Monthly Archives: October 2006

Hanging out at Rice University

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Rice lovett Hall.jpgRuth Samuelson, an intern with the Houston Press, and a senior at Rice University, reports on David Jovani Vanegas, a 20-year old fellow who showed up about a year ago at Rice as a student and hung out for a year. However, it turns out that he was never actually enrolled at Rice as a student:

On September 13, Rice police arrested Vanegas for criminal trespass. Turns out he wasn’t an actual Rice student but a 20-year-old impersonator. Starting last September, Vanegas began eating in Rice’s dining halls, hanging out with students and attending classes. Some nights, he crashed in friends’ dorm rooms when he was too tired to go home. [. . .]
. . . Within the next few weeks, campus administrators alleged that Vanegas had taken close to $3,700 worth of food from Rice cafeterias. On September 28, the district attorney’s office filed felony charges for aggregate theft. Bail was set at $2,000. [. . .]
So why did Vanegas keep coming day after day for three semesters? He told police officers that he hadn’t gotten into Rice, but it would have broken his mother’s heart for him not to attend. Attempts to reach Vanegas were unsuccessful.

Read about the entire bizarre episode. There is a Marching Owl Band skit in this story somewhere.

Profiting from business prosecutions

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fiftiesmoney.jpgSo, now it’s Debra Wong Yang, U.S. Attorney for California’s central district, is resigning to take a job with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP where she will serve as co-chair of the firm’s crisis management practice group. Sounds sort of like a legal SWAT unit, don’t you think?
At any rate, Yang — like Arthur Andersen-slayer Andrew Weissman before her — is moving on to greener pastures after spearheading the indictment of the Milberg Weiss law firm. Larry Ribstein — who just used Yang’s pursuit of Milberg Weiss in his recent talk on arranging key witness testimony — is wondrous about this development:

The WSJ reports that Debra Wong Yang, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, has parlayed her prosecution of Milberg into a plum partnership at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Bruce Kobayashi and I recently discussed Ms Yang’s handiwork: the irony of an indictment alleging that Milberg bought witness cooperation supported by a government plea deal with a leading witness. Now Ms Yang will earn big bucks to defend clients against similar government tactics. Is this a great country or what?

A better ranking than the BCS?

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BCS-logo-150.gifThe usual hue and cry met this week’s first Bowl Championship Series rankings of the 2006 college football season. I must admit that it’s pretty difficult to understand how Auburn, which was plastered at home a couple of weeks ago by 13th-ranked Arkansas, could be ranked fourth, five places ahead of Texas, which has manhandled 22nd-ranked Oklahoma and lost only to top-ranked Ohio State.
At any rate, there is a better way. Las Vegas Sports Consultants is the leading consultant for Nevada sports books and, last year, they began publishing their own OddsMakers Top 25. Inasmuch as the firm’s four college football oddsmakers were already preparing ratings for all 119 Division I-A teams, they decided to submit ballots and calculate the results for use in their radio shows. They rank teams based on such criteria as injuries, performance, skill and game location, not on won-loss record and not on which teams will draw the greatest or least betting action (that’s for the bookies) Their poll is gaining traction in betting markets and is now published every Monday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
For my money, this ranking — which is based on the profit motive (LVSC is attempting to attract betting customers through the accuracy of its research) — is a more accurate way to rank teams than the way in which voters of widely-varying interest rank teams in the more traditional polls. The following is this week’s Oddsmakers Top 25 poll with the team record and BCS ranking in parentheses.
1. Ohio State (7-0) (1)
2. Texas (6-1) (9)
3. Michigan (7-0) (3)
4. California (6-1) (10)
5. Louisiana State (5-2) (18)
6. Southern Cal (6-0) (2)
7. Florida (6-1) (6)
8. Tennessee (5-1) (11)
9. Louisville (6-0) (7)
10. Notre Dame (5-1) (8)
11. Clemson (6-1) (12)
12. Wisconsin (6-1) (21)
13. Oregon (5-1) (14)
14. West Virginia (6-0) (5)
15. Auburn (6-1) (4)
16. Nebraska (6-1) (17)
17. Oklahoma (4-2) (22)
18. Boise State (7-0) (15)
19. Georgia Tech (5-1) (19)
20. Miami (4-2) (NR)
21. Pittsburgh (6-1) (NR)
22. Penn State (4-3) (NR)
23. Arkansas (5-1) (13)
24. Florida State (4-2) (NR)
25. Missouri (6-1) (24)
My sense is that Horns’ fans are already sold on this poll over the BCS ranking.

