SUNDAY,MAY 16, 2010
KLMNO
B
B5
Britain’s transition is done. We’re still at it.
transition from B1
Spring Cleaning 2nd annual
READERS’
CHOICES
Many thanks to the hun- dreds of Outlook readers who responded to last week’s Spring Cleaning feature with suggestions for more things we should toss out. Popular entries included the elector- al college, the penny and for- mer Bush adviser (and Spring Cleaning contribu- tor) Karl Rove. Here is a sampling of the most pas- sionate and persuasive read- er suggestions:
c “Those digital overhead road
signs that people slow down to
read. Do we really need to know how long it will take us to reach I-95 ?”
c“Dump the volunteer Army
and go back to the draft. . . .
When there was a draft, most Americans took an interest in who got drafted to go to war be- cause these draftees were our children. If we had a draft, per- haps we wouldn’t go to war so easily. . . . Wouldn’t we want more of a say about going to war?
c“The No. 1 thing on my spring cleaning list of things to throw
out would most definitely have to be the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.”
c“WE should also GET rid of
THE CAPS LOCK KEY! TYPING
IN ALL CAPITALS IS REALLY ANNOYING AND ONLY MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN INSANE CONSPIRACY THEORIST THAT’S TOO NUTS TO SEE HOW NUTS YOU REALLY ARE!”
c“In the modern world, trans- actions are digital, so it is only
logical that our currency should follow suit. In this fast-paced so- ciety, it is much quicker to swipe a credit or debit card then to dig for cash. This creates the need to make change, and as a cashier, I know how annoying and incon- venient it is trying to do mental math. . . . In addition, cash is grimy and disgusting.”
c “Plus S&H [shipping and han- dling]: Don’t feed me this un-
known cost. I want to know what it will cost to put it in my hands.”
c“The automatic transmission
comes to mind. . . . It would take
[care of] the 25 percent of the population that do not possess the coordination to move their left foot and right arm simulta- neously. People who lack this co- ordination do not possess the co- ordination to operate a two-ton projectile at any velocity. . . . Fi- nally, the cellphone abuse — it is difficult to divide your attention to a cellphone when a clutch and a gear shift require manipula- tion.”
cAnd our winner, courtesy of Chris Edwards of Harri- sonburg, Va., is car alarms:
“I had long tried to ignore the oc- casional earsplitting devices’ out- bursts, and to smile (if painfully) at apologetic shrugs from an of- fending car’s apparent owners. I’ve watched would-be helpers gather, patiently trying ways to silence the thing. What if that ‘owner’ they’re helping is a thief with finesse? . . . Having driven lower-tech vehicles until recently, though, the embarrassment of having my own car cause such disruptions is a new experience. Once or twice the cause was hit- ting a button by accident, though I’m still unsure which button; other times, it has been the inno- cent, hard-to-break habit of reaching to get something through the parked car’s open window. “By the way, where is OFF?”
tives, I tried the initial case in 1994. My colleagues and I took testi- mony from more than 1,000 people, looked at 10 million pages of Exxon documents, argued 1,000 motions and went through 20 appeals. Along the way, I learned some things that might come in handy for the people of the Gulf Coast who are now dealing with BP and the ongoing oil spill.
F
Brace for the PR blitz.
BP’s public relations campaign is well
underway. “This wasn’t our accident,” chief executive Tony Hayward told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this month. Though he accepted responsibil- ity for cleaning up the spill, Hayward emphasized that “this was a drilling rig operated by another company.” Communities destroyed by oil spills
have heard this kind of thing before. In 1989, Exxon executive Don Cornett told residents of Cordova, Alaska: “You have had some good luck, and you don’t real- ize it. You have Exxon, and we do busi- ness straight. We will consider whatever it takes to keep you whole.” Cornett’s straight-shooting company proceeded to fight paying damages for nearly 20 years. In 2008, it succeeded — the Supreme Court cut punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $500 million. As the spill progressed, Exxon treated the cleanup like a public relations event. At the crisis center in Valdez, company officials urged the deployment of “bright
it. State and local governments and fish- ermen’s groups on the Gulf Coast will need reputable scientists to study the spill’s effects, and must work tirelessly to get the truth out.
Remember: When the spiller de- clares victory over the oil, it’s time to raise hell.
Don’t settle too early.
