The Poston Congressional hearings?

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Postons3.jpgThis previous post reported on the strange case of Houston-based lawyer and former sports agent, Carl Poston, who is currently serving a two-year suspension levied by the National Football League Players’ Association from representing any NFL players. I thought the suspension pretty much ended that story, at least until coming across this ESPN.com article:

New York Giants linebacker LaVar Arrington is tentatively scheduled to testify before Congress this week at a hearing involving his former agent.
Arrington, a three-time Pro Bowl player; NFL Players Association general counsel Richard Berthelsen; and a law professor were on a “tentative witness list” e-mailed to The Associated Press on Tuesday by House Judiciary Committee press secretary Terry Shawn. [ . . .]
The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law has scheduled an oversight hearing for Thursday to examine the NFL Players Association’s arbitration process. Lawmakers will be looking into the NFLPA’s suspension of Arrington’s former agent, Carl Poston, stemming from his handling of a contract the linebacker signed with the Washington Redskins near the end of the 2003 season.

Now, I recognize that a post-election Congress is the Washington, D.C.-equivalent of professional golf’s “silly season,” where members of a lame duck Congress are passing time until the new Congress is sworn in early next year. But still, can’t our elected officials find something more noteworthy on which to hold a Congressional hearing than a relatively small, not-very-well handled contractual matter between two private parties?

Priceless!

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OU Logo2.jpgThese previous posts passed along that the Aggies are having quite a bit of fun over their recent victory over the Texas Longhorns, and now it appears that fans of the Horns’ other primal rival — the Oklahoma Sooners — are getting in on the act.
During the Big 12 Championship game between the Sooners and Nebraska in Kansas City last weekend — which the Sooners were playing in only because of the Aggies’ upset win over the Horns — several OU fans were spotted by the television cameras holding up three sequential signs that read as follows:

“Cost of tickets to the Big 12 championship football game . . . $350”
“Cost of hotel rooms to attend the Big 12 championship football game . . . $700”
“Cost of taking Texas’ tickets and hotel rooms . . . PRICELESS!”

C.T.’s Time profile

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christomlin3.jpgI have to admit that it’s not every day that an old buddy of mine is profiled in Time:

There are two paths to music immortality: the Prince route and the Patty and Mildred Hill route. In the Prince model, you write a piece of music that people love so much, they seek it out, download it and turn up the radio whenever it comes on. The Hill sisters model is trickier; they composed the melody for Happy Birthday to You. They achieved their fame by writing a tune that people don’t listen to so much as sing.
Chris Tomlin belongs in the second camp. People sing his songs a lot, often repeatedly. Specifically, they sing them in church. According to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), an organization that licenses music to churches, Tomlin, 34, is the most often sung contemporary artist in U.S. congregations every week. Since glee clubs have fallen out of popularity, that might make Tomlin the most often sung artist anywhere.

Chris started his ministry at my family’s church in The Woodlands when he was freshly graduated from Texas A&M University, and we hit it off immediately. He has sinced moved on to base his ministry in a church comprised of mostly students and young couples in Austin, but we stay in touch as his career continues to flourish. The success that Chris is experiencing could not happen to a nicer fellow and is a testament to his grace and humility. But he still does lose control on the golf course at times. I’m helping him work on that. ;^)

Executive compensation is actually too low?

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executive comp.jpgLarry Ribstein has been waging a lonely fight (examples here and here) against the politicians and media pundits who think that executives make too much money because . . well, . let’s see, . . because some of them make a lot of money. Or some logic similar to that.
At any rate, Dominic Basulto — who is the editor of the Fortune Business Innovation Insider — observes in this American.com op-ed that the conventional logic on executive pay actually has it backwards. Most executives are underpaid:

In fact, thereís strong evidence that, far from being paid too much, many CEOs are paid too little. Not only do the top managers of multibillion-dollar corporations earn less than basketball players (LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers makes $26 million), they are also outpaced in compensation by financial impresarios at hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment banks. Should we care? Yes. If other positions pay far more, then the best and the brightest minds will be drawn away from running major businesses to pursuits that may not be as socially usefulóif not to the basketball court, then to money management.

Read the entire piece. I wonder what Gretchen Morgenson will say?

Are you ready to rumble?

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bilde2.jpgWhat’s the old saying about hockey fans went to see a fight and a hockey match broke out?
Well, as Gary Gaffney reports, when the University of Iowa and Iowa State University wrestling squads got it on over the past weekend, 13,700 screaming Iowans showed up and the respective coaches — including Iowa’s legendary former head coach, Dan Gable — almost got it on, too.
Even though the other coaches involved are quite a bit younger than Gable and — like Gable — former Olympic wrestlers, don’t bet against Gable in a fracas.

