Attempting to Pay His Mortgage

“I had to get us out of this,” the elderly man said from the other side of the glass at San Diego central jail. “I’ve never done a bad thing in my life. But when you get desperate, I guess you throw all that sh– out the window.”

Listening to how Michael Casey Wilson of Santee tells it, a 17 percent mortgage, the threat of homelessness and a terminal health condition will turn a man to crime.

Wilson, 69, is accused of walking into the Bank of America branch in the 4100 block of El Cajon Boulevard in City Heights and handing a bank manager a demand note, saying he had a bomb. Prosecutors said he made off with $107,000 before he was caught lying on a front porch near the bank.

“I wrote them an apology. I am so sorry,” he said referring to the employees who rushed out of the bank. “It’s not my purpose in life to scare people.”

“If it would’ve worked the way I wanted it to, it would’ve just been he and I. But he told everybody. He shouldn’t have done that,” Wilson said.

On Thursday he pleaded not guilty to three counts of robbery and one count of falsely reporting a bomb to a business. In an interview Friday, Wilson was very open about the plan he had hatched to save his home.

“I was hoping to get $50,000 to pay off my mortgage,” he said. “Just to get the money and get the hell out of there.”

Wilson said he had planned to hail a taxi and drive with the bank manager to the airport. Once the manager was gone, Wilson said he had hoped to pick up another taxi to take him to his home in Santee. But he said he never thought the bank manager “had the balls to call the police.”

“I saw all of a sudden all the people rushing out and I knew I was had,” he said. “I knew that he had called me in. C’est la vie.”

Wilson said he lives with his 73-year old wife, who he described as a “gentle soul.” He said he feared for her future living on the streets if he couldn’t make their house payment.

Looking at Wilson, you can see his health is suffering. He claims doctors have diagnosed him with severe arthritis, sleep apnea, heart problems, and a disease he described as one “that makes you fly off the handle.” Wilson said he was told he had one to two years to live.

When he hatched the bank robbery plan, he said that he had considered the consequences but thought, “It was 50-50. Well if I get caught, I get caught. I’m dying anyway so what different does it make.”

Wilson could face more than seven years in prison if he is convicted. His bail was set at $50,000.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Here’s a man who (screwed) up his life and his family’s life but I did it with good intentions. Just stupid intentions.”

Cash for Convicts

 President Obama promised in February that he was going to:

“….watch the taxpayers’ money with more rigor and transparency than ever.”

But when you’re spending someone else’s money, it’s natural to be fast and loose with it. With $787 billion in stimulus money to throw around, Congress is spending money with little oversight and no shame.

Federal economic stimulus cash was handed out to cons behind bars after a bureaucratic snafu resulted in $250 checks being sent to some inmates – and now red-faced feds want it back.

Not only did the feds send the cash to incarcerated cons, but they failed to respond to officials who sounded the alarm about the inmate windfall…

Some “rigor” watching the taxpayer’s money.

“Taxpayers already believe the inmates are running the asylum in Washington,” U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “Now it appears they are being compensated for their efforts.”

The state Department of Correction initially withheld stimulus checks mailed to inmates because prison officials believed the convicts were not entitled to the cash, said DOC a spokesperson.

The DOC said it released the funds after the federal government ignored several requests for guidance.

“In the absence of a formal directive, DOC determined that it did not have grounds to continue to withhold the checks from the recipients.”

 “This just goes against all common sense,” said U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip and a stimulus plan critic. “It shows you the lack of oversight and then what follows is this incredibly nonsensical outcome. Where is the accountability?”

The only requirement to get the cash, under the law, was that the recipient needed to have received benefits from the Social Security Administration, Veterans Affairs or the Railroad Retirement Board between November 2008 and February 2009. When the checks started going out in May, thousands went to prisoners jailed after February 2009 check cut-off date.

A total of 3,900 of the $250 checks were sent to incarcerated persons and most of them, 2,200, were legitimate. The remaining 1,700 checks that went to people who were in jail during the specified time in violation of the law will need to be recalled.  It’s not clear if the cons have already spent the money in the commissary.

“Out of the 52 million one-time economic recovery payments made, we are aware that a relatively small number of Social Security beneficiaries currently incarcerated and not receiving monthly benefits — approximately 3900 — received the payment,” Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said in a statement provided to The Washington Times. “Most of these beneficiaries — about 2200 — were due the payment because they were not in prison during one of the following months: November 2008, December 2008 or January 2009. The law specified that any beneficiary eligible for a Social Security benefit during one of those months was eligible for the recovery payment.

“A smaller subset of beneficiaries — about 1700 — received the economic recovery payment because our records did not accurately reflect that they were in prison,” the statement said.

Oh well…it’s only 425K…I’m sure much more has been & will continue to be wasted.

True story of walking the dog…..

WALKING THE DOG 
A woman was flying from Seattle to San Francisco .. Unexpectedly, the plane was diverted to Sacramento along the way. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes. 

Everybody got off the plane except one lady who was blind. The man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her seeing-eye dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight 

He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, ‘Kathy, we are in Sacramento for almost a n hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?’

The blind lady said, ‘No thanks, but maybe Buddy would like to stretch his legs.’ 

Picture this: 
All the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a seeing-eye dog! The pilot was even wearing sunglasses. People scattered. They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines!

True story… Have a great day and remember… 

THINGS AREN’T ALWAYS AS THEY APPEAR

A DAY WITHOUT LAUGHTER IS A DAY

WASTED!!!

“Stella Awards”

 Proof of entitlement mentality

It’s time again for the annual “Stella Awards!” For those unfamiliar
with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee.

You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?

That’s right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy. Here are the Stella’s for the past year:

To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th place.

5TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin , Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.
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5TH PLACE:

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California – you knew California had to be in the list somewhere, right? – who won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.
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5TH PLACE:

Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to subsist for eight – count ’em, EIGHT! – days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental anguish.
Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish.

We should all have this kind of anguish. Keep scratching, there are more….
======================================================

4TH PLACE:

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th place in the
Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard.

Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Grrrrr … Scratch, scratch.
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3RD PLACE:

Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a
Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a
spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone (coccyx). The reason the soft
drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30
seconds earlier during an argument.

What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stellas to go… ====================================================

2ND PLACE:

Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware , sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth.

Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.
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1ST PLACE:

This year’s runaway 1st place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, no less, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set.

The Oklahoma jury awarded her – you are sitting down, right? $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Are we, as a society, getting more stupid…or what?