Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

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The Quick and the dead.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

This was on FARK, but it touches on so many things covered here, and is such a fascinating story, that I wanted to make note of it.

Thomas Quick was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in Scandinavia. During the 1990s, he confessed to over 30 murders, and was convicted of killing eight people.

Except his name wasn’t Thomas Quick. It was Sture Bergwall.

And he was being fed diazepam while he was confessing to the murders.

And he probably never killed anybody. There is a total lack of physical evidence linking him to the crimes. In several cases, he was convicted based only on his confessions, and in spite of the fact that there was physical evidence directly contradicting those confessions. (For example, in one case, recovered DNA didn’t match Quick/Bergwell’s DNA.)

And he was probably being fed information – information he used to build his false confessions – by the cops. (Henry Lee Lucas, call your office, please.)

There’s a book on the case that, as far as I can tell, does not have a US publisher. I’m hoping it finds one, as this is a heck of a story. (There’s also a good story behind the book; the author was a prominent documentary filmmaker/”investigative journalist” who started looking into Quick’s case, discovered the inconsistencies and other issues, and ended up having Quick/Bergwall tell all to him. As I understand it, this was the author’s first book. He died of cancer three days after finishing the manuscript.)

(Is this, like, a thing in Scandinavian countries? Dying before your book is published?)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: October 23, 2012.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we want to note a story from today’s New York Times that bothers us. We think it is appropriate to talk about here, as it deals with things TMQ has been hammering on as well. After the jump, we’ll get started…

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Posted in Clippings, Firings, Food, Movies, Neuroscience, NFL, Safety, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | 1 Comment »

Formula 1 is slightly less heckish.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

I wrote previously about the proposals to close large swaths of downtown streets, including Congress Avenue, so people could party when Formula 1 came to town.

We have a deal. The Congress Avenue proposal (from an independent promoter) has been dropped, and that festival is merging with the official F1 “Fan Fest”.

Unfortunately, Congress Avenue is still going to be closed, but it looks like the closures will be for a shorter period than under the original “Experience Austin” proposal.

A bigger festival for 2013 could be held at the circuit in southeastern Travis County, Carroza said. “As COTA becomes more and more finished, it becomes apparent that people will want to spend more and more time there.”

This sounds like a fine idea to me, assuming there is an F1 race here in 2013. I wouldn’t recommend counting that chicken until it hatches, though.

Posted in Austin, Cars, Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Speaking of things that make me want to go full Nelson…

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

…in the “Ha ha!” sense:

Parking in New York City is also expensive. Especially near Yankee Stadium on game days.

Good news: there’s a train! And a subway!

Bad news for the people who own the parking lots: they didn’t plan on having a train stop near the stadium.

Bronx Parking Development Company, the operator of the lots, has defaulted on nearly $240 million of its bonds because of overambitious forecasts and less expensive transportation alternatives for fans, like the subway and Metro-North Railroad.

More:

If new revenue is not found and costs are not cut in the coming months, the company could go bankrupt even though the city provided more than $200 million in subsidies, some of which were used to replace parkland where parking lots now stand. The company’s next debt payment is due in April.

I find myself wondering where “new revenue” is going to come from, unless BPDC blows up the train and subway tracks. Come to think of it, this is New York; they could probably find a couple of guys who’d do that for a price.

Interestingly, the city’s Industrial Development Agency issued the bonds for BPDC, but the city does not have to pay if BPDC defaults. I’m not clear on how that works. But, “the company owes the city $25.5 million in rent and payments in lieu of taxes accumulated since 2007.”

Also, just to be clear: BPDC is a separate company from Satan’s minions, the New York Yankees. The Yankees don’t own the parking and have no say over it. Which is a shame; at least the Yankees could manage a team into the playoffs, so why not let them have a shot at parking?

Posted in Cars, Clippings | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: October 22, 2012.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Gas is expensive in California.

Even as gasoline consumption has declined in California in recent years because of high unemployment and increased vehicle fuel efficiency, refiners have been able to keep prices about 35 cents a gallon higher than the rest of the country.

Gee, I wonder why that is?

…the reason refiners made a killing while retailers such as Arya lost their shirts isn’t conspiracy, it’s economics. Oil companies operate what amounts to a legal oligopoly in California — an arrangement that probably will contribute to more wild gas spikes in the future.

