Monthly Archives: October 2004

SBC launches WiFi service

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SBC Communications Inc. begins a major Wi-Fi broadband internet service today by offering its broadband Internet customers $2-a-month access to its wireless hotspots. The $2-a-month charge is only for customers who have an SBC digital subscriber line connection. SBC charges non-DSL subscribers $20 a month for the service and sells day passes on its network for $8 in most location
The plan gives SBC customers access to its FreedomLink wireless Internet service in nearly 4,000 locations across the country and 262 in Texas, including UPS Store locations. Including the UPS Stores and many Barnes & Noble bookstores. The company has a full list of its FreedomLink locations at www.sbc.com/freedomlink.

2004 Weekly local football review

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Texans 29 Titans 10. In the sweetest win for the young Texans franchise since the win against Dallas in the team’s first NFL game, the Texans defense picked off four Steve McNair passes and beat the Titans 20-10 in Nashville. The Texans defense — which has looked pathetic for much of the season — held the Titans to 210 passing yards on 41 attempts. I know it’s juvenile, but how can one not feel good about kicking the collective butts of a Bud Adams team? Here’s hoping the Texans make a habit of it. The Texans have an off week next Sunday before taking on the Jacksonville at Reliant Stadium in Houston on October 31.
Steelers 24 Cowboys 20. Rookie Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger cuts up the Pokes with 14 points in the fourth quarter to pull out the win. Uh, Big Tuna, have you noticed that the Texans have a better record than your Cowboys? The Pokes play at Green Bay next Sunday.
Texas Aggies 36 Oklahoma State 20. This was the resurgent Ags most impressive win to date as they extended their winning streak to five. Okie State is pretty good, and they had no answer for the Aggies offense under Reggie McNeal, who ran up almost 400 yards total offense. The Aggies take on Colorado at College Station next Saturday.
Texas Longhorns 28 Missouri 20. The Horns overcame their increasingly mediocre passing game to hold off Mizzou at Austin. Texas is a good team with a solid rushing attack and a quick and generally effective defense. However, the lack of any meaningful passing attack is a huge problem, particularly against good teams. The Horns take on Tech next week in Lubbock, which will be no picnic, and both Oklahoma State and the Aggies will be difficult games for the Horns. This team could easily end up 8-3, which will not go over well in Austin.
Nevada 35 Rice 10. The big bugaboo of the triple-option oriented attack is that it does not play well from behind — it simply takes to much time running the ball to overcome a big deficit. That’s what happened to Rice in this game as Nevada took a big lead and Rice’s offense simply could never get on track. This is a disappointing loss for the Owls because Nevada was a team that they should have beat and the Owls’ next game is against a very tough Navy squad next Saturday at Annapolis.
The Houston Cougars were off this week as they prepare to go 1-6 against TCU next Saturday in Ft. Worth.
And remember, for a more thorough weekly review of Big 12 games, check out Kevin Whited’s analysis over at PubliusTX.net.

