Plaquemines Parish BP Spill Compensation Shenanigans

Plaquemines Parish Council Chairman (or should I say "Yahoo") Don Beshel, and a Republican I should note, has come up with an outrageous form letter that he's encouraging all Parish residents to submit to the BP Oil Spill claims adminsitrator for financial compensation because folks either have to pay higher seafood prices at the supermarket, or they actually now have to go to the supermarket to buy seafood that they could get previously directly from fishing themselves. [Click here to see a copy of one of these absurd letters.] Hell, by that measure, everyone in the damn world ought to be able to file a compensation claim against BP because the prices of fish are going up in supermarkets. And 4,000 people sent in this form letter seeking to cash in. It's crap like this that really ticks me off. And knowing the political/ideological proclivities of this Parish, I'd bet gobs of money that a majority of the folks submitting these fraudulent claims would generally pass themselves off anti-entitlement conservatives. I noticed the same thing post Katrina when many, many people that I know personally to be anti-entitlement and pro-personal responsibility conservatives (when it comes to such things as Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, etc.) all of the sudden themselves become the strongest voices of entitlement grievance because they were under-insured (or simply not insured) against hurricane damage and flood losses. So many of these erstwhile anti-entitlement conservatives, when it came to having to assume personal responsibility for their own gambles, looked to point the finger anywhere else but at themselves for their losses -- and then expected (and sued) anyone and everyone they could, whether it be insurance companies or FEMA, to get what they were "entitled" to. It really disgusts me.