Is Private Enterprise More Efficient Than The Public Sector When It Comes to Student Housing?

Site of the balcony collapse at the
University of North Texas

Campus Crest Communities has a business plan that sounds so splendid you want to slap your forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Founders of the Charlotte-based company realized several years ago that America's colleges and universities faced a shortage of dormitory space. Many on-campus dorms had grown outdated, and such facilities are increasingly expensive to build. Plus, today's prospective college students, raised on the Internet, cable TV, and electronic devices, are turned off by the cramped and spartan dorm rooms of yesteryear. They want amenities, and they want them now.

Ted Rollins, founder and CEO of Campus Crest, had an idea: His company would replace the blah, publicly built dorms of yesterday with the privately built, "fully loaded" student housing of tomorrow. Wall Street loved the idea so much that Campus Crest completed a $380-million IPO in late 2010, and it now has almost 30 properties around the country, including one that is planned for Auburn University here in Alabama.

How could this idea not be a smash hit? After all, private enterprise always is more efficient than government. That's what conservatives have been telling us for years, right?

Well, conservatives might want to check out the latest news about Campus Crest Communities before taking that idea to the bank.

One of Campus Crest's newest properties under The Grove brand opened August 20 at the University of North Texas. Three young men were injured on September 3 when a third-floor balcony collapsed at The Grove in Denton, Texas, and they fell to the parking lot below. One of the men was listed in serious condition, and all had injuries that are believed to be non-life threatening.

How could such an incident take place at a building that is barely two weeks old? The North Texas Daily, UNT's student newspaper, provides insight:

Garrett Draper, Grant Draper and Tony Garcia were attending a party when the third-floor balcony they were standing on detached from the building and fell to the parking lot below.

A CareFlite helicopter transported the victims to Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, where Garcia and Grant Draper are in fair condition.

As of Monday afternoon, Garrett Draper is still in serious condition, said Megan Brooks, senior public relations specialist for Texas Health Resources.

How did Campus Crest Communities respond? The North Texas Daily reports:

The North Carolina-based company, Campus Crest, released a statement as The Grove’s development company.

“The safety and well-being of our residents and guests that visit our properties is our top priority and concern. We are working in full cooperation with the local authorities as they investigate the incident, and will comment once more information becomes available,” said Campus Crest representative Jason Chudoba in an emailed statement.

In a follow-up statement, the company added that the balcony was a “non weight-bearing structure” that was “not designed to support the weight of three full grown adults.”

In an editorial, The North Texas Daily makes an obvious point:

If the structure wasn’t meant to support the weight of grown adults, it is careless and irresponsible to have a fully functioning door that opens out to the area. It’s either a door that leads to the balcony or a door that leads to the ground.

That's right, the balcony supposedly was decorative, but a door opened out to it. Who approved that design? Is that what you get from private enterprise?

Campus Crest officials apparently are not anxious to answer such questions. We know about that from firsthand experience. CEO Ted Rollins was involved in an alarming divorce case here in Alabama, one that public documents indicate was handled in an unlawful fashion. That resulted in a colossal cheat job for Sherry Carroll Rollins and the couple's two daughters, who now reside in Birmingham. Also, multiple former and current Campus Crest employees have filed federal lawsuits alleging that the company engages in sex and race discrimination. We have made multiple requests to interview Ted Rollins on these issues, and he has refused to be interviewed by "a blogger," one who has more than 30 years of experience as a professional journalist.

Ted Rollins might not be answering questions, but students at the University of North Texas are asking them:

Terrence Williams, a resident of The Grove and kinesiology sophomore, said the problem with the balconies worries him because there may be other safety concerns residents do not yet know about. “If there’s one glitch, there’s probably more,” he said. “What I want to know is, what’s going to happen next?” Williams said. . . .

Tarrolyn Williams, a former leasing assistant at The Grove, said she felt the building’s construction was rushed, possibly contributing to the incident.

“It seemed like they started putting stuff together late July. The inside looks very thrown together,” said Williams, a development and family studies senior at UNT. “I just really, really hope The Grove Apartments get it together, because they’re putting students in danger.”

The big question is this: What happens when a private enterprise takes over the construction and management of student housing that traditionally has been overseen by public entities?

Parents who sign up for their kids to live at The Grove, and other private developments like it, might want to be thinking real hard about that question.

Here is a report from Dallas/Fort Worth television station WFAA about the balcony collapse at the University of North Texas:

Fears From 9/11 Provide Cover for the Real Threats to Our Democracy

Millions of Americans took a moment for reflection yesterday on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorism attacks.

Those remembrances surely were genuine, offered with a heavy heart for those who were killed and a sense of resolve for the threats facing our country. We suspect, however, that many of yesterday's meditations were misguided, at least in the threats category. And our prayer is this: That we will come, in time, to recognize what truly eats at the foundations of our republic--and it has little, if anything, to do with planes flying into buildings.

