Disenfranchised Citizen

Yeah Santa...Bob lives in that house right over there and then two blocks west, you'll find Ken...

Hey everybody…

Yeah, I’m still around, preparing to launch back into things on the 1st of the year, but I couldn’t let the days get by without some holiday wishes to all in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast…

Best to everybody this season…Christmas, New Years and everything else everybody celebrates…

Me, I’ll be driving even further north than I already am to spend time with family and on Monday night, take over the television to watch the Saints destroy the Falcons in the Dome!

Merry Christmas!

Go Saints!

And of course, screw British Petroleum…I’d wish the Claus’d put coal in every one of your stockings but you’d just turn around and try to sell it anyway…

- Drake

Something like that...

So, been away for a little while…well, more than a little while…

I feel like I’ve been away for six weeks or so, even though I’ve written a number of things up here during that time…guess one could say I felt like I was running out of things to say, or maybe trying too hard to say what I think people want me to say…

Plus, I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to rectify a move to San Francisco with everything I’ve been working on up here for the past year and a half or so…and frankly, I still don’t know how to sync it up…I mean,  what do the people who’ve been following the oil spill care about homelessness in San Francisco? What might people in San Francisco care about British Petroleum and the Gulf of Mexico?

I don’t know…

What I do know is that in 77 days, I’m leaving the Midwest for California, for San Francisco…my second favorite place in this country, next to New Orleans…and I guess you might call this blogger’s block…hell, I could show you the series of posts I’ve started and not felt it worth finishing to prove it…

In any case, I’m still around…and I’m working this out…

Be well…

Have a nice day.

Feinberg...Ken Feinberg...

When Ken Feinberg took over administration of BP’s $20 billion dollar fund, he stated many, many times one of his primary objectives was to keep people out of the court system…ahhhh yes, do you remember those halcyon days, back when the Macondo well had just been capped, when hope was beginning to spring eternal and Feinberg dove into the scene, promising claims offers bigger than any the court would ever consider?

It seemed in those days the only way a claimant could screw it up would be to commit the ultimate blasphemy…filing the lawsuit. And why do that?

No need, just fill out your paperwork, get to planning, get to fixing up your boats and cleaning and soon…you and the banks would be all good…

Feinberg was here, the overseer of your oil spill lottery! Lawsuits were for posers!

And then…thud.

The second spill hit the Gulf Coast, the paper one created by creditors and banks issuing warnings, letters of non-payment, demands for their money, the money Feinberg wasn’t giving out because he was demanding more paperwork, more documentation, more, more, more and…denied!

Or maybe you took the quick pay, just to be done with the bastards…

And now?

Let it begin or should I say, continue…off to the courts!

Hmm…I suppose whether it was an insult would depend completely on perspective…from what I keep reading, British Petroleum is back in the black, Ken Feinberg is raking in the money and even Nalco, makers of Corexit are doing pretty damned good…in fact, it would seem all the companies involved in damaging lives throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are doing just fine indeed…even Halliburton?

Halliburton!

Maybe Feinberg has had a secret agenda all along.

Maybe he realized early on how he’d be unable to keep as many from the court system as he wanted, as his bosses at BP hoped…in fact, wait a minute, maybe Ken Feinberg has been a secret spy, a double agent from the get-go… maybe he figured along with making a ton of money for himself, he could finally do something about unemployment along the Gulf Coast…that harsh unemployment rate for lawyers.

Well, well, well…birds of a feather…

In any case, here’s betting Hutchinson won’t be the last attorney to file suit against BP as a result of Feinberg’s system…the GCCF’s meager payouts and problematic lack of transparency almost ensure it.

Read the article:

New lawsuit filed in Gulf oil spill

Have a nice day.

So...disappointed...

Okay, not really…

But you were thinking it, weren’t you?

In case you don’t know what this is about, British Petroleum has accused Halliburton of intentionally destroying test results showing samples of the cement they used to seal the Macondo Well were unstable, in addition to the suppression of computer models that might have also showed them at fault.

In truth, Halliburton said they are reviewing the filing…

And that’s about all the truth you’re going to get, especially from companies like British Petroleum who, lest we forget, fought to keep the press out of the Gulf, has made it next to impossible for independent scientists to get the oil samples they need to do testing in the Gulf, as well as buy up scientists throughout the Gulf region.

