Legal Memo-Random

A couple of things in the news today

(1) Dick Cheney had to go to the hospital yesterday complaining of a little shortness of breath (turned out to be the common cold).  No doubt that Dick Cheney, who along with his running mate Bush railed against the concept of government directed or government subsidized health care, utilized his government subsidized and government provided health care at the hospital, because as we all know, there's probably not a single fucking insurance company on the face of the earth that will provide someone with health insurance after they've had a heart attack, let alone four of them, without the government directing them to provide it.

Just remember - its good for Dick Cheney.  Its not good for you.

(2) Saw that some gunmen took a couple of potshots at new Palestinian leaader Abbas.  This was at some mourning event for Arafat.  They showed the crowd at the event - it looked like EVERYONE had an AK-47.  This must have been a prayer vigil for peace.

Flying the Bankrupt Skies

I hope that if someday I decide to move from Colorado, that I move within driving distances of either my family or my wife's family. Not so close that they can simply show up unannounced. But close enough so that come Thanksgiving or Christmas, we can simply hop in the car and take a long drive to get to their house, and in some way break the surely bonds of...traveling on airplanes in the United States. This past weekend was a case in point.

So we travel to Minneapolis for meetings and to take a few days off in the area. I have always been a big fan of Minneapolis, and feel it is, as a city, one of the truly underrated areas of the country. A little confusing to drive in (uhh...I-35 West North? What the hell is THAT? And before anyone writes me, yes, I understand WHY there is an I-35 West and an I-35 East...but just give one of the two spurs a different number designation, and avoid that whole confusing mess). We flew on United.

Anyway, my wife goes to the airport on Thursday, as she was in-between jobs. She even does the early check in Wednesday night at home, as they beg you to do. When doing early check-in, she was eager to change seats, as she was assigned a middle seat. Of course, no seats were available to change, because the airlines lock and block different seats for different reasons. So nothing was gained by early check-in. She arrives at the airport, and there are no longer much in the way of people to deal with at United. There are rows of self-check-in kiosks, with about one person manning 10 kiosks. She went to one of the people behind the counter and asked about switching her seat. Since she already checked in, they would not do it or deal with the issue, and they directed her to deal with it at the gate. Of course, there is never anyone at the gate anymore until 30 to 45 minutes before the flight, so the chances of being moved to a seat not in the middle were small. She stopped by United Customer Service. They offered to change her seat to exit row for money. They did move her seat to something not in the middle, but it was bizarre to hear that they wanted money for exit row. Just like the mafia. Gimme some cash, and you can have a decent seat.

Finally, my turn comes. Friday. Evening. Rush hour. Probably one of the busiest times at the airport. I do the early check in online, and I am also somehow saddled with this crappy seat arrangement. Each security check point has lines going on for seemingly ever. 1 hour wait to get through. They have 10 lanes at each security spot at DIA, but only 1 check line was open for regular passengers, and 1 check line was open for first class passengers. That makes a LOT of sense. I can't wait to see how they handle it around the holidays. I saw plenty of people in my line who were in danger of blowing the boarding time because the security was so spartan. (I point out problems with security because the airlines are at least in part responsible for providing it - and they are doing a shitty job of that).

The plane itself was not clean, although I was moved by the Customer Service people to an exit row-ish seat. The flight attendant didn't come around with drinks, but instead came around with a tray with about 10 pepsis, 10 diet pepsis, 2 ginger ales, and 2 waters. I asked for water, but she ran out. She came back and offered me a pepsi. No thanks, can I have a water? A third time. A fourth time. I never did get my water. Oh well.

Flight back. We get to the airport. We purchased our tickets separately (although at the same time over the phone), as we were flying to MSP on different flights. So we had different seats. We went to the line where we could check in with a human being. United actually employs bouncers (ok, guys who wear United shirts who ostensibly are there to help direct you to the correct place to go) who are paid solely to keep you from dealing with their customer service agents. Are you freaken kidding me? The airline is in bankruptcy, and they pay someone to stop you from dealing with customer service?

Schiavo case continues on

The parents of Terri Schiavo have lost a battle in the Court of Appeals (2nd District...presumably this is Florida's Court of Appeals) to join a suit in which the husband of Terri Schiavo is seeking to overturn "Terri's Law".

As you may recall, Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state, of which there is virtually no hope of recovering. Of course (and understandably) the parents of Mrs. Schiavo retain hope that their daughter can be recovered from her debilitative brain damage (which has existed for 14 years now - at what point do you determine that it is permanent and not recoverable?). Naturally, they have taken every twitch and movement as a sign that she can recover and that she is aware. Those of us who have been through the process of a relative in a persistent vegetative state know that this is based more on hope than on rational science. Having seen my Grandfather in that state, I am pretty sure that these are involuntary reactions, twitches, etc. - nothing evident of intelligence or conscious or subconscious effort.

Of course, last year, after finally receiving a court victory and winning the right to remove the feeding tube, the husband and legal guardian was usurped by a state legislator and governor (Jeb Bush) who decided that it was wrong for Mr. Schiavo to play God, and that playing God was a role much better suited to the legislator and the governor (of course, were only God to play God, Terri Schiavo would be dead, as she is being kept alive on a multitude of machines).

