Monthly Archives: March 2004

INSCOM apologizes

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This Austin American-Statesmen article follows up on an incident that occurred last month at the University of Texas Law School, as reported in this earlier post. The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) officials said they would provide refresher training for all U.S. Army intelligence personnel as a result of their investigation after a Feb. 4 conference entitled “Islam and the Law: A Question of Sexism” at the UT Law School. INSCOM has concluded that military intelligence agents acted inappropriately when they requested a roster of people attending a conference on Islamic law at the University of Texas. Army investigators had not decided whether any of the agents or the commander involved would be reprimanded or disciplined.

Plains Resources up for graps

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As noted in this earlier post, Houston-based Plains Resources is the subject of an ongoing offer to purchase the company. As reported in this Houston Business Journal article, Plains received another unsolicited offer, which it has rejected for the time being. However, this is getting interesting. Stay tuned.

Prosecutors get chummy with the Fastows

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This Chronicle report indicates that the Enron Task Force and the Fastows are having some very interesting conversations of late, and the Task Force would like to continue the discourse.

High schoolers and the NBA

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This Sports Law Blog post discusses this interesting law review article that addresses the legal and economic implications of high school basketball players eschewing college basketball and going straight into professional basketball. As the Sports Law Blogger notes:

The most compelling statistic of the article, though, is that only 29 players have entered the NBA draft as high schoolers in the past 25 years. This tends to dispel the myth that the NBA is being overrun by players who have never experienced college. Of those 29, many have become “stars” or “superstars,” while less than half are deemed “busts” or have been relegated to “minor league” basketball. Is the problem as bad as critics make it out to be?

Interesting post and article. Too much time is spent attempting to prevent high school athletes from turning professional prematurely. In America, we retain the right to make bad decisions.

Doc, Let me get this straight . . .

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This NY Times article delves into the confusion among doctors regarding HDL — the so-called “good” cholesterol. Doctors have been saying that patients should pay attention to both the so-called bad cholesterol (LDL), and the good cholesterol (HDL) to prevent cardiovascular disease. As a general proposition, the doctors believed that the good cholesterol counteracted the bad. But now, some scientists say, new and continuing studies have called into question whether high levels of the good HDL cholesterol are always good and, when they are beneficial, how much. As the Times article relates:

In the meantime, doctors are calling researchers and asking what to do about patients with high H.D.L. levels, or what to do when their own H.D.L. levels are high, and patients are left with conflicting advice.
“There is so much confusion about this that it is unbelievable,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.

In the meantime, as noted in this earlier post, the pharmaceutical companies are watching this development closely.

Air Ball!

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This Wall Street Journal ($) article describes the financial disaster that is the CBS contract with the NCAA for the right to telecast the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. CBS is entering the second year of an 11-year, $6 billion deal with the NCAA for the rights to carry the tournament games. That high price, coupled with declining viewership for the games, almost ensures that CBS will lose tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the event over the life of the contract. Even optimists think the best CBS can hope for is to break even on the contract. The article goes on to point out:

The NCAA contract is particularly onerous for CBS, though. Not only is it more than double what the network had been paying, but also the rights fees will rise dramatically over the 11 years. This year, CBS will pay the NCAA $389 million for essentially three weeks of college basketball, not much less than what it pays the NFL for five months of regular-season and postseason football. For the 2013 tournament, the last under the current agreement, CBS will pay $764 million, according to the NCAA.

. . . Making the high costs even more worrisome is viewership. The audience for the NCAA tournament has been on a steady decline since hitting 34.3 million viewers for the final game in 1992 (Duke vs. Michigan) The 2002 final between Indiana and Maryland drew 23.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Last year’s audience for the Syracuse-Kansas championship game was 18.6 million. To be sure, the Iraq war hurt last year’s tournament numbers, but even so, viewership has clearly been on a downward trend.

And the clincher:

The NCAA also gets final say on who can and can’t advertise in the tournament . . . It also bans commercials for Viagra and other erectile-dysfunction drugs, bad news for CBS since pharmaceutical companies like to spend money on sports to reach older men.

Which leads to CBS’ mantra upon the inevitable renegotiation of this albatross: “No Viagra, no way!”

Kerry’s Health Plan

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This Wall Street Journal ($) article describes the Kerry Campaign’s health care finance plan. The entire article is well worth reading, and includes the following summary of the plan:

Mr. Kerry has vowed to restore higher tax rates for those earning more than $200,000 a year, yielding about $300 billion in revenue over the next decade. Sweeping estate-tax changes and corporate subsidies are two more targets. But he also is betting — some say unrealistically — that his emphasis on better information technology and disease-management practices ultimately will yield big long-term savings.

. . .He also proposes to have Washington step in to reinsure high-cost patients, and thereby reduce premiums charged to private companies and their workers.

It already makes a striking contrast with Mr. Clinton’s more controlling attempt to revamp the nation’s health-care system 10 years earlier. At the time, nothing less than universal coverage was the president’s goal, which forced the party into a set of employer mandates and cost caps that provoked huge resistance in the small-business community.
By comparison, Mr. Kerry chooses two core social principles: caring for poor children and better sharing the cost of the sickest patients. He never attempts to achieve universal coverage and devotes huge sums to help those trying to keep what they already have.

Target defendant: The House of Saud

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This NY Times Magazine article chronicles the massive tort case that South Carolina trial lawyer, Ronald L. Motley, has brought in connection with the 9-11 attacks on the United States. Mr. Motley thinks of terrorism as a depraved and ruthlessly efficient business that Saudi Arabians largely finance. As Gerald Posner persuasively showed in his book “Why America Slept“, Mr. Motley believes that the 19 hijackers would never have been able to carry out their attacks without generous Saudi financial assistance. Accordingly, Mr. Motley has filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. federal court charging that a wide variety of Saudi parties sponsored the attacks by making donations to institutions that they knew fostered terrorism. Among the case’s 205 defendants are seven Saudi charities, three Saudi financial institutions, dozens of prominent Saudi individuals, and several members of the House of Saud royal family. Mr. Motley’s case is by far the largest civil case filed in connection with the 9-11 attacks — the families of 1,667 people who died that day, as well as 1,197 men and women who sustained injuries, have signed on as plaintiffs. This is an interesting article about a case that will be fun to follow.

Bill James Interview

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This Home Plate interview with Bill James is a must read for all baseball fans. Mr. James is the original sabermetrician and the pioneer of statistical analysis of baseball. Mr. James’ work has led directly to such excellent baseball books such as the annual Baseball Prospectus, which was touted in this earlier post. Mr. James is now a consultant for the Boston Red Sox, and it is no coincidence that the BoSox have become serious challengers to the Yankees for the AL East crown and for the American League pennant. Now if we could just get the baseball reporters for the Houston Chronicle and other newspapers that follow MLB teams to study Mr. James’ work. It would dramatically improve the reporters’ understanding of baseball, which is generally burdened by many traditional baseball myths that sabermetric research has conclusively debunked.

Who is better for business — Bush or Kerry?

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This Big Picture analysis reflects that the question is a close call.