Posted on 10/07/2006 11:42:24 AM PDT by Sergeant Tim
Instead of someone who actually cares about 9/11—its dead and living victims and heroes—and remembrance of the day America was attacked, someone with less interest, without the time, and with an obvious conflict of interest is about to be left in charge of the memorial and museum at Ground Zero. Mayor Bloomberg’s choosing culture over remembrance, arrogant indifference for human remains, sabotaging all prior fundraising for the memorial, and callous disregard for thousands of living victims of 9/11 renders him unfit to serve as the chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
More than five years after 9/11, a thorough search for human remains of the Deutsches Bank building has not been attempted. Mayor Bloomberg steadfastly refuses to let JPAC (the joint POW/MIA accounting command) join the search.
At Fresh Kills, the remains of our loved ones remain layered in with the garbage. New Jersey, with the second highest number of 9/11 dead, has passed a law to remove the remains from there yet Mayor Bloomberg refuses to demand that the New York legislators order them moved to a more fitting site.
Thousands of people are afflicted with 9/11 related illnesses—some people have already died from them—while Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki have overseen a one billion dollar fund set aside to help those victims. Yet only 60 million dollars has been expended, all of it to lawyers to dispute the victims’ claims.
Early this year, Mayor Bloomberg scared away both memorial board members and donations by publicly inflating the cost of the memorial to “one billion.” He intentionally failed to mention the Port Authority would have had to spend several hundred million of that figure on site preparation, even if no memorial is built on Ground Zero at all:
Mr. Bloomberg has spent much of this year criticizing the planning and fund-raising efforts for the memorial, which fell far short of the goals and in recent months stagnated amid ballooning cost estimates and personnel shakeups.Now the mayor, who helped raise more than $1 billion for The Johns Hopkins University, would be in a position to ensure that the project has enough money to go forward and to help rein in its costs, government and foundation officials said.
Mr. Bloomberg has been especially vocal over the pace of the planning, which appeared to spin out of control a few months ago. There had always been confusion and tension over the roles of the foundation, formed to construct and operate the memorial, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which began the planning and design.
Yet before he runs off, Governor Pataki wants to add to his legacy of memory failure Mayor Mike, as the New York Times reported yesterday:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the sharpest critics of the planning and fund-raising for the 9/11 memorial at ground zero, would take over the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation as chairman under an arrangement brokered by members of its board, government officials and board members said yesterday. … “…The appointment, approved yesterday by the foundation’s executive committee, could go before the foundation’s full board as early as tomorrow. Also under the arrangement, Gov. George E. Pataki, who has great sway over the board, would become the foundation’s honorary lifetime chairman. He has been looking to lock in a role in the future of Lower Manhattan past the end of his term this year.Government and foundation officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because the appointments were not yet final.
Mr. Bloomberg’s new position — which has no fixed term — is intended to focus mainly on fund-raising and could be finished before he leaves office in 2009. The appointment is the most direct evidence yet of his intention to insert himself into the rebuilding, and is an attempt to break the logjams that have seen victims’ families at war with politicians and others over the design and other elements of the project.
Mayor Bloomberg previously supported what caused the largest logjam when he supported the International Freedom Center becoming the gateway to the memorial. His support lasted until just one day before Governor Pataki ordered the IFC off hallowed ground. On September 28, 2005, in an editorial entitled Mayor Mike’s Makeover, the New York Daily News said:
Mayor Bloomberg seems to be seeing the light when it comes to the International Freedom Center proposed for Ground Zero.Bloomberg once appeared sympathetic to the controversial museum, which critics fear will detract from the solemnity of that hallowed site and possibly create a forum for America-bashing.
But lately, everyone is joining the uproar: Hillary Clinton, three local congressmen, the police and firefighters unions, Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro and her likely rivals for Clinton's Senate seat have all voiced concerns.
And now, so has Bloomberg.
"I think what we have to understand is that this is just not a normal location where you can put a cultural institution and have the cultural institution have total freedom to do anything they want," Bloomberg said yesterday. "I think at this time it is clearly problematic."
Uh, no kidding, Mr. Mayor. We've only been saying that for . . . months.
Alas, Hizzoner left some wiggle room.
"I'm . . . urging my members on the [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] to read [the IFC's latest] report carefully and then discuss it and see if you can't come to some resolution," he said.
