It's okay to question the 9-11 survivors' fund

According to an old bosun’s mate I met on the USS Denver, the first rule of Naval service is: Never cuss another sailor’s good deal.  With that in mind, I’m all for taking a look at the 9-11 first responders’ survival fund. 

The fund was initially allocated 7 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money.  So I think the first step in authorizing additional funds for the program is thorough audit of the original fund. I am most interested in the tooth to tail administrative cost of the fund.  What is the total cost and percentage of the funds dedicated to bureaucrats overseeing the fund?

I hear that the fund will reduce survivors' benefits by 50-70% in the coming months. What kind of cuts are being applied to the salaries of the bureaucrats administering the fund?  Any?

How many people are taking advantage of the fund?   How many more can be expected to file for benefits?  What’s the end state of the fund?  How long does it go on?  Is it like affirmative action – a government program that will never end?

And here’s the real question that no one asks but needs to be answered: What makes 9-11 first responders any different from a beat cop who is killed in the line of duty issuing a traffic citation in Bozeman, MT on Jun 3^rd, 2018 or cops who are killed entering a workplace shooting?  What’s the difference between the 9-11 first responders and the kid from Iowa who put his life on hold on 9-12 to join the Marine Corps and was killed in action in Fallujah?

Seems to me that there’s a bit of an Animal Farm hierarchy of first responders – some are more equal than others.

I entered the Marine Corps with full understanding of the responsibilities and risks of great bodily harm associated with that service.  I suspect that first responders do the same.  That’s not a “so sad, too bad” dismissal of their plea for assistance.  Americans are the most giving people in the world. We can handle this.  But we shouldn’t be in the business of issuing blank checks. 

I don’t know a damn thing about the 9-11 first responders' fund.  It’s a government program.  As such, I suspect the program is rife with waste, fraud and abuse. That’s not a condemnation of the purpose of the fund.  It’s the altruistic near universal support for the program that probably allows much of the waste, fraud and abuse to take place.  After all, you heartless bastard, you cannot question support for survivor’s benefits for 9-11 first responders.

Maybe what needs to be done is a national fund administered by reliable charities funded by 100% tax deductible contributions that supports all first responders.

Anyway, it should not be a political death blow to question what is going on with this fund.

What is an existential threat?
The new Demo-Dope talking point is that global cooling warming climate change climate disruption poses an “existential threat” to the planet. Smart guy Tucker Carlson demanded, rhetorically, “Define 'existential.'  I bet you can’t.”

By context I assumed the meaning to be an immediate and deadly threat.  So looked the word up.  Here’s the definition: (adj) derived from experience or the experience of existence; (adj) of or as conceived by existentialism

So I looked up existentialism.  Here’s the definition: (noun) (philosophy) a 20th-century philosophical movement chiefly in Europe; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves

So I was right.  Not about the definition of “existential,” Carlson was right about that.  People using the word either didn’t have an understanding of the meaning or chose to ignore it.  I was right about the context.  What the warm-mongers meant was immediate and deadly threat rather than an existential threat - which means precisely nothing. 

So to put this in a gilded frame, the smartest people on the planet offer up a fancy wrong word to hector the hoi polloi about the dangers of global cooling warming climate change climate disruption.  I think the far more immediate and deadly (that would be “existential” for the Dopes and cable teleprompter readers in smart guy glasses) risk to the planet is from stupid people who shroud themselves in arrogance.