Richard Z. Chesnoff is one of America’s foremost commentators on Middle Eastern affairs (see prior posts here). And he tells a pretty darn good joke, too. From the magnificent Old Jews Telling Jokes:
A Meeting with the Pope
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Monthly Archives: July 2009
Marc Dreier’s letter to his sentencing judge
It will take awhile before you will read a more interesting — and really quite extraordinary — letter from a defendant to a sentencing judge than the one below that disgraced New York lawyer Marc Dreier wrote.
It’s hard to imagine, much less understand, the personal hell that Dreier created for himself. Dreier’s letter provides a glimpse of how it happened.
The webs we weave.
Is Allen Stanford being railroaded?
I recognize that he is not the most popular fellow in Houston investment circles these days, but is anyone else but me a tad uncomfotable that the federal government is running roughshod over R. Allen Stanford?
As everyone following the Stanford Financial Group scandal knows by now, at the request of the Department of Justice, U.S. District Judge David Hittner overruled a federal magistrate’s order last week that would have allowed Stanford to remain free on bond pending his trial on business fraud charges. As a result, Stanford is imprisoned in Houston’s Federal Detention Center pending his trial, which will probably not occur until sometime next year.
Meanwhile, the DOJ, the SEC, a federal court-appointed receiver and a British receiver operating in Antigua have frozen all of Stanford’s personal assets, as well as the assets of the Stanford Financial empire. Consequently, Stanford has no funds with which to retain counsel.
And now he doesn’t even have the freedom to help his attorneys prepare his defense.
However, it’s now become reasonably clear that the DOJ and the SEC’s repeated public allegations that Stanford was running a Ponzi Scheme through Stanford Financial are, if not outright false, at least misleading and irresponsible.
Stanford Financial clearly owned substantial assets, including the Antiguan Bank that also owned substantial assets itself. Perhaps those assets were over-valued and perhaps Stanford and his associates misled investors on the bank’s capability of repaying the certificates of deposit that the company promoted and sold. But that’s a far cry from running a Ponzi Scheme.
Moreover, the government’s efforts to prevent Stanford from paying for defense counsel are downright scary.
The fact that Stanford Financial is not in a position to pay them is not particularly surprising. The company would probably be in bankruptcy if it were not already in receivership, and it’s unlikely that either a bankruptcy judge or a U.S. district judge would allow the company to pay for Stanford’s criminal defense.
But putting aside for the moment the issue of Stanford not being allowed to use his personal assets to defend himself, Stanford Financial has a Director’s & Officer’s insurance policy that provides for payment of at least a portion of Stanford’s defense However, the Stanford Financial receiver has threatened to seek contempt charges against the insurer (Lloyds) if it pays Stanford’s defense costs as it is contractually obligated to do under the policy. At the same time, the receiver, the DOJ, and the receiver are spending millions in preparing the case against Stanford. My conservative estimate is that the government’s tab is more than $25 million already (the receiver alone has a pending request for $20 million in fees).
Finally, Stanford has exhibited absolutely no inclination to flee from the charges against him. He has numerous family ties to Texas and the Houston area, and he has no prior criminal record. And it’s not as if Stanford can just walk away from the charges if he is allowed out on bond. He has no passport and, with the GPS tracking device that the U.S. Marshal’s Office requires criminal defendants to wear these days, the U.S. Marshals know immediately when a defendant is going somewhere that he is not supposed to be.
It’s easy to look the other way when this type of concerted effort by the federal government essentially strips an unpopular businessman of the capacity to defend himself against charges that could imprison him for the rest of his life.
But remember — if it can happen to R. Allen Stanford, then it can certainly happen to you and me.
A copy of Stanford’s motions seeking release of funds for his defense and for reconsideration of his detention order are below.
Crossing Heaven’s Border
Over the past decade, tens of thousands defectors have crossed the dangerous waters of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers into northeast China to escape from North Korea, the world’s last closed Communist state. In the hour-long documentary Crossing Heaven’s Border, Wide Angle tells the moving stories of a few of those defectors.
Pastor Chun Ki Won is the director of Durihana, a Christian missionary organization that helps North Korean defectors make the treacherous journey along the Asian underground railroad to safety in South Korea. In the six-minute interview below, Chun describes the ordeal that the defectors endure and the complex relationship that they have with Christianity. The Wide Angle website on Crossing Heaven’s Border is here.
Stros 2009 Season Review, Part Two
The Stros (41-41) reached the halfway point of the 2009 season in an incongruous position.
Although they are performing only slightly better than predicted before the season and are in fifth place in the six team National League Central Division, the Stros are only two losses behind the first-place Cardinals (45-39).
How could that be? Are the Stros better than expected? Do they really have a good chance of contending for a playoff spot? What is going on here?
The answers: (1) Baseball remains a funny game; (2) Only slightly; (3) Not much of a chance; and (4) Mediocre teams playing mostly other mediocre teams will generally split about even over the long haul of a season.
In coming to these answers, it’s helpful to review the aggregate RCAA and RSAA numbers of each club because that statistic provides a simple but revealing benchmark of how a team is performing during the long MLB season. Baseball remains a deceptively simple game. If your team’s hitters generate more runs than the opposition, and your team’s pitchers allow fewer runs from being scored than the opposition’s pitchers, then your team is going to be a winner.
