Monday, May 5, 2014


News Clips For The Day


www.snopes.com

Welcome to snopes.com, the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. Use the search box above to locate your item of interest, or click one of the icons below to browse the site by category.


I am showing this web site because I just discovered it this morning when I looked up a conspiracy theory on the web. One of the reporters is Ben Stein, who is very funny. I've seen him on television a couple of times. You may want to put this website on your favorites list to use the next time you hear something suspicious being reported as the truth. Now to the news of the day.




Spreading Polio a Global Health Emergency, WHO Says
BY MAGGIE FOX
First published May 5th 2014

The spread of polio is an international health emergency that requires “extraordinary measures” to control it, the World Health Organization said Monday.

Three countries are spreading the virus to the rest of the world and need to act immediately to stop it, by vaccinating the population and vaccinating travelers, WHO said.

“If unchecked, this situation could result in failure to eradicate globally one of the world’s most serious vaccine preventable diseases. It was the unanimous view of the Committee that the conditions for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern have been met,” WHO said in a statement.

“Pakistan, Cameroon, and the Syrian Arab Republic pose the greatest risk of further wild poliovirus exportations in 2014,” it added. The war in Syria has interrupted vaccination and allowed the virus to return. In Pakistan, Taliban militants have attacked workers trying to vaccinate children.

WHO said 417 cases of the disease, which was once nearly eradicated, were reported in 2013. The virus only infects human beings and WHO has been close many times to completely eradicating polio, like smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s.
But conflict often intervenes, like it has in Pakistan and Syria, making it difficult to vaccinate children.

WHO said Pakistan, Cameroon and Syria should make sure that all residents and long-term visitors receive a dose of polio vaccine at least a month before traveling internationally and should require proof of vaccination to travel.

“If the virus is re-introduced into a polio-free area it could become endemic again,” WHO’s Dr. Bruce Aylward told reporters on a conference call. “Indeed it could become endemic again in the world.”

There is clear evidence that travelers are spreading the virus, WHO says
"At end-2013, 60 percent of polio cases were the result of international spread of wild poliovirus, and there was increasing evidence that adult travelers contributed to this spread," WHO said. "During the 2014 low transmission season there has already been international spread of wild poliovirus from three of the 10 states that are currently infected."

The seven other countires that still have polio -- Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Somalia and Nigeria -- also need to step up vaccination efforts, WHO said.

The virus has been found in the sewers in Israel, although not in people. The vaccine that is usually used keeps people from getting sick but allows the virus to live in the gut, so it can be found in raw sewage. Israeli officials have redoubled vaccination efforts.



Poliomyelitis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although approximately 90% of polio infections cause no symptoms at all, affected individuals can exhibit a range of symptoms if the virus enters theblood stream.[3] In about 1% of cases, the virus enters the central nervous system, preferentially infecting and destroying motor neurons, leading tomuscle weakness and acute flaccid paralysis. Different types of paralysis may occur, depending on the nerves involved. Spinal polio is the most common form, characterized by asymmetric paralysis that most often involves the legs. Bulbar polio leads to weakness of muscles innervated bycranial nerves. Bulbospinal polio is a combination of bulbar and spinal paralysis.[4]

Poliomyelitis was first recognized as a distinct condition by Jakob Heine in 1840.[5] Its causative agent, poliovirus, was identified in 1908 by Karl Landsteiner.[5] Polio had existed for thousands of years in certain areas, with depictions of the disease in ancient art. Major polio epidemics started to appear in the late 19th century in Europe and soon after the United States,[6] and it became one of the most dreaded childhood diseases of the 20th century. The epidemics are attributed to better sanitation which reduced the prevalence of the disease among young children who were more likely to be asymptomatic. Survivors then develop immunity.[7] By 1910, much of the world experienced a dramatic increase in polio cases and epidemics became regular events, primarily in cities during the summer months. These epidemics—which left thousands of children and adults paralyzed—provided the impetus for a "Great Race" towards the development of a vaccine. Developed in the 1950s, polio vaccines have reduced the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to under a thousand today.[8] Enhanced vaccination efforts led by Rotary International, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF should result in global eradication of the disease,[9][10][11]although in 2013 there were reports by the World Health Organization of new cases in Syria.[12]

