Disenfranchised Citizen

Plaintiff Steering Committee Member

In an article published online last evening, David Hammer of the Times-Picayune called into question whether over 50,000 plaintiffs attempting to sue BP in the trial beginning February 27th would have their suits rendered ineligible for compensation because they didn’t try to get money from Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility first.

He writes:

“The “presentment” issue could endanger 60 percent of them (court claims). In August, Barbier ruled that claims under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 would have to meet presentment requirements – to seek redress from BP or its designee, Feinberg – to be eligible for compensation.”

Over 50,000 claims potentially knocked out before we even get started? Wait a minute, don’t these 50,000 plaintiffs have attorneys from the Plaintiff Steering Committee? Let’s assume more than a few of them do. Okay then, so what happens if all 50,000 of these legal claims are thrown out of court by Judge Barbier, over half of all the private legal claims? On what basis did the members of the Plaintiff Steering Committee not advise their clients to go ahead and file with Feinberg first, just to get it out of the way? Hell, the claims wouldn’t have even had to be all that detailed, right?

Kind of a legal technicality sort of thing?

“Dear Ken, please send me fourteen dollars for lost wages, contracts, time, illness, etc…”

And then when Ken and the GCCF offers a nickel, the plaintiff turns him down and all done!

Legal requirement satisfied! On to the MDL!

Right, right?

Okay…well how about one more small question:

If 50,000 plus claimants get tossed out, this would seem to indicate that the Plaintiff Steering Committee could have been doing a much better job of steering the plaintiffs, so then shouldn’t they be forced to turn down the 6 percent that Feinberg is now holding back from claimants who actually do settle with the GCCF, all $650,000 dollars of it so far?

Because if you’re getting that 6% for claimants indirectly benefitting from your legal expertise and your legal expertise kinda blows, it would seem they should get their indirect money back…

It’s a thought.

Read the article:

Most BP plaintiffs may be ineligible for compensation

Have a nice day.

Oil companies? What? Now excuse me, I need to get to my church where I'm signed up to volunteer at the soup kitchen tonight...

So, when the House of Representatives proposes to cut guaranteed funds from public transportation which will cause city transportation systems to run in the red, thus requiring cities to raise bus/train/subway fares, fare increases which disproportionately affect poorer residents…

What do we call that?

It’s called a tax.

More specifically, it’s called a regressive tax on the poor, people otherwise known as those who can least afford a tax right now.

And, when the House of Representatives, also as part of their transportation bill, proposes to open nearly all coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, including those places which are environmentally fragile for the stated purpose of raising revenue to pay for the transportation bill, despite their continued, steadfast support of subsidies for oil companies which already are making money hand over fist…

What do we call that?

It’s called a giveaway, a non-starter.

More specifically, it’s called taking money from the poor to give to uber-wealthy corporate campaign donors for the benefit of nobody but GOP Congressman and the masters they bow to, all at the expense of America.

In other words, Boehner’s bullshit transportation bill is just one more piece of manufactured garbage intent on giving more breaks to those who don’t need it while breaking the backs of those who are struggling.

Read the article:

A Terrible Transportation Bill

Have a nice day.

I shit you not, Chuck Norris's balls are this big! I know! I've seen them! In the helicpter when we were fighting the oil spill!

Quite the week for Mr. Jindal.

Bobby goes to CPAC.

Bobby releases his budget for Louisiana.

Bobby blames everybody but Bobby for all the criticisms levied against the decisions and policies of Bobby.

Gotta feel for the guy, though…it must be difficult to be the only reasonable man in not only Louisiana, but the United States…the only true conservative, the only one willing to fight for the Louisiana coast he didn’t really care about until he saw the possibility to earn political points by developing a sudden, long-standing love of all things nature and fighting and Obama sucks and aviator sunglasses badassery!…oh, and the only man to care so much about fiscal responsibility, he’s willing to make the hard choices that fuck the poor out of health care and he had to, because those health care providers and bureaucrats just didn’t listen to him, didn’t plan and since they didn’t, who would Jindal be to try to remedy the situation and ensure his state’s citizens are cared for? Certainly not a benevolent leader of any sort, after all, his hands are clean and leadership is only for brief moments when one gets to ride helicopters and criticize the federal government…

Ah, but I’m rambling…let’s review, shall we?

