This Wikipedia entry on Arizona’s anti-immigration law might answer some questions people have about what the exact language of the law mandates. Law Provisions The law makes it a state misdemeanor crime for anyone to be unable to prove lawful residence in the United States upon being asked to provide such proof pursuant to a [...]

A Flagstaff, Arizona citizen argues that the state’s new anti-immigration law, requiring law enforcement authorities to determine the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, does not go far enough. From elephantjournal.com: Is it just me or has Arizona Immigration Law SB 1070 not gone far enough? If the Arizona police [...]

Time magazine describes the SEC fraud case against Goldman Sachs this way: On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed civil securities-fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, alleging the investment bank and its partners created mortgage bonds that were set up to go bust. Goldman then sold these bonds, which are called collateralized debt obligations [...]

From UN Dispatch, a site providing “commentary and coverage on the UN and UN-related issues.” The Somali Pirates’ Business Model by Mark Leon Goldberg Last week, a group of investigators dispatched by the Security Council to Somalia released an exhaustive, 100 plus page report on arms trafficking, aid diversion, and other criminal activities in Somalia… [...]

A California voter initiative to legalize marijuana has officially qualified for the November ballot. From the web site Ballotpedia: Supporters of legalization are focusing on the benefits they say would flow to the state from taxing marijuana; when marijuana is illegal, it is not taxed. If it was legal, the government would be able to [...]

FraudBytes, maintained by an accounting professor and accounting PhD student, aggregates news reports on corporate governance, corruption, and general white collar malfeasance. There are 43 posts alone on Bernie Madoff, including this one on a recent Wall Street Journal article about Madoff’s being beaten in prison. The earnest tone of the blog is typified by [...]

Another session with the Evil HR Lady finds her engaged in some straight talk with a job seeker in sales who is well-connected but has two DUIs on his record. Will my high level connections overcome a DUI? I have a friend pretty high up at a major company (in sales) who had recently talked [...]

Intrepid blogger Mary Hannington writes about the perils of living in crime-afflicted Detroit. Guns and the Weber Grill Wars (Vagabond Guru) I don’t know if it was a trend unique to my city or if it was popular everywhere, but everyone I knew in Detroit had a Weber grill and we barbequed all summer. We [...]

Speaking of crime and the recession, we found this press release issued last year by the National Retail Federation. It deals with store return policies and “return fraud.”

Though retailers seem to be confronting return fraud, incidents continue to permeate most retail stores. According to the survey, most retailers (88.9%) have had stolen merchandise returned to stores within the past year. Retailers also report being victimized by returns of merchandise originally purchased with fraudulent or stolen tender (74.1%) and returns using counterfeit receipts (45.7%).

The release goes on to address something called “wardrobing.”

The New York Times reported the other day that even in this brutal economy, crime is actually down in New York City.
“The idea that everyone has ingrained into them — that as the economy goes south, crime has to get worse — is wrong,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was never right to begin with.”

…While there is generally thought to be a lag between changing economic conditions and new crime patterns, he said, it is curious that there has been no pronounced jump in street crimes associated with the most recent recession, which took root last year.

A series of posts from the political science blog Monkey Cage addresses this counterintuitive lack of correlation between crime and the economy, in relation to people’s perceptions.