Whom Do You Trust: Lance Armstrong, Manti Te'o, or Thomas P. Lowe

Whom Do You Trust: Lance Armstrong, Manti Te’o or Thomas P. Lowe?

Who do you trust: the cheater, the hoaxer/hoaxee, or the lawyer?

Think of the Lance Armstrong Story. After suffering from testicular cancer at 25, he won the Tour de France seven straight years. His forte was the mountain laps conquered with seemingly super human ability. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer support at Livestrong, the non-profit he created. We wanted to believe.

Even more remarkable is that in a sport renowned for cheating, he won, out-cheating the cheaters. He doped for 20 years, lied for 12, and won 7. Others were caught, but not Lance. He out-cheated, out-doped, out-hustled, out-bullied, and out-sued them all.

He beat the inspectors, licensing and regulatory bodies, and governments. He took a small fortune from the United States Postal Service.

He won.

Lance Armstrong amassed a fortuned estimated at $100 million.

He couldn’t outsmart though science and his guilty teammates, who plea-bargained to testify against him. New tests detected the illicit chemicals in his samples preserved for years.

In the end, he sought absolution from the only person in American who can grant absolution: Oprah Winfred. He admitted to being a bully and living “one big lie.” He confessed to all: EPO, blood doping, blood transfusions, testosterone, cortisone, and human growth hormones.

Alas for Lance; she can only give partial forgiveness. He is about to suffer the hell of a thousand lawyers. All the people he defamed; all the insurance companies and media defendants he won judgments and settlements from through perjury seek their money back. He faces possible criminal prosecutions.

His sponsors, Trek, Nike, Anheuser Busch, and the Postal Service have dropped him. He has no income coming in. He may end up bankrupt.

He’s already offered $5 million to the federal government for the Postal Service. The government wants more.

He ruined many in the pursuit of glory. One victim is Emma O’Reilly, his former masseur, who stated she carried doping supplies cross borders for him and trashed drugs to avoid him getting caught. They called her a heavy drinker and an ex-prostitute.

Greg LaMond, a legitimate two-time American winner of the Tour de France refused to recant his statement that Armstrong was a doper. Trek dropped him, with three years left on his contract.   

Lance Armstrong hurt many.

Manti Te’o was either part of the hoax, a facilitator of the hoax, or a victim, in which case he is incredibly naïve. Wait until the sports agents and managers get their hands on the Notre Dame All-American!

Manti’s story makes sense in virtual reality with a second life and an avatar. This is reality though, real time, and the story line and timeline don’t add up.

However, it’s Notre Dame! Who could question a tale right out of the Gipper and Rudy?

Manti, like Lance, had a beautiful story. His grandmother and girlfriend died at virtually the same time. He played for them.

The NFL won’t hold this hoax against him. The only test is how he performs on the field.

Alas, he played poorly against Alabama in the BCS Title Game.

He hurt no one with this hoax.

Thomas Lowe is a 58 year old disbarred attorney in Eagan, Minnesota. He represented an emotionally disturbed woman in her divorce. He commenced an affair with her during the divorce proceedings.

That is ill-advised.

Next came the chutzpah.

He then billed her for legal services for the time spent stooping her. He dumped her last March, and resigned as counsel. She attempted suicide the same day with the sordid details coming out.

Minnesota suspended him from the practice of law for an indefinite period.

He deeply hurt the victim.

His past record is also not exemplary. He was placed on probation in 1997 for using cocaine and being involved in purchasing the drug from a client.

I never cease to be amazed at how some athletes and lawyers can screw up, but Lowe and Te’o pioneered new fields for future athletes and lawyers.

Most lawyers are trustworthy, but not all.

I never trusted Lance Armstrong. He was no more believable than Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and A Rod. Greg LaMond told us about Lance Armstrong, just as Jose Canseco warned us about McGwire.

Greg and Jose were treated like Cassandra.

People did not want to believe the obvious; the story was too good. Baseball knew, but looked the other way in pursuit of breaking the Babe’s record and hyping attendance.

