Daily Archives: January 18, 2006

Now, that’s serious!

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2006-01-15-bettis.jpgAnd I thought that Texans took football seriously:

Bettis Fumble Coincides With Fan’s Heart Attack (WTAE-TV)
The excitement of the Steelers taking on the Indianapolis Colts proved too much for one fan on Sunday.
With about 1 minute remaining in the game, Colts linebacker Gary Brackett hit Steelers running back Jerome Bettis on the Indianapolis goal line and forced a fumble — one that caused a man to go into cardiac arrest at Cupka’s bar, in the South Side, Sheldon Ingram said.
The firemen performed CPR on [the victim] and the called the paramedics, . . .
[The victim] was later revived with a defibrillator and taken to UMPC Presbyterian Hospital.

Missing the Point

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Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy has been a harsh critic of Enron and its former key executives, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.

In their motion to transfer venue of their upcoming criminal trial, Lay and Skilling have used Steffy’s past columns as examples of the biased and negative reporting in Houston that makes it far less likely that an unbiased jury can be found here than in, say, Denver, Phoenix or Atlanta.

In his column today, Steffy responds by conceding that he has been critical and mocking of Lay and Skilling, but arguing that jurors can put aside inflamed passions and biased reporting to render a verdict based solely on the evidence presented in court.

Besides, Steffy snipes, that Lay and Skilling are entitled to a fair trial does not mean that he shouldn’t be allowed to express his outrage in his columns over what happened at Enron.

Well, it’s pretty clear that Steffy has missed the point of Lay and Skilling’s use of his columns, which is not uncommon for someone who is promoting a certain view toward a case rather than a more balanced one.

Lay and Skilling’s pleadings never question Steffy’s right to express whatever viewpoint he wants in regard to Enron or their case.

Rather, Lay and Skilling’s point is that the Chronicle and local media’s almost total failure to provide a counterbalance to the one-sided views of those expressed by Steffy and others has greatly contributed to the overwhelmingly negative views toward Lay and Skilling that are expressed in the responses to the juror questionnaire that was transmitted to prospective jurors several months ago.

As noted many times on this blog, there does exist a different view toward what happened at Enron than that which Steffy shares with the vast majority of the mainstream media.

The problem is not with Steffy’s viewpoint. Rather, the problem is with the effect on potential jurors of the promotion of that viewpoint to the almost total excluson of the contrary view.

On a related note, Larry Ribstein and Thom Lambert (of the terrific new blog, Truth on the Market) comment on the effect of bloggers expressing balancing views to those of the mainstream business media.

More Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Sad Case of Jamie Olis

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One can only wonder when the mainstream media will pick up on the outrageous conduct of the Justice Department in the sad case of former mid-level Dynegy executive Jamie Olis?

First, in a prosecution that probably should never have been pursued in the first place, the Justice Department dramatically misrepresented the market loss attributable to the transaction over which Olis was prosecuted, prompting U.S. District Judge Sim Lake to sentence Olis in March 2004 to an absurd 24 years in prison.

Then, after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Olis’ sentence on this past October 31, the Justice Department had over two months to prepare for the hearing on Olis’ resentencing. Despite that time to prepare, the prosecution simply asserted that Olis should be sentenced to an almost as absurd 15 years in prison and failed to prepare any meaningful evidence of market loss to support that position.

On the other hand, Olis’ defense team produced impressive expert reports that establish the impossibility of establishing with any degree of meaningful certainty the market loss attributable to the transaction over which Olis was prosecuted.

Now, in yet another outrage, the Justice Department has requested six additional weeks to prepare market loss evidence for Olis’ resentencing hearing despite the fact that it has been clear since the Fifth Circuit’s decision of October 31 that such evidence would be necessary for Olis’ resentencing. Inasmuch as Judge Lake is about ready to commence the trial of former key Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, it now appears that Olis resentencing will be postponed for at least four months.

Meanwhile, justice, respect for the rule of law, the principle of prosecutorial discretion, common sense and human decency continue to be the casualties of the sad case of Jamie Olis and other dubious prosecutions of corporate agency costs in the post-Enron era.

Update: Doug Berman continues to place the over/under on the Olis resentencing at 5-7 years. I’ve been taking the under on that bet, but the latest news reflects that my bet is based more on a generally optimistic nature than savvy betting skills in such matters.

WSJ profiles David Adickes

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sam_houston_01.jpgThis Wall Street Journal ($) article profiles Houston sculptor David Adickes, who specializes in huge works such as the sculpture of Sam Houston on I-45 just outside of Huntsville about 60 miles north of downtown Houston. In recent months, Adickes has been working on erecting a 60-foot-tall statue of Stephen F. Austin in Brazoria County, a project that Banjo Jones has been following closely (scroll down to 10.26.05 pictures), but the WSJ reports that Adickes is contemplating an even more ambitious project — a 280-foot-tall cowboy (equivalent to a 23 story building) that Adickes envisions standing next to one of the Texas’ busiest freeways.
Alas, the Journal reports that Adickes’ creations have not brought him much critical acclaim:

Mr. Adickes’s statues don’t bring him much approval in the world of serious art. The sculptor’s skillful, Titan-sized likenesses of historical figures may have a big “gee-whiz” factor, but they’re of “minimal aesthetic interest,” says University of Kansas professor of art history David Cateforis. He likens Mr. Adickes’s statues to such artifacts of roadside Americana as the 80-foot-high Uniroyal tire outside Detroit.

Nevertheless, that noted Houston art critic — heart surgeon Denton Cooley — defends Adickes’ creations:

Famed Houston heart surgeon Denton Cooley, who is the subject of one of Mr. Adickes’s more life-size (8-foot) statues in Houston’s Texas Medical Center, sees genius in Mr. Adickes’s enormous scale.

“Some of the great wonders of the world are big things like that,” he notes.