On 5 May 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the spread of polio is a world health emergency - outbreaks of the disease in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are considered "extraordinary".[13][14]

 As of 2013, polio remains endemic in only three countries:Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan,[80][91] although it continues to cause epidemics in other nearby countries due to hidden or reestablished transmission.[92] For example, despite eradication ten years prior, an outbreak was confirmed in China in September 2011 involving a strain prevalent in neighboring Pakistan.[93] Since January 2011, there have been no reported cases of the wild polio infections in India, and in February 2012 the country was taken off the WHO list of polio endemic countries. It is reported that if there are no cases of wild polio in the country for two more years, it will be declared as a polio-free country.[94][95] On 27 March 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) declared India a polio free country with no case of disease being reported in last three years.[96]

In 2003 in northern Nigeria—a country which at that time was considered provisionally polio free—a fatwa was issued declaring that the polio vaccine was a conspiracy by the United States and the United Nations against the Muslim faith, saying also that the drops were designed to sterilize the true believers.[97] Subsequently, polio reappeared in Nigeria and spread from there to several other countries.[98] Health workers administering polio vaccine have been targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano.[99]




“Three countries are spreading the virus to the rest of the world.... “Pakistan, Cameroon, and the Syrian Arab Republic, ” taken from the original news article. The Wikipedia article lists Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, then later gives the information that Nigeria issued a fatwa against the vaccination, claiming that “the drops” of vaccine were a part of a US and UN conspiracy aimed at “sterilizing the true believers.”

I hate to say it, but religions which demand absolute obedience and unwavering “faith” cause more trouble than they cure. Nothing is so detrimental to good common sense as “conservative” religion. In Europe in the middle ages and renaissance it was rampant anti-Jewish feeling and the rejection of the science of the day. In this case, it's the hatred of “Western” ways and beliefs. Clearly these people are being deprived of a higher standard of life in general in the aim to keep out Western liberalism. Western liberalism causes women to rebel, of course. To me, it's just immorality on the part of the Taliban and other extreme Muslim groups in the aim of achieving and maintaining total power over the populations of those countries.

“WHO said Pakistan, Cameroon and Syria should make sure that all residents and long-term visitors receive a dose of polio vaccine at least a month before traveling internationally and should require proof of vaccination to travel.” The total list of countries that has active “wild poliomyelitis” populations includes Israel, which though vaccinating its people, is using a vaccine that allows the virus to continue to live in the gut without making the individual sick, and therefore the sewers in Israel contain it. “Israeli officials have redoubled vaccination efforts” is good news.

Viruses that can live for some time outside the body of a host are really dangerous. The common cold is now thought to be spread by touching household surfaces as much as by sneezing. Frequent hand washing is part of the prevention of such viruses. Polio is, of course, much worse because it can be really devastating. There was a report within the last couple of years that some Americans are not vaccinated for polio now, and also that some people vaccinated back in the 1950's have partially lost their immunity and may need a booster shot. So if you live in the US and were vaccinated in the 1950's, ask your doctor about a booster.





Young blood rejuvenates older animals, studies show
By AMANDA COCHRAN CBS NEWS May 5, 2014

Three new medical studies show young blood may be able to improve lives.

Researchers took old mice and gave them blood, and blood proteins, from young mice. They found the old mice showed improved muscle and brain function. The older animals ran faster and longer on a treadmill, had an increased rate of new brain cell creation, were more sensitive to changes in smell and improved on age-related memory tasks.

The studies were conducted at Harvard University, University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University and published in the publications Science and Nature Medicine.

"It was something -- a cross between vampire and Frankenstein where they took two animals and they hooked their blood supply for four weeks called parabiosis," CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus explained on "CBS This Morning."

