Why The Barry Bonds Verdict Should Be Thrown Out

BARRY BONDS: GUILTY OF OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

Our initial reaction upon hearing the Barry Bonds verdict was: "How can you obstruct justice without actually lying?"

The answer is, you can't. And at least one legal expert agrees that his conviction should be thrown out for that reason.

Barry Bonds was on trial because prosecutors believed that he lied in front of the grand jury investigating BALCO, a drug supplier that Bonds was associated with. He was brought to trial on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice.

In order to prove that he obstructed justice, prosecutors essentially had to prove that he lied to them in front that grand jury. But one of the counts of perjury was dropped before the trial ended and the jury could not agree on the other three. (On two of the counts, the jury was actually leaning toward acquittal.)

In other words, the government did not prove that he lied.

The obstruction count included the phrase "evasive and misleading," which is why the jury eventually found him guilty. But being evasive and misleading isn't really a crime. Under oath, you're required to tell the truth, but you aren't required to be helpful. If the prosecutors didn't like his answers, they should have asked better questions.

Bonds was not the target of the original grand jury -

 (He was actually offered immunity in exchange for his testimony.)

 Five BALCO associates were either convicted or plead guilty as result of that case, so it's hard to argue that Bonds' evasiveness "obstructed" any justice.

On May 20, at the next hearing in this case, Bonds' defense team will argue that very fact.

 They will say that the jury's verdict on the Count 5 can't hold up if they didn't convict on the perjury charges.

(The fact that they were 11-1 to convict on Count 2, means his escape was very narrow, but still an escape.) They will ask the judge to set the verdict aside and let their client go free.

And ESPN's legal analyst Roger Cossack says if he was the judge, he would agree.

The conviction should be thrown out.

This case was all about lying and the government didn't make its case.

Economism and Economites

The theory that people’s lives are principally focused on “production, exchange, and consumption.”

Writing for The New American, Isabel Lyman listed a number of things that might indicate you are an “economite” including, subscribing to Forbes magazine, or forgoing “family time to work to afford more expensive gadgets, clothes, and trips”:

The term “economite” was coined by John Attarian in his book, “Economism and the National Prospect.” In a brisk 72 pages, Attarian, who earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan, provides plausible answers to the troubling questions that currently preoccupy many thoughtful Americans:

“What has happened to this great nation?

Where are we headed as a people?

Who’s taking us down this road to destruction?

Why do so many seem to be oblivious to the danger?”

Attarian places the blame squarely on the worldview he calls “economism” and its adherents, the “economites.”

Economism incorporates the belief that men and women are primarily economic beings, focused mainly on “production, exchange, and consumption.

Indeed, economism tries to explain virtually all human motivation and action by economics. ”

So when will someone go to jail????????

Probe: Goldman Misled Investors

Reuters

A two-year Senate probe into the U.S. financial crisis is wrapping up, and its diagnosis of Goldman Sachs is far from flattering. “Our investigation found a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), while Sen Tom Coburn (R-OK), who also approved the findings, said, "It shows without a doubt the lack of ethics in some of our financial institutions,"

The probe found that Goldman Sachs designed, marketed, and sold collateralized debt obligations that misled investors and created conflicts of interests just before the U.S. housing market collapsed, in one case telling investors in a CDO that their interests were aligned when in fact the firm held 100 percent on the short side.
 “In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress,” said Levin, referring to the investment bank's testimony before a subcommittee at an April 2010 hearing.

 Levin went on to say he would refer their testimony to the Justice Department for possible perjury charges, as well as to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Asked if he was disappointed no Wall Street figures had gone to jail in connection with the crisis, Levin replied, “There's still time.”

Read it at Bloomberg

How to Save a Trillion Dollarshealth care costs, lifestyle diseases, nutrition, the budget

In the scheme of things, saving the 38 billion bucks that Congress seems poised to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. And we could do that by preventing disease instead of treating it.
For the first time in history, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and others kill more people than communicable ones. Treating these diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP.

But they’re preventable, and you prevent them the same way you cause them: lifestyle. A sane diet, along with exercise, meditation and intangibles like love prevent and even reverse disease. A sane diet alone would save us hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe more.

This isn’t just me talking. In a recent issue of the magazine Circulation, the American Heart Association editorial board stated flatly that costs in the U.S. from cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death here and in much of the rest of the world — will triple by 2030, to more than $800 billion annually. Throw in about $276 billion of what they call “real indirect costs,” like productivity, and you have over a trillion. Enough over, in fact, to make $38 billion in budget cuts seem like a rounding error.

