How Structured Settlements Victimize The Poor

[vt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...8c6_story.html

[Milton Kuo]

Re: How Structured Settlements Victimize The Poor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...8c6_story.html

There most certainly is a special place in Hell for people like Borkowski and the salesmen of his company who swindle unknowledgeable people out of their structured payments.

However, I sometimes have to wonder if the news really is news or if it's a work of fiction:

"Rose, who can scarcely read or write..."

"...Heritage High School, where she secured the diploma she now calls her greatest achievement."

Perhaps I am ignorant of what qualifications are an absolute minimum baseline for earning a high school diploma but how can a person get a high school diploma and yet barely be able to read or write? Proficiency exams are timed, too, so being able to read and write albeit "scarcely" doesn't seem like it would enable a person to pass.

Is the incongruity above a ham-fisted attempt by the reporter or the Washington Post to make me further sympathize with Rose, thereby rendering the entire article propaganda and not news? Or is it journalistic sloppiness, which again brings to question how of much of the article is true and how much is fiction.

[jk]

Re: How Structured Settlements Victimize The Poor

what qualifications are an absolute minimum baseline for earning a high school diploma

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121374125

"She had graduated high school a couple of years earlier at the age of 21 knowing only eight letters of the alphabet...."