Mary Flood notes that former Enron Task Force director Andrew Weissmann has been named in this Ethisphere article as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.”
They are kidding, right?. If it’s acceptable to promote business ethics through abuse of prosecutorial power, then Weissmann is your guy.
As the Texans fade to their sixth straight losing season and fifth last place finish in their six year existence, head Texans cheerleader John McClain is preaching patience.
A year ago at this time, the Texans looked deader than a doornail and like a team that was not particularly well-coached. The Texans closed the season by upsetting the Colts and beating a bad Browns team to finish with a 6-10 record.
Then, after the usual pre-season cheerleading and despite the fact that the Texans continued to make questionable personnel moves in the off-season, McClain went batty over second-year coach Gary Kubiak after the Texans opened this season with wins over a bad Chiefs team and an even worse Carolina team.
Now, a couple of months later and a year later after the Texans looked deader than a doornail, the Texans again look deader than a doornail and like a team that is not particularly well-coached. The Texans will have to win two of the last four games against tough opponents just to finish one game better than last season’s 6-10 record.
And McClain preaches patience.
Frankly, I’m quite patient with the Texans — I don’t think the team will improve much until Bob McNair is completely comfortable with a management model for the team, gets the right management and coaches in place, and that management quits making bad personnel decisions. However, I’m much less patient with what the Chronicle attempts to pass off as analysis from John McClain.
This Tom Fowler/Chronicle article (also see later report here) reports on the beginning of the latest in the series of criminal trials nicknamed “the trader cases” among the Houston defense bar involving Houston-based natural gas traders who allegedly manipulated natural gas trading indexes that are used to value billions of dollars in gas contracts and derivatives. The defendants are former El Paso Corp traders Jim Brooks, Wesley Walton and James Pat Phillips, who face 49 charges of conspiracy, false reporting and wire fraud. The trial of this particular trader case looks as if it will last about two months.