Armstrong and the baseball players all had their facilitators as well as those who knew better, but knowingly blinded themselves to the oblivious.

Sports writers asked if the ball was juiced or if the quality of major league pitching was deteriorating. They refused to look at the bodies of the players, the bodies that suddenly sprouted 30 new pounds of chiseled muscle in the off season. We term it res ipsa loquiter (“The thing speaks for itself”) in the law.

The Angels won the World Series a decade ago. Some of the Angel sluggers similarly possessed the physiques of steroid users.

Don’t look at the body if you have doubts. No exercise regime can transform a head into Mr. Potato Head, but steroids can. Take a second look at Barry Bonds. Take a similar glance at Tiger Woods.

Compare the before and after photos of the players.

To answer my question, I never trusted Lance Armstrong and have faith in the ability of some lawyers to royally screw up. As for Manti T’eo, he had better grow up fast. Touchdown Jesus cannot protect him as he leaves the Golden Dome.

The Lack of Civility in the Gun Control Debate

“NRA” is a four letter word to gun control advocates.

The Supreme Court in the famous defamation case of New York Times v. Sullivan recognized the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

That is certainly the case today with the debate over gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy perpetrated by a crazed nutjob. The debate has long since past the stage of civility.

It actually began with the murder suicide of the Kansas City football player Jovan Belcher. Bob Costa at halftime of the Sunday Night Football Game read from an anti-gun column from Jason Whitlock wherein Whitlock referred to the NRA as the new KKK.

Then came Sandy Hook.

The Westchester Journal News, a Gannett publication, published and posted online the names and addresses of New York gun permit holders in Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester counties. Included in the postings were not just private figures, but also law enforcement officials, which put in danger their lives and those of their family members.

The outrage and “kickback” reflected itself in several ways. The paper ironically hired armed security guards to protect itself. It finally removed the postings earlier today, but the damage was done.

The new New York gun control statute enacted in response to Sandy Hook exempted gun permits from the state’s freedom of information act. The names and addresses are now confidential.

The Des Moines Register published a column by David Kaul. He proposed the government declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal.

He recommended that the mere ownership of assault weapons be made a felony punished by the death penalty. I thought liberals were opposed to capital punishment.

He further wrote that “If some people refused to give up their guns, that ‘prying the guns from their cold, dead hands’ thing works for me.”

He saved the best for the Republican leaders: “Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light of gun control.”

That is uninhibited, robust, and wide open.

The violence in Hollywood movies and TV shows, and in video games, can create a culture of violence. A video game, posted on-line Monday on Encyclopedia Dramatica, is titled the anti-NRA “Bullet to the Head of the NRA.” The video game allows the player to draw a bead on the head of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s director.

Liberals and the media were outraged two years ago in the 2010 midterm elections when Sarah Palin published a list of 20 Democratic Congressional districts with cross hair images. One of the Districts was tragically that of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The idea of placing a bulls  eye on a Congressional district was started by Bob Beckel, a prominent Democratic strategist.

Still no media outcry against the vehemence of gun control advocates.

To the contrary, CBS’s Bob Schieffer joined the Rage Against the Gun: “Surely, finding Usama Bin Laden; surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do, and before that, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.”

The targeting of the NRA misses the mark. Many Democratic Senators and Representatives are scared of voting for gun control. They know that Vice President Gore lost the 2000 election not because of Florida, but because he could not carry either Tennessee or West Virginia. He lost Tennessee, his home state, because he favored gun control. He lost West Virginia because of his views on gun control and coal. Senator John Kerry in 2004 wanted to ensure voters knew he was against gun control be having a photo published of him hunting. He looked like Elmer Fudd.

Gun control is popular in blue states, but not red states. In addition, even in blue states, those in favor of guns tend to be single issue voters. Little political traction is gained by supporting gun control.

The extremism was shown earlier today by an ad sponsored by The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence against Georgia Democratic Congressman John Barrow. He ran an ad during 2012 showing his family guns. His ad was edited to show him saying “I’m John Barrow, and long before I was born, my grandfather used this little Smith and Wesson here.” The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence clipped out the critical ending to the sentence “TO HELP STOP A LYNCHING.”

