Taxing Patriotism
November is tax-publicizing season in Finland, where, starkly unlike America, the government releases all individuals’ tax records to help build public support for the country’s vast welfare state. Thus, reported Foreign Policy magazine, Finnish society gets a “yearly dose of schadenfreude”…“opening the door for a media frenzy of gossip, boasting and fingerpointing” about “fair share” and who’s more worthy. A few, however, proudly pay high Finnish taxes as a “badge of patriotism,” rejecting common tax shelters. “We’ve received a lot of help from society,” said one homegrown (and wealthy) entrepreneur, “and now it is our turn to pay back.”
Bright Ideas
The Washington, D.C., restaurant Second State recently added an accessory to its bar menu—“hand-cut rock,’ i.e., “artisanal” ice, for $1 extra (but free in premium drinks). The local supplier Favourite Ice assures that its frozen water contains no calcium to cloud it and that, with a heavy-duty band saw blade, it “hand cuts” 200-to-300-pound blocks into the cubes that ultimately wind up in the glass. A Favourite Ice founder said his frozen water resists drink-weakening longer than ordinary cubes do.
Chutzpah!
■ The law finally caught up, partially, to squatter Darrell Beatty in September, as he was charged with grand larceny for forging a deed to a home owned by Jennifer Merin, 70, in Laurelton, N.Y. However, he bailed out of jail on Oct. 22 and immediately returned to the house. In fact, Beatty’s two sons had remained “at home” even while Beatty was locked up. The home has been in Merin's family since 1931. “Mind-boggling,” she said.
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■ The Law Works in Strange Ways: (1) The Gothamist news site reported in October that bicyclist John Roemer, who was rear-ended by a driver in Brooklyn in May (and whose intensive-care bill was paid by the driver’s insurance company), is now being sued by the driver in small claims court for $2,000 damage to her car. (2) In November, a civil court in Lindau, Germany, ordered Rory Gray to pay Dr. Daniel Ubani for calling Ubani “an animal” (for having injected Gray’s father with 10 times a drug’s safe dose in 2008, which led to his death). The court found the epithet unwarranted and ordered Gray to help pay Ubani’s legal expenses.
Well, Of Course!
■ The owner of the world’s largest corn maze (63 acres), at Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon, Calif., told Sacramento’s KOVR-TV in October that “several” times this season, visitors have called 911 to come and get them out of the maze. Said owner Matt Cooley, “When it’s dark, all you see is corn.” (Also, two months earlier, an emergency crew in Braintree, England, was forced to use special equipment to find and rescue an elderly woman who had fallen while inside the 10-acre Blake House Craft Centre maze.)
■ Cliches Come to Life: In a $460,000 police-brutality settlement with the city of Birmingham, Ala., in October, plaintiff Anthony Warren will receive $1,000, with the rest going to his lawyers. (The un-angelic Warren is serving 20 years for running over an officer during a high-speed car chase in 2008; he took a beating once officers caught him.)
Best of the Foreign Press
“Man’s ‘Drugs Test Trick’ Foiled by Pregnancy”: a November report from Egypt’s Al-Yawm al-Sabi website on a male bus driver who tried to game a drug test by using his wife's urine, only to inadvertently discover that he would soon become a father.
Least Competent Criminals
Employees of the Marshalls department store in Longmont, Colo., said they had been hearing noises but were unable to locate the source for several days until finally, on Nov. 11, they summoned firefighters, who tore out an interior wall and freed a weak, injured Paul Felyk, 35, who had been trapped between that wall and an exterior wall after falling through the roof. A scrawled note near him was three days old. Burglary charges were filed against Felyk, who has a substantial rap sheet.
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