"It was an experiment that was originally done in the '50s that showed mice seem to reverse aging. Now we know the mechanism. So three separate groups showed this. When you hook the blood together, after four weeks, the stem cells in the brain and the muscle and heart, they get activated and turn back on. And in fact, the young mice age and old mice reverse age. Very powerful. Their brain works better, they were able to get through a maze better. Their muscles work better. So certainly very exciting findings."

Scientists hope these mouse studies will lead to anti-aging treatments for humans.

Looking forward to clinical trial research on humans -- which researchers say will begin this year -- the hope is that the particular protein will be identified so researchers won't need all of the blood from the young person, Agus said.

"So the dream is, instead of treating the disease, we actually change you so you're not aging and you can actually, hopefully even reverse it," Agus said. "It has enormous implications for people with disease and people as they grow older."

Though the implications for humans based on this animal study are unknown, Agus said, "there clearly is something here."

He added, "These are the best science journals with really well done science, but it will take a while before we understand how to control it and use it appropriately and safely in humans."





Of course it's only in mice so far, but it looks like a possible treatment for Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, or other things that are age related. Scientists hooked up an old mouse with a young one for four weeks, commingling their blood in a process called “parabiosis." Miraculous changes occurred in the brain and other bodily parts of the older mouse, improving it's maze running ability and even increasing the number of new brain cells grown. “...the stem cells in the brain and the muscle and heart, they get activated and turn back on. And in fact, the young mice age and old mice reverse age.” This sounds to me like it's good for old mice, but not good for young mice. Human trials are due to be started this year, and scientists do hope to identify the specific protein involved so “all of the blood” from the young person won't be needed. Good.





Man who went to prison 13 years late ordered released
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP May 5, 2014

CHARLESTON, Mo. - A judge ruled Monday that a Missouri man who was sent to prison 13 years after his robbery conviction due to a clerical error should be immediately released, reports CBS affiliate KFVS.

Cornealious "Mike" Anderson, of St. Louis County, was convicted of robbery in 2000 and sentenced to 13 years but was never told when and where to report to prison. He spent the next 13 years turning his life around - getting married, raising three kids, learning a trade. He made no effort to conceal his identity or whereabouts. Anderson paid taxes and traffic tickets, renewed his driver's license and registered his businesses. 

Not until last year did the Missouri Department of Corrections discover the clerical error that kept him free and authorities went to his home and arrested him. 

"They sent a SWAT team to his house," Anderson's attorney, Patrick Megaro, told the Associated Press in April. "He was getting his 3-year-old daughter breakfast, and these men with automatic weapons bang on his door."

He has been imprisoned in the Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston, Mo. ever since. But on Monday, the 37-year-old Anderson appeared in court to fight for his freedom and Mississippi County Associate Circuit Judge Terry Lynn Brown ruled that keeping Anderson in prison would serve no purpose, reports KFVS.

"You're a free man," Judge Brown reportedly said, telling Anderson to go back to his family.

CBS affiliate KMOV reports Anderson then went and embraced his wife and daughter in the courtroom. According to KFVS, Anderson's family erupted in tears. His wife reportedly said she is jumping for joy.

Anderson had one arrest for marijuana possession on his record when he and a cousin robbed an assistant manager of a St. Charles Burger King restaurant on Aug. 15, 1999. The men, wearing masks, showed a BB gun and demanded money that was about to be placed in a deposit box.

The worker gave up the bag of cash, and the masked men drove away. The worker turned in the car's license plate number.

When Anderson was never told to report to prison after his conviction, his attorney reportedly told him to just wait. 

"A year goes by, two years, five years, 10 years. He's thinking, `I guess they don't care about me anymore,'" Megaro previously told the Associated Press.

So Anderson went about his life.

Peter Joy, director of the Criminal Justice Clinic at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, previously told the Associated Press it isn't unusual in a country with such a high prison population for sentences to fall through the cracks. What is unusual, Joy said, is for it to go unnoticed for so long.

"The real tragedy here is that one aspect of prison is the idea of rehabilitation," Joy said. "Here we have somebody who has led a perfect life for 13 years. He did everything right. So he doesn't need rehabilitation."





