Disenfranchised Citizen

Making things right...one attorney at a time...

Okay, so first we acknowledge the obvious:

Lawyers being lawyers, and British Petroleum having long since given up that whole “making things right,” and “actions, not words” schtick – at least in reality – of course BP is going to try to use every legal maneuver to pay as little as possible to anyone. Their company’s in trouble now that the Rosneft deal looks blown so yeah, that whole Gulf Coast thing…it’s one big financial/legal liability and since the media interest flags, it’s time for corporate law to rear the ugliest of heads to take the biggest bite they can…

So stated, let’s move on to the latest from British Petroleum’s attorneys in Judge Carl Barbier’s court, shall we?

Turns out (surprise) British Petroleum is of the legal opinion that the claims for economic and punitive damages as a result of their little ‘ol spill, including those who lost jobs/wages as a result of the drilling moratorium, including those first responders who got sick during the cleanup, including basically…everybody, should be summarily dismissed by Judge Barbier.

Oh…but why?

Because these people must go through Feinberg’s GCCF claims process, first.

Oh…but why?

That pesky Oil Pollution Act of 1990, that’s why. Andrew Langer, BP’s head legal talking head argues that OPA states claimants must first attempt to redress their grievances with the responsible party – BP, and if they are then denied by the responsible party, only then can they file a claim in court. Langer also claims the Oil Pollution Act supersedes maritime law, and since OPA doesn’t allow for the punitive damages allowed under maritime law, these claims must be dismissed as well.

Dismissed, just like that…upwards of 130,000 legal claims.

Judge Barbier gave no timeline on when he would rule on the matter, but perhaps Feinberg now should really want to hold off on closing all those GCCF claims offices, you know, just in case.

BP’s desire isn’t surprising, it makes sense they would want these people to go through the GCCF. Much as the oil company would like to control a United States court of law, they don’t, but the GCCF and Feinberg are a different matter. There they hold much more sway. Hell, their guy wrote the rules, the same man Judge Barbier already ruled can’t claim himself as independent of BP. Good ‘ol Ken, the lawyer whose law firm is paid $1.25 million dollars a month by BP. Way back when, the GCCF and Feinberg’s stated mission was to keep people out of court, but this didn’t entirely happen, especially when his “generous” payments turned out to not be so generous after all. So now British Petroleum argues Judge Barbier should rule in their favor and complete Feinberg’s mission for them, kick the claimants into BP’s court, where they can be delayed, stalled, and hopefully, so frustrated that some throw up their hands and take Feinberg’s “generous” claims instead of heading back into court to be delayed, stalled and frustrated anew by BP’s lawyers.

From a legal standpoint, it makes sense. What does British Petroleum really have to lose? Self respect? The goodwill of the Gulf Coast? Well, self-respect and goodwill ain’t worth a dime and this whole mess has appeared to be about the money for this company since day one. 

The plaintiffs’ attorneys, of course, disagree with BP, arguing OPA was created after the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill because legal remedies available at the time were insufficient. They further argue the companies involved in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon shouldn’t be able to now use OPA as a legal shield to escape punitive damages and throw these legal claims into the GCCF mess. Besides, the oil pollution act of 1990 doesn’t expressly declare an intent to displace maritime law, whereas other statutes that prevent punitive damages do specifically prohibit them.

Judge Barbier, who questioned both sides’ arguments, asked how it is he is supposed to go through the 130,000 cases to determine which should be thrown out and which should be allowed to proceed. Nobody seemed to have an answer on this, beyond saying such a process will be exceedingly time-consuming.

Even more so pehaps, then the GCCF’s claim process.

But British Petroleum wasn’t the only company to get in on this four-hour hearing, and all involved had an argument on why these pesky economic claims should be dismissed. Represented in court were Anadarko, Halliburton, Cameron International and Transocean. Transocean argued that since BP is the responsible party, economic claims should only be made against BP under OPA, and then it would be BP’s right to go after the other companies to pay their share. You see, the people have filed suit against the wrong companies in the wrong order.

In other words, much like Feinberg’s screaming about unsatisfactory documentation, all of the big companies on the hook here are claiming the businesses and the people of the Gulf Coast are doing it wrong, not adhering to the correct process, not filing suit against the right company, not going through the GCCF process first, where they would inevitably be unable to document their claims in the correct way.

