Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
Is it just me, or…
Love the way you...
…does it seem each time a politician refers to their budget as “bold” or their ideas as “bold,” or their plan to do anything as “bold,” one can easily replace the word “bold” with “stupid,” or “poorly thought out,” or “really screwing the poor and middle class so don’t look too close, go see the Smurf movie instead, it’s family-damn-tastic!”
Take this example from a Think Progress article where John Boehner tried to say the S+P didn’t downgrade US credit because of GOP unwillingness to consider revenue increases, but instead because Obama (kinda-sorta) wouldn’t let them eliminate Medicare:
Boenher said:
“The President and the Democratic leadership in Washington are trying to blame the tea party, because they know this downgrade is on [the Democrats] (Hmm…that’s a lie). When we took the bold step of proposing entitlement reforms, they reacted not by embracing them and joining us, but by demonizing those proposals for political gain.”
See how that works?
Bold…as in, “Hey man, I was thinking we could save a lot on Grandma’s health care if we were to just tie her hands and feet and throw her off the Crescent City Connection, taking that strong an inititiative would be a truly bold move.”
Have a nice day.
A Question of Greed…
S'mores are my favorite...
Since the rule of law is dead:
GOP cuts funding to the SEC because of “budget deficits,” despite the fact money for the SEC does not come from the budget, but from regulatory charges paid by the brokerage firms the SEC investigates, thus saving the same companies/banks that fucked us into a recession millions while also making it more financially difficult for the SEC to prosecute all the companies that did all the fucking.
Oh, and that recession – nobody in jail, banks made billions.
Oh, and that British Petroleum oil spill – nobody in jail or charged.
Oh, and that Foreclosure Fraud – nobody in jail or charged.
Oh, and the Medical Lobby/hospitals/administrators/insurance companies/big pharma – how many people have died because they couldn’t afford not to? – nobody goes to jail and nobody charged.
Okay then, so does this mean when Republicans and not a few Democrats, including Obama, cut back on the safety net because of the deficit, one debt ceiling and/or budget at a time, while in the same moment, they give ridiculous tax cuts to the wealthy which go a long way towards helping create that deficit…does this mean then, that when I decide to go to the exclusive parts of town or to the Financial District to get my money back, that just like the banks, the oil companies, the insurance and medical industry, that I won’t go to jail or be charged either for theft and/or fraud?
Right, right?
No?
Interesting, then the rule of law must only be kind-of dead, inasmuch as the bottom 99% is ruled by the laws of the top 1%, the same 1% who only calls it class war when the bottom 99 fights back against their greedy, entitled ways…
Have a nice day.
The Taxman Cometh…
A tax cut for claimants? Hmm, we'll have to organize a study, to set up a committee to see if an investigation is necessary to consider the idea.
Stories abound across the Gulf Coast of people with legitimate claims who have been denied by Feinberg and the GCCF, but what of those who have been approved, who have received checks? Many have been given paltry sums, pennies on the dollar that didn’t come close to making up for their damages or lost earnings as a result of the BP oil spill, and for those people, now they may have a new problem:
The taxman.
He’s coming, and he’s coming only two days before the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
All of the paid claims are taxable income and since Feinberg and the GCCF didn’t withhold taxes on any of the payments, that leaves the recipients responsible. With $2.7 billion dollars paid out, that’s a lot of money, maybe too much to think about on such a large scale…so let’s start small. Feinberg, with his quick payments of $5,000 to individuals and $25,000 dollars to businesses leaves the recipients on the hook for $1,200 and $6,000 dollars respectively. Now, how many of those people who were in need, bad enough to accept this payment had the means to set aside 25% of this paltry sum?
Yeah, that’s trouble and those tax bills only go up from there, levied onto a population that can hardly afford it.
So here’s a thought, since Obama and his new Republican runnin’ buddies are so into the tax cutting business these days, why not go one more and declare these payments tax free. Get the IRS out of the equation, these people got trouble enough.
It would seem the least you can do.
Have a nice day.
Bobby’s Bad Day…in Texas
"You think I need you to tell me about the problems in Texalouisianaflorda? Hardly, if Obama would get out of my way, I'd fix everything."
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, ever concerned about the needs of his constituents, spent yesterday attending to Louisianans in the grand ol’ state of Texas. He gave a speech. He hawked his book. He did a fund-raiser.
