Security Check Hissy Fit by the Left
Jack Kemp
Today the Huffington Post and their associated America Online website ran an article about how “awful” it was that firemen who were at the Trade Center on 9/11 and others as well at the post 9/11 cleanup will be screened for possibly being terrorists. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/911-responders-screened-for-terror-ties_n_852198.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2|57655
This is a spin to cause people to be outraged. The correct way of describing this security event is that FBI will screen to keep out fraudsters and terrorists from milking the system to take monies reserved for actual victims of 9/11 and post-9/11 health problems. And yes, there are many people who make false claims in this world – especially on Medicare – and the government should be screening them.
When you attempt to cash a check, buy cigarettes if you are young or ask for a senior discount, does someone ask you to see a driver’s license to prove age and identity?
When someone goes to vote and they ask for their drivers’ license, does the Huffington Post – or the New York Times say, “Grandmas now compared illegal alien welfare cheats by The Board of Elections?” Actually, I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas.
Within the last week, Jeff Bruzzo, the Director of Island Metro Productions 9/11 Tribute Film (www.911tributefilm.com) and I were just finished shooting some background video in the World Trade Center subway passageways, walking towards the exit with the camera turned off, a New York City Police Detective approached us, showed his badge and requested we show some identification and tell him what we were up to with that camera so close to Ground Zero. We didn't complain to the Daily Kos or the New York Times, but understood that the detective was just doing his job, protecting the public.
When I went for jobs as a computer programmer in financial institutions in the 1980s, they took my fingerprints and sent them to the FBI to see if I had a criminal record. According to the Huffington Post, I should have been outraged, just like most liberals, at the unfairness of this reality. And I had to take a drug urine test as well for a number of my interviews. Too bad I didn’t have Gloria Allred to call a press conference on my behalf and a Huffington Post writer to protest the Unfairness of Life.
When my mother was in Germany after World War II, some US Army agents, who she believed to be from Army Intelligence, did not just take her word that she was in Auschwitz, but actually asked her to draw a rough layout of the camp on a piece of paper and describe what each building’s function was. Any Soviet Spy could get a tattoo on their arm such as my mother had: the Army wanted verification she was telling the truth. It was difficult – but adult life sometimes forces one to deal with unpleasant difficulties. Someone could be the nicest, most decent person in the world, but to strangers, they are…a stranger and have to offer proof of their claims.
In the United States, the German government asked my parents to contact them once a year to show they were alive and other family members were not claiming benefits for a dead person. Let’s face it, many Holocaust survivors would have no misgivings to lie in order to get the German government to get additional funds for loss and suffering. But the German government was well within its rights to ask for that proof of being alive. I personally had to send my father’s last reparations payment back because he died just before the first of the month date on that check.
I see this Huffington Post story as some leftist being upset not only with life but with Jimmy Carter’s famous admonition that “life wasn’t fair.”
The government isn’t trying to insult 9/11 survivors. It’s trying to keep out 9/11 fakers.
Today the Huffington Post and their associated America Online website ran an article about how “awful” it was that firemen who were at the Trade Center on 9/11 and others as well at the post 9/11 cleanup will be screened for possibly being terrorists. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/911-responders-screened-for-terror-ties_n_852198.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2|57655
This is a spin to cause people to be outraged. The correct way of describing this security event is that FBI will screen to keep out fraudsters and terrorists from milking the system to take monies reserved for actual victims of 9/11 and post-9/11 health problems. And yes, there are many people who make false claims in this world – especially on Medicare – and the government should be screening them.
When you attempt to cash a check, buy cigarettes if you are young or ask for a senior discount, does someone ask you to see a driver’s license to prove age and identity?
When someone goes to vote and they ask for their drivers’ license, does the Huffington Post – or the New York Times say, “Grandmas now compared illegal alien welfare cheats by The Board of Elections?” Actually, I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas.
Within the last week, Jeff Bruzzo, the Director of Island Metro Productions 9/11 Tribute Film (www.911tributefilm.com) and I were just finished shooting some background video in the World Trade Center subway passageways, walking towards the exit with the camera turned off, a New York City Police Detective approached us, showed his badge and requested we show some identification and tell him what we were up to with that camera so close to Ground Zero. We didn't complain to the Daily Kos or the New York Times, but understood that the detective was just doing his job, protecting the public.
When I went for jobs as a computer programmer in financial institutions in the 1980s, they took my fingerprints and sent them to the FBI to see if I had a criminal record. According to the Huffington Post, I should have been outraged, just like most liberals, at the unfairness of this reality. And I had to take a drug urine test as well for a number of my interviews. Too bad I didn’t have Gloria Allred to call a press conference on my behalf and a Huffington Post writer to protest the Unfairness of Life.
When my mother was in Germany after World War II, some US Army agents, who she believed to be from Army Intelligence, did not just take her word that she was in Auschwitz, but actually asked her to draw a rough layout of the camp on a piece of paper and describe what each building’s function was. Any Soviet Spy could get a tattoo on their arm such as my mother had: the Army wanted verification she was telling the truth. It was difficult – but adult life sometimes forces one to deal with unpleasant difficulties. Someone could be the nicest, most decent person in the world, but to strangers, they are…a stranger and have to offer proof of their claims.
In the United States, the German government asked my parents to contact them once a year to show they were alive and other family members were not claiming benefits for a dead person. Let’s face it, many Holocaust survivors would have no misgivings to lie in order to get the German government to get additional funds for loss and suffering. But the German government was well within its rights to ask for that proof of being alive. I personally had to send my father’s last reparations payment back because he died just before the first of the month date on that check.
I see this Huffington Post story as some leftist being upset not only with life but with Jimmy Carter’s famous admonition that “life wasn’t fair.”
The government isn’t trying to insult 9/11 survivors. It’s trying to keep out 9/11 fakers.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 9:19 AM
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