Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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!Crazy for the law.

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

Another update: I have previously written about Carolyn Barnes, who was accused of shooting at a census worker, ruled incompetent to stand trial, sent to the state hospital, and continued to practice law while maintaining that she was sane.

Well, she found a judge who agrees with her. Yesterday, she was ruled competent to stand trial. The judge ordered her release from the state hospital to the county jail, and set an early April trial date. He also set a bail of $30,000 and:

…ordered Barnes to wear a GPS monitor if she made bail — a prospect Barnes said would be difficult.
While she has been detained at the hospital, she said, her house has been vandalized and she has no remaining assets.

The “no remaining assets” part is also worth a little focus here. You see, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the people who run the state hospitals, tries to

…collect treatment fees from mentally ill patients ordered into the hospitals by judges until they are ready to stand trial. Critics compared the practice to dunning incarcerated prisoners for their room and board.

According to the Statesman, Ms. Barnes was being charged $509 a day, and has been invoiced for “more than $100,000”.

If I were to fly out to New York City next Tuesday and stay for a week, I could get what seems like a pretty nice hotel room for around $350 a night – possibly less than $300. Subtracting that from the $509 a day Ms. Barnes was being billed leaves me with $150 to $200 a day for food, which even by NYC standards sounds fair: get a couple of bagels with lox spread for breakfast, maybe grab a dog from a street vendor for lunch, and you’ve still got enough money to eat someplace decent to fairly nice for dinner. Of course, I’m not including the cost of medication in my calculations, but there’s also no mention in the articles I’ve seen that Ms. Barnes was getting medication, or that medication was included in her bill.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Today’s Austin nightclub update.

Friday, January 11th, 2013

The whole Yassine Enterprises case is starting to feel like kind of a bust. Yes, they lost their liquor licenses and yes there have been convictions. But those convictions seem mostly mild: money laundering, a single drug charge, and a charge of “transferring a firearm used in a violent crime”. Where are the murders? Where are the “sending money to terrorists” charges? This just isn’t shaping up to be entertaining at all.

Another member of the group has pled out. He was accused of “..conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine; and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over five kilos of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.”

He pled guilty to…one charge of “misprison of a felony”. All of the other charges against him have been dropped.

What is “misprison of a felony”? The Statesman describes it as “he was aware a crime had been committed and that he failed to report it to authorities”. That kind of fits in with the actual wording of the US Code:

Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

From what I’m seeing elsewhere, it isn’t just “he didn’t report the felony”, but misprison also requires an active attempt to conceal the felony.

The gentleman in question also fled the jurisdiction after failing a drug test, but was arrested in Honduras and returned to the United States. I don’t see any indication that he’s been charged with, or pled guilty, to any crime relating to that.

I thought it was worth noting: how often do you hear about “misprison of a felony”?

Not often enough, as I completely missed this unrelated story (until Google turned it up): Karen Parker lived in Jefferson Parish in Louisiana. Ms. Parker had a boyfriend (eventually fiancee, eventually husband, now divorced), Aaron Broussard, who was the Jefferson Parish president. Mr. Broussard wanted to get his girlfriend a good job. But, “once he took over the position of Parish President he could not hire Parker and there would be increased scrutiny as a result of the romantic relationship between Broussard and Parker”.

What to do, what to do? Well, if you’re the Jefferson Parrish president, you call your people together and you say “I want someone to hire my woman”. If you’re the Parrish attorney, Thomas G. Wilkinson, you’re also apparently an idiot. Because Wilkinson hired Parker as a “paralegal supervisor” in his office:

…even though she was not qualified, trained, or certified as a paralegal supervisor. Indeed, according to court records, PARKER did no work as a paralegal supervisor and, in fact, the little work she did perform was not paralegal work at all. According to court records, BROUSSARD and WILKINSON were aware that PARKER did no work as a paralegal supervisor. PARKER’s salary and her raises were approved and known by WILKINSON who, in turn, was retained by BROUSSARD as the Jefferson Parish Attorney. BROUSSARD also approved of substantial pay raises, from 2004 through 2009, for WILKINSON, the Parish Attorney.

