dojR002619.xml

dojR002619.xml

born-digital

email

yes

no

2002-03-22

Friday, March 22, 2002 9:30 AM
Unjustified

Hello.

I am very disturbed that people are being compensated monetarily for loss of
life in New York. People lose their lives from terrible acts or accidents
daily. It is not the role of the government to find the family of each of
these people and pay them for this unfortunate circumstance. Financial
compensation for deaths should occur in cases where someone is at fault or
blame can be placed on an individual or group, as a deterent for others who
might commit a similar act, but in this case, how can the american government
or the american people be faulted for what happened? It was simply a terrible
and unfortunate act. By compensating family members, we are essentially taking
responsibility for the act in the same way an airline takes responsibility for
faulty equipment that leads to a crash.

The news is full of comments from angry family members of victims who ask how
the life of their loved ones can only be worth a few hundred thousand dollars
and that they should receive more. I find it sickening that they use this
argument because they are trivializing the life that they are trying to place
value upon.

I do believe that financial support is necessary for families that have lost a
major income provider, but arbitrarily giving each family a baseline amount of
money is without a logical foundation and is inappropriate.

Lastly, if this plan is brought to fruition, how can one define the parameters
of a "family"? For example, whether we agree with gay relationships or not, I
think a life partner of a victim is more entitled to the benefits from
September 11th than is a family member who had not spoken to the deceased in
years. There will be many family members who will benefit from this
compensation that were much less emotionally connected to the victim than many
gay partners of victims.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you realize that victim
compensation is innapropriate and will encounter many circumstances where
people who did not truly love a victim benefit from this and others who were
emotionally bound to victims are left out.

Individual Comment
MD

2002-03-22