The Excllence In Recovery Bookshelf Keeps Growing

I've got Ed Blakely's book checked out right now but haven't been able to bring myself to crack it open yet. Maybe I'll have slogged through it by the time the next self-congratulatory ghoul gets his published.

On his way out the door, the man who famously oversaw victim compensation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Virginia Tech shootings praised himself, his team, President Barack Obama and BP for a job well done.

"Right now I'm going to step back and return to teaching, write a book about BP and compensation and watch with great interest what transpires going forward in New Orleans," Feinberg said. "This has been a rollercoaster -- a very challenging, very successful program, and major credit is owed to the president for working with BP in getting the $20 billion fund established and great credit is owed to BP, too. I can think of no other situation in history where a company has stepped up and fronted $20 billion."

Congratulations to BP, the feds, and to Feinberg and his crew. Always good to remember who the real heroes are.

Here's a quick review of how our local disasters are bucking the trend and saving the publishing industry.


The Excellence In Recovery Library (Thus far)

How to Maximize FEMA Funding After a Natural Disaster by Veronica White

Deadly Indifference by Michael Brown

Katrina's Secrets (Vol. 1) by Ray Nagin

My Storm by Ed Blakely

Ken Feinberg gets his life back too

As a consequence of the recent BP settlement, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility as we know it is reaching the end of its life. And that means Ken Feinberg is being replaced by something called a Patrick Juneau.

I'm wondering if we should all chip in to get Feinberg a nice parting gift. I think something like this might look good on a mantle.

Hey, Heckuva job!

Former BP Boss Tony Hayward eligible for $950,000 bonus

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,

More than half of the 110,299 private claimants suing BP in the huge trial set to begin in federal court Feb. 27 have never filed with claims czar Kenneth Feinberg, calling into question whether they are eligible for compensation. That's according to numbers released by Feinberg to U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on Wednesday.

The data suggest that Feinberg may not achieve his stated goal of settling 90 percent of all legitimate claims out of court. At the same time, the numbers -- a rough barometer of the size and strength of the plaintiffs' army -- could have a significant impact on tense settlement talks among an army of lawyers who have descended on New Orleans.

Quote of the day

"Feinberg has welcomed the independent evaluation and already agreed to pay for it."

Feinberg's paradox of compensation rules

Aren't these two ideas in conflict?

Last week, Feinberg released highly anticipated new methods for calculating settlements for oyster leaseholders and interim payments for those experiencing new losses in 2011, and both changes could have a significant impact on the flow of money through the program.

The first change requires claimants seeking interim quarterly payments for continuing losses to demonstrate at least a 5-percent revenue growth rate from 2010. A firm hired by Feinberg, ARPC of Washington, D.C., found that a slower growth rate would suggest that ongoing losses are most likely not from the effects of the spill.

Feinberg also agreed to do a case-by-case review to compensate claimants whose spill-related losses have only arisen in 2011, after suffering no loss in 2010.

Also isn't there also a massive damage assessment process currently under way which assumes that the effects of the spill could last for decades?

And while all parties involved expressed hope for reaching a speedy initial settlement, none are expecting the studying to end for many years. Alaska's Exxon Valdez spill showed that oil impacts not only linger for decades, but in some cases they might not even surface for years after a settlement, so the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 allowed trustees to reopen settlements.

Here's the crucial question I don't immediately have the answer to. Does the GCCF process close whatever opportunity individual claimants might have under OPA to reopen settlements at a later date?

Defamation

Mississippi's AG Jim Hood is suing Ken Feinberg's Gulf Coast Claims Facility over what Hood believes is a lack of transparency in the claims process.

Jim Hood said Tuesday that he has tried to negotiate with the fund's administrator, Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg. He says he's seeking to make the process more transparent so people will know whether Feinberg is looking out for the best interests of oil spill victims or BP.

Hood filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Hinds County Chancery Court.

Feinberg said Tuesday in a phone interview with The Associated Press that, "Our lawyers will respond in the ordinary course." He had no other immediate comment.

