Disenfranchised Citizen

Kneel before Zod!

My fellow Americans…

We here at General Electric feel it important to take a moment, pause from your Gulf Coast coverage to remind everyone out there just how much and why, we love America.

Our love, it’s a lot.

Simply, because all you people out there, our trusty employees, our consumers and our NBC viewers, you people will read what follows in the coming paragraphs, maybe get upset about it for a minute or two, but then go about your business soon enough.

We here at GE are counting on you…by now, you may have heard the story about how General Electric, the largest corporation in America made profits of over $13 billion dollars without paying a dime in taxes; we actually received a rebate of $3.2 billion dollars from your very own government.

It’s true…amazing, but true.

Our tax guys are really good…how much in taxes did you pay last year?

I know, I know…frustrating isn’t it, especially considering how the Dems and GOP are getting together these days to talk about how broke the country is, demanding all those cuts in services to you people, cutting away all those programs that help the least fortunate in this, our great country…stuff like Energy Assistance, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, (Social Security…shhhh) and don’t forget the unions. Remember everybody, it’s the unions that are bankrupting this great land, with their demands for livable wages or health insurance that actually covers health care, maybe even something to retire on.

Yeah, we know…those greedheads.

You people don’t have livable wages, why should unions? Let them get a second job too, and retirement? Let people in the unions play the lottery like everybody else.

We here at General Electric follow the trends and we agree with the GOP, the unions want too much, which is why we, as a corporation have decided that despite making a profit of over $13 billion dollars, despite paying no taxes on any of those profits and actually getting $3.2 billion dollars back, we have decided this is not enough.

We want more.

This is why we are preparing demands from our own unions, all 15,000 members, and they’d better accept these concessions:

“The elimination of a defined contribution benefit pension for new employees, a move the company has already implemented for its non-union salaried employees. Likewise, GE is signaling to the union that it will ask for the elimination of current health insurance plans in favor of lower quality health saving accounts, a move the company has already implemented for non-union salaried employees as well.”

Oh, and we might want a wage freeze as well. And if we don’t get it we might just close our plants in Schenectady, NY and Louisville, KY.

At GE, we do understand some are getting upset about the growing wage disparities and austerity cuts in America. We get it, but we do our part by giving jobs to this country, and we feel this is more than enough.

Period.

To ask any more would simply be un-American, not that you can’t go ahead and try…feel free. We all have our first amendment rights. We all have a democracy. Admittedly, it works much better for people who can afford it but we didn’t make the system, we just exploit it. Patriotism means never having to say your sorry, or undergoing sacrifice once you hit a certain income level.

Now, we here at General Electric understand that this news, or maybe even our attitude might be upsetting to some of you, and we have taken this into consideration. We’ve debated this amongst the highest levels of management. We’ve even spoken to a few of our larger shareholders and of course, the entire news department at NBC News and after much careful consideration, we’ve prepared the following rebuttal to any possible criticisms of GE policy:

Fuck you.

Yeah, that’s right…fuck you.

We love you America, frankly we can’t conceive of any other country where we could pull this off, not even China so again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We here at GE need these, uh concessions, um…we need this to remain, uh, competitive in the global marketplace…and uh, Free Trade! Open Markets! Down with Socialism!

Everybody aboard the Tea Party Express, Bitches!

Oh, and if you’d like to know who you might complain to…why not try our CEO, Jeff Immelt. He’s easy to find. Your President, Barack Obama, just named him as head of the Presidential Jobs Commission.

Yes, we’re serious and no, we didn’t believe it at first either. We thought it was a prank but go ahead, ask him yourself: you can try to reach Jeff Immelt at:

705 West Rd
New Canaan, CT 06840-2518
(203) 972-2680

If angry, don’t worry, it’ll be over soon enough so just get back to work, you don’t really have the time or energy to worry about it. Relax, turn on the television instead and don’t forget to watch the NBC Nightly News featuring Brian Williams, where none of the latter will be discussed, ever.

Have a nice day.

And thanks for being so hospitable…we now return you to the Gulf Coast where British Petroleum apparently lost a certain laptop computer…oops:

Read the article:

Laptop containing Gulf of Mexico oil spill damage claims with BP is lost

And remember loyal viewers:

Jay Leno and the Tonight Show at 10:30 central!

He’s a hoot!

And that's why, we here at BP are committed to making things...money?

According to Reuters, the Department of Justice is investigating whether to file manslaughter charges against BP managers for decisions they made leading up to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.