Joyce Carol Oates tweeted new gun control legislation might be forthcoming "if sizable numbers of NRA members become gun-victims themselves."

Marg Helgenberger, formerly of CSI, tweeted back "One can only hope." 

Further outrage greeted an NRA ad earlier this week. The NRA’s ad pointed out the President’s daughters have armed security at their school, but the President has not supported armed security at all schools. The basis of the attacks on the NRA ad is that the President’s children should traditionally be off-limits. Note carefully though that the ad did not attack the two daughters, but the President’s position, calling him an “elitist hypocrite.” The degree of outrage indicates the NRA ad is effective. President Obama used four children as props in his press conference, trying to make gun control a new Children's Crusade.

Note also though that the media showed little restraint in reporting on the activities of President George W. Bush’s daughters, but joined in the trashing of Governor Palin’s family during the 2008 Presidential Election.

Hypocrisy and lack of civility abound in this debate about gun control.

Upper Deck and Richard McWilliam:The Death of An Era

Remember going to the store and buying a nickel pack of Topps baseball cards with a stick of gum?

How about taping the cards to the spokes of your bike?

Did you toss them against the wall in a contest?

Did you dispose of the Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays rookie card?

All that changed in 1989 when Upper Deck entered the baseball card market in direct competition with Topps.

The Upper Deck card was novel. It was printed on quality stock, complete with a hologram and great photography. The number 1 card of the inaugural set was the rookie card of Ken Griffey, Jr. Upper Deck hit a grand slam.

The Ken Griffey rookie card sold for over $100.00.

Upper Deck became the standard. Topps cards looked cheap and prosaic. Upper Deck acquired licenses from the NBA, NFL, and NHL.

It pioneered the insertion of limited, numbered “insert” cards, also called “chase” cards, which could include limited series, autographed cards, and pieces of player jerseys. It was no longer enough to complete the base set, which you could cheaply do with many card sets by buying factory sets. Now you also had to build a seemingly infinite number of chase card sets, which necessitated the purchase of more card packs and caused an explosion in card shows.

The industry jumped from $50 million in sales in1980 to $1.5 billion in 1992 with Upper Deck leading the way. Competitors to Topps and Upper Deck multiplied: Donruss, Fleer, Leaf, Pacific, O-Pee-Chee, Pinnacle, Pro-Set, Score, and Skybox. Topps sold premium priced cards under the names of Bowman and Stadium Club. Upper Deck expanded into sports memorabilia.

And then the market collapsed; the speculative excesses were wrung out of the market.

A number of reasons existed for the collapse. First, the industry got away from its roots. Very few children could afford to buy the cards. Cards were marketed to fathers through nostalgia.

Parents lost interest as the prices shot up. For example, it became hard to justify paying $1500 for Michael Jordan’s Fleer rookie card. Most of these little pieces of cardboard became as valuable as tulips after the tulip bubble collapsed in 1637.

Third, it became increasingly impossible and prohibitively expensive to collect just the cards of your favorite players. A superstar might have scores of cards from the various manufacturers and subsets of chase cards.

The fourth reason was the machinations of Upper Deck and Richard McWilliam, the company’s CEO. They apparently did not believe that a contract created a bond between the parties, but simply a license to bring a lawsuit.

Quality, innovation, and litigation were the hallmarks of Upper Deck.

The history of litigation includes employees, vendors, and licensors, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Richard McWilliam was a co-founder of Upper Deck, but he soon eased out the other founders, resulting in litigation between them. Upper Deck admitted to counterfeiting cards on one occasion.

Rumors existed that Upper Deck shipped valuable inserts out the back door.

The market caught up to Upper Deck. It rose like a meteor and crashed like a meteor. Major League baseball cancelled its license in 2009, 20 years after the first set of Upper Deck cards were issued. The NFL followed in 2010.

McWilliam died last Saturday at the young age of 59. He built and destroyed a successful company through greed.