Oh, and while Bobby was out of town again…
The National Oil Spill Commission declared that Jindal’s great sand berm idea was ineffective to say the least, largely as a result of them not being built fast enough and also, in the wrong location. In response, Jindal said, “This report is partisan revisionist history at taxpayer expense,” which of course, is another way of saying, “All the people who said this berm idea was faulty from the beginning, and who have now been proven correct by the evidence in this report are either scientists, Democrats, or not hoping for some kind of higher office in 2012, so obviously I must know better.”
Meanwhile in Baton Rouge, also while Jindal was in Texas, more than 250 people gathered at the state capital to protest the poor job Kenneth Feinberg is doing in compensating the Gulf Coast for its losses as a result of BP’s oil spill. They complained that maids, bellhops and the such at Louisiana hotels are not being compensated from the claims fund, despite them losing money and hours as a result of the drop off in the tourist trade.
Jindal, to make sure his citizens understood how much he cared, even though he was in Texas, sent out his Chief of Staff, Timmy Teepell to inform the protesters that Jindal “continues to have concerns about the fairness, timeliness and accuracy” of the claims process and he will someday address them, from Texas or maybe Florida or Ohio, you know, where he is hard at work taking care of his constituents at fundraisers or book store events, these necessary obligations where Jindal is busy raising funds for…Louisiana.
Maybe this is how he intends to close the monstrous budget gap, continue doing fundraisers so he won’t have to cut back on education, on social services, on medical care…on…and on…and on…
If not, however, perhaps he would be better served by some serious brainstorming on how to fix the problems in his state, listen to his people, attend to their needs…come up with some seriously, creative solutions to blunt the looming damage from the budget shortfall…tor maybe finally admit what many have suspected all along, that Louisiana is a platform for Jindal to higher office and once he flies out of the state for good, he’ll be leaving the people and the problems behind.
Have a nice day.
Bob Dudley…what are we playing for?
"You bet your life? Hell yeah, I play that game every day baby...not with my life, of course..."
British Petroleum’s CEO, Bob Dudley has provided estimates to the business world and more importantly, to its investors that BP’s share of costs associated with the Deepwater Horizon will not exceed $40 billion dollars when all is said and done. Still trying to reassure his company’s investors, Dudley has even indicated that dividend payments will resume again in the new year.
Course, there is a lot riding on those statements and actually, it is somewhat of a gamble.
In order to meet these two goals, the estimate’s accuracy and the dividend payments, it is becoming increasingly important that BP not be found guilty of gross negligence which would quadruple the per barrel fine, and the recent uplift in BP’s stock prices assisted by these announced goals? Yeah, those stocks would again fall.
So keeping this in mind, there is ample reason for BP to keep pointing fingers at Transocean and Halliburton, according to David Prosser, business writer for the Independent:
“It is important that BP does not have to shoulder the full responsibility for the spill when Mr Reilly (Oil spill commission co-chair) makes his final report to President Obama in the New Year. And not just because sharing the blame might leave BP feeling just a little less uncomfortable. What is more important is that if Mr Reilly finds the British company only jointly culpable for what happened, he is much less likely to say it was guilty of gross negligence.”
Ah, business strategy…well, If there is one thing we all seem to continue learning about British Petroleum, it is just how strategic they are about trying to save money and cut costs, and this would seem to be more important to them than human lives, taking responsibility for their actions or doing what someone of sound conscience would consider to be the right thing, the moral thing.
From the Oil Spill Commission’s document that shows BP’s risky decisions on the Deepwater Horizon to their use of toxic chemical dispersants to drive the oil from sight, from the hiring of Ken Feinberg as arbitrator of the escrow fund to the stipulation that the fund money not paid out be given back to the company, from BP’s new insistence that the government’s estimate of spilled barrels could be off by as much as 50% to their refusal to give Gulf Coast charities further funding in helping residents make rent payments, pay utilities or put food on their tables: all strategy, all cost cutting, all serving British Petroleum’s interests.
BP appears to have never really been about making things right; their actions seem to indicate they are only about making things right enough. So it would seem in very poor taste for Bob to make this gamble, to make his suggestions and estimates, especially when these rosy scenarios appear to be based on BP’s attorneys finding a way for the company to shirk their moral responsibilities to the Gulf, again.
