Sexting Scandal on Evanston Township High School's Baseball Team

My local Twitter feed blew up today with news that the Evanston Township High School (ETHS) baseball team has canceled the remainder of its season because of a sexting scandal of some sort:

On the eve of regional playoffs at Evanston Township High School, the athletic director told parents in a letter that the baseball team would forfeit the season, following allegations that players were sending indecent photographs via text message.

I don't really know what to make of this. Is sexting really so terrible? Even if it is, why not just suspend the evil-doers? Why "forfeit the season"? What is the lesson here?

I don't care at all about local high school baseball, but this possible overreaction to teenage sexuality seems like a troubling trend.

Penny Pritzker is Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

President Obama has nominated Penny Pritzker to be Secretary of Commerce. She has a reported net worth of $1.85 billions dollars. That's billion, with a B. Her wealth is mainly inherited, as she is a member of the famous Pritzkers of Chicago, who made their fortunes in the hotel industry—specifically Hyatt Hotels.

But Ms. Pritzker is not merely an heiress. She makes tons of money on her own. In fact, she makes so much money that, in filings with Congress, she accidentally understated her income over the last decade by 80,000,000 dollars. To be clear, she didn't understate her net worth; she understated her income. The mistake was chalked up to "a clerical error," and she has corrected it.

So, how did Ms. Pritzker make all this money? Basically, it looks like she got paid a fortune for managing the fortune:

Documents released last week show Pritzker received $32.2 million for a decade’s worth of consulting on the restructuring of domestic trusts. The filings released yesterday show she earned at least $80 million for that work, according to Bloomberg’s compilation of the data. The revised total is in addition to the amount reported last week, according to Anderson.

Pritzker, whose family founded Hyatt Hotels Corp, ... disclosed last week that she earned $54 million in consulting fees last year for a similar restructuring of trusts based in the Bahamas, also over 10 years. The Bahamas’ income wasn’t changed in the amended disclosure document.

* * * 

“Ms. Pritzker was engaged by the U.S. trustee of trusts for the extended Pritzker family for advice on restructuring trust investments for the purpose of dividing assets along individual family lines,” Anderson said. They included investments in Hyatt, Marmon Holdings Inc., Union Tank Car Co. and non-hotel real estate investments including the Hyatt Center office tower in Chicago, she said.

So, if I'm reading this right, Pritzker has "earned" about $165,000,000 over the past decade for "managing various trusts." [CENSORED.]

About the only controversy regarding Ms. Pritzker's nomination is that her family owned bank failed back in 2001. She testified that "ya know, I feel very badly about that." But she asserts she had no management role in the bank so bears no responsibility. Honestly, what could she have done? She was too busy earning $31 per second (every second of every day of every year for a decade) managing those pesky trusts.

The Green Mountain State

The state motto for Vermont is "freedom and unity."  The motto raises the (unintentional) question about whether one is free to not be part of the unity in Vermont.  One thing that judges in Vermont are not free to do is serve as long as they are able.  Like many states, Vermont has a mandatory retirement age for judges.  For most states the mandatory retirement age is either 70 or 75.  Vermont, however, has a mandatory retirement age of 90.  That is a somewhat interesting choice by the Vermont legislature given that it is 11 years longer than the average life expectancy for someone living in Vermont.  I could not find anything that showed how many Vermont judges, if any, have served until they were 90.  But I guess that it is good that Vermont judges have more freedom to chose how long they serve than judges in our states.

Apple's taxes

Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, testified in front of Congress the other day about Apple's tax-avoidance strategies. One of the main topics was the so called "Double Irish" scheme, which Joe Nocera describes:

This strategy, which was the primary focus of Tuesday’s hearing, involves setting up a shell subsidiary in an offshore tax haven — a k a Ireland — and transferring most of Apple’s intellectual property rights to the dummy subsidiary. The subsidiary, in turn, charges “royalties” that allows it to capture billions of dollars in what otherwise would be taxable profits in the United States. In Ireland, according to Apple, it pays an astonishing 2 percent in taxes, thanks to a deal it has with the government.

Nocera thinks this is bad business for Ireland, somehow:

Question for the government of Ireland: Do you really want your country to be known as an offshore tax haven? Indeed, at a time when your citizens are dealing with the pain of an austerity program, how can you justify allowing Apple to pay virtually no taxes on a subsidiary established solely to avoid taxes in the United States? Just wondering. 

These kind of rhetorical questions often mask stupid arguments, and that is true here. In fact, Ireland has nothing to lose by allowing Apple to do this. As noted in Nocera's column, Apple has no employees and no offices in Ireland. Yet it pays taxes there! Nocera says it is "an astonishing 2 percent," which he later calls "virtually no taxes." But two percent of a very big number is a very big number. Apparently Apple pays 2 percent of its IP royalties to the government of Ireland. I would say that is astonishing indeed—and a great deal for Ireland.

