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Monday, June 13th 2005

My colleague Chad Syverson passed along the following news clipping, although as a native North Dakotan, he swears this sort of thing would never happen in North Dakota (only in Moorhead, Minnesota which is right across the state line):
Former Realtor ordered to pay fine for attempted theft

By Amy Dalrymple

The Forum - 06/10/2005

A former real estate agent pleaded guilty Thursday to attempting to steal nearly $800 from a freezer during an open house.

A Clay County District Court judge ordered Kathryn Grady-Thurston, 56, to pay a $500 fine and placed her on one year of unsupervised probation for gross misdemeanor attempted theft.

Grady-Thurston, 1361 5th St. N., Fargo, admitted in court she went to an open house on Feb. 6 in Moorhead and took a bag of cash out of a kitchen freezer.

She returned the money after another real estate agent caught her with the cash and told her to put it back, she testified.

“It was just basically a stupid impulse,” Grady-Thurston said, adding she’d never done anything like it before.

A felony charge was dismissed under a plea agreement. If Grady-Thurston completes her probation, the conviction will become a misdemeanor, said Clay County District Judge Galen Vaa.

“This is a strange incident, and I’m sure you thought many times (about) why you did what you did,” Vaa said.

Defense attorney Bruce Quick said Grady-Thurston did not wish to comment.

Quick said he did not know how Grady-Thurston was aware there was cash in the freezer, but he said it’s common for real estate agents to inspect appliances.

Grady-Thurston was fired from Metro Realty after the incident and her real estate licenses in Minnesota and North Dakota were canceled, real estate broker Dan Madsen said in April.

Grady-Thurston said in court she worked as a Realtor for more than 20 years.

According to court records and an interview with victim Steven Vigesaa:

Grady-Thurston looked at the home at 6201 Oakport St. N. before the open house, which was hosted by Kvamme Real Estate agent Darrin Wixo.

When she arrived at the open house, Grady-Thurston said she was waiting for clients, but they never arrived.

At some point she was in the kitchen with Wixo when he left the room to talk to prospective buyers.

Wixo told authorities he heard some noise in the kitchen and returned to find Grady-Thurston trying to hide something.

Vigesaa said his wife used the freezer as a hiding place.

Looking on the bright side, at least it wasn’t her own client she was stealing from. Isn’t a real estate agent supposed to extract as much as possible from the person on the other side of the deal? Maybe she just got carried away with esprit-de-corps.

A few days ago, in an online Q&A with the Washington Post, someone asked this question:

Annapolis, Md.: Have you explored why some people vote against their own economic interest?

And I gave the following answer: No. But it’s not that surprising, since one vote is really worth very very little. It probably comes down to the fact that most people consider a single vote to be worth far less in electoral oomph than in the value it gives them in terms of their conscience, or belief, or style, or whatever you want to call it. In “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, Thomas Frank makes much of the fact that blue-collar Republicans are voting against their economic self-interest, which is true. But again, I don’t find it so surprising. Steven Spielberg is voting against his economic self-interest by voting Democratic, no? I think the voting paradigm we all cling to — that economic self-interest rules all — is pretty weak. (I should also note that I don’t know a single economist who bothers to vote, so worthless do they consider the act.)

Since then, I’ve heard from quite a few people, including at least one economist who says she always votes. Today, we heard from one Anna V., who had this to say:

I saw part of the recent Freakonomics Q&A on Washingtonpost.com and was surprised by the assertion that most economists don’t bother to vote because it’s just not worth it. After the extremely close results in the 2000 Gore vs. Bush race (not to mention the extremely close results in a lot of local government races), how can you justify this position? (And give me a break, with all the absentee and other voting options available nowadays, it’s not a big expenditure of time or effort to cast a ballot.)

Anna V. has plainly turned the issue from a “what is” to a “what ought to be,” which I think is perfectly fine. I’d love to hear what others have to say — economists and non-economists — about the utility of voting. (It should also be said that there’s a huge difference in a national election and a local election, which I probably would have noted had the Q&A not been a live one.) Comments welcome.

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