Senator Mary Landrieu and other lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that would direct 80% of the fine levied against BP towards the Gulf Coast and its repair, so when BP is doing all that they can to drastically cut into that money amount by lowballing the government’s oil estimates and avoiding a decision of gross negligence this is more than big business just being big business and trying to protect their own.
This is another example of a company’s failure to live up to the slogans of their public relations TV commercials.
This is a gamble at the expense of the Gulf Coast.
And though it may be legal, this is wrong.
Have a nice day.
Feinberg out smoking a cigarette while 100,000 claims denied in ten days
Bah! Humbug! Merry fucking Christmas!
December 15th is looking to be a disappointingly memorable day for citizens of the Gulf Coast. This is the deadline when all emergency claims to BP’s $20 billion fund must be processed and since August 23rd when Kenneth Feinberg took over the fund from British Petroleum, he has denied 173,000 claims including 100,000 in the past seven days alone.
Documentation, documentation…documentation..
“The number of denied claimants continues to soar for two reasons,” Feinberg said in an e-mail Monday. “1) Thousands and thousands of claimants, who were asked over the past few months to submit additional documentation have not done so; so they are now being denied. 2) Claimants who filed in the past few weeks with insufficient documentation have automatically been denied.”
This is an excuse to give Feinberg cover.
He has been in charge of the claims fund for over three months and it would seem reasonable to believe that Feinberg knew of documentation problems early on. When you take into account that the average amount of fraudulent claims in any national disaster have been about ten percent, and in the Gulf there have been 455,000 claims, this would indicate that only about 45,000 of these claims should be considered fraudulent. When Feinberg denies 173,000, or 40% of the claims, this strongly indicates that thousands upon thousands of people being hurt by this oil spill are not being compensated. Even worse, this simple math doesn’t take into account all of the people who feel they have been shortchanged, getting pennies on the dollar for their losses.
According to my math, 120,000 legitimate claims are being denied and that is simply, wrong. That’s 120,000 families, businesses and individuals and that is a lot of people, too many. I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe there is nothing Feinberg could have done, or could do now to help. Sure, by the letter of the law, he is doing what is legally permissible, but by any kind of moral law, he is a dismal failure and should be removed.
120,000 legitimate claims denied, 120,000 rent payments, homes, businesses, dinner tables, families abandoned by the neutral arbitrator: it’s simply another criminal gut punch to the residents of the Gulf Coast, after British Petroleum’s oil spill slashed their jugular.
And lest we forget, any of the money Feinberg doesn’t pay out of the fund gets returned to British Petroleum, the company paying his salary.
I gotta wonder how Feinberg lives with himself. Like the Halliburton technician who wasn’t watching the pressure readings rise on the Deepwater Horizon, maybe Feinberg is just out smoking cigarettes while the claims are being denied and needy families are sent home.
Perhaps it’s time to get back in your office, Ken. Unless something is done to “make things right,” this situation is just as likely to explode.
Read the article:
More than 100,000 emergency oil spill claims denied in 10 days
Have a nice day.
I’m back! Return of the New Orleans Assassin…
Killing, with a conscience...
Hello.
Yes, I still kill people for a living.
And first off, I just wanted to extend a hearty handshake, a nod of the head, I’d even be willing to give a little lead time to every French Quarter resident who voted down the French Quarter Security District.
Yes, that was nice, too kind and now that those two to three security guards won’t be wandering the Quarter and getting in my way, I am completely free to accept jobs there. Just put an “X” in chalk on the farthest left, third pew to the back inside St. Louis Cathedral and walk away. Don’t worry, I’ll find you and perhaps we can do some business. Despite usually doing only government work, I like to oh, I don’t know…”give back” so to speak and keeping that in mind, I am here to let you in on a bit of a secret. Call it a thank you, just a small token of my appreciation.
You ready?
Okay, your government?
They really don’t care about you. I know, I know…big surprise, but I don’t mean that in that in the “disgruntled throw away comment over a beer at your favorite bar – grousing” kind of way. No, I mean, they really do not care. You should hear the shop talk my brethren and I have. You know we refer to citizens as “cogs”? We do, but lately I’ve been thinking even this is a stretch. To imply that people are mere cogs in a machine would indicate that if one of you is removed, the machine might break down and this is simply not the case. I think a more apt metaphor would be like people are the dirt on the floor below the machine. When necessary you’re just swept away, and the machine keeps running, just fine. I know, kind of hurts, don’t it?
