Beyond belief
Taki
HNew York
uman nature being what it is, it was only a matter of time before thoughts of misfortune turned to thoughts of money. Last week, lobbyists for Larry Silverstein, the developer who holds the lease on the World Trade Center, helped ensure that a bill passed by the House protects him from claims by victims of the attack and their families. Nobody has sued, thousands of bodies are entombed, there are tens of funerals daily, the area is a disaster, and Larry Silverstein is trying to stay rich. The reason his sharks were successfully lobbying the crooks in Congress was that Silverstein is trying to maximise the obligation of insurers, while trying to limit his liabilities. Larry the louse insists that the insurers — Swiss Re — pay him for two buildings. Swiss Re insists that the WTC as a whole was insured for $3.2 billion. The louse wants 7.2 billion big ones.
Unfortunately, Silverstein has the least to lose financially and the most to gain. Taking a leaf from another American patriot, Marc Rich, Larry the louse has hired Jack Quinn, the lawyer who got the Draft Dodger to pardon the fugitive fraudster in his last day in office. The lawyer, in turn, lobbied his pals in Congress to limit how much money victims can obtain from Silverstein's real-estate companies. The louse wants to obtain $7.2 billion and to limit his liability to $1 billion. It's called having it both ways, a la Marc Rich, but in view of the enormous human tragedy, what Silverstein really should get is a bullet up the arse — from some cop who lost his buddy in the rubble.
What a grotesque bunch. A greedy developer tries to enrich himself with the help of a lawyer who made his name by getting a crooked American president to pardon a fugitive traitor-fraudster billionaire. A film scenario such as this would be considered unbelievable even in Hollywood. Now, with the help of pols, Silverstein wants to cash in.
But not to worry. It will get worse. Trial lawyers, those nice guys who extorted billions from tobacco and gun manufacturers while the Clinton gang was in power, will now go after airlines and other corporations, and then after the city's fire department, the police and the emergency and rescue services, many of whom lost their lives. Mark my words. Trial lawyers are America's cancer, and the cancer will stop at nothing in pursuit of a buck.
The problem, of course, is not the greed and utter loathsomeness of certain people, but of democracy. America calls itself a free society but it does not provide protection against people like trial lawyers, Jack Quinn or Larry Silverstein. Last week I attended the funeral of Christian Reganhard, a 28-year-old judo black-belt friend of mine. (One of the three martial-arts friends I've lost.) Christian was very tough on the mat, and very gentle off it. He left the Marine Corps in January this year to join the fire department. Assigned to ladder 131 in Brooklyn, he died the way he lived, heroically, while trying to save others. His father, a retired police detective, called me to thank me for what I had written in the New York press about his son. As if I had done something heroic. Christian was the prototype Hollywood villain. He was patriotic, respectful of the flag, a gentleman, a churchgoer, with all the attributes the freaks and conmen of Hollywood and the Left detest. In fact, he and the rest of the firefighters and cops who gave their lives embodied what the Clintons and their friends hated and looked down on.
As I said, it will get worse. And I wonder how Christian's parents (his mother still makes the hospital rounds, unable to accept his death) will feel when one day soon Larry Silverstein rakes in seven billion big ones, while they get at best the minimum of compensation. Probably the same as William Buckley's (the CIA agent tortured to death in Lebanon) family did when Marc Rich, who traded with and made billions from the very people who ordered their son to be tortured to death, was pardoned by the Draft Dodger. But I am preaching to the converted. Thanks to the IRA, thousands of ghosts rise from their white crosses thundering the word justice, but their murderers are walking around free. This is a very evil world full of evil people.
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