Bush**'s advisor caught stealing from Target is a "market oriented

[AlinPA]

conservative". I laughed out loud when I read the article about Claude Allen in the NYT (sorry, I don't have the link here) where he was described as a "market oriented conservative" and the article told about his holy life. So that's how it works ! I always wondered about these economic terms. So, you buy some stuff, take it to your car, take the receipt back into the store, buy the same stuff, then go to the return desk to get your money back. "Conservative and market oriented, indeed"

[Sparkman]

1. ?buy-put in car-take receipt back-buy same stuff-get your money back?

[Tommy_J]

2. That what he did apparently

It much safer than stealing directly.

[Drum]

4. The guy would

charge a buncha items at Target, walk out and put them in his car. He would then return to the/a Target store (same day or later) and walk around with a cart, select the same items he'd previously purchased and put them into a Target bag he'd brought along. Then he would haul the lot of it to the Customer Service desk---with his earlier, legitimate, receipt---and get a refund for all of it, credited onto his credit card. Leave the store with nothing but credit, while the goods are actually all sitting there in his car. He wouldn't buy the same things a second time...only collect them around the store to serve as props in his scam.

hope this expl. helps

[progdonkey]

6. security tags...

The thing I don't get about this whole scam is that I thought Target (and also Hecht's, apparently) put security tags on their clothing like most clothing retailers. Did he specifically target Target (sorry for the pun ;-) ) because they don't actually do that?

I would think this whole scam would be impossible if he tried to return a whole bunch of items that all still had their security tags on them. :shrug:

[Drum]

8. I know, that's a puzzle...maybe he really learned some neat tricks

in this White House...?

[Sparkman]

10. thanks for the explanation...i've thought of that same scheme but CAMERAS!

Petty crimes like shop-lifting are impossible to prevent, or graffiti, but decent folk just don't do it, just because. It's a kids foolish stunt, but for an adult to sink to that is bizaar? seems the "religious cover" can deflect suspicion only so long.

[leftofthedial]

19. kind of like the "war on terror" scam his ex-boss is running

on the US treasury

phony war, real money

[sojourner]

3. it's truly amazing the way Bush and his cronies attract criminals...or

do they create criminals? hm...........i'll need to ponder that awhile.

[reichstag911]

5. correction

"...(Y)ou buy some stuff, take it to your car, take the receipt back into the store, buy the same stuff, then go to the return desk to get your money back."

The highlighted part should read: "get the same stuff you just bought off the shelves."

[AlinPA]

12. Yes. This market oriented conservative stuff is tricky.

[reichstag911]

18. Four years at Wharton...

...helped make it comprehensible to me.

[Virginia Dare]

7. He appears to be another sad upper-middle class

suburbanite living way beyond his means. There's many more where he came from. It's hard to keep up appearances. This is the by-product of our consumerism-obsessed society, which is constantly reinforced by the media. I actually feel very sorry for him.

[gratuitous]

9. So hard to scrape by on a measly $160 thou a year

It's perfectly understandable why Allen had to rip off Target and Hecht's for an extra few hundred or thousand dollars.

Wait, no it's not understandable at all.

[Virginia Dare]

22. It is if you're a self-absorbed sycophant rich-boy wannabe...

besides 160 thou a year in D.C. is the equivalent of 50 thou a year in Iowa ;)

[zbdent]

11. He must not understand what "Free Market" really meant

I mean, he still has to pay for stuff . . .

[winston61]

13. dumb ass forgot the number one rule:

1.) NEVER steal anything small. Steal small and you go to jail. Steal big and you get to be president and murder middle Easterners.

[KansDem]

14. I saw a similar scam on "Cops"

A couple months ago, due to freezing pipes, I had to do some laundry at a coin-op laundry. I sat there while the washers were going, and watched the community TeeVee. I saw two episodes of "Cops." One episode showed how a retailer caught someone trying to scam them with a similar procedure: the customer picked up an item, took it to the customer service desk and said he had bought it there (I forget if he had a "receipt" from a previous purchase, or if didn't have one and was trying to return it without one--the "lost my receipt" scam hoping to get a sympathetic checker). Well, this was all caught on a security cameras, and the plain-clothes store cop and a checker both "took him down." They 'cuffed him and took him up to the office for the police to arrive.

[izzybeans]

15. "market-orientation"=robber barron.

50 cent was market oriented when selling crack and bustin' caps.

The differences are mute. Halliburton is 50 cent underneath a multi-national corporate charter.

[VaYallaDawg]

16. I don't think it catches any of us by surprise. n/t

[KurtNYC]

17. 25 offences and at least $5,000 in merchandise

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/politics/12allen.html

He was a domestic policy advisor and he loves to steal....hmmmmmmmmm. Social Security reform = ?

edit: better story link and loved the last line:

re: the 1960s and 1970s -- "Just when today's welfare state was being created," Mr. Allen wrote, "my mother and father were instilling in my brother and me the principles of self-government and self-worth, not what Uncle Sam could do for us."

or to quote Oliver! (the Lionel Bart musical) "moneybags don't grow on trees..you've got to pick a pocket or two (or 25).

[Drum]

20. in today's WH Briefing on the WaPo site:

at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

"Allen is friends with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: "The two would often go to lunch, sometimes talking about the burdens of being black conservatives. 'He would always say to make sure I conducted myself appropriately,' Allen recalled in an interview last year."


...and much more backstory besides....

[LastDemocratInSC]

23. Thomas made sure Allen conducted himself appropriately?

Well, I suppose so. Clarence Thomas is in the big time - he steals Presidential elections. Claude Allen just steals DVD players. I guess he was just starting to learn at the knee of the master when he was caught. Allen's comments about "appropriate conduct" are surely honor among thieves.

[npincus]

21. no mention of this on NBC Today Show

during Clinton's second term, wasn't NBC the "Blowj*b Network"?