Ms. Parker pled guilty to misprison. Apparently, Mr. Wilkinson did as well, and Mr. Broussard pled to “one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and one count of theft”. I can’t find any evidence that they’ve been sentenced yet, as it looks like their cases are also part of the whole Letten/NOLA.com mess.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

What could it be, it’s a Mirage.

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

The Chicago Sun-Times is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Mirage Tavern stories by rerunning the entire series, one story a day, as they originally appeared in the paper (they also promise extras from their archives and those of the Better Government Association).

For the young and those who don’t remember, the paper and the BGA teamed up, bought a bar (which they named the “Mirage Tavern”), outfitted it with hidden cameras and recording devices, and then proceeded to record a parade of city employees and officials coming in and demanding payoffs. (Wikipedia summary here.)

I particularly like this quote from the Wikipedia entry:

The shakedown amounts were small, typically less than $100, as the reporters learned of what they later called “the supermarket approach to graft–low prices, high volume” that inspectors tended to prefer as the safest way of doing illegal business.

This is backed up by the paper’s reporting: for example, it took $10 to pass a fire inspection, even though there was exposed electrical wiring and other issues in the building’s basement.

The HouChron at the time ran Mike Rokyo’s work a couple of days out of the week, so I kind of knew Chicago was corrupt, but hearing second-hand about the Mirage Tavern investigation was the first time that I realized just how crooked the city was.

(Interestingly, the series was nominated and recommended for a Pulitzer Prize for “Local Investigative Specialized Reporting”. However, the Pulitzer board rejected the jury’s recommendation of the Sun-Times series, apparently because Ben Bradlee and other folks were butthurt over the Sun-Times methods.)

(Hattip: His Jim-ness.)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Media | 3 Comments »

Random notes: January 10, 2013.

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the case of Missouri v. NcNeely.

Tyler McNeely was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving, and had blood drawn from him against his will and without a warrant. The Missouri Supreme Court suppressed the blood evidence. The state is appealing to the Supreme Court, arguing that they shouldn’t need a warrant.

Stop laughing. I’m not kidding. The state of Missouri believes that sticking a needle in someone’s arm and drawing blood is something that doesn’t need a warrant;”exigent circumstances” and all that happy horseshit.

Much of the argument concerned how long obtaining a warrant actually takes these days and whether the Supreme Court should encourage streamlined procedures. In some places, the justices were told, warrants can be obtained by phone in as little as 15 or 20 minutes; in others, the process can take two hours or longer.

Obit watch: Sol Yurick, novelist. His best known work was based on Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, and was turned into a Walter Hill directed movie.

James M. Buchanan, Nobel-prize winning economist.

Dr. Buchanan, a professor emeritus at George Mason, in Fairfax, Va., was a leading proponent of public choice theory, which assumes that politicians and government officials, like everyone else, are motivated by self-interest — getting re-elected or gaining more power — and do not necessarily act in the public interest.

I feel like I should make some comment about the Oscar nominations. Well, here it is: I’m glad “Argo” got nominated, as I think that improves the chances it will come back to the Alamo Drafthouse so I can watch it. Lawrence and I plan to see “Django Unchained”, but haven’t been able to coordinate that yet. I’m also interested in seeing “Zero Dark Thirty”. And “Silver Linings Playbook” got a best picture nomination? I’ll admit I haven’t seen anything but the trailer and commercials for it, but those were enough to turn me off: it seems like yet another “magical pixie girl/gee, isn’t mental illness fun?” movie. No thanks. I’ll pass. For now.

I’m also disappointed that “The Master” didn’t pick up a best picture nod, but it does seem to be well represented in the acting categories. Maybe that will make a comeback as well?