Or in other, other words…the claimants, the victims in this colossal fuck-all, the right thing for them to do would be to do as they are told, hurry up and wait, and go back to a GCCF process many consider long since broken.

All unless Judge Barbier, much like finally declaring Feinberg not independent, sides again on behalf of the people so harmed by this disaster, a catastraphuk not of their own creation.

Oh, but that’s not all, there’s more…

On the drilling moratorium: BP also asked for a dismissal of the claims by people who lost jobs/wages as a result of the drilling moratorium, saying it was the government who declared the moratorium, not BP, so why are they at fault? According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the moratorium was something the government would reasonable feel was necessary when they realized, hey, those oil rigs aren’t as safe as we ignored/were led to believe and you know what? We don’t have the resources to fight off these kind of spills so we better do a safety check. The plantiffs’ attorneys are also guessing the moratorium wouldn’t have happened had the Deepwater Horizon not exploded and since, under OPA, BP is the responsible party…well…they should be liable because one plus one usually equals two.

Unless you’re watching the latest “making it right,” advertisement by British Petroleum.

Attorneys for Nalco were also in court, the makers of Corexit dispersant and they argued they should have immunity from damage claims by people who got sick inhaling their toxins because the Federal government was in charge of the response, and it was the federal government who chose to use Corexit, “This was a spill of national significance, which put all of the decision-making in the hands of the federal government,” said their attorney.

One might wonder if this attorney is referring to the same government whose EPA expressly ordered British Petroleum to stop using Corexit dispersant, only to have BP refuse…somehow equating BP’s ability to do as they wished throughout the spill response with the ability of the government to be in charge of all the decision-making. 

There’s also the matter of all the private contractors who claim they deserve immunity too because they were doing cleanup under the same fully authoritative decision-making of the same federal government who had everyone listening intently on that whole Corexit deal. The plaintiffs’ attorneys in this case rightfully argued said contractors weren’t working for the government, they were hired by and working for BP and thus, why should they have immunity?

The entire hearing lasted a total of four hours and there’s more, but damn, my fingers are getting tired so perhaps I should just try wrapping this up:

British Petroleum, Transocean, Anadarko, Cameron International, Nalco…dismiss everything so we can better direct our funds to making things right for the Gulf Coast…

Residents and businesses of the Gulf Coast…get out of their way, you’re doing it wrong so go talk to Feinberg and he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms just how wrong you all are, while he painstakingly helps you to move on, being the loyal neutral arbitrator that he is…

The lawyers? Well, they’re busy being lawyers…

But most importantly, Judge Barbier, it’s up to you now and I for one, hope your ruling continues the process of finally making things right for all the people along the Gulf Coast that British Petroleum has made so wrong.

Read the article:

Defendants in oil spill litigation seek to have groups of claims dismissed

Have a nice day.

...And Bob's thoughtful, focused eyes, they scanned the horizon in serious contemplation of actions, and most certainly not, just words...

Bob Dudley, presiding over the British Petroleum shareholders meeting, read aloud the names of the eleven men who died on the Deepwater Horizon, and then spoke of , “working hard to earn back trust…through our actions, not just our words…”

- Oh, and he proceeded to mock an activist shareholder, Antonia Juhasz, who read a letter written by the father of one of the men killed, saying in response, “Many of your statements sound like they were prepared by a plaintiff’s attorney.”

Bob Dudley, presiding over the British Petroleum shareholders meeting outlined several of the changes British Petroleum has made to revamp its management structure and build safety into its everyday operations, thus hopefully making drilling safer.

- Oh, and shareholders proceeded to re-elect as director Sir William Castell, who as chairman of the company’s safety, ethics and environment assurance committee presided over the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.

- And…Mr. Castell was also the individual at the meeting who tried to cut off Antonia Juhasz when she read, ”This was no act of God — BP, Halliburton and Transocean could have prevented this…but it would have taken more time, more money, and you were too greedy to wait. You rolled the dice with my son’s life, and you lost.”

- And…shareholders then proceeded to award bonuses to various executives, including making Tony Hayward eligible for vested performance shares for 2010, worth up to 8 million pounds.

