Like there was ever a fair way to divide up the obscene amount of money available to the families of 9.11 victims. I suppose the second-guessing was inevitable, but it certainly has cheapened the healing process.
Instead of trying to figure how to help families and loved ones deal with the grief and the reality and the magnitude of their losses, we may now commence kibbitzing about how things “should have been done”.
WASHINGTON - The federal compensation for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could have been distributed more fairly and efficiently if equal payouts had been given to all families instead of basing awards on factors such as the victim’s age and potential lost income, according to the fund’s administrator.
Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, said the varying sizes of individual awards, required by Congress, led to “finger pointing” among victims and a sense that officials were placing a higher value on some lives than on others.
It also greatly complicated the task of calculating compensation for those who suffered losses after terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania, he said.
“I had the firefighter’s widow saying to me, ‘Mr. Feinberg, why am I getting a million dollars less than the stockbroker’s husband, who was pushing a pencil on the 103rd floor and my husband died a hero? I must be missing something,’ ” Feinberg said Tuesday. “And it fueled the divisiveness which was inevitable when the statute required different amounts for everybody.”
Of course, as soon as money was introduced into the equation, anyone with anything resembling a brain should have known that the gloves would come off- and we would see the worst side of the people expecting compensation. With money involved, it was no longer about compensating people for their losses. How could one POSSIBLY devise a system that was equitable, reasonable, AND agreed upon by everyone involved? No, suddenly you had people doing their Rosie Perez impression from “It Could Happen To You”…and it wasn’t pretty.
Yes, I suppose we should somehow compensate those who suffered such horrific and unimaginable losses. The questions, of course, become very basic: How much is a life worth? Is the life of a stockbroker or a CEO worth more than that of a fireman? It doesn’t take a genius to see the nightmare scenario inherent in this process.
Of course, with all of the second-guessing going on, I’ll leave you with one question: How much are the families and loved ones of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq being paid? You can bet that it’s one hell of a lot less than the families of the 9.11 victims are getting- and THAT, my friends, is a crime.