Stros pull even in NLCS

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Carlos Beltran and Lance Berkman continued their incredible post-season hitting, and Brad Lidge and Dan Weaver provided clutch relief pitching as the Stros came back to edge the Cardinals 6-5 in a heart-pounding National League Championship Series thriller at a raucous Juice Box on Sunday afternoon.
With the win, the Stros pulled even with the Cards in the NLCS with each team having won two games. Game 5 is tomorrow evening at the Juice Box and Game 6 is Wednesday in St. Louis. Game 7, if necessary will be Thursday evening in St. Louis.
This was one of the most thrilling games in Stros’ history, right up there with Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS against the Mets and the Game 5 of the NLCS against the Phillies in 1980. However, unlike those two games, the Stros won this nailbiter, which may just vault it to the top of Stros’ memorable games.
The game started badly for the Stros, as Roy O was not sharp and had trouble spotting his fastball all game. Pujols, who — like Beltran and Berkman — is having a tremendous NLCS, popped a two run Crawford Box tater in the first, which was quickly followed by another run to put the Stros in a 3-0 hole before they had even batted.
Bags got one back in the bottom of the first by knocking in Beltran with a double, but the Cards extended the lead to 4-1 in the third. Then, in the bottom of the third, Berkman nailed a double to the base of the wall in deep right center to drive in Beltran and Bags to close to within 4-3. However, the Cards added another run in the fourth off of Oswalt to increase the lead to 5-3. Could the Stros ever catch them in this one?
The answer was a resounding yes. In the sixth, after Bidg was called out to end the fifth on a questionable call at second on a steal, Berkman led off by hammering a massive yak to left to cut the lead to 5-4. Then, with two outs, Viz nailed an opposite field double down the line, and the unlikely Raul Chavez blooped a single over second base to drive in Viz and tie the game at 5. The Juice Box crowd — which was deafening the entire game — exploded.
Weaver took over in the seventh for Oswalt, who battled like the gamer he is through six innings without his best stuff. After giving up the customary hit to Pujols to lead off the inning, Weaver mowed down Rolen, Edmonds and Rentaria in succession to the roaring approval of the Juice Box crowd.
Then Beltran went to work. With one out, Beltran literally golfed a two strike pitch into the Stros’ bullpen to send the Juice Box into utter hysteria. The Stros now led for the first time in the game, 6-5.
There was going to be no Game 2 managerial mistakes in this one as Garner went to Lidge in the eighth. The Stros’ stopper used just six pitches to retire the bottom of the Cards order in that inning.
However, the ninth inning was wild. Womack led off by hitting a screaming liner to Bags’ right, and he made a nifty grab just off the infield dirt for the first out. After Walker walked on four pitches, Lidge worked the count to two strikes on Pujols, who then half-swinged one of Lidge’s nasty sliders and hit a high drive to left that looked like it might be the two run yak that would give the Cards the lead. However, Lane caught the ball on the warning track against the Crawford Box left field wall for the second out as the Juice Box crowd heaved a collective sigh of relief in unison. That’s all Lidge needed as he proceeded to whiff Rolen for the third out and the save. The Juice Box crowd almost blew the roof off the stadium.
Brandon Backe goes for the Stros in Game 5 against the Cards’ Woody Williams. It’s the best two out of three now, folks. We got us a series!

Stros beat Cards in Game 3 of NLCS

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JK, Carlos Beltran, and Lance Berkman cranked key yaks and Roger Clemens pitched seven strong innings to hand the ball to closer Brad Lidge as the Stros beat the Cardinals 5-2 in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series at a rockin’ Juice Box on Saturday afternoon. With the win, the Stros closed to within a game of tying the series, which the Cards lead two games to one.
After Larry Walker‘s solo yak in the first staked the Cards to a 1-0 lead, JK’s two out, two run bomb in the bottom of the first keyed a three run rally that put the Stros in front to stay. After Edmonds whacked a solo tater in the second, the score remained 3-2 until the eighth, when Beltran and Berkman’s massive solo cranks gave the Stros a three run cushion going into the ninth.
Meanwhile, the Rocket was magnificent and seemed to grow stronger as the game wore on. In his seven innings, he gave up just two runs on four hits, two walks, and fanned seven. He threw 116 pitches in a remarkable performance for any pitcher, much less one that is 42 years old. Lidge was equally effective in relief, giving up a single, a walk, and a hit batter in two innings while getting five of his six outs on strike outs.
A fully rested Roy O goes for the series tie in Sunday’s game against the Cards’ Jason Marquis. Inasmuch as Lidge threw 41 pitches today, the Stros need Oswalt to pitch deep into this one. The best approach would be to score some runs early and allow Oswalt to pitch with a lead, which he does well. Hold on tight for this ride because the Juice Box will be rockin’ again tomorrow.

The man known as “C.T.”

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Chris Tomlin is one of the emerging stars in the world of contemporary Christian worship music, and this Austin American-Statesman article profiles this outstanding Texan on the start of his 70 city tour with fellow Christian rocker, Steven Curtis Chapman.
Chris and I became good friends and golfing buddies when he was just starting his career at my church in The Woodlands about 10 years ago, and I have watched in admiration as his music career has continued to ascend after his move to Austin several years ago. This is truly one of those success stories that could not have happened to a nicer guy.
Coincidentally, I put in a call to Chris (or “C.T.” as he is known in golfing circles) yesterday afternoon to see if he could swing into Houston and play with me in a golf game on Saturday morning with Capitol Records country music recording artist, Dierks Bentley, who is in The Woodlands to perform at the Pavilion on Saturday night. Dierks is the younger brother of another old friend of mine, Bart Bentley, who is a longtime Houston real estate attorney.
C.T. was always quite a hearthrob to many of the teenage girls at our church during his time in The Woodlands, and he apparently has not lost any of his charm in that regard. The female reporter from the Statesman gushes as follows:

With this tousled blond hair, gleaming teeth and elfin face, he’s the stuff of teeny-bopper magazines. He’s 34 but looks a decade younger. And of course he’s sporting cool shades.