BP Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, also presiding over the British Petroleum shareholders meeting, said a lot as he tried to reassure restless stockholders, “”Everything we have done since Deepwater Horizon has had one aim; to win back the trust of shareholders and communities the world over…” and, “BP remains a great company, with a great history and, I believe, a great future…” and, “I can assure you I will do everything I can to bring a prosperous future for this company.”

- Oh, and shareholders proceeded to authorize BP to continue making political donations…

- Because…donating to political figures is something BP will surely need to do, for though Mr. Svanberg is confident in the future of his great company, the future is not so assured for the “community,” for the Gulf Coast residents who have been so harmed by the actions of his company, and there still remain a few politicians who will need donations to forget this fact.

- And…even though Bob Dudley can say that 99% of fishing waters in the Gulf have reopened and the EPA nd FDA’s testing of seafood from said opened waters is safe to eat, the general public is still not so convinced, thus, nobody is buying the seafood.

- And…even though Bob Dudley can say he is determined to earn back the trust of communities, it is his company which unleashed a Ken Feinberg on the Gulf Coast who while doing his best to ensure BP remains solvent, is doing far less to guarantee the same for the Gulf Coast residents.

- And finally…though Bob Dudley can respectfully recite the names of eleven men to his company’s shareholders, many will debate just how much of it was media/political theater, and how much of it, considering the other activities that occurred at this meeting, was sincere feeling for both the grieving families, and for a region still trying to recover, a region that still hopes, one day soon, their reality might again sync up with the glowing reports from British Petroleum’s own public relations campaign.

- Oh, and have a nice day.

And now, a word from our sponsors…

The Clash – Straight to Hell

The hidden subtext?

Obviously…

So, I got an idea. It’s pretty simple really, but that makes it no less effective. Everybody, just blame everybody. Make people unavailable for hearings. If you can’t clean the beaches, buy the beaches. We’ll all trade off, sometimes it’ll be BP’s fault, sometimes Halliburton or Transocean and just for kicks, every once in awhile we’ll let Feinberg give an interview so he can take the heat off all of us, you know, to recharge. Blowout preventers, who could’ve stopped what and when…really, just make it as complicated as possible and don’t forget Nalco, sometimes it’ll be Nalco’s turn…but just keep it all going. Accept no blame clearly for anything, ever. Right, complicated, ya know? Once the people stop paying attention, then -in reality- it ceases to exist and we got an anniversary coming, so okay, so who’s gonna take the brunt on the anniversary?

Great idea…on April 20th, we’ll give Feinberg another raise. Double it, why not? Oh c’mon, we don’t need to ask, we don’t ask Feinberg anything, we tell him. Hell, we drag this out long enough boys, and climate change’ll render the whole thing a moot point, anyway.

Okay…good then, cheers!

Have a nice day. 

We could never forget about you, Bob...

Yeah, Feinberg and the GCCF are doing a number on the Gulf Coast residents right now, but lest we forget…he and his shenanigans would hardly be necessary if British Petroleum’s explosion of the Deepwater Horizon hadn’t occurred in the first place, killing eleven men and trashing an eco-system.

The Department of Justice is currently deciding whether to press manslaughter charges against various British Petroleum personnel.

In an excellent article by Tom Schroder at the Daily Beast, he lays out the case for why BP could be so charged:

“On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that federal prosecutors are considering filing manslaughter charges against BP managers in the April 20, 2010, deaths of 11 crewmembers of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. BP, which has already paid billions of dollars to help clean up the largest accidental oil spill in history and compensate those who suffered economic losses, has been under the threat of criminal indictments since June. To date, the blame for the well blowout has been widely distributed, with BP deflecting much, if not most, of the responsibility for the disaster to the companies the oil company had hired to drill and manage their well. An indictment of BP managers for manslaughter would be a dramatic refutation of that position. To meet the legal definition of manslaughter, those responsible for the safe drilling of the well would have to be found to have acted with negligence, “without due caution and circumspection.”"

Read the article at the Daily Beast:

Is BP Guilty of Manslaughter?

Have a nice day.

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.

Citizens United

In a word?

Climate.

I’m not talking about environmental climate change, I’m talking about the political climate, the deregulation climate, the climate that continues to sweep through this country and threatens you, the American citizen at your door with not a polite knock, it’s more akin to home invasion, battering rams that splinter the wood with its force until the whole thing smashes in and stares greedily at your family.