Similarly, Type 2 diabetes is projected to cost us $500 billion a year come 2020, when half of all Americans will have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Need I remind you that Type 2 diabetes is virtually entirely preventable? Ten billion dollars invested now might save a couple of hundred billion annually 10 years from now. And: hypertension, many cancers, diverticulitis and more are treated by a health care (better termed “disease care”) system that costs us about $2.3 trillion annually now — before costs double and triple.
It’s worth noting that the Federal budget will absorb its usual 60 percent of that cost. We can save some of that money, though, if an alliance of insurers, government, individuals — maybe even Big Food, if it’s pushed hard enough — moves us towards better eating.

The many numbers all point in the same direction. Look at heart disease: The INTERHEART study of 30,000 men and women in 52 countries showed that at least 90 percent of heart disease is lifestyle related; a European study of more than 23,000 Germans showed that people with healthier lifestyles had an 81 percent lower risk.

And those estimates might be on the low side. Dean Ornish, the San Francisco-based doctor who probably knows more about diet and heart disease than anyone, says, “My colleagues and I have found that more intensive diets than those studies used can reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease.”
In his latest book, “The Spectrum,” Ornish recommends that people at risk eat stricter diets (more plants, higher fiber, lower saturated fats and so on) than those who are generally healthy, but it’s not all or nothing — the more you change your diet and lifestyle, the healthier you are. “What matters most,” he says, “is your overall way of eating and living. If you indulge yourself one day, eat healthier the next.” I’ve been preaching similarly for years. But the trillion-dollar question is, “How do we get people to eat that way?”

I don’t have an easy answer; no one does. But it for sure will take an investment: it’s a situation in which you must spend money to make or save money. (Yes, taxes will go up, but whose taxes?) Some number of billions of dollars — something in the rounding error area — should be spent on research to figure out exactly how to turn this ship around. (The NIH, which pegs obesity-related costs at about $150 billion, just announced a new billion-dollar investment. Good, but not enough.)

Corny as it is to say so, if we can put a man on the moon we can create an environment in which an apple is a better and more accessible choice than a Pop-Tart. Some other billions of dollars must go to public health. Again: we built sewage systems; we built water supplies; we showed that we could get people to eat anything we marketed. Now all we have to do is build a food distribution system that favors real food, and market that.

Experts without vested interests in the status quo come to much the same conclusion: Only a massive public health effort can save both our health and our budget.

Can we afford it? Sure. Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard-affiliated pediatrician and the author of “Ending the Food Fight,” says, “The magnitude of the deficit is small when you consider costs of nutrition-related disease; the $4 trillion that the Republicans want cut over a decade is about the same as the projected costs of diabetes over that same period.”

In last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Ludwig made a number of concrete suggestions, like restructuring subsidies, regulating the marketing of food to children and adequately funding school lunch programs.

His most novel ideas use existing and future technologies to help the food industry retain profits while producing less junky products: devising a method of preserving polyunsaturated fats, for example (dangerous trans-fats are widely used simply because they are stable) or making bread with real whole grains instead of refined ones.
 (His research demonstrates that people who eat ultra-processed grains rather than whole grains for breakfast go on to consume 600 to 700 calories more than other people each day.) “I’m not arguing that the food industry should be philanthropic,” he says. “Its purpose is to make money. But the goal of the government should be to encourage industry to make money by producing more rather than less healthful foods.”

The best way to combat diet-related diseases is to change what we eat. And if our thinking is along the lines of diet improved = deficit reduced, so much the better. If a better diet were to result only in a 10 percent decrease in heart disease (way lower than Ludwig believes possible), that’s $100 billion project savings per year by 2030.

This isn’t just fiscal responsibility, but social responsibility as well. And the alternative is not only fiscal catastrophe but millions of premature deaths.

By Mark Bittman on food and all things related.

Visit my blog, where you can find out more about my columns, or what I just cooked. You can also join me on Facebook or Twitter.

Fox News Pundit Responds To J. Crew Pink Nail Polish Controversy By Ignoring Facts, Spewing Misinformation

