Ah. The week between the championship games and the Superb Owl. Also known as “the silly week”, in which people look for things to fill space. And TMQ is no exception. This week’s column after the jump…
TMQ watch: January 29, 2013.
January 29th, 2013Random notes: January 29, 2013.
January 29th, 2013There’s a follow-up to last week’s story about the felon trying to sell guns at the gun show: he’s now been charged with theft.
Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
Setting aside for the moment the subject of this story, there’s a kind of interesting legal aspect to it. In Nevada, if you own a casino (or are a “key man” in a casino) you can still gamble anywhere execpt your own casino (for obvious reasons). In Atlantic City, though, you’re not allowed to gamble period; at your own casino or someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. I find it curious that there’s such a difference in the law. I’m sure Mr. Fertitta does, too.
Banana republicans followup: January 29, 2013.
January 29th, 2013I was hoping to have more on the Bell trial for you. I do, but it wasn’t what I was expecting: one of the alternate jurors called in sick yesterday and the trial was postponed.
But I do have excellent news. Remember Cudahy? The bimbo and the badge? Bribes in the Denny’s? (If you don’t remember Cudahy, previously.)
David Silva, the former mayor of Cudahy, was sentenced yesterday.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Akrotirianakis recommended that he receive 41 months in prison.
He got one year of prison time, three years of probation, 1,500 hours of community service and was ordered to pay $17,000 in restitution. (He was convicted of taking $17,000 in bribes from someone who wanted to open a medical marijuana dispensary.)
I missed this previously, but the same LAT article notes that Angel Perales, “Cudahy’s former head of code enforcement and acting city manager”, who was also implicated in this case, got five years probation.
Akrotirianakis had recommended that Perales serve two years in prison.
I find it interesting that the judge in both cases ignored the sentencing recommendation and gave both gentlemen lower sentences than requested. I find it especially interesting that Perales appears to have gotten away with no prison time.
By the way, Osvaldo Conde (of bimbo and badge fame) is up for sentencing on February 25th. And I also missed this: “…the former mayor of Santa Fe Springs, Joseph Serrano Sr., was sentenced to two years in prison for taking $11,500 in bribes from the marijuana dispensary owner.”
Art, damn it, art! watch (#35 in a series)
January 28th, 2013W.C. Fields supposedly said “It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep their money.”
I was reminded of that reading this NYT article:
Some examples of questionable practice:
- “chandelier bidding”: “At major auctions the first bids announced for a piece are typically fictional — numbers pulled from the air by the auctioneer to jump-start bidding.” (It’s called “chandelier bidding” because the auctioneer isn’t pointing at an actual bid, but at the light fixtures.)
- “Collectors can find themselves being bid up by someone who, in exchange for agreeing in advance to pay a set amount for a work, is promised a cut of anything that exceeds that price.”
- NYC has a law that requires galleries to post prices. “None of 10 galleries visited at random this month had posted prices, though a few smaller ones produced price lists when asked.”
If I had a (non-functional) rocket launcher…
January 27th, 2013I’d make the Seattle Police Department pay. $100 for it. At the next gun buyback.
I’m amused at how often the “someone turned in a non-functional rocket launcher at a gun buyback” trope has been showing up in the mass media. At least this story mentions the non-functional aspect in the first sentence.
Because paying $100 for an empty fiberglass tube makes the public safer. Way to go, guys.
Gun control works!
January 26th, 2013(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter, though he didn’t draw the same conclusion I did.)
Hot off the presses!
January 26th, 2013There were long lines and crowds at the gun show, according to the Statesman.
(Before today, I’ve never had to wait in line to get into a gun show, except maybe the one time I went with Borepatch and we had to wait for the doors to open. It took me about 40 minutes in line to get into the show; I got there around 10:30 AM. Two friends of mine got there later and reported the wait was much the same, even at 1 PM.)
Edited to add: Lawrence was there as well; here’s his report.
Banana republicans on trial: January 26, 2013.
January 26th, 2013As noted previously, the trial of six former city council members from Bell has begun. The jury has been seated, opening statements have been stated, and the first testimony has been testified.
The first witness was Rebecca Valdez. Ms. Valdez was the former city clerk of Bell. The LAT notes that she has been granted immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony.
And what did she have to say? Basically, as city clerk, she was supposed to take notes on the council meetings,
(This is significant because the charges against the members involve “taking huge salaries to serve on board and commissions that rarely met and did little, if any, work.”)
And:
The defense attorney for one of the former council members got Valdez to admit that Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, the city manager, loaned her $48.000 for a down payment on a house; he also asserted that the $48,000 was city money, not a personal loan from Ratso.