My, my! This is a great news story! “CBS affiliate KMOV reports Anderson then went and embraced his wife and daughter in the courtroom. According to KFVS, Anderson's family erupted in tears. His wife reportedly said she is jumping for joy.”

According to Peter Joy of the Criminal Justice Clinic at Washington University School of Law, “it isn't unusual in a country with such a high prison population for sentences to fall through the cracks.” I have heard that there can be a problem finding bed space for new prisoners in some prisons. An article I saw during the last few years said that this is the main reason for some judges beginning to make “creative” sentences for prisoners. I haven't always thought those sentences are sufficient and in some other cases they have seemed “cruel or unusual.”

If the trend is approved by the Supreme Court, though, it is probably better if fewer people are imprisoned. Prison is supposed to be a form of rehabilitation, but I don't think it usually is, and some things done in prisons like solitary confinement over long periods of time are very damaging to some people. Maybe that is “cruel and unusual.” If more prisoners could be restored to their positions in society and given another chance I would be glad.





Why don't women propose to men? – CBS
AP May 5, 2014

WASHINGTON -- Steve Paska waited two weeks for Washington's famously fickle cherry blossoms to emerge, then spent two hours searching for the perfect spot beneath the canopy of fluff. He lured his girlfriend there on the pretext of buying a painting of the blooms. Then he surprised her by dropping to one knee and proposing.

She said "yes" so fast he forgot to pull out the ring.

Go to any wedding celebration this nuptial season, whether in a ballroom or backyard or church basement, and it's a good bet you can trace the big day to a similar start, with different flourishes.

If a man is marrying a woman somewhere in America, odds are that he proposed to her.

That may seem obvious, but consider this: Three-fourths of Americans say it would be fine for the woman to do the proposing, in theory.

In practice, only about 5 percent of those currently married say the woman proposed, and the figure is no higher among couples wed within the past 10 years. Attitudes actually seem to be trending the other way, an Associated Press-WE tv poll shows.

Young adults are more likely than their elders to consider it "unacceptable" for a woman to do the asking. More than one-third of those under age 30 disapprove.

While Paska, 26, believes female proposals are OK - after all, one of his sisters proposed to her boyfriend - he wanted to declare his love and dedication the traditional way.

"I think If she'd gotten down on one knee and asked me the question," Paska said, "I would have called for a timeout."

In the survey, nearly half of single women who hope to get married someday say they would consider proposing. Paska and his fiancee, Jessica Deegan, who both live in Arlington, Virginia, already had decided together that they wanted to marry, she said. Still, Deegan was thrilled that he made it official with a grand romantic gesture on April 10.

"It's kind of like the moment you imagine your whole life," she said. "I've seen that in movies. I've read that in books. You don't want to miss out on that moment."

That traditional moment has survived radical changes in U.S. marriages over the past half-century. People are marrying older; brides are more likely to be already supporting themselves. It's become commonplace to live together first, even to have children before marriage. Some men are proposing to men and women to women, now that one-third of U.S. states allow gay marriage.

But the boy-asks-girl proposal still reigns, updated to a public art form in Facebook and YouTube videos that feature flash mobs or scavenger hunts or proposals while skydiving or swimming with dolphins. "Destination" proposals are trending, too, for men who want a California beach or the Eiffel Tower as the setting.

There are even "proposal planners" who can help arrange flowers, musicians and a videographer. Ellie Pitts, a planner who works in Dallas for The Yes Girls, said the group has handled more than 350 proposals around the country and abroad, nearly all by men.

A few clients were lesbians. Only one so far was a woman asking a man - a boyfriend whose proposal she had turned down previously.

"I think it probably takes a woman with a lot of guts to be able to do it," said Pitts, who is newly engaged herself, to a man who did the asking. "At least in my experience with my girlfriends, women tend to be a little more ready to get engaged and move forward than men are, so asking the question before he asks might tend to backfire."

