There MUST be someone to hold accountable - rehashing the 9-11 Victim Fund

[tniassaint]

Kenneth Feingold was on the radio this morning and was discussing his role in several mass settlement deals where victims of various events attempted to receive compensation through large funds set aside for that purpose. Honestly, Feingold is one of those people who are so easy to dislike; but he executed his responsibilities with a certain level

Comments

[lilenth]

The logic is to cover the expenses and to ease the suffering of families who lost someone, losing a family member is not only a huge emotional blow, it can cost a lot and sometimes it costs people their homes or jobs due to the aftermath.

That's the point of compensation schemes for these sorts of things.

[tniassaint]

OK - so who is to be held responsible for the compensation, and what is the logic of this instance - that is the actual question. I don't deny the case for ease of suffering, emotional blow (several states limit emotional compensation, btw) and etc.

This doesn't explain the logic of this instance. The prevention of the filings against the airline and airline security was cited as a specific cause for the law in the first place. How is this logical or even legal?

[underlankers]

It's logical in the sense that failure to realize Al-Qaeda was planning a major attack would logically fall to the CIA or US intelligence/military as opposed to the airliners the hijackers hijacked. Had the survivors sued the Bush Administration's intelligence apparatus that would have been an issue as explosive as a grain elevator surrounded by fine dust and high-octane fuel spilled from leaky tractor engines.

[tniassaint]

Agreed.

[underlankers]

So wait, your objection is to treating the survivors of 9/11 as human beings who receive compensation for having lost family members or for the health issues that come with massive smoke inhalation, claiming they should have sued Al-Qaeda instead? I'm not quite sure I understand the logic in this.

[tniassaint]

What is the logic of holding the victims responsible. In the case of those that became ill as a result of their work in rescue operations and cleanup etc. should be compensated through their work or through funds as required

I think you have missed the point of the question. I am not questioning that the responders and those who were employed or volunteered as responders should be properly compensated. I am suggesting that the with regards to the victims that the legal and moral fault is being placed on the wrong shoulders - and that it has been done because the real perpetrators are unapproachable and we, as a society, are litigious and feel that someone HAS to be held accountable - and why not the ones with the deepest pockets. I am asking why the airlines, the building management, etc. are the responsible parties and why they are the ones that required legal protection by way of this fund established by Congress.

[underlankers]

It should be, but it is not. In fact the Republican Party in more occasions than not refuses to vote funds for it, indicating they like to use 9/11 as nothing more than a political football, just as the Dems tended to use the Afghanistan War.

Ah. If that's what you were saying then yes, I agree with what you said. I think where the fault would have laid were this to actually be legally charted would be with both the Clinton and Bush leaders of the CIA and other intelligence agencies who after the first terrorist attack on the Twin Towers did not realize when a second one aimed at them and the Pentagon and at least one other place was in the offing in sufficient time to nip it in the bud.

[lilenth]

How do you nip a plane flying into a building in the bud?

[policraticus]

I am pretty much with you on this, actually. People are tragically killed in terrible ways all the time and many thousands leave family, children, loved ones who are bereft and financially ruined. Where is their taxpayer financed fund? If private citizens want to give charitably, I say go for it, I was happy to contribute to fire and police benevolent organizations in the subsequent years, but outside of maybe an ex gratia payment, the Fed had no business doing what it did. It was driven by emotion, not reason.

[tniassaint]

Why not seize the assets (laughing a little as if they had any) of the Afghan Taliban Government (who was the legitimate governing body at that time) and pull the funds from that - as well as attaching the assets (as unreachable as they were) of the Bin Laden family and Al Qaeda in at least a symbolic gesture.

[policraticus]

Because we aren't allowed to plunder anymore.

[tniassaint]

This would not be plunder. It would be legal compensation due to illegal and criminal acts. Send it through the courts as needed.

You say we cannot plunder, but the concept of holding the airlines or the federal government (and therefore the tax payers) responsible is plunder just as well.

Why not allow a court to hold the Al-Qaeda and Taliban legally responsible as the actual perpetrator and facilitator. If the government can garnish wages when legal responsibility is determined why not in a case like this?

[rick_day]

This incident was spun as "an act of war"; then so mote it be.

Legally, I am not sure what, if any compensation go to individuals killed or harmed during an act of war.

Were any civilians killed during Pearl Harbor compensated by the Japanese? By the US?

Were the Japanese civilians given compensation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the civilian internment camps?

How about the businesses renting in the Twin Towers? Are they due compensation for loss of business? Or is it just the people?

People bravely volunteered to help clean up the mess of the aftermath, knowing there HAD to be nasty stuff floating around (first clue to me there was a problem, was the EPA insistence the air was peachy clean). They volunteered. Now they want compensation?

I kind of agreeing with the OP; where do you draw the line on compensatory damage, leaning to morally or legally motivations?

[underlankers]

The ones here were both given compensation and their internment was recognized as unconstitutional by a decision of the US Supreme Court. The principle of war reparations and indemnities is one that has a long history of precedence in geopolitics, so that second sentence is a rather odd one. Of course most of these indemnities are paid by states, second-rate guerrillas like Al-Qaeda that have no state to support them obviously will not do this.

[kylinrouge]

Constitutionally, this is the general welfare clause. The same thing that our social programs are based on. To pay out compensation you do not need necessarily to structure your argument to say that this must be viewed in the legal spectrum of a court case. How and when to dispense funds via the general welfare clause is up to Congress, but the Constitutionality of these funds is very clear.

[tniassaint]

I disagree that this falls under the "General Welfare" clause and specifically as the law establishing the fund specifically cited the protection of the airlines. This was done preemptively to limit the airlines exposure to torte liability - in what I think can soundly be called poor logic.

I have seen nothing that established the Constitutionality of the fund under those terms. Can you provide that? (Not being snippy, I 'd really like to see something like that.)

[kylinrouge]

I don't know, look at the Constitutionality of any government funds dispensed to victims since this country's creation? When natural disasters happen? This isn't new, and it isn't under any Constitutional question.