In Austin nightclub news, the liquor licenses for all nine of the bars operated by Yassine Enterprises have been yanked. Apparently, licenses are tied to the building, and there’s a one license per building limit; this meant that nobody else could get a license until the Yassine licenses were revoked. Now that that is out of the way, various enterprises are planning to open new bars in the old Yassine locations. I have to be honest: most of these sound like horrible places. Especially Chicago House, which will be run by the people who run Bikini’s Sports Bar and Grill (a place you go to when Hooter’s is too classy for you), and Bourbon Girl, “a ‘country cool, cowboy chic’ bar that will be operated by Carmack Concepts, owner of Chuggin’ Monkey, Dizzy Rooster, the Dogwood and Molotov”.

(Previous entries about Yassine Enterprises and their legal problems here.)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies | 1 Comment »

TMQ Watch: January 8, 2013.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Yeah, we know. We got caught up in a bunch of stuff around January 1st, and last week’s TMQ totally slipped away from us. We figure we’ll do this week’s TMQ tonight, loop back and catch up with last week’s TMQ tomorrow (we’re doing them out of order because there’s some stuff we want to address in last week’s column), and then we should be in good shape all the way through to the end of the season.

At least, we hope so.

After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Clippings, Law, NFL, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Gun show update.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Austin Rifle Club sent out an email late last night stating that the Travis County Commissioners Court was considering the gun show ban today. I didn’t see that email until this morning, otherwise I would have considered going down to report.

According to the Statesman, the commissioners “discussed” the proposal, and heard testimony from residents, but did not take a vote. So you still have time to contact them.

A ban would not apply to an upcoming show on Jan. 26 and 27 and County Judge Sam Biscoe said that if a ban is approved, he would want it to apply three or four months down the line.

So Judge Biscoe thinks gun shows are a threat to public safety, but not one that we need to act on immediately? One that can wait “three or four months”? Option two is that Judge Biscoe is a political hack who wants to be seen as “doing something” when he’s really doing nothing. But that can’t be true: political hackery on the commissioners court? Why, that’s unheard of! (Option three is that Judge Biscoe figures things will blow over in “three or four months”, we can return to the current status quo, and voters will forget his actions. My message to Judge Biscoe: “He’d seen how ‘civilized’ men behaved. He never forgot and he never forgave.”)

…so-called “gun show loophole,” where private citizens selling firearms at gun shows can do so without requiring background checks, something licensed dealers are required to do.

And, again, I’ll make the points that:

  • Any dealer with an Federal Firearms License who sells guns at a gun show has to do a check, just as if they were selling guns in a physical store.
  • Any person who regularly sells guns at a gun show, or any place else, is required to get a FFL. Not getting one is a Federal crime, if you engage in the business of selling guns. If a relative dies and you engage in a private sale of a few of his guns, that’s not a crime. But if you sell guns regularly at the gun show without a license, the BATFE will come after you, and you may do time.
  • Those same private sales will take place in supermarket parking lots, subdivision driveways, and other places even if the county restricts gun shows. There’s nothing the county can do to stop that.

The Statesman does not give a breakdown of how many people spoke at the meeting, nor does it give any indication how many supported or opposed the measure.

Travis County does not have authority to regulate firearms sales, but Biscoe believes it can ban a gun show from being held at county facilities.

And, once again, I’ll mention that Judge Biscoe is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Here’s some legal precedent from the 5th Circuit for you, Judge Biscoe. The tl;dr version: the city of Houston tried something similar and ended up paying $50,000+ in legal fees to a gun show operator.

The commissioners were discussing the possible ban after Biscoe received messages from about 200 people asking for a ban of gun shows at the Expo Center following a similar request at a commissioners court meeting by Ed Scruggs, an Austin Democratic activist.

Keep that in mind. The opposition managed to get 200 people to support their illegal proposal. I think we can do much better.

Edited to add: Forgot something else I was going to mention: I updated the .CSV files of the county commissioners and the city council members with fax numbers, just in case anyone finds that useful. Someone yesterday (and I forget who it was) made the comment that they can ignore emails, but they have to answer the phone and they have to put paper in the fax machine. I am slightly dubious about the latter, what with modern technology and all, but the fax numbers are there if you can use them.

