Show Me The Money

There's a good article today called "Why the 9/11 fund was a mistake" in the Boston Globe. As you will recall, the 9/11 fund was set up to compensate the family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks.

I've always had a problem with this fund. People suffer tragedies every day, and no one has set up a fund to help them. What about the family that lost a father and breadwinner in a traffic accident on 9/11? It had nothing to do with terrorism, but the family was just as devastated as the 9/11 families.

What about the Oklahoma City victims? Or the family of a man killed while working in a convenience store? I think the idea of the government handing out billions of dollars to the victims of one type of tragedy is simply bad policy. I worry about the precendent that was set by this fund, and what effect it could have our our economy should there be another attack.