Beyond these possible criminal charges, what is at stake for the company is the likelihood of BP being found “grossly negligent.”

Should these charges occur, the possibility of such a determination would increase dramatically, and so would the fine, from $5 billion to as high as $21 billion dollars for the oil spill. It would reduce BP’s chances of getting their partners on the well to share in cleanup costs and also open the doors for more litigation on behalf of Gulf Coast residents for damages.

BP’s  British Petroleum has been pushing hard to share the blame throughout the investigations, including an investigation of their own which found both Transocean and Halliburton culpable in the blast that claimed eleven lives and spilled the oil across the Gulf Coast.

To put all this in terms Bob Dudley might understand, it’ll wind up costing a lot, a lot lot and as a result, British Petroleum shares fell two dollars today.

Read the  article:

BP shares hit by manslaughter report

Have a nice day.

LSU Law, Special Victims Unit

When it comes to Gulf Coast claims larger than $250,000 dollars, appeals will be heard by a special group of judges and Feinberg named Jack Weiss, chancellor of the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge, to be the person to select who those judges will be.

About his selection, Feinberg said, “I canvassed the Gulf region in an attempt to find an individual who would bring unquestioned credibility, integrity and sound judgment to the process of selecting the appeals judges…I have found that person in Jack Weiss. He brings decades of experience to this assignment, both as a nationally recognized law professor and administrator. I am confident that I have chosen the right person for the job.”

Okay, a couple of things:

Endorsements, especially such glowing ones by Ken Feinberg should make anyone nervous these days.

That aside, I will not attempt to impugn Jack Weiss’s ethics or his impartiality here. This is not for me to say and it is my hope he will do a fine job, choose judges who will be of the highest ethical order and unwilling to be swayed by the large financial reach of British Petroleum.

But that very reach is what might give cause for concern.

Institutional pressures work in small, subtle ways and you better believe British Petroleum and Ken Feinberg know this.

They also know that LSU, the university where Jack Weiss is a respected leader in law, has received millions upon millions of dollars from British Petroleum. Now, I wouldn’t insinuate a direct quid-pro-quo is in effect, but the idea that those amounts of money don’t linger somewhere in the back of Mr. Weiss’s mind as he selects these judges is not so easy to dismiss. Especially these days, as Bobby Jindal is turning the destruction of Louisiana’s higher education into an art form, cutting millions of dollars to universities already financially hurting.

Whereas I don’t doubt Mr. Weiss’s experience and qualifications, I do have a harder time believing his employment at LSU and the money BP has given to that university didn’t factor into BP/Feinberg’s selection. Really, for them it is a win-win. Weiss is local and if no institutional pressures are applied, well no harm, no foul, can’t blame a corporation for trying. But if somehow such pressures are applied, leading to friendlier judges?

Then they win the bonus round. 

Jack Weiss, in accepting this appointment said, “I am deeply honored to be entrusted with this important public service assignment. My goal is simple: to select impartial, highly competent judges to decide GCCF appeals fairly, expeditiously, and in keeping with the law.”

Assuming that all goes ethically well, the judges he appoints may be the first to do such things…so, here’s hoping.

Read the article:

LSU law chancellor Jack Weiss chosen for Gulf of Mexico oil spill claims appeals job

Have a nice day.

Yeah, I know...but just between you and me, isn't conflict of interest really open to interpretation?

Guess who’s getting more money in the Gulf?

If you guessed claimants, you don’t read this blog too often, but if you guessed Feinberg…you win! And what do you win?

Your very own gift-wrapped box of anger and frustration.

Just announced, Feinberg and his law firm had their rate of pay increased from $850,000 dollars a month to $1.25 million dollars. Obviously because of the good job he is doing…you know, for British Petroleum.

For claimants? Um, not so much…so says Orange Beach Mayor Anthony Kennon, “He has performed poorly, and I’m being polite, and yet they are giving him a raise…the real question is, how does BP view his performance? They are giving him a raise, so they must think it’s good. That speaks for itself.”

Well, I’ve got another number that speaks for itself.

Three, as in three days.

Feinberg loves to crow about the $3.6 billion dollars already paid out by the GCCF in the Gulf, but the average final payment accepted by Gulf Coast residents is a mere $12,000 dollars, an amount meant to cover all present and future damages. And now, $12,000 dollars is also the amount British Petroleum will pay every three days to Ken Feinberg and his law firm for all their outstanding service.

