I believe this story begins withUSA Today’s terrible article that seems straight out ofArmy Corps of Engineers headquarters Wichita. The story was titled “Katrina victims swamp corps with trillions in claims.” Its lead screams…
WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people whose property was destroyed
when Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans’ protective levees have
filed claims demanding the government pay astronomical sums that would
be enough money to make multimillionaires of everyone in Louisiana.
Hooweee let’s all move to Looziana where they’ll be shitting golden turds.
It just gets worse from there as the article focuses on 247 claims of $1 billion out of the 489,000 claims filed.
But what is really important in this? What the press and media has now discovered…from CNN to Press TV in Iran? It’s this–one claim was for 3 quadrillon dollars! Oh fucking my! What you never heard of such a thing? The reporter will make it clear…
One claim alone seeks $3 quadrillion in damages, almost all of it for
personal injury. That’s a 3 followed by 15 zeros — about 250 times the
nation’s gross domestic product.
Wow. Get it now?
A 3 and then 000000000000000
OR
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Or 15 letters:
W
h
o
t
h
e
f
u
c
k
c
a
r
e
s
There is no context in the article such as why those claims were filed other than to say…”Most of the claims allege that the corps is to blame for the levee failures that inundated huge sections of New Orleans.” Gee maybe they “allege” thusly because ACE admitted it’s fault in the matter in April 2006. Nor does the story seriously examine the likelihood that these cases will never even get a hearing in court. Could it possibly be that claimants know there chances of suing the government are so far out there that they thought what the hell let’s just make up some numbers? And last I’d love to know how this story came about as it seems to come straight from ACE.
But why let that get in the way of a good story? One that now is cropping upeverywhere. Of course maybe I could suffer the 3 quadrillion foolishness if the press and media had reported inApril of 2006 on ACE’s admission before a Senate committee that it’s “design failure” was responsible for the flooding of New Orleans.They didn’t report that though. Katrina was the biggest news story of 2005 but by April 2006 the media couldn’t even be bothered to report on why it happened, at least in New Orleans. Of course if they had–I doubt we would be reading the $3 quadrillion story…at least in the same way.