Disenfranchised Citizen

"I'm trying to explain...we've decided that touchdowns will now be worth five points in the first quarter and eleven points in the fourth, unless of course the opposing team's mascot enters the playing field and if that should happen, when he enters on the five yard line the points double, and if it's the forty-five they triple, unless of course only one foot enters the field of play and then it is a negative sixteen, unless the player scoring the touchdown dives into the stand and then all is moot until we determine style points for the dive...oh, and games are no longer composed of fifteen minute quarters, but fifths now, and I'll tell you later how many minutes per fifth and...what? Seems pretty clear to me... Perhaps I've given you too much info and I should just decide the score myself...after all, I'm neutral."

Clearly defined rules.

It isn’t that difficult, or at least it shouldn’t be.

In any process where a determination is made, where a judgment will be proffered, clearly defined rules not only protect the claimant, they protect the arbitrator. Rules let people know where they stand, what they need to do, what damage they need to show and upon showing said damage, they then have a clear expectation on what it is they will receive. Clearly defined rules also protect the judge, the arbitrator from accusations of bias, malfeasance and challenges to the process itself.

Since the Deepwater Horizon exploded, the people of the Gulf Coast have been forced to live in a place with no guidelines or clarity. They struggle inside the gray haze. What’s the flow rate? Is the seafood safe? When can we get back to work? Is our way of life over? Will we get sick? What is the real toxicity of Corexit dispersant? What happened to the oil? Which scientist do you want to believe?

Some of these questions could have been answered and weren’t, while some of the questions were impossible to answer but it also seemed BP, the government and the Coast Guard were doing their best to keep people in the dark or answer nothing.

So when Feinberg, the arbitrator of the $20 billion claims fund came to town, it should have been expected that at least when it comes to the damage claims, a population so understandably twisted up by the unknown would at least have some sense of financial clarity, something they can use to plan their immediate futures.

Nope.

Feinberg and his claims process, like all things oil spill, quickly faded into the same gray cloud of confusion Gulf Coast residents have been forced to live under since the beginning of BP’s oil catastraphuk.

Consider the story of Orange Beach business owner and resident, Phyllis Pearson, who owns Paradise Cleaners:

Pearson has two separate claims for her business, one for the laundry side and one for the cleaning side. For the laundry side the claims facility paid six of the six months on the emergency payment, but on the cleaning side, they only paid two of the six months. Those inconsistencies are yet another frustration to Pearson. “There is no documentation. You just take whatever it is they decide to pay. So I have no idea how they came up with their number,” said Pearson.

Interesting that Ken Feinberg’s GCCF, the constant champion of documentation and turning claims down due to a stated lack thereof, issues no documentation of his own.

All across the Gulf Coast are people confused as to why they have been turned down, on what basis, for what reason, so much so that the Justice Department, politicians and residents across the region have called for Feinberg to be transparent about the process. Explain yourself, why fishers on a boat get a claims check, but the guy who owns the boat gets turned down…why BP was willing to pay a claimant money, but the GCCF refused…why it takes an inquiry from the Times-Picayune about a specific claim to finally get a check in the hands of a fisherman. If the fisherman was determined eligible, why not just pay?

Feinberg has stated before he is considering these requests for transparency, but has yet to offer any sort of guidelines, post anything on the GCCF website, give any clear idea to residents what their expectations may be…all while asking claimants to waive the right to sue BP and take his final settlement check with only the promise that he will be more generous than any court.

This is a sham and Feinberg should be forced to explain the process or be fired in favor of someone who will because the residents of the Gulf Coast have been forced to live with misinformation and confusion for far too long.

That, or perhaps we should all “consider” this…why is it the only two entities who aren’t complaining about a lack of transparency in the claims process are Feinberg’s GCCF and BP?

Have a nice day.

Candi's Creative Crafts

“The GCCF takes into account evidence of the connection between the asserted loss and the spill, the nature of the claimant’s job or business, and the extent to which the claimant’s job or business is dependent upon injured property or natural resources,” the letter stated. “In weighing these factors, the GCCF has determined that you did not demonstrate that you lost profits or income as a direct result of the spill.”