A woman who proposes also risks criticism for her boldness, said Katherine Parkin, an associate professor of history at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

Parkin researched the folk tradition that claimed women could propose only during a leap year. She found that the idea triggered mockery every four years for much of the 20th century. Postcards, ads and articles portrayed women who would propose as desperate, aggressive and unattractive. The leap year joke has faded, she said, but the stigma lingers.

"I don't see much changing to challenge that notion, to say a regular woman, a good woman, could propose," Parkin said, although she notes that a few celebrities, such as singer Britney Spears, have done so in the public eye.

Becky Paska, sister of Steve, said she worried that proposing to her longtime boyfriend, Danny Brady, might make him feel embarrassed or emasculated.

But she wanted to demonstrate the depth of her commitment, because years earlier she had accepted Brady's surprise proposal and then backed out.

So Paska, 28, asked for his hand at the Thanksgiving dinner table as her family was reflecting on their blessings.

"I said I was so thankful for having him in my life, and we'd gone through so many things, and I'd love to marry him," she said. "And he said, 'I'd love to marry you, too.'"

Paska, of Richmond, Virginia, and Brady, of Charlottesville, Virginia, plan an August wedding on the beach.

In the AP-WE tv poll, recently married couples were less likely to say they got engaged by "mutual agreement," instead of through one partner's proposal, than were people married longer. About one-quarter of those married at least 30 years say it was a mutual decision; that drops below one-tenth of those wed in the past decade.

Among the newer unions, 83 percent said the man proposed.

That may reflect today's emphasis on creating a good proposal story to share with others.
Pitts, the proposal planner, said her clients usually have discussed marriage with their girlfriends and sometimes they shop for rings together before the man formally "pops the question."

The Rev. Joel Stafford of Patton, Missouri, sees nothing wrong with women taking the lead, the way his future wife did more than 40 years ago.

"It just got to the point where she said, 'Why don't we get married?' and I said, 'Of course," Stafford recalled. "I would have eventually built up the courage to do it myself. But she didn't wait."

They did wait a little longer for the ceremony, so she could graduate high school. Stafford and his wife, Sherry, married in June 1973, raised four children and have 13 grandchildren.

"Whether you are the boy or the girl, if you feel you are at the point you want to make a lifetime commitment, express that," Stafford advises. "Don't be shy like I was."

The poll was conducted in conjunction with WE tv from Jan. 17-21 using KnowledgePanel, GfK's probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It involved online interviews with 1,060 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for the full sample.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods and were later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost to them.





“Three-fourths of Americans say it would be fine for the woman to do the proposing, in theory.” That trend is reversing, though, this article says. “More than one-third of those under age 30 disapprove.” Paska, the 26 year old man in this article said, "I think If she'd gotten down on one knee and asked me the question," Paska said, "I would have called for a timeout."

According to Ellie Pitts, a proposal planner, "At least in my experience with my girlfriends, women tend to be a little more ready to get engaged and move forward than men are, so asking the question before he asks might tend to backfire." This issue, plus the turnoff that assertive women have to many men, is the real key, I think. Of course, maybe men can be so romantically inclined themselves that they savor the great moment for it's emotional value.

Katherine Parkin, an associate professor of history, researched the leap year proposal tradition. “Postcards, ads and articles portrayed women who would propose as desperate, aggressive and unattractive. The leap year joke has faded, she said, but the stigma lingers.
"I don't see much changing to challenge that notion, to say a regular woman, a good woman, could propose," Parkin said.

I tend to think that men and women should become thoroughly comfortable with each other, know each other well, and then discuss their relationship – including the sex – so more of them should by nature come to the agreement to marry by mutual consent. Of course I'm in that older generation, and aligned toward a “hippie” turn of mind when I was young – Women's Lib and all that. Now I'm just liberal in general. I wouldn't want to marry anybody, though, without the existence of a close talking relationship. I also am not in love with the idea of somebody dropping down to one knew and surprising me with a marriage proposal, especially in a public setting. That would put a lot of pressure on me. Maybe I would like some time to think about it myself!! I married twice and divorced both times, so I won't be jumping into any more marriages.





