Stros start playing pitch and catch

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roger%20clemens.jpgThe Stros’ pitchers and catchers went through their first workout of Spring Training yesterday at the Stros’ complex in Kissimmee, Florida, so we had to endure the first article of the spring that suggests the horrifying reality that the eminently forgettable Wandy Rodriguez, arguably the worst starting pitcher in the National League over the past two seasons, may be in the Stros’ starting rotation come Opening Day. And it doesn’t help that Stros manager Phil Garner, who is not particularly astute in his job, rationalizes that Rodriguez has done well over the past couple of seasons because he has won more games that he should have given how poorly he has pitched.
At any rate, such disturbing thoughts provoke one to wonder whether future Hall of Famer Roger Clemens has one more partial season in his tank for the hometown club (Alyson Footer updates us on the current status)? The clever ESPN commercial below (which includes a quite young Keith Olbermann) reminds us that the same question was being asked about the remarkable Rocket over a decade ago. I suspect that he would answer the question much the same way today. Enjoy.

DOJ Throws in the Towel on Nigerian Barge Case

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The Chronicle’s Kristen Hays reports on the news that was bubbling through the Houston legal community on Thursday afternoon — the Department of Justice has decided not to mount an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision vacating the convictions (see also here) of the four Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron-related travesty known as the Nigerian Barge case.

Although expected, the DOJ’s decision in the Nigerian Barge case reverberates through several other pending Enron-related cases.

The DOJ can retry three of the four former Merrill Lynch executives, but that would be petty by even the DOJ’s standards given the eviscerated nature of the original charges and the fact that each of the defendants has already spent a year of their lives in prison based on a prosecution that was based more on resentment than on true criminal conduct.

The Fifth Circuit’s now final decision in the barge case casts doubt on a substantial number of the charges upon which former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was convicted, and dispositively blows away over 80% of the case against former Enron Broadband executive Kevin Howard.

In addition, the re-trials of Howard’s former co-defendants from the prosecution disaster that was the first Enron Broadband case are now in various states of disarray, as is the pressured plea deal of former mid-level Enron executive, Chris Calger.

And don’t forget the mess that is the DOJ’s case against the NatWest Three.

And this is the product of what the Wall Street Journal called “a good record overall?”

Look, this carnage is what happens when government is allowed to bastardize charges. In these cases, the prosecution abused the honest services charge that is supposed to pertain to bribery or kickback cases.

In the Enron-related criminal cases, the prosecutors misapplied the honest service charge to merely questionable business transactions in order to transform juror resentment of wealthy businesspeople into politically popular convictions.

The damage to the defendants, their careers and their families that this abuse of power has caused is bad enough. But the carnage to justice and respect for the rule of law is even more ominous. Does anyone really think that they could stand upright in the winds of such abusive governmental power if those winds turned toward them?

Criminalizing divorce

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mccoy_in_jail.jpgOne of the areas of practice that I have developed over the years is defending parties in contempt of court proceedings. Those are never easy cases (don’t believe me? Read about this one), but some of the ugliest occur in the family courts where judges often will hold an ex-husband in contempt of court and jail him for failure to fulfill a support obligation.
According to this NY Times article, New York is experiencing a similar problem as family court judges in a number of cases there have used this supposedly rare sanction to punish ex-husbands. Although information on the number of these debtor prison-type cases is mostly anecdotal, it’s reasonably clear that the use of the contempt sanction in financial-inability-to-pay cases is a more widespread practice than it should be. As I’ve mentioned to more than a few divorce lawyers and family law court judges over the years, it’s particularly difficult for an ex-husband to generate income to pay his support or alimony obligations while he is cooling his heels in a local jail cell.

Tracking federal cases

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federal%20court.jpgJustia, the company that developed the popular Blawgsearch engine, has just introduced another outstanding search vehicle — a website that allows the user to track federal court cases in a number of different ways, including by date, state or party name.
The website taps into a database of recently filed federal district court civil cases and starts with a list of all of the cases, which then can be broken down by State/Court/Practice/Sub-Practice. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of all of the new cases that meet these criteria, or you can do a search and subscribe to an RSS fee of the search results. For example, you could track all of the federal court cases filed against a particular company as an RSS feed, or you could subscribe to just those that are filed in Texas. Whatever the search criteria, you can track new cases with an RSS feed.
Each case has an individual page with a link to the Pacer info page (you do need a subscription to access these documents at 8 cents per page) as well as Blog, News, Finance and Web searches on the party names. Not a bad way of picking up some quick informal discovery on the parties to litigation.
Justia has inputted over 300,000 case titles since January 1, 2006 and are now updating the database daily. The website is still in beta and Justia plans to add more functionality and editorial groupings of parties. But it’s pretty darn useful already. Give it a look.

