JayB

The secondary market for SUV's/Hummer's should be pretty active when the Great ARM Reset of '07 hits SoCal. Pretty foolish to torch what could become your primary residence IMO.

How heartbreaking to pass away after beating the odds and setting out on a path towards recovery. That's got to be terribly difficult for his friends and family and they have my sypathies.

Torch My Ride: Arson for Hire Debt-weary SUV owners unload their gas-guzzlers on insurance companies By Philip Reed Email | Blog Date Posted 06-06-2006 SUV owners who are faced with rising gas prices have found a new way to get out from under their high car payments — arson. This trend was spotted by a Southern California arson task force in the summer of 2005 when gas prices spiked. At one point, firefighters responding to a report of a vehicle fire arrived at the Los Angeles River Bed to find two SUVs burning at the same time. Investigators found the arson-for-hire ring involved a new-car dealership in Cerritos, California. Debt-weary SUV owners contacted the finance manager, hoping to trade in their gas-guzzler for something cheaper. They were then put in touch with an arsonist who told them to leave the keys in the ignition and $300 cash in the glovebox. An arsonist would then take the car to a remote location and set it afire. After the car was torched, the owners would then contact their insurance company and report their vehicle stolen, expecting their debt to be cancelled. Instead, they were investigated for insurance fraud. A sting operation was arranged and an undercover officer posed as an "upside-down" SUV owner who wanted his vehicle burned. "Upside-down" refers to a loan where more money is owed than the car is worth. The vehicle was left at a predetermined location with cash in the glovebox. However, the would-be arsonist didn't know there was a "dash cam" installed in the car to videotape his actions. When the arsonist removed the money and started to drive away, investigators hit a kill switch and triggered the door locks, trapping him inside. Simultaneously, warrants were served on seven other people involved in the arson ring. The loser in all this is the driving public. "You and I pay for it in our premiums," said Robert Rowe, arson investigator for the City of Downey and a member of the task force. "Insurance premiums for everyone increase when crimes [like this] are committed." Rowe said that "the likelihood of being caught [for vehicle arson] has increased tremendously. It used to be a dark secret but the secret is now becoming revealed. Investigators are now being trained and are networking with the insurance companies to uncover these crimes." At the root of the problem: People pay too much for a vehicle they really can't afford. "Because of the way the economy has gone, the gas prices skyrocketing the way they have, we started to see a peak" (in arsons), Rowe said. "People that had the gas-guzzlers that got eight miles per gallon, they started to get hit hard. They didn't want those cars anymore." Faced with rising gas prices, people who are trapped in a high-payment lease have no easy way to escape without a stiff penalty. "People will lease a car for 84 months with zero down and they have some outrageous payment," said Rowe. "They start to realize they are living beyond their means." The responsible solution would be to advertise the car for sale, pay off the loan and switch to a more affordable ride (even leased cars can be bought and then sold to get out of high payments). The irresponsible solution some people choose is to burn the vehicle and let the insurance company pay what is owed. A former firefighter from nearby Lynwood, California, said, "We used to get called out on vehicle fires and when we got there we would find a brand-new car was burning. Some of them were stolen but we knew that most of them were people trying to get out from under their car note. It seemed like it happened just about every night." Jennifer Mieth, manager of fire data and public education at the Massachusetts State Fire Marshall's Office, said car fires are "cyclical." She added, "When times are good, fires are down. When they are bad they go up." In 1984, Mieth said it was "commonly accepted for Mr. and Mrs. Citizen to 'sell' their car back to the insurance company by lighting it on fire." To put a stop to that, the Burned Motor Vehicle Reporting Law was passed in 1987. This required the owner of a burned vehicle to complete and sign a report that must also be signed by a fire official from the department where the fire occurred. The new law was the most likely reason that vehicle fires dropped 95 percent, from a high of 5,116 in 1987 to 217 in 2004. Vehicle arson has had a long and occasionally humorous track record over the years. In Texas, a car salesman was arrested after offering his customers what he called a "rotisserie program." He would have their cars torched; then, after they collected on the insurance, he sold them a new car. In another part of the state, two students were arrested after they torched their high school teacher's car in exchange for passing grades. Rowe, a firefighter since 1994, is in charge of contacting owners of burned vehicles to make sure their stories add up. While he hasn't seen any "rotisserie programs," he has heard his share of lies. Often he will begin his investigation by contacting the dealership where the car was purchased to see the sales jacket (loan contract) of a burned car. If the owner is upside-down, and particularly if they recently purchased "gap insurance" to make sure they were fully covered, they fall under suspicion. Actually, torching your own car isn't illegal, although as Rowe points out, if you have financed it, "you will pay for that burned-out shell for the rest of the lease." However, if you report the fire to your insurance company as accidental, when in fact it was arson, you have committed insurance fraud. "In the majority of the fires we have on the freeways, nine out of 10 times the owner is still with the car, or close by," Rowe said. So when a car is found burning, and no owner is in sight, it quickly becomes suspicious. In most arson cases, the car is reported stolen. But due to sophisticated anti-theft devices, it's not easy to steal a car without the key. Many owners become vague when Rowe asks them to account for the second key. Often, they maintain the dealership never gave it to them when they initially purchased the car. "We also look at the burn pattern [in the vehicle] going from the area of least damage to the area of most damage," Rowe said. "People who are burning it for insurance purposes want a total loss. The only way to do that quickly and efficiently before the fire department gets there is to use an accelerant." Rowe is not the only one who has seen an increase in SUV fires. Arson investigators in San Diego County saw vehicle arson go up 34 percent between 1998 and 2002, prompting analysts to surmise that more people facing economic hardship may be setting fires to their cars to escape high payments. Meanwhile, nearly 20 percent of all arsons occur in vehicles, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Additionally, arson is the second-highest cause of vehicle fires. To better investigate these crimes, Rowe has educated himself on the car-buying process. What he sees shocks him. "The deals are out there, but when the pencil meets the paper the deals really aren't that great. You'll see a car payment that is incredible and their rent is incredible but their income doesn't support either. "People become desperate during financial hardship," Rowe observed. "It's not because they are bad people; they just get pushed into a financial corner and they make poor decisions. There are ways out of it — but people want a quick fix." For anyone considering this "quick fix" Rowe said he wanted to send them a message. Quoting the line delivered by Robert De Niro in the 2000 hit movie Meet the Parents, he said, "I'm watching you!"