Give me a break. That adulation will cost C.T. several strokes of punishment on the first tee of our next big golf game. ;^)

Enron-related extradition of British bankers approved

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A British judge ruled Friday that three British bankers indicted in the U.S. on Enron-related fraud charges could be extradited to stand trial in Texas. Here is a prior post that reports on the background of this case leading up to the recent extradition hearing.
District Judge Nicholas Evans found that there was a “good and proper basis” for prosecuting David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew in the United States and ruled the case should be sent to Home Secretary David Blunkett for a decision on whether to extradite them. Under British law, Home Secretary Blunkett can only halt the extradition if the men might face the death penalty or are likely to face further charges once in the U.S.
Despite the Justice Department’s dubious handling of the Enron-related criminal investigation and prosecutions to date, the Justice Department is likely “only” to seek a prison sentence against each of the bankers that is tantamount to a life sentence, but not the death sentence. ;^)
The three former employees of National Westminster Bank (“Natwest”) were charged in the U.S. in 2002 with bilking the bank of $7.3 million in a Andrew Fastow-designed scheme. Prosecutors allege that Messrs. Mulgrew, Darby and Bermingham conspired with Mr. Fastow and Michael Kopper in 2000 to defraud Natwest of millions of dollars. They allegedly advised the bank to sell its interest in a subsidiary of LJM (one of Fastow’s off balance sheet partnerships) to another Fastow-created entity for $1 million when it was really worth much more. However, based on the way Fastow manipulated Enron and his partnerships, I do not know how the prosecution could know what the interest was really worth.
At any rate, the government says that Fastow arranged for Enron to pay $30 million to unwind the energy company’s transactions with the LJM subsidiary and that Natwest received only $1 million of that amount, while Fastow, Kopper, and the bankers divvied up $19 million between themselves. Of that, the bankers allegedly pocketed $7.3 million and, as a result, each of the bankers has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud.
The bankers’ case has been one of the first tests of the new fast-track British extradition procedures introduced in 2003 to deal primarily with terrorist cases. The Extradition Act lessens the burden of proof in some cases, allowing certain countries such as the U.S. to provide mere information rather than evidence that a crime has been committed.
Inasmuch as Kopper pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in August 2002 and Fastow pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in January of this year — and Kopper just finished being one of the prosecution’s main witnesses in the ongoing Nigerian Barge trial — the bankers can expect that both Kopper and Fastow will be witnesses against them in any U.S. trial.

Crossing the line

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Charles Krauthammer thinks John Edwards crossed the line, and he supports his argument with wisdom generated from personal experience:

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa:

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
As a doctor by training, I’ve known better than to believe the hype — and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them. . .

Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards’s remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

My sense is that the Kerry-Edwards Campaign staff will be deploying a trap door device for Mr. Edwards if he does this Benny Hinn imitation again before Election Day.