If gulf communities settle too soon,
they’ll be paid inadequate damages for injuries they don’t even know they have yet. It’s difficult to predict how spilled oil
will affect fish and wildlife. Dead birds are easy to count, but oil can destroy entire fisheries
recent report by the Center for Amer- ican Progress. So while Reagan filled 86 percent of the top jobs in his first year, Obama filled 64 percent, leaving vacant some critical antiterrorism and health posts. Efforts over the years to adopt the ob- vious remedy — that is, reduce the num- ber of Senate-confirmed political ap- pointees — have failed. Presidents, ea- ger to “control” the bureaucracy and to reward their supporters, are loathe to cut the number. Senators, determined to exercise their constitutional preroga- tive (and to ensure that their states get the earmarks and government con- tracts they surely deserve) demand to vote on far too many appointees. Besides, bedeviling the new adminis-
tration’s nominees has become cathar- tic for some in the Senate. British mi- nority party members, after all, get to yell at the prime minister in person. And they feel better afterward. In the United States, opposition party mem- bers in the Senate can hold the presi- dent’s nominees hostage, and it makes them feel good, too. The White House can’t select, vet and nominate people fast enough to fill the top jobs by the end of its first year. The Senate simply can’t push that many people through its clearance, hearing and approval process. “The system can’t handle such a large number” of nomi- nees, concludes New York University professor Paul Light. The pig has gotten too big for the py-
thon.
that both ends of Pennsylvania Av- enue — the White House to avoid em-
S
o what to do? Commentators have long noted
barrassment, the Senate to embarrass the White House — have adopted back- ground-check processes worthy of Tor- quemada. The burden of proof is on the hapless appointee, who, unlike a repeat crimi- nal, is entitled to no presumption of in- nocence. The vetters check endlessly for ethical, political, financial and other misdeeds, large or small, relevant to the job or not. These days, if you’re qualified to become head of the Fish and Wildlife Service, you’re probably smart enough to know it’s not worth the hassle, not to mention the thousands of dollars you must shell out to accountants and law- yers to survive the process. One way to speed things up could be if the Senate, or at least some commit- tees, reaches a general understanding with the White House that, unless a nominee’s job has something to do with public finance — the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, for instance — tax checks in most cases would be gen- eral reviews rather than detailed audits. If a nominee has paid approximately the average tax usually paid by some- one in his or her income bracket, that would, absent some other concern, end the matter. Interminable investigations of whether a particular deduction was appropriate or whether taxes were al- ways paid on time can’t be worth the Senate’s energy if the nominee is other- wise qualified to be, say, the assistant secretary for waste management. The hold craze also must end. Under
Senate rules, any senator can temporar- ily block consideration of a nominee for an indeterminate period of time, and for any reason or no reason at all. If sen- ators think these jobs are so important that they require their approval, then they have an obligation to do some- thing about holds, a chronic and nox-
ious problem that’s gotten completely out of hand. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa) recently introduced a measure that would try to curb holds by requiring them to be made public. That may not, however, make much differ- ence when senators bask in the pub- licity of holding up a nominee — or two or 20 — for the noble purpose of forcing a government agency to give contracts to home-state industries. In this instance, sunlight would be merely a spotlight, not a disinfectant.
service,” Mackenzie said. “They were al- ready there, Johnson reasoned, so they could get right to work.” Another advantage would be that, while the president would not be able to reward quite as many campaign aides, the country might benefit from having more people in top government posts who actually know the issues, the practical options and the unintended consequences of new initiatives. This would also enhance the career service by making the highest jobs available to its members.
British members of parliament can yell at the prime minister. In the United States, opposition senators can hold the president’s nominees hostage.
Strict time limits on each hold or on the total time a nominee can be held would be much more effective. Another idea is to have incoming ad-
ministrations increase the number of appointees who come from the ranks of the career civil service. The president would still select them — so they would be “his” people in terms of implement- ing policy — and the Senate would still confirm them. (This would keep the framers happy.) Career people probably already have the security clearances they’ll need, and they rarely make enough money to require lengthy finan- cial checks. As Colby College government profes- sor Calvin Mackenzie points out, pluck- ing from the civil service is not new. “President Lyndon Johnson wanted to appoint people from the career civil
This change would not require legis-
lation. And there is precedent for a sim- ilar informal arrangement in the selec- tion of ambassadors. While presidents historically have filled about 30 percent of ambassadorships with political sup- porters, the rest go to career foreign service officers. These are but a few changes that could improve the way we move from campaigning to governing. The Brits do it faster, but we can do it better.