It is still early in the trial, but it looks to me like the defense strategy is going to be “it was all Rizzo! We didn’t know what was going on! Ratso hid stuff from us!” We’ll see how effective this is. I’m thinking it probably won’t be very effective; if you’re taking $8,000 a month for meetings of boards that never meet, you’ve got to know something is up, and throwing Ratso under the bus isn’t going to help.
If I were Ratso, right about now I might be thinking about making a deal with the DA to testify against the council members, in return for a lighter sentence. If I’m the DA, I want Rizzo and Spaccia to do time, but I might be willing to make a deal with Rizzo (or Spaccia) if it means I can nail a bunch of corrupt elected officials. Ideally, I want everyone involved in the Bell scandal to be introduced to the joys of busting rocks, but sometimes you’ve got to make a trade. Personally, I’d rather send elected politicians to jail than appointed city officials, if I have to make a choice.
Bread blogging: French Onion Bread.
January 26th, 2013This one is from Laurence Simon. So finally you have a recipe that you can follow at home without purchasing a book from Amazon.
I followed Simon’s recipe more closely than I have any other recipe recently, even making several special trips to find date sugar. Sprouts didn’t have it. The Gateway Whole Foods didn’t have it. HEB, of course, doesn’t have it, even at Central Market.
(As a side note, I think the downtown Austin Whole Foods is the best place to go if you’re looking for unusual stuff. I griped previously about getting powdered goat’s milk; actually, both Sprouts and Whole Foods have it in large cans
Anyway, the only significant variation was that I used shredded Gruyère instead of Swiss or Emmenthaler. That’s what I had on hand, and I think that’s more traditional for French Onion soup. (Also, my machine
How did it come out? I’m going to put the rest of this behind a jump; those who are bored with my bread blogging are cordially invited to skip to the next post, or for that matter the previous post. If you don’t like this one, just wait; there will be another one coming along shortly.
Gun show watch.
January 25th, 2013Austin’s Saxet show is this weekend. I plan to be there Saturday. Feel free to say “Hi” if you see me: I’ll be wearing my snazzy Gunwalker t-shirt.
In Houston, a company called High Caliber Gun & Knife Shows runs gun shows in the George R. Brown Convention Center. They’re also having a show this weekend. (You may remember High Caliber from High Caliber v. Houston, aka “the city of Houston got their ass whipped and had to pay High Caliber’s legal fees”.)
Gun shows have security, like pretty much any public gathering; rock concert, biker rally, gun show. Gun shows do not generally hire the Hells Angels to provide security; in Austin, Saxet uses APD officers (who I believe are off-duty, but in uniform). In Houston, High Caliber uses off-duty Houston police officers.
At least they did until this past week.
Why?
This whole “state law” versus “house rule” thing doesn’t pass the smell test with me. Texas state concealed carry law allows a business to ban the carrying of concealed handguns, if they post a sign to that effect at the entrance or entrances. The sign has to meet specific wording and legibility requirements; we in Texas colloquially refer to them as “30.06 signs” after the relevant section of Texas law.
I haven’t been to a High Caliber show in Houston, but the Saxet shows in Austin have 30.06 signs posted at the entrances; I assume High Caliber does as well, which to me puts things firmly into the “state law” versus “house rule” category.
I wonder if off-duty police officers enforce “rules” that are not “laws” in other venues? For example, do off-duty police officers confiscate cameras and recording devices at rock concerts?
According to the HouChron, High Caliber has managed to get security from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which doesn’t seem to have a problem with the whole “house rules” thing.
Quoth Union chief Hunt again:
Sounds like “only ones syndrome” again, doesn’t it? Also makes me wonder: I don’t see any indication that any of the officers working security complained. I wonder if somebody – perhaps on the city council or in the mayor’s office – put some pressure on Union chief Hunt. I don’t have any evidence for that yet; this is purely speculative.
Your Austin nightclub update for January 25, 2013.
January 25th, 2013I noted previously that two of the Yassine brothers were convicted of money laundering in the Austin nightclub case. (Previoisly.)
They were sentenced today. Hussein Ali Yassine, aka “Mike”, “founder and president of Yassine Enterprises”, was sentenced to twelve years and seven months in federal prison. Hadi Yassine, his brother, got a five year sentence. Both will also serve three years on probation after they are released.
In addition, “Mike”, Hadi, and their other brother Mohammed Ali (aka “Steve”) are not US citizens, so there is “a chance” that they will be deported after serving their time. (“Steve”, as you may recall, took a plea deal last year and was sentenced to a year in prison.)
Random notes: January 25, 2013.
January 25th, 2013Today’s WP contains a sad and touching profile of Priscilla Lollar.