You don’t say? Tell us more, Los Angeles Times.

That’s because the Golden State’s gasoline market is essentially closed. The state’s strict clean-air rules mandate a specially formulated blend used nowhere else in the country. Producers in places such as Louisiana or Texas could make it, but there are no pipelines to get it to the West Coast quickly and cheaply. As a result, virtually all 14.6 billion gallons of gasoline sold in California last year were made by nine companies that own the state’s refineries. Three of them — Chevron, Tesoro and BP — control 54% of the state’s refining capacity.

But why doesn’t someone come into the California market and open new refineries? Or re-open some of the mothballed ones?

Refiners contend that the price of gas reflects the higher cost of doing business in California. It costs as much as 15 cents a gallon more to refine the state’s clean fuel blend, and green regulations chip away at the bottom line. Fuel taxes, too, are higher than in many other regions.
“It’s a very difficult, challenging market,” said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn., whose members include most of the region’s oil companies and refiners.
In August, the group released a report predicting that state rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions and push alterative fuels could force as many as eight of California’s refineries to close in coming years.

By the way:

At the same time, the number of refineries operating in California has declined to just 14 today from 27 in the early 1980s.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cars, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 22, 2012.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Russell Means, controversial Indian activist, actor, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, and vice-presidential nominee during Larry Flynt’s attempt to get the Republican nomination in 1984, has died. (LAT. NYT.)

Noted:

Told in the summer of 2011 that the cancer was inoperable, Mr. Means had already resolved to shun mainstream medical treatments in favor of herbal and other native remedies.

How’s that working for you?

I thought I’d give the George McGovern obits a day, which is why I didn’t post them on Sunday. For the record: NYT. LAT. WP.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#32 in a series).

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Once upon a time, there was an art gallery in New York City called Knoedler & Company.

Knoedler & Company made more than a fair amount of money selling art. As a matter of fact, they made a lot of money selling art supplied by one dealer, Glafira Rosales.

Between 1996 and 2008, the suit asserts, Knoedler earned approximately $60 million from works that Ms. Rosales provided on consignment or sold outright to the gallery and cleared $40 million in profits. In one year, 2002, for example, the complaint says the gallery’s entire profit — $5.6 million — was derived from the sale of Ms. Rosales’s works.

But there are some problems. Ms. Rosales’s “collection of works attributed to Modernist masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.” One of the works that passed through her hands, a Mark Rothko painting, was sold by Knoedler for $8.3 million dollars, and has now been declared a fake.

At the moment 14 works Ms. Rosales brought to market — 9 of which were handled by Knoedler — have been judged as fake by authenticating bodies.
A company called Orion Analytical also conducted forensic tests on at least five Rosales paintings and reported that materials on the canvasses were not available or were inconsistent with the dates on the works.

Knoedler stopped selling works from Rosales in 2009, and immediately started losing money. They closed in 2011.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Juxaposition.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Waves of about 4,300 cyclists were taking trips of up to 100 miles long in the Livestrong Foundation’s 15th annual Ride for the Roses, raising $1.7 million for cancer research, organizers said.

I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?

Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Breaking!

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Big Tex, the iconic symbol of the State Fair of Texas, has apparently caught fire and burned to the frame.

A friend of mine sent me a Facebook link to photos of the fire, which is also being reported by a Dallas TV station. However, I do not have any working links yet.

Edited to add: HouChron. Statesman. WFAA (probably has the best photos so far). Dallas Morning News.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Your Austin nightclub legal update: October 19, 2012.

Friday, October 19th, 2012

When last we left the Brothers Yassine, two of them had been convicted of money laundering; the third brother, commonly known as “Steve” had been acquitted on the money laundering charge, but still faced drug charges.

The Statesman is reporting that “Steve” just pled guilty to a single drug charge, with the prosecution recommending a year and day sentence (with credit for time served). All of the remaining drug and weapons charges against him will be dropped under this plea agreement.

The guilty plea came exactly one week after a U.S. District Court jury found Yassine not guilty of money laundering. Much of the evidence presented at that trial would likely have been introduced in the drug and weapons trials, as well, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Sofer told [U.S. District Judge Sam] Sparks this morning.

Additionally, “Steve” will be deported after he serves his time.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans watch: October 18, 2012.

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

We may need a banana republicans police blotter, too.

