Lisa Belkin, Just Money nytimes.com
[ In case you're still interested and hadn't seen this. ]
Question after question. But the most important questions are left unasked. How did the government get into the business of saying that one victim's life is worth three times as much as another's? Or that the grief of these families is worth millions, while the grief of other crime victims, or accident victims, or even other terror victims, is not? Should an emissary with unlimited power be granting children money when their father chose to leave them nothing? Should an emissary with unlimited taxpayer funds -- current projections put the cost as high as $6 billion -- have such power over people's lives at all? And what about next time? Are we going to be making these sorts of payoffs -- for that is what they are -- every time we are attacked?
[ Then there's the Special Master versus the Masters of the Universe . . . ]
At the heart of the Cantor rebuttal, however, is that the charts chosen by Feinberg do not accurately reflect the potential earning power of Cantor employees. In other words, the projected lifetime-income numbers, before any offsets, are wrong, they say. The Cantor culture was unlike the more traditional insurance companies and government agencies with which they shared a building, and salaries jumped at a more rapid yearly clip (even, they argue, in recession years) than Feinberg's projections reflected.
Feinberg has publicly welcomed Cantor's revisions, but he also knows well that public support for the plan fades as the arguments center more and more on money. He is not shy about pointing that out to those who seek the largest amounts. ''I saw a lawyer the other day, and he said, 'My client wants $12 million,''' he says. ''I said, 'That client's not getting $12 million.' He said, 'Well, then, he'll litigate.' I said: 'Go ahead. Go litigate. And do me a favor, hold a press conference, O.K.? And tell everyone how that $4 million I was willing to give you was too low, and say you wanted 12. Go on national TV and all the networks and let people know how unfair Feinberg's been in not giving you $12 million.''' |