Jindal went to CPAC and told a rabid crowd how badly Obama screwed up in the oil response, how he had “wasted precious time while that oil was coming to our coast, they refused to listen to the people who lived along the coast that knew better than the experts.”

Yeah, Obama was the only idiot in the Gulf. Because Jindal certainly never signed off on an emergency plan filed by BP which included the names of dead scientists to be contacted in case of an oil spill. Jindal never pushed forth a plan to create sand berms which not only wouldn’t stop the oil, but would also wash back into the Gulf and wouldn’t you know it, happened to make a profit for the Shaw Group, one of Jindal’s campaign donors.

Mere details, details not included in his speech because obviously, none of it was Bobby’s fault, it was Obama. If Barack Obama had just given Jindal what he needed, when he needed it, the damages from the spill would have been entirely mitigated, because for years Jindal and his cronies sat around the governor’s mansion anticipating the breach of the Macondo Well. They were all over that shit. And of course Jindal didn’t contrast democrat Obama’s horrible BP response with Bushco’s republican wonder works after Katrina…if it were to be asked, he would probably call the comparison irrelevant, not even worth a comment, not to mention politically unpalatable.

Next, Jindal proposes a new budget for Louisiana that not only privatizes everything he can get his hands on (because if there’s one thing we’ve learned since 2008, it is the efficiency and success of private industry, you know, like all things financial market and banks and auto industry and Standards and Poverty) he figures in more cuts to public health and surprise! No more cuts to higher education.

When it comes to state health, Jindal is calling for the removal of $34 million dollars in funds to the LSU network of public hospitals and clinics serving the poor and uninsured. Thousands of people receiving care from LSU would have to look for care elsewhere, where there is none, and hundreds of hospital workers would be laid off. LSU of course expressed disappointment in this development while Jindal’s health care secretary blamed LSU for recklessly overspending and blaming the administration. Also, Jindal proposes to cut reimbursement rates to doctors who work with Medicaid, but relax, politicians love to say, they’re not cutting even more services, just provider rates which…shhhhh, make doctors stop offering medicaid services in order to not go bankrupt, thus depriving health choices from the poor, yet again, so the poor, fucked again, but who cares in these times of austerity? Certainly not Bobby, All he knows is it certainly isn’t his fault LSU cared more about providing services and less about the budget. These are tough times! These are times of sacrifice! Jindal is more than willing to prove his conservative bonafides by balancing his budgets on the backs of the poor so what makes LSU’s public hospital so immune, so special?

Maybe if they served more rich people, they’d be in better financial shape.

Anyways, onto higher education which Jindal will not cut in this current budget and we certainly could applaud this, especially if we choose to forget the past three years, but maybe the reason he didn’t cut funding to colleges and universities this year is he already took everything he could over the past three…all $251 million dollars worth. Perhaps he’d been informed that if he cut anything else, the colleges were going to have to steal manufacturing jobs from the prisons, requiring students to work two hours a day in the gymnasiums making gloves or running call centers, the profits from which universities could then use to offset  further cuts to their budgets.

Hey, didn’t Jindal also say he was going to sell prisons in this new budget? So maybe there will be manufacturing contracts available after all.

Sigh…

Yes, it’s Jindal’s Louisiana…where quick, reactionary answers are proffered for any question.

BP oil spill?

Obama did it, or at least he applauded it and did very little while Bobby hung from a helicopter in a bomber jacket, sporting cool shades  and a bucket bailing out the Gulf with the help of Chuck Norris!

Denying health care to the poor?

