Important Newsflash!!
 

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]

someone needs to PM RLEO right away! Carleton- I like your news better, maybe you could host a Daily News Thread....

An Idea not entirely without merit....I may do just that,although I simply googled the keywords{bizarre news}and {weird news}.

I'm fed up with the mass-market social and political pabulum is all.

Totally agreed! Great to see news like this.

I want a deal like Sen. John Stennis of Mississipi got, getting paid to not grow rice on his tennis courts

Ahhh! Thanks to my valued forum members I've finally found my niche.....Chronicler of The Neglected Truth!{with apologies to Henry Ford I and his Dearborn Independant}:D

I'd just like to get paid ,period!

Ohhh! not on the pill,are we?

well there ya go Carleton- your our official Editor In Chief of all the news that's unfit to print.....Forum Our Eyes Only Eclectic News- cathcy little title don't ya think?

As a former, er, cattle rancher, I am a bit suprised that the beneficiary of a charitable trust ;), would be outraged at a few tax loopholes:o

dang punctiation..

Ohhh? some Capitalist booster you are...where the f*ck is your patriotism????

I am curious about this. Sen. Stennis' former long time chief of staff/campaing manager is a very close friend of mine (and even though he is 39 years my senior, can still manage more Makers in one sitting than can I). After finding nothing on google about this story, I called him and he said he had never heard anything about it, but remarked that Stennis was heavily involved in timber and that some 'dealings' had been mentioned negatively by the press shortly after he left office in '89.

I have looked and am not asking you to do my research for me, but can you direct me to an article or information about this--I was fortunate to meet the Sen. in 94 a year before he died and am interested in any anecdotes about his life.


TIA

I just do what that CPA tells me. But since you asked, my patriotism is still wistfully overlooking the York River where I left if last week, imagining Cornwallis' @$$hle puckering as Rochambeu began to choke off the limeys from entering with reinforcements, but it called around lunch and should be able to get a flight out of Norfolk to join me this pm.

It’s called an Agricultural (Ag-) Exemption. Not sure what’s new about that. I would tend to believe most (if not all) states have something of the sort.

Randy knows all about it. We’ve even posted/mentioned it here in the past. The part of our property that the house sits on is kept to a minimum because of it. The rest of the property is ag-exempt with a small Black Angus heard (cow/calf weaning areas), or with hangar/airport business exemptions applied.

There’s not a chance in Hell that farmers/ranchers could afford to operate if they paid the same residential property tax rates that home owners do.

There’s a reason Perot has cattle on Alliance Airport property. A reason they bail hay (which counts as Ag.) off of the Texas Motor Speedway property. And it aint ‘cause they want ‘em to look moer like “Texas”.

What’s not mentioned, is the “Roll-back taxes”. The money owed, should the property loose it’s agricultural exemption. And they are rolled back five years !! i.e. We sold 25 acres off our place to a family that was to no longer use it for agricultural purposes. They built a house on it. It became their “residential” property. They lost the ag-exemption. The reason the contract said we were not to be held responsible for tax issues following the sale: They had to pay what would have been the taxes owed at residential rates for the 25 acres for the previous five years. Ouch!!

Stick a gas well on the property, and the whole tax thing really becomes a mess.
Randy and I have posted over that as well.