So to answer Nocera's question directly: Ireland can justify allowing Apple to pay virtually no taxes because virtually no taxes is better than actually no taxes. Isn't this pretty obvious? Just wondering.

Is king of latex a desirable nickname?

Continuing our coverage the misadventures of Michigan circuit court judge Wayne McCree (see here, here, here, and here) we report, thanks to Mlive.com, that Judge McCree's judicial misconduct trial has started.  According to the testimony, Judge McCree when presented with a claim that he impregnated his mistress responded by saying he was the "king of latex."  I assume this means that Judge McCree used condoms and not that he dressed like the gimp in Pulp Fiction.

Umbrella Umbrage

A few days ago, Mr. Gillette posted about a sort of strange photograph taken of a Marine holding an umbrella for President Obama during an outdoor press conference. Mr. Gillette mused:

[T]he first thing I thought when I saw the picture was, why do they use a member of

the United States Marine Corps to hold an umbrella over the President?  I'm reasonably confident that the President himself doesn't decide who holds an umbrella for him.  I wonder how it was determined that umbrellas should be held by members of the Marines?

It turns out, however, that the President does indeed choose his own umbrelladiers. The Washington Post reports:

Slogging through a drizzly Rose Garden news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Obama took a break to ask for some rain protection.

“I am going to go ahead and ask folks, why don’t we get a couple of Marines — they’re going to look good next to us — just because I’ve got a change of suits but I don’t know about our prime minister,” he said as two Marines appeared at the lecterns with umbrellas. “There we go. That’s good.” He gestured to the soggy press corps, adding, “You guys I’m sorry about.”

According to the Post, conservatives are unhappy about the President's little joke. For example, Lou Dobbs tweeted:

Obama expects our troops to hold damn umbrellas rather than go inside: It's disrespectful, inconsiderate, classless.
— Lou Dobbs (@loudobbsnews) May 17, 2013

There also appears to have been a breach of protocol because apparently male Marines are not allowed to carry umbrellas. That said, title 10 of the U.S. Code also states that Marines are to "perform such other duties as the President may direct." So perhaps the conscription into umbrella duty was an appropriate exercise of executive power after all.

The Gillette-Torvik Blog will continue to cover this breaking story, which I've code-named "Umbroglio."

Judge Schiltz on Lawyers

I randomly stumbled across a very interesting and readable old (1999) article written by Judge Patrick Shiltz entitled, "On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession."

It's long, and somewhat outdated in its particulars, but it holds up rather well. It touches on some themes I've discussed here, but Judge Schiltz has perhaps a better explanation than I do for the apparently irrational profit-maximizing behavior of lawyers:

Why do you suppose sixty year old lawyers with millions of dollars in the bank still bill 2200 hours per year? Why do you suppose lawyers whose children have everything money can buy but who need the time and attention of their parents continue to spend most nights and weekends at the office--while continuing to write out checks to the best child psychologists in town? Why do you suppose one big firm partner I know flew into a rage after learning that his year-end bonus would be only--only--$ 400,000, while the bonus of one of his rivals in the firm would be $ 425,000? Why do you suppose that another lawyer I know (a lawyer making $ 1 million a year) came within a whisker of quitting his firm after losing a bitter dispute with one of his partners (a lawyer making over $ 2 million a year) over a $ 10,000 payment?

It is not because these lawyers need the money. Any of these lawyers could lose every penny of his savings and see his annual income reduced by two-thirds and still live much more comfortably than the vast majority of Americans. What's driving these lawyers is the desire to win the game. These lawyers have spent their entire lives competing against others and measuring their worth by how well they do in the competitions. And now that they are working in a law firm, money is the way they keep score. Money is what tells them if they're more successful than the lawyer in the next office--or in the next office building--or in the next town. If a lawyer's life is dominated by the game--and if his success in the game is measured by money--then his life is dominated by money. For many, many lawyers, it's that simple.

The whole thing is worth a read.

--Bart Torvik

I guess the White House doesn't have interns anymore.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a story about President Obama vowing to take action regarding the IRS and protecting diplomats.  This picture accompanies the story and was taken by Charles Dharapak for the AP.

What about bearded Spock?

Matthew Yglesias ranks the best of everything Star Trek.  His list of best episodes contains a startling omission.  As the saying goes, opinions are like ears, everyone has a couple.  Whether Mr. Yglesias's are worthy of your consideration given this omission is a different matter.

Does judge-shopping exist in criminal law cases?

If you read his online biography, you will learn that Wisconsin Representative James Sensenbrenner likes to watch the Green Bay Packers in his free time. If you read the biography closely you might realize that Representative Sensenbrenner has been in elected office pretty much from the moment he graduated law school. Representative Sensenbrenner graduated law school in 1968 and was promptly elected to the Wisconsin Legislature. After serving there for 10 years, he was elected to the United States Congress and has been there ever since. It does not appear that Representative Sensenbrenner has ever practiced law or  had a full time job that wasn't a political office.