No one should be surprised that George W. Bush, the man who served as president on 9/11, was among those with a warped perspective. After all, it's people like Bush himself--and the innumerable corrupt politicos he helped unleash--who truly have shaken our republic to its core. Bush has a vested interest in helping to ensure that many Americans never come to grips with that. Our  hope is that citizens of all stripes, from coast to coast, will one day figure it out.

Of this we can be sure: On a weekend for dedication, the deception about 9/11 continues. Consider Bush's words from Saturday's service near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for the Flight 93 National Memorial. Bush framed 9/11 as "the moment America's democracy was under attack."

Is that what really happened on that awful day? September 11 will forever represent an attack on our borders, on our financial and governmental infrastructure, perhaps even on our way of life. But an attack on our democracy, on the ideals that form the underpinnings of our society? That can only come from within. Such an attack started well before 9/11, and it has continued to this day.

George W. Bush and other like-minded elites want to make sure regular folks never grasp the nature of an insider attack that could bring America to her knees.

Do you want a date that truly represents a threat to our democracy? I will give you one--and it comes from deep in the heart of Alabama, my home state. It's October 20, 1995, the day a man named Perry O. Hooper was sworn in as the first Republican chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Hooper's swearing in marked the successful launch of a campaign--funded largely by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and orchestrated by two relatively unknown GOP operatives--to take over state high courts. Who were the GOP operatives? One was William Canary, head of the Business Council of Alabama. The other was Karl Rove, who already had a reputation for dirty tricks in Texas but had a low profile on the national stage.

The 1994 race between Hooper and Democrat incumbent Sonny Hornsby is brilliantly chronicled in a piece titled "Karl Rove in a Corner," by Joshua Green of The Atlantic. Green's article might be the most important piece of political journalism of the past 20 years, providing details about an election that would presage much of what would happen over the next 15 years.

Why does the Hooper v. Hornsby battle mean so much? The first two vote counts had Hornsby, the Democrat, winning an exceedingly tight race. But after months of recounts and court battles, going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, critical absentee ballots were excluded and Hooper, the Republican, was declared the winner.

If that scenario sounds familiar . . . well, that's because it would more or less play out again in the 2000 presidential election, the 2002 Alabama governor's race (Bob Riley v. Don Siegelman), and the 2004 presidential election.

Rovian Republicans obviously learned from Hooper v. Hornsby--lessons that would pay off big time down the road. What were those lessons? That judicial seats could be bought, that election results could be manipulated, and the justice system could be used as a political weapon.

That last lesson would lead to the U.S. attorney firings and the political prosecutions of Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and others during the Bush years.

All of that has left us with a justice system that makes a mockery of the 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection, a justice system that too often has little to do with "the rule of law."

I see frequent evidence of this here in my little corner of Alabama. As the fallout from a 10-year legal battle that is chronicled on this blog, my wife and I currently are parties to several federal lawsuits. In recent weeks, I've received rulings from federal judges that are grotesquely and blatantly at odds with the relevant law. I've seen sworn testimony from multiple parties that is demonstrably false, but it seems to be  presented in the secure belief that such antics will not be punished. Perhaps the rogues are right; I've presented irrefutable evidence to the court that the testimony is false, only to see no action taken.

This is the real world of American "justice" today. In the coming weeks, we will be reporting in detail about what Mrs. Schnauzer and I have experienced in court. And it goes way beyond us. Thanks to this blog, we have gotten to know numerous individuals who also have been victimized by corrupt judges and lawyers. We will be telling their stories, too. In fact, we already have told portions of their stories, but we soon will provide details that should test the gag reflex of anyone who truly cares about justice.

Does this have everything to do with our democracy? Yes, it does. Does it have anything to do with 9/11? No, it does not.

Of all the people who have been quoted about the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I suspect no one gets it quite like Valerie Plame Wilson, the former covert CIA officer who was outed as part of the Bush administration's effort to deceive the public about the war in Iraq.

Wilson is featured in Time magazine's commemorative "Beyond 9/11" issue that is on newsstands now. In it, Wilson utters perhaps the most profound words I've seen so far related to 9/11:

We live in what I believe to be the greatest democracy in the world. With all its failings, it's still the best model that we've come up with, and it is really imperative that people take the last decade and the lessons learned and make sure that you apply them and hold your public officials to account.

George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their brethren are desperate to make sure that doesn't happen. They want Americans to believe that airplanes and men with box cutters and funny sounding names can bring down our democracy.

Valerie Plame Wilson is too smart to fall for that rubbish. Let's hope that millions of Americans will eventually take her words to heart.

Bob Riley's Bingo Raids Cost Alabama Taxpayers Almost $4 Million

Jon Paepcke

To see an Alabama journalist asking tough questions about former Governor Bob Riley and his administration . . . well, it doesn't happen often.