Sorry, but I think after you all did me such a solid, I had to return the favor even if that favor is a little painful.
And this brings me to that whole BP oil spill thing. What I want you to realize is the spill and all its after-affects is not a be all, end all to a situation, it is just a symptom of the main problem, kind of like Katrina. It isn’t the disease. It’s merely a symptom to the greater, overall virus.
And the virus itself?
To the top 1%, you are mere chattel.
Sorry.
But don’t take my word for it. Want some proof?
Let’s talk food safety in the Gulf. How many times have you all heard by now from “your” government the food is safe, go ahead, eat away, we opened the waters for fishing, have fun? This is absolute crap of course. Look, your government, what they want are people to have jobs and the tourists to come back, and whereas this could be construed as admirable, unfortunately they are willing to risk the health of everyone in the Gulf Coast in the process. Opening waters for fishing and tourists being about revenue, revenue for states means more government services and fewer cutbacks. This brings about votes for those in power and those in power want to keep their power. So, the FDA uses shoddy tests that don’t detect PAH’s and toxic metals and then go about telling everyone how safe it all is, despite the fact that PAH’s and toxic metals cause cancer. Meanwhile, independent scientists are finding all sorts of goodies in the seafood, even seafood that is already on its way to market for consumption and nobody, I mean nobody seems to want to look at the long-term effects of eating this stuff on a regular basis. You might be inclined to think if the government cares, they should care about the long-term health of its people. Yeah, you’d think that, but they’re far more focused on short-term politics and cash. A health catastrophe twenty years down the road is a problem for those assholes twenty years down the road.
Want more?
No problem.
How many of you out there have accounts at Bank of America? That “too big to fail” thing is primed for a comeback. Yeah, the largest bank in this country is in trouble and they are doing their best to conceal it, but when appraisers estimate your institution as being only worth half as much as you say it is, it ain’t going to end well. Your government is going to be again put in the position of giving them a bunch of money, all while the bank CEO’s give each other bonuses, all while they use fraudulent paperwork to foreclose on your homes, all while letting all of you out there lose everything.
And while people are losing everything, the Obama administration, as much as I appreciate all they and the previous administrations have done for me, they agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts thus further reward those who are making life so difficult for all of you. With the loss of revenue, there will have to be further cutbacks, and rather than take back the money they so gratuitously gave to the wealthy, Obama’s own fiscal commission has recommended severe cutbacks to the poor by way of social security and medicare cuts, all while suggesting the retirement age be raised to 69 0r 70.
So yes, I’m sorry to be the barer of bad news and yes, I do understand how some of you might wonder how I feel that what it is I tell you could be considered a “thank you,” but it is.
As an assassin, I work in cold, hard facts: trajectory, wind speed, rifles, bullets, distance and time.
And as a citizen, once you realize the facts, this prompts newer, more effective insights, thoughts and finally, solutions.
If your government has broken the “social contract,” is it necessary for you to continue the struggle to fulfill its obligations?If I walk up to you on the street, shake your hand, smile and then slap you in the face, would you continue to stand there while I apologized and then did it again? How about the tenth time? The twentieth? The hundredth?
Your decision.
Think about it.
As for me, as I am sure you can understand, business is booming. Especially now that the French Quarter has been freed up. Still making plans on my condo. The dog’s doing well. I stay away from the shrimp, work out, read when I have the time. Check out Will Self’s “Quantity Theory of Insanity.” It’s a good read, for a Brit. Oh, and if you want an idea about how you might take the power of your community into your own hands, check out Common Ground Relief for a few ideas. If you can’t reform the government, substitute the lost function of government with an organization of your own.
Believe me you, a few of the people running that place are being watched but I won’t accept any of those jobs. I may be a killer, but I got a strong sense of right and wrong.
Have a nice day.
This citizen is officially on overload…Barton potentially chairs house energy panel, and more!
The similarities are eerie...and would explain, so much
You know that post I wrote yesterday?
