Disenfranchised Citizen

Transocean: trying not to make dumb, even dumber...

This is how it’s supposed to work:

A company, Transocean in this case, makes a bonehead move and gives bonuses to its executives for their “exemplary” safety record last year.

Transocean, being an offshore drilling contractor at work on the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and killed eleven people, is immediately barraged with criticism for awarding these bonuses. Steven Newman, CEO of Transocean, and four other executives who received these bonuses donate them in total to a fund set up by the company for the victims’ families, while Newman goes on record saying it was never their intent to diminish the effect the disaster had on those who lost loved ones in the explosion.

Simple.

A company makes a mistake. They get called on it. They make amends.

Tony Hayward, former CEO of British Petroleum is also up for a bonus of 8 million pounds, and according to the Wall Street Journal, this is actually more than each family who lost a loved one in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon will receive in compensation from his company.

Will he follow Transocean’s lead, or is he still trying to get his life back?

Ken Feinberg, the neutral administrator of the BP escrow fund has been criticized and/or accused of everything from not following through on his promises of transparency to the intentional delay of interim claims in the hopes of getting people to accept final claim offers out of desperation, thus have to waive their right to sue BP. He has lied, repeatedly to people at his meetings, promising them he will look into their claims personally, which is typically the last these people ever hear from him unless they can find a reporter to follow up. The GCCF pays out very little to Gulf Coast residents for a lot of lost time and money, and then Feinberg proceeds to whine when criticized, blaming everybody but himself for the clusterfuck that is his claims process.

Feinberg and his law firm recently received a raise from BP for all his hard work, upping the wage from $850,000 dollars per month to $1.25 million.

Will he follow Transocean’s lead, and do something personally for the people he is screwing over in the Gulf? Or will he just take his money back to New York and try to get the job dispensing compensation from the brand new 9-11 first responders fund, recently authorized by Congress?

Hard to say…but I got a good guess which way he’ll go.

Anybody wanna make a bet?

Have a nice day.