Proposed new law: Any contribution to a political candidate, a candidate’s campaign, a candidate’s mother, a candidate’s wife, a candidate’s mistress, or a candidate’s mister, when applicable, that exceeds $250 and especially if it exceeds $50 million, shall be deemed an attempt to bribe the candidate. Offenders shall be dismembered digit-by-digit, fed to crocodiles and punished to the full extent of the law.
In this divided country it would be hard to get agreement on such wording. You know somebody would slip in an amendment saying “this only applies to the other side.” It is, however, increasingly apparent that money buys elections. Is there any other reason that, as the papers are reporting, all these organizations with good government or patriotic names are raising money in the sneakiest way possible, money that is hard to trace but it is invariably used to support their friends or, more likely, attack people with whom they differ? And why is that all the big money comes from big entities, such as major corporations, or secretive groups of people skirting campaign laws by hiding their identities. The reason is obvious: They either want something from the candidates they support, or want to stop candidates they think will hurt their agenda to do something controversial, such as polluting the environment to make money, or bringing in big-time gambling.
There are some who think that giving money to a politician, hoping to get something back, is a bribe. But when that gift is a campaign contribution, and the beneficiary knows he can live off those contributions and, as we have seen, make all life’s expenses seem legitimate costs of running for office, then it is OK. And it is especially OK if the entity making the contribution can hide behind some name such as “Honest Floridians for Dirty Crooked Government.” We throw that invention out, confident that we will not be infringing on any established trademark.
It has gotten to the point where the influence of money is so strong that even after the latest shooting tragedy, neither of the two men running for president of the United States is willing to condemn a law which permits the sale of military weapons to nut cases. They know such a position could cost them the election. And how do you define a nut case before he shows up in court with international-orange hair and a stare that is right out of “Guadalcanal Diary”? Well, any civilian who feels a need to own an assault rifle might qualify as a nut. But don’t say that if you are running for office.
Would a simple law changing the word “contribution” to “bribe” change anything? Maybe. But only until The Patriotic Committee To Make Bribes Politically Acceptable for All Americans pays off its boys to advocate repeal. By gun-point if needed.
After a dark and stormy night, especially after a dark and stormy night, somewhere between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., even with the air conditioner humming and the overhead fan spinning, you could hear the stop-go of the car, and then the sound of newspapers landing. Plop, plop. Plop. Sometimes even three plops. The third plop would be The New York Times. This went up and down the street; practically every house had at least one plop.
That did not seem long ago, but it was probably 15 years, maybe 20. The plop of newspapers being delivered was as predictable as the sound of aircraft starting their day from the airport, and you knew that within a few minutes the sun also would rise. Last week it was different. The papers were late, and we were waiting on the porch. The car (actually it was a small pickup) eventually came by, with the sun beating it by minutes, and there was a plop-plop and the Sun-Sentineland Herald made their arrivals. Then there was silence, as the vehicle went down the street for a block or two, turned around and headed north. That covered about 15 houses, all inhabited by credit-worthy souls. Yet there was only one more “plop” within earshot. That was the big house on the corner, owned by a prominent banker-builder. His plop was probably the Sun-Sentinel, but it would not be surprising if it were the Times. The Times is an ego feeder, even if the ego rarely reads the whole paper.
This is the state of the newspaper business, here and over there. On our street almost nobody gets a paper, and that has something to do with the fact that the death of August Urbanek, which once would have been front-page news, was confined to the paid obits. August who? That’s the problem.
The story goes back to the 1980s, when Carl Mayhue, who made his money in the liquor store business, led a campaign to build a theater in Fort Lauderdale. People thought he was crazy; the location he was pushing was west of the FEC Railway tracks, in the oldest section of town. It had turned into a bum-in-the-doorway section. Nobody went there. And yet Mayhue saw a spot on the bend of the New River, which gave its name to the Sailboat Bend neighborhood, that would make a great site for this facility, which he thought could be a catalyst to revive the entire section.
August Urbanek, a Czech immigrant who had made a fortune in development, was a known philanthropist and a natural target for a contribution. When Mayhue called, Urbanek said he was good for $3.5 million, providing Mayhue first raised the seed money for the campaign. Mayhue did, to Urbanek’s surprise, and when Mayhue called to say he had the money, Urbanek delivered his check the next day. Thus was born the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, a remarkable cultural facility for a city the size of Fort Lauderdale. And, as Mayhue envisioned, the once-seedy neighborhood has turned into part of the Riverwalk commonly known as the Arts & Entertainment District.