That whole outreach to your community thing cause its important to know your neighbors in these economic and political times?
Yeah, I still agree with what I wrote – even more now because not even on my most cynical day could I have expected the fantastic amounts of utter shit I had to deal with in the headlines throughout yesterday.
I know I’m not alone in this, but man, how’s a guy supposed to do his job when every time he glances at his computer screen he sees a headline like:
LAWMAKER WHO APOLOGIZED TO BP MAY CHAIR HOUSE ENERGY PANEL
Nope, not kidding at all.
Perhaps a refresher from that most amusing day – I give you, Joe Barton: “I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Barton said. “I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown … in this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States….I’m not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize.”
Yeah! Texas!
Joe, I believe I am speaking for a lot of people when I say BP never needed an apology, they needed, and still deserve a set of handcuffs you dumb son of a…hey, did I ever share my Texas theory with the internet? The one that demonstrates how much better this country would have been if we never admitted Texas into the United States? Oh yeah…we’d be in a much better position as a nation if we had just set them up as some sort of perma-colony, you know, reap the benefits of any and all resources while ensuring we’d never had to have suffer through any Bush presidencies, oh, and our school books wouldn’t be globally laughed at, the Dallas Cowboys would never have won a super bowl…hell, Kennedy might even still be alive…but no, no, we get Joe Barton, mistress to every oil company imaginable.
And yesterday in the news, that’s not all…no, far from it…
We also get these two splendid moments of insight from G. W. Bush. Just in case you didn’t know, he did this interview with Matt Lauer which is really shaping up to be quite the Monty Python skit. Lauer asked him what the worst part of his presidency was…know what he said? Take a guess? Yeah…I know, pretty obvious…it was either 9-11, or maybe watching all those people suffer in New Orleans, waiting for a federal response that was days away…no? Okay, perhaps it was all the dead Americans from all those elective wars, or maybe when they discovered there were no WMD’s? No? Okay, then it has to be his regrets at stripping away the privacy of every American, or the way he tanked the economy or that prison in Iraq where all those people were tortured, or maybe the legitimization of torture itself, or perhaps the increasing consolidation of wealth…no? Okay, was it when he gave the unwanted backrub to the German Chancellor? Tell me it isn’t when he choked on the fucking pretzel?
Nope…no, it was when Kanye West called him a name.
(cough, cough…)
Asshole. I guess there was a definite reason why he wanted to wait until after the elections to release his book and do interviews.
Oh, and then I check headlines later only to discover another little ditty from this dimwit, didn’t you know that on the buildup to the Iraq war, he was a “dissenting voice” on the decision to invade Iraq because he didn’t “want to use force.”
Yeah, seriously.
Oh, but wait…there is so much more…I’m telling you yesterday, after the elections, people just went nuts on stupid…
Okay, so Obama spends the first two years of his presidency caving, caving, caving…believing that for some reason, this time, the Republicans are going to play nice and at least pretend to find a compromise, only to have them collectively turn their back on him at every handshake, every option…every freaking time. So now, the GOP gets a bit of the power back and you know, I guess there was part of me that was like okay, well at least now Obama’ll realize the only way he is going to get things through congress is to strong-arm, humiliate, politically blackmail the elephants until he gets something…maybe he is going to finally show some strength, get up to the podium and tell it like it is…
“Hey Boehner, yeah…climate bill, pass it or I leak the evidence about the dead gay hooker they found in the trunk of your Rolls, man….I didn’t want to go there, but you gave me no choice…”
Nope, not quite, instead we get Obama signaling that he will allow the wealthy to keep their tax cuts and also kill the climate bill.
In addition, he made the promise that he would “work harder” to build consensus with Republicans.
Brilliant. If Obama keeps trying to be everyone’s friend this way, we will windup with Jindal or Palin in the White House…Obama, if you are the only one trying to change the climate of DC, guess what?
And so we go back to climate change…remember all that we’ve been hearing about how these new candidates are furious about spending policies, all the waste, the bailouts, all that cash that’s being just thrown around…well, this new House of Representatives intends to hold hearings, doing an investigation of “climate fraud,” because obviously, 97% of the world’s scientists don’t know the truth the way a hundred congressional morons with no scientific training know the truth, and at the end of the hearings the Tea Party will finally put it to bed, yes America, the earth really is flat.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi said she has no regrets and feels her time as Speaker of the House was a “job well done” despite losing her job, and John Boehner feels that the GOP now represents the “voice of the American people” despite not claiming the Senate, despite having Tea Party candidates playing the conservative version of “more punk rock than you,” and beating their establishment candidates in the primaries.