The mayor of the city of Hawthorne has been charged with two counts of perjury.

[Daniel] Juarez is the second mayor of the South Bay city to be charged by the L.A. County district attorney’s public corruption unit and the third member of the council in recent years.

The charges against Juarez allege that he took a $2,000 cash contribution from the manager of a Gold’s Gym in Hawthorne, and didn’t report it. This was in 2010:

The gym closed in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection and defaulting on a $2.5-million loan from the city.

Which makes me say, “Gold’s Gym needed a $2.5 million loan from a municipal government to open? They couldn’t get a private loan? Doesn’t that…I don’t know…tell you something?”

Meanwhile, L.A. County Assessor John Noguez has been charged, along with two other gentlemen, with taking bribes to lower property taxes.

Last year, distric attorney’s investigators began probing secret, improper tax breaks granted to more than 100 wealthy Westside property owners since Noguez’s election. They also started looking into complaints from assessor’s office employees who claimed they were under pressure to lower property taxes for clients of prominent Noguez contributors, like [campaign contributor Ramin] Salari.

Salari, also indicted, allegedly “loaned” Noguez $180,000, and contributed $5,000 to his campaign. The indictment apparently alleges that the contribution and the “loans” were actually bribes; supposedly, bank records show that repayment of the “loans” started after the LAT began asking questions.

(The third person indicted is Mark McNeil, Noguez’s aide.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: October 18, 2012.

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

Now that we’ve had the better part of a day, here’s the Statesman‘s coverage of Lance Armstrong’s resignation, as well as his dumping by Nike, Trek, Radio Shack, and 24-Hour Fitness.

As soon as USADA brought charges against Armstrong in August, questions emerged about what would happen to Livestrong. But since Aug. 23, the foundation has received 16,468 donations at an average of $97, twice the normal levels, said spokeswoman Rae Bazzarre.

On the other hand, the Ride for the Roses (Livestrong’s major annual event) is coming up this weekend; did that cause a donation spike, or is the increase in donations over and above the normal run-up to the event?

The HouChron has been running articles on events at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. There’s a controversy over the organization’s grant approval process: the organization gave M.D. Anderson an $18 million grant to work on commercial production of cancer drugs, over the objections of various scientists who did scientific reviews and grant evaluations for the institute. Now, the agency’s two leading scientific officers (both of whom are Nobel laureates) and all of the other reviewers have resigned.

By the way, CPRIT is a state agency, established by a constitutional amendment in 2007, and funded with $3 billion in state issued bonds. And guess who was behind the campaign for CPRIT?

Newsweek has snuffed it. At least in print. The magazine is going all digital, which should be interesting; why would I pay for a subscription to a magazine that summarizes all the news I read online the week before?

Posted in Clippings, Media, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: October 17, 2012.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

This is just breaking, and I’ll probably have more to say about it later: Lance Armstrong is leaving his position as chairman of the Livestrong charity.

(I still haven’t had time to go through the USADA report. Sorry.)

Meanwhile, we have a couple of interesting things from the NYT:

There’s a longish piece about the “Rebecca” case, focusing on Ben Sprecher and how he claims he got taken.

Mr. Sprecher, 58, said he had done a cursory Google search of Mr. Hotton’s name before they first met in February, found that he had worked at a well-known brokerage house and noticed nothing else.
The Internet reflects a host of civil fraud lawsuits against Mr. Hotton, and the federal authorities say Mr. Sprecher is one in a long line of people from California, from Alaska, and from Mr. Hotton’s own neighborhood who say they have been swindled by him.

More:

Nor did he consider it unusual, he said, that he had never met or spoken with Abrams or that the investor’s passing was not marked by any obituary or death record. Indeed, federal authorities say Mr. Hotton mistakenly sent e-mails supposedly from one fake investor via an address he had already associated with another of his inventions.

Somebody really wanted to believe. Either that, or there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Have you ever wondered where escargot come from? If you order them in many restaurants, they were probably imported from France in a can. But if you order them in a higher-end restaurant…

…the NYT has a profile of Mary Stewart, snail rancher.

Mary “the snail lady” as we like to call her, is passionate about her mollusk’s. She forages & collects these wild snails in the Sierra Nevada mountains, then feeds them a strict diet of basil before blanching and packing them in basil water for shipping. When cooked, they become tender and infused with the flavor of the herb and are unlike any mollusk you’ve ever tried. Although they are pre-cooked, for best results they should be simmered for 30 to 45 minutes in a stock or wine of your choice, It’s often best to finish the snails by sautéing them with butter and fresh herbs.