Via CNN:

The ruling doesn't prevent the Schindlers from filing documents with the Supreme Court related to the case. The parents' lawyer, Pat Anderson, said the Schindlers' voices will be heard.

"It would be a shame to shut them out of the process," she said.

Actually, no it would not be a shame. The Schindlers (parents of Terri Schiavo) have had repeated opportunity to argue their case before the courts, and have repeatedly lost the argument:

For years, the Schindlers have battled Michael Schiavo as he has tried to have his wife's feeding tube removed. He argues she would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

And for years, they've lost their argument.

The Schindlers say they doubt their now 40-year-old daughter had any such end-of-life wishes and believe her condition could improve with therapy.

Actually, I've never met a young adult (she would have been in her 20's when this happen) who has told me that they wish to be kept alive in a vegetative state. Even the most religious people I know cringe at the thought of being kept alive in a persistent vegetative state.

I feel bad for the parents - I really do. Although their arguments are not what I would consider to be legally sound, they are trying to preserve any shred of hope for their child. You can't really fault them for that. And they've lost in Court. Where this story has gone wrong is Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida legislator intervening in the matter, and prolonging the suffering of all parties in order to make some political gain or statement.

In that sense, think of Jeb Bush as the anti-Solomon. Whereas Solomon was wise and offered to split the baby to resolve the dispute (the real parent would suffer in anguish at the thought and offer to relinquish the child so that the child might live), this modern-day anti-Solomon instead offers to keep the baby (in this case, Terri Schiavo) whole (alive) so that the parents and husband can continue to remain divided and unable to heal a mere 15 years after all of this started.

Why are the media folks "shocked"???

So, CNN is reporting that CIA Director George Tenet has resigned, effective mid-July.

Under Tenet's stewardship, we have had 9/11. We have had a boatload of bogus intelligence that led to a war with Iraq that we are still stuck in. We have had CIA agents being outed (not necessarily his fault, but presumably the CIA should be working harder to protect the identity of its members). Top secret info is finding its way to government officials dumb enough to relay it to Ahmed Chalabi, so now the Iranians have it. Etc., etc. And despite our much vaunted intelligence apparatus, we still have no freaken clue as to where Osama bin Laden is, except that we think he might be somewhere in the Afghanistan/Pakistan mountain region. Gee, that's great. You've only had what, nearly 3 years guys?

Pretty much every non-economy screw-up by this administration has been placed at the feet of George Tenet. Not that I think its all his fault - I think that the inept leadership and screw-ups go all the way to the feet of a different George. Bush.

But virtually all of the blame for every mistake, problem, over and under estimate, etc., has been placed at the feet of George Tenet either overtly or quietly by the Bush administration. Apparently, in the Bush administration, there is no limit as to how much you can screw things up, and you STILL will not be held accountable.

So, the best we can hope for now is a competent CIA Director, and perhaps for Tenet to write a kiss-and-tell book exposing all of the BS from this administration. I doubt it will happen, but hey, you never know.

Evidence of Enron rip-off

CBS has obtained and released portions of some audio tapes that have Enron traders and employees gloating about how they were ripping off Californians and rigging the energy shortage of a few years ago:

"He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."

"Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.

"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.

and

[...]in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.

"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying.

"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says.

"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."

It seems more and more obvious that Enron bordered (if not fully being one) on being a criminal enterprise in a significant number of its operations, between its active attempts to defraud Californians in the energy crisis, its accounting, and its set-up of sham companies designed to boost the appearance of robust sales and business. Ultimately, higher ups who were aware of the enterprise, were able to sell stock off and personally make significant profits off of what Wall Street believed to be honest sales.

Its time that the US Justice Department, California's Attorney General, and any other state's attorney general who may have been impacted (they are lucky they didn't try this crap in NY, or else Spitzer would eat them for lunch) get serious about pursuing this matter fully.

There is no evidence of it yet, but if this goes to Ken Lay, and we believe that Ken Lay was friends with Bush, and it seems likely that Ken Lay and Enron were heavily involved in Cheney's secret energy task force, this is the sort of thing that could finish off the Bush administration.

The first step, beyond the AGs getting much more serious about their investigations, would be for the Supreme Court to allow the release of those tak force records from Cheney.

And then there were three

Well, not exactly...

Big 4 accounting firm Ernst & Young took a hit today as an SEC Chief Administrative Law Judge suspended them for 6 months from accepting new SEC-registered audit clients (via FoxNews).

SEC Chief Administrative Law Judge Brenda Murray also ordered Ernst to pay $1.7 million and to agree to a cease-and-desist order against future violations.

The SEC in mid-2002 accused Ernst & Young (search) of violating auditor independence rules by working too closely with PeopleSoft, an audit client, on a software project.

Murray found that a licensing agreement between Ernst and PeopleSoft related to the project "created a direct business relationship" and that it was reasonable to argue that Ernst "would not be objective in its audit of PeopleSoft."

