Article 170976 of rec.humor: Newsgroups: rec.humor Path: nntp-server.caltech.edu!news.claremont.edu!kaiwan.kaiwan.com!rahul.net!a2i!nntp-hub.barrnet.net!wetware!olivea!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!cate3 From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate) Subject: Life 9.B Message-ID: [cate3D4qFIu.G5C@netcom.com] Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 22:52:05 GMT Lines: 367 Sender: cate3@netcom15.netcom.com Date: 8 Feb 93 17:50:33 PST (Monday) Subject: Life 9.B ---------------------------------------------------- The following are selections that I've pulled from a collection Mike Sierra has been building over the years [sierra@ora.com] -------------------------- [[[[[[ Attached TEXT file follows ]]]]]] The following news items and quotations were taken from The American Spectator, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Harper's, Heterodoxy, Insight, The National Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, Penthouse, Reason, Spy, Time, TV Guide, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Monthly, and more "year in review" issues than I care to mention. -------------------------- a report in the NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS, Fort Walton Beach, Florida: Shelly Gonzalez of Coventry Court, Ocean City, said someone stole a $300 Gucci purse and $270 in food stamps from her home on Dec. 4 or Dec. 5. -------------------------- NEW YORK TIMES, 3/26/92: For the first time, Poland is trying to impose a western-style personal income tax... and it is turning to the Internal Revenue Service in Washington for help... Two veteran American tax experts took time out earlier this month to provide a round of basic training to 25 of their newly appointed counterparts in Poland... At the training course, Polish tax inspectors marveled at the possibilities for obtaining data in an information-rich environment like America. In Poland, they said, permission to rummage through a taxpayer's personal bank accounts is rarely granted by the Finance Ministry... Zygmunt Sachnowski, national director of the fiscal police, contends that the recently passed law setting up the personal income tax leans too far in the direction of protecting citizens' rights... [IRS agent George F.] Blair also noted that in the United States, the authorities had the power to pursue an individual for failing to pay taxes on illegal income. Such powers have not yet been granted to Polish revenue officers. -------------------------- A recent Court of Appeals decision in Oregon says that people suspected of engaging in illegal activities can use the darkness of night as a cloak of privacy from police officers. The court threw out evidence obtained by police in Washington County with the use of a night scope, which amplifies background nighttime light, giving the viewer a fuzzy but well-lit view. The court said that the natural cloak of darkness constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy and that the officers had violated the suspect's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. -------------------------- The Philadelphia Housing Authority receives subsidies from the federal government to operate housing units, of which 495 no longer exist, having been destroyed -- some as far back as 1975. The problem was discovered when HUD auditors visited some of the addresses listed on computer printouts only to find vacant lots. -------------------------- A teacher at Boston Latin High School gave seventh-grade students an article saying German composer Ludwig van Beethoven was black. "The physical traits of Ludwig van Beethoven leave little doubt as to his racial identity. He was a black man, with nappy hair, flat nose and thick lips," writes University of Southern Colorado Professor Elmer Wells in a paper titled "Beethoven -- His Negroid Characteristics." The mother of one seventh-grade girl says the paper was presented as true. "My daughter came home with the belief that Beethoven is black." But music teacher Roseanne Fernandes says she presented the paper as just "another perspective" even though she says she considers it to be true. She says the paper helps students learn to question everything. It may prompt people to question the quality of education at the Boston Latin School. -------------------------- Six years ago, Girardeau A. Spann, a black law professor at Georgetown University who was on the lookout for a house to buy, decided that an Arlington, Va., real estate developer was violating fair housing laws, so he decided to sue. On May 14, A federal jury agreed with him and ordered Colonial Village Inc. to pay Spann $200,000 -- along with another $650,000 to two nonprofit fair housing groups. Had Spann put in a bid for a house and been turned down on account of his race? No. Had he approached a Colonial Village agent and been told there were no vacancies because of his race? No. He had noticed that the company's ads depicting happy Colonial Village residents used only white models. "It made me angry and it still makes me angry to this day," Spann told the Washington Post. Since 1986, when the suit was filed, Colonial Village has dutifully used black models in its advertising, and the Post has scrupulously adhered to its own agreement (also prompted by Spann's suit) to require 25 percent of all models used in real estate ads to be black. And Spann still hasn't bought