So why the $400,000 dollar per month raise?

In what would seem an attempt to give himself cover, Feinberg requested that US Attorney General Michael Mukasey explain the increased compensation, and the AG stated it is his belief that the extra money is warranted because Feinberg’s duties have grown.

Maybe…but I’ve got other possible explanations:

Feinberg has said that he figures only half of the $20 billion dollar escrow account set up by BP to pay claims in the Gulf Coast will be necessary, which of course means the other $10 billion dollars will be given back to British Petroleum. He denied 310,000 EAP claims outright and with the final and interim claims, he continues his demands for more and more documentation while also inferring claimants are being fraudulent.

Also, Feinberg set up a quick pay scheme that not only takes advantage of financial desperation, like the final claims, it requires claimants to waive their right to sue British Petroleum. This, while the claims process crawls along so slowly it has lead many to believe it’s a concerted effort to increase said desperation so claimants will accept whatever offer the GCCF makes, even if it is not nearly enough. Finally, Feinberg was able to find a scientist who believes that the Gulf will be recovered by next year, despite much evidence to the contrary, and he then proceeded to base his calculations upon this 2012 estimate, an estimate suggested as inconclusive and subject to change by the very scientist who wrote it.

Is all that worth a $400,000 dollar raise?

Not for me to say, but it would appear British Petroleum thinks so.

Hell, one might even say they are banking on it.

Read the article:

BP increases monthly fee for claims czar Kenneth Feinberg’s law firm to $1.25 million

Have a nice day.

Methinks Kenneth dost protest too much...

So, as I commented two days ago, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange fired off an angry letter to Ken Feinberg, the BP paid administrator of BP’s compensation fund outlining several objections he had with the process, chief among them being the snail’s pace and meager size of the payments, the lack of transparency in the process, and the stress this is causing to the citizens of his state. Mr. Strange demanded that Ken Feinberg “stop dragging his feet.”

This apparently didn’t sit too well with Mr. Feinberg who promptly wrote a letter of his own, to rebut the charges made by Strange…

Let’s review, shall we?

When it comes to the Quick Pay, Attorney General Strange asserts the reason so many are accepting the quick payments is that claimants are sick of dealing with the GCCF. Feinberg disputes this by writing that claimants take the quick payment because the ”claimant cannot prove any further damage.” Maybe, maybe not…many are curious to see if Feinberg is correct in this assumption but its awfully hard tell with so little transparency in the process. Besides, how are we to know if people cannot prove any more damage? Claimants who have accepted quick payments are no longer trying to do so which brings us back to Strange’s assertion, that people choose quick payments out of frustration. One need look only so far as some of the comments being posted by claimants to this website, or the GCCF’s own methodology comments page:

From a business/individual on February 16th, “This methodology is so unfair it now looks good to individuals and business to take the quick pay, you hold all the money and the cards.”

From a business owner on Feb 15th, “Your formula is definitely shaking-down people and businesses that are in a weakened position and are under duress.”

From an individual on Feb 14th, “The thing that really grinds my gears is that you are sitting on 16 billion! You only paid out 3.5 billion to 168,000 claimants…now 1/2 of those are gone because they were desperate and took the quick pay.”

I could continue in this vein, but you get the idea.

Feinberg also combats Strange’s accusation that the GCCF is paying people to go away, that the GCCF is working diligently to protect BP and secure releases for their liability. Feinberg writes how nothing could be further from the truth, that these release are designed to “bring closure to the prospect of endless litigation which is not beneficial either to claimants or the public interest.”

He neglects to mention litigation is also not beneficial to BP.

Nobody likes to go to court Ken, it is a long, drawn out process, but the idea that you are attempting to keep people out of court to give them closure would assume they have otherwise been “made whole.” Seeing how this is far from the case, your suggestion is condescending on two levels: the first being Gulf Coast residents can’t decide for themselves what constitutes closure and the second being people would be so stupid as to not see the waivers as ultimately saving British Petroleum a whole hell of a lot of money.

Next, Strange accused Feinberg of making meager payouts on final claims. Feinberg defends this by once again throwing out large numbers that don’t hold up to some simple math. He says the GCCF has paid $688 million dollars to 28,000 Alabamans. Okay, but this averages out to under $24,000 dollars per claim, a sum Feinberg calls “not an insignificant amount.” I would argue, like Strange, that it is quite insignificant as a large percentage of those claims are not individual claims, but business claims which receive much higher payouts and drive that average up. The future of the Gulf is unknown and the simple idea that these amounts, these averages will compensate for all present and future losses when twenty years after the Exxon Valdez, some industries have yet to rebound is again, laughable.

