Monthly Archives: November 2004

John Edwards’ political future, RIP?

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No astute political analyst am I, this Economist article reflects my amateur political analysis towards John Edwards’ political future:

Mr Edwards is well on the way to becoming a man with a brilliant future behind him. What did he add to the Democratic ticket other than a boyish smile and a well-honed stump speech? He failed to deliver either of the Carolinas to the party (even though he was born in the southern one and represented the northern one in the Senate). He has no clear ideological constituency.

In addition to the foregoing, Edwards’ Senate seat was won by a Republican, he was surprisingly poor in his debate performance against Dick Cheney, and he made an incredibly inept gaffe late in the campaign after the death of Christopher Reeve. In view of all of this, my sense is that a decent case can be made that Edwards cost Kerry the election in a reasonably close race. That’s not much of a foundation upon which to build a political future.

The Disease of the Century

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Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola, 2002). She is working on a book based on her father’s experience of Alzheimer’s disease, and this New Atlantis article provides an outstanding overview of her research into the subject. There is no question that Alzheimer’s is becoming an increasingly important health care issue:

. . . [E]very once in awhile, we face a situation that forces us to collectively consider what it means to be human persons who grow old, suffer, and die.
The looming Alzheimer’s epidemic is just such a situation. This disease embodies everything we fear most about aging — weakness and dependence, humiliation and oblivion. Its insidious onset and relentless progression have penetrated our collective consciousness, and nearly half of Americans over the age of 35 know someone personally whose brain has been ravaged by it. As Americans are living longer and more physicians are recognizing dementia as a disease to be diagnosed, Alzheimer’s is claiming more victims. Some 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s today, more than double the number who had the disease in 1980. Alzheimer’s has become the eighth-leading cause of death in America, and its impact is expected to mushroom as 77 million Baby Boomers head into retirement. By 2050, if no cure is found, 16 million Americans could have Alzheimer’s. As they bid their long goodbye — Alzheimer’s can take up to 20 years to run its devastating course — we will no longer be able to ignore the human questions raised by this disease. Such questions, about the basis of our human dignity and our identity as persons, cannot be answered by science or technology. We must grapple with them the old-fashioned way, drawing on both reflection and lived experience to find the meaning in this way of dying.

For anyone dealing with the onset of dementia in a loved one, this piece is essential reading. Read the entire article.

Cancer in the House

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Jamie Malanowski, a New York-based writer, pens this Washington Monthly op-ed on Houston congressman Tom DeLay and provides the following overview to a discussion of the various ethics complaints and criminal investigations that are currently dogging Mr. DeLay:

Tom DeLay is the most odious character in American politics today. He does not lack for competition, of course, but what sets him apart is that all of his perversions have been accomplished under the radar screen. Apart from his colorful name ?the Hammer,? DeLay has no public identity, and even that nickname will more likely inspire people outside the Beltway to think of old jocks like Fred Williamson or Dave Schultz than the beady-eyed former exterminator who terrifies Capitol Hill. . . Tom DeLay is a cancer cell, silently metastasizing.

Statesmanship is not a word that comes to mind when thinking about Tom DeLay.

Liberal Dutch question Muslim assimilation

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This Economist article addresses the second political murder in the Netherlands in the space of two years. The murder of outspoken and provocative film director, Theo van Gogh, by a Muslim radical has shocked Dutch society, which has long been the European epitome of tolerant and liberal values. Dutch people fear that they may now live in a place where violence has become a way of settling differences of opinion, especially over rocky relations with a growing Muslim minority. The article is an insightful account of the difficulties that even the most liberal Western culture faces in assimiliating intolerant Muslim fascism.

Lance Berkman suffers ACL injury

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Lance Berkman — the Stros’ best hitter over the past four seasons — has torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and will undergo surgery at Methodist Hospital in Houston within the next ten days. Although the Stros’ initial announcement this afternoon did not disclose how Berkman suffered the injury, it was disclosed later that Berkman suffered the injury playing flag football.
Normal recovery time from this type of injury is at least six months, so it is unlikely that Berkman will be ready for the start of the 2005 regular season. May or June is probably more realistic.
Just to give you an idea of how just how good a player Berkman is, Over the past 4 years, Berkman ranks 6th in the majors in runs created against average (“RCAA”, explained here):

1 Barry Bonds 597

2 Todd Helton 284

3 Albert Pujols 281

4 Jim Thome 250

5 Manny Ramirez 240

6 Lance Berkman 236

7 Jason Giambi 225

8 Alex Rodriguez 218

9 Jim Edmonds 216

10 Gary Sheffield 210

That’s pretty heady company.