The penultimate Oddsmakers Top 25

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LVSC_logo234x100.gifPrevious posts here and here reported on the Oddsmakers Top 25 Football Poll, a poll developed by Las Vegas Sports Consultants based on the company’s profit motive-driven incentive to provide their sports betting customers the most accurate rating of college football teams. The following is LVSC’s final Oddsmaker’s Top 25, with the BCS ranking in parenthesis:
1. Ohio State (1)
2. Michigan (3)
3. Florida (2)
4. Southern Cal (5)
5. LSU (4)
6. Louisville (6)
7. Oklahoma (10)
8. Texas (19)
9. Notre Dame (11)
10. Wisconsin (7)
11t. West Virginia (13)
11t. California (18)
13. BYU (20)
14. Virginia Tech (15)
15. Arkansas (12)
16t. Boise State (8)
16t. South Carolina (NR)
18. Tennessee (17)
19t. Nebraska (23)
19t. UCLA (25)
21. TCU (NR)
22. Rutgers (16)
23t. Oregon (NR)
23t. Clemson (NR)
23t. Arizona State (NR)
Unranked by Vegas: Auburn (ninth in BCS), Wake Forest (14th), Texas A&M (21st), Oregon State (22nd), Boston College (24th)
In addition to picking Michigan rather than Florida as the proper opponent for Ohio State in the BCS National Championship Game, the Oddsmakers Top 25 raises a couple of interesting issues.
First, the credibility of the Vegas-based poll versus the BCS poll will have a lot riding on the Oklahoma-Boise State matchup in the Fiesta Bowl. The Oddsmakers Poll has Oklahoma 7th and Boise State 16th, while the BCS has Boise 8th and Oklahoma 10th. The initial line has the Sooners favored by a touchdown. My sense is that the Oddsmakers Poll has these two teams more accurtely aligned — Oklahoma and a bunch of other teams in the Top 25 would probably have gone unbeaten if they had played Boise’s schedule.
Despite LSU’s two early-season losses, the Oddsmakers Poll is looking prescient for not giving up on the Tigers. The first BCS Poll had LSU 18th while the Oddsmakers Poll had the Tigers fifth. This week, the Oddsmakers Poll still has LSU at fifth while the BCS has the Tigers fourth.
I say ditch the BCS rating system and let the purity of the profit-driven Oddsmakers Top 25 determine the rankings for the BCS bowl games. It’s all about the money anyway, isn’t it?

The Bobby Maxwell Lawsuit

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rig120606.jpgThis NY Sunday Times article reports on the lawsuit of former federal government oil and gas auditor Bobby L. Maxwell, who is suing Kerr-McGee Corporation in Denver federal court for underpayment of oil and gas royalties to the federal government on oil and gas wells producing on federal lands. Under an obscure federal statute that rewards private citizens who expose fraud against the government, Maxwell and his counsel stand to recover as much as $15 million if they ring the bell in the lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial on January 16.
Although I know nothing about the particulars of the Maxwell case other than what is reported in the article, underpayment of oil and gas royalties is not uncommon. Indeed, when I am retained by royalty owners in a reorganization case of an oil and gas company, my standard advice is for the royalty owners to hire an experienced oil and gas auditor to conduct at least a review of the debtor’s royalty payments. When an oil and gas company starts having financial problems, scrimping on royalty payments is not an unusual occurrence.

Controversial Justice

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William Wayne Justice.jpgLongtime Eastern District of Texas U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice has long been one of most controversial federal judges and, thus, one of the best-known in Texas. The 86-year old Judge Justice was recently back in the news as the first honoree of the Morris Dees Justice Award, named for the famed Alabama civil rights lawyer, which prompted this profile from the Chronicle’s Janet Elliott.
Judge Justice is the quintessential activist federal judge, so he is not the most popular fellow in all quarters. Maybe he should have been in the legislature, but it’s hard not to admire a judge who at 86-years of age still handles a full court docket and chooses to be activist in cases that promote desegregation in education, equal educational opportunity and prison reform. The legislature has never done a particularly good job of dealing with those issues, anyway.

Keep those buses handy

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Metrorail car120506-Houston.jpgWendell Cox reports on a little problem that occurred in St. Louis recently that ought (but probably won’t) give the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority pause:

Buses Replace Light Rail in St. Louis
A large ice storm hit the St. Louis area last night and power is out to nearly one-half of the area. The areaís light rail line, Metrolink, has suspended service for much of its alignment and is providing substitute bus service.
Meanwhile, there appears to be no instance of light rail providing replacement for buses anywhere in the metropolitan area — for that matter probably never in history, anywhere. Another demonstration of the flexibility of urban rail.

The enormous cost relative to usage and inflexibility of most rail systems reminds me of something that Peter Gordon observed awhile back about the political forces that support these boondoggles. Some are disingenous promoters seeking to profit from the rail lines, some pose as high-minded environmentalists and many are simply ignorant of the inefficiency and inflexibility of such systems. As Professor Gordon wryly points out:

“It adds up to a winning coalition.”

By the way, Anne Linehan over at blogHouston.net continues to follow another cost of the Houston light rail system that Metro doesn’t much like talking about.

What’s going on at Ford?

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Ford logo.jpgWhile most of the auto industry news of late has been the hubbub over Kirk Kerkorkian bailing out on his investment in General Motors, my sense is that the more interesting (or pathetic) snippet is this one reporting that Ford Motor Company fell in November to fourth place in vehicle sales for the first time in history. Ford sold 10% fewer vehicles last month than it did a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Ford management is pursuing a restructuring plan in which the company is raising $18 billion secured by essentially all of the company’s assets in order to spend about $17 billion in an effort to stem Ford’s current annual revenue loss of close to $10 billion a year. About 38,000 employees — over 10% of the company’s work force — have resigned and accepted a buyout offer from the company. Thus, the new creditors are placing a rather large bet that Ford will be able to service the new mountain of new debt with expected profits from new products generated by a knockoff strategy similar to the one that the Japanese automakers used to make inroads in the US market during the 1970’s (Ford’s new products are expected to emulate the Lexus brand).
My impression of all this is to question what these people are smoking.