Feinberg points out that anyone can turn down his offer or appeal it to the Coast Guard. 467 people have tried this and 467 people have been denied, something Feinberg believes shows his process to be fair. Perhaps, or it might also show the Coast Guard is equally stingy and working with the same flawed recovery statistics as the GCCF, recovery statistics that claim the Gulf’s environment will be made whole inside of two years. This is doubtful, as a multitude of independent scientists suggest, and honestly, the Coast Guard has not been a shiny beacon of legitimacy throughout the past year…from Thad Allen’s sweeping pronouncement that they weren’t banning the reporters they were banning, to the way they stated Corexit was no longer being used when it was, to the way they accepted BP’s vastly flawed flow-rates before the well was capped, flow-rates that slowed down the spill response. In fact, I’d be curious to see any example where the Coast Guard didn’t give in to British Petroleum on pretty much anything over the past year, so why would the appeals process be any different? And this doesn’t even touch on the false hope involved in telling claimants if they don’t like the GCCF offer, they can appeal to a different body, a Coast Guard commission that has never ruled in any claimant’s favor.

Ken, isn’t that just kind of rubbing their faces in it?

Next, Strange expressed dismay about Feinberg’s continued inference of fraud being evident in claims made to the GCCF. Feinberg rebuts this by writing the GCCF has sent 1,035 claimants suspected of fraud to the Justice Department, “not an insignificant number.” Actually Ken, it is. Numerous studies have shown that after any major disaster, on average, 10% of claims in any claims process can be considered fraudulent. There have been over 480,000 claims made to the GCCF in total which would make the percentage of suspected fraudulent claims you forwarded to the DOJ ring in at far less than 1%.

Fraud is not a problem in the Gulf Coast claims process, regardless of suggestion by Feinberg, it merely serves as cover to the GCCF’s flaws.

Strange also wonders why Ken Feinberg now omits from his press releases the fact that 310,000 people were denied during the EAP process; the Attorney General further calls this omission another example of the GCCF not being “completely forthcoming.” Well okay, I’ll give that one to Feinberg. He pretty much states these numbers are common knowledge, and they are, so why would he have reason to hide them? The only thing I might consider is that when it comes to framing narratives, and Feinberg is indeed trying to promote the narrative that the GCCF is fair, he probably doesn’t want to start his recitation of final and interim claim numbers by reminding everyone just how many EAP’s the GCCF turned down. 310,000 denials with little to no transparency can cast a long shadow over a conversation on fairness.

Finally, Strange demands more transparency.

He wants Feinberg to release the amount of damages people are claiming versus the amount of damages the GCCF has offered to pay. In response Feinberg writes, “the release of such data would be a useless exercise; indeed it would be counterproductive.”

Useless and counterproductive to who? The GCCF? BP?

He goes on to cite a couple of examples where people have filed ridiculous claims, one person requesting the full $20 billion dollars while another claimant filed damages for $11 billion. Agreed Ken, those claims are ridiculous, but seeing as I can figure that out I’m pretty sure you can trust everybody else to see it as well. You write that people typically file for more damages than they can prove. and this is also true, but what Strange would appear to be looking for is a pattern of low-balling claims, and when your amounts offered are indeed meager, wanting to see this information in order to accurately evaluate your process seems entirely justified.

As I have written before, when it comes to the GCCF, full transparency is warranted. Transparency demonstrates a commitment to justice, to confidence, to credibility, but your credibility has been shown time and time again to be lacking, especially when Judge Barbier ruled you are not “independent” of BP as you so loudly trumpeted for months to anyone within ear shot of the Gulf Coast.

In fact, Barbier ruled you to be a “hybrid entity” of BP, and your claims to transparency are also a hybrid of the real thing, kind of…but not really. 

The time where you could be taken at face value, where you could decide what is in the “public interest,” or how the release of information would be nothing more than a “useless exercise” are over. In fact, one could argue, as Strange does in a roundabout way, the only “useless exercise” going on in the Gulf is when you base any pro-GCCF arguments on your word. 

Again, from the GCCF comments section come these words from an e-mail sent to you on Feb 14th, “I believe you should revert to the old BP calculations, they seemed fair and well thought out.” Now that is an impressive feat. Ken, once you were a self proclaimed savior to the Gulf Coast, but your Gulf Coast Claims Facility is so backwards, one claimant actually feels BP was the fair one, all along…

Methinks Strange is correct in his words.