Hood has previously said he believes Feinberg's operation is intentionally delaying and denying legitimate claims, an allegation Feinberg has denied. Others have also criticized the size and pace of payments and a perceived lack of transparency.

Feinberg has said Hood could undermine the claims process by urging a court to intervene and by making allegations that border on defamation.

"Defamtaion" is Feinberg's go-to complaint against anything approaching judicial oversight.

Attorneys general of four Gulf Coast states this month asked US District Judge Carl Barbier to conduct an inquiry into the claims process and the GCCF. They assert that Feinberg is using “economic duress to manipulate financially desperate claimants’’ into signing off on insufficient settlements in the GCCF’s Quick Pay option, which gives $5,000 to individuals and $25,000 to businesses in return for waiving the right to sue or seek further money from the claims facility.

Feinberg attacked the appeal to Barbier in emphatic language, saying that it verges on “defamation.” “The court does not have the power under the Oil Pollution Act to impose upon the GCCF the monitoring sought by the attorney general,’’ said Feinberg lawyer David Pitofsky in a court filing this week. Such a step would “chill the ability of GCCF personnel to work expeditiously without fear of running afoul of an independent auditor and a court-imposed evidentiary hearing.”

I don't yet know enough details to speak to Feinberg's claims regarding what the Oil Pollution Act might disallow. But "defamation" is a fairly dickish thing to scream back given the circumstances.

This week in oil disaster news

Cementing contractor settles with BP Company agrees to pay BP $75M to settle claims

Meanwhile Tranocean has published the results of its internal investigation. Surprise! They find BP negligent.

Mississippi brown shrimp catch is off by nearly one million compared to this time a few years ago.

Traci Floyd, director of the state Department of Marine Resources Shrimp and Crab Bureau, says 903,908 pounds of brown shrimp were caught in the two weeks after the brown shrimp season started on May 25. She says that compares with first two weeks of 2007 when the catch was 1.96 million pounds.

Mark Stewart, an Ocean Springs shrimper, said the shrimp have been small and scarce in Mississippi waters. He says that has resulted in low prices.

This morning on WWL radio, Bob Delgiorno was confusingly describing the low price paid to shrimpers for a scarce and low quality product as a "shrimp glut." Clearly that's not what this is.

Feinberg says he's making progress. Although it's still quite difficult to pin down what that actually means.

The biggest lingering question is: What claims are still out there? The uncertainty rests mostly in the fishing industry, where the true measure of the spill's economic pain is still unfolding. Only 24,000 fishers, crabbers, shrimpers, oyster harvesters and seafood processors have sought final payments so far, and half have settled. The vast majority of them -- about 11,000 -- took the quick payment option of $5,000 for individuals or $25,000 for businesses.

Also there are thousands of fishers who are currently relying on government assistance and periodic (although stingily disbursed) interim payments from GCCF for subsistence alone. And, of course, the long term damage to the fisheries won't be fully known for many years.

Finally, the deadline to submit oil spill related "restoration" project proposals to the Natural Resource Trustees set up by BP on behalf of five Gulf Coast states is this Saturday.

Louisiana will receive a minimum of $100 million for "oil restoration" projects from the trust but will have to compete for a share of an additional $300 million with Texas, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. Despite initial optimism that this money could at least serve as a modest beginning to the massive funding needed to mitigate Louisiana's dire coastal erosion problem, this language appears to restrict the projects to Macondo clean-up only.

Trustees determining early restoration projects are guided in their selection in part by criteria laid down by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The projects must "contribute to making the environment and the public whole by restoring, rehabilitating, replacing or acquiring the equivalent of natural resources or services injured as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or response, or compensating for interim losses resulting from the incident," according to a recent presentations made by Drue Banta, an attorney for the Governor's Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, and Stephanie Morris, an attorney for the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office.

The projects also must "address one or more specific injuries to natural resources or services associated with the incident." And they must "seek to restore natural resources, habitats or natural resource services of the same type, quality and of comparable ecological and/or human use value to compensate for identified resource and service losses resulting from the incident."