That’s got nothing to do with Bobby. That’s LSU’s fault for not working harder to craft a more stringent budget and take on their own responsibility in denying healthcare to the poor. And hey, if those doctors decide to stop offering medicaid services because politicians like Jindal keep starving them out through reimbursement rate reductions, well, that’s on those greedy fucking doctors and their love of not declaring bankruptcy.

Funding higher education?

Hey, Jindal already cut $251 million dollars over the past three years and this year, if he tries to cut more, Tulane will have to begin selling their students for scientific experiments…

Quick answers.

No blame.

Well…no blame for Bobby, everybody else will have to shoulder their share of the responsibility, especially those who are suffering already…

After all, tightening the vise on those who can least afford it is the republican way.

Read the articles:

At CPAC, Jindal revives attack on Obama administration over oil spill recovery

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration, LSU spar over cuts at public hospitals and clinics

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s state budget proposal is expected to avoid cuts in higher education

Have a nice day.

John Woo is bad-ass...

Recently, Judge Carl Barbier determined some historical items needed to be excluded from his courtroom to speed things up in the BP case, things like previous accidents, fines and commissioned reports, and man, that got me to thinking: when it comes to my job, what is it that slows me down, drags things out…

What is it that simply takes too long?

Easy…as an Adult Crisis Counselor, that would be suicide assessments…

Oh yeah, way too long and I should know, they’re a big part of what I do. I take calls from emergency room doctors and nurses, from local cops and local lock-ups, all requesting I come to the hospital, the home, the jail, the wherever to talk to whomever to determine just how much at risk of suicide they just might be.

And this process, it can really take a long time.

Too long for me, as after many, many years of doing this work, I’ve become increasingly concerned about efficiency. When I show up, I only want that moment’s immediate facts. Police involvement? Suicidal statements? A plan? An attempt? Did the person take pills, cut their wrists, or maybe they just threatened to do something drastic…Then and there, what did they do, what got me here today, tonight?

Least important is their history.

You see, getting their history just takes way too long. I don’t want to know if they tried suicide before. I don’t want to know if they see or have seen a psychiatrist, if they are taking medications, if they’ve been depressed, lost their job, their wife, their house, their dog, their parents, their health…whatever. You get the idea. Knowing the person’s history forces me to take into account their answers to countless questions, the asking if which eats up a lot of time.

Context and information? Completely overrated.

Just ask Judge Barbier…

He knows what I’m talking about.

Yeah, the Justice Department and the steering committee lawyers, they wanted to introduce information about British Petroleum’s horrible safety record, about the fifteen people who died at Texas City when the refinery exploded…or the previous fines the company received for clean water act violations in Alaska at Prudhoe Bay, you know, when they had the other oil spill…or all that shit that went down in Scotland. Death, injury, environmental impact and degradation…with BP, there are tons of this stuff ,but man, that kind of history, that kind of context…it just takes too long, too much time, a trial within a trial…and besides, how important to the Justice department’s allegations that BP was an unsafe company would demonstrating BP’s previous history of unsafe practices be?

I know, I’m shrugging my shoulders…

But it’s probably of the same magnitude as knowing whether the guy I saw in the emergency room last night had a history of suicide attempts. This guy, his wife called the cops and said he took an overdose of pills and the guy said his wife was lying. She also said he threatened suicide. He said he didn’t. She said he needed help. He said he just wanted to go home. She said he bragged about how he could fool everyone into thinking he was just fine and how when he got home he’d try it again. He said that was a lie.

Now, maybe it might have helped…a little…to know if this guy had attempted suicide before, had previous hospitalizations, emergency detentions, or to know whether he was depressed and why, or maybe to know if their was a previously completed psychological evaluation I might take a look at…

Hmm…maybe.

But, you know…Barbier decided he didn’t want to see the report from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and all the conclusions contained therein regarding fault, and similarly, I don’t need to see what some psychiatrist thought of my client’s mental health, or his history, or what such things might have to do with why he was sitting in that emergency room.

