Disenfranchised Citizen

Here's looking at you, baby...

Hey, I thought this whole oil spill deal was all kinda, you know…over.

At least that’s the impression I got watching all them there sparkly British Petroleum commercials, but man, over the past two days, the news has been flying pretty serious again in the Gulf, and between you, me, the courts and the water…I think this has just begun…Maybe I just got distracted by the hockey playoffs…

What? What do you want? I never said I wasn’t from the north…

So, shall we begin year two with a prayer?

Archbishop Gregory Aymond got on bended knees and put his arms around two women, listened to the damage BP and the GCCF have wrought and did his best to console them. The women had come to Catholic Charities in Violet for counseling and help with their spill damage claims.

Turns out one of the women, Lois Neville of Violet is yet another one of those people who Ken Feinberg, BP paid administrator of the GCCF and $20 billion escrow fund is saying…well, golly gosh gee, must have slipped through the cracks…hey, mistakes get made, do you know how many claims we’ve received, we’re working as fast as we can…etc…ad nauseum.

Funny thing though, BP was helping her financially, but all payments stopped when Feinberg took over…and she filed for her final settlement, and well past the 90 day time limit Feinberg gave himself to present final offers, she is still waiting…

In her words from David Hammer’s article in the Times-Picayune:

“I’m barely making ends meet with my savings and rental income, and I’m depressed, I’m stressed out,” Neville said. “I get very angry. I hate to even watch the news because there are other people in a worse predicament than me.”

Depressed and stressed out…like thousands of others, yet BP has closed the coffers on funding for mental health in the Gulf Coast…maybe when they said, making things right…they meant everything but the mind.

And hey, why might Ms. Neville still be waiting for her final claim?

It’s been a year since the oil spilled.

Well, on the GCCF front…Feinberg will tell any reporter who listens how he has paid out $3.9 billion dollars of that escrow fund…and apparently, he is quite proud of this fact…lord knows why…after all that means…he hasn’t paid out $16 billion dollars…and of that 3.9, it’s mostly quick payments…very few final offers, and even fewer interim payments…so what gives? Oh…right, right: mistakes get made, do you know how many claims we’ve received and we’re working as fast as we can…got it. Um, bullshit? Not to mention, how convenient was it for Feinberg, the day before the anniversary, the day before the press was to descend all over the Gulf Coast, to suddenly issue the largest final offer to date to Omega Protein Corp, $44.8 million dollars total. I’m sure the timing of this was coincidental, of course…Feinberg couldn’t possibly be such a cynical asshole to present this offer as some sort of distraction to the press, you know, so the coverage might be a bit more balanced as the press goes out to find the countless Lois Neville’s across the Gulf Coast, the ones seeking counseling because they are struggling not to lose everything, again, a year later…

And speaking of unhappy people in the Gulf…well, let the lawsuits begin, and rightfully so…

70,000 people have filed suit in the Gulf in a maritime law proceeding brought by rig owner Transocean, using a form that also expanded the suit to include British Petroleum. This would be on top of the 350 other suits, representing multiple parties already filed. No word on how many of these people are of the 400,000 that Feinberg and the GCCF have not paid yet, or plan not to pay, but Stephen Herman, co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs said, “I think it certainly validates the litigation effort. I also think that it confirms the sentiment out there that Feinberg and the GCCF haven’t really done a great job of giving people what they thought they were entitled to.”

Not to be outdone, British Petroleum filed a suit of their own, going after Cameron International, the company that made the blowout preventer that wouldn’t close. BP would like a court to rule against the company, declaring the device caused or contributed to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon. Such a ruling would help BP fight against a designation of being “grossly negligent” which if so designated would dramatically raise the amount of fines British Petroleum will have to pay under the Oil Pollution Act.

Perhaps Feinberg knows a judge, to help out his boss, maybe call in some favors perhaps? It’s been a while since he got a raise, and remember the reason the GCCF keeps screwing people? Right, it’s because they’re overworked…not because the GCCF is trying to coerce people into claims attached to a clause where they sign away their rights to sue BP, and not because Feinberg is trying to save BP money, and certainly not because Feinberg is just trying to keep people out of court…cause, that worked out real well…(see above).

Okay…well, at least…all the oil is gone. And that’s important because according to Feinberg’s methodology, all that oil has to be outta there by 2013. If not, if the Gulf isn’t back to normal by then, the entire pay-scale he is using to determine damages for claimants will be off, and not in the claimants favor…so, hey…at least BP and the Coast Guard, they got that one right…oh, what?