The good news is there may be more money available at some point once the National Resource Damage Assessment is complete.

That money will be deducted from the final bill presented to BP and other responsible parties after completion of the overall Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, which is anticipated to take several years.

The bad news is many observers believe BP is trying to manipulate the NRDA process.

Justice delayed

Defendants in oil spill litigation want claims for economic damage to be dismissed

BP attorney Andy Langan told the court that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 is very clear: anyone harmed by the spill must present a claim to the responsible party, and that claim must be denied before an aggrieved party can sue in court. "They're not supposed to be in court right now," Langan said of the more than 100,000 individuals who have filed claims in the litigation because of economic losses they suffered.

Langan said the claims should be dismissed, but that they should be dismissed with prejudice so that aggrieved parties have the option of coming back into court and filing a claim if the Gulf Coast Claims Facility can't solve their problems. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility is the entity supervised by Kenneth Feinberg that is handing out $20 billion from BP to those who suffered losses as a result of last year's oil spill.

Gonna go out on a limb and say Feinberg won't "solve their problems."

Of course, there are always "other places to get shrimp"

Just not here this year.

See also

In an e-mail response to concerns raised by Young and Council Chairman Chris Roberts, Feinberg said he is considering "some compromise options" to keep the offices open one day per week or having a special "claims day" every few weeks. "I am sensitive to your concerns and will propose some approach to deal with those remaining claimants who, more than a year after the spill, are still filing claims and seeking information," Feinberg wrote. "This is simply a numbers problem along with considerations of alternative claim sites and efficiency."

Young and Roberts said they want both offices to remain open five days a week with reduced staffing through the summer.

Roberts said many commercial fishers waited until the shrimp season was underway before deciding whether to file additional claims.

"I find it a little ironic that just as the shrimp season has opened, they're looking at closing their claims office," he said. "I don't think BP is trying to make it right as much as they are trying to run from their obligations."

Also, and too, as well

Ken Feinberg is still an asshole.

Are you threatening me?

Feinberg tells his critics their complaints "border on defamation."

Heckuva jobs all around

And you thought awards season was over.

The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association Thursday presented its 2011 Blue Heron environmental award to the secretary of the Louisiana agency that oversees some state regulations of association members. Chris John, the association's president, said there is nothing inappropriate about giving an award to Scott Angelle, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

That's right. The oil industry doles out an annual award to its favorite regulator. This is really the best idea since the "Bernardo" award for "Excellence in Recovery". Well, maybe it isn't quite that glamorous, but still it's clear that the industry knows how to take care of the people who take care of it.

Take BP, for example. They'll tell you you can never pay enough for a decent (non-independent) claims administrator.

Nor can you pour enough money into advertising as I discovered this week while reading a blurb about how the company responsible for the latest spill is "helping" and noticed this ad in the corner.



Welcome Back!

Un-vanished

New oil surfaces near Elmer’s Island

BATON ROUGE — New oil is still washing up on local beaches, including Elmer’s Island, 10 months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, state officials said.

It’s a contentious time for crude sightings, especially as BP and the federal government begin to inch out of the Gulf Coast.

Officials with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries say they’ve been told that the clean-up partners are planning to “pack up shop” at the end of this month.

Secretary Robert Barham called the departure “unacceptable,” especially since new oil is being discovered in places like Bay Jimmy, Red Fish Bay and Pass-a-Loutre.

"Packing up shop" also entails:

BP has reneged on promises made in November to negotiate early payments to Louisiana to help rebuild oyster beds, repair damaged wetlands and build a fish hatchery to allow the state to respond immediately to the collapse of commercial fisheries in the wake of the BP Gulf oil spill, state officials said Monday

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman Garret Graves and Department of Wildlife & Fisheries director Robert Barham said the state will instead scramble to find millions of dollars to begin the work itself, then bill BP for the costs.

"BP has clearly changed their approach," Barham said. "All we've asked is for them to do what they said they would do in their commercials, be here for the long haul and make it right."