Topps survived.

What Would Joe Albertson Think?

What Would Joe Albertson Say?

Joe Albertson was a prototypical American entrepreneur. He was born in Yukon, Oklahoma in 1906. His family moved to Caldwell, Idaho in 1909. He dropped out of the College of Idaho after two years for financial reasons.

He worked 12 years for Safeway, learning the business, and then in 1939 struck out on his own. He opened his first store on 17^th and State in Boise, Idaho.

He was a pioneer of the self-service supermarket. More than that, he had new ideas for his store. He offered free parking as well as a bakery, magazine rack, the first hot roasted nut machine, an automatic doughnut machine, a popcorn machine, and their own ice cream.

The big attraction of the then large 10,000 square foot store was service. Joe Albertson believed in service.

Success followed service. He opened one store, and then another, and another, in Nampa, and Caldwell, and Emmert. He had 17 stores by 1951.

The expansion continued, California, Nevada, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Southwest, and the Southeast, hundreds, and then thousands of supermarkets and drug stores.

Always service.

He stepped down as Chairman in 1976, but remained as a director until his death in 1993.

I remember the ads decades ago from employees: “It may be Joe Albertson’s supermarket, but it’s my produce department.”

Service and pride.

He built large stores in growing suburbs.

Always service.

And growth. Albertsons acquired other chains to become a national retailer: Acme, Jewel, Lucky’s, OSCO, Sav-on, and Shaws.

His successors grew Albertsons, reaching 2,500 stores at its peak 13 years ago, but could not sustain it. The debt load was too great.

The company was split up. CVS Drug Stores purchased the free standing OSCO and Sav-on stores. SuperValu Stores out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota acquired 1124 stores, including Acme, Bristol Farms, Jewel, Shaw’s, and 564 Albertsons.

The venture, or vulture, capital firm of Cerberus led a group of investors who acquired 665 Albertsons, operated as Albertsons LL.C. independent of the SuperValu/Albertsons.

The acquisition was too much for SuperValu to digest. Competition in the grocery business, especially from Walmart and then Target, was too great for SuperValu to cover its debtload and invest in the stores.

Cerberus’ group on the other hand has been cleaning up. Between store closings and refinancing, they’re received a return of roughly 500% on their original investment. Cerberus is not necessarily interested in running a retail grocery chain in the long run.

It’s in it for the real estate. That means a slow liquidation of the retail stores with sales of individual stores or lots in the future.

It has just been been announced; the Cerberus Group is buying five of SuperValu’s chains, including Albertsons. The two Albertsons will be back together under one owner.

If Cerberus is up to its old tricks (Mervyns, Chrysler, GMAC), it will spin off the real estate to a separate company, and squeeze cash flow out of the retail operations, with the goal of flipping the “profitable” company back to the public through a stock offering.

Service will go down the drain. Grocery retailing is a low profit margin, highly competitive business with little customer loyalty, except for companies such as Whole Foods, which has carved out a high profit, organic market for itself.

Joe Albertson believed sales and profits would flow from service and quality. He sold beans. Cerberus counts beans.

We know what Joe would think. 

President Richard Nixon, President Barack Obama, The Imperial Presidency, and the Debt Limit

Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, The Imperial Presidency, and the Debt Lmit

President Richard Nixon was born 100 years last Wednesday. You missed that celebration, didn't you? Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. published his famous book, The Imperial Presidency, 40 years ago in 1973. You mat also have missed the book, although you know the phrase.

Schlesinger’s thesis was that the nation’s presidents progressively accumulated power in the Presidency, often through the pretense of fighting a war. The usurpation of power exceeded their constitutional powers. The more power they had, the more arrogant they became, demonstrating Lord Acton’s maxim “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson was imperious, but the book was aimed at President Nixon.

Liberals never liked “Tricky Dickie,” and they had ample grounds to complain of his Presidency: Watergate in all its manifestations, Executive Privilege, dismissal of the Special Prosecutor, the break in of Daniel Ellsbergs’ psychiatrist office, the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the ground invasion of Cambodia, the enemies list, the Pentagon Papers, Dirty Tricks, the Plumbers, domestic spying, wire tapping American citizens, the invasion of the tax records of opponents, and the impoundment of appropriated funds.