But first, the back-story:

When the financial system broke down in 2008 as a result of companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers playing fast and loose for ten years with their newly deregulated financial systems, allowing them to leverage their own companies to the point of collapse in pursuit of short-term profits, they knew they had an ace in the hole. Deregulation had allowed them to grow to sizes unseen since the Great Depression so if they were to fail, they would take the interconnected global economies with them. They knew this and when the house of cards came down, they received the TARP bailouts from GW Bush so essentially, while making billions in profit at the expense of pension funds and house mortgage owners, they then received billions more in rescue money from the government to keep themselves solvent, and that money from the government? That was your money, and the money to the executives that created this mess so quickly gained in those several years of exorbitant short-term profit? They kept it, and nobody went to jail for the fraud they played on our country because their co-workers filled the President’s cabinet, the New York Reserve, the treasury and the SEC.

Large business everywhere watched this charade play out. They bore witness to what these companies got away with and realized yet again that any fines levied for the companies’ inappropriate behavior amounted to little more than a parking ticket for you or me.

Corporate responsibility was at little to none.

At the same time the financial mess was being created, the Mineral and Management Service, the regulatory agency responsible for overseeing oil companies was rubber stamping deep-sea oil well permits and doing blow with corporate heads while ignoring the fact that neither the states, the MMS or the companies themselves had a plan in case something should go wrong on one of the oil rigs. Nobody had a plan to seal the well or clean up the mess.

And few, if any said a word about this.

And then April 20th happened.

The Oil Spill…the great catatsraphuk that is British Petroleum’s Gulf Coast Disaster played and plays out across four states. Millions of barrels of oil, methane and chemical dispersants were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, leading to dead people, dead dolphins, wasted fisheries, destroyed oyster beds, destroyed cultures, businesses and families and ten months later we have increasing illness, we have tar balls left on beaches while BP closes shop on its cleanup. British Petroleum claims the GCCF and Feinberg’s payments are too high, too much when everyone in the region knows they aren’t enough, not nearly enough. Mental health issues continue their escalation on those both direct and indirectly impacted, court cases are filed, reporters write, British Petroleum reneges on its commitments to Louisiana and the rehabilitation of their oyster beds. Politicians in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama are seething, screaming at Obama to do something about the businesses and people who are being abandoned, essentially asking Obama to be a President.

And in his State of the Union address, the President doesn’t even mention the Gulf Coast.

And in the state of the Gulf Coast – Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida are being forgotten.

British Petroleum is reneging on their commitments to the environment and to the people, while Ken Feinberg is low-balling claimants straight to insolvency. And for Gulf Coast residents? No bailouts from the government. Most people receiving any compensation from the Gulf Coast fund are forced to waive their rights against seeking any more money from over a hundred companies regardless of an unknown future. Sicknesses as a result of the spill? No. Environment doesn’t bounce back by 2013? No. Oil continuing to come ashore? No. And these hundred companies still operate and still make money both on and off their shores.

And British Petroleum is not fulfilling their corporate responsibilities to the people.

Why?

Because they don’t have to, climate dictates.

Meanwhile nationwide, like a financially desperate Gulf Coast, the other 46 states continue to suffer through a recession that while it may be recovering in the sense that profits are again going up for the same banks and investment firms that created the mess in 2008, the people who lost their jobs as a result are still unemployed, and the federal government and the states are still experiencing a continuing recession that is forcing cutbacks on their state and federal budgets.

This recession, caused by corporate irresponsibility, was made possible by current climate conditions and it is these cutbacks that have led to the protests in Wisconsin. Governor Walker has declared that in order for him to close the budget gap, he has no choice but to end collective bargaining rights for state unions.

He says the state of Wisconsin is broke and has no choice.

Two weeks ago, John Boenher, Speaker of the House said the same thing about the federal government, “We’re broke. It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money.”

And hundreds of companies like British Petroleum, walk away, without paying whatever is necessary for them to “make things right,” in the disasters of their own creation. In fact, in many instances, corporations like Bank of America and General Electric actually received tax benefits and paid nothing. Nationally, and in the states, the Republicans and oftentimes the Democrats want to take the money from us.

Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood: healthcare for the poor. Obama wants to defund energy assistance. Republicans want to prohibit unions for federal employees. They want to defund investigations of the fiscal crisis and enforcement of new regulations on the banking and investment industry. Both sides want to cut education, reducing grants and rasing tuitions. Republicans want to defund the EPA and the NOAA. They want to cut money to public transit. They want to cut money for social services, addiction treatment, housing programs. They want to end community development grants, used primarily in poor neighborhoods.

Have to, we’re all broke, didn’t you hear?

It’s a budget crisis.

Republicans and Democrats nationwide also often agree the people who will pay for this crisis are the people who had no part of its cause and were typically its victims, while the people whose criminal activity led to these budget deficits? They will continue to receive their tax breaks, their bonuses, the lifestyles they have grown so accustomed too.

Personal responsibility and shared sacrifice is the watchword from Democrats and Republicans.

Corporate responsibility garners nary a mention.

It’s the climate.

So, while the people nationwide are forced to accept austerity cuts, while politicians are attempting to destroy state and federal unions and while the people of the Gulf Coast continue to watch their livelihoods, culture and families stagnate in limbo…corporate profiteers are back in business. British Petroleum begins issuing dividends to stockholders and reporting profits. The large multinational banks and investment firms continue to issue bonuses and Wisconsin unions are asked to give up their rights

Barack Obama continues to say little to nothing.

While the people?

They continue to suffer. The Gulf Coast resident, the union member, the middle class and the poor are dictated pain and sacrifice and forced to take it while the government and the corporations go on their merry way, married by a climate of profit and deregulation, at your expense.

And this is wrong.

This is Un-American.

This is not a shared sacrifice, the average American citizen is a sacrificial lamb and it must end.

So, what do the union protesters in Wisconsin, in day 14 of their fight against their governor have to do with the Gulf Coasts struggles against British Petroleum, Ken Feinberg and an out of earshot Federal Government?

Everything.

The fights are the same.

It’s the average person of this country trying to fight against a political and corporate power structure that cares very little for their individual lives and more for their personal bank accounts, their profit margin and their market share.

The fight in Wisconsin is the Gulf Coast’s fight and the Gulf Coast’s fight is Wisconsin’s.

It’s the fight of all of us, for all of us to change this climate and unify the nation against the very people whose attention to profit creates the economic suffering of the many, and against the politicians who continue to let it happen.

We have to, because in the current climate, the oil spills of financial ruin will continue to occur nationwide.

Have a nice day.

BP trusts me, what more do you need?

Who do you trust?

Who do you believe?

Who’s looking out for you and who is not?

Such are the questions in the Gulf Coast, about the claims process and the safety of Gulf seafood. In the federal version, the seafood is fine, the FDA is doing their testing and everything is coming up aces while Feinberg is doing his best as a neutral arbitrator and quickly trying to get as much money as he possibly can into the hands of a beleaguered public. Justice is running its course, and all of the companies involved in the BP oil catastrophe will be legally obligated to make amends and pay their fair share towards restoring the pristine waters of the Gulf back to their only kind-of polluted state. British Petroleum is cleaning up the oil, using all the manpower it deems necessary to do so. In a show of confidence, the federal government has urged the armed forces to start using Gulf Seafood to feed the troops.

Obama is silent on most of these issues and on vacation in Hawaii, so no worries…the Secret Service won’t allow for anymore shirtless president photos to grace the AP wire.

Sounds pretty good.

Sounds.

Course then there’s this:

An environmental law firm in New Orleans said it was preparing to challenge the government’s public declaration that following the nation’s worst-ever oil disaster, seafood from the Gulf of Mexico remained safe to eat. Stuart H. Smith, Esq., of the law firm Smith Stag, LLC., was leading the charge, rallying additional litigants to his side through a website called Oil Spill Action.

One of the toxicologists on Smith’s litigation team pursuing BP was Dr. William Sawyer…he’s calling the Food and Drug Administration’s safety test “little more than a farce…they did not test the [total petroleum hydrocarbons] (TPH) in their samples,” he said, calling his testing methodologies a much more comprehensive way of examining compounds present in seafood when compared to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests.

Dr. Sawyer added that some of his test samples came from seafood on its way to market, pulled from waters that had only recently been classified as safe for commercial fishing activities. “The sensory test employed by the FDA detects compounds that are volatile that have an odor; we’re detecting compounds that are low volatility and are very low odor,” he added. “We found not only petroleum in the digestive tracts [of shrimp], but also in the edible portions of fish. We’ve collected shrimp, oysters and finned fish on their way to marketplace — we tested a good number of seafood samples and in 100 percent we found petroleum.”

