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9-11 fund compensations based on earning potential

A new book by Washington lawyer Kenneth R. Feinberg, who headed the 9-11 fund to compensate the victims of the tragedy and their families, said that survivors were paid based on the earning potential of the victim, according to an article in the New York Times.

“By law, he was required to calibrate awards according to the financial worth of the deceased victim,” the Times said. “… telling the wife of a fireman, for example, that her husband was worth less than a stockbroker.”

Feinberg’s book, “What is Life Worth: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11,” is a firsthand account of the difficulties he faced creating such a compensation system for an unprecedented tragedy. In the book he urges that if Congress decides to hand out awards in the event of a terrorist attack, however, it should make the same payment to everyone, regardless of income.

“Calculating the Incalculable in the Aftermath of Sept. 11,” New York Times, June 15, 2005.

GOP judge compares administration to “Nazis”

A candidate for Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court said last week she will leave the Republican Party, likening the Bush administration to “Nazis.” Longtime Republican Rachel Lea Hunter also harshly criticized the federal government’s occupation of Iraq, saying that those who disagree with the administration are branded as “traitors.”

Hunter also defended Republican Congressman Walter Jones, who was attacked by pro-Bush Republicans after calling for U.S. troops to be brought home from Iraq. Jones had called for “French Fries” to be renamed “freedom fries” at the start of the war, to snub European nations who did not support the Bush administration, but turned against the war recently after talking with returning veterans.

“…the administration in Washington will brook no criticism of its policies,” Hunter said in her statement. “So it has sent out its dutiful attack dogs to shoot the messenger. What have we heard? That Walter Jones is a member of the lunatic fringe. That Walter Jones should resign … What I find disturbing is that we are criticized for nothing more than the exercise of our Constitutional rights. Those who disagree with any aspect of the administration are branded as traitors and must be silenced.”

“Republican Candidate Calls Bush Administration ‘Nazis.’” Lincoln Tribune, June 23, 2005.

Americans getting shorter as inequality increases

Height is a good measure of nutrition—and, some anthropologists say, a culture’s democracy. Historians and archeologists usually find ruling elites of any society to be taller and healthier than regular people, and some conclude that a more egalitarian nation will tend to produce taller masses.

“If you take a dollar from the richest and give it to the poor,” anthropologist Richard Steckel said in a recent article in MacLean’s magazine, “heights will increase.”

Early Americans, with their freshly farmed topsoil and ample game, averaged two inches taller than Europeans, a fact remarked upon by Thomas Jefferson and others. In the 1900s, Americans were among the tallest people in the world.

As average Americans’ standard of living has declined, however, so has our height relative to other industrialized nations. Nations with universal health coverage, protein-rich diets and relatively low income inequality—like Canada, Australia and European nations—are continuing to grow as Americans shrink. The tallest people in the world are now the Dutch, which Steckel attributes to their having one of the most egalitarian societies in the world.

“A short history of height,” Maclean’s, March 31, 2005.
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