It’s all really just so many scattered details…details which would require me to ask way too many questions…questions that would take up way too much of my time.

Skip it. What could possibly go wrong?

I know it’s my job and all but I’ve kinda been on a John Woo film kick of late, and I don’t mean the mediocre John Woo flicks he did for American film companies. I mean the Chinese flicks…damned good, and besides, I just got back from New York last night and I’m kind of tired so context and history and patterns of behavior…overrated.

Maybe I’ll invite Barbier over to the office. We can watch Red Cliff, part one and two…it may be over four hours long, but with our streamlined approach to our work, we got time.

Read the article:

BP’s blemished safety record is off-limits in trial, judge rules

Have a nice day.

So, if British Petroleum is so concerned about making things right, if the economy is on the mend, the environment a-ok…in short, if everything in the Gulf is so good British Petroleum could really leave any time, but won’t, because they are just that committed and that benevolent of a company, then why all the trouble at these schools?

Trouble such as:

Kids coming to class in dirty school uniforms and trying to take showers without others noticing because their parents lost their jobs and are living in homes with no electricity or running water.

Kids not getting the medication they need for ADD and other ailments, leading to kids acting out in class and fights.

Kids missing classes to stay home and take care of their siblings while parents are out looking for work or trying to keep their jobs.

Kids suffering from increased trauma as a result of increased substance abuse and domestic violence in the home.

Oh, and there’s more:

According to a study by the University of South Ala­bama last spring, 35 percent of the students at Bryant High School in Irvington re­ported being significantly and personally traumatized by the oil spill. A third of them said they were very concerned because the spill had caused their parents to lose jobs. The number of students getting in trouble at Alba Middle School in Bayou La Batre had doubled in a year, according to the study, and was up by 20 percent at Bry­ant.

“There are tons of stories,” said Paige Rucker, state di­rector of Project Rebound, which, in tandem with Alta­Pointe Health Systems, has 21 counselors on a recovery team concentrating on south Mobile County. “You take a community that was already suffering, with Hurricane Katrina and the economy, and you layer the oil spill on top of it.” With that “trifecta,” she said, the community is more than hurting. “It’s on life sup­port.”

Claims money is running out. The jobs haven’t come back. Utility bills are going unpaid. The foot pantry shelves are emptying out and the use of mental health services is on the rise.

This is almost two years after the spill.

Making things right…for who? British Petroleum and their connected politicians…

As Iris Cross says in one of BP’s latest commercials:

“And the economy is showing progress, with many areas on the Gulf Coast having their best tourism season in years. I was born here, I’m still here and so is BP. We’re committed to the Gulf, for everyone who loves it and everyone who calls it home…”

Yeah, well, that’s just wonderful Iris, BP, but how about the kids at schools in south Mobile County? How about you take a little time from your ad campaigns and commit yourselves to these kids and their families?

You know, because you care enough to not have the effects of your spill span across multiple generations.

Read the article:

South Ala. students still suffering from oil spill

Have a nice day.

So then it's agreed? The dolphins are all committing suicide in protest of fewer deep sea oil platforms to swim around. Wonderful...Bob, you good with that? Great. Okay, bring the Coast Guard in here...

It just keeps getting funnier, except it’s not…

In this past week, it has been reported how, in the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, British Petroleum had demanded via e-mail that it’s own expert be kept quiet when he gave his opinion stating 82,000 barrels of  crude a day were coming from the Macondo Well. In fact, two days after ordering his silence, BP publicly announced their estimate that the flow rate was only 1,000 barrels per day. And of course, this report comes on the heels of another showing how the White House had been trying to get the United States Geologic Survey to downgrade its flow rate estimates in public statements too, reducing the USGS estimate of at least 25,000 barrels of oil per day coming from the well to a number the NIC thought sounded better, 12,000 to 25,000 barrels or better still, the estimate a White House Communications officer suggested, 12,000 – 19,000 barrels per day. Oh, and who can forget the wrongful termination lawsuit being filed by August Walters where he claims to have been fired by BP a couple of months back because he wouldn’t modify clean-up data  to make the beaches appear cleaner on paper than they in fact truly were, thus allowing BP to say they’d turned the corner and in light if this data, come to an agreement with the Coast Guard to officially move from cleanup to restoration, all while eagerly anticipating the stock bump to come from such an announcement.