Bob Lowry, of The Huntsville Times, has done it several times. Skylar Zwick, of Dothan's WTVY, did it before accepting a public-relations position in the Washington, D.C., area in April. Jon Paepcke, of Birmingham's WVTM, has joined the crowd, and we hope he sticks with it.

In the kind of real journalism that is all too rare in Alabama, Paepcke reveals that Riley's anti-gambling task force spent $3.95 million--and asks, "Was that money well spent?"

Former Alabama Attorney General Troy King has a ready answer:

During the two years of its existence, the Illegal Gambling Task Force cost taxpayers $3,948,850. So we asked King if he thought taxpayers got their money’s worth.

“I guess it depends on what they wanted. If they wanted fireworks and theatrics and they wanted to see state troopers swarming into business parking lots. If that's what they wanted, then they got it in spades,” King argued.

As an Alabama progressive, I can't believe I'm saying this . . . but I'm actually starting to like Troy King.

Paepcke provides plenty of details on how the Riley administration spent your tax dollars:

More than half of the illegal gambling task force costs came out of Governor Riley's office.

Of that $1.8 million, $1.7 million covered court and attorneys fees.

More than $131,000 paid for machine consultants and another $2,800 funded travel for task force commander David Barber and two others.

The Department of Public Safety spent nearly another $2 million on the task force.

That amount covered things like state trooper overtime, vehicle costs and aviation flight times.

The task force's final $114,000 came out of the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

It paid for overtime, travel expenses, professional services and equipment rental.

Paepcke then gets to the crux of the matter--and Riley, as usual, proves slippery:

So, what did Alabama taxpayers get for that $4 million?

We directed that question to the man who created the illegal gambling task force, former Alabama governor, Bob Riley.

“Today there are no illegal slot machines here, so yes I think they got their money's worth. The laws were not being enforced and we would have never set up the task force if they had been enforced,” Riley said Friday.

King, in so many words, said Riley is full of it:

We asked King to respond to the claim that if he had simply done his job as the top law enforcement officer and properly enforced the gambling laws, the task force wouldn't have been necessary.

“Well the only thing that I could have done, that would have made the task force unnecessary would be for me to betray my oath for me to choose to throw the constitution to the wind and for me to choose to trample due process,” King countered. . . .

King . . . feels you should never put a price tag on prosecuting Alabama's criminals.

“But neither should we spend exorbitant amounts of money on crusades which have no basis in the law. That's what I believe that the governor's task force was,” King concluded.

The bottom line? According to our state's chief law-enforcement officer at the time, Gov. Riley spent $4 million of public funds on a crusade with "no basis in the law."

Will federal prosecutors ever take a serious look at the Riley administration? Will Jon Paepcke keep asking tough questions?

We hope the answer to both questions is yes. The big question is this: Who was pulling Bob Riley's strings during the bingo crusade? Whose private interests were being protected, with the use of Alabama's public funds?

If Jon Paepcke keeps digging, he will find a much bigger story beneath the surface of the Riley crusade.

Here is a video of Paepcke's report. Below that is the full interview with Troy King. The former AG needs to switch parties and run for office again. If he continues to show a spine, and respect for the rule of law, I definitely would consider voting for him:

Are Blacks More Likely Than Whites to Face Stiff Penalties in Child-Support Cases?

Andre Rison

Three current or former professional athletes have been in the news recently for alleged failure to pay child support. All three happen to be black, and all three faced the threat of arrest.

Ted Rollins, a member of one of America's wealthiest families and the subject of several posts here at Legal Schnauzer, has a history of failing to pay child support. In fact, public documents show that Rollins has been late with child-support payments for months on end--and it isn't clear that he has ever made some payments. Ted Rollins happens to be white, and we see no sign that he ever has been seriously threatened with arrest.

That raises this troubling question: Are blacks more likely than whites to face serious consequences for failure to pay child support? The story of "Ted Rollins and the three athletes" indicates the answer is yes.

Ted Rollins' advantages might go beyond skin color. He is the CEO of Campus Crest Communities, a Charlotte-based company that became a Wall Street darling when it completed a $380-million IPO in late 2010.  Rollins has strong political connections, with his stepmother and late father both having run for public office as Republicans. As if Rollins didn't have enough money on his own, his family owns Orkin Pest Control and other enterprises. Rollins' connections apparently helped him obtain an extraordinarily advantageous (and unlawful) outcome in a divorce case with his former wife, Alabama resident Sherry Carroll Rollins.

So perhaps our question should be this: If you are white, fabulously rich, and have deep connections to Wall Street and the Republican Party, are you likely to receive gentle treatment when you fail to pay child support?

