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, January 15, 2002 9:32 PM Compensation for 9/11 victims Dear Mr. Zwick, When I heard of the proposed settlement to the recent terrorist plane crash victims, I could not believe my ears. My associates and I travel from Boston to the west coast early in the morning on many a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and two of our group actually were on one of those very flights on 9/9 and 9/10. My son worked in a building now abandoned due to 9/11 crash damage (Two World Financial Center), but was fortunate to be elsewhere that morning. Except for the state of the economy and the downturn in the semiconductor industry since last January, I am sure that I or one or more of my associates would have been on that flight. Therefore, I have a great empathy for the victims and am angered to learn that my family would have received no compensation simply because I took the precaution to provide insurance and retirement savings. Like many of the victims families, my family would stand to receive millions in damages in open suits from such a crash but nothing under the government's formulaic compensation program. Like all too many government programs, this is another Robin Hood style attempt at redistributing wealth. This should not be not a country of handouts, rather it is presumably a country of opportunity and reward. As someone who earned every nickel, but would therefore "qualify" for no compensation under your plan, I am furious. Yet again, the bureaucrats are taking from those who work hard, pay taxes, deny indulgences, and save for their future, while giving to those who otherwise have made no such provision. I know I will never see a dime of my social security in spite of paying the maximum FICA every year since I left high school. I don't think that is fair, but the politics of that piece of social welfare seem unstoppable and I have made my retirement provisions to account for that inevitable reality. However it is an insult to now find that such planning would result in a 9/11 victim's heirs losing both their companionship and respective future earnings toward that retirement simply because a jealous bureaucrat decides that the victim's savings are already "sufficient" to take the place of compensation or those future earnings. What a person provides for himself does not lessen the liability for their loss due to negligence of airlines and government agencies, who are clearly responsible for poor security that allowed such easy and damaging terrorist strikes. All prior damage awards and negotiated settlements in other crashes actually provided awards proportionate to future earnings power--not debited for the savings to date from such earnings power or proceeds of self-insurance. There is no precedent for the unfair settlement, except perhaps in some of the lesser know writings of Marx or Lenin. As a contributing member of Citizens Against Government Waste and the Republican Party, I will push hard for the correction of this injustice and the replacement of any member of government responsible for continuing down this unjust path. Regards, Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-15 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 dojN001728.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. 2002-01-15