Yes, these are the assholes in charge making things right along the Gulf Coast, and yes, the oil company mentioned in the above paragraph is the same British Petroleum putting out all those feel good commercials telling you how everything is just swell now. Hey! The economy, the seafood and the jobs are back!

And now, today even, when it comes to that same oil company and that same government, I’m sure if you asked, they’d go on and on to tell you how it would be impossible for the low-balling of flow-rate numbers that lead to a potentially flawed cleanup response based on their bad data, and how the fact there is still more unaccounted for oil in the Gulf of Mexico than was spilled from the Exxon Valdez…yeah, they’ll tell you how none of this has anything to do with more dead dolphins…even if there still is oil along the Louisiana coast.

Of course not.

That would be fucking ridiculous, and potentially unprofitable…

However:

“Since the beginning of the month, 14 marine mammals, including a dozen dolphins, have been found along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Half of the dead dolphins washed up on the Louisiana coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls it an “Unusual Mortality Event” in the northern Gulf and next month will mark two years since it began. The tally so far: 630 dead.

The event started in February of 2010 – two months before the oil spill began. Still, the deaths raise a red flag with the Gulf Restoration Network. “The ongoing death of these dolphins speaks to the idea that we haven’t seen all of the impacts from the BP oil drilling disaster end yet,” said Dan Favre of the Gulf Restoration Network.

Ridiculous, indeed…

Read the article:

More dead dolphins wash up on Southeast Louisiana coast

Have a nice day.

August who? Nope...never heard of such an incompetent, lying son of a bitch...why do you ask?

When an employee of BP refuses to go along with the corporate narrative that all’s swell with Gulf cleanup, does BP change the narrative to make it more accurate? Does it admit there may be some problems, that they might not have done everything they promised to do?

No, instead they run some feel good commercials enforcing their narrative about Gulf health.

Oh…and that employee?

Fired.

So says a lawsuit for wrongful termination filed by August Walters, a former employee of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization (GCRO) as State Planning Lead “for the purpose of developing a descriptive plan to accomplish the cleaning of oil caused by the BP spill.”

From the article:

According to the suit, Walter’s job involved creating plans for the clean-up, known as Shoreline Treatment Recommendations (STR), which were prepared and approved with the oversight of the U.S. Coast Guard Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) “to be in compliance with federal and state environmental rules and regulations.” BP would then be responsible for implementing the plans. But, Walter claims, in May and June of 2011 he “began to convey his concerns that BP Mississippi operations were intentionally not following the plans for clean up delineated by U.S. Government, the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior.”

“Cory Brown, BP’s Deputy Operations Branch Director/Response Lead conveyed that he was defying the [recommendations] by insisting that BP was only picking up tar balls and not other smaller oil debris as required by the” Shoreline Treatment Recommendations. In September of last year, Walter told BP that he was required to inform stakeholders that the company was not following his recommendations.

And, what allegedly followed next is what one might expect from British Petroleum…a campaign to discredit Walters within the company, the suggestion that the data should be skewed because to move from cleanup plans to restoration plans would be good for the company stock, and threats that he was being watched, so if he continued to do his job correctly, lawfully, he would be reported to his superiors.

On November 3rd, according to another article, Walters was called into a meeting with BP’s vice president of operations, Carla Fontenot who informed him BP’s primary objective was to gain the confidence of the Coast Guard so that cleanup could move to another phase even though BP was still in violation of the cleanup plan.