Insane. If I was an ex-hippie in Fremont that bought 20 years ago I'd negotiate a sale which included long-term lease-back provision with any "investor" willing to fork over 1 million for my 1500 square footer from the 1930's, and then invest the proceeds in a low-risk basket o' investments that would generate enough income to cover whatever rent the property could realistically fetch. Keep living in the house, pocket gains from the crazy-ass sales price, and transfer the maintenance and spiraling tax liabilities, as well as the considerable downside risk to the "investor" in exchange for forfeiting whatever marginal inflation-adjusted upside still exists at this point.

Niiiiiiiiice. It was interesting for me to hear what he had to say after being in the thick of it for another year.

Not claiming either - but a contrary view seems to dominate the popular commentary around the world.

Could be a time cycle/sourcing difference. Info released when the Euro news bureaus are humming, etc. Speaking of reporting, one of the first things that my best friend told me when he got back from Iraq was that if his unit made it to a certain time without any explosions in their territory, they felt pretty confident that it'd be a quiet day, as any carnage that ensued after that point would be too late to make much of an impact in the Western daily news cycle.

And you know this is factually accurate how? Just following the news. Never encountered any stories of such events happening, and given the scale and tempo of Canadian deployments there, it seems unlikely that incidents where several civilians are killed at once will occur, and it's still more unlikely that such killings would occur with the frequency and scale that would be likely to serve as an effective transnational rallying cry for a Jihad against Canada. My larger point here is that for some reason people assume that Islamist's agenda is limited to reacting to specific, concrete grievances that have their origin in particular elements of US or Western foreign policy. This is certainly part of the story, but if you aquaint yourself with the history of the Islamic peoples and the terrorist's own literature it's clear that the sense of grievance that animates most Muslims has roots that go back for centuries, and the scope of the policy objectives that Islamic terrorists are persuing is much grander than simple retribution in response to Western policies of the last 30 years or so. Albert Hourani's "A History of the Arab Peoples" is a good place to start for anyone interested in a general history.

I am hardly a confirmed enemy of bolting, but if a leader who's competent at the route's overall grade could handle the first pitch without the bolts, and engaging in the bolting would substantially alter the character of the entire route, then that's two strikes against the potentially hypothetical bolts. The other factor to consider is whether having abundant bolting down low might lure in a leader who's likely to have his ass handed to him on the upper pitches. Heavy bolting also seems pretty contrary to the longstanding "ethic" of slab climbing, in which the mental fortitude required to run it out has been a much greater "part of the game" than in sport climbing, where for most of us the challenge is way more physical than mental most of the time. I like sport-climbing, but to me bolting the hell out of slabs is a lot like chipping jugs onto a sport route - in both cases you are eliminating the central challenge of the discipline.

