Wednesday, May 14, 2014

back in the saddle

I know, I know....a rash of recent MSM stories on the BP claims process popped up and fizzled out within the past few weeks.

None of them...none of them...are worth commenting on.  The banality of the 60 Minutes story was eclipsed by a vapid chorus of MSM "watchdogs", nationally and locally.  All of them crying foul without actually addressing the real issues of the settlement, themselves.

I found it to be a snapshot into the pathetic state of American journalism.

I wonder how these dudes write this shit and look themselves in the mirror.  I suppose the routine paychecks quell the self-loathing.

No matter...we'll just stay focused.

I'm back on the horse.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do appreciate your point that the media is ignoring -- so far --the particular angle you're pursuing ("the real issues of the settlement"), but why is that the only backstory that deserves to be highlighted ("crying foul")? Do you really think it's wrong for other "watchdogs" to call BP out on the insincerity of its PR campaign? Seems like there's plenty of blame to go around.

Clay said...

Is there any clue when the true identity of Aircheck will be revealed?

Jason Brad Berry said...

Anon,

Look...you have two MSM journalistic sources crying foul on another...I'm crying foul on all of them. This isn't just about me, it's about the truth.

In the case of WWL-TV you have a reporter who has access to Pat Juneau and the PSC and you don't question them about the issues I've brought up on the blog? I know they know about it....take me out of the picture and explain to me how you sit down with Pat Juneau and don't ask him about the expedited claims and the alleged sampling program? Does it just slip one's mind?

You sit down with a PSC member and you don't ask them about it? You don't ask them about the page 60 firm and their insight into the alleged fraud by a PSC firm? That just slips your mind?

There is plenty of blame to go around but why am I the only one blaming the right people? There are no heroes in the is story, everyone is an asshole including BP. Is that story too complicated to tell? Do you have to pit the PSC and Juneau as heroes fighting for the Gulf against the evil BP when the truth is they have sold out the people of the Gulf to their own ends and have violated our trust even worse than BP themselves?

Is that story too complex to address? Or is the story being dictated by economic pressure?

They called bullshit on 60 Minutes and they are right....but I'm calling bullshit on all of them and I'm more right.

No matter....none of them are affecting what I'm doing nor can they so it's all good. I'm trying to get to the truth, regardless of how complex and complicated it may be. If that comes across as contentious, so be it....I'm guilty.

Anonymous said...

Is the story too complex to address, or is the story being dictacted by economic pressure?

Interesting question.

Did you ever see Lady and the Tramp, the Disney movie?

You remember the scene with the spagetti, where they seem to be eating two different pieces of spagetti, and it turns out to be the same one?

I think your two questions are probably two ends of the same piece of spagetti. If the complexities were followed up on, and revealed in print in a through way, what picture of economic and social relationships would be revealed?

If the money was acknowledged as a factor, as a starting point, and some reporter followed the money, followed that end of the spagetti all the way to the end, who is getting kissed?

I like office supplies. I enjoyed trips to my local big box office supply place with a simple, innocent joy, until the news about Romney`s Bain Capital getting seed money capital for it from people connected to Latin American Death Squads.

I have never liked the communists, but I was horrified by the death squads, what little I read about them. I have not started to make all my own office supplies, I still shop at my local big box store... but now I just go in and go out and feel sort of bad about the whole thing, though I like the local staff.

Finding out too much about how things works tends to let us see how our tiny lives fit into a more complex picture, and it can make us sad, or confused, and it can suck some element of daily pleasure out of life to have a nice thing revealed as problematic.

The things here are tough to start with, and I suspect following either end of the spagetti would reveal unhappy connections.

Anonymous said...

" LeCesne gets it"

Loyola Law School Professor Blaine LeCesne says it’s because BP actually got a lot more out of the settlement than it will acknowledge.

“They got to placate their shareholders, who were nervous about how much this was going to cost them through the years going through litigation; they got to settle their criminal and environmental fines on very favorable terms with the federal government; they got to get 100,000 residents along the gulf coast to join the settlement and forever give up their right to sue BP in court,” LeCesne said. “Each of those items is worth billions to BP.”

Steve Herman, the lead plaintiff’s attorney who negotiated the deal with BP, said the company needed and wanted the deal it got because it had huge government liabilities from the spill. BP even cited the deal it struck with Herman and other private plaintiffs as a show of goodwill, to convince a federal judge to accept its $4 billion plea agreement on criminal fines for seamen’s manslaughter in the deaths of 11 rig workers and for polluting the Gulf of Mexico with millions of barrels of oil over 87 days.

But Herman said BP changed its tune about the private settlement when its separate negotiations with the government over massive civil penalties went south.
“It didn't pan out for them with the government and that's why -- one of the reasons why -- I believe they made an about-face on the private settlement,”
Herman said.

Also, BP is complaining that anyone who suffered a loss during the post-spill period is being compensated under the settlement. But Juneau and others say the mathematical test that’s used to establish that the spill caused a claimant’s loss, called the “V test,” is actually failed more often than it’s passed.
Juneau said he’s denied 40 percent of claimants for various reasons, thousands of them because of the V-test, which requires claimants, depending on location, to lose a certain amount of revenue after the spill and recover a certain percentage back within the next year.