Your’s are just one more empty harangue intended to deflect the reponsibility of failing the Gulf Coast. 

Have a nice day.

You meant narcissist in the good way, right?

The Attorney General of Alabama, Luther Strange wrote a letter to Ken Feinberg about his concerns with the GCCF and the payment of claims, highlighting many of the problems with the process that have been highlighted here and on several other websites.

Among his concerns:

1. Of all the claims reportedly paid, 98.9 % are the quick pay claims, claims that require no processing and of course require all recipients to waive their and their families rights to sue British Petroleum and a hundred other companies.

2. The average final payment accepted by claimants in Alabama is $12,000 dollars. With all the uncertainty in the Gulf’s recovery, the idea that $12,000 dollars will cover any and all damages is laughable at best.

3. Though Feinberg continually speaks of fraud and lack of documentation, in Alabama only 14.6% of claims required further documentation. The rest were turned down for other reasons, reasons that are not often revealed.

4. Why is it the GCCF now omits from its news releases the number of EAP claims which were turned down? This omission is only one of many example showing transparency continues to be an issue.

5. Although the GCCF seems to enjoy trumpeting the amount of money paid, $3.5 billion dollars, why is they refuse to release the total damage amounts people have claimed, surely billions more than has been paid. The GCCF will not give the complete picture, negating any attempt for people to properly evaluate the success or failure of the GCCF and its process.

Strange goes on to discuss how the GCCF’s botching of the claims process is having a detrimental effect on the mental health of Alabama’s citizens…their mental welfare being strained by frustration and uncertainty with the claims process, the demoralization of being reduced to begging Feinberg for money, the frustration that comes with claims being continually rejected and the realization that this ugly reality created by Feinberg and the GCCF will not be solved in the foreseeable future.

All, while so many lives are slipping into financial ruin, caused by no fault of their own.

Meanwhile, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood recently announced he will be touring the Coast later this month to hear comments from claimants in the BP oil catastraphuk. The gatherings will be held in conjunction with the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Mississippi Center for Legal Services, and the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyer’s Project.

“It is important to me to hear directly from the claimants what they have been experiencing in this process,” Hood said when announcing the meetings. The Attorney General has filed briefs in the oil spill litigation, asking for court-appointed monitors to move the $20 billion BP claims process along with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which is handling victim claims.

It is a positive that these two men are speaking out, and listening. This situation in the Gulf continues to be untenable.

It’s been almost a year since the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and seven months since Feinberg took over the claims process from British Petroleum and it is unconscionable that people continue to wait for payments…not hand-outs, but compensation from the company who spilled this oil across their lives. Feinberg does his interviews and issues his press releases, yet gives only part of the story, the side of the numbers that sound okay, while burying the rest behind a wall of secrecy. This, while he continues to promise transparency yet time after time delivers little to nothing.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Barack Obama still says nothing…proving that he is just one more president who came down to the Gulf Coast and after giving his speech, took his generators home, leaving the coast in the darkness created by unknowns.

At least Strange and Hood are willing to speak up, make some noise about the travesty that is the GCCF and the ego run wild that is Ken Feinberg…

In the words of Strange, from his letter:

“Rest assured, I will do everything I can to help our victims survive this catastrophe, including holding the GCCF’s feet to the fire. Quit dragging your feet and stalling the large majority of claims to a point where victims are so desperate that they settle for anything. remember, your job is to compensate the victims – not magnify their problems by playing games with BP’s money (to BP’s benefit).”

Here here…

Have a nice day.

P.S. I might only add, where the hell is James D. “Buddy” Caldwell?

And now, a word from our sponsors…

Cancer Bats – Hail Destroyer

The hidden subtext?

Obviously…

British Petroleum? Feinberg?

They want you to go away.

They want you to accept whatever pittance they choose to give you, and say thanks for the pocket change while your homes, your businesses are foreclosed upon. Their mistakes pissed on what you knew as normal, your lives and your families. Washington DC, and many of your local politicians expressed empathy, and then cut funding to the social services keeping you afloat. The environmental protections meant to keep you safe were gutted and underfunded, and now that they have collapsed, immersed in a bath of oil and chemicals…they ignore your demands to keep your lives within the shadow of the American Dream, that same dream being lived by the politicians who sold you out while they shook your hand…and expected your vote.