BP cries foul in massive oil spill settlement – CBS
By Scott Pelley
May 4, 2014

The biggest accidental oil spill the world has ever seen began with the explosion, in 2010, of theDeepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of businesses suffered along an oily arc from Texas to Florida. And BP, the company at fault, started paying them compensation right away. BP says it wanted to do the right thing and paying victims early bought the company some goodwill at the time that it was facing criminal charges and billions in federal fines. But now, four years later, BP says it's the victim of Gulf Coast swindlers who have the oil giant over a barrel. BP says it is being forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to people who never saw oil anywhere but on TV.

The explosion was a catastrophe. Eleven crew members were killed. The gusher flowed 87 days. BP put up billions to pay compensation and hired attorney Ken Feinberg to sort out who was hurt by the spill and who was not.

Ken Feinberg: One fellow down in Alabama said to me, when I asked him for proof, he said, "Mr. Feinberg we do things with a handshake down here." I said, "That's fine, but a handshake won't get you compensation.

Scott Pelley: Why is it so important to hold everyone to that standard of proof?

Ken Feinberg: Because there'll be another catastrophe. And a catastrophe after that. What happens the next time, in terms of a company's willingness to do something similar?

Feinberg has long experience. He ran the compensation program for victims of 9/11. In the BP disaster, he told us there were often two kinds of applicants, the deserving and the devious.

Scott Pelley: What was the most outrageous claim you got?

Ken Feinberg: I think there was a fellow in Oslo, Norway, if I remember correctly who slipped on the ice while he was filing a claim and sought damages for a broken leg.

Scott Pelley: People saw money and they tried to get it.

Ken Feinberg: Human nature. Goes with the territory. I think that if you had any type of compensation program anywhere, you get a fair number of people who try and game the system to try and recover compensation.

Feinberg says, out of more than a million claims, he found only a third were justified. His critics said too many claims were being denied. So to avoid decades of court battles and uncertainty, BP agreed to a more lenient compensation program. But now BP Senior Vice President Geoff Morell says the oil giant is getting soaked by businesses with losses that are not linked to the spill.

Geoff Morell: We're talking about a wireless phone company store that burned to the ground and shut down before the spill. An RV park owner that was foreclosed upon before the spill. And I love this one. A Pontiac dealer who could no longer sell Pontiacs because GM had discontinued the line before the spill. 

Scott Pelley: Those are all real examples and they are people who actually got a check?

Geoff Morell: Those are all real examples and are, frankly not exceptions but rather emblematic of a far larger problem. There are more than a thousand claims just like them that had glaring red flags associated with them that should have been picked out by the claims administrator and instead were ultimately awarded more than $500 million.

That's how BP adds it up, but the new claims administrator, Pat Juneau, says BP is getting what it asked for. Juneau's Deepwater Horizon claims center replaced Ken Feinberg. Same job, new rules.

Scott Pelley: BP makes it sound like you're throwing millions of dollars away to people who have no stake in the oil spill whatsoever.

Pat Juneau: I have an obligation as a court-appointed official by the federal court to implement what these two parties wrote.

The "parties" are BP and, on the other side, lawyers representing victims. They negotiated a settlement with a fairly simple formula. BP agreed to pay businesses whose income dropped after the spill, and then rebounded one year later. Trouble was some attorneys soliciting clients, took that to mean any business with a loss of any kind.

[Brooks/LeBoeuf: Your losses don't have to be directly traceable to the oil spill.]

[W.F. Casey: "Do I have to prove the oil spill directly harmed my business?" The answer is no.]

[Gusty Yearout/Lloyd Gathings: A business does not have to prove that their loss was directly caused by that event.]

Geoff Morell: There was a proliferation of these kinds of ads. And there was almost a pied piper like recruitment of claimants and compounding that problem was the fact that the claims administrator the facility began to pay these claims.