Instead, he said, the company has clearly moved from a public relations strategy to one focusing on litigation over whether damage to the state's oyster beds was BP's fault.

Here's part of what "focusing on litigation" has meant.

The documents that oil spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg is making people sign in exchange for their final damage settlements are illegal and should be voided by a federal judge, according to the plaintiffs in the massive federal civil case against BP and others.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled earlier this month that Feinberg must stop representing himself as independent of BP. The oil giant owned the deepwater oil well that exploded last April, fouling the Gulf of Mexico for three months, and pays Feinberg's law firm $850,000 a month to dole out money from a $20 billion compensation fund.

Now, Barbier is considering whether Feinberg, who was jointly appointed by BP and President Barack Obama, has set up a claims payment procedure that properly follows the law.

Kudos, again, to David Hammer for putting the bit about Feinberg's relationship with BP right there at the top of the article.

Meanwhile, returning to the theme we began this little round-up with, more and more oil continues to un-vanish out there.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

One more note about the "magic microbes." When they first appeared, we noted that the "more optimistic" studies referred to above were funded this way.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP.

Should we ask Judge Barbier to determine whether or not the microbes are "independent" too?

Too generous

BP tells Feinberg he's being too generous with claims

The administrator of the $20 billion fund for Gulf oil spill victims, under fire for red tape and delays, has been told by BP that his formula for determining final payments is actually too generous

Also "too generous" is the AP description of Feinberg's position and background.

An Associated Press review published Monday that included interviews with legal experts, government officials and more than 300 Gulf residents found a claims process beset by red tape and delay, and at the center of it all a fund administrator whose ties to BP have raised questions about his independence.

Now, lawmakers in Washington are demanding the White House step in, the Louisiana governor and others want a federal judge to intervene, and the people most affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster are threatening to line the courthouse steps if they don't get the changes they seek from Feinberg.

Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who runs the fund and was lauded for his work overseeing the compensation fund for 9/11 victims, has insisted he is being fair.

Missing from this generous account of the (ahem) "lauded" for his 9-11 fund work Feinberg, is the fact that a federal court has ruled he has no right to claim he is in any way "independent" of BP. There is no excuse to write any account of anything Feinberg says or does without including this information.

Letters

Sen. Bill Nelson calls for executive-branch review of oil spill fund

February 4, 2011

The Honorable Barack Obama

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to ask for a review of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. My request follows a court ruling and recently published news accounts that raise questions about transparency and accountability of the $20-billion fund set up to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Just this week, a Louisiana district court judge, in essence, ruled the fund is not in any way-shape-or-form “independent” of the BP oil company, and that BP must refrain from calling the administrator “neutral” as compensation is dispensed to victims of the worst oil spill in our country’s history.

Mr. President, last summer, while in my state at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Panama City, you said this fund would be run independent of those who caused the spill “so that people can trust that they’ll get a fair shake.”

The claimants in Florida, and the rest of the Gulf coast, deserve no less.

In addition to the aforementioned court ruling, the Associated Press reported this week the claims fund has disbursed only one final settlement, which was done at the request of BP and amounts to $10 million that went to an unnamed BP business partner.

In any other context involving a fund of this size, questions that touch on accountability and transparency would normally be reviewed by a regulator or outside auditor. I believe a high level of scrutiny should apply not only to claimants, but also to the claims handlers – and to BP.

Thus, I respectfully request that your administration initiate a review of all administrative operations of the claims fund. Given the court ruling and other news accounts, there’s clearly a need to assure more accountability and transparency. I thank you in advance for addressing this concern.

Sincerely,

Bill Nelson

U.S. Senator, Florida

Sunday digest

A brief listing of this week-end's miscellany.

• Endymion Grand Marshals announced

  Parade officials have announced this year's Grand Marshals of the Endymion parade.
  
  Those Marshals will include: CNN's Anderson Cooper, talk show host Kelly Ripa, actor Mark Consuelos, singer Pat Benatar and the musical group Train are expected to ride in this year’s Endymion as grand marshals.

