Are You Kidding Me ? ! ?

We respect our esteemed opponent Amy Weiss for creating such an outrageous spin.  We are disappointed in our own Sun Herald for reporting this as fact.  Sun Herald, Tuesday, March 15, page 5A.

Feinberg: 54 percent of claims paid

By KAREN NELSON - klnelson@sunherald.com

GULFPORT -- Those who handle claims against BP for the oil rig explosion and spill announced a milestone Monday -- 54 percent of all claims submitted since November have been paid.
The claims of casino workers are not included in these figures.
November marked the end of the emergency payment period for people injured by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.

Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of claims, said they have received approximately 256,000 individual and business claims of all types since November, that includes those asking for final, interim or quick payments.
Feinberg said they have processed 138,874, leaving 117,889 yet to be processed.
Hundreds of claims continue to be filed every day.
Of the quick payments of $5,000 for individuals or $25,000 for a business, 100,000 have been paid for a total of approximately $1 billion.
The final rules for claims were announced less than a month ago and Feinberg and his staff have made final payment offers to 18,562 people and businesses totaling $174 million. About 6,600 of those have accepted for $66.6 million. The others have 90 days to make a decision.
More than 2,700 interim payments have been made for a total of $37 million. And 19,400 claimants have received a letter asking for more information and documentation before their claim can be paid.
About 2,300 were notified that they would receive nothing for their claim. And 3,100 claims were officially denied.
“We are determined to continue to accelerate the processing of all individual and business claims,” Feinberg said.

Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/03/14/2942145/feinberg-54-percent-of-claims.html#ixzz1GgYYX4Mh

 

Enclosed is our email to the Sun Herald:

 

Gentlemen,

 

I must respectfully ask for a retraction or correction of your story "Feinberg: 54 percent of claims paid" on page 5A of the Sun Herald, Tuesday, March 14.  This is a very sensitive issue to many who are hurting on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The issue is central to major economic impact for the entire Gulf Coast.  Whether it will remain the current negative impact, or perhaps turn out more positive remains to be seen.

 

The facts are these, as published on the gccf website this morning:  Since November, 256,621 claims have been filed.  100,252 claims have been paid.  39%, not 54%.  The headline is repeated as fact in the first paragraph as well.  Buried in the article are numbers showing that 54% have been "processed".  But those of us who have been struggling since the blow-out will tell you that there is a big difference between "processed" and "paid". 

 

The headline and the first paragraph are outright untruths.  The rest of the article is simply deception, misdirection, and smokescreen.  Almost all of the 100,000 paid are the Quick Claim sign-offs only for those who have already received emergency claim help.  They are rubber-stamp approved and require no additional paperwork or adjusting.  The very serious business of Interim and Final Claims is a whole different story.  Since November, there have been 157,143 Interim and Final Claims filed.  Only 3835 have been paid, about 2 1/2 %.  There is your real headline as it impacts the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

 

I speak for many when I say that we would very much appreciate active investigative digging into the gccf-Feinberg mess.  The gccf-Feinberg-Amy Weiss Public Affairs group has a history of publishing deception and misdirection disguised as press release.  Please try not to print anything from them without checking the facts.

 

We would certainly hope for an accurate rebuttal from the Sun Herald with at least as big a headline, "ONLY TWO PERCENT PAID", and at least as many inches.