Judge Lake dismisses the indictment against Ken Lay

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Ken Lay 070606D.jpgUS District Judge Sim Lake has overruled the Enron Task Force’s dubious opposition and dismissed the indictment against the late Enron chairman, Kenneth Lay. Judge Lake’s memorandum opinion is here, and his conclusion pretty well says it all:

Since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has adopted the abatement rule, and since . . . the United States . . . has raised any legal basis for denying the ruleís application in this case, the court concludes that Layís conviction must be vacated and that this action against him must be dismissed. Accordingly, the Motion of the Estate of Kenneth L. Lay to Vacate His Conviction and Dismiss the Indictment (Docket Entry No. 1082) is GRANTED, . . . The indictment against Kenneth L. Lay is DISMISSED.

As noted earlier here, here and here, I don’t believe Ken Lay was guilty of anything other than making some bad business decisions (among many good ones, too). Dismissing the charges against his legacy is not only the right thing to do legally, but also morally.

Trials and tribulations at UTMB

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UTMB LOGO.gifBaylor College of Medicine’s struggle to define its future in the choppy waters of America’s health care finance system has been a frequent topic on this blog. But Baylor is far from the only medical school that is struggling with such problems. This Kevin Moran/Houston Chronicle article reports on the recent troubles at Texas’ oldest medical school, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Those troubles were alluded to in this earlier post.

In a year when this island city has avoided even the threat of a major natural storm, its largest and oldest employer ó the University of Texas Medical Branch ó is experiencing an unprecedented financial, employment and political tempest.
Facing a $20 million deficit and aiming to cut $130 million in spending in 2007, the 13,000-employee medical center started the year by hiring a consulting firm to heavily reduce expenses.
Faculty and staff feared that any solution involved a massive layoff. Morale dropped precipitously when UTMB announced in June it would cut 1,000 jobs. Next came a storm of dissatisfaction when administrators unveiled plans to cut salaries of tenured faculty, physicians, researchers and others.

The article goes on to report on how UTMB’s initiatives to generate more income is being opposed by competing physicians and how little of UTMB’s professional services are compensated through proceeds of health insurance. Although somewhat different from Baylor’s problems because UTMB operates its own hospital in Galveston, UTMB’s difficulties are another reflection of the cascading problems that are resulting from the federal and state governments’ failure to address America’s broken health care finance system. The risks of that broken system are a decline in the quality of physician training and medical care, which is something that should concern us all.

Two Houston docs convicted in Medicare-wheelchair scam

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Wheelchair.jpgTwo Houston doctors — Charles Frank Skripka Jr., 65, and Jayshree Patel, 62, — were among four local men who were convicted by a jury this past Friday afternoon in federal court on charges related to accepting kickbacks in a scheme that allegedly defrauded Medicare of more than $21 million. The other two men convicted were James Ekiko, 43, the owner of a medical equipment supply company, and David Dennis Brown, 47, who recruited patients into the scam.The Justice Department’s press release on the convictions is here.
The jury convicted all four men of health fraud in connection with a scheme to prescribe motorized wheelchairs to people who didn’t need them. Skripka, Ekiko and Brown also were convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud Medicare, while Skripka and Ekiko were also convicted of money laundering. Prosecutors contended that recruiters such as Brown would pay prospective patients $50 each to see the doctors, who would then prescribe motorized wheelchairs. The medical supply company would bill Medicare $4,200 for the wheelchairs that cost $1,600, pay the doctors $200 per prescription, and then pocket the balance as profit. At the height of the scam, the doctors were writing as many as 80 prescriptions a day!