  Surprised to see Cooper snub Thoth and Cleopatra this year. It's bad enough that Pat Benatar is there to remind of being hit with someone's best shot.
  
  Meanwhile, NYT: In New Orleans, Early Mardi Gras Parades Are Family Fare
  The article actually means well but this constant attempt to separate Carnival from "family fare" in the non-NOLA media is still distorts the fact that, aside from the tourist frat party on Bourbon street, the whole thing is a "family fare" type of event.



• Speaking of Egypt, it is often the case in mildly xenophobic America that political narratives spawn very quickly out of ignorance or indifference. The best defense against such for most of us is to just shut the hell up and read more. Here are a few links through which one can learn some context quickly.
  
  Unrest in #Egypt: Not new, just reaching a tipping point
  
  Why Mubarak is Out A primer on police, military, gender and capitalist dynamics behind the Egyptian uprising
  
  
  Always always more to the story than you think there is.



• Ray Nagin. The real Ray Nagin, it appears. Is now in the Tweeter Tubes. Actually he's been there for some time but people only started noticing just this week when he demonstrated full capacity with the medium by picking a fight with Fletcher Mackel which is, of course, what Twitter is there for. While the former mayor's tweets might prove to be every bit as diverting as the now-defunct @mayornagin satire account, we can't imagine they'll be any more profound. Many overloaded Twitter users might save themselves some time by just buying one of those "Da Mayor in your pocket" thingies.



• Crawfish prices up in Louisiana
  
  

  Small, expensive and hard to find is no way for Louisiana's beloved delicacy to kick off boiling season. Yet local merchants, harvesters and scientists say if you move fast, you might be able to scrounge enough to make do on Super Sunday.
  
  A fall drought and a cold winter have conspired to keep the mudbug population down. And that low supply, coupled with higher prices at the gas pumps, have crawfish costing about 50 cents to a dollar more per pound than this time last year.
  
  A pound of live crawfish is going for about $3.50 to $4, and boiled fetches anywhere from $4.25 to $5 in the New Orleans area. Once the weather gets above 60 degrees, supply will increase, typically dropping prices by a dollar per pound.

  
  
  Food prices up everywhere
  
  

  What’s behind the surge in food prices? The usual suspects have made the usual claims — it’s all about the Fed, or it’s all about speculators. But I’ve been looking at the USDA World supply and demand estimates, and what stands out from the data is mainly that we’ve had a huge global harvest failure.




• This week in the Gulf. Drake Toulouse summarizes the eventful week in oil spill news from Barack Obama's indifference, to Ken Feinberg's newly defined status as a BP employee, to the growing criticism of Feinberg's "two to three year" Gulf recovery estimate.
  
  Two additional items of note regarding all of this.
  
  The Pensacola News Journal published an editorial today noting the size of the fee Feinberg collects from BP.

  "For instance, the AP reported that Feinberg's law firm "was paid $850,000 a month for its work through the middle of January, and now Feinberg is discussing with BP how much he should be paid going forward. Well, given that BP has an interest in Feinberg paying out as little as possible, is it unreasonable to suspect that his pay will be linked to that goal?"

  
  
  And then there's this.
  
  

  Months after diving in Gulf waters fouled by BP crude oil and the oil dispersant Corexit, a man in his 40s has more than five times the normal amount of ethylbenzene in his blood.
  
  The bloodstream of a 3-year-old, exposed to the oil spill when his family visited the Gulf Coast, contains at least three times the normal level of the same organic hydrocarbon, which is toxic in certain quantities.
  
  Such numbers, according to Wilma Subra, a New Iberia biochemist and environmental activist, are increasingly common in a region that continues to grapple with the consequences of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
  
  And, Subra said Saturday at a forum in New Orleans, they are just one indication that the human health effects of the spill are greater -- and will linger far longer -- than either the oil industry or the U.S. government has acknowledged.
  