Ted Rollins

The answer appears to be yes--and we feel certain that would be of interest to Andre Rison, Terrell Owens, and Jimmy King. They are the three athletes with child-support troubles, and officials did not seem willing to let them skirt the law, as apparently happened in the Ted Rollins case. Here are the athletes' stories:

* Andre Rison--A former wide receiver with the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers, Rison was indicted last week by a federal grand jury on one count of failure to pay child support. The case became a federal matter because Rison lives in Michigan and the child lives in Arizona.

* Terrell Owens--Most recently with the Cincinnati Bengals, Owens long has been one of the NFL's most flamboyant and productive receivers. A product of Alexander City, Alabama, Owens faced charges in late June that he was failing to pay the full amount of his child support. The child's mother sought to have Owens held in contempt of court, but the case was resolved after Owens reportedly paid the amount owed.

* Jimmy King--A member of the University of Michigan's famed "Fab Five" in the early 1990s, King went on to play for the NBA's Toronto Raptors. He was arrested in early August on charges of failing to pay $17,000 in child support and ignoring repeated warnings to get back on schedule.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is leading the case against King, indicating the state is bringing out the heavy artillery. From an Associated Press article:

Authorities have been working since 2008 to get King to get up to date with the payments, said Schuette spokesman John Sellek. He said King ignored more than a month's worth of messages to come in and face the charges. Sellek said he couldn't identify the child.

Investigators tracked King to a basketball camp at a northwest Detroit church and arrested him there Tuesday, Sellek said.

"When it comes to child support, you have to play by the rules, no matter who you are," Schuette said in a statement.

Is that last statement true, that everyone has to play by the rules when it comes to child support? Our research indicates it certainly is not true in the case of Ted Rollins. And that apparently goes both for the payment of child support and the amount of child support imposed by a court.

Terrell Owens

For example, let's compare Ted Rollins' child-support payments to those of Terrell Owens. After 15 seasons in the National Football League, Owens undoubtedly has made a nice living. He made $2 million last year, and that qualifies him as wealthy by most any standard. But it's doubtful that he is anywhere near Ted Rollins' league financially. Rollins' current venture, Campus Crest Communities, generated a $380-million IPO on Wall Street--and there is no telling how much money Rollins has received from Orkin and other family enterprises.

Surely Ted Rollins pays more than Terrell Owens in child support, right? Well, not exactly. (And don't call me Shirley.)

According to news reports, Owens pays $5,000 a month for one child. Ted Rollins has two daughters, now ages 17 and 13, and both residing in the Birmingham area. How much does Ted Rollins pay in child support, as ordered by Shelby County, Alabama, Circuit Judge D. Al Crowson? The answer is $815 a month--and, we repeat, that's for two children.

In other words, Ted Rollins pays less than one-fifth what Terrell Owens pays--for twice as many children.
Wonder how our "justice system" might try to explain that one. Wonder how the lawyers involved in both cases would try to explain that one. Perhaps we will give them an opportunity.

Does race play a factor in child-support cases? The only answer we can come up with is, "It sure as hell does!"

Obama Advisors Feared a Coup if the Administration Prosecuted War Crimes

Barack Obama

Advisors for President-Elect Barack Obama feared the new administration would face a coup if it prosecuted Bush-era war crimes, according to a new report out this morning.

Christopher Edley Jr., law dean at the University of California and a high-ranking member of the Obama transition team, made the revelation during a 9/11 forum at his law school on September 2. Andrew Kreig, director of the D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project, reports that Edley's comments were in response to questions from Susan Harman, a long-time California peace advocate.

Edley apparently tried to justify Obama's "look forward, not backwards" policy toward Bush-era lawbreaking. Instead, Kreig writes, Edley revealed the Obama team's weakness in the face of Republican thuggery:

Edley's rationale implies that Obama and his team fear the military/national security forces that he is supposed be commanding--and that Republicans have intimidated him right from the start of his presidency even though voters in 2008 rejected Republicans by the largest combined presidential-congressional mandate in recent U.S. history. Edley responded to our request for additional information by providing a description of the transition team's fears, which we present below as an exclusive email interview. Among his important points is that transition officials, not Obama, agreed that he faced the possibility of a coup.

In their prepared remarks, speakers at the Cal law school, known as Boalt Hall, repeatedly called for accountability and support for the rule of law. Based on the Obama administration's record on justice issues, Harman said she found the comments "surreal."

Christopher Edley

Former Bush Justice Department official John C. Yoo, known as the "torture memo lawyer," serves as a faculty member at Boalt Hall, perhaps making the occasion seem even more surreal.

Harman decided to ask some tough questions--and she received news-making answers. Reports Kreig:

Edley responded that Obama’s team feared that leadership in the U.S. armed forces, the CIA and NSA might “revolt” if the new Obama administration prosecuted war crimes by U.S. authorities and lower-ranking personnel. Also, Edley told Harman that his fellow decision-makers on Obama's team feared that a prosecution inquiry could lead to Republican efforts to thwart the Obama agenda in Congress.