Election map analysis

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William J. Stuntz is a smart professor at Harvard Law School, and in this Tech Central Station article, provides an excellent and non-biased analysis of the voting patterns from Tuesday’s Presidential election, including the following observation:

The best way to see how the two sides stack up is to look at one of those red-and-blue maps that seem to breed these days. Divide the country into three parts: Kerry’s base, Bush’s base, and the Midwest. Kerry’s base is the Northeast — everything North of the Potomac River and East of Ohio — together with the Pacific Coast and Hawaii. (They don’t call it the “left coast” for nothing.) Kerry swept his base 194-0. Bush’s base is the South and the rest of the West. Bush swept his base too, by an electoral score of 237-0, assuming the New Mexico vote holds up. But Bush’s base is bigger. Which means Kerry needed to nearly sweep the Midwest to catch up. He did carry the Midwest, but not by much: 58-49 in the electoral college. Bush carried Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa — and he could have lost any of the last three without changing the result.

Read the entire article.

Perilous Times

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In this New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani reviews Perilous Times, the new book about American restrictions on civil liberties and free speech by Geoffrey R. Stone, the Harry Kalven Jr. distinguished service professor of law at the University of Chicago. As the review notes, the restrictions of civil liberties under the recent Patriot Act are not unusual in time of war in the United States, regardless of whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat:

Impassioned yet methodical, [Professor Stone] lays out the vital role that free speech plays in a healthy system of self-governance, using lots of case studies to illustrate his arguments while creating a devastating portrait of those public figures whose commitment to free speech has been weak or hypocritical. Woodrow Wilson, who tried to squelch any disharmony that might impede his mission of making “the world safe for democracy,” comes off especially poorly, and Franklin D. Roosevelt emerges as a president who would support civil liberties in the abstract, “but not when they got in his way.”

However, Professor Stone is reassuring that America’s commitment to civil liberties is strong, and that each period of restriction has been followed by a period of stronger restoration:

After each period in which the nation went too far in restricting civil liberties, Mr. Stone argues, “the nation’s commitment to free speech rebounded, usually rather quickly, sometimes more robustly than before.” A Congressional report declared that the Sedition Act of 1798 had been passed under a “mistaken exercise” of power and was “null and void.” The Sedition Act of 1918, which was repealed two years later, helped give birth to the modern civil liberties movement. And in 1976, President Ford formally prohibited the C.I.A. from using electronic or physical surveillance to collect information on domestic activities of Americans, and the new F.B.I. director, Clarence Kelly, publicly apologized for F.B.I. abuses under J. Edgar Hoover.
Such developments buttress Mr. Stone’s argument that “the major restrictions of civil liberties of the past would be less thinkable today than they were in 1798, 1861, 1917, 1942, 1950 or 1969,” and that “in terms of both the evolution of constitutional doctrine and the development of a national culture more attuned to civil liberties, the United States has made substantial progress.” Mr. Stone writes that in its 1971 Pentagon Papers decision (which held that the government had not met its “heavy burden of showing justification” for a prior restraint on the press), “the Supreme Court, for the first time in American history, stood tall – in wartime – for the First Amendment.” That case was only one in a series of Vietnam-era decisions in which the court suggested its understanding, in Mr. Stone’s words, “that dissent is easily chilled, that government often acts out of intolerance when it suppresses dissent, and that it is essential to protect speech at the margin.”

Read the entire review.

Justice goes after doctor accounts in tax avoidance investigation

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This New York Times article reports on a San Diego federal judge’s order on Thursday that froze almost $600 million in investment accounts as the Justice Department probes charges of illegal tax avoidance involving California-based xÈlan, a company that markets tax-savings plans to doctors. The company’s Web site says it was founded 32 years ago by doctors to help other physicians with financial matters, ranging from pension plans to disability and long-term care insurance. It calls itself “the Economic Association of Health Professionals.”
The Internal Revenue Service estimates that some 4,000 doctors are involved in what it alleges is a fraudulent tax-reduction scheme, and they could owe as much as $420 million in taxes, interest and penalties. The Justice Department alleged that “persons and entities affiliated with xÈlan” have advised thousands of doctors and other medical professions to invest in “various fraudulent tax avoidance schemes,” including purported supplemental-insurance products and improper charitable-deduction schemes involving a xÈlan-related foundation. The government’s complaint said more than $500 million is held in investment accounts controlled by xÈlan-related and Barbados-based Doctors Benefit Insurance Co.
I don’t know whether the government’s charges against xÈlan have any validity, but it has been my experience that doctors are generally easy prey for promoters of investment scams and tax avoidance schemes. With a lot of money and not much time to analyze such matters, doctors are tailor-made for making bad investment decisions. As a result, I have represented many doctors over the years in extracting them from poor investment decisions that they have made.
My first experience with this phenomena is instructive. Over 25 years ago, while still in law school, my late father — noted Professor of Medicine Walter M. Kirkendall — called me one day to ask me to accompany him to a breakfast meeting at Houston’s old Shamrock Hilton to advise him regarding an investment “opportunity” that was going to be pitched to him and a number of other Texas Medical Center doctors at the meeting.
So, my father and I attended the meeting, along with about 50 other Medical Center doctors. During the meeting, a group of slick promoters from Dallas promoted limited partnership interests (at $75,000 a pop) in an entity that would own the rights to a movie. The movie was being filmed at the time and was called “Coming Back,” a preposterous tale about the adjustments that several Dallas Cowboy football stars had to make in playing professional football after returning home as Vietnam veterans. The promoters even played a few film clips from the movie, which were absurdly bad.
“We expect this to be hit throughout the country, particularly among professional football fans,” commented the promoters. But the real money to be made, the promoters assured in hushed tones, was in the overseas markets. “The Dallas Cowboys are simply huge in Japan,” they exclaimed breathlessly.
Through the presentation, my father and I were actually having a wonderful time, enjoying the free breakfast while rolling our eyes at each other and chortling about the absurdity of it all. At the conclusion of the meeting, the promoters asked that any doctor interested in investing to come up to the front of the conference room and they would make arrangements for giving them a discount on their investment in the film. That pitch brought a final chortle from my father and me, as we simply could not believe that anyone would be so gullible to invest any money in such a surefire scam as this movie. So, as the meeting concluded, we stood up and proceeded to leave.
As my father and I made our way out of the conference room, we were almost stampeded by the dozens of doctors literally sprinting to the front of the conference room to make their investment in the film.
About a year and a half later, the promoters of the film were convicted of securities fraud in federal court in Dallas.
To this day, no word on how “Coming Back” ever did in the Japanese market. ;^)