Any act of President Nixon that seemingly expanded or abused, rather legal or not, the power of the President was vigorously attacked by his opponents and magnified by the media.

President Nixon resigned before being voted out of office.

President George W. Bush was accused of resurrecting the Imperial Presidency, but President Obama has clearly done so.

President Obama, the Constitutional Law Professor, expressed his views on the Constitution in a 2001 Chicago TV interview: “But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that guarantees the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.”

President Obama, the Constitutional Law Professor, must have missed the Supreme Court decisions, and those of appellate and district court judges, that vastly expanded the rights of African Americans. He neglected the decisions that struck out segregation and protected the rights of minorities. He never mentioned the decisions that limited the powers of the government.

President Obama has made it clear that if Congress does not advance his agenda, then he will do so by executive orders and administrative decisions.

The Senate blocked Cap and Trade – no problem; the EPA will shut down the nation’s coal plants.

Congress failed to enact the Dream Act. He did it through Homeland Security.

He believes in Gay Marriage – again no problem; he refused to defent the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Rather he believed in it or not, it is the law of the land as enacted by Congress. He could have waited for the Supreme Court to strike it down, but that is uncertain.

He granted about 1,200 waivers to ObamaCare, mostly as political favors.

President Nixon had Dirty Tricks. President Obama has Chicago Rules.

President Nixon asserted executive privilege. President Obama asserted executive privilege to avoid disclosing embarrassing details about Fast and Furious. The details will emerge, as with Watergate, but not until after reelection.

He rewrote the obligations of student loans to curry the youth vote.

Vice President Biden has claimed President Obama will issue executive orders on gun control if Congress doesn’t act. There are some actions he can take, such as with imports, but any general restrictions will run afoul of the Second Amendment. There’s that pesky Constitution again.

The real test will come in a few months, when the Treasury will exceed its borrowing authority. President Obama has empathically stated that he will not negotiate with Congress on the debt extension.

Either he reaches an agreement with the House Republicans, or the nation theoretically goes over the debt cliff.

Unless he acts unilaterally.

He has two alternatives: act pursuant to the 14^th Amendment to unilaterally increase the debt ceiling or have the Treasury Department issue a trillion dollar coin to the Federal Reserve.

The 14^th Amendment provides the “validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” The problem with this argument is that the government has enough revenue to cover the debt. It would be short of funds to cover other spending accounts.

Under an obscure statute, the Treasury has the authority to issue platinum coins and place a value on them. Thus, it could place a fictitious $1 trillion dollar value on the coin, which would just about cover the current budget deficit.

Either recourse will be devastating to the United States. The strength of our currency is not based on underlying assets, such as gold or silver, but on “the full faith and credit” of the United States.  Lose that, and the dollar will enter into a free fall and inflation will set in.

Oops, how you checked the supermarket lately? The price of food has risen while the size or quantity dropped. That’s inflation.

So too with the price of clothes! More inflation.

The price of gas has more than doubled during his administration, and is rising again. Rising energy prices ripple through the economy.

Oil is traded in dollars; the more the dollar falls, the higher the price per barrel of oil.

Second, any debt issued by the federal government will be constitutionally suspect because of the lack of Congressional approval. Interest rates will shoot up with the currency again being devalued.

Inflation and rising interest rates are a major threat to the United States. The Federal Reserve Bank is currently purchasing $85 billion monthly of Treasury and mortgage securities.

Let me rephrase that. The Fed is printing $85 billion monthly in unsecured monies. That is a catalyst for inflation.

The reason prices are rising is because the government is printing money.

The Fed is in danger of losing control of interest rates. Rising interest rates and inflation will be deadly for our precarious economy.

Will President Obama take that risk? How imperial will his Presidency be?

Both Presidents Nixon and Obama won commanding reelections. Will President Obama follow President Nixon's course?