Among the people represented in his suit are everyone from seafood retailers to crabbers to real estate developers, and they continue to add plaintiffs, all targeting BP, Transocean, Anadarko, MOEX Offshore and Halliburton.

Said Dr. Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Maine about exposure to the crude oil in the Gulf, “There is no safe level of exposure to this oil, because it contains carcinogens, mutagens that can damage DNA and cause cancer and other chronic health problems…many people in the Gulf have been exposed for months — not just workers but residents. There are hundreds of health complaints from local people with symptoms that resemble symptoms of oil exposure. It will be years, possibly decades, before we understand the extent and nature of the health effects caused by this spill.”

Meanwhile, Feinberg and the GCCF’s claim process continues to get its fair share of criticism.

In an Op-Ed written by the Alabama attorney General, Troy King and published in the USA today, King writes “Gulf Coast Claims Facility Administrator Kenneth Feinberg cannot be trusted. While Feinberg has tried to persuade residents of the Gulf Coast that he works for them — referring to himself as their advocate and friend — he was hired by BP, his law firm is being paid $850,000 a month by BP, and every action he has taken has benefited BP….regrettably, throughout this process Feinberg has dragged his feet, admittedly applying uneven criteria to many well-documented claims from businesses on the verge of bankruptcy and closure, thus pressuring business owners to take whatever small compensation he offered.”

And from an editorial in Sunday’s Times-Picayune:

Nevertheless, Mr. Feinberg promised that legitimate applicants could expect to receive money within a day or two. Yet, many applicants have languished for months without receiving anything, and Mr. Feinberg appears loath to blame his organization for that. If a person’s been waiting for money since August, he told The Times-Picayune, there must be something wrong with the application. “All I can say is there’s a very, very good reason for it.” Apparently not so good a reason that he can share it with frustrated applicants. Mr. Rogers (a claimant) says he doesn’t know why he hasn’t gotten a payment.

Mr. Feinberg’s presence here along the Gulf Coast is supposed to guarantee that people with legitimate claims can get damages they’re owed by BP without having to give a portion of it to a hired lawyer. Yet, hundreds of people were so frustrated with Mr. Feinberg’s slow pace that they lined up in the cold this month to sign over a third of any money they get to attorney Tim Porter if Mr. Porter can help them secure the money. That should be a sign to Mr. Feinberg how frustrated people are with him and his organization.

In response, Feinberg has hired several law firms and a claims administration company to help people in applying for final claims. The law firms will be set up in offices across the Gulf Coast and though Feinberg has now promised to release the methodology the GCCF is using to approve or deny claims and determine how much each claimant is given, as of yet these guidelines have not been posted to the GCCF website.

So again, who do you trust? Who are the people in the Gulf Coast supposed to trust?

Its a hard question with no easy answer.

The government has never appeared to play it straight with the Gulf since this thing started. Be it flow rates, the waffling of Thad Allen, the exceptions granted every time to BP to continue spraying dispersants while maintaining their categorical use had ended. It’s also the ridiculous oil spill numbers they released, the NOAA’s opening of water for fishing only to find newly discovered oil and then the immediate closing of the same waters. There appears to be an overall refusal from the beginning to acknowledge adverse health effects of the crude or the chemicals. They appeared complicit in BP’s refusal to allow the press in to cover the story. The NOAA seems virtually incapable of finding oil on the seafloor while for the University of South Florida, this appears to be no problem. The government withholds information from the public at every turn and Barack Obama? Besides a brief swim and a couple of speeches has been absent from the Gulf of Mexico.

These things are glossed over in the official version of events, but we are told to trust the FDA that the seafood is safe despite the increasing clamor from independent scientists like Dr. Sawyer who believe this isn’t the case.

Meanwhile, Feinberg has been a colossal disappointment at best and his solution to his own failure is to hire more attorneys to advise plaintiffs on what to do. If British Petroleum pays Feinberg, then British Petroleum is paying these new legal advisers as well. And if it is in both BP and Feinberg’s interests to settle claims without suing BP, why would a plaintiff be anymore inclined to trust the new legal help?