  "The effects will be felt for generations," she said, ticking off a wide range of symptoms she said result from exposure to crude oil and Corexit. "This is what we have to look forward to."

  
  
  Feinberg defines "generations" as roughly 2-3 years.
  
  

  The blood tests were performed on people of varying ages, gender and exposure levels. All of the individuals tested displayed some physical symptoms typical of exposure to crude oil or Corexit, Subra said. Immediate symptoms include skin irritation, nausea, headaches and vomiting. Longer-term maladies can include liver and kidney damage, cardiac arrhythmia and chronic respiratory problems. Benzene also is a cancer-causing agent.
  
  Test results consistently showed elevated levels of chemicals -- among them benzene, ethylbenzene and Xylene -- that are found in either crude, dispersant or both, she said. Results were similar on oysters and other Gulf seafood.

  
  
  Meanwhile I continue in my personal pursuit to ingest as much of this poison as I possibly can with varied results. On Friday night, Menckles and I wandered in to Casamento's where I had some of the most disappointingly cakey and greasy fried oysters I've ever encountered. They came on a full loaf of big thick buttered toast. Properly fried seafood is one of life's greatest pleasures. Poorly fried seafood is quite the opposite of that. These were nasty. I ate all of them anyway.
  
  Last night we joined a large party at Pascal's where I ordered these.
  
  
  
  They were exquisite. I ate all of them. Obviously, I am far from the only person in South Louisiana who eats copious amounts of Gulf Seafood despite the continuing flow of ambiguous reports as to its safety.



• Neighborhood level Census 2010 data is now available. More on this later but one conclusion we can draw is that the flood accelerated the demographic trend of a shrinking New Orleans already in progress. It also enabled the demolishing and abandonment of poorer neighborhoods while encouraging the development of ritzy condos. The net effect is a smaller city geared more to serving an upper class population. None of this was inevitable, of course. But none of it was at odds with what policymakers thought of as an optimal outcome either.



• Finally, today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's something of a let down in New Orleans, of course. But as I said at the very beginning of the football season, nothing that happened last year can ever be taken away now. Or to put it another way, it will always be Lombardi Gras in our hearts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, today I and every sports fan with any kind of a conscience will be rooting for the Green Bay Packers. Here's a passable explanation why that is.

  Simple: They’re the only major team left that’s not owned by an oligarch. The only one that’s not just a business run by some tycoon with his eyes on the bottom line.
  
  They’re still, effectively, owned by the town of Green Bay, population 102,000

  
  
  In truth, every professional sports franchise rightfully belongs to the city off of whose identity it trades, whose taxpayers build its stadiums, and whose citizenry invests so much time, money, and emotional capital in supporting. The billionaire "owners" of these franchises are really just unnecessary leeches who have attached themselves to a decent racket. At least the city of Green Bay figured a decent way to get around this. (I'd actually go farther than they do with regard to collective ownership but that's another story for another day.) In this sense, a win for the Pack is a win for all of us.

"Independence" day

The Telegraph reports on the State of Mississippi's motion against Ken Feinberg's Gulf Coast Claims Facility and its practice of coercing BP oil spill victims to surrender their legal rights in exchange for minimal up front payments.

The attorney general claims that people are signing "seemingly very low settlements" that bar them from later legal action, because emergency relief money has not been paid quickly enough.

"This scheme is another device for BP [through the fund] to entice claimants to sign a release and to improperly leverage those releases by intentionally underpaying interim claims," he claimed. "BP is withholding interim claim payments to increase financial hardship on claimants."

The oil spill fund has an independent administrator, Kenneth Feinberg, who also oversaw payments to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It has received 468,000 claims and paid out $2.7bn to 170,000 claimants. BP won't comment on the fund, because it is not in charge of the process.

Okay stop. All that stuff the AG says about BP's "enticement scheme" appears to be undermined by the follow-up paragraph implying that the claims process and its administrator are "independent" of the oil company itself. It's one way to do "balanced" reporting. It's also a falsehood.

Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administrator of the $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, should not claim that he is fully independent of BP, a federal judge overseeing litigation against the company ruled on Wednesday.

Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court in New Orleans, who is overseeing federal litigation related to the spill, issued an order in response to protests by lawyers for plaintiffs suing BP. They have said Mr. Feinberg’s statements that he is independent and that settling claims through his fund is superior to lawsuits are improper.

Judge Barbier took no substantive action to change the way Mr. Feinberg runs the fund, but said he must make clear to potential litigants that he is “acting for and on behalf of BP in fulfilling its legal obligations.”

It's important to know that Feinberg is "acting for and on behalf of BP" so that in the future when we have to write stories like this one.

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Ken Feinberg opened his latest criteria for final claim payments to public comment for the next two weeks.

And business leaders and elected officials across southwest Alabama say they’ll give it to him.

Despite saying he would double what was lost for most in oil-drenched 2010, Feinberg’s latest guidelines drew ire Wednesday from those who have long been critical of the process.

"I’ve really only drawn one conclusion: The game continues," said Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. "He has taken the final payment and structured it from the very best-case scenario and presented that to a group of people who have not been paid and are desperate and more likely to take it. It’s double what he dictates as our loss, not what may be our true loss."

We don't feel obligated to throw in some language describing Feinberg's "independence" the way the Telegraph reporter does.

Here is a handy rule of thumb for the Ken Feinberg reporter's style guide. When writing about any significant claim Feinberg makes regarding the GCCF payment mechanism or the methodology on which it is based, make sure to stress the nature of Feinberg's employment. Take this BBC article as an example of how one gets this right.

The Gulf of Mexico will have largely recovered from the BP oil spill by the end of 2012, the administrator of the $20bn (£12bn) pay-outs fund has said.

Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said that compensation to those who lost revenue from the disaster would be based on this prediction.

Meanwhile, a judge has ruled that Mr Feinberg make clear to claimants that he is not independent from BP.

It's important when reporting the official bullshit to include a conspicuous statement indicating to the reader that they are indeed grappling with bullshit.

Need more positive examples? Okay sure. Here's the Times-Picayune's David Hammer reporting yesterday on Feinberg's 2-3 year recovery bullshit.

Feinberg used a report this week from John Tunnell Jr. at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi as the main basis for assumptions about when Gulf fisheries would recover. Tunnell's report warns that his assessment was inherently inexact, but predicted that blue crabs, shrimp and fin fish catches should generally recover to pre-spill levels this year. He said some oyster beds would take six to 10 years to fully recover.

Tunnell was paid $225 an hour by BP to serve as a consultant to Feinberg's operation.

Neither Feinberg nor his lone expert consultant upon whose dubious opinion the GCCF payment formula is based can be described as "independent." We're not even sure what Tunnell has presented can be described as science.

The report, however, quickly drew criticism from spill victims and from environmentalists who said it underplayed the damage caused by BP’s runaway well.

“This is not a scientific report — it’s an opinion,” said Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University and a member of the National Wildlife Federation’s science advisory panel. “It doesn’t propose any methodology by which its assumptions and predictions could be tested.”

Dr. MacDonald added, “We can’t use these early rosy scenarios as an excuse to not do what’s necessary, which is once and for all establishing a health monitoring method and restoration program for the entire Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.”

Another marine expert, James Cowan, a fisheries scientist at Louisiana State University, said the report “suffers from way too much lumping,” by which he meant lumping together so many species that significant impact on some species might be glossed over.

When we read that fund claimants are being schemed out of their legal rights and coerced into accepting compensation that doesn't begin to reflect their loss, it's important to know that bullshit is being employed to back these schemes up. It's also important to know that the purveyors of this bullshit are not allowed to claim "independence" from the oil company who employs them.

This is basic stuff and I'm grateful to find so many examples of reporters getting it right today. On the other hand, something tells me we'll be reading plenty of ledes about "independent claims administrator Ken Feinberg" during these next 2-3 years of Gulf Coast recovery anyway.

