From Unbelievable
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the outrageous news stories out there -- many of which come from you, the readers. So this is the perfect time to round up a few so infuriating, they deserve awards of their own.STUPID LAWSUIT OF THE YEAR AWARD
Back in August, Starbucks launched what was meant to be a small promotion. The company e-mailed a coupon for a free iced coffee to a "limited group" of employees, encouraging them to forward it along to friends and family. When the promotion got out of hand -- with the e-mail zooming all over the Internet -- Starbucks announced that it would stop honoring the coupons. That might have been a clumsy P.R. move, but it definitely didn't justify what happened next.
A 23-year-old New York paralegal named Kelly Coakley claimed that she felt "betrayed" by the company and filed a lawsuit against Starbucks for a whopping $114 million. Where does that insane figure come from? According to published comments by Coakley's lawyer, Peter Sullivan, it's a "conservative figure" based on a cup of coffee per day for all the people turned away during the promotion's original 38-day time frame. Sullivan says he intends to make the case into a huge class-action suit. Wonder if he takes milk and sugar with his greed.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK AWARD
When Congress decided to build itself a new underground visitor center, you didn't have to be a prophet to predict it wouldn't be the most efficient construction project ever. But few could have guessed how out of hand things would get. The project broke ground in 2002 with a cost estimate of $373.5 million (after lawmakers tacked on extras beyond the original scope of the plan, like added office space for themselves) and a target completion date of January 2005.
You can probably guess what happened next. The project was plagued by mistakes, delays and cost overruns. Now the price tag is expected to shoot toward $600 million, with a completion date of September 2007 at the earliest, making it, in the wise words of Citizens Against Government Waste, "a monument to Congress's own excess."
SCHOOL DAZE AWARD
Eric Hamlin, a seventh-grade teacher in Jefferson County, Colorado, didn't see any problem with hanging some foreign flags -- namely, from Mexico and China, as well as the flag of the United Nations -- in his classroom. But one day, a school administrator informed him that state law prohibits the permanent display of foreign flags in public-school classrooms. Okay, that makes sense: You don't want someone using, say, a Cuban flag to make a political statement. But Hamlin protested that the law allows the temporary display of flags if they're part of "instructional or historical materials." School officials didn't agree, reprimanding Hamlin and putting him on administrative leave. Later, Hamlin was asked back -- after the school got a lot of negative publicity -- but he declined. Hard to blame him. You see, Hamlin had dared to hang those flags because ... he's a world geography teacher! Run that up your flagpole.
Unbearable
KEYSTONE KOPS AWARDWhen Maryland hairdresser Elias Fishburne IV had a minor one-car accident in which no one was hurt, he was relieved. That is until, according to The Washington Post, a state trooper pulled up, ran a routine check of Fishburne's license and then, to his shock, handcuffed him, telling him he was a wanted fugitive from Atlanta named Jarvis Tucker. No one believed a terrified Fishburne when he said they had the wrong guy -- and no one performed the required background check to confirm his identity (in part, thanks to a computer system that had gone down).
Thinking it would speed up his case, Fishburne agreed to be extradited to Atlanta, without realizing that would only make police more sure he was a fugitive. After more than two weeks in jail, he endured a daylong bus ride to Atlanta with stops along the way to pick up other inmates. During the trip, he was shackled to a murderer and suffered an asthma attack that required hospitalization (and costly medical bills).
Finally, in Atlanta, a computer check caught the shocking mistake. Fishburne was released without so much as a bus ticket home, let alone an apology. When he later requested a sworn statement of his innocence from the Georgia authorities, they made him come back to Atlanta, at his own expense, to get it -- and then charged him $27 for the required fingerprinting. Talk about Southern hospitality.
BUMBLING BUREAUCRATS AWARD
You'd think that, of all people, the folks who get rich working for Uncle Sam would pay their taxes. But federal auditors found that one in ten companies that receive contracts from the U.S. General Services Administration owed back taxes -- a total of $1.4 billion. Some executives of scofflaw companies were spending their money on big mansions, luxury cars and Rolex watches. In one case, a deadbeat CEO withdrew $100,000 for gambling expenses. Other audits have found a total of nearly $6.3 billion in back taxes owed by federal contractors, $3 billion of it from companies who do work for the Pentagon.
While the law requires a check into companies' ethical records, it doesn't require a look at their tax status. And even if it did, that information isn't easily available to government workers.
It's not like this is a new problem: Contractors have been exposed for delinquencies for years. But the system never seems to change. Maybe the worst part is that being a cheat can actually help you land a lucrative contract. As one government-oversight official told a Senate panel, contractors that blow off tax obligations can lower their operating costs and thus "have an unfair advantage in price competition" when it comes to bidding. Here's a case where crime really does pay.