A club’s RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a club’s hitters generate than a National League-average club and RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a club’s pitching staff saves than a National League-average club (an exactly National League-average club’s score is zero). Accordingly, a club’s combined RCAA/RSAA number shows how many more (or fewer) runs the club’s hitters have generated and the club’s pitchers have saved (or given up) in comparison to a National League-average club.
A negative RCAA number reflects that a club’s hitters have generated fewer runs relative to what an average National League club would have generated using the same number of outs, and a negative RSAA number reflects that a pitching staff has saved its club fewer runs than an average National League pitching staff would have prevented in the same number of innings. Positive numbers in both cases are just the opposite — hitters are generating more runs than a National League average club and a pitching staff is saving more runs than a National League average staff.
Although the Stros’ record during the second quarter of the season was a bit above-average (23-19), the Stros remain a National League-average hitting team (2 RCAA) with a below National League-average pitching staff (-19 RSAA) at the halfway point of the season. Not surprisingly, that performance leaves the Stros smack dab in the middle (8th) of the 16 teams National League clubs from a hitting standpoint and the bottom 25% of the league (12th) in regard to pitching.
The Homeopathic ER
An instant classic from That Mitchell and Webb Look (H/T Kevin, M.D.). Enjoy.
First, Henry VIII, then this
A rather odd postlude from Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church. H/T J.D. Walt from The Firstborn Son :
The Yankee Doodle Boy
The late Michael Jackson was inarguably one of the most talented entertainers of our time and certainly one of the most innovative dancers. But well before Jackson, there was James Cagney, who was every bit as talented an entertainer and dancer as Jackson. In fact, I seem to recall reading an interview of Jackson years ago in which he admitted that he patterned many of his dance techniques on those of Cagney.
Although better known for his gangster movie roles, Cagney was actually Hollywood’s best dancer for much of his long and storied career. Check out three of Cagney’s signature dance scenes below from the 1942 film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which Cagney plays the early-20th century composer, George M. Cohan.
The first video below is probably Cagney’s most famous dance sequence, the "Yankee Doodle Boy" scene from Cohan’s first big-hit musical in the movie. The end of that video includes a short clip of a later salute to Cagney by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, which serves primarily to prove just how far Cagney’s glorious talent exceeded that of a couple of pedestrian Hollywood hoofers. The third video below is the final dance scene of the movie in which Cagney as an ebullient Cohan descends the White House staircase after receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Roosevelt. Note that the scene is shot in one take (the camera never strays from Cagney) and Cagney never once looks down at his feet. Heck, I cannot even walk down a staircase of that size without watching my feet. Enjoy!
Albert Collins
I saw Albert Collins perform at a Houston jazz club back in the late 1970’s when he opened for a well-known local jazz musician. Suffice it to say that Albert stole the show. The headliner decided to have Collins and his band come out and play with him during his part of the show. It was a very smart move.
The Chronicle’s Continuing Enron Hypocrisy
Being generally an optimistic sort, I keep thinking that the financial crisis of the past year or so will eventually prompt the Houston Chronicle to reconsider its generally biased coverage of the demise of Enron over the past seven years.
After all, it’s not every day that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concludes that a newspaper’s coverage of a particular event was a major factor in the creation of a presumption of community prejudice.
Nevertheless, the local paper’s recent coverage of disgraced financiers R. Allen Stanford and Bernard Madoff reflects that no such soul-searching is likely to emerge anytime soon down on Texas Avenue.
Take this recent Loren Steffy column in which he asks the following: “Why, then, does Madoff get a sentence six times that of [former WorldCom CEO Bernie] Ebbers or Enron’s Jeff Skilling?”
I mean, really. Is the answer to that question all that difficult?
Madoff turns himself in and admits from the outset that he was stealing money from investors for years by running a Ponzi scheme. Any wonder why he was hammered by the sentencing judge?
Ebbers was essentially convicted of covering up accounting fraud at WorldCom, but he at least put up a colorable defense that he was not responsible for such matters and had no knowledge of the fraud.
Moreover, Skilling wasn’t even accused of accounting fraud. He was convicted essentially of making too many rose-colored statements about Enron, notwithstanding that his belief in the truth of those statements was never seriously challenged.
Finally, neither Ebbers nor Skilling stole a dime from the investors of their respective companies. Yet, Steffy insists upon comparing them with the larcenous Madoff. who essentially stole tens of millions. The Greed Narrative prevails again.
But here’s my main point. Now that what happened to Enron has happened to numerous other trust-based Wall Street firms, shouldn’t the Chronicle be advocating that similarly aggressive criminal prosecutions be mounted against numerous executives of the Wall Street firms who made the same type of rosy statements about their wobbling companies as Skilling made about Enron?
Now, I don’t believe that there was widespread criminal fraud at Enron. The only true criminal fraud there was relatively small and isolated in Andrew Fastow’s Global Finance unit. Similarly, I don’t believe that there was widespread criminal fraud at the Wall Street firms that endured the same downward spiral that engulfed Enron.
But inasmuch as the Chronicle fanned the flames of criminal prosecutions against dozens of Enron executives and others involved in transactions with them, shouldn’t the Chronicle be taking the same position with regard to executives at the similarly-situated Wall Street firms?
Or at least shouldn’t the Chronicle be explaining why it threw dozens of Enron executives under the bus even though it now fails to advocate similar treatment for executives of the failed Wall Street firms?
It seems like the least that the local newspaper can do.