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Thread ID: 11956 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-01-19
2004-01-19 18:08 | User Profile
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The Guild 1-17-2004 The Right Man for a Job No One Could Have Wanted
Forward ^
| Jan. 4, 2002 | ELI KINTISCH
Posted on 01/17/2004 4:31:12 AM PST by BigWaveBetty
WASHINGTON ââ¬â When asked to recall a difficult moment during his tenure so far as Special Master for the federal government's September 11 Victim's Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg recounts a meeting in a New York conference room where over 100 grieving family members had gathered to discuss the fund with its appointed director.
"One woman said, 'I had been married to my husband for over 25 years, we were inseparable. I should receive more emotional-distress payment than the woman who was married only six months or a year,'" Mr. Feinberg, 56, recalled during an interview from his Washington office. "Another woman hopped up and said, 'How dare you, I loved my husband just as much as you did, and the fact that you were married 25 years and I was married six months should not be a viable distinction.'"
Weighing the pain of two grieving families is just one of the trying experiences to which Mr. Feinberg has grown accustomed in recent weeks, since his appointment in late November by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
To solve this particular problem, Mr. Feinberg decided in mid-December to award each family an identical base sum for what lawyers call their "non-economic" loss. Under the plan, each family will receive $250,000 and each spouse and dependent will receive $50,000 more.
But even as victims' families have begun to challenge that solution, newer, even stickier dilemmas have arisen. One man who lost two children in the attacks asked Mr. Feinberg whether he should file one or two claims.
"How can it not get to you?" asked Mr. Feinberg. "But you try to believe that you're doing some good."
Mr. Feinberg's task is as difficult to administer as it is easy to describe: to determine how much money each family of a September 11 victim should receive. The fund itself, created as part of the airline bailout bill, is an unprecedented, open-ended government initiative designed primarily to save the airline industry from billions of dollars in lawsuits. By agreeing to tap the fund, families give up the right to sue the airlines involved in the September 11 attacks and to appeal any of Mr. Feinberg's decisions.
Mr. Feinberg has been at his job for only a month, but controversy has already flared over the rules he has established. The so-called non-economic awards, which assign a dollar value for each victim, their spouses and dependents, have earned the bulk of the criticism.
Mitchell Baumeister, a New York lawyer representing more than 40 families of victims, called Mr. Feinberg's plan "a betrayal," echoing many families' complaints that these figures are too low. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer called the program "unduly restrictive."
Mr. Feinberg answers that the figures are similar to what families of firefighters or police officers lost in the line of duty would typically receive by law.
In addition to the non-economic awards, families will also receive compensation based on the deceased worker's wage-earning potential. Under that formula, Mr. Feinberg's plan will grant an average of $1.65 million to each family, with a high "award" of roughly $4.3 million and a low award of approximately $500,000.
Still, many families have complained that families of victims of airline disasters often receive larger awards. Mr. Feinberg counters that it may be possible to win more compensation in court, but then families would have to endure years of litigation and emotional trauma.
"If you want to go through all those hoops in the tort system, you may get a bigger award,'' Mr. Feinberg said. "Or you may get zero." But if you sign up for the federal grants, he said, "You will get a check within 120 days."
Mr. Feinberg's plan has also been criticized for deducting pensions and insurance from eventual rewards, though this is normal procedure in tort cases. Critics further ask how Mr. Feinberg will compensate families with special needs, such as handicapped children.
Mr. Feinberg's previous experience with some of the thorniest, most emotional mediation cases in recent years has prepared him well for his present task.
As the court-appointed mediator charged with settling claims related to the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Mr. Feinberg garnered praise from government officials and most veterans groups. Mr. Feinberg has also officiated over long-standing disputes involving asbestos and the shutdown of a Long Island nuclear power plant in 1988.
Mr. Feinberg jokes that his mediation skills have also prepared him for disagreements at his home in Bethesda, Md. "Whenever there was a sibling dispute, I'd hold a little mini-trial," said Mr. Feinberg, father of Michael, 24, Leslie, 22 and Andrew, 19. "I'd sit everybody down at the table and I'd say to my oldest, 'Alright, you're the plaintiff.' Then I'd ask my little girl, 'do you want to cross examine?'"
Officials at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington speak glowingly of Mr. Feinberg, whose wife, Diane, is the federation's immediate past president. A co-chair of the federation's Lawyer's Division, Mr. Feinberg has brought a number of prominent speakers to federation events.
Mr. Feinberg was born in Brockton, Mass., where he grew up in a non-practicing Jewish household and was active in the local YMHA. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, he received his law degree at New York University in 1970.
It is difficult to imagine an attorney with better bipartisan credentials. Years before Mr. Ashcroft was publicly hailing his expertise as a mediation lawyer, Mr. Feinberg was formerly chief of staff for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a leading candidate for the job of White House counsel in the Clinton administration. [I guess Mr. Feinberg was too honest for that job.]