We strongly suspect that as chairman, Mayor Bloomberg would let his cultural world cronies wiggle back onto the memorial quadrant. Yesterday, he let slip his “anonymous” 10 million dollar donation towards the memorial, yet in five years, he has failed to solicit them or his business associates for donations. Instead, he condoned giving 45 million of 9/11 funding to cultural types downtown. His past philanthropy, while noble, has otherwise been reserved for charities and the art world. Yet we are supposed to trust that—now that he will turn on the charm—he will raise all the money needed. If he now hits up his friends in the cultural world, they will have a major say in what goes in the museum. That is, they will have that say if Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t decide to cut costs and the museum out altogether.
Mayor Bloomberg has stubbornly blocked the names upon the memorial being listed by affiliation, despite the promise of more than 50 million dollars in donations should that change be made.
The board could ask Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick to chair the memorial foundation. They will not ask him, even though he is a 9/11 family member, deeply cares about remembrance, and has the time, skills, and connections to raise all the money needed.
An already busy Mayor Bloomberg wants to oversee the letting of contracts to build the memorial and museum. No matter that perhaps some applying for such contracts contribute (or do not) to New York City’s politicians when they run for office.
Governor Pataki prefers someone whose past actions and indifference has greatly angered 9/11 family members.
We have heard the offhand swipes that 9/11 family members have scared donors away with our protests—to the point we seem "loony" at times. Were we supposed to stand aside last year while political activists and the cultural elite stole a memorial site from America right from under its nose? Should we just shut up about our loved ones rotting in a garbage dump and being left for five years in a building that should have been searched long ago? Do they expect us to be happy that Mayor Bloomberg might be left in charge of America’s 9/11 memorial to our flesh and blood and a museum about the day our country was attacked? Anyone who thinks we will remain silent about him becoming chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation must be out of their minds.
Governor Pataki: can you hear us now?
Updated 5:05 PM EDT 10/05/06:
Mixed reviews for Mike on WTC fund role
Updated 5:10 PM EDT 10/05/06:
As expected, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation voted to elect Mayor Bloomberg as its chairman.Take Back the Memorial.org will have much more to say about this very soon. Please stay tuned.
ping!
Just wish he'd find himself a nice boyfriend and retire from public life.
I didn't care for this guy when he was a .....(D)
I really don't care for him now that he's a ..(R)
I have been expecting this back-stabbing against us from Pataki at this point.
He leaves the leadership of the NY and NYC GOP at just about its lowest point in history (no thanks to him), and his attention to the political cronyism as his primary forte does not end.
What fantasy spinning wackos have convinced him to waste his and other people's time and money on a 2008 POTUS bid? The man is nuts.
This person is quite obviously unhinged. Looking for remains?
I hate to tell them, but anybody who hasn't been found is, if they are lucky, a stain.
These RINOs stick together and support each other. Too bad conservative Republicans can't do that.
They're still finding bone fragments in the Deutsche Bank Building. It's a crime scene. They had just started working from the top down when they realized there are human remains.
Not much work seems to be getting done there. I don't know that they were equipped to deal with much of this sort of thing, and I don't remember hearing anyone talk about how much in the way of remains there actually are in the building. It's possible this could be the case in a lot of the building.
The instruments that look like they're built to measure air quality have been situated at various vantage points, all within a few yards of the Deutsche Bank Building, for quite some time, probably close to two years.
I don't know why Bloomberg won't 'let' a qualified agency perform a search for remains, but I suspect it might have something to do with a boondoggle that could conceivably come down the pike between the EPA & a presumed insurer of the property. In any case, I don't think we're talking about 'stains' here.
I have my issues with Bloomberg, but Pataki is quite possibly my least favorite politician that I've ever seen.
You missed my point and are not fully informed. Nothing of 1,151 murdered at the WTC on 9/11 has been found so far. Did you know that the remains of more than 30 people were at Staten Island's Fresh Kills garbage dump after WTC wreckage was moved there? Did you know that despite hundreds of bone fragments being found atop of the Deutsches Bank building (debrie and part of the South Tower fell onto and into the face of it) last year, the building still has not been searched? The 9/11 families do not expect anyone to resift what was dumped at Fresh Kills; we only want it moved out of a grabage dump. And we want the Deutsches Bank building thoroughly and properly searched. If you lost someone in the WTC on 9/11, would you want those two things?
Stay tuned as, in time, I think you'll see Bloomberg pass Pataki to the bottom of your list.
What do you expect from a RINO and Bloominidiot?
We got about what we expected. That does not mean we will settle for it.
I hate to tell them, but anybody who hasn't been found is, if they are lucky, a stain...
They recently found some remains in the UBS building and on rooftops...
The article had me thinking that Pataki was announting Bloomberg to be a candidate for Governor in the future. Thank goodness he didn't do that.
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