Joe Amaturo, who was a major contributor himself (the Amaturo Theater), recalls a dinner related to the Broward Center when Urbanek asked if he could sit at his table. “Sit at my table?” said Amaturo today. “I would be honored to sit at his table. And when it came time to recognize people, nobody mentioned him. Well, I had been asked to say a few words, and when I got up I spent about three minutes talking about him. Without Augie Urbanek, I don’t think we would have the Performing Arts Center today.”
August Urbanek spent his last years in Boca Raton. He died at 92. You would not know it if his family had not paid for the obit in the paper. But then again, when the plop-plops disappear day by day, maybe it doesn’t make any difference.
Our beloved congressman, Allen West, has complained that the media has distorted his meaning when he likened social security to slavery – to the extent it makes people develop a heightened sense of dependency, also known as entitlement. The media does that a lot to West, which tends to happen to people who say weird things.
For instance, some might think he meant that anybody who is on social security is a slave, a notion reinforced when the managing editor walked in and said, “Boy, you call that PR girl about the boat show special? Ain’t you on social security? You think you’re entitled to lay around all day drinking beer like a schmuck? You do your blog yet, boy? You know it’s Tuesday, and I need your stupid blog on Tuesdays.”
Back on topic. Congressman West complained that around 3.2 million people went on social security disability since 2009, suggesting there are lots of louts looking for any excuse not to work. Now that gets close to home because one of our brother slaves, a highly skilled engineer whose had an ability to dominate young engineers who worked for him, wound up on the street when too many of his slaves complained to the boss man. So he applied for social security on the grounds that because his boss would no longer let him treat his engineers like slaves, he was unable to work, i.e. disabled. He got his check.
We started getting ours the legitimate way a few years later, and this has been going on for a decade. We feel pretty guilty, even though we are still paying FICA, even after 60 years. FICA is the money they take out of your paycheck every week as long as you work so that you can feel good when you starting getting some of it back when you are too old to spend it.
Which prompted a call to our CPA to find how it is going into FICA compared with our monthly check. He got on his computer and ran a bunch of numbers and said, “Understand?" and we said no, and he ran more numbers and we were even more confused. Then he said, “One has nothing to do with the other – if you had the money you gave the government since you were 15 and put it in a mutual fund, you’d be a millionaire.”
That really made us feel like slaves, and we began to understand Congressman West’s point, and that depressed us so we went to a bar and when we came back the managing editor said, “Boy, you call that PR girl back?” and then, a little groggy and set upon, we fell asleep and dreamed we were somewhere far away and people were rounding us up and putting us on a boat.
“What’s up?” we asked.
“We’re shipping you out, boy. You’re a slave.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you get a check from the U.S. Treasury every month for doing nothing.” The nice man put down his whip and handed us a check for more money than we had ever seen.
“Boy, I like this job!” we chirped.
“And you get one like this every month, and every year it goes up with the cost of living over there.” We thanked him profusely and pushed aside people who were fighting to get on the boat. And as we sailed into the sunset, we heard the nice man shout: “Bon voyage, and tell them Allen sent you.”
A federal judge has killed the Florida law prohibiting doctors from asking if patients have a gun at home. Docs vs. Glocks, the wise guys called it. That’s a blow, but not all is lost. The state of Florida, a subsidiary of the National Rifle Association, may appeal and that would be good because it provides a way to spend all that extra money which is lining the lanes of Tallahassee.We still have our assault rifles, which are really useful if you get caught in the cross fire of a drive-by shooting in Miami. We also hope the state will support a new organization we are trying to form. The NRRA is the National Recoilless Rifle Association. Our goals, developing as we type, include having a recoilless rifle in every home, school, church and doctor’s office in Florida.
For those too young to recall, the recoilless rifle was a long tube shaped like a long tube, which was developed before World War I. It was designed to give the average G.I. Joe a chance against a tank. In theory it would shoot a big bullet, usually about 84 millimeters – the same size as the famous 84 millimeter gun and instead of recoiling like a typical field artillery piece, it would offset the sudden-forward motion by blowing stuff, sometimes called countershot, out the rear. It has been commonly supplanted by more modern hand held rocket launchers, which can bring down airplanes. The problem with the recoilless rifle, which was tried during the Korean War, is that it never worked too good, even when mounted on wheeled vehicles, boats, donkeys, etc. The first models, when mounted on vehicles, had their trunnions set too far back, and sometimes the tube swung around and shot the person firing it. The crew sometimes took off the trunnions and put them on Philadelphia cheese steaks. Not too bad with tabasco.