Personally, I worry about a bunch of attorneys running down to the Gulf to sign up plaintiffs for lawsuits and take a healthy chunk of any compensation that should all be going to the plaintiffs, but at this point what other option exists? Trusting Feinberg?

So who do you trust?

In my estimation, you trust your own instincts and the people who want the truth, and not just best case scenarios. If the seafood is safe, even though not legally necessary, why doesn’t the FDA do the more thorough testing to prove their point? If anything, just to reassure the public because isn’t that the whole point of the FDA saying the seafood is safe? To reassure the public? And Feinberg…Good lord, where to begin…if he had been more up front, more realistic, more consistent and most importantly, transparent…Gulf Coast residents would not have felt it necessary to hire their own attorney, but Feinberg has been none of these things and if it were me, much as I don’t want to say it, I’d be making some phone calls. At least then I would know for sure the attorney is on my side.

It didn’t have to be this way, but through the unfortunate actions/inactions of Feinberg, the government and their collective agencies, now it is.

Have a nice day.

Time is money

Many discussions have been held regarding British Petroleum’s corporate climate, the cost cutting, the record of safety, the notion that this corporation did or did not balance the drive for profit above all else, and it will be debated for a long time to come. The National Oil Spill Commission spent a lot of time and money trying to determine what BP, Transocean and Halliburton did or did not do, and many environmental groups, politicians, heads of corporations and the residents of the Gulf Coast have their opinions on what they have released so far and certainly, the legal machines are getting their gears oiled up and ready to do their slow grind towards far distant financial conclusions.

Fine, but as ProPublica reported last week, an internal document from the oil spill commission that briefly made it online says a great deal in commonsense terms, breaking it all down. When one considers that the daily operations of the Macondo Well were running at $1.5 million dollars a day, a well which had yet to begin retrieving oil, BP was putting out a lot of money getting the thing up and running.

And bringing the well to production was taking a long time.

So we do the math and we take a look at what this internal document says about the decision making process on the Macondo Well. The document is titled “Various Decisions that May Have Increased Risk” and The Oil Spill Commission concluded that of the eleven key decisions, nine of them saved time.

Time is money.

But that’s not all, the Oil Spill Commission reports in this document that BP, Transocean and Halliburton’s decisions to not wait for more centralizers, not reevaluate cement slurry designs, not wait for foam stability results, not run diagnostics on float equipment, not running a cement evaluation log, not installing additional plugs or barriers, not undertaking simultaneous operations that could confound kick detection, using combined spacers without flushing them from the system and bypassing pits and flow out meters during displacements not only saved time, they also were more risky than alternative options.

Saving time, saves money and increases risk.

It can also create the conditions which lead to eleven dead and the destruction of an ecosystem.

Yet, last time I checked, nobody has even been brought up on charges and this little document, for whatever reason is not being reported on by a single mainstream national news outlet.

Have a nice day.

What? Our lawyers are way better than yours anyway.

To sue or not to sue, this has been a question on the minds of many in the Gulf Coast.

As things currently stand, if a claimant accepts a final payment from the $20 billion dollar escrow fund being run by Ken Feinberg, that claimant gives up their right to sue for punitive damages, but in a new rule being considered by Feinberg, these claimants would also be forced to transfer their rights to sue other defendants to British Petroleum.

In other words:

Accept a final payment from the fund and you can’t sue BP, Transocean or Halliburton for punitive damages.

Accept a final payment from the fund and you transfer your legal rights to BP, who can then use them to sue Transocean or Halliburton, thus collecting the money to supplement their $20 billion dollar escrow fund, supplementing the fund with compensation that should have gone to the Gulf Coast residents.

Ken Feinberg, apparently anticipating a possible backlash, e-mailed a statement saying the language in the proposal is not final.

In other words:

Let’s float this idea out there and see how pissed off people get…if the reaction isn’t too bad and more importantly, if the press ignores it the way they ignore the rest of the Gulf Coast we’ll go through with it…but hey, if the outcry gets too big, we’ll just have to find another way to help out British Petroleum, do it more quietly, on the sly, because after all we are independent arbitrators, and we are here for the support of Gulf Coast residents.

Read the article:

Spill fund rules would shift rights to BP

Have a nice day.

The real culprit? This guy...

