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. Saturday, January 12, 2002 2:28 AM Inadequacy/ injustice of current fund I am deeply disappointed by the current fund guidelines. My brother, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp , was murdered in this horrific attack on the WTC on Sept.11. I feel that your current limits are an inadequate underestimation of both the economic and non-economic lossses his family will experience. First, I feel that reducing the compensation by insurance premiums trivializes the prudent investments these hard-working victims made to provide for their families. Taking this investment from them is victimizing them yet one more time in their deaths. It undermines our society's work ethics of industriousness and responsibility in that it penalizes the victims for choosing to provide for their families with life insurance. Second, reducing their compensation by Social Security payments once again penalizes the victims for being hard-working, dedicated citizens. My brother had been paying into Social Security since he was a young teenager. The cumulative investments into this system by he and his employers are sizable. To take this investment from him makes a mockery of the system and essentially deprives him of his rightful investment. If the fund were still to implement this policy, it should at least compensate for the entire contributions made by the victims and their employers into Social Security. Third, it is unfair to choose a three year salary average to determine future projected earnings. This fails to recognize recent promotions and concomitant salary increases. I could understand your using an averaging of salaries when commissions are involved, but for those victims who had a predetermined salary (and bonus), you are once again penalizing them in death for having lived the American ideals of working hard and getting ahead in life. Oh that they had lived to continue to do so! Sadly, though, their potential will never be realized. Please don't rob them of what they had already accomplished by failing to accept their salaries as of September11th as the true reflection of their current earnings potential. Finally, I am saddened by your failure to attach a greater value to the non-economic losses which the families have suffered. Although we all know that there is no figure which could ever reflect the tremendous losses which have overwhelmed the families of the victims, the current calculations are incredulous. In our democratic society with a judicial system that attaches multimillion dollar settlements for "pain and suffering" scenarios which are far less painful and sorrowful than those of 9/11, the fund has a moral responsibility to exhibit a greater sensitivity to the families' grief than they are currently demonstrating. Although I know that this issue is not intended to be a major one in the way the compensation fund has been set up, it deserves far more value than it is currently receiving. These innocent victims died because they were American. And they died, in part, because their beloved country failed to protect them. We must not camouflage this fund under the guise of a benevolent gesture by our country. Rather, we must be frank in our acceptance that although they were random targets of blind hatred, there was unequivocal negligence by other parties which also played a role in the wrongful deaths of these innocent victims. Unless the victims' compensation fund takes these issues into account, our family will be unable to accept it. Thank you for your attention to my comments. Regards, Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-12 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 dojN001542.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. 2002-01-12