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 22, 2002 3:11 PM Compensation US Government Compensation Fund Representatives: In the immediate aftermath of the tragic attack of The United States, on September 11, Congress enacted the Victims" Compensation Fund of 2001 P.L. 107-42, to compensate relatives and the families of the victims of that attack. This Fund was enacted as part of a comprehensive package to protect the airline industry and imposed restrictions of the rights of the victims' relatives to recover damages from court. Overall, I think the published Interim Regulations for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 establish a fair and efficient process for expediting reasonable compensation to most of the individuals and families harmed by this tragedy. I do see one potential defect in the regulations, which may serve to undermine one of the statutory purposes: litigation avoidance. I offer the following comments: Each family should be treated equally and receive the same amount of government compensation for non-economic loss. Payments from privately purchased life insurance policies or collateral payments from private, non-government sources should not be a consideration in the calculation of government compensation. It appears from the interim regulations, and the accompanying loss tables, that compensation awards for "economic loss" are being capped at the level of the 98th percentile of income earners ($231,000). Placing a cap on the potential fund awards for this type of loss may seem unfair of this regulatory system. Stated plainly, the gap is wholly adequate compensation for the families of the highest wage earners: Why should fund compensation for the economic loss experienced by someone who earns well into the 6 digit range and is more than capable of carrying adequate life insurance to meet their financial obligations not be capped through reference to a $231,000 salary. Higher wage-earning victims, of course, may lead to higher damages claims - and, ultimately, higher potential awards - against the airlines as well. Which is precisely the reason to be consistent with the cap on economic loss recoveries from the fund for the highest earning victims. The formulas used need to calculate appropriate economic loss in these upper end circumstances, and allow the same formulas to use each victim's actual earnings to calculate true - not deemed - economic loss. It is imperative that the government establishes awards and compensation consistent all the way up the chart. The American people do not want to see our government, once again, award people who are not responsible. It is misleading of the government to continue to state that the average family will receive $1.6 million dollars when some of the families may receive nothing. The government has made it a practice to take care of those, who on the surface, can not take care of themselves, but in reality did not attempt, plan or manage their assets for the future. Individuals who lived well beyond their means, carried no life insurance, and lived extravagant carefree lifestyles will be given the most compensation based on need. The responsible individuals will be penalized as usual. This is representative of the families who save for their children's college tuition and then are penalized when qualifying for grants or financial aid. Families that lead extravagant lifestyles, have multiple cars, elaborate houses and saved nothing for education magically qualify for assistance! I realize that the government is trying to keep the costs of the September 11 payouts down while maintaining fairness as they compensate each victim's family for pain, suffering and lost wages. However, the law must be unemotional to be fair and must not penalize taxpayers, whether through reduction of Social Security funds or special taxation, for the purpose of compensating a select misfortune. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. It is absolutely imperative that we as a nation uphold our obligation to the people who died by fully protecting the families that have been left behind; but it is also imperative that we do not inflict undue burden on the rest of the nations masses for the compensation of the few. Individual Comment Middle America September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-22 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 dojN002289.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. 2002-01-22