Priscilla Lollar was the mother of Richard Lollar. Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker were the two men who were stabbed to death after the Super Bowl in 2000; this is the case in which Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis pled guilty to obstruction of justice.
There are many reasons why wrongful convictions are bad. Obviously, innocent people do time in prison, time that can’t be given back to them. But also, if the wrong person is convicted, that means a murderer is still out in public, free to commit other crimes.
Today’s example of this comes from the NYT, with a followup on the Baithe Diop/Denise Raymond murder cases I mentioned yesterday.
The NYT goes into a little more background on the prosecution’s original theory of the case: Ms. Raymond’s former boyfriend was an alleged drug dealer, who was charged in the case with “conspiracy to commit murder”. The prosecution claimed that he and his drug dealing buddies were afraid Ms. Raymond was going to go to the police about their drug operation. Ms. Raymond was apparently being cultivated because, as a FedEx executive, the drug dealers figured she could help them get drugs through the FedEx system. (The boyfriend was acquitted: “testimony from two key witnesses was discredited by defense evidence”, and he died five years ago.)
The NYT article doesn’t make it clear why the prosecution believed the Diop and Raymond cases were tied together. According to the original NYT article on the reversals in the Diop conviction, the prosecution believed Diop’s killing “was part of an elaborate plot to distract the police from the intended crime: the theft of $50,000 worth of cocaine from a passenger in Mr. Diop’s car.” But it isn’t clear who that passenger was, or how Ms. Raymond’s murder was a part of this plot.
I was able to dig up the original “How To Solve a Murder” article on Google Books, and it doesn’t make things much more clear; if I understand the theory of the crime correctly, the cocaine heist was an inside job, and Ms. Raymond’s boyfriend was supposedly ordered to kill her “as some kind of twisted atonement” for making his bosses in the drug ring angry. In retrospect, the whole case seems to have had holes in it you could drive a cab through.
Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#P of a series)
January 25th, 2013Today’s Austin Police Department suspension is brought to you by former Sergeant William Lefebvre.
Chief Acevedo says “That tactic was not justified or objectively reasonable and (he) failed to report it in a timely manner”.
Okay. What does “failed to report in a timely manner” mean?
Former sergeant Lefebvre will be suspended for 60 days (“The memo didn’t say whether Lefebvre will be paid during the suspension.”) and has agreed to a demotion to corporal detective. Post suspension, he will be “on probation” for a year. “If he commits a similar act of misconduct, he would be indefinitely suspended without the right to appeal.”
It sounds like this was a negotiated deal with the city, and that Lefebvre will not be appealing his discipline. However, the Statesman does not explicitly state this.
Banana republicans followup: January 25, 2013.
January 25th, 2013Back in August, I discussed the case of Omar Bradley, former mayor of Compton. Bradley was convicted of “misappropriation of public funds” in 2004, but had his conviction overturned last year and is awaiting retrial.
But Bradley isn’t just sitting around waiting for the retrial. He’s keeping busy.
“How?” you ask.
He’s running for mayor of Compton.
Per the LAT, both his retrial and the election are scheduled for the same month (April), which “sets up the potential for Bradley to win office and then quickly lose it again if he is convicted a second time on charges of misappropriation of public funds”.
Also interesting: Bradley is one of twelve people running against the current mayor.
Rodney Allen Rippy? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in ages.
More people who deserve your support.
January 24th, 2013I’m not putting this under “endorsements” because, technically, it isn’t one. I haven’t used the products of this company yet.
But I’d like to suggest that Guntag Signature Seasonings deserves your support.
Here’s the story: Guntag makes a lot of their money exhibiting at various outdoor shows. One of the shows they exhibit at is the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show, which draws more than 200,000 people. This is a big event in terms of Guntag’s finances.
Well, this year, the people who run ESOS decided that they were going to ban modern sporting rifles from the show. This was a Bad Idea. Exhibitors, sponsors, and people who were doing promotional appearances all pulled out of the show. Smith and Wesson pulled out. Cabela’s pulled out. Ruger pulled out.
And Guntag pulled out, too.
ESOS has now been postponed, but Guntag pulled out before the announcement was made. They took a stand on principle, even though it is going to hurt them.
I don’t have money to buy stuff from Guntag right now, but I can give them something to thank them for their stand. And that’s publicity here. If you’ve got the money, why not order up some seasonings from Guntag? I will if my finances ever improve; in the meantime, I’m willing to give them some free publicity, for whatever that may be worth.
Guntag guys: if you’re reading this and want some free ad space here, contact me. I’ll be happy to give it to you.
(Hattip on this: Borepatch gave me the idea for this post, and Shall Not Be Questioned has been all over the ESOS story like flies on a cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation.)