Edited to add 2: Updated story from the Statesman:

Travis County commissioners delayed a vote Tuesday on banning gun shows on county property, as county lawyers appeared to cast doubt on the legality of such a move.

You don’t say?

After emerging from a private meeting with attorneys, County Judge Sam Biscoe said the prospect for a ban was “not good.”
Biscoe added that county lawyers will need to research further whether the county can legally ban gun shows ahead of an expected vote next week. A county gun show prohibition would shut down a regular, well-attended gun show at the county-run Exposition Center. Biscoe declined to comment further on the discussions from the closed session.

The Statesman reports eight people spoke in opposition, and two in favor.

And edited to add again: by way of Lawrence over at Battleswarm, ““If Austin or Travis Co. try to ban gun shows they better be ready for a double-barreled lawsuit.” Click through to find out who said that. Hint: it wasn’t someone who runs gun shows. Hint 2: it was someone who can unleash hell on the city and county.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Sarcasm, Travis County | 1 Comment »

Random notes: January 8, 2013.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Those of you who have been following Radley Balko and The Agitator know that Balko’s been on the story of Mississippi forensic pathologist Dr. Steven T. Hayne like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition.

For those of you who don’t follow Balko (I don’t click through as regularly since he moved to the Huffington Post), the NYT summarizes the story:

The filings, based on new information obtained as part of a lawsuit settled last spring, charge that Dr. Hayne made “numerous misrepresentations” about his qualifications as a forensic pathologist. They say that he proposed theories in his testimony that lie far outside standard forensic science. And they suggest that Mississippi officials ignored these problems, instead supporting Dr. Hayne’s prolific business.

More:

In one case, Dr. Hayne performed an autopsy of a young boy and concluded he had been suffocated. Some weeks after the boy was buried, his 3-year-old brother told the police that he had been killed by his mother’s boyfriend. Officials exhumed the body, and Dr. Hayne had a cast made of the boy’s face. By comparing his initial notes of face wounds with the cast, Dr. Hayne testified, he found it probable that the boy had been suffocated by a large male hand. The boyfriend was convicted.

Worth noting for the record: the Innocence Project has also been involved with Dr. Hayne. Dr. Hayne and the project settled a lawsuit out of court last year, and the project paid him $100,000. The NYT article touches on this some: one key point is that, in the process of preparing their defense, the project claims to have discovered new evidence that contradicts Dr. Hayne’s sworn testimony in various cases.

Bob Dylan: The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1. No, that’s the real title.

…the point of the release was to keep the recordings under copyright protection in Europe, where the laws are in flux. Currently, recordings can be copyrighted in Europe for 50 years, a much shorter term than in the United States, where recordings made since 1978 will remain copyrighted until 70 years after the death of the last surviving author.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Fun. Nasty fun.

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Just finished calling all the Austin City Council members (none were available to talk to me, so I left messages with their staff), and sending emails through the forms on the city website.

My message was short and simple:

  • The Martinez proposal is a bad idea that will do nothing to solve any real problem.
  • It will expose the city to legal action under section 229 of the Texas local government code.
  • If the council member votes for this proposal, I will not only vote against them in the next election, but I will also give money to, and actively work for, their opponent.
  • It only takes 38,000 signatures to get a recall election going.

I can be a real mean SOB if I want to be. (“Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great.”)

I plan to back this up with physical letters, which will probably go out tomorrow (assuming I can get my printer working).

Here’s something that folks might find useful: a MSWord merge file of all the council members, with addresses and office phone numbers. The email addresses come off the copies of the emails I sent through the contact forms; the “PO Box 1088” physical address is the one they all list on their contact pages. The phone numbers come from their contact pages as well.

(I could add fax numbers, I guess. If anyone uses fax machines these days.)

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: At Lawrence’s instigation, here’s a CSV version of the Austin City Council members. And here’s a CSV version of the Travis County Commissioners Court, both commissioners and their executive assistants, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Posted in Austin, Guns, Law, Politics | 7 Comments »

Lampooned.