This is the sort of thing that happens when we focus on making an example out of one company or one person, rather than actually trying to deal with a problem. We made an example out of Martha Stewart, Enron (the business) and Arthur Andersen, but we still have not gotten to the root of all the accounting and corporate scandals. Obviously not every (or even a majority of) corporation is a criminal entity, and not every one of these scandals involve criminal intent. But until the government shows that it cares - really cares, not compassionately conservatively cares - about cracking down on this, I suspect that we will be revisiting this (in the form of new Enrons, etc.) in a few pro forma years.

And don't get me wrong - I don't put all of this blame on Bush. Much of this happened under Clinton's watch as well. After all, the insane run-up in the markets in the 1990's, during the dot com boom, happened under Clinton's watch - a time where a company's financial health was measured by fuzzy accounting (how else could you describe pro forma reports???) and stock market valuations.

Since we have obviously not learned our lesson (witness the stock market run up in the past few months), and we have obviously not passed the tip of the iceberg in punishing those responsible, one thing we can take to the bank is that Enron, Worldcom and Global Crossing will not be the last, or the biggest corporate debacles of this decade.

Wal-Mart gets the smackdown - ballot style

The world's biggest retailer's effort to build a supercenter in Inglewood, Calif., suffered a blow Tuesday as voters overwhelmingly rejected a Wal-Mart Stores Inc.-sponsored initiative that would have exempted the company from zoning and environmental restrictions in the L.A. suburb.

When the Inglewood City Council rejected Wal-Mart's proposal last year to build a store the size of 17 football fields, the company gathered 6,500 signatures calling for a ballot initiative that would have bypassed the government and allowed the construction without the traffic reviews, environmental studies or public hearings required of other developments.

Via CNN.

Good for Inglewood and its voters for voting this piece of crap down.

Wal-Mart always wants special privileges in everything it does - here in Colorado, in a story I've written on before, Wal-Mart got the city of Arvada to condemn via eminent domain so that it could build a mega-store. Fortunately here, the Colorado Supreme Court shut down Wal-Mart's plans by saying the eminent domain action was not within the authority of Arvada.

And what does Wal-Mart offer in return? Low wage jobs? In the Inglewood, California vote, had voters actually approved this measure, ultimately Inglewood residents would have been on the hook to fix the traffic and environmental mess that Wal-Mart would have overlooked in their plans.

Had Wal-Mart won this election, there is no doubt that it would have become the model for the store chain getting what it wants - and it still may try this route again, any time they can't force local city counsels to give them their cake on a silver platter.

So I will count this one as a definite victory.

Feel like you're being taken for a ride?

MSNBC clues us in on the potential for $3.00 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

It seems as though every season the prices go up. Its the rotating excuse machine. Lets play along and click them off together. We'll start from February, since thats what month it is now. Here is how it has gone and will go:

OPEC cut production
The winter has been a colder winter (its winter - of course its cold SOMEWHERE)
Tanker accident south of New Orleans (this was a new one)
Spring travel, increased airplane traffic
Lower capacity due to insufficient ______ (plants, drilling, etc. - you name it)
Memorial Day weekend traffic spike
Jule 4th traffic spike
Summer traffic and road trip spike
Energy demands for summer electricity will stress ALL fossil fuel energy needs
Lower supplies
Fall (heading into winter, and of course, its going to be colder next winter - its always colder)
Demand for heating oil during the winter.

Etc., etc.

I don't mind paying a fair price for gasoline, and I appreciate that oil is a product of commodity markets. I also appreciate that we are held hostage by OPEC and their quotas.

But sometimes, with the continually rotating excuses, I feel like we are being played for fools. Just like Enron and other energy traders (traitors?) appear to have conspired to gouge California a few years ago, I feel like we are currently being led around in a similar manner by energy suppliers and market manipulators who are manipulating supply and demand to gouge that extra dollar out of my wallet.

And oh, by the way, since we are such big capitalists and free traders and members of the WTO, can we FINALLY stop playing footsy in bed with OPEC? Nothing strikes me as quite so anti-competitive and anti-market ideals as the Organization of Petroleum Extorting Countries cartel.

Prediction

Now that the Defense has rested...It is time for my prediction on the Martha Stewart case:

Martha Stewart: Not guilty (or no charges brought to the jury or JNOV overturning the verdict).

We will see what happens...but aside from Faneuil, it doesn't seem as though the Prosecution's case was particularly strong...

Kansas Court winks at discrimination, Georgia tries to pretend evolution didn't happen

The Kansas Court of Appeals has decided that it is perfectly acceptable to punish adults who have sex with same-sex underage participants differently than those who have sex with underage opposite sex partners.

See FoxNews story here for more.

A three-judge panel, splitting 2-1, rejected the appeal of Matthew R. Limon, sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for having sex with an underage boy in 2000.

Had Limon engaged in sex with an underage girl, he could have been sentenced to one year and three months in prison.

Another poor decision and stretch of logic from the heartland and/or south hot off the presses after Georgia's daring brush with stupidity and pretending that evolution doesn't exist by trying to ban the word itself.