IN-HALE
It’s now clear why the settlement set aside claims and canceled the first in first out protocols.

Within the last few days we started receiving Denials and Incomplete Notices some of these claims submitted 18-20 months ago. The new policies like 345,468 & 495 just adopted in April 2014 have now killed thousands of class members from recovery.

Our Class Counsel has failed us again, each day the results will show up on the stat reports.

Jason Brad Berry said...

In Hale, I'm getting to that...just stay tuned.

Clay said...

LA Times http://t.co/zYdnEWnVLI Did 60 Minutes whitewash the BP Oil Spill?

Why, yes, they did!

Anonymous said...

The power of one three letter word "ANY"

2.2. Excluded Individuals or Entities: Settlement Reads:

2.2.4.7. Real Estate Developers, including any Natural Person or Entity that develops commercial, residential or industrial properties. This includes, but is not limited to, any Entity developing an entire subdivision (as defined by the law of the state in which the parcel is located) of Real Property, including condominiums with multiple residential units and/or a residential subdivision with contiguous home sites and homes, provided, however, that Real Estate Developers shall be eligible to assert Coastal Real Property Claims under Section 5.7 and Real Property Sales Damage Claims under Section 5.9.

Policy 468 adopted on 4/21/14 (Changes the wording to “ANY” Revenue or Expenses)

C. Criteria for Analysis.

3. Revenue: "ANY" revenue from real property sales reported by the Entity on its 2010 Tax Return as ordinary income (other than depreciation recapture), rather than as capital gains income, typically shall be considered to be revenue associated with Real Estate Development Activity. This includes, but is not limited to, the 2010 sale of any real property developed by the Entity, including individual condominium or vacation rental units, timeshare estates, timeshare interests, or vacation ownership interests.

4. Expenses: "ANY" information on any of these expenses of the Entity during 2010 that are considered to be associated with Real Estate Development Activity:


Policy 468 will now exclude any employee that works in the hospitality trade because his /her employer list “ANY” sales revenue or expenses on their tax returns. B&G handles the IEL claims current stats 42,603 claims filed 5,173 offers made.
Watch the denials sky rocket on the IEL claims. They sit on these claims then pass policies to kill them.

Anonymous said...

Policy 495 “The kiss of death”

The New Supreme Power The Court Vendors: they decide if the claim is matched, they decide the NAICS code and they get thousands of billable hours. While the claimant gets a 2% reimbursement of accounting fee’s limited to the calculated loss only, excluding the RTP.

One very important point:this policy and percentages used in the 7 points were created using the claims submitted.(Another reason for expediting claims.)

“Based upon the CSSP’s experience in reviewing claims and analyzing accounting records submitted to the CSSP since the inception of this settlement program and in light of the rulings and directives received from the Court, the Claims Administrator, in consultation with the CSSP Accounting Vendors, has arrived at the following conclusions relative to the “matching” issues at hand:”

Second point: sampling program where’s numbers on the effected claims, how many will be denied due to causation, how much will this increase or decrease a claim in the sampling test and will the claimant be able to satisfy the new document request?

Policy Development Process
In the process of developing this policy as directed by the Court, the Claims Administrator has conducted extensive consultations with the Court Supervised Settlement Program (“CSSP”) Accounting Vendors (PricewaterhouseCoopers and Postlethwaite & Netterville) and has received significant input from both BP and Class Counsel. The Claims Administrator’s efforts in this regard have included:

Underlying Issues / Principles
5.If a claimant’s contemporaneous P&Ls submitted to the CAO are deemed to be ‘sufficiently matched’ based on an assessment by the CSSP Accounting Vendors, such P&Ls will be utilized in calculating compensation under the Settlement Agreement. In utilizing such contemporaneous P&Ls, corrections will be made for any accounting “errors” identified in the ordinary course, by the CSSP Accounting Vendors.1

10.It is the intent of this policy to ensure both causation determination and compensation determination are both based on sufficiently matched P&Ls.

11.Consideration of whether revenues and expenses are sufficiently matched necessarily involves an element of professional judgment. The CSSP recognizes and reserves the right of the CSSP Accounting Vendors to exercise such professional judgment to achieve sufficient matching as ordered by the Court.4

See seven points:

For those claims determined not to be sufficiently matched, the CSSP Accounting Vendors will adjust the claimant-submitted accounting records as outlined in paragraph II below in order to achieve sufficient matching as per the orders of the Court.

A.Determination of Applicable Methodology.

Claims will be assigned to an industry type for purposes of these methodologies using NAICS codes as outlined in Attachment A. To the extent that in the professional judgment of the CSSP Accounting Vendors assignment to a methodology by such NAICS code is inappropriate based on that claimant’s particular business activities, the CSSP reserves the right to revise the applicable methodology to achieve sufficient matching as ordered by the Court.

IN-HALE