Daily Archives: November 16, 2005

What half a million bucks buys you

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The Woodlands house.jpgLA house.jpgThe house on the left above is an example of what half a million bucks will buy you in the Village of Alden Bridge, a nice area of The Woodlands in suburban north Houston — a 3,600 square foot decorator’s home on a big, tree-filled lot, flagstone covered patio, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, gameroom, media, 2 staircases, dynamic kitchen, and a paneled study.
The house on the right is an example of what half a million bucks will buy you in Los Angeles — a 1,200 square foot, two-bedroom Craftsman-style house with a “sizable” frontyard in a neighborhood that is “on its way up.”
Read more about the crazy Southern California real estate market here. Hat tip to Craig Newmark for the link to the LA Times article.

Examining the train wreck that is the Texans

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lopez.gifRecent posts here, here and here have noted the lack of research and insight in recent articles by Chronicle NFL beat writer John McClain and columnist Richard Justice on the subject of the woeful Houston Texans. Into that vacuum of analysis, Chronicle sportswriter John Lopez stepped up with this excellent column on the questionable personnel moves of Texans’ General Manager Charlie Casserly, and he follows up on that effort with this interesting column today in which he questions Texans head coach Dom Capers’ management of the team’s coaching staff.
Regardless of whether you agree with Lopez’s views, his last two columns on the Texans contain the type of research and analysis that provides the reader with a grounded position to think about in evaluating the Texans’ surprising downturn this season. That’s far more satisfying than off-the-cuff observations that have little or no factual basis and sound more like water cooler banter than the insightful analysis that readers really want with regard to the Texans’ baffling situation that few people predicted (Clear Thinkers reader Don Mynack excepted) before the season.

The troubling case of the NatWest Three

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Natwest three6.jpgThe NatWest Three are the three former National Westminster Bank PLC bankers based in London — David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew — who are charged in Houston with bilking their former employer of $7.3 million in one of the schemes allegedly engineered by former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his right hand man, Michael Kopper (previous posts are here).
However, NatWest never sought to recover the funds from the three men, never pursued criminal charges against them in England, and neither the Crown Prosecution Service, the Financial Services Authority nor the Serious Fraud Office in the UK found sufficient evidence to prosecute. If a trial had taken place in the UK, then the three men could not be extradited to the US because of the principle of double jeopardy. But since no British trial has taken place, the British Home Secretary has granted the US extradition request under the Extradition Act of 2003, which was passed to facilitate extradition of suspected terrorists to the US. Under that legislation, the Home Secretary can extradite British citizens without the US authorities having to make a prima facie case — they need only set forth a statement of the facts that they hope to prove. To make matters even murkier, the Extradition Act is a one-way street — to extradite an American citizen from the US, the British still need to provide evidence that the American citizen has committed an extraditable offense.

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Charged with a crime in California? Just settle

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surgery.jpgTwo California doctors who were charged with criminal fraud in performing unnecessary heart surgeries at a hospital formerly owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. have agreed to an unusual settlement that resolves the criminal charges and includes a settlement of related civil litigation that provides $32.5 million in payments to patients and federal insurance programs. The investigation included a highly publicized raid of the hospital, which Tenet eventually sold under the threat of losing access to the Medicare program.
As a part of the unusual deal, the doctors who were charged agreed to pay $1.4 million each and consented never to perform any cardiology procedures or surgeries on any patient covered by various government insurance programs, including Medicare. Nevertheless, neither of the docs admitted liability and one of them commented that the reason he settled was that he could not “continue to fight a system that is not interested in the truth.”