A use was occasionally found for recoilless rifles it in fighting avalanches (this is true), which are rare in Florida, but it was never effective in warding off hurricanes. Despite their dubious value, the army ordered a lot of them, and as a result there are more of them on the surplus market than collectors of famous failed weapons can absorb. Which is why we have formed the NRRA. We are hoping that some of the 900,000 people in Florida who have concealed weapons permits would apply for permits to carry a concealed recoilless rifle. Now some may say a six-foot tube is too long to conceal comfortably. Maybe on the actually body, but they could conceal them on top of their cars. Besides a lot of readers of this piece have deep pockets, or at least golf bags, which would facilitate concealment. Also a box of golf balls might make more effective ammunition than the big bullets the rifles originally shot. There’s precedent for that. Early cannon shot 105 millimeter balls capable of knocking a body in half at hundreds of yards, but they also used grapeshot, which was basically a bunch of golf balls glued together which came apart over sand traps and hit everybody hiding there.
Well, if none of these ideas come to fruition, at least we have a new organization called the NRRA. Maybe state government can come up with a use for it. They’ve had dumber ideas.
We had been in Washington, the D.C. one, where there are a lot of monuments. After the obligatory visit to the National Air and Space Museum, to visit our Messerschmitt Bf 109 G, we took the grandkids to see some of the better known. There is the Washington Monument, that striking spike in the sky, and the Lincoln Memorial, which looks like an art museum and would embarrass the late president, an extraordinarily modest man for one so famous, and of course, the Vietnam Wall.
From the mall we pointed across the broad Potomac to where Arlington Cemetery is located, and not far from the Marine Corps War Memorial, the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima, and we told the kids if they looked carefully they would see at the top of the hill the former residence of Robert E. Lee, which had, and still has, the best view in Virginia of the nation’s capital. We also corrected the impression, apparently inherited from their mother, an alleged history major, that Lee commanded the Union Army. She is in Ireland and unlikely to see this. When you speak to a native Irishman about the Civil War, they ask “which one?”
Which brings us back to W.C. and those of us who did nothing. Nobody keeps such records, but there are millions of us who put in time in the military, trained and ready to be forward observers (a dangerous job at the time) but who were never asked to fire a shot in anger, or try to duck one. In fact, our outfit, the legendary 446th Civil Affairs Company, Upland, Pa., Col. (later a general) Clarence D. Bell commanding, was thrown out of the army at the height of the Tet Offensive in the 1960s. We were considered useless, and why would anyone in their right mind argue that a unit studying Arabic and solving water problems in the Middle East had any reason to exist? Anyway, they disbanded the whole damned unit. It hurts, and it hurts millions of guys who are in the same boat, those of us who did nothing. Why are we not remembered in some memorial in Washington, D.C.? Washington has memorials to everybody. Statues of generals, including some who were not very good, are all over the place. These are tributes to people who would have been better off doing nothing, but there is nothing to remember those who truly did nothing.
Fueled with indignation, and a few martinis, we went to visit the secretary of monuments. They made us check our assault rifle at the door, which is probably a good thing. “Mr. Secretary,” we screamed, “why no monument to the guys who did nothing? Do you have any idea how many of us are having nervous breakdowns – post-traumatic, do-nothing stress?”
“Calm down,” he said. “We are working on it. We have the support of Presidents Clinton, Bush (the younger) and Obama – all of whom did nothing like you great guys. In fact, they did less than nothing. Anyway, we will do it. “
“We need a name,” we said, “and a location. How about close to the congressional offices, filled with people who do nothing?”
“Beautiful,” he said.
“We need something that will knock their socks off. Like a riderless horse they use when the CIA kills a president. “
“That’s overdone,” he said. “How about a giant beer bottle, flanked by a regiment of blue martinis? With the names of all the people who did nothing engraved on ceramic olives?”
“Too costly,” we said. “How about a horseless rider?”
“How tell?”
“A guy like he’s on a horse but there ain’t no horse, get it? Just a guy up there, bouncing up and down, swinging a freakin’ sword in the air and nothing under him. The image is perfect. It captures our frustration. It would keep people from having nervous breakdowns.”
“How do you do that? There’s the law of gravity.”
“You bureaucrats have no imagination. We put a man on the moon. People were floating around all day in them space capsules. We can certainly put a horseless rider up there. Helium. We have a friend in Florida who has a company – Helium Is Our High. He can figure it out. All these kids would love it.“
The secretary had to break off for a lunch date, and he left saying he did not know what he could do to remedy this remiss, but he promised he wouldn’t do nothing. We also serve who only stand and wait.