Now, British Petroleum would maintain the latter was done so the cleanup wasn’t affected, that they are just following procedures and were trying to find the best and the brightest to help them with the expertise needed to make the cleanup a complete and rousing success…except of course, for the obvious, which is no pictures, no evidence, no way a scientist can testify against us now that you’re entire science department signed the confidentiality clause…

Yeah, BP’s full of it, duh…but nonetheless it leaves me to scratch my head and say, when it comes to accusing Halliburton of concealing or destroying evidence in the Gulf:

Jealousy will get you nowhere.

Read the articles:

Halliburton Unit Destroyed Evidence in Gulf Oil-Spill Case, BP Tells Court

BP says Halliburton destroyed Gulf spill evidence

Have a nice day.

Empathy? This much...

So sayeth the self-celebrated:

“I am constantly pressured to do the right thing,” Feinberg said. “You know, the shrimpers, the crabbers, the oystermen and the GCCF, they all say we need to do more, and that they are still at risk. On the other hand, I get correspondence from BP, saying you should not give two times, or four times. In fact they say that two times is too much, the Gulf has recovered. So I get pressure from both every side. I do what I think is right.”

It’s gotta be hard to be Ken Feinberg, living in the middle like that…the fishermen saying he hasn’t done enough, the evil oil corporation who says he has done too much…so very difficult…I almost feel bad, like I should invite him down to Flanagans on St. Phillips, do my social work thing, listen, empathize…and then of course, dump my beer all over his head, kick him off the bar stool and then, standing over him, remind him how he has turned this whole “neutral arbitrator” schtick into a multimillion dollar business…the agent orange fund, the 9-11 fund…etc…and while he is going on and on about how hard it is to wear his shoes, I’d remind him how he put them on, and how they’re some of the most expensive shoes money can buy, and how the people his decisions affect have lost quite a bit more than a few hours sleep so sorry, tell it walking, tell it to the MSM who oftentimes feel content to give him a pass because he is at least paying something unlike the Road Home Program…

Yeah, a celebration of mediocrity…perfect.

Oh, and Ken would just like to add:

Feinberg emphasized that anyone who so wishes, can still seek interim payments from the Gulf Coast Claims facility, and not accept any final payment.

To which a observor such as myself might respond:

Yeah, and you can go buy lottery tickets too.

Read the article:

Feinberg: It’s Hard to be a Gangster

Have a nice day.

So much better than a swastika...

Did you hear an internet group in Michigan has raised over $63,000 dollars to put a statue of Robocop in downtown Detroit?

No, I’m not kidding.

It’s completely true, and a fantastic idea. If not familiar with the Robocop legend, allow me to so inform: Robocop is a cyborg police officer who not only was a one man wrecking crew in stopping crime all over Old Detroit, but he was a robot who so touchingly, was able to retain some of his humanity, his affectionate feelings for his wife and son while he pulled guns of varying sizes and blasted his way through Dick Jones of the evil Omni Consumer Products Company (OCP) and all his henchmen, especially that entertaining, but utter rat bastard Clarence Boddicker, (“guns, guns, guns…”) who was responsible for killing Officer Murphy in the first place, before Murphy got all wired up and transformed into Robocop.

So yeah, Robocop saved a city, he saved men, women and children and taught us all a lesson about the evils of corporate privatization, so of course he needs a statue in Mayor Bing’s new plans to revitalize Detroit. To not so do would be a crime against justice and humanity.

Yet Mayor Bing will not commit.

Nope, but I bet you can guess what guy will get a statue in Detroit, hands down…guaranteed.

Yeah, the guy responsible for putting out the Dearborn Independent newspaper, the guy whose anti-Semitic, collected writings in that newspaper were put together in a book called “The International Jew,” the guy Adolf Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf and considered an inspiration, who Heinrich Himmler referred to as “one of our most valuable, important and witty fighters.”

Henry Ford. 

Oh sure, he’ll get a statue.

Henry Ford, the same man who in 1938 received the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest award Nazi Germany could give to a foreigner.

Henry Ford, the man whose writings, whose book “The International Jew,” was said by convicted Hitler Youth leader, Balder von Schirach who deported 65,000 jews to concentration camps in Poland, to be the “decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades…I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy.”

Yeah, Ford’ll get a statue…but not Robocop.

Giving Robocop a statue would be absolutely ridiculous, a farce, silly and an insult…but an insult to who?

The American Nazi Party? Aryan Nations, Idaho and Montana?

I don’t get it, but with this in mind, the New Orleans Saints will welcome the Detroit Lions into the Superdome.