One attorney's flyer says, "The craziest thing about the settlement is that you can be compensated for losses that are unrelated to the spill." BP's attorney Ted Olson has a word for that.

Ted Olson: I think that's fraud. We want to compensate legitimate claimants. But this here's an incentive to encourage people to commit fraud and that that is wrong.

So BP launched its own ad campaign which pointed to $60,000 that went to colorectal surgeons 300 miles from the coast and 173,000 paid to an escort service in Florida. BP also claims $8 million was approved for companies that clean up after hurricanes. Their income was down after the spill, because there were no hurricanes that made landfall that year.

Pat Juneau, the claims administrator, told us he questioned the eligibility formula at the start, because it didn't require proof of a link to the spill. He asked BP about that. And BP replied in the court record, that if the numbers fit the formula "all losses...are presumed to be attributable to the oil spill" (even if) "the decline was...wholly unrelated to the oil spill." With that, Juneau decided that if a business lost money he was not allowed to ask why.

Jim Roy: It's a black and white formula, a deal is a deal, Scott.

Jim roy is a lawyer for the victims. He helped negotiate the eligibility formula with BP.

Jim Roy: Well, I think BP has buyer's remorse. BP told the court that it believed that this was gonna be a $7.8 billion dollar settlement. But I think it's gonna be considerably more than the amount of money that BP said it was gonna cost.

We called more than a dozen of the applicants that BP says, took unfair advantage of the deal-- but all of them declined to be interviewed.

Scott Pelley: Do you think that might be because they're feeling sort of sheepish about receiving that check?

Jim Roy: No, I think there are two things going on. I think, one, most of these businesses understand that they want their lives to stay private. And number two, the last thing you want is to go on "60 Minutes" with Scott Pelley to broadcast anything about them personally.

But there could be another reason, on the claim form that applicants sign under penalty of perjury it says that they: "assert economic loss due to the spill." BP lawyer Ted Olson says it shouldn't matter that the formula to calculate the loss doesn't consider the cause.
Ted Olson: You had to have been hurt by the oil spill.

Scott Pelley: BP's accounting expert, Holly Sharp, testified in 2012 that once a business meets the formula, all losses are, quote "presumed to be caused by the spill with no analysis required to determine whether the declines might have been due at least in part, to other causes." I mean it just seems that that's what BP agreed to. You made your bed, and now you're lying in it.

Ted Olson: The part that you just quoted for me started off with, "Once you meet the formula." The formula is that first of all you have to establish that you were injured as a result of this. Otherwise anyone can walk in and say, "I had a bad year. Pay me money."
Scott Pelley: And that's exactly what's happening?

Ted Olson: That's exactly what's happening.

Scott Pelley: The front page of the settlement claim form says, quote, "The claim is for those that assert economic loss due to the spill." What does due to the spill mean to you?

Jim Roy: Caused. But if they qualify whatever that calculation is, they should be paid. You may, in hindsight judge, "That just doesn't seem right." I may judge in hindsight, although I don't that that just doesn't seem right. But that's the deal BP asked for. That's the deal BP got. And the deal BP got was for the entire states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Claims administrator Pat Juneau is rejecting about 40 percent of claims -- when companies can't prove an economic loss -- of some kind. But he has approved more than $3 billion in claims so far

Scott Pelley: So, in a nutshell, if they've got the right numbers they get a check?

Pat Juneau: I'm obliged to pay--honor and pay those claims.

Scott Pelley: BP essentially is saying that you're facilitating fraud.

Pat Juneau: I have never in my life--I'm 76 years old. I've been to a lot of rodeos in my life. I don't facilitate fraud. Fraud offends me.

Scott Pelley: But doesn't this do violence to common sense when you're paying claims to people who have no loss associated with the spill? How could that possibly be the intent of the agreement?

Pat Juneau: You do understand that I wasn't there when these parties agreed to this agreement. And that's what they agreed to.

Geoff Morell: But no company would ever agree to a settlement that compensates people who were not harmed by their actions and we most certainly did not agree to such a settlement.