Let’s call it what it is and confront the demons the corruption of our country has wrought…

Have a nice day…

- Drake

Text messaging should never be penalized, you know what they say about idle hands...

I had initially planned to begin and end this post with one simple sentence, “Damn, the NOPD sucks, we knew that, but thanks for spelling it all out for us, in detail, just how much they suck…” But before I hit “publish,” I decided I should perhaps, elaborate on this so I did just that:

My former apartment in New Orleans was located at the corner of Royal and St. Ann. Yeah, another newbie moves to the city and sets up shop in the French Quarter, well, please don’t begrudge me my stereotype, I liked living in the Quarter and upon my return, it’s probably where I’ll choose to live again. Why not? I like a lot of noise, I keep odd hours and there’s a feeling there unlike any I’ve ever experienced, living in a museum so to speak…I should also note, I’m a white male, and being of such human classification in this part of New Orleans, who beyond certain political opinions and philosophies, has a clean record and doesn’t make a habit of breaking any serious laws, one might think that walking down Royal Street or up Decatur in the middle of the night, when a passing squad would hit the lights while it crept the streets, it would be of no concern. Wrong. I always, and still do feel that fast adrenaline jolt, and I also immediately look for the escape route.

It might sound overly dramatic, but I can’t help it.

And this response of mine, it brings me to the Department of Justice’s report on the NOPD…you wouldn’t think such reactions would be necessary, that my instincts wouldn’t take over and make such dramatic demands…especially in light of the report which states white males in the city of New Orleans are the only race and gender in the city the NOPD isn’t biased against. You’d think, but nonetheless those darker feelings always came over me quick, each and every time the squads lit it up and dashed the shadows with blue light…

So, if I feel this way about the NOPD, I can only imagine what it must be like for everybody else, the dismissing of complaints made by women, the unwarranted brutality, the racial profiling. The NOPD has a reputation that precedes them, and the many examples in the report show those reputations are hard-earned by years and years of their criminal behavior, leading to a public perception that the officers in New Orleans are best avoided by all.

I can think of many a time my friends and I would be sitting around a certain favorite haunt on St. Phillips and somebody would be discussing the occasional crime perpetrated against him or her, a break-in, a mugging, a stolen bike, etc…and inevitably someone would say the magic words, “Did you report it to the police?”

Such a question was always met with outright laughter. It was kind of an understanding we had that at best the NOPD wouldn’t catch anybody and at worst, whomever called would wind up in trouble when they ran his or her name for unpaid parking tickets or some other such minor offense that comes with the age and the time.

I don’t mean to imply there aren’t decent cops on the NOPD. I’m sure there are good officers on the force who are deserving of respect, much like the police in other places I’ve lived, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco, but the problem is I never really seem to run into those particular officers. In Chicago, it was because I was in the punk rock and anarchist scene and we were targeted. In Seattle, I was part of the Battle in Seattle down with the “just say no to the WTO” crowd, so we were targeted. In San Francisco, I lived in a neighborhood that was all homelessness, drugs and prostitution 24/7, and with my skin color in the middle of the night, I’d get targeted. A friend of mine in the social work world who also lived in the Tenderloin would commonly refer to it as being stopped for “walking while white.” The SFPD would seem almost disappointed I wasn’t on the street to buy crack or pick up a prostitute, that I actually lived there, by choice even.

But nervous around the NOPD? A white guy? In the French Quarter?

Um, yeah..definitely.

Simply put, the other understanding my friends and I shared was the NOPD could and would pretty much arrest anyone they felt like and once the NOPD arrests you, anything can happen. Law and due process are more of a pesky “guideline,” and one that can be ignored if you catch a cop in the wrong mood. The NOPD always had the reputation of being Wild West types who really played without any sort of rule book, and when they are the same ones to enforce any rules that do in fact exist, ultimately there are no rules beyond what they feel like at any given hour.

From the report:

Although the report identifies several instances of improper gun discharges by police — often in cases where officers shot at moving cars against NOPD policy — the department during the past six years has not found that any officer violated policy. Each of the homicide investigations into officer-involved shootings from January 2009 to April 2010 was “deeply flawed,” the report found.

Among the flaws:

• Investigations were too cursory to determine whether the shooting was justified under the law, which requires that an officer perceive he or somebody else is in imminent danger of death or bodily injury.
• Officers under investigation were temporarily assigned to the homicide division, a practice that seems to be a conflict on its face.
• Sometimes, homicide detectives would tell the officer under investigation that his statement was being “compelled,” meaning his statement could never be used against the officer in a criminal prosecution.

