BP Dodging Responsibility for Oil Spill - Victims Facing Wall of Red Tape

Why Wasn't This Predicted? It Was Certainly Predictable To Me

This is why FEMA or some other Federal agency should be running the claims process. The government should pay the victims and make them whole, then go to BP and ask ...take the money to reimburse the taxpayers. This should have been the plan from the beginning. I never understood the logic behind allowing BP to handle every part of this, from controlling their own crime scene (outrageous), all the way to handling the financial claims for the victims (when the company has a clear incentive and motive not to pay). It makes absolutely no sense. I thought it was idiotic from the start...and that this would be the likely outcome.

It appears that BP intends to create so much red tape that the people simply give up in frustration and go away. THIS is the kind of madness that I want Obama to do something about. He shouldn't just get angry. Anger with no action to back it up is just acting to me. He has to couple his anger with deeds. He has to demonstrate both.



From MSNBC report on BP's mishandling of claims:

GRAND ISLE, La. - Gulf Coast fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with BP over the oil spill are angrily complaining of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under as the financial and environmental toll of the disaster grows by the day.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, the oil company Wednesday captured an ever larger-share of the crude gushing from the bottom of the sea and began bringing in more heavy equipment to handle it.

The containment effort played out as BP stock plunged to its lowest level in 14 years amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Shrimpers, oystermen, seafood businesses, out-of-work drilling crews and the tourism industry all are lining up to get paid back the billions of dollars washed away by the disaster, and tempers have flared as locals direct outrage at BP over what they see as a tangle of red tape.

"Every day we call the adjuster eight or 10 times. There's no answer, no answering machine," said Regina Shipp, who has filed $33,000 in claims for lost business at her restaurant in Alabama. "If BP doesn't pay us within two months, we'll be out of business. We've got two kids."

An Alabama property owner who has lost vast sums of rental income angrily confronted a BP executive at a town meeting. The owner of a Mississippi seafood restaurant said she is desperately waiting for a check to come through because fewer customers come by for shrimp po-boys and oyster sandwiches.

Some locals see dark parallels to what happened after Hurricane Katrina, when they had to wait years to get reimbursed for losses.

Continue to full report

Hear an NPR discussion on the failures surrounding the BP disaster.