Harman shared this account by email and Google Groups with our Justice Integrity Project and others. Among recipients was David Swanson, an antiwar activist who since last January has been organizing a grassroots effort to replace Obama on the Democratic 2012 ticket.

Here is Harman's account of what transpired on September 2:

I said I was overwhelmed by the surreality of Yoo being on the law faculty . . . when he was singlehandedly responsible for the three worst policies of the Bush Administration. They all burbled about academic freedom and the McCarthy era, and said it isn’t their job to prosecute him. Duh.

Then Dean Chris Edley volunteered that he’d been party to very high-level discussions during Obama’s transition about prosecuting the criminals. He said they decided against it. I asked why. Two reasons: 1) it was thought that the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt, and 2) it was thought the Repugnants would retaliate by blocking every piece of legislation they tried to move (which, of course, they’ve done anyhow).

Afterwards I told him that CIA friends confirmed that Obama would have been in danger, but I added that he bent over backwards to protect the criminals, and gave as an example the DOJ’s defense (state secrets) of Jeppesen (the rendition arm of Boeing) a few days after his inauguration.

He shrugged and said they will never be prosecuted, and that sometimes politics trumps rule of law.

“It must not," I said.

“It shouldn’t," he said, and walked off.

This is the Dean of the Berkeley School of Law.

Kreig sought a response from Edley, who confirmed the comments that Harman reported. Here are several points Edley made in his written reply:

Thanks for the opportunity.

1. You can read about the Miller Institute at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/1194.htm. The faculty cochairs of it are me and Prof. David Caron, who also happens to be Honorary President of the American Society of International Law. I don't know why Ms. Harman thinks Professor Yoo has received a "promotion" or special position.

2. I didn't hear anyone burbling. I think the panelists, along with me, were perfectly cogent and articulate. I've also written about it to my students and alumni several times. Ms. Harman strongly disagrees. She did not specifically engage our points about academic freedom, including the McCarthy era precedents. Those examples are especially important to Californians for whom the ugliness of that era had special significance for Hollywood and state universities. Remember, too, that Berkeley was the home of the Free Speech Movement.

3. Ms. Harman accurately conveyed the substance of my comment about the Obama Transition. I'd add three points: I never discussed these matters with the President Elect; the summary offered by one of the senior national security folks was, "We don't want to engage in a witch hunt," to which I replied, "Neither do I, but I also care about the Rule of Law and, whether or not there ultimately are prosecutions, the question of whether laws were broken and where the lines should be drawn deserve to be aired"; that discussion as a whole was brief.

4. My point about politics is simple and non-controversial to people trained in law. I was not referring to politics trumping Law in the sense of President Nixon thinking he could do anything he wanted with respect to the Watergate scandal. I was referring to what every first year law student learns about prosecutorial discretion and the political accountability of prosecutors, which the "system" assumes will be a check on prosecutorial abuses more often than a source of them.

5. A frustrating thing to me about these discussions is that non-academics don't seem particularly to appreciate the fragility and importance of academic freedom. A university isn't equipped or competent to do a factual investigation of what took place at DOJ or in secret White House meetings. Nor should it make judgments about what faculty do outside of their professorial duties when there is no evident impermissible impact on their teaching. (For Professor Yoo, there is none.) The right forum investigating and punishing alleged crimes is in the criminal justice system, not a research university. Our job is already tough enough.

6. Finally, another frustrating thing is that advocates are often fierce in their belief that they know what the law is, and they know when someone else's view is extreme. Your typical law professor is, I think, far more humble. We tend to see multiple sides to important issues, and lots of gray. Even if we are convinced of something, we work hard to understand the counterarguments, just to be sure. If there aren't any, then MAYBE one could characterize the other position as extreme. My guess is that Professor Yoo's constitutional theories and statutory interpretation would win at least three votes among current justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. I don't like it, but that's my reading of the caselaw. Does 3 out of 9 make it extreme? If so, then a lot of my heroes are or were "extreme."

The Remnants of Hurricane Lee Have Us Yearning for the Songs of Summer

Our weather here in Alabama has been dominated by Hurricane Lee in recent days. Since late Saturday, we've had nothing but clouds and steady, sometimes pouring, rain. Shelby County, where I live, had been in a drought, so the rain has been a welcome sight. But now we are ready for Lee to exit and bring us some sunshine.

With that in mind, we can't help but think about songs of summer. Some were released in summer, some have summery subjects, some just make us think of summer, for whatever reason.

