Spill puts Obama's oil fund chief (Czar Feinberg) on hostile turf

Reuters via Yahoo Finance ^ | 7/26/2010 | Leigh Coleman & Rachelle Younglai

[Qbert]

BAYOU LA BATRE, Alabama (Reuters) - The man who acquired a solid gold reputation for fixing sticky situations for the U.S. government is facing one of his toughest challenges yet: running BP Plc's $20 billion compensation fund.

Kenneth Feinberg, lawyer extraordinaire, was in charge of compensating victims' families after the September 11, 2001 attacks and presided over executive pay at bailed-out Wall Street firms.

But the job President Barack Obama has asked him to do -- deciding who will be compensated from BP's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- is placing Feinberg in hostile territory where residents are still reeling from the federal government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Many areas in Louisiana and Mississippi never recovered from the 2005 hurricane. Buildings are gutted. Broken boats lie in marshes.

Now many of the same residents who were left to fend for themselves after Katrina are seeing their fishing and tourism industries fall apart from the oil spill.

"Feinberg is full of baloney. He is a lawyer and that is how lawyers talk. I do not believe a word he says," Delane Seaman said after attending one of Feinberg's town hall meetings in Bayou La Batre on Sunday.

[sinanju]

I don’t see how even a Solomon could fairly determine who should be compensated for lost business and wages. That is impossible. Anybody can claim anything.

I heard Feinberg when he first took the job, I saw a little man drunk with ego. I still recall the New Yorker article on his 9/11 work an it struck me as utterly bizarre how anyone could be entrusted with deciding whose death in the Twin Towers should rate more compensation and whose less. That pot of money should have been simply divided up equally and distributed to the families of those who lost a breadwinner and left at that.

The article makes it sound like Feinberg is no longer finding the job so enjoyable but as long as people are lined up kissing his feet and begging his favor I guess he’ll stay at it.

[goseminoles]

I was thinking about this this morning. Where is all that money going???

[caseinpoint]

Well, he’s having to deal with the “little folks” here. In his previous jobs he got to hobnob with finance people and World Trade Center survivor families. He did have some hoi polloi among the World Trade Center victims, the janitors, the waiters, and so forth, but this is an entirely different breed of folks. Not New York at all.

[Brugmansian]

He was Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff. He’s also the “Pay Czar”. The power this guy has been given over the years is downright un-American.

[DustyMoment]

Here’s an idea (sez DustyMoment, adjusting his asbestos undies), why not let BP handle it? They were making the payments and working with the people of the region and NOt acting as the king’s tax collector deciding who owed more and who owed less. Essentially, that’s what this guy is doing (except in reverse)!!

Besides, he’s just the barrier between the “little people” and Obama’s $20 Billion slush fund, courtesy of BP.

[Sunshine Sister]

I encourage the people of the Gulf to let this guy have it. He isn’t in DC any more and it’s high time those insulated boobs get a piece of mind from real Americans who don’t put up with BS.

[Eyes Unclouded]

I encourage the people of the Gulf to be happy with whatever crumbs they get from this czar and leave the region. Not nice to hear I know but I’m just calling it like I see it.