Spitzer is at it again

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New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer cranked up his questionable litigation propaganda machine again yesterday and sued the world’s largest insurance broker — Marsh & McLennan Cos. — on the grounds that it cheated its corporate customers by rigging bids and collecting huge fees from major insurance companies in return for guiding insurance business their way.
The charges were included in the civil lawsuit and in two plea bargains of criminal charges against two insurance executives from American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”). In addition to AIG, Spitzer named Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Munich-American Risk Partners in the civil suit as participants with Marsh in the bid rigging and improper fee-paying charges.
This is the latest in Mr. Spitzer’s use of the New York attorney general’s office to sue large companies in an effort to trigger reform in business practices, although some grizzled observers contend that the lawsuits are more about promoting Mr. Spitzer’s political ambitions than reforming business. Earlier posts on Mr. Spitzer’s other lawsuits are here, here and here.
Mr. Spitzer’s latest lawsuit depicts the insurance industry as a corrupt business in which bid rigging and payment of improper fees have become accepted practices. Unlike markets for securities, commodities and other financial products, commercial insurance is bought and sold in private, so most of the business passes through the hands of insurance brokers, who are middlemen who match buyers and sellers in return for a cut of the transaction.
Normally, a company that is shopping to buy insurance advises its insurance broker on the type and amount of coverage that it is seeking and the broker then solicits bids from insurance companies. The broker usually is paid by commission, which is calculated as a percentage of the insurance buyer’s premium payments. It is not unusual for the insurance purchaser to send its premium check to the broker, who then deducts its commission before passing the premium payment on to the insurance company.
Spitzer’s lawsuit does not appear to take direct aim at the system described above. Rather, the lawsuit is going after the brokers from accepting what are called “contingent commissions,” which are payments that insurance companies make directly to brokers based on factors such as the total volume of business a broker does with that insurer or the profitability of that business. Big insurance brokers such as Marsh have been able to demand and receive such contingent commissions in recent years because of the large amount of insurance business that they control.
Spitzer contends that the contingent commissions prompt brokers to book their business where it is most profitable to the broker rather than where it best serves the interest of the customer. client. On the other hand, it’s not like the companies buying such insurance do not know about the contingent commissions and cannot take their business to another broker if they are uncomfortable with such arrangements. Mr. Spitzer’s lawsuit appears to overlook that rather obvious market truth.
As noted in the previous posts, Spitzer has become controversial figure in the financial services industry. This insurance industry lawsuit follows high-profile lawsuits into conflicts of interest that allegedly taint the research of Wall Street analysts and into special trading privileges that big mutual-fund investors enjoy. The probes have tarnished the reputations of some of the country’s best-known and largest corporations, and although the facts differ in each lawsuit, they all have a common theme — the alleged wrongdoing has been going on for years and the corrupt industry is unwilling or incapable of correcting it.
Inasmuch as the state governments handle regulation of insurance, differing regulation standards, controls, and disclosure requirements apply from state to state. Although large insurers and brokers for years have resisted federal regulation of insurance, lawsuits such as Spitzer’s latest may have them rethinking that position.
Wouldn’t that be rich? Big insurers and brokers lobbying with consumer groups for federal regulation of insurance? Politics certainly makes for strange bedfellows!

Cards top Stros to take 2-0 lead in NLCS

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The Stros’ bullpen could not hold a lead again as the Cards’ scored two runs in the eighth to break a tie and beat the Stros 6-4 and take a 2-0 lead in the NLCS on a cold, rainy night at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Thursday night.
The Stros took a 3-0 lead in this one on solo yaks by Beltran and Ensberg, and Berkman‘s run scoring single. Pete Munro pitched brilliantly for 4 2/3 innings and actually had the third out in the fourth, but the ailing JK (bruised knee and calf) could not get to the bag in time to turn a sure fire double play ball to end the inning.
After that, Munro gave up a walk, a two run tater to Larry Walker and a base hit to Pujols to cut the lead to 3-2, and then Harville served up his second big hit in two nights as Rolen took him out of the yard. Presto, the Cards led 4-3. The Stros came back to tie it in the seventh on Berkman’s double and Ensberg’s single, but then Miceli served up a back-to-back gopher balls to Pujols and Rolen in the eighth to allow the Redbirds to head to Houston with a 2-0 series lead. Game, set, match.
I was talking to a friend earlier today in which I proposed that the Stros simply walk Pujols and Edmonds (and maybe Walker, too) when anybody other than The Rocket, Roy O or Lidge is pitching and see what happens. Frankly, my sense is that the Stros could not do much worse than they did in past two games pitching to these guys.
Clemens and Oswalt are ready to go next for Games 3 and 4 on Saturday and Sunday at the Juice Box in Houston. This is a plucky Stros’ team, so I am not ready to count them out, yet. But Clemens and Oswalt really need to pitch long into each of these games so that they had the ball directly to Lidge. We’ll worry about who pitches after Backe in Game 5 later.