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, November 06, 2001 9:23 AM Victims of the WTC disaster My brother was a victim of the World Trade Center disaster. He was a Firefighter with Ladder 25 in Manhattan and gave his life evacuating people from the burning building. There is no doubt that this type of herosim demonstrated by all the Firefighters, Police and Emergency workers was impetus behind the public's ongoing charitable donations. The public has contributed a significant amount of money to directly assist our fallen brothers and sisters - not to help the U.S. government bail out the airline industry and to protect its balance sheet. No one who has lost a relative or friend in this disaster wants to get rich -- in fact, we would give all that we had to have our loved ones returned to us. Barring that, we, the survivors, must bear the burden of incredible grief, coupled with the mundane aspects of settling our loved one's estates. The outpouring of charity has assisted in shouldering that burden, yet is a separate thing altogether from the responsibilities of our government. There has been no larger receipient of our government's largesse than the US Airline Industry. A $15 Billion dollar bailout of an industry already suffering from competitive pressures and a lack of regard by the public is certainly a boon to stockholders and the companies' CEOs. The package that was created by our government to bail out the industry, also created a fund for the victims to compensate us for the airlines unwillingness to provide for basic security. Of course, as a provision of this expedited settlement, the victims' families cannot sue the airlines. If one of us chooses to avail ourselves of this fund, we should be able to do so -- and not have our ultimate settlement reduced by the amounts received from Charity. Do we reduce the benefits for welfare recipients if they go to a soup kitchen? or use government sponsored daycare? Of course not - these are unthinkable! They fly in the face of why people donate to charity! This sentiment is no less true here - charity is charity, and the government is the government. They are separate entities and should be treated as such - it is unconcionable to treat them as equals. One final note - if the awards to victims families are reduced by the amounts they receive from charities, you have just given the trial lawyers the best 10 years of their lives. The amounts spent to prop up the airlines will be wasted, and the industry will go under from the weight of lawsuits and judgements for the victims families. Your choice is clear - preserve charitable donations for what they are, not for a method of balancing the government's books. Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-06 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 dojW000057.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. 2001-11-06