Man, it just kept going…all day…this is a bullshit world they live in.
Glad they all seem to be okay with it.
Me?
As I said…I’m on overload…this is going to be a long few years…and as I began this, so I will finish…I’m going to spend my time in the community, building, because at least in my neighborhood, if I say something like, “Hey, all my clients went to my boss and demanded I be fired because I was doing such a good job, so I’m feeling good, no regrets at all,” my neighbors won’t just nod, or smile, they’ll look at me like I’m crazy… and they should.
That’s the reality.
Have a nice day.
Headlines: Gulf Coast and Beyond…
BP declares BP innocent after BP's extensive investigaton of BP
Fish research vessel drafted for use at BP oil spill site – Times Picayune
Feds order more pressure tests before relief well drilling can restart – Times Picayune
WikiLeaks: We Won’t Be Threatened by Pentagon – AP
BP clears itself over oil spill disaster – Daily Mail Yes, a British Paper
Just How Badly Have We Screwed Up the Gulf Ecosystem?
Maddow on Vitter: Hooker, Line and Sinker – Daily Kingfish
Children Don’t Mean a Thing, If You Ain’t Got That Bling – American Zombie
Obama’s Ground Zero Mosque Comments: President Recalibrates (Video) – HuffingtonPost
No Shock: AT&T Backs Different Rules for Wireless in Net Neutrality – Wall Street Journal
Update: The State of Mental Health in the Gulf Coast…Here Come the Numbers!
Look man, I've met with BP, with Congress, so I know crazy, but I still ain't paying.
From Kenneth Feinberg, soon to be arbitrator of the $20 billion dollar fund during a congressional hearing on July 21st – “If you start compensating purely mental anguish without a physical injury — anxiety, stress — we’ll be getting millions of claims from people watching television…you have to draw the line somewhere. I think it would be highly unlikely that we would compensate mental damage, alleged damage, without a signature physical injury as well.”
Good to know, Kenneth.
But, have you seen the numbers?
They’re starting to roll in thick like another wave of non-existent oil…according to a survey by Ochsner Health System, a nonprofit, academic healthcare delivery group BP wasn’t able to purchase – three in every ten people surveyed currently experience “probable serious” to “probably mild-moderate” mental illness as a result of British Petroleum’s catastraphuk.
The numbers by state: Louisiana – 18%, Mississippi – 12%, Florida – 14% and Alabama – 10%
“To see so many people mired in psychological misery and in worse shape than they were after Katrina is disheartening,” said Dr. Joseph E. Bisordi, M.D., FACP, Ochsner’s chief medical officer. “This benchmark identifies the need for mental health services throughout the region. So that coastal residents can more quickly reclaim their lives, our region needs the immediate support of BP and the federal government to fund mental health resources. We cannot afford to delay any further.”
Oh, but delay, we will…because according to Feinberg, he will not handle state and local government claims, they will be handled by British Petroleum and as mentioned in previous posts…mental health care is not covered under the oil pollution act passed in 1990 by Congress. If British Petroleum pays for these services as part of the BP Catastraphuk cleanup, they will be setting new precedent, a case to be referred to by any community after any future oil spill, by any company. So on that note, cue up Patricia Wright, yet another British Petroleum spokesperson. She recently said in an email that the calls for funding for mental health services — which have also been submitted by Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — have been requests, rather than formal claims. She confirmed that the company has not yet responded to the requests.
Bully.
Feinberg won’t pay…
British Petroleum continues to stall…
Back to Ocshner’s survey…
Those most at risk for serious mental health issues are the younger respondents and those who are financially vulnerable. People in the Gulf Coast making less than $25,000 annually are most at risk with 32% classified as having probable serious mental illness. Gulf Coast residents reported the most stress from money problems (34 percent) and work issues (19 percent), while relationship difficulties, substance abuse and missed appointments with mental health professionals added to their woes during the ongoing disaster.