And on the other other hand I have to wonder what took everybody so long. Take a moment to re-read both these AZ posts from way back in July regarding Feinberg's readily apparent conflicts of interest and the general lack of interest in those conflicts from the people we generally expect are paid to be skeptical about such things.

At the time there was plenty "independence" flying about. Also "hope", "compassion", "fairness". All sorts of good stuff.

Oil spill claims administrator Ken Feinberg offers hope to victims

Pledging his independence from the federal government and BP, Feinberg said he plans to establish a centralized claim center, beef up a staff of adjusters and be a constant, visible figure for Gulf Coast residents.

"This is an independent, private program," he said. "I'm not beholden to the Obama administration. I'm not beholden to BP. I'm an independent administrator calling the shots as I see them.

Feinberg isn't allowed to say things like that anymore and presumably no one will print it either but we'll remain on the lookout for that.

Also, even though it isn't correct to write "Indepenent claims administrator Ken Feinberg" anymore it is still perfectly within bounds to write, "Obama-appointed claims administrator Ken Feinberg". That one, we can document.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration revealed that Feinberg would take charge of a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate people and businesses harmed by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I'm confident he will assure that claims are administered as quickly, as fairly and as transparently as possible," President Obama said in a speech at the White House

Two to three years

Feinberg figures we'll all be done with this in two to three years. And so he is compensating based on that figure.

He said the decision to grant twice a claimant's 2010 losses is based on research by his Gulf Coast Claims Facility staff, which determined that Gulf-related business activity will recover in two to three years, with a 30-percent recovery in 2011 and a full recovery in 2012.

He said the oyster beds will generally require a longer recovery period, thus supporting a payment of four times a harvester's 2010 loss.

Just doing the simple math, I conclude that the oyster beds will be fine in about 4 to 6 years then. It's really astonishing, given the precedent.

But mention the word Exxon to anyone here, and the idyll evaporates. Men break down in tears describing what they lost when 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound in 1989 from a grounded tanker named Exxon Valdez. Twenty-one years later, the herring that once signaled the start of the summer season are largely gone, rendering $300,000 permits worthless. Losses are tallied in divorces, suicides, repossessed boats, depleted college funds, friends who moved away.

"Fast-talking East Coast lawyer"

Wow, who wrote this article?

Now, Indians who've known nothing but fishing all their lives find their futures tied to the man handing out checks for damages, paid from a multibillion-dollar fund started after the April 20 Gulf spill.

Kenneth Feinberg, the fast-talking East Coast lawyer in charge of BP PLC's $20 billion compensation fund, met with them for the first time Friday night on the back bayous of south Louisiana at a gymnasium in Montegut, about an hour and a half from New Orleans. Dozens of fishermen showed up in shrimp boots and work clothes, speaking a mixture of French and English.

More on the Fast-talking East Coast Lawyer from Drake Toulouse, who has been consistently asking what I think is the most important question.

Finally, it would appear that nobody wanted to talk too much about the fact that all these people accepting quick payment claims and those who will accept final payment are signing away their rights to sue British Petroleum and a hundred other companies. Again, forcing people to make a present day decision based on unknown futures, when their culture, their professions, and due to the ongoing sickness in the Gulf, their very lives may be at stake is simply wrong. It only benefits British Petroleum for them to do so, and British Petroleum is the primary cause of this entire mess…so why do they get the free pass, while everybody else has to take the risk of being screwed in the future?

When will somebody in the GCCF, or Congress, or the White House finally answer that question?

If we don't know what the long-term damage will be, why are we in such a rush to shut down the possibility of future claims against that damage?

Update: Or just the punchline, I guess.

Gulf residents uspet as BP resumes dividends

Metal detectors

Just to be clear. If you're in the business of telling people they need to "tone down the rhetoric" because a crazy person did something awful, you're really just working for the people who want to squash legitimate dissent.

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) -- The shooting of a congresswoman and rising tempers along the Gulf Coast have prompted increased security for meetings between BP's oil spill claims czar and residents seeking compensation.