Mr. Feinberg's supporters also include Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, liberal Harvard university law professor Alan Dershowitz and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who says that Mr. Feinberg "had an outstanding reputation in part due to his special ability to work well with individuals of many different views."
"If you can get Ashcroft and me to agree on anything," Mr. Dershowitz said, "it has to be something good."
Mr. Feinberg's Bio., University of Pennsylvania Law School
It is difficult to imagine an attorney with better bipartisan credentials. Years before Mr. Ashcroft was publicly hailing his expertise as a mediation lawyer, Mr. Feinberg was formerly chief of staff for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a leading candidate for the job of White House counsel in the Clinton administration. [I guess Mr. Feinberg was too honest for that job.]
Mr. Feinberg's supporters also include Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, liberal Harvard university law professor Alan Dershowitz and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who says that Mr. Feinberg "had an outstanding reputation in part due to his special ability to work well with individuals of many different views."
"If you can get Ashcroft and me to agree on anything," Mr. Dershowitz said, "it has to be something good." Fascinatingly swarmy Forward article with an equally swarmy commentary by that epitomy of FR neo con incestuosness/dictatorialness - that mysterious organization known as "The Guild". Can't you just feel the love? ;) Dershowitz holding Feinberg's hand. La de da de da. "The Guild" sure in this instance seems to epitimize the modus operendi of "The Tribe" doesn't it? (Probably only a few of us FR oldtimers are fully cognizant of the fascinating story of "The Guild" I guess, and I never really had time to fully get into it myself. But it was obviously very influential in the transformation of FR to its full neocon lacley status.) --- ### Okiereddust *2004-01-21 17:47* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=AntiYuppie]From what I remember, "The Guild" consisted of soccer moms who voted for George W. Bush because they thought he was "cute." Their collective noise-making may have had something to do with enforcing the "no criticism of George W. Bush" rule, but the newfound sacrosanct status of Israel, Jews, and colored immigrants is due to something far more sinister.[/QUOTE]You missed out on our private discussions about "the Guild". They had a lot more going for them than noise making power - they had an enormous club if some sorts over FR. Anyone who so much as uttered the slightest peep against them or on one of their threads was immediately gone. We speculated money at the time, but they seemed to have something more actually. They were after all a group of FR prominent and visible supporters in Washington D.C., showing pictures of their public dinners etc. I'd suspect they had some personal ties with the National GOP, (thus explaining their reflexive neoconservatism) although I never really confirmed that. --- ### Okiereddust *2004-01-21 23:32* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=AntiYuppie]That may explain part of the "no criticism of Bush/GOP/Rush Limbaugh" policy at FR, but is there any evidence that the FReeper Guild was explicitly Zionist and shared the ADL mindset?[/QUOTE] What do you mean by "evidence that the FReeper Guild was explicitly Zionist and shared the ADL mindset? If I asked you for "evidence that Jim Robinson was explicitly Zionist and shared the ADL mindset" how would you reply? To me he most certainly does, in a sense, but not like a Cachelot or Veronica/Penacite/Daisy11 does. Actually, to answer your question, your recollections that " 'The Guild' consisted of soccer moms who voted for George W. Bush because they thought he was cute" was pretty close to my impressions, only a picture I saw of them struck me as more like soccer grandma's, and of course they have enormous clout at FR. Who knows - soccer grandma's could pretty much fit the description of people like Barbara or Laura Bush to a T for that matter, couldn't it. Mine and your feelings about the nature of the Guild could both basically be accurate - they are soccer moms, but with some pretty substantial clout of some sort. I don't know, this discussion took place among my group of Freeper dissidents at a time when I was sort of burned out on Freeper fighting anyway, so at the time it just seemed an oddity. Maybe it's just catching my attention a litle more now. (Or maybe I've just got to much time on my hands ;) ) --- ### Campion Moore Boru *2004-01-22 02:05* | [User Profile](/od/user/31) Okie: My incomplete recollection of the Guilders squares to that of AY's. Yes, they possessed an inordinate amount of juice on the board. If you'll notice, they were a consistent source of income for JimRob. In fact, their complaint was usually that the people who disagreed with them didnt even pay, were parasites, while they contributed monthly. They were not neocons outside of Republican = Good, Democrat = Evil. --- ### Sertorius *2004-01-22 12:46* | [User Profile](/od/user/26) I remember that they were bitchy as hell and not only would go after those who question blind support of Israel, but also those who brought up the immigration issue. When I think about the crap they wrote about Bush I really can't see any diffference between them and those women who defended Clinton to the point of wanting to have sex with him to show their support. Quite a collection of myrmidons. ---