Quite the dissappointing paucity of posts by the grand-champions. I'm note even asking for new material. Just cut and paste the good stuff here after you hit the "submit" button over at the Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, etc.

Probably more effective than killing thousands of innocent civilians will be at protecting us from future terrorist attacks.....next dumb question please. Canadian forces have yet to inadvertently kill any civilians in the course of their operations in Afghanistan, so it stands to reason that perhaps something other than outrage driven by the sight of Afgan civilians killed by Canadian forces may have been motivating the fellows who wanted to set-off the explosives in Toronto.

I'm really, really looking forward to reading the responses to this thread. TREETOAD, Fear-and-Greed, etc - show your stuff.

I noticed that statistic too. Interesting. Might be the single most impressive statistic that Canada has been able to muster in the decades long crusade to differentiate themselves from the cretinous hordes lurking to the South. I'm sorry that I don't have the time to respond to your question with anything other than a question of my own, which is, do you think that by withdrawing from Afghanistan, Canada could secure itself lasting immunity from terrorist attacks of this sort?

a sort of suicide fat fuckers. still, I remember when america was fit and thin, a quiet advertising brainwashing over a generation and BOOM!!! sleeper cells under the golden arches!! Ronnie Rat = Osama Bin Burger. No one has a choice when it comes to important things, i.e. your last election, hijacked, lied to, and taken down the garden path. Statcan Obesity Data for the GWN Canadian Obesity Stats

I'm not an authority on Toyota Truck/4Runner related camping modification trends, so I'm not sure. I just thought that RedBeard would get his feelings hurt if his initial query was met with something besides a lame joke (response #2) and useless information (response #1).

You can probably also modify the 4Runner to suit your camping needs pretty well by trading it in for a Taco with a canopy.

Never seen/heard of anyone rigging up the 4Runner Camper Mod, but never fear. The car camping folks have got you covered with this bitchen tent-car hybrid. "Finally - a shelter that combines the ease and convenience of setting up a tent AND that lovely car-interior ambience you've come to expect when you're crashing at a trailhead."

Just scrolling through the "Google News" feed for Canada, actually. Also some coverage on NPR this afternoon. So give me your nuanced analysis of why these men wanted to detonate a large explosive device in a major Canadian city. The global consensus seemed to be that the US had it coming on account of it's foreign policy, and Canada has been at pains to differentiate it's foreign policy for nearly 30-40 years, so what do you think motivated them to initiate this plot?

Since the received wisdom around the world is that every bombing of the US and/or attack on its citizens is a just, fully warranted, and legitimate response to American foreign policy, how do you explain the planned attack on Canada?

Dude - Carl. What is going on down there in SoCal? The cj001f Misanthropy Index © has been trending higher ever since you've made the move down there. Too much sunshine wreaking havoc with the Scandanavian constitution? BTW - how did pecs manage to work their way into this counter-rant?

Dude - Carl. What is going on down there in SoCal? The cj001f Misanthropy Index © has been trending higher ever since you've made the move down there. Too much sunshine wreaking havoc with the Scandanavian constitution?

So could someone point out the injury? There's got to be an ortho/radiologist amongst the lurker hordes.

Good rant but the odds are pretty high that at least some non-climbing friends and family will still continue to judge the hell out of the risks you take and the decisions you make. My Mom grudgingly accepted the way things are quite a while ago, but nonetheless makes it a point to inform me that she will spit on my grave if I get killed climbing. Then there are the sketchy-looking folks that look like they're at risk of killing themselves. Say something or no? Always a tough call. I've had people come over and provide some unsolicited, unnecessary, and incorrect advice before and it annoyed the hell out of me, but when I was just getting started, there were at least two occaisions where someone looked at what we were doing, got concerned, and spoke up. I was embarassed but ultimately grateful that they did so. For some reason there seems to be something about climbing that just makes it tougher to do this sort of thing.

The only initiative I would vote "Yes" on is an initiative that would terminate the initiative/referendum process once and for all in Washington. Good way for the legislature to chicken-out of making tough calls on the record by "letting the people decide," and one hell of a bad way to make policy.

It's already been 10 minutes since I posted that to troll Dru and I have yet to get a response, so this is clearly a damning failure of my own foreign policy.