N002199
Monday, January 21, 2002 9:45 PM
Comments to Victim's Compensation Fund
I am told that the DOJ and Kenneth Feinberg have extended the deadline for
comments. Mine are attached. My husband was murdered at the WTC on 9/11.
To: The US Department of Justice
Mr. K. Feinberg
From:
The first issue that I would like to address is my disgust that the USDOJ is even allowing the public to comment on the rules and regulations of this fund. The US government does not provide a forum for the nation to make personal comments regarding any other expenditure that they make. Why then are they allowing their decision to be impacted by the comments of people who are not personally affected by the fund? The taxpayers would complain about any money that the government wanted to spend on anything if they were only given the chance. This “comment period” is just an underhanded ploy used by the US government to try to get out of taking responsibility for their inability to protect the victims of 9/11. Using the comments, the DOJ can easily say that public opinion is negative regarding giving victims families a settlement using taxpayer dollars; thus the settlements must be scaled back. Why don’t you take comments on how the American people feel about paying millions, if not billions, to feed the people of Afghanistan or to rebuild their country? Why don’t you ask them how they feel about paying for attorneys to represent these terrorists in court? The government doesn’t care what the public thinks about that because they are going to spend money on it anyway. Why do the American people get to have an opinion now? Because it is in the penny pinching governments’ interest to be able to say that a group of citizens are opposed to the Fund.
I might add that those opposed citizens are in no way affected by the attacks and I am certain that they would change their opinions very quickly if they were directly affected. They also do not know the facts as I do.
I believe that the DOJ and Mr. Feinberg need to be reminded of the facts. Allow me…
September 11 happened because of the negligence of many, many organizations. Bin Laden planned the attacks, the suicide hijackers carried the plan out, but the US Government, its agencies and private industry allowed these murderers to waltz into this country and have their way with the lives of more than three thousand people…including my husband, the father of our two children.
The Immigration Department of this country is the biggest waste of taxpayer money in the history of the country. Clearly they are paper pushers who push paper as fast as they can in order to let masses of people into this country so that they can lose track of them and never even think about checking up on anyone to see if they are complying with the restrictions of their admission into this country. How many of the hijackers were here illegally or were here legally, but were in violation of their admission requirements? Can you count to 19? I can.
The FBI and the CIA failed miserably in several ways. The basic lack of knowledge of the attacks is gross given the fact that people were aware of the attacks in advance. In addition, what is this “Watch List” and who is watching the people on it? Apparently no one is since Atta was on the list and he boarded a commercial airliner without being stopped or being asked a single question. Why is the “Watch List” not automated with airline ticketing systems so that passengers are flagged if they are on the “Watch List”? Simple technology could have stopped the first plane that hit the towers…maybe that would have stopped them all? Atta should have missed his flight because the CIA and FBI should have been swarming him at the gate…he was on the “watch list” and he bought his airline ticket in his own name. He did not even try to sneak by security because he knew that our defenses are so weak that he didn’t need to use a false name.
The FAA failed by not teaming up with the intelligence agencies of this nation to make sure that they had the appropriate information about the “watch list” and by not imposing more stringent security measures on all commercial airliners. Other, less developed nations have much better security measures to protect the people who fly their airlines. It is a disgrace that the flying public of the United States is essentially unprotected. Only now that four planes were hijacked in one day are measures being talked about to improve the safety of airline passengers. Still, four months later, no sweeping changes have been made. The FAA is the regulatory agency for the airline industry and is the watchdog for the public when it comes to their safety on planes. Their job is to be proactive in their work, but unfortunately for over three thousand people, they are reactive. Can no one plan for the worst or is blissful ignorance a way of life at the FAA? The FAA is taking measures to protect us now that terrorists have taught them what to change. The FAA should be teaching terrorists that they cannot take over a commercial airplane in this country. They should have been implementing measures to protect the public before a tragedy happened, not just in response to it.
The Airlines and their security agencies are clearly inept at protecting their passengers. I don’t think that there is any dispute about that. The Victim’s Compensation Fund had to be created because the government knew that the airlines, at least United and American, would cease to exist if lawsuits were filed against them. That in itself speaks to the strength of the victim’s cases against the airlines. If they didn’t need protecting then the government would not be protecting them.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey built buildings that were unable to be protected by the fire departments of New York because the NYFD has no air support for fire. All the NYPD could do was fly a helicopter around and look at the people who were trapped inside while the NYFD ran up the stairwells to their deaths. The structure of the buildings made them susceptible to collapse when there was an explosion and subsequent fire. Firefighters cannot be expected to climb 92 floors and fight a fire with only the equipment on their backs. Even if they had gotten to the fire, what would they have done? They need water to put out a fire. No matter how the fire started, there was no way to fight it from the air and any explosion and fire on the upper floors could have resulted in the same fate, although maybe not as quickly as on 9/11. Anyone trapped near or above the fire would have perished just as so many did with my husband on 9/11. In this respect, the City of New York and whatever City agency that knowingly approves the construction of a building that cannot be protected from an explosion and fire is negligent as well.