Washington, D.C. – The young woman was kneeling in the small yard in front of the small but charming house, planting flowers. She seemed happy, and said hello to the strangers walking along the brick sidewalk in front of her home. Her yard was very pretty, filled with flowering plants, yellow and pink and blue, some in buckets, most in natural soil. There was nothing unusual about this scene, nothing you could not see this time of year in countless places in the northern states. But what made it different was that this was an old neighborhood in Washington, D.C. and you would not likely have witnessed this scene five years ago, certainly not 10. For this was Capitol Hill, a neighborhood risen from the dead.
Florida, as we have noted in the past, had something to do with it. In fact, more that something. In 1972 Rhea Chiles, wife of then-Sen. Lawton Chiles (later Florida governor), noticed an abandoned building virtually in the shadow of the Capitol. It was definitely in the afternoon shadow of the Supreme Court, directly across from Second Street. Its windows were boarded and an upper floor was falling in. Homeless occupied the basement. But in 1972 it was not unique. Much of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in the southeast quadrant of Washington, an old section on the opposite side of the famous mall, was a disaster.
Prudent people did not go there. The streets were unsafe. More than a few houses were so neglected as to be uninhabitable. It was a national disgrace. Rhea Chiles may have shared that view, but she also saw opportunity. She had been thinking about a state embassy ever since her kids asked where Florida’s embassy was. She raised the money to buy the dilapidated property, which dated to 1891 and was designed by a famous architect, and in short order an eyesore was restored to a modernized version of its original dignity.
She began the first, and still only, state embassy – Florida House. Gold Coast magazine wrote about it in the late 1970s; it already had a reputation as a convenient place for Florida business people to drop by – an office away from home, as well as a classy place for Florida legislators to hold receptions, and for families touring the capital to get their bearings. By then it had an important side effect in calling attention to its neighborhood as a redevelopment project begging to happen. By the late ‘70s it had already begun, and it goes on as this is written. Within a few years the blocks adjacent to Florida House began to recover. And so it has gone on, almost 40 years now, block by block to the east, all the way to RFK Stadium, roughly 20 blocks from Florida House on the edge of the Anacostia River.
The trend has accelerated in recent years as members of Congress and thousands of government workers have looked for comfortable housing close to the capitol and surrounding government buildings. Commuting from outside Washington has become a nightmare. Every main approach is like a bad day on Interstate-95 in Florida, and that of course includes the same I-95 north and south of Washington. Even the existence of the Metro, an excellent modern subway system, has done little to relieve auto traffic into the city. What Metro has done is accelerate redevelopment of old city neighborhoods convenient to stations. Workers can get to downtown jobs in minutes instead of an hour or more from outside the city.
Most of those buying, at very high prices, and restoring old homes are young people. These are people who love, but could not afford the charm of the old Georgetown section, but they are bringing the Georgetown style to Capitol Hill. The sidewalks are busy with mothers pushing carriages and people walking dogs. The newcomers improving properties often have formidable challenges. One couple bought a house that had been foreclosed on. The floor of the house, including the supporting joyce, was rotted and had to be ripped out. There was no basement and in the dirt below the floor they found old whiskey bottles obviously left by the workers who built the place in the 1880s. This couple spends much time debating what subtle shade to paint their brick front wall and figuring out how to top their neighbors with the contrasting color of doors and decorative shutters. The effect of all this energy has been to stimulate all aspects of urban life that had been in trouble in Washington. Schools and churches that in a different locale might have closed are surviving and growing. Capitol Hill is alive with restaurants and the Eastern Market, not long ago surrounded by a neighborhood where one would venture with caution, has become a tourist attraction.
And those visitors spread without fear into the neighborhood, admiring with awe the renaissance of a city, and exchanging pleasantries with a young woman planting flowers in a front yard.
Ocean City, N.J. – The Atlantic was as blue as it regularly is off the beaches of South Florida, and that, in some 70 years of occasional visits to this place, is a rare sight. Typically the water is a gray-green, the colors that the Royal Air Force used to camouflage its aircraft in World War II. The Brits nicknamed the scheme “slime and sewage.” But yesterday was wonderful great-to-be-alive weather in this favorite escape for people from Philadelphia and much of eastern Pennsylvania, and it was hard to believe that all is not right everywhere in the world.
Among those who once were summer regulars here was the Kelly family, one of whose members was Grace Kelly, later princess of Monaco. Mention that name to your average 15-year-old today and they will ask “Who is Grace Kelly?” Sic transit gloria mundi. That’s a line from a play written by Princess Grace’s uncle, George Kelly, once a famous figure, now more forgotten than the beautiful actress turned princess. But neither of them is as forgotten as William E. Dodd, the subject of our vacation reading. He was the American ambassador to Germany in the years just preceding World War II. History is one of my fancies, and I never heard of the man. Happily, his memory is rightfully restored in Erik Larson’s book In The Garden of Beasts, published last year.