“It is difficult to view this practice as anything other than a deliberate attempt to make it more difficult to criminally prosecute any officer in these cases, regardless of the circumstances,” the report contends.

Exactly…if the police who are in charge of policing the police, don’t actually police the police, not really, then nobody is safe from the whim or overzealous behavior of any particular officer…especially, like I previously mentioned, not anyone who isn’t a white male:

“The patterns of policing in New Orleans are biased against several demographic groups, including black residents, people who don’t speak English fluently, gay and transgendered people and women, the report says.”

Back at Rising Tide last August, many of us listened to Ronal Serpas, the new chief of the NOPD speak, and despite most of his comments sounding like canned portions of a politician’s stump speech (understandable as he was speaking to a room full of bloggers, fingers on the keyboard trigger), you also got the sense that maybe this guy, finally was someone who could be taken seriously…

Course, the NOPD was under his stead when the Krewe of Eris paraded down the street, and then closed down the Iron Rail…

Nonetheless, I do remember much of what he said, and I hold out hope that he was sincere and will really try to fix things, not that it will be easy…far from it, especially in a city with the levels of poverty that are found in New Orleans.

Okay, I would probably be remiss before I went on if I didn’t at least point out here something most people already understand, most people it would seem except for Republicans, and not just a few Democrats:

Poverty and crime are linked.

I know, I know, not especially groundbreaking, but you might be surprised by this fact if you spent the majority of your time being force-fed information by most mainstream media news outlets, especially the 24 hour news networks. And this is why Ronal Serpas’s job is going to become increasingly difficult, for not only must he work to fix the climate of the NOPD, he has to do this in an economic climate that is breaking the backs of the middle class and the poor, especially when politicians like Governor Jindal are balancing a budget in such a way that it slaps everyone across the face, repeatedly, unless you happen to be someone of higher means…

Ever here the old saying, “Hungry people don’t stay hungry for long?”

Well, the middle class and poorer neighborhoods in New Orleans are getting hungrier by the year.

Jindal’s new budget cuts back on health care for the poor. It cuts education programs for at-risk youth. It dramatically increases costs for higher education. When the city and state already had a dramatic need for social service programs and assistance for its residents, and the governor responds by cutting back, every year on what is already not enough, well, the end results ain’t gonna be good. 

Not to mention a charter school system that funnels poor kids or kids with behavioral problems, precisely those who need the best supplies and the most attention from teachers, into the schools that don’t have the resources to give due attention to their needs…

Not to mention Obama cutting LIHEAP energy assistance funds, which keep the lights on for thousands of people across the city…

Not to mention a Congress that would seem to like nothing more than steal the lunch money from a kid on his way to school so they could give it to their friends, and their K Street friends’ friends.

Jindal says all these cuts are necessary, one reason being because Jindal won’t raise taxes on business, while on a national level, they become suppoisedly necessary because Obama bought in to extending tax breaks for the wealthy…

The working middle class and the poor?

Well, you’re just going to have to do what you can…

And like any city across the country, as in New Orleans, what do you think some of the “what you can” will entail?

So yes, the NOPD’s gonna have an even bigger job to do. Here’s hoping that Serpas can do what he said, change the police climate because the items in this report speak directly to a climate of in-house crime, especially when officers break the law by covering for other officers, or setting up the system of investigation to be a roadblock to the very same internal investigations meant to assess wrong-doing…Now, to be fair, the NOPD has made a start, essentially decriminalizing minor possession of marijuana to free up officers’ time to pursue more serious crime. A college degree is now required to advance up the NOPD ladder. And along with accepting this investigation by the DOJ, a federal judge will be overseeing the actions of the NOPD.

It’s a small start, but it must continue.

Maybe, along with giving the keys back to the people at the ARK building in the Marigny, the NOPD could start to earn back the citizens’ trust by arresting every person in business or government whose decisions set the stage for more economic suffering in the poorer neighborhoods across the city?

Yeah, probably not…

Changing the inner operations of the NOPD, all the way down to the cops walking the street would certainly be a positive and it is so very necessary for the safety of the city. It will take time, but imagine a day when the NOPD does the job the right way, and not just because a judge is watching. Imagine a time when the average citizen, no matter the skin color or gender has the honest expectation they will be respected by an officer in the NOPD, simply because that’s the norm.