himself a house. -------------------------- Dr. Geraldine Richter was accused of drunk driving after being pulled over by Virginia state police for driving erratically on Nov. 22, 1990. She blamed her driving and a subsequent attack on the trooper -- she tried to kick him in the groin -- on PMS, saying her hormones were out of whack. A judge dismissed the charges -- even though a breath test showed Richter had a blood alcohol level of .13%, well over the legal limit. Gayle Fuchs of Sikeston, Missouri, was found guilty of embezzling more than $168,000 from the bank where she worked. The minimum sentence for this crime is 18 months in prison, according to federal guidelines. However, a reduced sentence can be handed out if the accused was "psychologically diminished" and didn't know right from wrong. Her attorney argued that Fuchs was psychologically diminished while she was embezzling funds because she was distraught over her inability to conceive a child. In August, the judge sentenced her to four months in prison. -------------------------- Los Angeles attorney Stephen Yagman won a civil rights case recently against Police Chief Daryl Gates and nine Special Investigations Section officers. The plaintiffs alleged that the officers had used excessive force when they fired 35 times at four robbers on Feb. 12, 1990, killing three. A jury awarded $44,000. Then Yagman submitted his bill for legal fees, which under federal regulations must be paid by the city. Yagman said he had spent 800 hours on the case with 683 hours' worth of help from three other attorneys. Total bill: $987,684. Yagman charged $350 an hour for his own 800 hours on the case and then doubled the amount due to the "complexity" and the risk of losing the case. If his request is approved by U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts, Yagman will receive $560,000. -------------------------- In Houston, Texas, the lawyer for a four-foot-six-inch man accused of fatally shooting his grandfather has asked that the jury pool include some people who are five feet tall or shorter to guarantee a fair trial. -------------------------- In the last three years, Charles Plunkett has given hundreds of rides home to bar patrons too drunk to drive themselves. Now the California Public Utilities Commission has ordered him to get a state permit to carry passengers or go to jail. -------------------------- You're a police officer facing a sniper who has fired several shots from a window. Your job is to subdue and disarm this dangerous gunman. Whatever you do, don't break the window. That seems to be the message from Grand Rapids, Mich., where a U.S. District Court has ruled that police should not have smashed a sniper's living room window without a warrant. Joseph O'Brien, who was left partially paralyzed in an October 1987 shoot-out, sued the city, its police force and several officers for using excessive force and violating his civil rights. O'Brien, now 34, was convicted of four counts of assault with intent to do bodily harm and placed on five years' probation. He had been felled by a police bullet after a nine-hour standoff, during which he fired several shots without hitting anyone. In March, U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen ruled that O'Brien's Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. In smashing the glass, authorities breached his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the judge ruled, adding that police had more than enough time to seek a warrant. -------------------------- An Oregon newspaper stated it will not print the names of sports teams that it finds "offensive to racial, religious, or ethnic groups." This includes such teams as the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins. How the paper can write about the teams without mentioning their names is unclear. -------------------------- California farmers have been ordered to destroy millions of pounds of peaches and nectarines because they are slightly smaller than federal standards require and could undermine profits from larger fruit. Dan Gerawan, one of the largest peach, nectarine and plum growers, said he has sold undersized fruit to wholesalers who sell it to family-run stores in inner-city Los Angeles. But the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Attorney's office have threatened court action if he continues. "Consumers are prepared to spend more money for larger fruit than smaller fruit, so why undermine the higher profit margin for the grower?" Eric Forman of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service said in the AP report. -------------------------- Donna Miller of Providence, Rhode Island, who received welfare payments, food stamps, and free medical care from 1985 until she won the lottery March 11, was charged with fraud after her caseworker noticed that television and newspaper accounts about Miller's prize indicated that her husband, Kenneth, was living at home and working as a machinist. The state maintains that Miller fraudulently collected $54,000 in public assistance during the seven years in question by failing to disclose her husband was present and employed. Miller told the Providence Journal Bulletin that she spent $20 to $25 a week on lottery tickets for the two years preceding her win. She won $739,000 a year -- $547,575 after taxes -- for the next 20 years. Miller is charged with three counts of