Problem Solving, American Style

The quirks of the American culture are endlessly fascinating. The go-go culture of making a fast buck and hero worshiping wealth is one dimension. The fierce belief in the right to walk around armed to the teeth by a Constitutional guarantee to "arms" another dimension. The special tax privileges of owning a home and the cultural push to "own your own home" is yet another dimension.

These dimensinos came to an intersection in the following story from Business Week entitled "Upset homeowner shoots real estate agent in Mich.":

A man upset about a property transaction fatally shot a real estate agent in the head during a meeting Tuesday morning in the victim's office, authorities said. ...


Tague said Johnson plotted to kill VanderStelt, took a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun to the real estate agent's office, got him preoccupied with some paperwork in a conference room, stood next to him, pulled out the gun and shot him once in the temple. ...

A suspect was arrested a short time after the shooting at a home in nearby Norton Shores. Tague identified him as Robert Arnold Johnson, 73, of Roosevelt Park. ...


"We believe this was a planned-out execution-style murder of the real estate agent," the prosecutor said.

Tague told WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids that Johnson believed that VanderStelt took advantage of him in a real estate deal. Johnson bought a house through him in 2005, then recently decided to sell it and went to a different real estate agent. The second agent told Johnson that, because of the slumping housing market, the home was not worth what he had paid for it.