Republican Justice: blindness to conflicts of interest

The United States Supreme Court was barely able to hold that it's wrong to spend $3,000,000 electing a judge and than be able to have your newly purchased judge decide a big case in your favor. Decided June 8, 2009, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company Inc. was a 5-4 decision, with dissents by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The defendant in the West Virginia case was a coal company that had been accused of fraud, and the jury had awarded $50 M in damages against defendant. It was A.T. Massey's Chairman and Chief Officer Don Blankenship who stepped in to buy the judgship for Brent Benjamin for $3 M after the verdict, knowing that this case would be considered by the West Virginia Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts frets that he can't criticize this obviously wrong case of a $3,000,000 judge because there are less obvious cases that would be more difficult to decide. Think about it: Roberts is urging that the Court can't decide the easy cases because there are also some other cases that aren't so easy. Why not just hang up your robes and give it up? Tell me a situation where that isn't true. Roberts goes even further, suggesting that hammering the $3,000,000 judge will undermine our fair, independent, and impartial judiciary. Good grief. Scalia had previously shown that he is completely obtuse to the idea of a conflict of interest when he decided a case favoring his duck-hunting buddy, Dick Cheney.

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Portable defibullator used on soccer field

There's no doubt that this soccer player received a jolt of electricity (you can see his foot jump at the 15 second mark). I'm still wondering about the accuracy of this on the fly diagnosis, however. Can a sports trainer really make such a quick yet accurate diagnosis as to whether an athlete needs the use of a defibrillator?

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Facebook and Twitter as marshmallow dispensers

I’ve previously written about a fascinating marshmallow experiment here and here. To set the stage, keep in mind that marshmallows are the equivalent of crack cocaine for young children. In the experiment, numerous four-year olds were each left alone with a marshmallow and told that they could eat it if they wanted. They were also told that if they could wait until the experimenter returned (which would happen 15 minutes later), they could have two marshmallows. Only about 30% of the children had the discipline to wait for the experimenter to return. When the psychologists followed up on these children fourteen years later, they found some startling things. Those four-year-olds who exerted the willpower to wait for two marshmallows scored an average of more than 200 points higher on the SAT than those who couldn’t wait. Those who could wait also show themselves to be more cooperative, more able to work under pressure and more self-reliant. In sum, they were dramatically more able to achieve their goals than those who couldn’t wait. Which leads me to this thought: Are Internet social sites the cyber-equivalent of marshmallow dispensers? Since reading of the marshmallow experiment, I have repeatedly thought of inability of many people to resist spending hours on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I also think of those who burn long hours on MySpace and those who are non-stop texters. Perhaps Internet news junkies belong in the same category. I don’t know the exact numbers, but there are numerous folks who aren’t getting nearly enough important things done in their lives (things THEY consider to be important) who are spending immense numbers of hours chatting and gossiping. I personally know some of these people. If these were retired people without any daily obligations, it would be one thing. Many of them, however, are blowing countless chances to make significant progress on goals that they themselves have set.

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Nothing about our economic system has really been fixed, or even diagnosed, and time is running out.

According to SANDY B. LEWIS and WILLIAM D. COHAN, nothing about our economic system has really been fixed or even diagnosed, and time is running out. This is the theme of a powerfully and clearly written Op-ed piece in today's New York Times, entitled "The Economy Is Still at the Brink":

We’re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We’re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over — and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow’s swings are a fool’s game . . .The storm is not over, not by a long shot.

Lewis, who owns a brokerage house and Cohan, a Wall Street banker, succinctly present the problem and some solutions:

Six months ago, nobody believed that our banking system was well designed, functioning smoothly or properly regulated — so why then are we so desperately anxious to restore that model as the status quo? . . . Instead of hauling out the new drywall to cover up the existing studs, let’s seriously consider ripping down the entire structure, dynamiting the foundation and building a new system that rewards taking prudent risks, allocates capital where it is needed, allows all investors to get accurate and timely financial information and increases value to shareholders and creditors.

The authors lay out numerous areas of concern, many of them in the form of pointed questions. Why, indeed, haven't we taken steps to change the system? As Einstein once said, insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Lewis and Cohan urge President Obama to take these real steps, to get serious about the faux solution so far imposed (the massive injection of federal money in the absence of any systematic fix).

Instead of promising the imminent return of good times, why isn’t Mr. Obama talking more about the importance of living within our means and not spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need? . . . We are 139 days into his presidency, and while there is still plenty of hope that Mr. Obama will fulfill his mandate, his record on searching out the causes of the financial crisis has not been reassuring.

Lewis and Cohan's Op-ed is must-reading and disturbing reading.

Continue ReadingNothing about our economic system has really been fixed, or even diagnosed, and time is running out.