Susette and I were talking in a small circle of people when we were approached by Justice Richard N. Palmer. Tall and imposing, he is one of the four justices who voted with the 4-3 majority against Susette and her neighbors. Facing me, he said: “Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently.”
I was speechless. So was Susette. One more vote in her favor by the Connecticut Supreme Court would have changed history. The case probably would not have advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Susette and her neighbors might still be in their homes.
Then Justice Palmer turned to Susette, took her hand and offered a heartfelt apology. Tears trickled down her red cheeks. It was the first time in the 12-year saga that anyone had uttered the words “I’m sorry.”
It was really an appalling decision. It greatly enhanced local governments’ capacity for tyranny.
The fraud – conservatively estimated at $38.6 billion, though others believe it could be at least 20 times bigger once his secret trading accounts in a file mysteriously marked “Stimulus Package” are fully investigated – comfortably exceeds the paltry $2.3 billion losses run up by UBS trader Kweku Adoboli.
Though full details of the Uber Rogue Trader – known only by his initials B.O. – have yet to be released, he is believed to be either of Hawaiian or Kenyan birth, with a plausible speaking manner and a deceptive aura of competence and gravitas. He is said to be “coolly unrepentant” about his crime, which, he claims, he was only doing to provide “hope and change” to his 200 million victims.
The fraud appears to have centred around an arcane taxpayer-swindling system first devised by Kenneth Lay of Enron known as “Clean tech” or “green jobs.” B.O. – who joined the bank in January 2009 – is believed to have persuaded colleagues and shareholders that he could boost the institution’s flagging profits by spending $38.6 billion on a “loan guarantee program” for clean tech start up companies. He also claimed that in the process he would create “65,000 jobs”.
This really is criminal fraud. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for the Justice Department to do anything about it.
I had a brief email exchange with Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR Aerospace but also (and more importantly in the context of this post) member of the Augustine panel, to get his thoughts on last week’s SLS announcement.
Many people have been killed and injured at the Reno Air Races. It was a vintage plane (reportedly a Mustang) and things can go wrong. The rocket racers will be more modern, and presumably safer, but there will be a lot of emotional arguments against allowing a crowd anywhere near them after this.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s some video. Looks to me like it could have been a lot worse — the pilot seems to have tried to minimize the damage. I’d hope do the same in similar circumstances — I suspect it’s a natural reaction. You don’t want to die, but you don’t want to fly into a crowd, either.