kamena@washpost.com
on
washingtonpost.com
For more Washington Post coverage of politics, power and the Obama administration, go to
postpolitics.com
by Brian O’Neill
or 21 years, my legal career was focused on a single epi- sode of bad driving: In March 1989, captain Joseph Ha- zelwood ran the Exxon Valdez aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. As an attorney for 32,000 Alaskan fishermen and na-
Andno matter how outrageously spill- ers behave in court, trials are always risky. Though an Alaska criminal jury did
not find Hazelwood guilty of drunken driving, in our civil case, we revisited the issue. The Supreme Court noted that, ac- cording to witnesses, before “the Valdez left port on the night of the disaster, Ha- zelwood downed at least five double vod- kas in the waterfront bars of Valdez, an intake of about 15 ounces of 80-proof al- cohol, enough ‘that a non-alcoholic would have passed out.’ ” Exxon claimed that an obviously drunken skipper wasn’t drunk; but if he was, that Exxon didn’t know he had a history of drink- ing; but if Exxon did know, that the com- pany monitored him; and anyway, that the company didn’t really hurt anyone. In addition, Exxon hired experts to say
that oil had no adverse effect on fish. They claimed that some of the oil on- shore was from earlier earthquakes. Lawrence Rawl, chief executive of Exxon at the time of the spill, had testified dur- ing Senate hearings that the company would not blame the Coast Guard for the Valdez’s grounding. On the stand, he re- versed himself and implied that the Coast Guard was responsible. (When I played the tape of his Senate testimony on cross examination, the only question I had was: “Is that you?”)
Keep hope alive.
Historically, U.S. courts have favored oil spillers over those they hurt. Petro- leum companies play down the size of their spills and have the time and re- sources to chip away at damages sought by hard-working people with less mon-
How to sue
and yellow” cleanup equipment to avoid a “public relations nightmare.” “I don’t care so much whether [the equipment is] working or not,” an Exxon executive exhorted other company executives on an audiotape our plaintiffs cited before the Supreme Court. “I don’t care if it picks up two gallons a week.” Even as the spill’s long-term impact on beaches, herring, whales, sea otters and other wildlife became apparent, Ex- xon used its scientists to run a counterof- fensive, claiming that the spill had no negative long-term effects on anything. This type of propaganda offensive can go on for years, and the danger is that the public and the courts will eventually buy
an oil company
Tips for the gulf from a veteran of Valdez
over time. In the Valdez case, Exxon set up a claims office right after the spill to pay fishermen part of their lost revenue. They were required to sign documents limiting their rights to future damages. Those who did were shortsighted. In Alaska, fishermen didn’t fish for as many as three years after the Valdez spill. Their boats lost value. The price of fish from oiled areas plummeted. Prince Wil- liam Sound’s herring have never recov- ered. South-central Alaska was devastat- ed.
In the gulf, where hundreds of thou- sands of gallons of crude are pouring into once-productive fishing waters ev- ery day, fishing communities should be
wary of taking the quick cash. The full harm to their industry will not be un- derstood for years.
Hire patient lawyers.
After the Valdez spill, 62 law firms
filed suit against Exxon. Many lawyers thought they would score an easy payday when the company settled quickly. They were wrong. My clients resolved their last issue with Exxon just last month. The coalition of firms that stayed with the case expended $200 million in billable hours and $30 million in ex- penses. Exxon began paying compensa- tion to lawyers only two years ago. In the end, we were able to recover about a fourth of losses suffered by fishermen and natives.
ey. And compensation won’t mend a bro- ken community. Go into a bar in south- central Alaska — it’s as if the Valdez spill happened last week.
Still, when I sued BP in 1991 after a
relatively small spill in Glacier Bay, the company responsibly compensated the fishermen of Cook Inlet, Alaska. After a one-month trial, BP paid the community $51 million. From spill to settlement, the case took four years to resolve. Culturally, BP seemed an entirely dif- ferent creature than Exxon. I do not know whether the BP that is responding to the disaster in the gulf is the BP I dealt with in 1991, or whether it will adopt the Exxon approach. For the sake of every- one involved, I hope it is the former.
Brian O’Neill, a partner at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis, represented fishermen in Valdez and Glacier Bay in civil cases related to oil spills.
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