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

Back in March of 2011, I noted the arrest of Timothy Durham, the CEO of National Lampoon Inc., on fraud charges. Specifically, he was accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme.

I missed the followup on this; it doesn’t seem to have gotten a lot of play in the press, plus it took place shortly after things went south for the winter for me. Anyway, Durham was tried, convicted, and sentenced at the end of November:

A jury on June 20 found Durham guilty of all 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud, each punishable by as long as 20 years in prison, and one count of conspiring to commit those crimes. Jurors deliberated for less than a day after a 10-day trial.

Durham was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The prosecution was asking for up to 225 years.

Durham’s co-conspirators, James Cochran and Rick Snow, were also convicted. Cochran got 25 years (against 145 years requested by the prosecution) and Snow got 10 years (the prosecution was asking for 85).

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

And, hey, how about that governmental oversight?

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

Anyone with Internet access could have spotted that the Christmas Bureau of Austin and Travis County president had racked up three theft convictions long before ascending to the charity’s top spot — a job that gave him direct access to tens of thousands of dollars in public donations.

But, apparently, nobody did. Including “representatives of the organization that was most closely connected to the Austin Police Department and had the easiest access to criminal records: Blue Santa.”

Way to go, APD.

A criminal background check was never done on Washington. Tax forms haven’t been filed since 2010. And, although the organization has been designated by the IRS as a nonprofit, the Christmas Bureau isn’t an official Texas charity because it never filed the appropriate paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office.

Also interesting: the “board” (or the former board, depending on how you look at it) is remaining silent. One former president, and the guy who set up the organization’s PayPal account, “declined through his lawyer to comment due to the ongoing investigation.” A second former president, who allegedly brought Shon Washington into the organization, also declined to comment.

But her lawyer, George Lobb, said Colpaart is hardworking and honest.
“I’m firmly of the belief that my client got dragged into this mess like a dolphin into a tuna net,” he said.

“Like a dolphin into a tuna net.” I cannot lie: I live for analogies like that.

(Previously. Previously.)

Posted in Christmas, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

The steer, the stall, the shade, the duke man, and the dip.

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Picked this up from Insta, but I don’t care that he already linked it; this is one of those stories.

People who have been reading this blog regularly know that I’m fascinated by magic and the history of magic. You know that my admiration for Penn and Teller is like the universe itself; finite but unbounded.

Penn and Teller are only in this story as sort of peripheral figures, but I commend it to your attention: a New Yorker profile of Apollo Robins, the world’s greatest pickpocket.

…Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.
“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.
Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

Part of what makes this story so interesting to me, other than the magic angle, is that Robbins’ work, and the techniques he’s developed, reveal really interesting things about the mind and human perception.

The intersection of magic and neuroscience has become a topic of some interest in the scientific community, and Robbins is now a regular on the lecture circuit. Recently, at a forum in Baltimore, he shared a stage with the psychologist Daniel Kahneman—who won a Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics—and the two had a long discussion about so-called “inattentional blindness,” the phenomenon of focussing so intently on a single task that one fails to notice things in plain sight.

This is the best thing I’ve read so far in 2013. It may be the best magazine article of the year; I expect it to be in contention if we’re all still here in December.

Posted in 2013, Clippings, Law, Magic, Neuroscience, Reading list | 1 Comment »

We must stop the killer Italian cars!

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Nobody needs a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store! We have to do something about these killer assault cars! Two deaths this week!  And that’s just in California!

A Ferrari driver was killed and his passenger injured when he lost control of the speeding car on a curve in Ventura County, plunging the red sports car into an irrigation ditch, where it burst into flames, the CHP said Friday.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cars, Clippings, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

Important safety tip. (#13 in a series)

Friday, January 4th, 2013

For God’s sake, people, you’re adults. Act like it.

“Egging” someone’s house as a “prank” is just dumb.

Especially if that someone is your boss.

And especially if you’re a cop.

He says is handling the matter internally.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Safety | 1 Comment »

Random notes: January 4, 2013.

