Daily Archives: June 30, 2005

Kenny Rogers and Benny Hinn compete in public snit contest

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Kenny Rogers.jpgTexas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers and television evangelist Benny Hinn were in intense competition yesterday over who could have the most outrageous public snit of the month and perhaps the year.
First Rogers:

Rogers shoved two cameramen before the Rangers’ game against Los Angeles on Wednesday in a videotaped tirade that included throwing a camera to the ground and threatening to break more.

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“Kenny is having anger issues right now,” Rangers general manager John Hart said. “I don’t know what’s going on inside. We’re responding to something that’s very unusual.”
Rogers, who missed his last start with a broken pinkie he sustained during an outburst earlier this month, lashed out at the cameramen as they filmed him walking to the field for pregame stretching. He wasn’t scheduled to pitch and was sent home by the club following the incidents . . .
The 40-year-old left-hander first shoved Fox Sports Net Southwest photographer David Mammeli, telling him: “I told you to get those cameras out of my face.”
Rogers then approached a second cameraman. He wrestled the camera from Larry Rodriguez of Dallas-Fort Worth television station KDFW, threw it to the ground and kicked it.
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound pitcher saw two other cameramen who were recording from the Rangers’ dugout and walked toward them. He did not make contact with the men, who were backing away.
“I’ll break every … one of them,” Rogers said before he was escorted to the clubhouse by catcher Rod Barajas.
The Rangers sent Rogers home about an hour later . . .
Texas lost eight of nine entering Wednesday night’s game.
Rogers, who leads the team with nine wins, has refused to talk to reporters all season. He has also boycotted most media since a report before spring training that he threatened to retire if he wasn’t given a contract extension.

But as impressive as Rogers’ snit was, Hinn is not backing off. Unimpressed with the number of Nigerians who attended his latest crusade, Hinn went ballistic on the disrespectful Africans:

Whatever disappointment he felt on the first and second days of the miracle crusade, Hinn kept to himself – but he opened up with anger on the final day.
“Four million dollars down the drain,” he shouted into the microphone from the huge rostrum.
He said that he had been assured by the local organising committee that at least six million people would attend the crusade – but the total turnout was only around one million. As a result, he realised that all the mega public address equipment he had flown in from the US was not needed.
He also complained about some claimed expenditures, the charges imposed on pastors who attended his day-time seminar, and journalists who sought to cover the crusade.
He then announced publicly that he would not provide any more funds, and that the local organisers should pay all outstanding bills from the collections they made on the first two days.

Winner of the snit contest to be announced in a few days. Hat tip to Chris Elam for the link to the Hinn article.

DOJ decides not to go Arthur Andersen on Shell

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Shell logo.jpgOver 15 months after opening a criminal investigation into Royal Dutch/Shell Group‘s overstatement of oil and gas reserves, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will not charge the company in the continuing criminal probe. Here are previous posts over the past year and a half in regard to the reserve estimate mess and related problems that Shell and other energy companies have been confronting as a result of the government’s investigation.
Learning from the Department of Justice’s dubious decision to put Big Five accounting giant Arthur Andersen out of business through a misguided criminal prosecution, the Department of Justice observed as follows in its statement yesterday:

Because Shell has cooperated fully with the government’s investigation, has implemented substantial remedial efforts to enhance its reserves reporting and compliance, and has paid a $120 million civil penalty to the [Securities and Exchange Commission], the public interest has been sufficiently vindicated. Moreover, criminal prosecution would likely have a severe and unintended disproportionate economic impact upon thousands of innocent Shell employees.

However, just to make sure that no one should jump to the conclusion that the DOJ is backing off its questionable policy of prosecuting agency costs, David Kelley, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, confirmed in an interview yesterday that the role of individuals in the energy reserve accounting scandal at Shell is still being investigated.
In 2004, Shell reported it has misstated for several prior years its oil and gas reserves, which are a key market gauge of the long-range health of an exploration and production company. Subsequently, Shell’s audit committee generated a report that blamed senior executives for ignoring warnings from Shell employees regarding the accounting of the reserves. As a result, Shell fired the chairman of its committee of managing directors and the chief executive of its exploration-and-production unit, and removed about 23% of the barrels of oil equivalent reserves from its books (about 4.5 billion barrels). Shell settled with the SEC and British regulators over the matter last year.