TX R-Joe Barton Hoping to Lift Crude Export Ban and Raise the Price of Gasoline in America.

[DhhD]

3. Yes. Barton even said something to the effect that the taxpayers should pick up BP's bill

for the damages. The government said that it would take about $20 Billion to cover the damages.

Just read that BP may get away with paying $1 Billion. So Barton may be boasting and roasting the taxpayers some more. What judges are allowing this to happen? Who appointed them. Who and why was Feinberg appointed to over see the payment for damages?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Feinberg

"Mr. Feinberg, employed by BP, has decided on his own authority that all claims recipients must release all companies who caused this disaster from any and all legal responsibility, no matter how grossly negligent they were. This sweeping release, which assigns victims’ claims to BP, benefits only one actor: BP – the company that happens to pay Mr. Feinberg’s salary.". In January 2011, Judge Barbier, the federal judge over the oil spill litigation, after hearing evidence and arguments of the attorneys, ruled that Kenneth Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim to be so. Feinberg had been telling victims he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.
The letter also criticized Feinberg's lack of transparency around compensation:
"Despite repeated calls for the release of documents establishing the formal relationship between BP and Feinberg Rozen, as well as its subcontractors who are reviewing and adjudicating claims, almost nothing has been publicly released. And now we learn, as reported by Reuters on November 22, 2010, that BP and Feinberg Rozen consider their arrangement “verbal,” i.e., they have not committed to writing the firm’s compensation arrangement so there can be no public examination of it. Is the public to believe that there is no paper evidence at all documenting a $10 million per year financial arrangement between BP and Feinberg Rozen? What about the contracts between BP, Feinberg Rozen and the subcontractors who are advising and adjudicating claims and also being paid directly by BP? Surely these contracts must be in writing and released. This failure to release the terms of all these financial arrangements under circumstances of tremendous historic and public significance is simply unacceptable."