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. Tuesday, November 06, 2001 2:49 PM Re: Public comments on issues related to the Victims compensation fund Hello, Thank you for inviting public comments on this issue. I have been extremely disappointed in the way charitable organizations are giving in to their own transparent greed by trying to devise ways to cheat the Sept 11 victims out of the money collected on their behalf. I applaud our government for wanting to rise above that level and strive for fairness. I'll address the issues as outlined in the NY Times article today. 1. In order to define/verify eligibility for the fund, I believe producing acceptable forms of documentation for the person lost such as the expedited death certificates offered for the WTC victims families should be sufficient. To ensure that the right relative is applying for benefits of the fund, generally accepted standards like those used by life insurance companies to determine who gets the proceeds of any policy should be used. This would prevent a non-immediate relative from intercepting benefits that should rightfully go to someone more closely tied to the lost victim. Ie, an Uncle could not apply to receive the fund proceeds if it were found that there was a living wife, or child who would be deemed in first position to receive benefits. In the event that no spouse (legal or common-law) were evident, then children of the deceased should be next, followed by parents of the deceased, siblings, etc. Only one relative should be allowed to file on behalf of one victim. There should not be several people filing to receive benefits on the same victim. 2. Calculating economic and noneconomic losses should be based on a combination of what the lost victim was earning on an annualized basis and calculating what percentage that amount was in relation to the families overall income as a whole. If the person was only earning 25% of the total family income, then the economic benefit should not be greater than that. The non-economic benefits to all families should be one set dollar amount which would be equally dispersed to all families. 3. Disputes amoung relatives could easily be resolved by referring back to #1 above and using a standard life insurance companies rules for determining eligibility. In the case of disputes over which relatives in a family are entitled to benefits, the burden of proof should always rest on the relative with the greatest relational distance from the victim himself. For example: Between an ex-wife with children and an Uncle or Aunt, the burden of proof of entitlement to benefits would rest on the Uncle or Aunt and not on the ex-wife with children. In the case of homosexual couples or non-married couples, I believe using the standard common-law marriage rules to determine the validity of the relationship should apply. I am pleased to see our government rise to the challenge of providing for the victims of Sept 11. My support, and my prayers remain with all of you. Individual Comment Mount Pleasant, SC September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-06 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 dojW000113.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. 2001-11-06