Oil still oozing along coastline amid dying marsh grasses

BP oil spill still affecting Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal says

Well, damn…okay, so maybe that’s not working out so well either, but BP’s got another ace in the hole, and it certainly beats the hell out of cleanup workers…

BP Marks Gulf Oil Spill Anniversary With Campaign Contributions

Brilliant!

Besides…something else about political donations…political donations don’t get sick, infected by hydrocarbons and other assorted toxins the way those cleanup workers do…

Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup Workers Report Mysterious Illnesses Year After Disaster

From the article:

“Mike Robichaux is a local doctor who has seen up to 60 patients in recent weeks with a mysterious sickness that some attribute to BP’s oil spill. Dr. Robichaux has been making house calls because many of the “stoic” workers don’t want others to know that they are sick. Yet, Dr. Robichaux tells the AFP, “Ninety percent of them are getting worse… Nobody has a clue as to what it is.”

Reuters reports that the U.S. National Institutes of Health has launched a ten-year study on the health of 55,000 oil spill clean-up workers and volunteers. Perhaps it will take ten years to get an answer for Dr. Robichaux.

Not everyone blames the oil spill for the health problems plaguing Gulf cleanup workers. Namely, BP does not blame the BP oil spill for the health problems plaguing Gulf cleanup workers. In a BP comment to the AFP, the company wrote, “Illness and injury reports were tracked and documented during the response, and the medical data indicate they did not differ appreciably from what would be expected among a workforce of this size under normal circumstances.”

As for compensating sick workers, this would fall under state law and “must be supported by acceptable medical evidence.” Are the 415 Louisianans suffering from respiratory tract infections, nausea, and headaches evidence enough?”

Oh, and as mentioned before…it ain’t just the physical body having problems…a study funded by the National Science Foundation has found that mental health difficulties are likely to linger on the Gulf Coast for the following decade. According to the study, two factors that could cause stresses to persist are delays in compensation for spill damages by the claims process, and possible slow recovery of fishing resources and the fishing industry.

Feinberg, Dudley…your ears burning?

Okay…my bad on all this everybody…I promise to stop watching so much hockey. It really would appear this thing is far from over…that few are doing well in the Gulf at all

In fact…it would appear the only people really doing well these days are British Petroleum…once again paying stock dividends and issuing bonuses to the elite within its company, and Ken Feinberg,who’s sitting on a helluva nice raise from his British Petroleum puppet masters. Yeah, Ken may be taking a lot of criticism these days, but from everything I read, it doesn’t appear to be affecting his psyche at all, in fact he refers to himself as “Bloodied, but unbowed.” And that’s a good thing too, because whereas some of you lightweights out there might want your guy in charge of helping hundreds of thousands of people recover from this catastraphuk to brag about such things as fairness, compassion, generosity and empathy….I like my arbitrator of a compensation fund to talk like he’s trying out for the WWE, you know, to be a bad-ass who don’t take no crap from some fishing type guys and business people who’ve never been to New York.

Nope…not going well at all:

Cleanup workers are getting sick, depression is running rampant and suicides are up across the Gulf Coast. There’s still oil out there while BP continues to scale back cleanup. BP is reneging on financial promises to help with the oyster beds while helping their stockbrokers and executives to more money. The health of the Gulf continues to be debated. Dolphins are dying. Fish have sores. There are dead zones on the Gulf seafloor. Allegations exist that BP is trying to taint the science by influencing the research. A year after the Deepwater Horizon blew up, no laws have been passed by Congress to help ensure it doesn’t happen again while experts maintain it very well could happen again. The NOAA, EPA and FDA all claim the seafood from the Gulf is safe to eat, and they finally opened the last fishing area but the country isn’t buying it: what the government says, or the seafood – which leaves the industry far from recovered. Too many people are waiting for Feinberg to do his fucking job…homes are being lost, jobs haven’t come back and businesses continue to go bankrupt.

And the President?

Well, he said some words and stuff, but ah…who cares, or believes that guy anymore…

Anyways…and so on…here we go folks…

Year two…

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. 

Transocean: trying not to make dumb, even dumber...

This is how it’s supposed to work:

A company, Transocean in this case, makes a bonehead move and gives bonuses to its executives for their “exemplary” safety record last year.

Transocean, being an offshore drilling contractor at work on the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and killed eleven people, is immediately barraged with criticism for awarding these bonuses. Steven Newman, CEO of Transocean, and four other executives who received these bonuses donate them in total to a fund set up by the company for the victims’ families, while Newman goes on record saying it was never their intent to diminish the effect the disaster had on those who lost loved ones in the explosion.

Simple.