The Lions, without their master of personal restraint, Ndamukong Suh, will try and fail to win this game and the Saints will quickly send this team, representative of a town with such misplaced priorities, secret history and a really poor choice in statues back to their fabled Old Detroit, and back to cohabitation with the most evil team in hockey, the Red Wings…

Who dat sey dey gonna beat dem Saints?

Not Henry Ford, not Ndamukong Suh, not the Lions…and certainly not a city who so casually dismisses the greatness that is Robocop in favor of a Nazi sympathizer…

No way.

Enjoy the game! Go Saints!

Have a nice day.

"The finest day that I've ever had, was when I learned to cry on command..."

At the end of this month the payroll tax holiday will expire, and if allowed to lapse, it will come as a tax increase for working lower and middle class Americans. The Democrats, including Obama, are in favor of an extension while many Republicans are not. Many Republicans are demanding the extension be offset by spending cuts elsewhere or simply done away with altogether.

Why? Simple…

According to Macroeconomic Advisers, allowing it to lapse “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” An analyst at Barclay’s estimated that letting the cut expire would knock 1.5 percent off of first quarter growth next year. Ameriprise Financial Services, meanwhile, estimated that extending the cut “is likely to add between 750,000 to 1 million jobs.” “Payroll tax cuts are very powerful,” added Allen Sinai, chief economist of Decision Economics. “They provide a boost to direct income and, in turn, spending, which is important to growth.”

Oh wait…forget that part…no, the reason some Republicans would be so willing to let it expire is our out of control deficit…fiscal prudence at its best, yes-sir, so fiscally responsible these Republicans, the cult of Norquist clan, they would allow a tax cut to expire. What an example of sacrifice? Imagine that, they finally agreed, not all tax cuts could be forever sacrosanct…oh, and the fact this party is oft accused of defending only the wealthy, and the fact this tax cut only benefits the working poor and middle class, not the wealthy…

I’m sure this is coincidence.

Has to be.

Just as I’m also sure it is only coincidence the Bush tax cuts, those gifts to the rich and a large part of our current deficit, weren’t required to be paid for while the payroll tax holiday, so many Republicans demand, must be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Yes, this Republican coincidence is but one of many these days…

Take a look at the job creators, for instance. Nick Hanauer, a successful venture capitalist recently wrote an op-ed, stating:

Consider, for example, that a puny 3 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million would be enough to maintain and expand the current payroll tax cut beyond December, preventing a $1,000 increase on the average worker’s taxes at the worst possible time for the economy. With a few more pennies on the dollar, we could invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure. And even if we imposed a millionaires’ surtax and rolled back the Bush- era tax cuts for those at the top, the taxes on the richest Americans would still be historically low, and their incomes would still be astronomically high…Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit.

Yet, the Republicans would rather it be discovered they wet the bed than raise taxes on the wealthy, on those job creators…God save the job creators, even if they call bullshit on their actual ability to create jobs…and I suppose this only makes no sense at all, none…I mean, the Bush tax cuts have been in effect for what, 10 years or so, yet strangely enough we’ve had a recession, we’ve watched a looting of pension plans, a housing collapse and high sustained unemployment for years… And through it all, the fact those taxes on the wealthy, meant to create jobs have done everything but create jobs?

Coincidence.

But I digress, back to that tax break the Republicans are so sketchy about, the one that coincidentally doesn’t help the wealthiest of this country…when John Boehner was asked if letting the tax cut expire would hurt the economy, he replied, “I’m not an economist. I don’t know what kind of impact it’s going to have on the economy.”

Not an economist?

Yet he was sure the deficit didn’t matter when Bush was president, growing exponentially due to unfunded wars, tax breaks for the wealthy and that huge gift bag to pharmaceutical companies.

Just as he is now sure, that since Bush is no longer President, the deficit is destroying America as we know it, that if allowed to continue, not only will the deficit destroy our ability to manufacture American flags for the waving, but your mother’s apple pie? As a country, we will no longer be able to support the cost involved in using ovens, ever again. We will be one flag-less pie-less country, that much closer to gay marriage if we don’t do something about the deficit, like yesterday. He means…now. 

Oh, but that Boehner suddenly lost his economist credentials, that he devolved into financial confusion when it was time for this tax break that doesn’t expressly help the wealthy?

Another matter of simple coincidence.

However…to be fair…Boehner has come around the past day or so, the GOP is coming around and now say the payroll tax holiday should be passed. John himself has said, ““The fact is that Republicans are doing everything we can to allow American families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn.”

