There is no getting around the numbers: Using the funds that are already budgeted or pledged TWIN TOWERS II IS PAID FOR and, because they would be so efficient to construct, would give the people in three or four years what almost everyone wants — as opposed to taking twenty or thirty years for something that almost nobody likes. So how do they think they can keep that cat in the bag? More importantly, why would anyone want to?

Port Authority announcements of developments at the WTC confuse activity with progress. It is no surprise that an agency with vast public resources and tremendous autonomy can make things happen, but given the feasibility of the alternative, it is a reckless course. Some of the recent announcements that pass for big news would be ridiculous if they weren’t so sad.

So is Mr. Silverstein’s attempt to manouver the public into paying for his buildings. Not having the money to develop the property is a symptom, not the cause, of his troubles. That was as true in the boom as it is in the bust. Given the complete lack of interest in his project, there is no fiscally responsible way to saddle the public with his towers — any of them.

The new Twin Towers II website is making the inferiority of the official project plain for all to see. No one can deny that the current plan is terribly broken. But instead of making the transition to a far superior plan, we are stuck with a dismal letdown simply because our elected representatives won’t own up to a mistake — a BIG mistake — or recogize that the biggest mistake of all is in failing to correct course when they have every reason to do so.

For the moment, we still have an unparalleled opportunity to show our own citizens and people around the world how rewarding it is to get off the conveyor belt and take charge of our destiny. But if, instead, a monument to corrupt government rises at the World Trade Center, then the epitaph of a once-great nation will be: “They couldn’t admit a mistake…” When are officials going to stop beating a dead horse as if it might actually get up and run?

As Yogi Berra once pointed out: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up somewhere else.” Now that the “Gracie Mansion Summit” talks have failed, Twin Towers II designer Kenneth Gardner is planning to host a series of “Kitchen Table Summit” talks, to be held in early September. The events will be marked by respect for the common sense to be found around the table in homes across the nation.

While the current project gets sadder all the time, Twin Towers II keeps getting better. The ONLY reason that the irrational, disrepectful, and wasteful spectacle at Ground Zero keeps going from bad to worse is because there is widespread misunderstanding of what is really going on and what Twin Towers II would offer instead. It is by far the more elegant and appropriate architecture and would result in a far more profitable investment. And once a legislative variance is enacted in New York and New Jersey, the flexibility of mixed-use Towers would make the office space controversy irrelevant.

Both the material and spiritual rewards vastly outperform the un-cola of a World Trade Center they are trying to impose on this country. The savings that would result from the efficiency of construction would pay for the transition — taking three years, as opposed to thirty, to complete. So, just around $10 billion of mainly public money would give us a truly spectacular World Trade Center — compared with $20 billion and counting for the current plan.

Finally, eight years is more than enough time to come to grips with the fear factor. It is a disgrace that politicians who wouldn’t dream of running into a burning building or charging an enemy on the battlefield are deciding how their fellow countrymen and women should handle the risk of being a 21st century Americans. Without ever consulting the people, they are trying to “protect” the country by emasculating it. But Americans do not shrink or cower. We have the collective character and spirit to defend what we love and what represents us abroad.

It is too bad that the servicemen and women who joined up as a result of 9/11 haven’t returned home to find what we all expected the day after 9/11 — better than ever Twin Towers rising above Ground Zero. If construction workers were building new Twin Towers, none of them would be getting drunk at lunch hour — and the American people would finally get what they have deserved all along — a World Trade Center worthy of the terrible price our country paid on September 11, 2001.

But it’s never too late to do the right thing… As many who are reading this will recall, the manager of the 1973 New York Mets made an observation in July, when his team was 9½ games out of first place, that became prophetic when they clinched the division title on the last day of the season. The greatest of all the Yogi pearls of wisdom remains: “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over…”