The Guess Who released "Laughing" in June 1969, as a followup to "These Eyes." In the hands of some artists, "Laughing" might have been just another song. But in the hands of The Guess Who's Burton Cummings, it became a classic about the angst of relationships. A band called The Guess Who still makes the rounds of state fairs and summer festivals, but it includes only one original member, bassist Jim Kale. Cummings and Randy Bachman, the creative forces behind the original lineup, now perform mostly under their own names. Here is Cummings from a 2011 solo tour of his native Canada:



Chicago released "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" in October 1970, but it has an undeniable summer feel. This is the Chicago horn section at its very best, and to my ears, they help make this one of the 10 best songs of the rock and roll era. Robert Lamm wrote "25 or 6 to 4," "Saturday In the Park," "Beginnings," and other Chicago classics. But "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" will always be his master work. That's Lamm on keyboards and lead vocals from a 2008 clip. The remaining original members--Lamm and the horn guys--are getting well into their 60s, but this shows they've still got it:



Don Henley, of the Eagles, is one of the finest wordsmiths in popular music. "Talking to the Moon," from Henley's debut solo album, is a splendid example of what we might call musical atmospherics. You can almost feel yourself sitting on a front-porch swing on a scorching Texas evening. "Talking to the Moon" never was released as a single, but it is one of Henley's finest pieces--and that's saying something in a Hall of Fame career that spans almost 40 years:



You can't think about summer music without turning to the Beach Boys. While their surfer songs will be delighting audiences for decades to come, we are in the mood for a car song. And they don't come any better than "I Get Around." Here are the boys from the days of black-and-white TV:



Finally, we return to one of our favorite artists, John Fogerty, and matters of justice. "Gunslinger" is from the 2007 album Revival, and in our view, it ranks with Fogerty's finest work. Much to the disgust of many of his fans, Fogerty is a devout liberal, and he has emphasized that this is not a "pro gun" song. Rather, the gunslinger is a metaphor for leadership, of our need for toughness in the face of thugs who seek to ruin our democracy. Sadly, the song is a reminder that Barack Obama has been an abject failure as a "gunslinger." But it's a powerful message, one that is expertly delivered by an American original. Enjoy:

Choctaws Faced Huge Debt Payment When Bob Riley Launched Bingo Raids in Alabama

The Choctaws' Golden Moon Casino

The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were facing about $80 million in looming debt when former Alabama Governor Bob Riley launched a series of raids against bingo facilities in his state.

Was Riley trying to help the Choctaws by stamping out competitors in Alabama? Given that Riley reportedly benefited from at least $13 million of Mississippi gaming money in the 2002 race for governor, the likely answer is yes. And that means the federal bingo trial that recently ended with no convictions--but is scheduled to be retried--almost certainly was driven by Riley's efforts to harm businesses in his own state.

We have known for a while now that Choctaw gaming facilities were hemorrhaging money at the time of Riley's raids in Alabama. But recent news reports tell us just how dire the situation had become. The Choctaws' bonds now have a junk rating, and tribe officials appear to have lied about the financing for a new casino in Jones County, Mississippi. From the Associated Press:

Although the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians said in May that profits from its casino had paid off its $18 million construction costs at its Bok Homa casino in Jones County, financial documents show that the tribe used a $10-million line of credit to help pay that cost.

That hardly is the only bad financial news for the Choctaws. According to The Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the tribe has a $70.8 million payment due in November 2011:

The latest Moody's Report, which downgraded the tribe's bonds to junk bond status, described liquidity of the Choctaw Resort Development Enterprise as "weak," citing the $10 million loan as well as $70.8 million due in November.

As of the end of March, the resort had $27.2 million in unrestricted cash, including $15 million in cage cash, which Moody's concluded "wouldn't be sufficient to cover $80.8 million of maturing debt."

So Bob Riley's Mississippi benefactors were facing more than $80 million in maturing debt, and it apparently was well known by insiders. Was that incentive for the former Alabama governor to essentially screw his own constituents?

The citizens of Alabama--not to mention federal law-enforcement authorities--need to be taking a real close look at that question.

Republican Governors Are At the Controls in the Nation's Worst Economies

A recent study identified "The 10 States With the Worst Economies in America." Seven of the 10 states have had Republican governors for the majority of the past eight years. Half of the states have had GOP governors for all of the past eight years.

Moral of the story: If you want your state's economy to suck really bad, vote Republican.

Joshua Holland, an editor and senior writer at AlterNet, conducted the study. Here is his list of economic ignominy. You probably will not be shocked to learn that six of the 10 states are from the Southeast, with our very own Alabama right in the midst of the misery:

1. Mississippi
2. Nevada
3. West Virginia
4. California
5. Alabama
6. Florida
7. South Carolina
8. Michigan
9. Georgia
10. Kentucky

West Virginia and Michigan are the only states on the list to have majority Democratic governors over the past eight years. Kentucky has been evenly split.