A company makes a mistake. They get called on it. They make amends.

Tony Hayward, former CEO of British Petroleum is also up for a bonus of 8 million pounds, and according to the Wall Street Journal, this is actually more than each family who lost a loved one in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon will receive in compensation from his company.

Will he follow Transocean’s lead, or is he still trying to get his life back?

Ken Feinberg, the neutral administrator of the BP escrow fund has been criticized and/or accused of everything from not following through on his promises of transparency to the intentional delay of interim claims in the hopes of getting people to accept final claim offers out of desperation, thus have to waive their right to sue BP. He has lied, repeatedly to people at his meetings, promising them he will look into their claims personally, which is typically the last these people ever hear from him unless they can find a reporter to follow up. The GCCF pays out very little to Gulf Coast residents for a lot of lost time and money, and then Feinberg proceeds to whine when criticized, blaming everybody but himself for the clusterfuck that is his claims process.

Feinberg and his law firm recently received a raise from BP for all his hard work, upping the wage from $850,000 dollars per month to $1.25 million.

Will he follow Transocean’s lead, and do something personally for the people he is screwing over in the Gulf? Or will he just take his money back to New York and try to get the job dispensing compensation from the brand new 9-11 first responders fund, recently authorized by Congress?

Hard to say…but I got a good guess which way he’ll go.

Anybody wanna make a bet?

Have a nice day.

If he can do it, why not me?

I am, really bad…

You see, I’ve been doing this job for a long, long time, off and on for about ten years and frankly, it’s getting a little old. If unfamiliar with crisis work, what I do for a living is I get calls from doctors and police officers in various hospital emergency rooms, or maybe jail corporals at detention centers to come to the scene and speak to the client for the purposes of determining the least restrictive setting where the client will be safe, until they can get follow-up professional help. If at the jail, I might place them on a special watch status which can include suicide gowns and isolation. If at the emergency room, I will determine whether they can go home, can go to a crisis house or go to a behavioral hospital either on a voluntary basis or under an emergency detention called a Chapter 51, where they will be escorted to the hospital by the police in handcuffs.

And truth be told, I’m not very good at making these decisions. I don’t want to go so far as to say that anyone has made a succesful attempt because of the decisions I’ve made, but if they did, I’m certain I wouldn’t have just received the usual bonus for a missed call, I would probably instead be put in charge of the entire Adult Crisis Program.

That may sound like an odd system of rewards, but over the past ten years, social work has largely undergone a transformation from something that was once a total client model to the more black and white corporate model. Sure, the clients are still important, don’t get me wrong, but moreso is the money. Billing, cutting costs, so much of social work today is about billable time and productive, measurable results.

No, I’m not complaining about this. Being as bad at this as I am, it’s probably the only reason I’m still employed.

In fact, the ongoing transition to the corporate model has even improved my career prospects and the many opportunities to receive promotions and raises.

Need another example of how this works?

Simple:

Transocean gives safety bonuses despite deaths in Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion

or…

Tony Hayward may receive bonus of eight million pounds

or…

BP increases monthly fee for claims czar Kenneth Feinberg’s law firm to $1.25 million

or, how about this old favorite…

President Bush Wins 2000 Election!

For a long, long time, in the field of social work, traits such as compassion, empathy, client rights, maintaining client focus and making a difference in people’s lives, no matter the cost were how the true worth of a social worker were measured, and in Adult Crisis work, client rights and client safety were preeminent.

That’s why I came close to getting fired, a few times.

But now?

The system plays to my strengths, or should I say, lack of them.

Just like the Transocean guys involved with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, or just like Tony Hayward and the destruction of Gulf Coast lives and ecosystem, or just like Ken Feinberg who couldn’t efficiently pay a claim if his life depended on it, or just like our former President who couldn’t even find oil, in Texas, just like all these guys…rather than being fired and left on the streets for my incompetence, the corporatization of social services has got me looking at promotions, bonuses and hell, who knows? If I really screw this up and somebody should die, well, according to the corporate way of doing things not only in the Gulf, but across the country, I could be looking at a promotion to Director of Social Services for the entire state.

It could happen…

Hey, maybe it’s time for some new blood.

I certainly have both eyes on that corporate bottom line, a lackadaisacal work ethic, a solid understanding of corruption navigation and a total lack of concern for the welfare of others which, when you put it all together, might just make me the ultimate envy of every other social worker in my field.

I tell ya, the county I work in better promote me soon because I expect a job offer from Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility any day now. My total amoral response to people in distress is sure to make me quite the draw. 

Lord knows, I could certainly use the raise.

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.