welfare fraud and one count of filing a false document. The maximum penalty for the first penalty is five years in prison, while filing a false document carries a penalty of up to two years in prison. -------------------------- Following the Los Angeles riots, a man wrote the Los Angeles Times and related his encounter with a panhandler wearing and oversized suit and a pair of Reeboks so new the price tags were still on them: "I asked him, 'Did you spend all your money on your new suit and shoes?' With a smile he said, 'No, I'm a looter, and I got this new suit and shoes looting.' I then asked, 'what do you think of the Rodney King situation?' He looked at me questioningly and said, 'I don't follow sports anymore.'" -------------------------- In Virginia Beach, a jury has ordered a gun shop to pay $100,000 to the family of a teacher killed by a student with a handgun purchased at the store. The boy's uncle had purchased the gun and given it to him as a present. -------------------------- Former jockey Willie Shoemaker, paralyzed in a single-car accident he had while driving drunk, has sued the state of California for negligence because there were no rubber guardrails where the crash occurred. -------------------------- In St. Louis, Missouri, the United States Postal Service purchased a building for $12 million from a developer who had bought the building earlier the same day for $4 million. -------------------------- New York Transit Authority officials conceded that they hire convicted criminals, but they prefer to call their ex-convict employees by such politically correct terms as "criminally challenged," "legally impaired," or "people of alternative conviction status." -------------------------- A woman sued a moving company for damaging her furniture, even though she signed a contract waiving such liability. Her lawyer argued that since the movers were tired and in a hurry to leave, and since women are socialized to be concerned about the feelings of others, signing the document without reading it was acting reasonably from the female point of view. -------------------------- Q: How many Philadelphia International Airport workers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Three. A building mechanic to remove the light panel, an electrician to actually change the bulb, and a custodian to sweep up the dust, according to civil-service requirements. -------------------------- Levamisole, a drug that has been used in the past to combat intestinal parasites in farm animals has been approved for human use in combatting colon cancer. Still, to keep a sheep free from worms for a year costs $14.95, but a year's supply for human patients runs about $1,500. Frank Glickman, who wanted the drug to aid his own recovery, has filed a class-action suit against Johnson & Johnson, the drug's maker. Johnson & Johnson says that the increased price was due to the research and development required to find an effective human use for the drug. However, Dr. Charles Moertel, who directed the effort to win FDA approval for the drug under the assurance from Johnson & Johnson that the drug would be reasonably priced, says the company didn't contribute any funds, and that the $10.6 million was covered by the National Cancer Institute, out of taxpayer's pockets. Furthermore, the veterinary and human versions of Levamisole are "exactly, absolutely identical." Glickman's attorney adds that a price breakdown for the drug by Johnson & Johnson shows that the major element in the price increase was promotion costs. "This for a drug that has no need to be promoted," he says. "It is the standard treatment for colon cancer, and it would be sheer lunacy for someone with the disease not to use it." -------------------------- Since 1983, Elizabeth Corbett has received monthly Social Security disability checks for blindness. In 1983, 1986, and 1991, however, she passed the vision test when renewing her driver's license. She has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for her fraudulent claim and has been ordered to repay $5,382 in welfare benefits. The most damaging evidence against her was a video of her driving to work. Astonishingly, her attorney said that after a 2 1/2-year investigation, the Social Security Administration has yet to call his client in for an examination and is still paying her. -------------------------- A pair of academicians released a report that concluded that The Cosby Show, in its favorable portrayal of middle-class African- American family life, had desensitized whites to the problems of most blacks. Said one, the show sends "a message that black people can make it if they try." -------------------------- Disagreement over California's policy of trapping and killing foxes in the Ballona Wetlands has been heated. Local environmental groups claim that the swiftly reproducing foxes, which were accidentally introduced into the area by man, are decimating endangered species of birds. Animal-rights activists strongly object to the killing of the foxes, and have been leaving death threats on the answering machines of local environmentalists who support the program. -- Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com] The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet "The Greatest Management Principle in the World" by Michael LeBoeuf: The things that get rewarded, get done.
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