In essence the Fund protects all of the above parties. Families of victim’s who opt for the fund forfeit their constitutional right to pursue litigation against ANY American agency, corporation, city, or company. Add to that the fact that the government has, unconstitutionally, placed very restrictive caps on the amount of liability that any potentially negligent party can be held accountable for. Let me repeat, very restrictive caps. So much so that the option of litigation against those parties would leave the victims with no compensation.
In a nutshell, the government has taken away the victim’s families rights to pursue any litigation to obtain financial compensation for the death of their family members. The government has protected every possible negligent party and left families with no rights and an insulting option for compensation…the Fund.
Insulting because it is totally impersonal. Feinberg says, fill out your forms, check the charts, deduct your collateral sources and have a good day.
Insulting because the amounts that Feinberg has come up with for compensating the families are nowhere near the amounts that the families would have gotten if they had been able to pursue their Constitutional Right to the legal system of this country. The bases for his computation of the numbers are not backed by the procedures used in the courts of this country. They are Feinberg’s arbitrary attempt to play God. May I remind him here that he is not. Any court in the nation would look at future earnings using economists to project the anticipated earnings of an individual over his/her lifetime. Any economist in the country will tell you that looking at an individuals' past three years earnings is not an accurate way to predict potential FUTURE earnings. Feinberg knows all of this…he has been involved with the legal system of this nation for many years…however he chooses to ignore it because he is trying to find the cheapest way for the government to shirk their responsibility to the people who perished on 9/11. The government has a responsibility because they were negligent and thousands died because of that negligence. Feinberg has a responsibility to step up to the plate and do the right thing, not the politically correct thing. At this point he has not left the locker room.
Insulting because it is just a small part of an act that was created with the more important objective of saving the airline industry. The Victim’s Compensation section of the Bill is listed as Section IV out of a total of five sections. It is preceded by the sections that involve a group that the government clearly feels a greater responsibility to…the airline industry. How many Americans know that the bill is titled the “Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act?” The Victim’s Compensation Fund is just a small part of a much larger government effort to protect the airline industry. In order to protect the airlines, it is necessary for someone else to take on the liability for the airlines negligence. The government chose to protect the airlines and foot the bill for that liability…they wrote this bill and dropped $15 billion into the airlines laps within weeks of 9/11. The basis of Feinberg’s job is rooted in the Airline bailout, not in the interest of the victim’s families.
Insulting because it strays so far from the practices of our legal system. No court in the country adjusts a settlement by collateral sources. No court in the country places an arbitrary, set figure on Pain and Suffering, Loss of Consortium, Loss of Enjoyment of Life, Loss of Companionship, and Loss of a Parent. No court in the country looks at past earnings as a relevant indicator of future earnings. The list goes on and on. Why are these victims not given the same consideration of the law that every other citizen gets? Because the government wants to protect the airlines and do it as cheaply as possible?
The victims of this tragedy are being treated as an afterthought that needs to be swept under the rug as quickly and as inexpensively as possible by Feinberg. He is trying to meet that goal. If this Fund is not changed then the whole purpose of creating it will be defeated. The families of these American, taxpaying citizens who died because of what they did for a living, driving the American economy, will not allow the government to insult the memories of their loved ones. These people were killed, not because they worked in the World Trade Center, but because they made the World Trade Center. If the World Trade Center buildings had housed libraries or schools or medical offices or any other industry, they would still be standing. The buildings were targeted, not because they were tall, but because of the successful, driven people who filled them. Those people represented the driving force behind the nations economy and their presence in those buildings made the buildings a symbol of our nations economic power, not the other way around. My husband was murdered because of his career, a career that symbolizes strength and wealth and power, qualities that our nation represents. He was a symbol of the very things that these terrorists hate about our country, he died for it, and the government allowed it to happen.
These are the facts.
I cannot believe that the families of these people will accept the meager offering that Feinberg proposes. He has professed to know that no family should need more that X dollars. He does not know what my children need. Our legal system is the only method that this country has for determining that number and the government, through this Fund, is trying to make us believe that the court system is no longer available to us. If this Fund is not modified drastically then I believe that many families will fight ALL of the decisions that the government is trying to impose on us. The Fund will become a useless instrument. We have rights. We have a Constitution. We have motivation. We have strength in numbers. We have a legal system that will respect us. We will not lie down and allow the US Government to ignore the facts and insult our loved ones.
I cannot accept this Fund as it is written and I believe that many families feel the same. You have wasted a lot of time and taxpayer dollars creating this Fund if none of us, or very few, take advantage of it. And you will have failed in your mission to protect the airlines. It may take more time for us, but this will not be the way that the United States government pays its liability to my husband. I will not tell my children that I accepted this paltry settlement for their fathers’ life because it was “simple”. September 11 taught me that life is no longer simple. I do not expect that to change anytime soon. Fighting the system to get respect for my husbands’ life will not be simple, but he is worth whatever it takes. I have a lifetime left to do just that if you force me to.
Bear in mind that multiple parties are liable, whether you acknowledge it publicly or not.
Make the Fund a realistic source of compensation.
Base it on the legal practices of our court system.
Individual Comment