By November 8th when Walters still had not complied by skewing data, he was placed on leave.

On November 9th, he was fired.

Oh, and also on November 9th, BP and the Coast Guard announced that 90% of the oil had been cleaned up and BP said it was moving from cleanup to Gulf restoration.

And months later, articles continue to appear in various newspapers, questioning this change from cleanup to restoration when oil continues to wash ashore, hinder wetlands and lie in tar mats on the seafloor, just waiting for the next storm to bring it all up on the beaches again, especially when this change to restoration no longer holds British Petroleum accountable for long-term monitoring or continued cleanup of the beaches.

As Garret Graves, Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman, puts it:

“The whole discussion goes back to legacy response,” Graves said. “You have more oil unaccounted for right now than was spilled during the Exxon Valdez. Tell me what would happen if the Coast Guard in Alaska had said, ‘We’re not going to clean this up. Let it naturally degrade.’ ”

Read the articles:

Lawsuit Claims Former BP Employee Was Fired For Refusing To Skew Clean-Up Data

Fired Over Cleanup Data, BP Worker Says

Have a nice day.

Liars telling lies to people who want to be lied to - both parties, every last one of them...well, God bless America

It really is this simple:

At the height of British Petroleum’s catastraphuk…the scientists involved from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were estimating at least 25,000 barrels per day were gushing from the well.

But, the National Incident Command suggested they report the flow rate to be between 12,000-25,000 barrels per day.

And a White House Communications person suggested they report the flow rate at 12,000-19,000 barrels per day.

However, part one:

Both would have been a lie, because as previously noted the USGS were estimating a minimum of 25,000 barrels per day and now…21 months later…the above-mentioned facts come out, that the White House was trying to downplay the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and unlike 21 months ago, nobody’s really paying attention anymore so it’ll be pretty much like it never happened…even though, all their bullshit obfuscations resulted in a less effective response to this spill.

Hey, it’s all politics, baby.

However, part two:

So then, tonight, when all over the fucking television will be Mitt Romney giving his pre-State of the Union Speech to be followed by Barack Obama giving his actual State of the Union Speech, to then be followed by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels giving a GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union Speech – what one might ask is what will all these asshole politicians be lying to you about now?

And do you really care?

And if you do care, what are you willing to do about it?

Read the articles:

Misunderestimating the BP Oil Spill

Obama officials pushed to underestimate Gulf oil spill

Have a nice day.

How could they make it any more clear, I mean...who the hell is this O'Rourke guy? I wouldn't hire him either...

So, in determining guilt and any possible fines under the Clean Water Act, welcome to another day in court, another episode of the 3 Stooges, starring  BP, Transocean and Anadarko…Please, follow along and keep in mind that of course, no one is to blame except for everybody else.

Duh…

First, allow me to introduce Department of Justice Senior Attorney Steven O’Rourke who explained how simple this all should be under the Clean Water Act – “Any person who is the owner, operator, or person in charge of any vessel … or offshore facility from which oil is discharged” will face Clean Water Act fines.

Okay, so British Petroleum is part owner of the lease to the well, and operator of the Deepwater Horizon, Anadarko is also part owner of the lease while Transocean owns the rig.

And, O’Rourke continued, “Each defendant admits that the oil came out of the well through the blowout preventer riser and was discharged into the Gulf of Mexico. They’ve admitted they were owners and they’ve admitted the discharge from the well.”

Well, that was easy enough…all three, guilty as fuck – so moving on to the amount of the fines…

Uh…what? Not that easy? Who says its not that easy?

Oh right…

The lawyers…

David Salmons, lawyer for Anadarko said no way, man…Anadarko can’t be held liable because they are part owner of the well and the oil, it discharged from the Deepwater Horizon and since they had no control over operations onthe rig, and since the oil can’t come from both the vessel and the well, it obviously came only from the vessel.

Not guilty!

