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The Citizen, 1999-07-14, Page 5THE CITIZEN. WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1999. PAGE 5. The - Draw me a dollar Money is what you’d get on beautifully without If only other people weren't so crazy about it. Margaret Chase Harriman Ever stopped to think about money? Not money the abstract. Money the concrete: loonies, toonies, fives, tens and twenties. We’re talking about paper, here. Paper and base metals. The words on the front of the coin/bill say it's worth 'X dollars’...but they’re just words, folks. We would be just as far ahead swapping lead washers, plastic beads, bus transfers or bubblegum wrappers - except for the fact that with money, some government somewhere says “pay to the order of ...” The stuff is only worth what somebody tells us it’s worth. I’m pretty sure that thought must have occurred to J.S.G. Boggs - otherwise, why would he have begun painting money? International Scene By Raymond Canon Get rich quick The recent American action of placing a bounty of $5 million U.S. (Can. $7,350,000) on the head of Slobodan Milosevic as several other Serbs accused of atrocities, shows that the spirit of free enterprise is alive and well south of the border. Immediately there was considerable talk about bounty hunters taking advantage of this offer to make themselves a bit of extra cash. I think that most people, if they have any idea at all of the role of a bounty-hunter, are basing their picture on what they have seen in a few Westerns, Hollywood style. I must confess I was in the same category until a few years ago, when I was standing outside the office of a bail-bondsman in San Diego waiting for a friend of mine to pick me up. I asked him, when I got into his car. just what a bail-bondsman was and out of this conversation came my knowledge of a bounty hunter. Bail bondsmen lend money to defendants who are about to be tried in court. Out of this they earn a not-considerable fee but, if the defendant skips his or her trial, as about one in seven do, the loan immediately becomes a risky one. The bounty hunter is hired by the bail bondsman to catch and return the fugitive within a specific period of time. If he is successful, he is paid a fee of generally 10 per That's what Mister Boggs does - he’s a graphic artist who happens to grace his canvases with representations of money. He draws painstaking replicas of American tens, twenties, and fifty-dollar bills. And then he attempts to use them as actual currency. Understand that Mister Boggs is no run-of- the-mill counterfeiter. His painted bills are much larger than real ones. The colours are deliberately wonky. Sometimes he messes with the wording on the bills. And he only paints the front side of the bills, and then signs the blank backside - just like a standard work of art. And it’s driving the U.S. Treasury Department absolutely nuts. Boggs is what you’d call a Conceptual Artist. He draws, say the front side of a $20 bill, goes to a restaurant, orders a meal, then attempts to ‘pay’ with his artistic rendition of legal tender. Sometimes, the waiters go for it. Sometimes they think he’s a freak. The waiters who go for it are the smart ones. There are serious art collectors who slaver for cent of the bail amount. In the United States there are approximately 7,000 bounty hunters and, judging from their success rate, they are quite good at their job. About 35,000 defendants jump bail each year and no less than four out of every five are caught and returned to face justice. This is certainly a better rate than that racked up by traditional law enforcement agencies. Part of the reason for their success is that they are allowed to take far more liberties than the police in trying to catch up with the bail jumper. For openers they can enter a fugitive’s house without any search warrant, they can chase him from one state to the next without worrying about extradition rights and can either restrain or transport a fugitive without conforming to the restrictions placed on officers of the law. Strangle enough, these freedoms are not given to them by law; they are part of the agreement with the bail bondsman that the defendant enters into at the time of the transaction. It is sometimes argued these bounty hunters should be subject to the same restrictions as are traditional law enforcement officers. After all, they do not have to take any training, qualify for any licence and there are no minimum requirements. Defendants are, therefore, open to abuse and there have been cases when bounty-hunters have been sued or arrested. an original “Boggs bill”. They'll pay a minimum of $300 U.S. for one of them. So what’s the problem? Tunnel vision at the U.S. Treasury Department. They contend that Boggs is “counterfeiting”. They’ve had the Secret Service charge Boggs; they’ve confiscated hundreds of pieces of his art. They’ve promised to send him to jail for a very, very long time. And every time they’ve dragged Boggs into court, the judges and juries have laughed in the governments gormless face and dismissed the charges. Still, the U.S. government is a very large adversary. Why doesn’t Boggs just give up and start painting hamburgers like Andy Warhol? That’s the irony of the situation: he can’t stop. Boggs is countersuing the government for harassment. He has to keep drawing funny money to earn real money to pay his lawyers. He says if the Feds weren’t trying to browbeat him into not drawing money, he’d have quit doing it years ago. The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. It’s the root of some bedrock stupidity, too. However, to date juries do not seem to be too sympathetic to injured fugitives and further-more the system does not cost the taxpayers anything. In addition the bounty hunters serve to keep down the number of people incarcerated awaiting trial at a time when the American jails are almost overflowing. One of the strangest statistics I came across is that defendants under the supervision of a bail bondsman were more likely to show up in court (85 per cent) than even those who had paid their own bail (78 per cent). This is certainly one example of free enterprise which seems to be doing its job efficiently. Who is to say that some of these 7,000 bounty hunters might not decide that Milosevic or one of the others is a prize worth trying for. I | A Final Thought Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode. Henry David Thoreau By Bonnie Gropp Hist-erical My childhood home was in a newly developed subdivision. It was a typical brick bungalow, pretty spiffy I thought then, but in retrospect. I'd have to say fairly unimaginative. I didn’t recognize as a youngster what I have come to see now is a love affair with older buildings. What 1 did know was that any I visited held a charm for me which though I didn't understand was evident even to my self­ absorbed, naive mind. Visits to my cousin's large two-storey farmhouse, once owned by my grandparents were full of fun and mystery. Never terrified by the distance from second floor to first floor when alone, a visit from the town mouse seemed to make my cousin wary of the familiar. Trips upstairs were never made alone. Our grandparents’ house held adventure. From basement to attic, from the coal stove to the flying rodents, there were wonders never seen in my new home. Later in my public school years I became friends with a new girl whose family lived in a sprawling old house. It was then I began to notice that a house can have personality. Its wooden framework, curving balustrade and high ceilings were telling me something, though my sensitivity wasn't fine-tuned enough to completely understand the subtle messages. I simply knew I loved to visit, I loved to be in that house. When my husband and I purchased a century home two decades ago, it was a dream come true — though nightmare has come to mind more often for my poor warrior. During renovations, we have come to know the dark side of owning a piece of history — primarily the expense. But the fact that my home has been in the community for almost as long as the community has existed, that people lived, loved and cried there continues to fascinate me. My children's voices are not the first it has heard, our feet in swift ebullience or slow melancholy are not the first to tread its stairs. My house comes with a past, its own charisma, its own stories to tell. Thus, you can perhaps understand why I was saddened at a recent council meeting by discussion on the possible demolition of an historic downtown building. Should it happen, one cannot lay blame; I know all too well the cost of owning a white elephant. Yet, as a colleague recently noted, and perhaps this is somewhat symbolic of society, while a community will rally financial and voluntary support for the construction of something new, it places little value on something old. I am not an 'hist-erical' person. But I recognize that what happened before has importance. And I am certainly not alone in my admiration for an older building’s beauty and for what it can teach us, not just about the past but about ourselves. There is value in our earlier buildings, you have only to look at St. Jacobs to see it. Yet, though an idealist, I am not blind to realism. This building is in disrepair. Sometimes things go too far to be reversed. However, I would only hope that council give this piece of history the respect it deserves and considers carefully that removal is the only way. After all. I’m certain most would agree, a hole on main street has absolutely no value.