Herskowitz on Stros GM’s

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Longtime Houston sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz, who I have mentioned frequently in these earlier posts, is my favorite sportswriter. Mickey’s blend of insight, humor and historical perspective is sadly lacking in much of the sportswriting that we must endure these days.
Earlier this week, fellow Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice blasted Stros’ owner Drayton McLane for Gerry Hunsicker’s recent resignation as the Stros’ general manager. Although most everyone agrees that Hunsicker was the Stros’ best GM in history, I believe that McLane had reasonable reasons for not providing him a long term deal (noted in this earlier post). So, I thought that Justice’s piece disparaging McLane as the “boss from hell” was way out of line, particularly given the fact that McLane is also the best owner that the Stros have ever had.
In this column, Herskowitz — without mentioning Justice’s blast at McLane — places the decision to let Hunsicker go in historical perspective and reminds us that McLane’s support of Hunsicker was the best that any Stros owner has ever provided for any Stros GM. In so doing, Herskowitz gives us this entertaining and brief “GM tree” of Stros general managers over the past 43 years:

The Astros have an interesting history with general managers. Does anyone remember Gabe Paul? He was their first, coming and going the year before the team took the field. Gabe had held the same position in Cincinnati, but left Houston when he did not want Judge Roy Hofheinz breathing on his neck.
But Gabe left a legacy — two bright, young staffers named Tal Smith and Bill Giles. The latter would one day become the owner of the Phillies.
Paul Richards drafted and molded the team that finished ahead of the Cubs and Mets in its first season, 1962. Richards signed the first wave of prospects, including Rusty Staub, Larry Dierker and Joe Morgan.
The torch was passed to Spec Richardson, who had paid his dues with the Houston Buffs but did not have a big imagination. Smith returned from New York, after getting a graduate degree at the Steinbrenner Institute for Pain.
Tal hired Bill Virdon as his manager and raised the Astros out of the primeval muck, 43 games out of first place (in 1975) to within three outs of the World Series in 1980. The Sporting News would name Smith as the executive of the year for ’80, but John McMullen, the new owner, fired him anyway.
McMullen lived in New Jersey, but he knew how to use a phone. He wanted a general manager who would not make moves or express an opinion without consulting him.
Into the breach came Al Rosen, who had set home run records as a third baseman in Cleveland. Rosen was good-natured and considerate. He lasted until 1985 and received the news of his dismissal not with anger but puzzlement.
“I don’t understand why I was fired,” he said to a friend.
The friend did not offer him sympathy.
“If you don’t know,” he said, “imagine how Tal Smith must have felt.”
Replied Rosen: “I don’t know why he fired Tal, either.”
At that point, there seemed to be something in the air that created turmoil among Houston’s sports teams, possibly spillage from the chemical plants in Pasadena.
But turmoil appeared to be our destiny. In this context, the new GM was Dick Wagner, the man who dismantled the Big Red Machine and fired Sparky Anderson in Cincinnati.
The Astros did not leave the plantation for Bill Wood, an intense, studious type whose life was baseball. Wood gave way to Bob Watson, a slugging first baseman and fan favorite in the 1970s.
Feeling he had not suffered enough here, Watson went to New York, guided the Yankees to a world championship and resigned. He is now with the commissioner’s office.
Hunsicker filled the opening in Houston, . . .

And with the depth of having seen many Stros GM’s and owners come and go, Herskowitz notes the bottom line of Hunsicker’s resignation:

After nine years, Gerry Hunsicker leaves on a high note, and by his choice — which is the best way.

Dan Cogdell profiled

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After winning the only acquittal for any of the defendants in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge trial, Houston-based defense attorney Dan Cogdell is profiled in this Houston Chronicle article. Cogdell did a magnificent job in the trial and clearly was the one lawyer in the crowded courtroom who won over the jury. As noted in this earlier post, Cogdell is one of a group of local criminal defense attorneys that gives Houston as formidable a Criminal Defense Bar as any city in the United States.