A J. Crew ad featuring Jenna Lyons — a fashion designer, president, and executive creative director at the company who is also a huge deal in the business sector of the fashion industry— painting her 5-year-old son's toenails pink is stirring up controversy in the media.
The subtitle under the image reads “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.”
Morning shows discussed the issue. Various news sites posted op-eds over the last two days. It is easy to get folks riled up around children and gender identity. Lyons probably expected a controversy, but at this level?
The most offensive opinion piece published on a nationally recognized journalism outlet appeared on Fox News' website.
Dr. Keith Ablow, a television psychiatrist and Glenn Beck associate, penned the story. (He also recently co-authored a book called The 7, a combination of Beck memoir and Ablow's self-help techniques.)
Nothing about the piece is helpful, informative, or even true.
The "Body & Mind" subverticle in the "Health" section of Fox News ran the article. In it, Ablow spouts polarizing, simplified rhetoric about gender. Practically every argument in this piece references push-button issues that have no relation to the supposed gender identity of 5-year olds. It is an embarrassing attempt at journalism.
Ablow claims that the culture is "being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity." He then suggests that such "psychological sterilization" — a vague term he invented for his article — may have unknown consequences.
Such as? Ablow's silence demonstrates the emptiness of his content.
He equates the sexualization of young girls wearing inappropriate, too-adult clothing — halter tops and short-shorts with messages written across the haunches — with the pink nail polish, stating the "truth" that it's "unwise to encourage little boys to playact like little girls."
Stop right here.
Social conservatives who are ultimately homophobic — in this case, transphobic — will always suggest that any non-heteronormative behavior is somehow the result of nurture, and never that it can happen as a result of natural human biology. They consider nontraditional gender identity as perverted as pedophilia.
To any individual, queer or otherwise, this should be offensive.
Coming from a psychiatrist, it is offensive and unprofessional.
There has never been proof that dressing up a little boy in women's clothing will somehow make him transgendered. Not only is it uninformed in terms of our understanding of gender identity in the modern day, Ablow completely ignores Western history.
Specifically, he ignores the period from the mid-16th century until the early 20th during which boys aged 2-8 generally wore dresses and gowns and were treated, more or less, as gender-neutral until they reached a certain level of maturity. At some point in their development, usually around the time of preadolescence, boys were "breeched"; essentially, they were allowed to start wearing pants.
Getting your pants was a big deal back then. Yet, not wearing them early on didn't bring about whole generations of gender-confused European men. In addition, until the 1940s, society considered pink to be a more masculine and virile color, while blue was more feminine. Based on these two historical facts alone, all of Ablow's judgments are rendered meaningless.
Ablow's insulting rhetoric continues by arguing, implicitly, that real transgenderism essentially doesn't exist, or is some kind of perversion. He refers to gender reassignment surgery as "grotesquely amputate[ing] body parts," and compares "the choosing of gender identity" with using tattoos to change skin pigmentation to "claim African-American heritage."
He then sinks into a deep non sequitor:
"And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else..."
Dr. Ablow, what does raising children have to do with wearing nail polish? The logical fallacy of grouping these things together allows you to ignore the real issue, and instead highlight the conservative 's political call to "save the American family," whatever that means. It's like the Westboro Baptist Church rhetoric, just without the offensive words.
"...and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever..."
Again, what does pink nail polish have to do with having great sex all the time? As if you can't have both?
The close association on Dr. Ablow's part between gender identity and sexual activity is completely uninformed. For an average heterosexual American, unfamiliar with the plethora of alternatives in society, this error is a understandable. But Dr. Ablow is a psychiatrist. He is using this factual error to spread misinformation and, yes, hate.
"These folks are hostile to the gender distinctions that actually are part of the magnificent synergy that creates and sustains the human race," Ablow writes. "They respect their own creative notions a whole lot more than any creative Force in the universe."
Finally. This is always what it comes down to: The doctor's religious beliefs, which have absolutely nothing to do with psychiatric analysis and a scientific understanding of the human experience.
Grouping an oversexualized minor with a little boy wearing pink nail polish is a gross misunderstanding of human sexuality and gender. The medical expertise in the piece is a joke.
For a psychiatrist to confuse gender and sexual conduct would be just fine, if this were the 19th century. You know, that time period before electricity was widespread when little boys wore dresses until about age 7.
For this to happen now is simply unprofessional.
Dr. Ablow should be ashamed to have his name on the story, and Fox News should be ashamed for publishing it.

BILL O'REILLY: President Obama Has A Birth Certificate

 

Bill O'Reilly has had it up to here with the "ton of internet propaganda" he gets every day, and last night decided to, once and for all, go over some of the myths that are out there about the Obamas and tell people what is true and what is not.

 

When it comes to the President's academic transcripts, medical records and his list of clients from when we was a lawyer, they have not been released.

But, O'Reilly, points out, neither Clinton nor George W. Bush released their full medical records and he understands why Obama would not release who he represented because of "the privacy of clients."

In regards to President Obama's birth certificate, O'Reilly said that, while it is true that it has not been made public, "the state of Hawaii has once again said Mr. Obama's birth certificate is on file. A certificate of live birth has been released."

Also, there is no record of Obama's baptism because there is no public record of that, he did not release his thesis because he never did one and he did not receive any foreign aid while in college.

 Michelle Obama did not lose her law license and she has the same number of assistants that Laura Bush did.

Lets hope that this finally clears some of these things up.

April 12, 2011, 9:27 am

Why Not A Public Option for Medicare?

So, people are always asking what I would do about health care costs. One answer is that I would do all the things that are in the Affordable Care Act, and more.