This is the letter received from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility by Candi Cook, a business owner from Naples Florida. The criteria used to deny her claim was not explained. She wasn’t told what extra information they might need or where exactly her claim went wrong. What she does know is she’s two months behind on her rent and in debt with vendors. She know she initially filed for a claim in June for her losses in May and June and received a $2100 dollar check from BP, but after she submitted paperwork and supporting evidence for an emergency advance payment claim loss of $24,000 over the past six months to Feinberg’s GCCF, she got nothing.

Finally, she knows that in order to save her retail business, “Candi’s Creative Crafts” in Tin City Florida, she has to sell her house, live in her truck or with friends and at least temporarily, her 16 year old son is going to live with his grandmother in North Florida.

The story of Candi Cook made it to small press yesterday, largely ignored.

Splashed across the major papers, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune however, is another story about the seven people the Justice Department is investigating for fraudulent claims. Of the 460,000 claims submitted in the Gulf, Ken Feinberg estimates 2-3000 of them are suspiciously fraudulent and being sent to the Justice Department for investigation where Federal prosecuters, the FBI, the US Secret Service and the US Postal Inspection Service are cooperating to nail these people for disaster fraud.

“The charges…send a strong message that we will not tolerate any fraudulent activity designed to profit from this tragic oil spill,” said Assistant US Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

And whereas the seven people the Feds are currently going after will make news across the country, this isn’t the real story.

The real story here are the people like Candi Cook who are desperately trying to keep their businesses and themselves going but finding it difficult, near impossible to do so with Feinberg and the GCCF running this show. 220,000 claims denied by his crew, Candi Cook and her shop being one of them, most for poor documentation yet it only stands to reason that if someone were to own a shop geared towards selling nick-nacks to tourists in Tin City Florida, and because of the oil spill the tourists don’t come to your town, your shop is going to be in trouble.

“I’m not seeking handouts,” Cook said, “I just want my business to survive…I just want someone to tell me why I was denied.”

The Justice Department has suggested to Feinberg that he explain his protocol for denials. Feinberg has said he is considering it. Why only consider? Why did he not do this months ago? Perhaps if the criminal fraud division turned their sights on Feinberg for his law firm’s profiting of this oil spill, he might do more then consider, perhaps he might explain why BP told Candi Cook “yes” and sent her a check while the GCCF told her “no,” only sending a letter. Perhaps if the protocols were transparent, people like her might have a better understanding of why the denial came, and what they might do to rectify their situations.

“I’m at my wit’s end,” Cook said.

And she is not alone, there are over 200,000 people and businesses denied, many of them just like her.

That’s the story.

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.

Heck of a job, Johnnie

Johnnie Burton emerges:

She was the Mineral and Management Services Director for GW from 2000-2007 and she doesn’t seem to understand what all the hub-bub is about over at the MMS these days. “When I was there, it seemed to work so well,” she says.

True, when you give the oil companies whatever they want, and deplete the means of your own agency to enforce what rules you have left, of course things “seem” to go well. I could go to Wall Street today as the new head of the SEC and fire 70% of my staff while directing the 30% remaining to stop doing audits. I could give the banks and the major trading companies whatever they liked while they treated me to dinner, flew me around the world, and as they assured me how wonderful things were progressing, in kind, I would be able to report the same, speak to just how well the system functions for the benefit of all our citizens…until something happened like, oh, I don’t know, maybe a housing crash, a recession or possibly a meltdown of global proportion.

Under Johnnie Burton’s tenure, the MMS offered more incentive to drillers in the Gulf, attempted to open the market in ANWAR, trimmed spending on enforcement, cut back on auditors and sped up approvals for drilling applications. Burton cut back on the frequency of audits, fired auditors who challenged the oil companies and worked hard to expand offshore drilling, while working even harder to turn a blind eye to any safety issues.

What me, worry?

So, to all those people affected by the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico British Petroleum Oil Spill Catastraphuk, meet the woman who set the stage, to help make this all possible…eighty days and going strong. I guess we’ll just add her to the list of past Bush officials that Obama’s Justice Department won’t go after…she’ll be in good company, most of her friends are there.

Read this outstanding and comprehensive article by Brad Johnson:

Bush MMS Director Defends Tenure

Have a nice day.