Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Wednesday, November 07, 2001 1:51 PM Points to be considered. I have spent the past few weeks researching Title 4 and I have a few comments and questions: First: Why is pension funds listed specifically as a collateral source of income? The only time this would be available would be in the case of the death of the victim, when it would convert to the victims family. Wasn't this money that the decedent had already earned and then saved? How is this a benefit? Is it fair to use this as an offset against the compensation of Title IV? It is my opinion that this would not be fair. Second: Are charitable contributions and grants made by charities going to be listed as collateral sources of income? This too would not make much sense, unless the actual purpose of this plan was only to keep the cost of the potential exposures low. Third: Under the terms of Title IV, anyone applying for this fund would not be able to pursue a lawsuit against anyone else. This would seem to include the following: The security firms that were directly responsible for checking the passengers for weapons The management of the World Trade Center, who did not have an adequate evacuation plan and had told the people in the second tower to go back to their desks despite that the construction of the two towers did not allow for fire stop walls. Some have said that it is standard operating procedure to have people stay in their current locations until removed from the building by rescue workers, usually the fire department, but that only works in buildings that have walls and fire doors to separate areas from one another as per the current code regarding residential high rise buildings. The towers were built in such a way as to allow for the greatest amount of free working area, were office space and were built before the residential codes were in effect. And, despite an anti-terrorism law that is currently on the books written to deal with precisely this situation, the terrorists themselves cannot be sued. The law that was enacted still requires the airlines to place the limits of their liability insurance to the Victims Compensation fund, but none of the 3 groups above are required to place any amount into the fund, but still receive the same if not greater protection under this act. This is also extremely unfair. The monies frozen by the government belonging to terrorist organizations should be entered immediately into this fund, while the other groups involved should also be forced to agree to place into the fund the limits of their insurance in order to have the same basic immunity from litigation. While I understand that the airlines do serve a vital national interest, the same cannot be said for the other groups that should share to some extent the blame for the deaths of thousands. Individual Comment Brooklyn, NY September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojW000255.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-11-07