The Tiger Chasm

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tiger_woods121507.jpgThe rumblings from the last week’s decision to discontinue the popular International PGA Tour event at Castle Pines are still reverberating through the golf world, and Golf Digest’s John Hawkins isn’t pulling any punches:

The death of the International last week, however, was a big deal for a bunch of reasons. If no longer a marquee non-major, this was a solid mid-level tour stop in a major metropolitan market–not some CVS Charity Classic or B.C. Open. It is by far the most notable tournament loss in Tim Finchem’s 13 years as commissioner. Ten months ago Denver was on the short list of potential hosts for a FedEx Cup playoff tilt. Now the Mile High City is six feet under. “Players aren’t going to react well to this,” says eight-year veteran Joe Ogilvie, a member of the tour’s policy board. “You can’t do a better job of running an event than Jack Vickers and the people at Castle Pines.”[ . . .]
The International’s demise is a dangerous sign as to the widening chasm between Tiger events and the non-Tigers. Never have the haves and have-nots been so easily defined or so mindlessly categorized by the presence of a single player–it’s the frightening downside of Woods’ competitive dictatorship. When he doubles the size of a viewing audience in a strong golf economy, the rich get richer. When he does it in lean times, the poor get really poor.

Along the same lines, ESPN.com’s Bob Harig discusses the increasing risk of putting on a non-Tiger tour event:

Sponsoring a regular PGA Tour event costs in the neighborhood of $7 million per year. That money covers a portion of the purse, a television advertising commitment, a fee to the PGA Tour and to the tournament. Spread that out over the six-year length of the network contracts, and you’re talking about $42 million or more.
It is a hefty price, especially given the modest television ratings. Those small numbers — usually in the 2 million-to-3 million range for a weekend network telecast — were always justified because they were reaching the “right” kind of people Ö i.e. those with disposable income. With golf, less meant more.
But as the price has kept going up, those company executives began looking at the numbers more closely. And some of them have started to say that enough is enough — especially if Woods doesn’t play.

And guess what side of that chasm the Shell Houston Open is on?

Evaluating jock broadcasting

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Microphone.jpgCharlie Pallilo passes along this clever Chuck Klosterman/Esquire article that compares the playing careers of various former professional athletes with their current careers as broadcasters. Klosterman is on target with most of his comparisons, including this one on Bill Walton:

Bill Walton: A megalomaniac whose insights often seem wholly unrelated to the game he’s actively watching, Walton has an on-air persona that can be akin to Jerry Garcia vomiting through a version of “Sugar Magnolia.” That said, the Red Rocker is fearless and unpredictable, and the fact that Walton overcame a childhood stutter makes his loquaciousness something of a marvel. Still, this guy (when healthy) was probably the most complete post player who ever lived; he’ll never argue with Snapper Jones as efficiently as he threw outlet passes to Larry Steele. Better as a player.

Klosterman also nails it in pointing out that Bill Rafferty puts fellow basketball analysts Billy Packer and Dick Vitale to shame. Here is the entire piece.

Baby talk on energy?

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WSJ%20logo2.gifSo, I think it’s safe to say that, after this blog post, Cato’s Jerry Taylor is not going to be asked to contribute a piece to the Wall Street Journal’s ($) next special section on alternative energy:

One could spend a lifetime slamming dross in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal – particularly when it comes to energy. Only the driving need to be more productive with my time keeps me from doing so on a daily basis. But when something as bad as this insert comes along, something must be said.

Taylor is not impressed with Houston-based Peak Oil advocate, Matt Simmons, either:

Moving right along, page two features recommended readings from Matthew Simmons, the most prominent proponent of the idea that the worldís oil fields are about to run dry. This, to put it charitably, is a minority perspective among oil analysts. That the Journal turns to someone like Simmons – and only Simmons – to lay in print the groundwork for readers interested in knowing more about the oil industry speaks volumes. Much more intelligent conversations about oil with Daniel Yergin and Robert Mabro are briefly referenced as on-line supplements.

Then, Taylor takes off on the John Biers article about Houston’s leadership in promoting alternative energy initiatives:

Reporter John Biers mails in a vacuous piece titled ìTexasí New Teaî about how Houston is poised to become the center of the renewable energy biz, transforming the former oil town into the international headquarters of Big Green, Inc.. While his article might as well have been written by the cityís Chamber of Commerce, it would be nice to provide some perspective. For example, how much capital is flowing in to Houston to underwrite renewable energy investments versus how much capital is glowing in to Houston to underwrite fossil energy investments? I can guarantee you that the dollars associated with the latter are light years beyond those associated with the former and that rising oil prices are doing far more for the cityís economic health than anything else. He might have also asked how much of that venture capital is being driven by government regulation and subsidies. The answer would be ìall of itî – which speaks volumes about how precarious those investments might be.

Here is Taylor’s entire piece. Enjoy.

