R002428
Wednesday, March 20, 2002 8:13 PM
Disinformation
Kenneth L. Zwick, Director
Office of Management Programs
Civil Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Main Building, Room 3140
950 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20530
For the record, I feel an unethical disinformation campaign is being waged against the victims, heroes and families of the 9-11 debacle. We are being cast as being given, out of "taxpayers' generosity", first $1.65, now $1.8 million and yet some of us, if not all of us think that this is not good enough. Much of this plant can be traced to the administrators of the Fund while some of the extrapolation comes from suspicious e-mails to Victims Support web sites and in comments on the DOJ Fund website and news media fill ins. I wonder how many of the more than 100 airline lawyers and lobbyists sent to Washington September12 are still on retainer? Much is heard of the $1.65 figure but little is heard of the $15 billion given to the airlines in the same Airline Bailout Act. Curious? (That would reach $5.0 million per victim, by the way.) But which was the greater loss: the 4 aircraft and the lost business that eventually will be recouped or the extinction of 3,000 lives? I am almost afraid to ask this question on the DOJ site.
The same act that gave the airlines your tax money, severely limited the victims' right to sue the airlines and another, related act, took away rights to sue everyone else except the hijackers and related terrorists. The ABA also gave the Fund first crack at the limited airlines' insurance money. It is estimated by some that the Fund will payout between $1.5 and $2.0 billion in total, thanks in large part to the deduction of pensions, life insurance and a deceased consumption factor (that's right, dead men don't eat.) The Fund net average payout will be closer to $650 000 than to $1 650 000 and all of it will recoverable from the insurance money the victims who sue would have collected! The victims are actually paying for the Victim Compensation Fund. Thirsty? Have some vinegar.
Three groups are unfairly singled out to pay for the Fund. First, the uniformed emergency workers families who have low salaries but good death benefits. The low salaries are first discounted and used to calculate economic loss, then the generous death benefits are subtracted to net out to zero or less. The well-off experience the same treatment, but at a higher multiple. Good salaries that have been squeezed down by buying into generous future benefits are discounted and capped then reduced by the benefits which include life insurance and vested pension plans thus arriving at the same result, $0.00. The single victims' and the poor families get hit proportionally harder by the illegally calculated non-economic loss of a flat rate $250 000 take it or leave it proposition. Parents, brothers and sisters are a zero in the Master's calculus as are fiancés and same sex partners, which he leaves up to the states' laws and probate courts but provides no funding. The Master has said no plan can make every one happy but this one may set a record for its failure to make anyone but the airlines happy.
Individual Comment
Newton MA