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, January 23, 2002 9:20 PM January 22, 2002 Dear Mr. Feinberg, This letter is to convey to you my concerns over the current format of the Victim Compensation Fund I lost my husband and my two young daughters lost their father on September 11th while he was at work in the World Trade Center. While I am grateful for our government's immediate response to this horrific event, upon closer scrutiny I am troubled by the current rules of the compensation proposal. Essentially, certain aspects of this proposal cause one to wonder if it was created to truly compensate victims' families or to protect the airline industry and the federal government. The conflict between these two very divergent goals is causing the families of victims considerable anguish in addition to the enormous grief which has taken up residence in every minute of our lives. This is due to the appearance that the government is trying to "buy off" families such as mine without giving fair and equitable compensation that respects our birthright as Americans to exercise our lawful prerogative to pursue our tremendous grievance in a court of law. For example, the fund's compensation offset for life insurance, pensions, and government benefits (social security) is patently unfair. It is perhaps the main element in this fund that appears to illustrate how this fund was created to protect the liability of the airline industry and the government rather than to genuinely compensate for the murder of innocent people in this national tragedy. I especially object to the reduction of compensation for life insurance and pensions. To suggest that families of victims should be penalized because their lost loved one exercised wise planning and financial responsibly is profoundly unjust. Also, to offset the compensation by any survivor's social security benefits is unfair. My husband paid into the social security system for many years and it is a benefit that I am counting on for income. In bold stark terms, the purpose of the fund is to compensate people who are victims of a tragedy that has its origins in the failure of both private industry (the airlines and their private security firms) and various agencies of our federal government to protect us from terrorist treats that could well have been predicted and avoided. Perhaps our government realized that, if tried in a court of law, these shortcomings, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent and law-abiding citizens, would be revealed. What you are proposing is that we accept your compensation package in replacement of the normal lawful method of compensation by filing a civil suit in a court of law. The current proposal doesn't equitably replace one form of compensation with another. In reality, this proposal, which is designed with the interests of the airline industry and government in mind, proposes to the families of victims an option that denies us the right under law to reasonable compensation and punishes the heirs of my husband and many others who made financial and insurance decisions wisely, thoughtfully, and responsibly to protect their families. Therefore, I respectfully request that these offset provisions in the legislation be eliminated, which are inequitable and unfairly penalize some families and not others. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-23 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 dojP000037.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. 2002-01-23