But if you want a really radical proposal — but one that, unlike privatization, actually has strong evidence on its side — why not add a true public option to Medicare?

What do I mean by that? I mean creating a network of hospitals and clinics actually run by the government — a civilian VA, as Phillip Longman puts it — and giving Medicare recipients the option of using that system.
The public option would be required to spend significantly less per risk-adjusted recipient than traditional Medicare. And if it couldn’t provide care that seniors wanted given that restricted budget, it would have no takers and would close.

But the actual experience of the VA suggests, of course, that such a system would have major cost advantages — and that it could be used to achieve major cost savings.

Look, I know this isn’t politically feasible, at least not now. But neither is Ryan’s system of inadequate vouchers. And this one has the virtue of being something that experience suggests would actually work if we could overcome the political hurdles.

I’m sure the trolls will be screaming as soon as this is posted. But notice that neither I nor Longman are suggesting that anyone be forced into such a system. It would have to win patients in a fair competition with both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage.

And what would terrify the right, of course, is the likelihood that genuine socialized medicine would actually win that competition.

The NYTimes is good but I'm not payng to read it! How about you?

NYT Site Traffic Drops with Paywall

 

The New York Times paywall finally went live on March 28—but how much did that stop its most avid consumers? A comparison of total visits to NYTimes.com for a 12-day period before the launch of the paywall and a 12-day period after the launch found that there was a decrease of between 5 percent and 15 percent in overall visits.

 There was one bright spot: On April 9, there was an increase of 7 percent, as people searched for news about the government shutdown and budget discussions. However, the decrease in total page views was even more pronounced, with a decline of between 11 percent and 30 percent for the 12 days following the launch.

 The paywall limits online readers to 20 articles per month, unless they have a subscription. Those with smartphone applications continue to get the top news section for free, but all other sections require a subscription.

Read it at Hitwise

Mark Zuckerberg Sued Again

 

Not a good day to be a boy wonder: Paul Ceglia, the man who sued Mark Zuckerberg last July claiming the Facebook founder had agreed to give him 50 percent ownership in 2003, has just produced a series of emails in which he and Zuckerberg allegedly discuss the project together.

The original suit was dismissed as a fabrication because Ceglia took seven years to file it and he was a convicted felon. The new emails said to be between Zuckerberg and Ceglia discuss their two original projects—Ceglia's "StreetFax" and Zuckerberg's "the face book"—and provide proof of payment in which Ceglia funded the Facebook project and the collaborative launch of the site. Zuckerberg then writes to Ceglia that the new Facebook site is floundering, that he's thinking of shutting it down, and offers to send Ceglia his $2,000 of funding back.

 These emails were suspiciously sent right before Zuckerberg moved to California and the site immediately took off. In response to Ceglia's new suit, Facebook has maintained that the emails—like the original suit—are fake and that Ceglia is a "con artist" and "convicted felon."

Read it at Business Insider

Will America vote for a guy who wears makeup 24 hours a day?

Donald Trump tied for first in poll of GOP race

(Credit: Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

Reality television host and developer Donald Trump has risen to a tie for first among potential GOP presidential contenders, according to a new national poll.


Nineteen percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey that they are most likely to back Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. That put him in a tie at the top of the list with former Arkansas governor and 2008 candidate Mike Huckabee, who also received 19 percent support.


Rounding out the top five were former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with 12 percent support, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 11 percent support and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also with 11 percent support. They were followed by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas with 7 percent support and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota with 5 percent support.


Trump has risen ten points from a similar poll taken by the same organization last month.

Still, it would be premature to conclude that Trump has become a viable contender for the GOP presidential nomination. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said they didn't want to see him run; his relatively strong showing in the poll would seem to reflect both the media-savvy Trump's high level of name-recognition and the fact that the GOP electorate has not yet coalesced around a candidate.


Trump has been making the media rounds talking up a candidacy and pushing discredited theories and false information about President Obama's birthplace. The "birther" rhetoric has meant a backlash among prominent African-Americans, as Politico's Ben Smith reports.


"There's a lot of people that I've talked to [who] instinctively think that he's using the issue as a proxy for race," Urban League President Marc Morial told Politico. "I don't know if it has resonance in the Republican Party but I certainly think it has resonance in certain far right elements of the American public."

Trump said Monday that if he loses the GOP nomination he will "probably" run for the presidency as an independent. Skeptics question, however, whether he is seriously considering a run or is simply engaged in a disingenuous effort to drum up publicity for his reality show, which ends in June.

It's a charge Trump denies.


"I don't need to do this for ratings on 'The Apprentice,'" Trump told the Wall Street Journal. "This is too important, our country is in trouble, our country is not being properly led."