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. Friday, March 15, 2002 3:55 PM FEDERAL FUND COMPENSATION FOR THE SELF-INSURED To: Mr. Kenneth R. Feinberg Dear Mr. Feinberg; I saw you on Meet The Press on 3-10-02 discussing compensation for the 9-11 victims. During the discussion the issue of just compensation for the self-insured was briefly talked about. Basically, beneficiaries of victims who were privately insured are having the proceeds of those private life insurance policies offset from any benefits they are entitled to under the federal compensation fund, you are administering. In some cases, the proceeds of the private policies will even prevent some surviving families from receiving any benefits at all from the federal fund. Since these survivors are receiving monetary compensation through private insurance equal to or greater than the upper limitations of the federal compensation fund, this initially seems equitable. However, since this insurance "windfall" to the Federal Fund was generated through the payment (and sacrifice) of private premiums/monies, I believe to be really equitable in these cases, the Fund should reimburse the survivors for all the premiums paid out (up to the Fund's upper cap) that secured the private insurance benefits being offset. Of course this will cost the Federal Fund more money than it would otherwise pay out, but it will cost the Fund far less than if those individuals had not had the foresight and made the economic sacrifices to privately insure themselves. After all, if these individuals had taken their premium money and spent it on vacations, expensive cars, Rolex watches, diamond jewelry or just blow it, the Federal Fund would be paying them without any offsets. Even if these individuals had taken the premium money, invested it wisely, and were now enriched, there would not be any offsets to compensation by the Federal Fund. The catch here seems to be these individuals bought life insurance with the money. They should not be penalized for using those dollars to buy life insurance, while those who spent their dollars in other ways are compensated by the Federal Fund without offsets for not spending their dollars for life insurance benefits. I believe that failure to reimburse these individuals for the premiums they paid (with reasonable interest on their premium payments from policy inception) would in effect be punishing them for their economic responsibility and foresight. For the Federal Fund to do less would not be equitable, especially in light of the circumstances and sacrifices involved. Sincerely, Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-03-15 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 dojR000828.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. 2002-03-15