Friday, January 4th, 2013

It looks like this is going to be a NYT heavy day. I apologize, but I go where the interesting stuff is.

This is a no-snark story. Even though I think the main idea is well known, and gets repeated by the NYT every few years, I still think it is worth noting,

Decades later, the operators say, the images are vivid. The slender fellow in the jacket and tie, bending his knees at the platform’s edge. The reveler stumbling on the tracks at dawn, wobbly in her evening best, unable to stagger away in time. An arm reaching up, hopefully, then disappearing in a flash.
“As cruel as it makes it sound, for the individual it’s over,” said Curtis Tate, a former operator whose train struck and killed a man in 1992. “It’s just beginning for the train operator.”

According to the NYT, operators expect an average of one death per week. (There were 55 in 2012, and the system has already had the first death of 2013.)

“I was always seeing it, you know?” Ms. Moore, 45, from Staten Island, said. “I see him alive and….”

Also in the NYT, an interesting article about the investigation into the Indianapolis gas explosion.

Even before they heard that family photographs were missing, investigators said they sensed something was not right with the scattered remains of Monserrate Shirley’s home.

I’ve heard more than once that family photos being missing, or obviously taken out of the house before the event, is a significant clue to investigators that they might be dealing with arson or some other deliberate act. But as we shift towards digital photos and storage in the cloud, how long is that going to remain a useful clue?

Officials believe the home, in the Richmond Hill subdivision, had been saturated with natural gas for six to nine hours before it erupted at 11:11 p.m. The explosion was seen and felt for miles. It shattered windows and collapsed walls throughout the neighborhood, shoving some homes off their foundations. John D. Longworth and his wife, Jennifer, who lived in the house next door, did not survive.

Conveniently, the people who owned the house were “at a casino 100 miles away”, their daughter was spending the night with friends, and they had boarded their cat.

This came to me by way of the NYT: I’m linking to the AZCentral web site, but both have about the same amount of detail. The jury in the trial of Erick Venola deadlocked on the second-degree murder charges against him. Mr. Venola is expected to be retried in late February; he was pleading self-defense in the shooting of his neighbor, James Patrick O’Neill.

Why is this worth noting? I don’t note every mistrial in Arizona. True that, but: Mr. Venola was a former editor of “Guns and Ammo” magazine, and I’ve seen absolutely no mention of this in the gun blog sphere (or anywhere else) before now. It may be that Mr. Venola is not exactly a sympathetic defendant: the prosecution claims he and Mr. O’Neill were both drunk at the time of the shooting.

Interesting set of stats from the NYT, by way of Jimbo: Arthur O. Sulzberger’s obit in the NYT was the fourth longest in the past 30 years. The top five:

  1. Pope John Paul II.
  2. Richard Nixon.
  3. Ronald Reagan.
  4. Arthur O. Sulzberger.
  5. Gerald Ford.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Nixon, Obits, Safety | Comments Closed

Unintended consequences.

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

Actual headline from the Y Combinator Twitter feed that made me click through to the article:

So why did the train cross the border 24 times and never unload? My first thought was “to get to the other side”. Turns out that was wrong.

I’ll spoil the riddle for you:

The cargo of the train was owned by Bioversal Trading Inc., or its US partner Verdero, depending on what stage of the trip it was at. The companies “made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program.” Each time the loaded train crossed the border the cargo earned its owner a certain amount of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which were awarded by the US EPA to “promote and track production and importation of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.” The RINs were supposed to be retired each time the shipment passed the border, but due to a glitch not all of them were. This enabled Bioversal to accumulate over 12 million RINs from the 24 trips, worth between 50 cents and $1 each, which they can then sell on to oil companies that haven’t met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements.

This was all perfectly legal, at least according to the companies involved. The US and Canadian governments are investigating, according to the article, so the “perfectly legal” part may be in dispute.

(Wouldn’t you have enjoyed being a fly in the cab of that train and listening to the crew talk as they went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth across the border?)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics, Trains | Comments Closed

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