Saturday, May 17, 2008

Rising Costs = Lack of Morals

We all know that the gas prices are skyrocketing, we are close to hitting $4 here. Price of milk, bread, food in general is going up. Here are 2 stories of people on the Cape that have taken matters into their own hands.

One is Jeffrey Windle. A Harwich man that has been arrested for embezzling 12 million dollars from the off-Cape company he worked for. I feel ok about mentioning his name, because he has been arrested by the Feds and it's all over the papers here. He and his wife and kids once lived in a little house in Dennis, then "came into some money" and moved into my favorite house in Harwich. It has a beautiful view of the water, a tennis court, a pool and a farmer's porch. He also purchased a few yachts, nice cars and a condo in Florida. He was also the treasurer for his small church in Dennis. Yes, he hit them up for about $400,000, too. The big joke in the papers is that his name rhymes with Swindle. Coincidence? I feel really badly for his kids. I can't believe that his wife didn't know about where the money came from. She thought it was bonuses he was getting from work.

The second story, unfortunately, comes from my high school. We have a very small high school. Everybody knows everybody and probably their parents and grandparents. In Massachusetts there is a thing called School Choice, where if the enrollment in our town is lacking in certain grades, kids from other towns can enroll. Our small size makes our school like a private school, therefore, we have quite a few school choice kids. Recently, there has been money stolen from wallets and lockers. There has also been missing Ipods. Evidently this kid is smart enough to only take the unengraved ipods. (Let that be a lesson to you, engrave your kids' ipods.) There was a party at some kid's house a few weeks ago, where $65,000 was stolen from a family (mattress) safe. Yeah, I don't know what they were doing with that money in a safe in their house. OK, so all these robberies led the police (who's idea of excitement in this town is jaywalkers) to one kid. Evidently he is on the baseball team. The police took a cruiser 1 1/2 hours away to the ball game and arrested the kid. This is a school choice kid. He is from one of the Cape towns, who's high school has police in the school all day because it's one of those "tough" towns. I had been enjoying my election for 12 hours when my sister in law says to me that we should ban school choice students. Never mind the 100 other choice kids who are great.

I just hope that with the economy struggling (ha struggling, read tanking) that this is not going to be the norm now.

12 comments:

Wendi said...

Windle= Swindle
Too funny.
Sorry, not funny!
I hope these rising costs don't produce more of that.
I sure wish I had $65,000 under my mattress...sure would help in times like these!

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey Windle's and this kid's actions have absolutely nothing to do with the economy. Swindle has been embezzling for the last 20 years through economic ups and downs, and this kid is, well, just a kid , who doesn't have to pay for his milk and electricity. The reason they're stealing isn't the economy, it's because they're criminals.

Anonymous said...

I'm with capemom: over the last 10 years we've had several districts in financial trouble after their officials robbed them blind. My own district was terribly hurt by a principal who stole from after school child care. I will never understand how his wife thought they were living like they were on about 100K a year.

P.S. I like school choice :)

Anonymous said...

i like school choice too and i'm not so psyched about any references to school choice and lack of morals...

KathyLikesPink said...

I read about that kid stealing the money. In our paper it said the girl who had the party was 15 and the 'kid' who stole the money was 22.

I can't imagine anyone having cash like that around the house.

When I was in high school, a girl friend used to have parties every time her parents left town (which was very often) but nothing bad ever happened. As a parent myself now, I hate to even THINK of it.

Tootsie Farklepants said...

I just had a long conversation with my oldest son because he wants to take his iPod to school. I told him that they're so easy to get stolen, so it's a big no.

Laski said...

You just get started and you have to deal with this--Ugh.

Tonight was the first time in four years our athletic boosters were able to hold the yearly dinner. The past treasurer stole over $35,000. She ended up in the same jail as Martha Stewart. What is going on??? Ugh.

It is a bummer that this program is going to be targeted because of the actions of one kid. Big bummer.

Anonymous said...

So I am sorry for the other 100 kids that are wonderful and my comment was to ban kids that have criminal records or have been expelled from other districts. Let us heed the warning here. Please don't quote me without me being able to explain-
Your loving sister in law
Who is in favor of school choice for kids that want to make choices and not break the law!!!!!

Sabrina said...

Wow...

Who keeps 65K around the house?

Wineplz said...

Unfortunately you're always going to have oppotunistic theives, and I don't think too much of it is due to the bad economy. Sometimes it seems that there are more when everything's on the up and up because there's so much money flowing around.
one of the bigwigs in the Washington DC Teachers union embezzled millions of dollars over the course of several years...finally got convicted a couple years ago. Sad that this person was lining their pockets with the hard-earned salaries of the teachers they were sworn to fight for.
And $65K in a home???? My mom would frequently keep $60-$100 in cash in a drawer, but anything over that amount is silly! Yikes! Makes you wonder what THEY were doing that they weren't putting that money in a bank....

scargosun said...

Difficult times. It's all about opportunity and wanting more and more. I think school choices is an excellent program and I hope it doesn't get a bad rap for this instance. As for Swindle...why would you leave a beautious town like Dennis?! I like Harwich too though. :)

Betsy, short for Elizabeth, formally known as Esther said...

SUCKS, just sucks. Can you imagine being the parent of that kid?