Wednesday, July 31, 2013

"But what do I know? I'm from New York."

That's Joe Nocera's closing sentence from a July 19th article in which he blatantly shills for the multi-national oil company, BP.  Joe wants us to believe that poor BP is getting "skewered" by our "good ol' boy" trial attorneys way down here in the dirty south.  Apparently he has a "deus ex machina" view from his office in "Big ole' " New York City.  (I feel like I'm writing dialogue for Mr. Haney in a Green Acres episode)

Nocera drives the point home in today's NYT opinion article:

Lawyers' Business Model

...he feels the need to justify his moral obligation to tort reform by pointing out the injustice he's witnessed in the mass litigation against Dow Corning for health effects caused by silicone breast implants.  I can't imagine the horrors this man has faced.

I guess he's trying assure us that he "understands" mass litigation and all the issues involved, particularly with this case, the BP oil spill.

Rest assured dear NYT reader...he has no agenda here other than to ward off the enormity of New Orleans' trial attorneys onslaught against this poor, little, multi-national, oil company, BP.

And rest assured, according to Joe, if Feinberg was still in the driver's seat...everything would be right as rain:
"But, to me, the question of whether BP can afford to pay is irrelevant. BP is the best example I’ve ever seen of a company that actually tried to find a better way. Immediately after the spill, it set up a claims process to get money into victims’ hands quickly, without having to file a lawsuit. Though that process had its critics, it worked. Of the $11 billion BP has paid out in claims, $6.3 billion was paid through that process."
And Joe knows that this claims process was "working"......because....he's from New York....

Right.

Well...I'm from Louisiana.  I've been covering the effects of this spill from the moment it happened.  Perhaps I don't have that wonderful panoptic view New York City provides, but I have seen a lot of what's actually happening on the Gulf Coast in the wake of this man-made disaster.  

I've seen a lot of suffering.  I've seen a lot of struggle.  I've seen a lot of death and destruction.

I see that it is still very fucked up.

But don't take my word on the matter, let's go back to June of 2012 and take a look at what a Louisiana fisherman had to say about how well the GCCF/Feinberg process was working for the "good 'ol boys" down here on the Gulf Coast:

So, I'm no big-city, New York, swinging dick...but I'm gonna go ahead and take a shot at answering Nocera's question about what he knows.

I think he knows two things:

1.  Jack

2.  Shit

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever been to the parts of Alaska that were hit with the Valdez spill?

Decades later, the ocean and the animals are not alright, and the people who live in that place are still a mess over it. Lives were ruined.

Families were hurt very badly. The loss of meaningful work and a connection to the land that felt good and right... you can't put a price on that.

BP is not getting roiled in the Gulf.

There will never be enough money in the world to fix what has been broken.

BP's PR is B.S.

Fisheries have collapsed in other times and places, and every time one does, that region produces exiles and economic refugees, and many stories about the loss. Generations later, things like this still resonate.

Ever heard of the Irish Potato Famine? Of course you have. It changed a culture in ways that marked the Irish no matter where they went on Earth.

Fuck that guy in New York. He is a dumbass.