"Oil spill payments to be bigger, faster
NEW ORLEANS — The administrator of the fund for gulf oil spill victims said people should start getting bigger payments faster. Kenneth Feinberg, Gulf Coast Claims Facility administrator, said he was responding to criticism (AP)."
NEW ORLEANS — Far fewer people than expected have applied for money from a $100 million fund BP set up to help deep-water rig workers after a federal moratorium on drilling prompted by the massive oil spill.
Also because NO ONE WANTS to have anything to do with GOVERNMENT or AUTHORITY or OFFICIALDOM! The LIES have kind of RUINED IT!
And look at what the CORPORATE PAPER is FOCUSED ON: when they can get MORE OIL!!! Not the ENVIRONMENT they are supposed to care so much about and are guarding for YOU!
With nine days left to apply, a spokesman for the charity running the program said yesterday that only 356 people have come forward. Up to 9,000 people had been expected to seek grants of $3,000 to $30,000.
The charity said it turns out that many rig workers are being kept on the job by their employers, despite the moratorium.
Grants were expected to be limited to those who worked on the 33 rigs affected by the moratorium. But with so much money apparently left over, the charity plans to offer a second round of grants — this time to workers who support the deep-water rigs, such as people on supply boats and pilots who provide helicopter transportation to rigs.
“We expect all of the money to be made as grants at that time,’’ said Mukul Verma, a spokesman for the Gulf Coast Restoration and Protection Foundation, which is running the program.
A recent federal report argued that the moratorium has not increased unemployment in the region. Louisiana lawmakers and the oil and gas industry immediately disputed the finding.
The report, released at a Senate hearing Thursday, said the moratorium imposed after the BP oil spill probably caused a temporary loss of 8,000 to 12,000 jobs in the gulf region, including about 2,000 on deep-water rigs. Total industry spending in the region decreased by nearly $2 billion, the report said, most of it by drilling operators. But the report found no large increases in unemployment claims, thanks in part to a big hiring push for cleanup crews and massive spending by BP on the recovery.
The scenario is far rosier than that described in some previous reports, including an Interior Department estimate over the summer that 23,000 jobs could be lost to the moratorium.
Are you SICK of being LIED TO YET, America?
Oh, right, the SAINTS GAME is STARTING!
Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat and leading critic of the moratorium, attacked the report and said the “heavy hand of the federal government’’ was placing thousands of jobs in the gulf at risk.
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Related: La. senator says she’ll block Obama economic nominee
Where is the HOLLERING of OBSTRUCTION from the Democrats?
Oh, SHE IS a DEMOCRAT!
And about that spill:
"New study affirms US gulf spill estimate; Video analysts put it at 185m gals." by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press | September 24, 2010
You know, the government can trot out as many bulls*** experts as it wants and the newspapers can fill their pages with them; however, WE NO LONGER BELIEVE you LYING SACKS of S*** that SERVES CORPORATIONS not people!!!
WASHINGTON — After several missteps, the federal government finally got it right, accurately estimating how much oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, an independent scientific study found.
I thought I smelled something familiar.
Nearly 185 million gallons of oil spilled from the broken BP well into the Gulf of Mexico this summer, according to a study by two Columbia University researchers who made their estimates based on video of the oil spewing from the well.
PFFFFFFFFT!
It was reported as 206 million gallons a while back. BP must have complained about the fine.
The federal government’s final estimate was a shade more than 172 million gallons. The Columbia researchers’ estimate is 12.6 million gallons more than the federal figure.
That must make it all kosher, huh?
However, because it’s so difficult to get a precise estimate, there is a large margin of error for both the government figure and the Columbia number. The margin is so large that the two estimates essentially overlap, the researchers said. Their study was published online yesterday in the journal Science....
Related: Globe Endorses Government on Evaporated Oil From Gulf Gusher
I think that is when I stopped believing in Science.
And my remaining faith in the newspaper?
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Get the point?
And about that paymaster:
WASHINGTON --The Obama administration says it's chosen a Treasury Department lawyer to replace pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who stepped down Friday, ending a contentious 14-month tenure.