Andrew Langan, lawyer for British Petroleum said no way, man…the oil couldn’t have come from both the well and the vessel, we agree with Anadarko about that and the oil, it definitely came from the vessel and Transocean owns all that shit.

Not guilty!

Kerry Miller, lawyer for Transocean said no way, man…they are only liable for the oil that made it to the surface and all that subsea oil, you know, almost all of the oil unleashed into the Gulf…it all belonged to both British Petroleum and Anadarko who leased the well, so send them the bill, not us.

Not guilty!

And there you have it…4.9 million gallons of oil discharged into the Gulf of Mexico and the only person anyone can say for sure did it, was anyone else but me.

But wait, Mr. O”Rourke then decided to try again, do his best to summarize it for the Judge: “Transocean is saying it came from the well so BP and Anadarko are liable; Anadarko and BP are saying it came from the vessel so Transocean is liable. The government says all of them are correct. They’re all liable.”

Sigh…

I know!

It’s like he didn’t hear a single thing the other lawyers said at all…

No wonder he works for the government, obviously way too dim to work for any of these plaintiffs.

Read the article:

Gulf Oil Spill Could Bring Up to $20B in Fines

Have a nice day.

"Boy...glad that's over..."

“We all knew we were experiencing health problems, but if you don’t have money and access to health care, it’s a win for BP,” said Carol Farmer, 52, of Milton. “No one knows about us, and BP can brush it under the carpet.”

Not knowing.

The country remains largely unaware of health problems occurring to cleanup workers and others in the Gulf of Mexico and those that are sick, don’t know for sure the extent of their illness…or what they can do about it.

That’s a whole hell of a lot of not knowing, and that makes a whole lot of fear. Hoping to help, the National Institute of Health is doing a long-term study of health problems in the Gulf, especially focussed on the clean-up workers and at a recent workshop in Gulf Breeze, 100 or so people showed up to take part, including Carol Farmer. The goal of the workshops and community meetings is to enroll up to 55,000 of the 150000 cleanup workers. Individuals participating in the health screenings will be told of any health problems and referred to doctors or clinics who can treat them at low or no cost.

The goal of the study is to better determine how to handle oil spills in the future.

That way, hopefully, there will be fewer problems such as:

Eddie Casanova 46, of Fort Walton Beach, said the whole left side of his body has rashes and bumps that came up after he began working the oil spill on Pensacola Beach, Fort Pickens, Johnson Beach and Pensacola Naval Air Station in 2010 and 2011.

Or…

Charles Everhart, 60, was on one of the first cleanup teams to hit the beaches in the summer of 2010 when the air was full of noxious fumes from the oil washing in from the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, he’s been having eye, respiratory and throat problems, “I used to jog three miles a day,” he said. “Now, I can’t run a block without huffing and puffing.”

Or…

Many others in the crowd who worried about immediate health problems…problems they say are being dismissed by doctors or left untreated because they can’t afford medical treatment or don’t have insurance…

Yes, money…again, money…always, money…

Money’s the reason BP won’t entertain too much discussion about health problems as it might open their company up to litigation or liability, and money’s likely the reason why Feinberg, unlike his fund for Agent Orange and 9-11, is demanding proof of causality in order to make a health claim against the GCCF, something very, very difficult to do…

But, not everybody is dealing with so many worries as BP CEO, Bob Dudley reports:

“BP added exploration prospects equivalent to an area the size of Italy, an unlikely outcome given the firm’s role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. ‘One of the surprises is that I thought we would have a more difficult time taking on exploration roles,’ the American said. It’s been the best year in 30 years for increasing exploration acreage for BP’, he added…”

Yessir…

BP and Bob Dudley crow away about how they’re back in business, making big profits, expanding…while many of the people their spill hurt, or made sick are still in the dark waiting…wondering…unable to afford medical treatment or the peace of mind contained in knowing when it will also be their time to finally get their lives back…

You know, just like Bob.

Read the article:

BP oil cleanup workers focus of health study

Have a nice day.