Course, that was Public John Boehner. And what did Private John have to say about the payroll tax holiday?

Well, behind closed doors, he told his membership they were pushing a package that not only included the extension, but also more environmental deregulation, more sales of broadband spectrum and a change in policy to help pass the Keystone XL pipeline so, you know, he could  turn “chicken shit into chicken salad.”

The ingredients of chicken salad of course being heavier pollution, sick kids, global warming, monopolies on spectrum leading to a lack of diversity on our airwaves, and a big fucking pipe to take oil all the way across our country from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, oil from tar sands development which is about as environmentally friendly as, well, as most Republican policy.  

Oh, and that John Boehner didn’t refer to this tax break, which doesn’t help the wealthy, as “chicken shit” in public?

Coincidence…you know it.

Yes…coincidence…of course this is what it is, what all of this is.

Cutting taxes on job creators so they continue to not create jobs, unfunded tax breaks for the wealthy while tax breaks for the working poor and middle class must be offset by spending cuts, spectrum sales and pollution, and Boehners ability to be an arch-economist who sometimes, economically speaking, is dumb as a stump…

All of it coincidence…surely.

What other explanation is there?

Have a nice day.

"So what I'm saying is I can't, simply cannot tell a lie and oh, damn..."

Feinberg’s helping again…

He took a look at the poor harvest this season of shrimp and crab from the Gulf of Mexico and decided something needed to be done, that more compensation was necessary as the damages from this oil spill were greater than he had originally estimated…

And he was right in this assessment, and to fix it he will increase the compensation rates for shrimpers and crabbers to four times the amount of their losses in 2010. Great! Wonderful! Certainly a responsible move and I, who have criticized Ken all this time, let me be the first to say perhaps I was wrong, wrong about him being inflexible, maybe even wrong about…er, what?

What do you mean it only applies to those who haven’t accepted a final payment yet?

Well, that doesn’t make any sense…

It’s not like those who’ve already been compensated are any less damaged, that they don’t also need this payment adjustment… I mean, they’re fishing the same waters, they’re experiencing the same depleted catches, the horrible market prices, the questions about their future…

“Feinberg…said he is unwilling to reopen claims or change the terms of already signed releases…”

Oh for fuck’s sake…

Okay, so to those estimated 1000 shrimpers and crabbers who have yet to accept a final offer?

Congratulations.

But to those 4000 claimants who have already accepted final payment from the GCCF, receiving half of what Feinberg’s now paying to people in their same situation?

Tough shit.

I guess you shouldn’t have listened to him first time around…Yeah, when he told you the final payment offer he sent you was all you were going to get? Not true…or in other words, a lie. When you applied for your interim payment, and along with the interim offer, he sent you a final payment offer for shits and giggles, suggesting that offer was as good as it was going to get?

A lie.

When he spoke aloud to the press, suggesting that claimants should just move on with their lives, and in the near future he might see fit to decrease the amount of his final payment offers?

A lie.

When he said the Gulf was rapidly improving, that all would be well by 2013?

Another lie, or…wait a minute, maybe Ken was just wrong? Interesting. Okay…so Ken is either a liar or he’s wrong. Well then, here would appear to be the choices:

If Ken is in fact a liar and a fraud, then he will remain so unless he agrees to retroactively pay the 4000 people who make their living from shrimp and crab, who unfortunately took him at his word when he made them a final offer and now are cheated out of half what they would’ve been paid had they not.

Or…

Ken isn’t a liar and a fraud, he was just wrong about the science, that same science he based his entire methodology around, and if that’s the case, then not only should he still retroactively pay those 4000 claimants, but he needs to revisit his entire methodology and see who else might have been screwed by his poor environmental estimations…other fishermen, in fact…maybe the entire 300,000 plus claimants he just flat out denied in the first place, review their claims too just to make sure…

Course, if he doesn’t want to go to that kind of trouble, he can just admit he’s a liar who is currently cheating 4000 people out of their fair due, and assuming this is his preferable option, how is cheating people right, moral, ethical or fair at all?

It’s not.

It’s help at a late date for a few and a backhanded slap for the many, hardly complimentary.

The GCCF and Ken Feinberg have never been about doing the right thing, and this latest move is just one more demonstration…or in other words…hey, when is that federal audit supposed to happen again?

Read the article:

Oil spill claims expansion for shrimpers, crabbers is not retroactive

Have a nice day.