“At this time in our country, we are all Patriots,” Patriots owner Bob Kraft told the Boston Globe after his team won the Super Bowl.
Patriotism was at an all-time high at this year’s Super Bowl. There were American flags and frequent references to the military. There was live footage of the troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. There was even a red, heart-shaped stage where U2 sang against the backdrop of a giant list of victims of the Sept. 11 tragedy.
American hearts were in the right place, but what about their pocketbooks? Congress has allocated an estimated $4 million of our tax money to a fund that will attempt to put a price tag on human lives lost on Sept. 11. It has passed unprecedented legislation that compensates victims for tragedies for which the U.S. government was not liable. The legislation interferes with the judicial process by cutting a deal that pays families in exchange for not suing the airlines.
Congress undertook a noble cause. Nearly five months after the tragedy, the initial shock is being replaced by reality. As families struggle to cope with the loss of a loved one, they are also struggling to pay their mortgages and feed their children. The emotional loss is compounded by a crippling financial loss, as these families are left to pay their bills after losing not only a family member, but a family member’s income.
On Sept. 22, Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, which will pay the airlines for their losses on Sept. 11 and set up the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. There is a pragmatic aspect to this legislated relief in that the victims will not be subject to the uncertainties of a trial and will receive at least some compensation.
The legislation seems to help everybody, but it may be too good to be true. In protecting the airlines, the legislation will be protecting not only the victims but also the airlines’ shareholders from lawsuits against the airlines. Under the veil of helping the victims, the government is actually helping the big businesses and big unions that hold much of the airlines’ stock.
Big businesses like the airlines think in terms of the bottom line. Until it is more expensive to be sued for lives lost as the result of inadequate security precautions, the airlines will not invest money in improving security. If families want to make real changes in honor of their deceased loved ones, they should not forfeit their right to sue by receiving money from the government’s fund.
The legislation sets a precedent for the U.S. government to act as a life insurance policy in any future tragedy. Families need to use the judicial process to seek justice through compensation from the airlines that had a role in this tragedy, not from the taxpayers.
Insurance companies often specifically refuse to accept responsibility for claims resulting from acts of war. Yet, the government is rushing into an area where insurance companies fear to tread.
The fund will give families an average of $1.65 million. Although this may sound like a lottery jackpot, this estimate will likely be reduced to a fraction of that number after deducting the victims’ life insurance, pension benefits and Social Security payments. Some families are concerned that after all of the deductions, the yearly income from the fund will not be enough.
The monetary worth of each victim is going to be decided by one man. Kenneth R. Feinberg was named special master of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund by Attorney General John Ashcroft. The value of each life will be calculated by factoring in the victim’s income, age and family size. The fund will compensate families for each of the victim’s dependents and for lost future earnings. Families will also be compensated by the U.S. government for their pain and suffering after the death of their loved ones, even though the government did not inflict this pain or suffering or have any responsibility for the death of the victims.
Many families have spoken out against Feinberg because they feel they will not be adequately compensated by the fund. Some Americans have been quick to label these families greedy, and the New York Daily News ran a scathing column against these individuals next to a cartoon showing families getting handouts from a Ground Zero crane dumping piles of money.
These families are not greedy. They are afraid of going on without their loved ones and of how they will find money to pay the bills. As a grieving widow told Oprah Winfrey on her program Feb. 1, she would live in a cardboard box if she could just see her husband one last time.
Families seeking money should leave it to Sept. 11 charities and life insurance policies. Families seeking justice should leave it to the courts, instead of allowing Feinberg to put a price on lost lives. Families should not be forced to bargain with Feinberg about the dollar value assigned to their deceased relatives or about their legal significance to the victim, as gay and lesbian partners will be forced to do. Congress is forcing grieving families to justify the worth of their loved ones, and not surprisingly, families think their loved ones were worth a lot more than the government does.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