What accounts for the poor economic performance? Holland cites a variety of factors:

Three of the four states that saw the biggest real estate bubbles arise in the 2000s are on the list, beaten down by Wall Street hucksters promising them never-ending growth in home prices. People in California, Nevada and Florida, fueled by irrational exuberance, got badly “over-leveraged,” and when the house of cards fell apart, millions were left underwater. These states saw extremely high rates of foreclosures, and steep job losses as people pulled back on spending while credit markets tightened. States themselves invested pension funds and other reserves in mortgage-backed securities, thanks to AAA ratings bought from ratings agencies like Standard and Poors, and that, combined with a massive drop in tax revenues, led to budget crises and public sector cuts at the worst imaginable time.

Others like Mississippi, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are cheap-labor “right to work” states. These are the economies that were devastated during the Civil War, came back only after the United States began mobilizing for WWII and have never truly caught up with the rest the country. . . .

Rounding out the list is Michigan, which may be seeing some “green shoots of recovery.” Michigan ranks fourth in high-tech workers and R&D spending, but has been hurt badly by the long decline of the auto industry, which was hastened during the 2000s by high fuel prices and an out-moded fleet of gas-guzzling products.

Even some of the floundering states that have voted sensibly for governor do not deserve too much credit. West Virginia and Kentucky have gone Republican in presidential races over the past eight years.

Jennifer Granholm

Michigan is the only state in the "bottom ten" where voters have shown good sense and still wound up suffering--and that is almost totally because of weakness in the automotive industry. On top of that, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is cute as the dickens (as we used to say back in the Ozarks)--much more attractive than the supposed GOP "hottie," Sarah Palin. When Granholm wears her spiffy glasses, she's got that "sexy librarian thing" going on. That will get my vote every time. (By the way, Mrs. Schnauzer is a Granholm fan too, so I'm in the clear on this one.)

As for the other states, the lesson could not be more clear: If you want an economy that is "el sucko," punch the GOP ballot for governor or president--and that is exactly what you are likely to get.

How Many People Have to Die Before We Get Serious About Distracted Driving?

Do we have any hope of tackling a complex problem like global warming when we can't even handle the easy stuff?

I can't think of an issue that should be more easy to resolve than distracted driving. Anyone with a smidgen of common sense should see that it is uber dangerous to talk on a cell phone or send a text while trying to maneuver a vehicle. For those with no common sense, we have scientific evidence showing that talking on a cell phone while driving is the equivalent of being a drunk driver. (Texting and driving must equate to being unconscious behind the wheel.)

Want to feel secure the next time you are behind the wheel? Check out this study from the University of Utah: "A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver." It's scary, and it's from 2006; things have gotten much worse since then, with the proliferation of hand-held electronic devices.

If we know there's a problem, and it shouldn't be too hard to fix, why aren't we doing something about it? Why do we keep reading stories like this one out of Alabama last week? The headline: "Texting Blamed in Deaths of Mother, Infant Son on I-65."

From The Birmingham News:

A young woman who was texting as she drove on Interstate 65 in Chilton County lost control of her car and crashed Thursday night, killing herself and her 10-month-old son, authorities said. 

Randreaita Coleman, 18, was pronounced dead on the scene.

Her son, Carter, was taken to an area hospital where exhaustive resuscitative efforts were performed, but he was basically dead upon arrival, said Chilton County Coroner Randy Yeargan.

Did Coleman have her mind on driving, the task at hand, when the crash occurred? Evidence at the scene indicates she was focused on something else:

An investigation showed Coleman was texting while driving when she lost control of her car.

Authorities said Friday her phone activity showed she had been having a text conversation for about two or three minutes before the crash and still had a message on the screen that she had typed but not yet sent when they recovered the phone after the crash.

What would it take to bring distracted driving under control? First, we need laws to make it unlawful to talk on a cell phone or text while driving a vehicle. And the laws need serious teeth; minimal fines aren't going to cut it. I would suggest a three-month suspension of a driver's license for a first offense, six months for a second, and one year for a third.

We have addressed this subject in previous posts, noting that both the U.S. Senate and the Alabama Legislature have tried to pass bills on driving and texting. So far, they have failed. Bills to outlaw driving while talking on a cell phone apparently cannot even be discussed.

State Rep. Jim McClendon (R.-Springville) has led the effort to fight distracted driving in Alabama. How difficult has it been? His measures have failed five times, and this summary pretty much sums up the hurdles involved.

If there is any positive out of the Randreaita Coleman story, it's this: At least she did not kill another driver. But think about her infant son, who barely had a chance to live. Was his mother's text message really that important?

As we ponder that sobering question, let's consider a few others: Is our frantic, hyperactive, multitasking society driving too many of us to early exits from this earth? Will we ever "Learn To Be Still"?

For help with that last one, we turn to the Eagles, from 1994:

How Should a Progressive Blogger React to a Possible Death Threat?