Jim Roy: BP doesn't like the deal it cut now. I'm sorry about that. I can't help that. But I was in the room when this section of the deal was negotiated. Others on our team were there too. That's what we saw and heard. No doubt about it.

The battle, of course, is in the federal courts. BP has won a few on the size of some of the checks. But it's lost every attempt to reinterpret the formula that decides who is eligible.

Scott Pelley: Here in New Orleans, one federal judge said that BP was essentially trying to rewrite the deal. A federal appeals judge said that there was nothing fundamentally unreasonable about the deal that BP agreed to but now wishes it had not. BP is now asking the appeals court for one more hearing.

Scott Pelley: Is this a matter of BP's attorneys just having been hoodwinked? You accepted a deal without fully realizing what it meant and now you're stuck with it?

Ted Olson: No one could have anticipated that the system would go completely off the tracks, but that's why you have appellate courts. And that's why we have the Supreme Court. BP will take this as far as it is necessary to go to make sure that this settlement agreement is construed properly.

Scott Pelley: Did you guys take BP to the cleaners on this?

Jim Roy: No sir. BP got a good settlement. And BP was represented by very, very good lawyers who were worthy adversaries who fought tooth and nail for their client. And it was a hard-fought settlement. Their own lawyer said it was a very generous settlement.

Scott Pelley: That's not what they're saying now. There're saying it's a little too generous.

Jim Roy: It is what it is.

Now BP complains it feels like it's the visiting team fighting a home field advantage along a Gulf Coast that remembers vividly scenes like this.

Pat Juneau: If the inference is that we're giving preferential treatment and putting the screws to somebody here, myself or this court--that's grossly untrue. It's offensive, certainly offensive to me. And it shouldn't be said and it has no place in this litigation.

The trouble with the litigation now is that all compensation checks to businesses whether deserving or otherwise have been stopped while BP continues its appeals.




“BP says it is being forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to people who never saw oil anywhere but on TV.” If that's true, it certainly isn't justice, and there could be some exchange of favors between attorneys and judges facilitating the situation. According to BP Attorney Key Feinberg, “One fellow down in Alabama said to me, when I asked him for proof, he said, "Mr. Feinberg we do things with a handshake down here." I said, "That's fine, but a handshake won't get you compensation.” He states later, “I think that if you had any type of compensation program anywhere, you get a fair number of people who try and game the system to try and recover compensation.”

According to Pat Juneau, BP actually agreed to pay claims that did not include proof of any connection to the oil spill. This must have been as an expediency, but it was very unwise, it seems. Jim Roy stated that BP was expecting a $7.8 billion dollar settlement, but it is turning out to exceed that. “We called more than a dozen of the applicants that BP says, took unfair advantage of the deal-- but all of them declined to be interviewed.”

The fact that the BP agreement was based on the fact and timing of money loss and not on the cause is obviously the problem. I think BP should fire its entire legal staff. As one person in the article stated, “it's human nature” – I would beg to differ. It's American society which is verging toward amorality more and more as time goes on, and it isn't a lack of religion. We're covered up in religion. They're all very religious down there in the deep South. It's lack of civic spirit. People no longer are honoring the social bond between citizens. A hundred years ago fewer people would have stepped forward and made an unethical claim for money when in fact they weren't damaged.

BP is now going to appellate courts and may go to the Supreme Court, and meanwhile it has stopped all payments to businesses on their claims. There is one argument that I didn't see stated specifically in this article, which surprises me. The whole Gulf Coast area was massively damaged by that oil spill, lowering its value as a place to live and do business. Some of the environmental claims aren't even being addressed, at least not within the news article. That kind of damage is too often passed over by the courts, though environmentalists would like to see that change. They would like for big businesses to pay the entire cost of such a spill, and they never do, due to politics. If coal-fired power plants had to pay for the global warming that is occurring they would be working very hard indeed to find new ways of making electrical power, and people would be complaining of the unsightliness of wind farms or solar power units instead of the danger of CO2 emissions. That would be a real improvement. I could overlook the view, given our situation in the world today.