Arnie’s Houston farewell

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ArnoldPalmer_Winner.jpgArnie17.jpgI’ve been remiss in not mentioning Arnold Palmer‘s announcement this past Friday during a round in a Champion’s Tour event at Houston’s Augusta Pines Golf Club that the round would be his last competitive round of golf. Steve Campbell’s article is here.
That Arnie would finally call it quits at a not particularly notable Houston course in a largely-ignored Champions Tour event (it’s football season in Texas, you know) seemed somewhat out of place. Arnie has actually been saying good-bye for quite awhile, first at Augusta National (his final major appearance) and then at his tournament, the Bay Hill Invitational, which was his final PGA Tour event. Suffice it to say the Augusta Pines is not anywhere near as dramatic a venue as either of those courses for Arnie to bid farewell to his fellow senior golfers. Too bad that the tournament couldn’t have been played a few miles south at Champions Golf Club, a venerable championship layout where Ben Hogan played his last competitive round about 40 years ago.
Palmer’s impact on golf and sports is so pervasive that it is difficult to put it in perspective. Suffice to say that there would be no Tiger Woods — at least in the larger-than-life sense that we know him — had not Arnold Palmer literally pulled the PGA Tour by its bootstraps into the forefront of televised sporting events around the world. Heck, Arnie even created the modern sports promotion business by hiring his old college chum, the late Mark McCormack, as the first real sports agent back in the late 1950’s. Scott Michaux, a columnist for AugustaChronicle.com, does as good a job as I’ve seen in this article (reg. req) of conveying Palmer’s special nature. Noting that Palmer withdrew from his last tournament on the fourth hole, but continued to play the remainder of the round for the benefit of his fans, Michaux observes as follows:

That’s what made Palmer the most beloved player in the history of golf. He was not its greatest champion and didn’t possess the finest swing, but nobody before or since has ever had the charisma that Palmer holds in spades. Whether it’s on the golf course, in the clubhouse or on the dance floor, Palmer oozes with the magnetism that has drawn his Army of fans for every step of the ride.
That the ride is finally over is as traumatic to his fans as it is to him. That Palmer never won a major championship in my lifetime didn’t stop him from being as giant a figure to my generation as he was to his own. That it has been 18 years since I witnessed him win his last tournament at the senior Crestar Classic in Richmond, Va., hasn’t made every sighting since any less thrilling.[ . . .]
Now we can only wish that Palmer will take the stage that late greats Byron Nelson, San Snead and Gene Sarazen took before him on the first tee of the Augusta National Golf Club for an honorary start to the Masters. With no other places to get a glimpse of the King, it is our last hope.
Palmer understands that no matter how awkward it might be to stand up in front of the world trying to give it that good shot, just a fix of his radiance is all we want.

Spitzer: Populist Warrior or Reckless Business Foe?

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spitzer13A.jpgIn this New York Sunday Times article, Mike McIntire explores the above question regarding the true nature of future New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer.
I could have saved McIntire a lot of time. Seriously. A lot of time.
Spitzer and his ilk — whom we have seen on display in numerous business-related prosecutions in the post-Enron era — remind me of what Ayn Rand observed about socialists:

“[T]he truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to nobler ends. The truth is that those horrors are their ends.”

What to do about North Korea?

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north_korea_nighttime_shrunk.jpgWith last week’s confirmation that North Korea had tested a nuclear device, The Atlantic Monthly has put online Robert D. Kaplan‘s cover article from the October print edition, When North Korea Falls, a stark analysis of the disaster that could occur when the fragile North Korean society finally collapses. Kaplan sums up the problem that North Korea’s inevitable collapse presents to the US:

Middle- and upper-middle-level U.S. officers based in South Korea and Japan are planning for a meltdown of North Korea that, within days or even hours of its occurrence, could present the worldómeaning, really, the American militaryówith the greatest stabilization operation since the end of World War II. ìIt could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations,î Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell told me. On one day, a semi-starving population of 23 million people would be Kim Jong Ilís responsibility; on the next, it would be the U.S. militaryís, which would have to work out an arrangement with the Chinese Peopleís Liberation Army (among others) about how to manage the crisis.

Read the entire article, which is essential reading for understanding the motivations of North Korea’s current nuclear brinksmanship. Which, by the way, generated the best crack of last week, from David Letterman:

“The North Koreans are starting to gloat a little bit. The test was a big success, and to celebrate, today Kim Jong-il is wearing his hair in the shape of a mushroom cloud.”

2006 Weekly local football review

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Ron Dayne.jpgCowboys 34 Texans 6

As expected, it was men against boys as the Texans (1-4) went down without so much as a whimper against the Pokes (3-2). The Texans defense played well for a half as Houston actually led 6-3 at the half. However, the utter incompetence of the Texans’ offense wore the defense down in the second half as the Texans committed all seven of their penalties and turned the ball over three times on two David Carr interceptions and a fumble by kickoff returner Edell Shepherd. With the Texans facing the Jaguars twice as well as the Giants and the Titans over the next month, the best that Houston can realistically hope for is a 2-7 record when the schedule gets a bit easier in late November and early December when the Texans play the Bills, the Jets, the Raiders and the Titans again in consecutive games. This is a brutally bad football team.

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