It could happen…why not?

Personally, it’d be nice this time round to not have a flight instinct when I see police lights circling behind me on a dark French Quarter street, let alone anywhere else in the city of New Orleans. This place is just too amazing for that, it deserves much better than its gotten and it has deserved it for years. I don’t care what district you’re in, all people are deserving of protection and respect by the police.

And nobody should need protection from the police, ever.

So good luck Ronal…here’s hoping you mean what you said when you promised to take the DOJ report seriously. Maybe you can even be one of the first officials in the entire country to seriously try to do something about the problems of climate change, even if it’s only the climate inside your own department. 

Lord knows New Orleans needs it… 

Read the DOJ report:

Justice Department Report on the New Orleans Police Department

Have a nice day.

I can remember the days when my parents were invincible...

An old fashioned clock, a family heirloom holding its place on a worn fireplace mantle, chimes the ten o’clock hour. The silence the strikes disrupt is loud, louder than the churning waves of the gulf, of the boat motor that once went out into the waters, of the wall-phone ringing…

Probably just another creditor.

The couple sitting at the table don’t even look up. Answering it is out of the question.

The man’s baseball hat is pulled low. She can’t see his eyes as he reads from the letter and she isn’t sure she even wants too. Between them, sunlight comes in through dusty windows, stabs of light that once seemed warm, heating up the surface of their kitchen tables in the long Alabama mornings are now just a reminder of everything happening outside the walls of their home, of their closed restaurant. The prices of oysters got so high, and in time it didn’t even matter if they could afford them. Nobody wanted to eat the seafood anymore.

She watches as he reaches across the table for his cigarettes and lights one up. Their eyes meet briefly, but both look away fast, singed.

The chiming of the clock stops.

The kids will be home tomorrow.

She desperately wants to ask about the paper, almost as badly as she would rather remain in the dark.

She isn’t even angry anymore, those feelings were long ago replaced with resentment, only to be substituted again by a smothering resignation, more oppressive than the hottest summer she can remember, back when she was a young girl, back in the days when her parents were invincible and the worst thing she could imagine was to be embarrassed in front of a boy she kinda liked, maybe, but wouldn’t admit to liking, no way…

She and her husband have been married for nineteen years and it’s never been this bad before, not even during the aftermath of Katrina.

They had to repair the restaurant then, but unlike the hurricane, the oil spill kept coming and it closed them down.

“Well,” he says, something…finally.

She looks at him, but he’s still hiding below the brim of his hat.

“It’s an offer.”

She allows herself to hope, just briefly, but she knows it’s a lie. He still won’t look at her.

“It won’t bring back the restaurant, but it might save the house, for a little while.”

She doesn’t respond to this, not right away…She doesn’t know what to say.

The sun is so warm, unseasonably so.

And we’ll get through this, she thinks, she doesn’t know how, but some way. They’re strong, they’ve had to be many times in their marriage and they’ll have to be even stronger now.

“You okay?” he asks.

She looks back at him where their eyes meet again. Neither turn away this time and she’s struck by how much older he looks, aging fast over the past year, ever since the oil started drifting their way…

“Yes,” she lies, and then quickly corrects herself, “No, no, but I want to be, I will be.”

“Me too,” he says, unsmiling.

The phone rings again.

And this time she flinches, “We’re going to have to get a lawyer, it’s the only way.”

He sighs, nodding, and exhales smoke through the dirty rays of the sun…

This ain’t exactly the way it happened of course, of how a family, or of how many families decided they had to sue British Petroleum to have any chance the company would actually make things right…

But the point of such naratives are to remind anyone who forgets that the people on the Gulf Coast are not statistics on a GCCF website.

They’re people and they’re families.

If only Feinberg would realize this, instead of just saying the words…

Read the article:

BP oil spill lawsuits: Area restaurants among state businesses seeking damages

Have a nice day.

They finally get something right...

Hey all,

Just wanted to send a quick note of congratulations to G, and her husband. They got in touch with me sometime ago about their claims, expressing their frustrations with investigations by the GCCF, disgust with the length of time it was taking…79 days to get a quick payment? And an overall disappointment with BP and Feinberg for the damages, the stalling, the runaround and the lies.

Well, they got paid today, so I just wanted to say congratulations to them and a continuing best of luck to everybody who’s still waiting. Like G. and her husband, may all eventually have the good fortune to finally be done with the GCCF and their miserly ways…

- Drake