Ghouliticians have thought of yet another gruesome price-gauging move to exploit the beloved victims of the war of 911: charge the bus drivers leading tours of Ground Zero. Is this before or after 911 family members have to pay to visit their loved ones' remains piled in a stack behind some wall seven floors under the watering pools (sheesh)?
These are the gatekeepers of our most precious and raw memory in the long war on the West: Advisory member to the 911 Memorial, Daisy Khan, and carpetbagger Julie Menin, whose bigwig real estate husband is tighterthanthis with Bloomberg, along the obscenely overpaid bureaucrats like 9/11 foundation president Joseph Daniels, who pocketed $371,307, Museum director Alice Greenwald, who made $351,000, and capital planning Vice President Joan Gerner, who soaked up $337,143 before leaving last spring. Development director Cathy Blaney raked in $322,292. She is a full-time foundation employee, and yet she also worked last year as a fund-raiser for the election campaign of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The very idea of using human remains as some exhibit is an act of pure savagery. They have no humanity. They must eat soylent green for breakfast.
Meanwhile, leading experts in the field agree with the 911 families. One such expert, Dr. Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, whom the Times identifies as “an expert on the repatriation of Native American remains at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,” noted that when bodies have been put on display in other exhibitions, everyone involved signed a consent form. But none of these 9/11 family members have given consent to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Where did all this money come from? Donations from unsuspecting Americans, school children and bake sales. Museum publicity material has featured schoolgirls who donated a dollar each to the museum. Donations solicited for the Museum ended up paying for $5.3 million in salaries and benefits for Memorial and Museum employees in 2009.
"Freak Show": 911 Memorial Museum Officials Exploit Human Remains
9/11 Memorial Tour Buses Will Pay to Park Downtown DNAThe city plans to charge tour buses to park downtown near the 9/11 memorial starting this fall. (Flicker/ƒliçkrwåy)
By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Tour buses visiting the 9/11 memorial will have to pay for parking spaces and may also have to buy permits from the city, officials said Friday.
Downtown politicians and community leaders hope to use the fees, which have not yet been set, to pay for NYPD patrols that will keep traffic flowing and pedestrians safe when the 9/11 memorial opens to the public this fall, drawing an estimated 5 million visitors a year.
"It is important to take that revenue that comes of our hosting the memorial and dedicate that to continued assurance of quality of life [downtown]," Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Friday.
Silver spoke with other local officials after hosting a closed-door meeting at his office Friday morning with representatives from a bevy of city agencies. The meeting marked the first time the major downtown stakeholders have come together to discuss a bus plan for the memorial's opening, which is less than five months away.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gave an update on tour bus planning Friday, with, from left, Community Board 1 Chairwoman Julie Menin, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, DOT Lower Manhattan Borough Commissioner Luis Sanchez, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, Downtown Alliance President Liz Berger and Assemblywoman Deborah Glick. (DNAinfo/Julie Shapiro)"The process is far from finished, but we certainly are off to a positive start," Silver said.
Much of the plan is still uncertain, including the bus parking and permit fees and how exactly the money will be used.
But the city is moving forward with efforts to encourage tour buses to park at remote sites in Brooklyn and Jersey City and have the tourists take ferries, subways and PATH trains to the memorial, officials said. The 9/11 memorial foundation plans to withhold free, timed tickets to the memorial from tour companies that do not cooperate.
Still, the city estimates that six to eight buses an hour will need to enter lower Manhattan to drop off visitors including schoolchildren and senior citizens. Those buses will park in three-hour layover spaces near the Trade Center site, likely on Barclay Street and West Street, said Luis Sanchez, the Department of Transportation's lower Manhattan borough commissioner.
Sanchez said the city is no longer considering parking tour buses in Battery Park City or in TriBeCa. A previous proposal to park buses on Warren Street near P.S. 234 and the Downtown Community Center drew the ire of local residents.
The city is also exploring retrofitting double-decker tour buses to make them less polluting, Silver said.
State Sen. Daniel Squadron said he hoped that the inter-city bus legislation he and Silver introduced in the wake of last month's deadly Chinatown bus crash would help regulate tour buses as well.
No tour bus companies attended Friday's meeting, but some tour guides have expressed concerns about the restrictiveness of the city's plan.
In 2013, the Port Authority is scheduled to open an underground bus garage at the World Trade Center site, which would help alleviate the problem.
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