Miscellaneous

A Cynic's Wet Dream

Hello and Happy New Year! I know, it has been a while since you saw me on this site. Well, in case you were wondering, I was busy prepping for my final semester! Graduating class of 2008, here I come! I wanted to make sure I found a story worthy of my return to QuizLaw. And boy, do I have a doozy.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? All that damage? All those people forced to flee, turned into refugees and such? Remember feeling really bad for them, thinking that they got royally screwed by the government? Well it looks like the Katrinas are screwing right back. Too bad their piss-poor education system didn't teach them how to scam money effectively.

Katrina victims have been filing tons of claims (489,000 of them, and counting) -- 247 of the claims ask for $1 billion or more, one asks for $6 trillion, and get this, one claim actually asks for $3 quadrillion. Seriously. That is a three, followed by 15 zeroes.

The claims are so massive the government could never hope to pay them. Rather, they are the hopeful ? and at times inflated ? requests of people reeling from losses.

Just the top filings add up to so much money that the entire annual output of the nation's economy ? $12 trillion ? couldn't pay them off, according to the corps' listing. It is the first public accounting of the scale of damage demands the corps faces.

Holy Zombie Jesus. The claims outstrip the entire output of the economy of the United States of America. The scary part is that these are the same folks who will spend that money on Tyler Perry films.

Just so you get an idea of the kind of folks making these claims:

Full post as published by Quiz Law on January 14, 2008 (boomark / email).