A thought crossed my mind as I was reading that the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to better regulate the financial services industry this week: Why on earth do we bail out companies like AIG, Morgan Stanley, and Citibank that supposedly are too big to fail without requiring that they be broken apart as part of the bailout deal? The only entity that I want to be too big to fail is the federal government. Anyone else is being given a free pass to gamble with my money.
12 December 2009
10 December 2009
Yet another development on the “Good Money from Not-So-Good Benefactors” front: According to the Coal Tattoo blog, members of the West Virginia University student chapter of the Sierra Club presented a petition yesterday to President Clements signed by 1,100 faculty, staff, students and Morgantown residents urging him to reject future donations from coal CEOs Bob Murray and Don Blankenship and demanding that the faculty chair funded by Murray be named for the people who died in the Crandall Canyon Mining disaster, rather than the person whose negligence caused their deaths.
While I am generally sympathetic to the Sierra Club cause, I think their opposition to these gifts is wrong-headed. In my perfect world, West Virginia University, which actually has a competitive advantage in the field of energy research, would become a leader in the alternative and renewable energy fields. To do that, they need money from people in the energy industry – and for good or ill, that includes people like Murray and Blankenship, who at least understand the potential benefits of energy research, even if their statements about global warming and other issues are far afield.
It would be great if higher education institutions never took money from benefactors who did not-so-good things, but we wouldn’t have some of the world’s finest educational institutions without the benefit of some ill-gotten gains – Duke University (built by tobacco), Carnegie Mellon University, and Rockefeller University, just to name a few.
8 December 2009
I received yet another mass email today urging me to fight “political correctness” during the holiday season by wishing everyone I know a “Merry Christmas.” The pro-”Christ” movement has even spawned a website, called Stand for Christmas, that rates retailers by how Christmas-friendly, -negligent, or -offensive they are.
Several things bother me about the “Stand for Christmas” movement:
- If there is a more un-Christian holiday than Christmas, I would like to know what it is. Even a casual reader of the New Testament, much less regular church-goers like the “Stand for Christmas” people, should know that Christ was concerned with assisting the less fortunate, not in assuring that people who already have too much receive even more in the way of worldly possessions. I’m pretty sure Christ would not want His name associated with the spectacle we call Christmas.
- I do not like the implied message being sent to my Jewish and Muslim friends: We are a Christian nation; either join us or leave. That message seems very un-Christian to me, especially given the long tradition of individuals from these faiths adding so much to America.
- The movement runs counter to basic notions of religious liberty upon which our nation was founded. As generally understood, religious liberty means that we live and let live when it comes to religion. If a store wants to embrace religious diversity, we should embrace the store, not punish it.
- I actually grew up in a Christian church in which a minority did not celebrate Christmas because we don’t actually know whether it is Christ’s birthday. Is there no room for such Christians in the “Stand for Christmas” world?
As for me and my house, we stand firmly AGAINST Christmas as it is practiced by far too many American households, and we will avoid stores that attempt to use Christ as an excuse to support conspicuous consumption.
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’til his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas perhaps means a little bit more…
7 December 2009
Unlike West Virginia University, which accepted $1 million from Bob Murray of Crandall Canyon mining disaster fame, Miami University has agreed to return somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.2 million donated by Minnesota businessman Thomas Petters, who was found guilty last week of running a $3.5 billion Ponzi scheme. Most of these funds were going to create the John T. Petters Center for Leadership, Ethics and Skills Development. ”The university has no interest in keeping money that Mr. Petters obtained by fraud or deceit,” said Miami University’s President. I guess it’s hard to create a center for ethics with ill-gotten gains, even if the irony would be delicious.
5 December 2009
I find this story in the Charleston Gazette, particularly the second to last paragraph, very interesting. Knowing what I do about the federal criminal justice system, I have a hunch we’ll be hearing more about Mr. Diehl.
- If you have a vendor like Mr. Diehl generating documents that would suggest that bids were solicited from other vendors when they were not, you logically have a state government employee, who ordinarily would do this work, as a co-conspirator. Who might that person be? Was he or she directed to assist in the cover-up?
- I recall that a General Services Division employee named Jim Burgess was dismissed about the same time, but received a sizable settlement after he alleged inappropriate procurement practices in connection with Governor’s Mansion renovations.
- There has been a lot of gossip about the Alcohol Beverage Control Administration and the provision of liquor to the Governor’s Mansion. It’s interesting that Mr. Diehl was a liquor vendor.
I don’t know enough to know precisely where this investigation may be headed, but I’d be really surprised if it’s over.
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