Creative Mortgage Solutions

Circular Reasoning: Surprisingly, the recession otherwise felt in the Phoenix area this year has largely spared one “profession”: psychics. An October Arizona Republic report found that while longtime clients tended to reduce their use of astrology and related fields, their business was replaced by a new class of customers desperate to know the future — those facing financial ruin because of bad home mortgages. (Few, wrote the reporter, seemed to sense the irony of purchasing questionable psychic services to overcome the consequences of questionable mortgage decisions.) [Arizona Republic, 10-9-09]

Not Too Old to Do Her Own Hit: Elsa Seman, 71, was shot and killed in North Versailles, Pa., in September, when she was mistaken for a prowler. According to police, Seman had gone to the home of her ex-boyfriend at night and, dressed in black, commando-style, was lying in wait in his yard with a pistol, intending to kill him. A neighbor called in the report of a prowler, and a police officer arriving at the scene fatally shot Seman. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9-21-09]

Not Too Sickly for a Career in Bank Robbery: Police in Southern California know what the man looks like (from surveillance video) but have not yet apprehended the well-dressed, 70ish man who has robbed four banks since August, with the latest being a Bank of America in Rancho Santa Fe in October. The man has shown special dexterity to pull off the robberies, since he is on oxygen and has to carry around his own tank. [KSWB-TV (San Diego), 10-27-09]

Fine Points of British Law

A September inquest into the 2007 suicide of a 26-year-old woman found that doctors at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital could have saved her, but that because she had executed a living will ordering no treatment, they rebuffed the pleas of family members to treat her because, they said, they feared the woman would sue them if she recovered. [Daily Telegraph, 9-30-09]

Recurring Themes

Drug-Runners Who Needed to Keep a Lower Profile: Michael Dennis, 22, of Mahoning Township, Pa., dared to speed in May, police said, even though he had 100 packets of heroin in the back seat. [The Morning Call (Allentown), 5-18-09]

Mark Smith of Winslow, Ariz., dared to run a stop sign in Philadelphia in September, police said, even though he was carrying 11 pounds of heroin in the back of his SUV. [Philly.com, 9-3-09]

The driver of an 18-wheeler dared to make an illegal lane change on Interstate 15 in Riverside County, Calif., in August, deputies said, even though he was hauling 14 tons of marijuana. All were arrested, and all drugs seized. [Press-Enterprise (Riverside), 8-27-09]

And finally

Performance-Enhancing Substances: University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarians said in September 2002 that they now have the technology to detect the fraudulent use of three udder-beautifying schemes employed on show cows at dairy exhibits. Forty percent of a cow’s grade is on how full, symmetrical and smooth her udders are (but unlike in, say, human beauty contests, cow udders are important only for their milk-producing potential). Tests of the milk can detect whether saline was injected into the udder, and ultrasound can reveal whether the udder has received isobutane gas “foamies” or a liquid silver protein that does for the udder what Botox does for human wrinkles. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9-28-02]

Just for Fun

Building a Risk-Free Society

Safety First in Britain: Recently, 118 local government councils conducted formal tests on their cemeteries’ gravestones to see how susceptible they are to toppling over and hurting people, according to an April Daily Telegraph report. [Daily Telegraph, 4-19-09]

In April, a circus clown performing in Liverpool was ordered not to wear his classic oversized shoes because he could trip and injure someone. [Daily Telegraph, 4-23-09]

BBC producers, wielding a “telephone-book-size” set of safety precautions while making a recent adventure documentary, ordered Sir Robin Knox-Johnston (the first person to sail single-handedly and nonstop around the world) not to light a portable stove unless a “safety advisor” supervised. [Daily Mail, 4-18-09]

Lobbying Pays: University of Kansas researchers, reporting in April, disclosed that a single tax provision in a 2004 law (allowing U.S. multinational corporations to avoid federal tax on foreign profits) gained a typical company $220 for every $1 the company had spent lobbying Congress to enact that provision. Among the big winners was the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company, which disclosed spending $8.5 million to lobby for the law and gaining a tax break of more than $2 billion. (The lobbying emphasized that the lower tax would enable the companies to create more jobs, but the Congressional Research Service found that most of the tax savings went to pay dividends or buy back company stock.) [Washington Post, 4-12-09]

In a study of the last six years’ admissions at hospital emergency rooms in the Austin, Texas, area (reported in April), 900 people were identified as using ERs six or more times in the previous three months, and nine specific patients had made a total of 2,678 visits in the six-year period. [Austin American-Statesman, 4-1-09]

A 22-year-old tipsy soccer fan celebrating on a chartered bus after a match in West Bromwich, England, in January, was run over by a motorist after he fell out the back door of the bus, believing it led to the restroom. [United Press International, 2-3-09]

Timothy Grim, 39, was arrested in Shreveport, La., in April after swiping several garments from the rehearsal room of the Shreveport Opera and dashing off. The conductor and three performers took chase and cornered Grim several blocks away, still in possession of one part of a diva’s outfit, which he immediately offered to sell back to the opera, and by the time police arrived, Grim had cut his asking price to $1. [KTBS-TV (Shreveport), 2-24-09]

Not Ready for Prime Time: A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Centerville, Utah, in April as he roamed a neighborhood at night trying to break into several cars. The last one he tried was the private vehicle of a sheriff’s deputy, who was still in it, in uniform and finishing a phone call after coming off his shift. After arresting the kid, the deputy reported that the boy had been so stunned when he saw the deputy inside the car that he immediately soiled his pants. Said the deputy, “You could smell him.” [Deseret News, 4-21-09]

Only in America

New York City, which is sued more than 1,000 times a year, has a policy of settling some lawsuits quickly to avoid the risk of expensive judgments. The New York Daily News reported in October that more than 20 lawsuits, going back several years, were filed by members of the East 21st Street Crew (a well-known Brooklyn gang notorious for selling crack cocaine), and that the city has settled every time, paying out more than $500,000. The “civil rights” lawsuits were over possibly illegal searches and for criminal charges that the city later dismissed. [New York Daily News, 10-11-09]

A nine-hour, 16-officer search of the home of alleged drug kingpin Michael Difalco, near Lakeland, Fla., in March, apparently was not exciting enough. Surveillance video (from Difalco’s security system) released by police in September showed that the easily distracted officers also took time out to play spirited frames of bowling on Difalco’s Wii game. Since the detectives were unaware of the camera, they uninhibitedly pumped their fists and shouted gleefully with every strike. Police supervisors acknowledged the unprofessional behavior but said the search nonetheless was productive. [Tampa Tribune, 9-21-09]

Things You Thought Didn’t Happen Anymore

Bombastic financier R. Allen Stanford was able to maintain secrecy in the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme he allegedly operated for years out of a bank in Antigua because he and Antigua’s chief bank regulator had met in secret in 2003 and taken an actual “blood oath” of loyalty. The hematic bonding was revealed by Stanford’s No. 2 executive, James Davis, who pleaded guilty in August in federal court in Houston. [New York Times, 8-28-09]

Least Competent Criminals

Daniel Taylor Jr., 33, was arrested in Elizabethton, Tenn., in September following a domestic disturbance complaint against a neighbor. A sheriff’s deputy had gone to Taylor’s house by mistake, wrongly thinking it was the source of the complaint, but Taylor immediately surrendered to the deputy anyway, and turned around to be handcuffed. When the deputy inquired why Taylor thought he should be arrested, Taylor said he assumed the deputy had come to arrest him for violating probation on earlier charges. The deputy took Taylor to the station before resuming the domestic disturbance call. [Johnson City Press, 9-14-09]