My apologies Mr. Feinberg.

I have written a number of things up here, laying the blame for the slow payments of reparations firmly at your feet. I questioned your promises. I doubted your ability to do the job. I insinuated you were naive.

Sorry.

I felt that by promising people they would get their emergency payments in twenty-four hours and businesses inside a week you might be doing what we in the social work world call “setting yourself up to fail.” It’s a simple idea really, one where we as case managers help guide clients into setting realistic expectations and goals because if they set them too high, they are making it impossible to see themselves as successful. This only brings clients the opportunity to beat themselves up if/when they fail, one more time and gives them permission to give up, way too easy.

Kind of like what I thought you did, Ken, both in the setting of too high of an expectation and in the giving up part, but it turns out I was wrong. It isn’t you at all that’s causing the problems here. Apparently it is the people of the Gulf Coast, more specifically, the people in the Gulf Coast who are not giving you enough information on their claims, and those who are being outright fraudulent.

The way I had been thinking about all of this, it was you what with that whole set up to fail thing. I understood why you made the promises you did; I really do. The Gulf Coast was fucked up, the people were very depressed, hope was being lost everywhere and people were losing everything. You had the perfect foil in BP, the corporation that cares (about the bottom line) and it must have been too irresistible to not play the hero, and those promises we all read in the papers were great. They instilled a new sense of hope in a large group of people who surely needed it, until reality set in and you couldn’t deliver.

And why again couldn’t you deliver?

From the Alabama Press Register:

Kenneth Feinberg said more than a third of the roughly 104,000 applicants need to do more to back up their claims, and thousands of claims have no documentation at all. He added that the amount sought in some cases bears no resemblance to actual losses, such as a fisherman’s claim for $10 million “on what was obviously a legitimate claim of a few thousand dollars.”

“We have scores of applications for financial aid that appear to be fraudulent,” and are being reviewed for possible forwarding to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, Feinberg said. Some of the suspect claims have obvious discrepancies, while others appear to be multiple filings for the same loss, he said.

Of course though, Ken…it isn’t really all their fault, right?

I mean sure, at least 95% of the blame is theirs, but what about the other 5%?

Some things could have been done differently, maybe before you made your promises you might have considered the much trumpeted findings in all those different studies, the ones that found 10% of claimants seeking reparations after tragedies will have exaggerated or fraudulent claims? Those numbers were all over the internet, but maybe you didn’t see those reports, or maybe you just didn’t understand that not all displays of human nature are positive?

“At the beginning, it’s always rough,” said Feinberg, an attorney who previously oversaw claims for 9/11 victims.

Or maybe you did.

Okay then, maybe when you finally called the frauds out, you were taking a cue from the hearings involving British Petroleum, Transocean and Halliburton where the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon is everybody’s fault but their own? Or maybe you didn’t anticipate the explosion in the press when you couldn’t back up your words, or anticipate the complaints of the Justice Department, “The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill has disrupted the lives of thousands upon thousands of individuals, often cutting off the income on which they depend,” the department said in a Sept. 17 letter to you. “Many of these individuals and businesses simply do not have the resources to get by while they await processing.”

Maybe now that the pressure is on, you’re just trying to point fingers.

You know what?

You could have taken a more cautious approach back in August. You could stop trying to blame the people victimized by this oil spill for the slowness of the payments you were brought in to oversee. Maybe I shouldn’t have apologized at all for this time-frame problem that you created. Maybe you should quiet down now, do your job and go home.

In fact, having now thought this through again, I take back my apology.

Instead, as I’ve written before, and as long as you keep spouting off like this, I’m forced to now write again: the people of the Gulf Coast have taken enough shit over the past six months, they don’t need any more of it from you. You decided to play the impossible hero, and part of being a hero is to not blame others when things don’t go as you planned.

Ken?

Maybe tonight, when the workday is over and you’re sitting in your hotel room or rented house, you should read what Sheryl Lindsay, a beach wedding planner said when asked about her business: “We don’t have any business left.”

No business, no customers, all because of the spill.

She filed claims for $240,000 dollars for lost business and from you, has received $7,700 dollars.

Think about this instead of blaming others, Ken…and then get going, you’re making progress, but you’ve got a long way to go.

Read the article:

Leader on BP oil spill claims blames fraud for slow payouts

Have a nice day.