Arizona

The count for March’s Notices of Trustee’s Sales in Maricopa County was 1720. Not a record beater, but certainly within sight of the summit. MC Trustee’s Sale Notices (1995-Present)Mean929.5Median819Mode746Standard Deviation306.2041743Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum135705Count146 The daily average in March (78.18 Notices recorded per day) was also not a record beater. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/DailyAvgMar07.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for full-sized image"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048174691379040498” /> Here’s an interesting chart I threw together based on sales data I pulled from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. The take-away from it is that, clearly, the inventory of unsold homes in the Phoenix area has been increasing for quite a while, now. The words “downward pressure” come to mind. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/listingsales.jpg” border=“0” alt=““id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048176301991776514” /> ...

I’ve just learned that I missed the “9/11 Accountability: Strategies and Solutions Conference” that was held in February in Chandler. The guest list is filled with the expected kooks like James Fetzer, Steven Jones, and Col. Robert Bowman from “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” (Jones apparently has withdrawn from co-chair of that group and started another of his own with a similar name after clashing with Fetzer), and Jim Marrs, among many others. If there was any doubt that this is a collection of people with no concerns about their credibility, I was quite amused to see this entry on the speakers list: Michael and Aurora Ellegion Michael and Aurora Ellegion, have been investigative reporters for over 25 years. They have insight into the powerful mind control aspect that 9-11 was utilized to create. They have appeared on numerous television programs, the BBC TV and Armed Forces Radio, newspapers and magazines. The Ellegions are also futurists and deeply desire to enlighten mankind, feeling that we must each play a part in directing our government. Michael and Aurora have spoke at cutting-edge conferences worldwide and at the Press Clubs throughout the U.S. on numerous social and political issues.This description is remarkable for what it omits. I’m familiar with this couple under the name “El-Legion” rather than “Ellegion,” from meeting them at a psychic fair in Phoenix around 1987 when I was head of the Phoenix Skeptics. There, they presented themselves as channelers of Lord Ashtar and other discarnate extraterrestrial entities from the Pleiades, along with the occasional Archangel. The website I’ve linked to, “channelforthemasters.com,” seems to indicate that they are still in that business. Hopefully they’ve discontinued their side business of selling stolen telephone card numbers in Hawaii, for which they were arrested in 1987. Admission to the psychic fair gave me a ticket for a reading from the psychic of my choice. I chose Michael El-Legion, thinking his reading would be the most likely to provide entertainment, and he did not disappoint. He told me I was an “Eagle Commander” of the Star People and a person of great cosmic importance. I’m pretty sure I still have an audio tape of that reading somewhere. I wrote up my encounter with Michael El-Legion in the Arizona Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 1 (July/August 1988), which unfortunately I can’t seem to find my copies of. UPDATE (March 31, 2007): Found my copies of the Arizona Skeptic. Turns out I misremembered writing it up, and misread grep output from my search of the online index. The only reference to the El-Legions was in vol. 3, no. 3 (April 1990), in Mike Stackpole’s “Editorial Blathering” column. The psychic fair I reported on in vol. 2, no. 1 didn’t include anything about the El-Legions, though I did converse with a man who claimed to be an alien contactee, who now is claiming online to have had a near-death experience that have given him healing powers. ...

Whoever maintains John McCain’s MySpace page borrowed the template from another MySpace user without giving credit. That template included an image in the “Contacting ” section, which was being pulled from the original user’s page and had a list of menu items to click on. The original user, upset at his template being used without credit, changed the image, so that it said: “Dear Supporters, Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage… particularly marriage between passionate females. John” McCain’s MySpace page has subsequently been fixed. BTW, the Republican candidate for president with the most MySpace friends is libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, who has for some reason been removed from multiple online polls about candidate preferences (including Pajamas Media and Slate’s reporting of the online idea futures). UPDATE (March 30, 2007): Pajamas Media has re-listed Ron Paul and added Fred Thompson this week; Fred Thompson is leading and Ron Paul is in second for the Republicans; Bill Richardson is leading for the Democrats. Not that online, self-selected polling has any reflection on how an actual vote would go…

An anti-Mormon Christian ministry, “Concerned Christians,” has distributed 18,000 DVDs to homes across Arizona, mainly targeting areas with high Mormon populations such as Mesa and Snowflake. 15,000 DVDs were distributed to homes in Mesa, Tempe, and Gilbert, 2,000 in Snowflake, and 1,000 in Tucson. The DVD, titled “Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith,” argues against the latter but not the former. The DVD was apparently produced by and distributed nationally by Living Hope Ministries of Brigham City, Utah, a Christian church that criticizes the Mormon religion. [UPDATE (July 6, 2007): My cousin and his wife inform me in the comments that this is not correct, contrary to the statement from the Arizona distributor in the Arizona Republic’s report, and that this was produced and distributed by TriGrace Ministries and GoodnewsfortheLDS.com.] That name was familiar to me–I suspected, and verified, that this is the same church that previously produced a DVD about how DNA evidence disproved Mormon claims about Native Americans being descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. In 2001, the pastor of Living Hope Ministries was Joel Kramer, who was the officiant at the wedding of my cousin Aaron Lippard, which I attended at their storefront church in Brigham City. Kramer, a former Tucson resident, has authored a book, Beyond Fear, which tells the story of how Kramer and my cousin Aaron traveled across Papua New Guinea solely under their own power. I read the book after seeing my cousin present a slide presentation about his harrowing trip (and show off his septum piercing, which was pierced by a New Guinea aborigine with a bird bone, by sticking a meat thermometer through it). I found the book enjoyable, though preachy and annoying in spots. Kramer’s voice as a writer struck me as arrogant and condescending towards my cousin, portraying himself as a Christian real-man and my cousin as an inexperienced, naive fellow who had much to learn about becoming a mature Christian male. A film Kramer has produced is called The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon, which is reviewed here by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. This review makes a point that I’ve made about Living Hope’s Mormons & DNA DVD and about Richard Abanes’ One Nation Under Gods–they don’t seem to apply the same standard of criticism to Christianity that they apply to Mormonism. I’m sure the same is true of “Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith.” ...

