Seattle News Bites! seattlenewsbites@hotmail.com November 4, 2001

Gulliani vs. Firefighters

This had resulted in a small riot with the police being ordered by the Mayor to arrest them, which is exactly what happened. Charges were eventually dropped against most of them the next day.

Now to the question: did he make the right decision?

We think so! and that might suprise many of you. While we have GREAT respect and admoration for those BRAVE and DEDICATED souls, the bottom line is that it is too much of a financial burden on a city already reeling economically from the effects of Sept. 11!

Now, we don't really believe the Mayor's decision was based on safety concerns, but rather over just plain dollars and cents. We sympathize with all relatives of the 5000+ innocent victims and firefighters, and are truly sorry for them. All rescue workers are doing a marvelous job despite horrendous conditions and no hope of finding anymore alive.

But we just can't spend an indefinite or inordinate amount of time trying to recover every last one. That's nearly impossible to accomplish and will take years! It's not worth the risk of pushing the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

Just look at what Sept. 11th has done already:

1. pushed already slumping world economies into recession, which we believe might eventually become a depression,
2. put thousands, or perhaps 10's of thousands out of work, with many others being laid-off due the economic downturn,
3. tourism is down,
4. lower Manhattan has been devistated,
5. it will take months, maybe even years to clean-up the rubble. And it will cost big bucks to do it,
6. investigating, decontaminating, and fighting the growing anthrax threats are costly,
7. and the war isn't helping matters any.

Remember when the city "tittered" on the verge of bankruptcy the last time? And how bad things were back then? Want to go through that again? We don't think so.

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