Ha,ha.....fooled ya...Don't it just restore your faith in mankin just when everything seems circling down the toilet?

Among the tax sweeteners offered by states to welcome relocating businesses is Texas' easy-to-get farmland benefit. When the huge Fidelity Investments company bought a 300-acre plot near Dallas for a new office, it made sure to put 25 head of cattle on the land, which the Boston Herald found reduced its real-estate tax bill by about $360,000 a year under what it would pay without the cattle. [Boston Herald, 5-11-07]

Also, federal farm subsidies continue to be skewed, as well. In May, a coalition of Washington groups unveiled a searchable computer database listing agriculture subsidies by recipient, which revealed what such "farmers" as David Letterman and basketball player Scottie Pippen receive federal funds for incidental farm uses of their land. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 6-14-07]

Democracy!

In May, a jury in Weld County, Colo., declined to hold Kathleen Ensz accountable for leaving a flier containing her dog's droppings on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, apparently agreeing with Ensz that she was merely exercising free speech. [Denver Post, 5-24-07]

Jenny Bailey was elected mayor in Cambridge, England, in May, and her companion-partner Jennifer Liddle (a former Cambridge city council member) became the equivalent of "first lady"; both Bailey and Liddle were born males and became women as young adults. [Daily Mail (London), 5-23-07]

Great Art!

University of Western Australia artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr blend art with science, extracting living cells from animals and growing them on top of biodegradable scaffolds so that when the scaffolds disappear, a living entity remains, in the shape of the scaffold. At the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel, in April, they unveiled "Victimless Leather," or actual animal skin cells that grew into leather without harming an animal, but their previous work has included growing steak from lamb muscle cells and the preparation for growing wings on a pig (though, in the final stage of that project, they were turned down by the exhibitor, who was apparently grossed out). [Haaretz, 4-7-07]

Latest Religious Messages

In May, "more than 300 people" in Augusta, Ga. (according to the Augusta Chronicle), assembled at the Municipal Building explicitly to pray for the city, following weeks-long controversies on the city commission. [Augusta Chronicle, 5-16- 07]

In June, "more than 300 people" in Destin, Fla. (according to the Northwest Florida Daily News), assembled at the Destin Worship Center and raised their hands in joyful prayer for a rebound in the real estate market in the coastal communities in the Florida panhandle. [NW Florida Daily News, 6-20-07]

Fine Points of the Law

Thomas Wimberly, 74, was arrested in July 2006 for stealing two hot dogs (value: $2.11, including tax) from a Quik Trip convenience store in Wichita, Kan. (though he said he had merely forgotten to pay). Because it was Wimberly's third misdemeanor theft charge, Kansas law required that the count be upgraded to a felony. Wimberly could not immediately make bail, and in fact was incarcerated for 71 days before his trial (once being subject to a bond of $100,000), but prosecutors insisted on a trial. In April 2007, a jury of 12 people (reportedly angry at having been called to such an insignificant case) found Wimberly not guilty. (The penalty, according to state law, if he had been convicted, was 12 months' probation.) [Wichita Eagle, 4-8-07]

Crime Waves

In May, a woman in Jacksonville, Ill., reported the theft of a bong from her house; she told police that she valued it because it belonged to her son, who is in prison, and it is all she had to remember him by. [Jacksonville Journal-Courier, 5-25-07]

The sheriff's office in Clyman, Wis., reported that a man called 911 on April 21, alarmed that he had just paid $20 to a woman at a club after a lap dance and then realized that she was not the one who had danced for him. [Pittsburgh News-Tribune-AP, 4-22-07]

Fetishes on Parade

Police in Guelph, Ontario, were on the lookout in May for the man they thought responsible for three incidents in which someone approached a woman and asked that she kick him in the groin. A police spokesman said no crime had been committed, but that they are "concerned." [Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader-AP, 5-28-07]

In New York City in June, Frank Ranieri, 25, was arrested and charged with impersonating a police officer in order to persuade teenage girls, for money, to let him stab them in the buttocks with a ball-point pen (which is the not-well-known paraphilia called piquerism). [New York Post, 6-7-07]

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