Although I’m not generally a fan of Arizona’s U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-District 2), I have to give him compliments for his stance on this issue. He’s one of only two Congressmen who has reached out to the Egyptian ambassador to the United States on behalf of Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman (also known as Kareem Amer), who was arrested, beaten, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing his government in his blog. As the other Congressman is Massachusetts’ Rep. Barney Frank (D-District 4), this is about as bipartisan as it gets. Kudos to Franks and Frank. (Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

In a CNN interview, former Arizona governor and current pastry chef Fife Symington says he saw the “Phoenix lights” in 1997 and believes that the cause was an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The CNN coverage fails to offer any alternative explanations (see the “Skepticism” section of the Wikipedia entry on the Phoenix lights and Tony Ortega’s 1998 New Times story), or to note that Symington was the second Arizona Republican governor of the 1980s to be indicted on criminal charges, impeached, and removed from office. Also see the Arizona Republic’s coverage.

Arizona has risen from #23 for reported mortgage fraud in 2005 to #7 in 2006, based on number of fraud cases out of the total number of home loans in the state: The top 10 states for 2006: 1. Utah 2. Florida 3. California 4. New York 5. Idaho 6. Michigan 7. Arizona 8. Georgia 9. Minnesota 10. Illinois

Radley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona. The only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana. This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn’t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues. But it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s “porn czar,” Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled “Obscenity Cases” which said: We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] comments at the NAC to ‘kick butt and take names’, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations."Adult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a “good case.” It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling. The reason the second chain wasn’t also prosecuted? It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government. And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store. More details and links at The Agitator. And there’s more on the other attorney firings at TPM Muckraker. UPDATE (March 26, 2007): Balko has further comments on Charlton’s firing based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ. Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway. Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn’t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations. UPDATE (April 27, 2007): The New York Times editorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton’s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi: ...

The Arizona Republic has a story on why Arizona doesn’t go on daylight savings time–it was attempted in 1967 and reversed by the state legislature in 1968, when Sandra Day O’Connor was Senate Majority Leader. The feds gave Arizona an exemption from daylight savings time on January 4, 1974, two days before a mandate for states to go on daylight savings time. As I like to say, Arizona has so much daylight we don’t bother to save any. One positive side-effect–no issues over this year’s DST changes in Arizona (except for companies that operate across multiple states). UPDATE (March 13, 2007): Long or Short Capital offers some funny additional speculation on why Arizona doesn’t go on Daylight Savings Time. ...

Today’s Arizona Republic reports that “Big lenders and Wall Street investors are going after Arizona mortgage brokers, appraisers, real estate agents, title firms, and home buyers for fraud”: Dozens of civil lawsuits alleging the gamut of mortgage fraud, from cash-back deals to lying about income on loan documents, have been filed against Valley firms and individuals during the past few months. Fraud experts and regulators say the lawsuits are only the beginning as the fallout from mortgage fraud starts to hit the Valley. Cash-back scams involve getting a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money. The deals inflate home values and leave lenders with losses from loans worth far more than the house itself.A few specific suits mentioned: Phoenix’s Biltmore Bank is suing Security Title, appraiser Kittelman & Associates, and Tucson resident and house flipper Frank Padilla (who already was indicted and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering) over a $1.3 million loan for $800,000 property. A Lehman Brothers investment trust and Aurora Loan Services are suing the parent company of First National Bank of Arizona for 38 home loans which misrepresented home values and income, debt, and employment of borrowers. The plaintiffs bought the loans and want the bank to buy them back. Transnational Financial Network is suing Lending House Financial and a Scottsdale investor “who purchased 22 homes within days of each other last spring” for failure to disclose debt level or the fact that the investor was purchasing multiple homes (which were all foreclosed upon). Tucson mortgage lender First Magnus is suing its former Phoenix-based loan officer, Tyson Rondeau, for fraud and negligence, saying that bad loans are costing it $1 million. That lender itself has been investigated by the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions for misrepresentations and failure to disclose facts, and has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine. The article quotes attorney Michael Manning, who is working for some of the above plaintiffs, saying that “This is the tip of the iceberg, but I think regulators got on top of it faster than in the mid-1980s.” I’m not sure how fast they got on top of the S&L issues in the eighties, but they’re at least three and a half years late to the party this time around–when these fraudulent deals were working, the regulators were uninterested. Now that they’re failing and the house of cards is collapsing, suddenly they gain an interest. This is because all of these players–the plaintiffs and the defendants–knew what was going on. They were all profiting from it. The regulators and lawsuits are just a way for the larger players to cover their asses after the fact and avoid paying the full price for what they must have known was bound to ultimately happen. ...