The depravity of prison

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Shawshank.jpgRegular readers of this blog know that I frequently criticize the deplorable condition of Houston’s local jail facilities. Also, it will surprise no one that I don’t agree with the governmental policy of throwing wealthy businesspeople in prison for engaging in merely questionable business transactions, and I also am not supportive of the largely futile policy of locking up thousands of citizens for nothing more than a personal drug problem. Not to mention the absurdity of locking up legitimate businesspeople who simply facilitate bettors engaging in online gambling.
One of the primary reasons for my opposition to needless imprisonment of citizens is the deplorable state of many American prisons. Inasmuch as I visit jails and prisons from time to time, I am not surprised by the foreboding nature of this Christopher Hayes post (HT Ezra Klein) excerpting a part of this Human Rights Watch report on prison rape. The story reinforces graphically why imprisonment is a horrifically overused remedy in America’s criminal justice system.
Not all prisons in the United States are like the one described in the report. But many — particularly in the widely inconsistent state systems — are every bit as bad. And don’t think for a minute that all public officials are particularly interested in changing the status quo. Remember when the attorney general of California once suggested a similar fate to the one described above for the late Ken Lay? The deeply ingrained inhumanity of many American prison systems is one of the primary reasons to be vigilant in opposing the demagogues in our society who advocate increasing criminalization and imprisonment of American citizens.
In this timely National Journal op-ed,, Stuart Taylor examines the brutality of America’s sentencing laws, noting that a “world-record 2.2 million people [populate] our nation’s prisons and jails. Justice aside, there are better ways to spend scarce tax dollars.” Meanwhile, Scott Henson reports on the status of current legislative efforts to bring sanity to the Texas prison system.

The fading allure of the “Superstar Cities”

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night%20Houston%20skyline.jpgUrban economics expert Joel Kotkin (previous posts here) reports on the myth of the “superstar cities” in this WSJ ($) article and he sums up the bullish prospects of cities such as Houston in comparison to supposed superstar cities such as New York, San Francisco and Boston:

Economic and demographic trends suggest that the future of American urbanism lies not in the elite cities but in younger, more affordable and less self-regarding places.
Over the past 15 years, it has been opportunistic newcomers — Houston, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Riverside — that have created the most new jobs and gained the most net domestic migration. In contrast there has been virtually negligible long-term net growth in jobs or positive domestic migration to places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area.
What as much as anything distinguishes elite places — what Wharton real-estate professor Joe Gyourko calls “the superstar cities” — are their absurdly high real-estate prices. New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles have long been more expensive than, say, Dallas, Houston or Phoenix — but in recent years the difference in price, he calculates, has increased beyond all reason. San Francisco prices since 1950, for example, have grown at twice the national rate for the 50 largest metropolitan areas.[. . .]
This perhaps explains why the largest companies — with the notable exception of Silicon Valley — have continued to move toward the more opportunistic cities. New York and its environs, for example, had 140 such firms in 1960; in 2006 the number had dropped to less than half that, some of those running with only skeleton top management. Houston, in contrast, had only one Fortune 500 company in 1960; today it is home to over 20. Houston companies tend to staff heavily locally; this is one reason the city was able to replace New York and other high-cost locales as the nation’s unchallenged energy capital. Another example of this trend is Charlotte’s rise as the nation’s second-ranked banking center in terms of assets, surpassing San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, indeed all superstar cities except New York.

Houston’s own urban policy wonk, Tory Gattis, has more of the Kotkin article and provides his own series of posts on why young cities such as Houston are well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities that are not rich enough for the superstar cities. Not a bad position to be in, folks.

Five big health care issues

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stethoscope021407.jpgEconLog’s Arnold Kling, who is doing some of the best thinking these days on reforming America’s dysfunctional health care finance system, identifies in this TCS Daily op-ed the five big questions in health care:

1. What will we do about the large projected deficit in Medicare?
2. What can we do to reduce government subsidies for extravagant use of medical procedures with high costs and low benefits?
3. What should we do about the health care needs of the very poor?
4. What should we do about the health care needs of the very sick?
5. What should we do about a scenario in which both income inequality and the share of average income devoted to health care rise sharply?

Kling goes on to discuss our social fetish with health insurance, which is really not insurance at all:

If you ask me what kind of health insurance I would like for my family, my instinct is to answer, “None.” The only reason we have health insurance now is to avoid the stigma of being called “uninsured.”
Somehow, health insurance has become a social fetish. I could travel to the far reaches of the globe, and almost everywhere I would find merchants where my credit is good and my dollars are welcome. But here at home, trying to enter a local hospital with nothing but a wad of cash and a credit card would be like urinating on the sidewalk.

Read Kling’s entire piece. As the WSJ’s ($) Holman Jenkins pointed out awhile back, government policy has exacerbated these issues and is unlikely to solve them through greater involvement in the system:

The tax code is the original hectoring mommy behind our health-care neuroses. It gives the biggest subsidy to those who need it least. It pays the affluent to buy more medical care than they would if they were spending their own money. It prompts them to launder our health spending through an insurance bureaucracy, creating endless paperwork. It prices millions of less-favored taxpayers out of the market for health insurance. It fosters a misconception that health care is free even as workers are perplexed over the failure of their wages to rise.