Yep, things don’t look good for that Gulf Coast state of mind.
And though I would never underestimate the strength in this community – I understand and I believe residents of the Gulf Coast are survivors, sometimes by choice and sometimes because they had none – how much bullshit can a region have foisted upon their shores? Those of us in the mental health community often discuss how mental illness and physical illness are in fact only variables of the same thing…illness. If you put a person with a bad cold in a closed room with ten other people, not all of them are going to get a cold. Flood that same room with an oil spill and not all are going to get a mental illness either…but some will. It’s all the same, none of it healthy and later on down the road…many more are going to be suffering. Take for example the Exxon Valdez where public health officials discovered those impacted in Alaska suffered the effects up to four years later and that was a one time spill, not the gift that keeps on giving. So, resilient or not…if Kenneth Feinberg walks up to a resident of Venice, Louisiana and jabs his face with Rita and uppercuts him with Katrina, then sits back a while, waits for that individual to begin his recovery before getting a running, five-year start and kicks him square in the balls with a BP catstraphuk, well – guess what? Guy’s going to be hurting. And unlike Alaska, with the unprecedented use of dispersants in the Gulf those invisible oil slicks and tar-balls are going to be coming ashore for a decade according to most estimates. The Gulf Coast can look forward to Feinberg giving them a few elbows in the ribs for years to come.
Any way you look at it, it all adds up to need.
An article in Slate had this to say -
Without an organized, community wide intervention strategy to deal with the stress, it took several years for the area to recover. By many estimates, it still hasn’t. Most affected were the surrounding communities that relied on commercial fishing, including Valdez and Cordova. According to research conducted by environmental sociologist J. Steven Picou and others, divorces and suicides increased, as well as depression and anxiety (20 percent of fishermen suffered from severe anxiety and 40 percent from severe depression)…the average fisherman has lost a significant percentage of his income since the spill. We can expect the same effects now with the 2010 spill, only on a much larger scale.
So what are those in the community, those on the front lines, those that are doing the outreach, going into the communities and trying to help saying about all of this disregard – Catholic Charities applied for a separate grant from BP to do their work, $12 million dollars that would have included their outreach and the outreach of 27 other non-profit agencies in the region. As of this past Friday, they haven’t heard a thing from British Petroleum. Liz McCartney, the co-founder of St. Bernard Project, cannot understand the nonsensical approach BP has towards this funding, “It’s such a quick win,” she says. “It’s such an easy way for BP to demonstrate to people that they care not only about fixing the environment and making sure wildlife is taken care of but that people matter.”
No, BP doesn’t care about people. They didn’t long before April 20th and they don’t now.
But what about Obama and Congress?
At the same congressional hearing on July 21st, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D- Texas, pointedly asked Feinberg if he would cover damages such as mental health if Congress passed a law requiring it.
Feinberg replied that he would.
Okay then…
There you go, we all know what’s coming. We all know, saw it in Alaska and saw it during Katrina…the increasing use of substances, the increased depression, stress, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, anger and domestic violence. There is no mystery here. There are no what if’s? The numbers have started to come in already and with the recession causing annual mental health funding cuts in all the Gulf Coast States, services were already in short supply. Feinberg told Congress what had to happen, what needed to be done before the Grinch would return Christmas, so Congress – do it now. More numbers will be coming in over the next few months, next few years, and the need will only continue to grow. Perhaps this could finally be the time that the numbers also reflect how the right thing was done and demand was met.
Imagine that.
Congress?
Obama?
Get started, you jack-wagons, pass a law and call Feinberg’s bluff. What choice do you have? If there is one thing learned over the past few months, British Petroleum ain’t listening to a thing you have to say, so maybe Feinberg will.
One more time…also from Slate -
“The oil spill in the Gulf carries with it a very significant risk of PTSD and major depression, as well as other psychiatric disorders,” says psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, author of Living the Truth. “The Exxon Valdez spill was a one-time shock, and that alone caused tremendous suffering on a psychological level. I fear that this event, with its protracted course, could prove far more toxic.”
So get going.
Have a nice day.
For current resources in the Gulf, click the link by SAMHSA
Tips for Dealing with the Gulf Oil Spill
Or if in Louisiana, call the following hotline:
1-800-424-1856, 8am-5pm CST weekdays