Feinberg was accused of failing to act aggressively enough to recoup excessive pay for Wall Street bankers. He said in a final report that he thought his work had helped reform compensation policies.
The administration says Feinberg will be replaced by Patricia Geoghegan. She will be responsible for setting pay guidelines for top executives at the four companies still getting exceptional assistance from the government's $700 billion bailout fund.
Those companies are American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and Ally Financial Inc., the financing arm for GM and Chrysler.
Geoghegan spent much of the past year working with Feinberg as he issued a series of compensation reports. She came to Treasury after retiring as a partner from New York law firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore, where she had specialized in tax law and executive compensation.
In his report, Feinberg recommended that the administration tap a permanent Treasury official to head up the compensation office....
Feinberg's last day at Treasury was Friday although he has been devoting much of his time since mid-June to overseeing a $20 billion fund created by BP to pay the victims of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Before being chosen as the government's pay czar in 2009, Feinberg had headed up the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund after the terrorist attack. In that job, Feinberg distributed awards to the families of victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks....
And his reach goes even further back.
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More Louisiana slime:
WASHINGTON — The trial is an extraordinary spectacle, featuring allegations that lawyers and bail bondsmen plied the Honorable Gabriel Thomas Porteous of New Orleans, a reformed drinker and gambler, with gifts to gain his courtroom favor. Cash in envelopes. Bottles of Absolut and coolers of shrimp. A Vegas bachelor party for Porteous’s son, complete with lap dance.
It showcases both the often-sordid politics of Louisiana and a struggle over constitutional precedents.
But while this is the first Senate impeachment trial since President Bill Clinton’s in 1999, and the first for a member of the judiciary since 1989, the historic procedure is underway largely outside the zone of the public’s attention. Amid the tumult of the midterm campaigns, Washington’s attention has been occupied elsewhere....
And WHO would be RESPONSIBLE for THAT, agenda-pushing corporate media?
Porteous’s defense lawyers, led by George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, say the charges are overblown and do not rise to the “high crimes’’ described in the US Constitution.
Related: Obama the Neo-Con
I think he would know!
He urged senators to consider carefully before making Porteous the only judge in US history to be forced off the bench through impeachment without having been charged with a crime.
Welcome to AmeriKa!!!
Porteous, 63, a large, balding man with thick gold rings on each hand, is suspended from the bench but still collecting his salary. He has sat impassively at the defense table, sometimes making a note or two on a legal pad, as a string of colorful characters have spilled the alleged tale of his dishonor and human failings.
His Metairie home was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Four months later, his wife, Carmella, died of a heart attack, his son testified. “After that, he became very isolated, he stayed at home, he was depressed,’’ said Timothy Porteous, also a lawyer....
Porteous was suspected of being way too cozy with Louis and Lori Marcotte, a pair of siblings who had monopolized the lucrative bail-bond business on the West Bank, and he was one of the local judges investigated in Operation Wrinkled Robe, an FBI investigation into corruption at the Jefferson Parish courthouse.
This is what the FBI does when it isn't framing Muslim patsies.
Two of his fellow state judges went off to jail for mooching off the Marcottes, and a third was taken off the bench by the state Supreme Court.
Marcotte took the judge to Las Vegas and treated him to expensive lunches, he testified, and his employees fixed Porteous’s fence and his cars, often returning them from the detailing shop with the vodka or shrimp left inside as a special goody bag.
Lawyers slipped Porteous cash, prosecutors charge, to influence their cases before his bench. The defense says those lawyers were longtime friends just trying to help out a man they knew had fallen on tough times....
The impeachment trial’s rules of evidence are unlike civil or criminal trials, and Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat [and] former city and county prosecutor, often has leaned over to seek guidance from Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who is the committee’s vice chairman and a longtime Judiciary Committee member.
They are SO PARTISAN, aren't they?
And the case is complicated, for all of the hours of narrative that would seem to place Porteous in the parade of infamous Louisiana public servants, from former Representative William Jefferson with his cash in the freezer all the way back to Huey Long.
Huey Long was killed because he was a threat to Roosevelt and the establishment.
And how dare they call them public servants these days.
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