Geolocation can help track Internet thugs

On Monday evening, Legal Schnauzer received an anonymous comment that I interpreted to be a death threat. How should a blogger handle such a situation? I'm not aware of any textbook or position paper on the subject, so there seems to be no clear-cut answer. But I can tell you what I've done, so far.

In the four-plus years that I've been producing this blog, I've received probably 50 to 75 anonymous messages that had a threatening tone. I'm guessing that 20 to 30 of those have been ugly enough to cause me some measure of alarm. I've never described any blog-related communication that I thought caused me to be in danger of bodily harm or death--until now.

What's different about this most recent message? Well, I explained that, in a general sense, with a post yesterday afternoon. Mainly, the timing of the comment--and the content of the post to which it was attached--made me think the individual behind this one might be dangerous.

But I've done a layman's investigation that adds some troubling specifics to the story. We're going to examine some of those specifics, as revealed by a few common Web tools. And we're going to ask, "Have I been the victim of a federal crime?"

In a broader sense, I would like to pose several "big picture" questions: What should a blogger do when an anonymous messenger veers from "disagreeable" or "nasty" to "menacing"? Can writing a blog, or practicing citizen journalism as we do here, truly put your life at risk? If you report such threats, will law-enforcement officials take them seriously? What kind of law governs such behavior?

I welcome comments and ideas from readers because I don't claim to have the absolute answer to all, or any, of these questions.

A good analytics service, many of which are available for free on the Web, might be your best weapon against those who spread fear via e-mail or blog comments. Google Analytics probably is the best known such service, but there are many others out there. Here is a list of the top five blog statistics trackers.

I first read the threatening message, through my Blogger comment-moderation notice, at about 9 p.m. on Monday (August 29). After deciding to publish the comment, I promptly went to my stat service to scroll back about two hours; that's because the comment was time stamped at 6:55 p.m., on a post dated Tuesday, August 23. Could I find someone who had clicked in the comment section of that post in the appropriate time frame?

The answer was yes--and there was only one visitor who proved to be a suspect. (Memo to bad guys: When you click on a post that is several days old, it is likely to have less traffic than a new post. That makes it much easier to track your activities. We never said these people were smart.)

What information did my stats service provide about this visitor? Here is the rundown:

Visitor Analysis and System Spec

Search Referral: www.bing.com — legal schnauzer blog

Host Name: 99-71-178-13.lightspeed.brhmal.sbcglobal.net Browser: IE 9.0

IP Address: 99.71.178.13 — [Label IP Address]

Operating System: WinVista

Location: Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Resolution: 1024x768

Returning Visits: 0

Javascript: Enabled

Visit Length: Multiple visits spread over more than one day

ISP: Sbc Internet Services

What does all of this mean? Well, I'm hardly an expert, but this seems to be the key information:

* The visitor uses SBC Internet Services;

* He made multiple visits spread over more than one day;

* His location, or at least that of the server he uses, is Birmingham, Alabama;

* Most importantly, his IP address is 99.71.178.13

I took this last piece of information and did a search at an IP-address tracking site on the Web. Here is what that search yielded:

General IP Information

IP: 99.71.178.13
Decimal: 1665643021
Hostname: 99-71-178-13.lightspeed.brhmal.sbcglobal.net
ISP: SBC Internet Services
Organization: SBC Internet Services
Services: None detected
Type: Broadband
Assignment: Static IP

We learn that this is a static IP--probably a home user--with a decimal of 1665643021. (Not sure what this decimal number tells us, but it might mean something to a genuine technophile.)

Perhaps the most intriguing data, to me, comes under the heading of "geolocation," which is the art (or science) of matching an IP address to a physical location on the globe. Here is what we find:

Geolocation Information

Country: United States
State/Region: Alabama
City: Birmingham
Latitude: 33.4168
Longitude: -86.6801
Area Code: 205
Postal Code: 35242

Here comes the really fascinating (or creepy) part. If you key in my IP address, it produces a latitude and longitude that is identical to the one above. Does this mean my threat came from someone who lives nearby? It sure looks that way. How close might they be? I'm still trying to figure that out--but I'm guessing it is pretty darned close.

A little research on the Web turns up all sorts of caveats about the accuracy of geolocation software. The general consensus seems to be that a good service is about 80 percent accurate within a 25-mile radius.

Some layman's experimentation has me thinking the geolocation in our area is more accurate than that. I searched on an IP address that I know is about 15 miles from my house and on another that I know is about eight miles away. Both had different coordinates than those for my location.

Did my threat come from several neighborhoods over, from several streets over, from a few houses down the street, from right next door? I'm still working on that question, but I have a definite suspect or two in mind. Do I think these suspects are capable of violence? Yes, I do.

Has my "correspondent" committed a federal crime by using the Internet to send a threatening message? We will turn to that question next.

(To be continued)