J. Peterman, call your office, please.

($39.75 a pound.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Sports, Theatre | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: October 16, 2012.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Another Tuesday has rolled around, and it is time to take a stab at this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Once again, we’re going to slash our way through the thickets of Easterbrook’s prose, hacking away at logical fallacies when we see them and using our sharp wit to puncture pretense.

After the jump…

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Posted in Cars, Clippings, Law, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Random notes: October 16, 2012.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

As expected, the NYT has a longer story on the “Rebecca” arrest.

The stockbroker, Mark C. Hotton, collected $60,000 for his efforts before his arrest early Monday by federal authorities, who described the scheme as a complex fraud that was “stranger than fiction.”

It looks like Hotton was using some of the same phony “investors” to scam other people as well. And:

…Mr. Hotton and several accomplices, including his wife, Sherri, had secured $3.7 million by creating sham invoices for companies they controlled and selling that debt at a discount to unsuspecting companies.

I’d never thought of that kind of scam before. That’s clever.

George Whitmore Jr. died a week ago Monday.

(waits for the cries of “Who?” to die out)

Whitmore was at the center of a famous criminal case in 1964. He was picked up for “questioning” by the police for an attempted rape; by the time the police finished their interrogation, he’d confessed to three murders (including the murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, aka the “Career Girls” murder case).

Whitmore later recanted his confession, and the police developed evidence showing someone else was responsible for the Wylie/Hoffert murder. Ultimately, all the charges against Whitmore were dismissed.

The Supreme Court cited Mr. Whitmore’s case as “the most conspicuous example” of police coercion when it issued its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing a set of protections for suspects, like the right to remain silent. Mr. Whitmore was tried several times in the Edmonds murder, with each trial ending in a hung jury.

The city of Eagle Rock, California, had an election over the weekend. Eagle Rock is engaged in a fight over medical marijuana dispensaries: the neighborhood council passed, and then repealed, a ban. On the pro-dispensary side is the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has “organized workers at more than two dozen dispensaries across the city”.

Here’s interesting thing #1:

City rules allow anyone who does business in a neighborhood to cast a ballot as an “at-large stakeholder.” [Rigo] Valdez [of the UFCW union] urged supporters to “go into Eagle Rock and purchase gas, coffee, or whatever … and keep a receipt as proof” of doing business in the neighborhood.

And here’s interesting thing #2:

Most disturbing to some neighborhood activists were fliers circulated before the vote that promoted pro-dispensary candidates and offered $40 of free medical marijuana to those who could show evidence of casting ballots.

Only two of the pro-dispensary candidates won, but I can’t tell from the LAT article how many seats were open, or what the pro/anti-dispensary breakdown on the council was before the election.

James Kwon is the “Maritime Director” of the port of Oakland. James Kwon was in Houston for a conference in 2008. James Kwon decided to take “about a dozen shipping industry executives” out for a party.

James Kwon decided to take them to Treasures. I probably don’t need to tell you what Treasures is, as I imagine you can guess. Strippers. Always with the strippers. Mr. Kwon spent $4,537 on this “drink and dinner” reception. (If you figure 13 people, including Mr. Kwon, that’s about $349 per person. That seems like a lot for strip club food, but I’ve never been to Treasures. Maybe they have Beef Wellington. And who knows what they paid per drink for strip club drinks.) Now port officials are asking questions, four years after the fact.

Kwon’s strip-club spending spree didn’t come to port officials’ attention until just recently. The timing is especially terrible for the port, which is in the midst of a protracted labor fight with maintenance and other workers over terms of a new contract.

As the HouChron notes, Treasures also has a colorful history of “prostitution, drug dealing, weapons crimes and sexual assaults”.

I’ve written previously about the strange and sad case of Robert Middleton, and the legal wrangling over whether the boy who set him on fire can be tried for murder. New development:

…[Montgomery County attorney David] Walker has dismissed the murder petition he had filed against [Don] Collins seeking to have his case transferred from juvenile to district court and plans to refile it as a felony murder. This charge requires the murder to have occurred in conjunction with the commission of another offense – in this case the alleged sexual assault.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

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