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 16, 2002 12:45 PM comments regarding interim ruling The events of Sept 11, are unparalleled in US history. The scale of destruction and grief while seemingly unimaginable are profoundly real for many Americans. My brother was killed at WTC on 9/11. I closely followed how events unfolded on every front as our country responded to the attack. The actions of leaders from the President and his officers, the Mayor of NYC and others has been tremendous. The American people have become proud again of each other and their country. A glaring exception to the rule has been the handling of the Victims Compensation Fund. As I waited for the ruling to be published my gut feeling was that the DOJ would handle the ruling with the dignity this unparalleled event merits. I had the feeling that because the attack was an extraordinary symbolic attack on the spirit of America the response in support of those affected would be reciprocative in scale. I was deeply disappointed. I purposely waited these few weeks before responding to the ruling because the special masters ruling angered me to the point of distraction. I found the tone and language callous and dangerously out of touch with the context of the event. The ruling felt like another blow, more fallout from the attack. I share the interpretation of many regarding the priorities of special master as spelled out in the interim ruling. Specifically: The airline bailout act gave the airlines $15 billion of taxpayers' money and capped the airlines' liability for the 9/11 crashes at the limits of their insurance coverage. It set up the Fund so the airlinesâ?? bailout would not come at the expense of the victimsâ?? families. DOJ has ignored the fundamental mandate of the act to provide full and fair compensation to victims and their families, and instead created a formulaic federal program based on irrelevant concepts more familiar to the bureaucracy. The DOJ's proposed awards for non-economic damages ($250,000 per victim plus $50,000 for a spouse and each dependent) are only one-tenth the level paid in comparable cases. For example, a spouse was awarded $5 million in non-economic damages in a lawsuit arising out of Lockerbie. Congress explicitly enumerated a broad range of non-economic damages for which victims and their families shall be compensated. DOJ ignored this, and based its presumed awards on a military group life insurance program (SGLI) with a maximum policy of $250,000, and a federal statute providing $250,000 to families of fallen public safety officersâ??on top of other amounts they may receive. DOJ's approach assumes that Congress intended the non-economic damages to be illusory, because a $250,000 SGLI payment for a serviceman killed at the Pentagon would wipe out those damages under the collateral offset requirement. DOJâ??s proposed awards for economic damages grossly underestimate actual losses, because DOJ relied on outdated, inapplicable work-life and life-cycle earnings data. Forensic economists have discovered other serious flaws in DOJâ??s methodology. DOJ underestimates promotions and other increases in earnings for victims. It relied on federal civil service and military retirement system boards that track federal worker incomes and pension requirements, not the higher-paying private sector career paths. DOJâ??s reliance on past 3 years of income (which the Special Master â??may averageâ??) looks suspiciously like a federal pension approach, rather than considering the likely income-earning potential of the decedent, as is routinely done in wrongful death cases. The regulations arbitrarily cap a victimâ??s income at $225,000 a year, cutting some familiesâ?? compensation by over 50%. As a result, many widows will have to sell their homes, deplete their childrenâ??s college funds, and give up their plans of being full-time parents while their children are young. A familyâ??s award may be increased above the â??presumptiveâ?? award only by a showing of â??extraordinary circumstancesâ??â??beyond those suffered by other victims or victimsâ?? families. This makes the hearing or appeal to the Special Master a mere charade. The low levels of the presumptive awards will result in many family members receiving little or nothing from the Fund, once the collateral source deductions (which are not required in a court case) are made. DOJ should fulfill, rather than flout, the actâ??s intent by revising its rules to compensate victims and their families for the types of damages specified by Congress, at levels comparable to those provided in the tort system the Fund was designed to replace. I am thinking that perhaps the special master is unaware of the level of achievement and the personal characteristics of so many of the victims. It seems that this ignorance and lack of empathy resulted in the sadly unacceptable version of the ruling that is currently on the table. As Representative King said: "They were the symbols of American capitalism, the symbols of American business, and they were murdered because of what they were,"... "Now they shouldn't be deprived of what they're entitled to." The interim ruling is grievously flawed in my opinion. My family and I are wondering about the thinking. To us it communicates cluelessness about the value of a human life. The rhetoric of the special master rings hollow, the response given to those whose loved ones were murdered is painfully inadequate. In the context of responses from the President and the Mayor, Senator Clinton, etc., the special master's ruling comes across as a lame, ill conceived trap that forces victims to suffer further. It is not at all a dignified attempt to respond to the murder of 3000 Americans working at the symbolic heart of America. Thanks for your attention Individual Comment Philadelphia, PA September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-16 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 dojN001887.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. 2002-01-16