Dodd was a college professor who was tapped by President Franklin Roosevelt to become ambassador to Germany in 1933, largely because nobody else wanted the job. Dodd was qualified because he actually knew something about Germany, having studied there years before. In another sense, he was an odd choice. Unlike most ambassadors, he was not wealthy and was unable to use his own money to party the way ambassadors usually do. He was actually resented, and ridiculed by members of what was called “a pretty good club.” The members of that club, and many of the political leaders in the U.S. and throughout Europe, tended to dismiss Hitler and his Nazi thugs as almost comical, hardly the sort who could dominate a country such as Germany.
Dodd and his family arrived in Germany at a tragic hinge of history, although few realized it at the time. President Roosevelt told him to assess Hitler and conditions in Germany. Dodd appreciated the good qualities of the German people, and he did his best to remain open-minded even as the Nazis consolidated power, and brutally began exterminating political opponents and persecuting Jews. He even went so far as to worry that his staff had too many Jews, which he feared would antagonize the German leadership and complicate his delicate work. But that was 1933 and by 1937, he had done enough to earn the hatred of the German regime and put his own life, and that of those he associated with, in danger. He took risks to attempt, with some success, to protect people who might otherwise have died at the hands of the Nazis.
He returned to the U.S. to lecture widely, warning that Hitler was bent on war and the extermination of a race of people. President Roosevelt, we now know, was listening, but in the mood of America at the time, he felt politically unable to take action that might have prevented World War II. The enormous pressure William Dodd felt took a toll on his health and he died in 1940, living just long enough to see his predictions coming true.
Seventy years later it is hard to believe it ever happened, and that a man with a front-row seat to the beginnings of the Holocaust and preparations for a war that would cost millions of lives, could be ignored by all but a few. Today, with parts of the world ruled by people with no more scruples than the Nazis, and like Hitler vowing to exterminate nations and people, and having already demonstrated an ability to create massive destruction, and with Western leaders faced with similar political constraints, In The Garden Of Beasts and the story of William Dodd take on an ominous poignancy.
Even with fair skies and cool winds blowing in from an ocean blue.
Always looking for new forms of business, and inspired by the current NBA playoffs, we wonder if there is an emerging market of armor for basketball players. There have already been hints that a demand exists. Notice those cute masks that players wear when they break their noses. In a game that celebrates increasing roughness, with coaches and players vowing to be more “physical” than their opponents, it seems only a matter of time when basketball players will look more like football and hockey players than the swishy-dressed of today.
Not that we think this is a good thing; just practical and perhaps a business opportunity. After all, is it not business that has professional basketball teams playing obscenely long schedules, beginning in the early fall and lasting well into June? As we noted not too long ago, basketball is likely to be the first sport to have a new season begin before the old one ends. But back to sex and violence.
Chicago’s best player got hurt with the playoffs barely underway. The Miami Heat has one of its Big Three out with an injury, and other players constantly nursing something or other, missing games and playing hurt. This in a game which James Naismith invented in 1891 to be a safe, indoor sport to keep the lads active in the cold northern winters. Today, to protect the players we need armor.
Helmets, of course, should be first, complete with face masks and perhaps decorative Prussian spikes on top. That would one-up football and hockey and perhaps cut down on the concussion lawsuits that are all the rage among former football players, although there could be a danger of puncture wounds to the groin as players lower their bodies to charge through defenders, a very common tactic in today’s game. That would, of course, necessitate some form of body armor, and maybe shoulder pads. This would not be terribly heavy, less than 25 pounds, and probably only reduce the average player’s standing jump by a foot. Some players already wear knee braces, and knee pads have been around for years, although somewhat out of fashion because you can’t see them due to length of the gowns that are the current mode.
If these ideas seem extreme, keep in mind that there was a time when football players did not wear helmets, and concussions, oddly enough, were not so common. Ditto hockey. Back when we cut out photos of hockey players from Sportmagazine to decorate our bedroom walls, none of the great stars wore headgear. It was not considered manly. So now we press on, designing the helmets, blackjacks and other garments which will be quickly bought up by the poor souls who support this perversion of a once-great game. Our company has already cornered the market on helmet spikes. You guys can get the rest.
Wealthy fellow gets in a bad accident and goes to lawyer.
“Hello Mr. Goodenrich,” the lawyer says. “I have reviewed your case carefully and I must tell you it is a tough one. Your blood alcohol was out of sight, you seem to have been flying, you left the scene of the accident, there were serious consequences and frankly, there is only one thing I like about your case.”
“What’s that, Mr. Lawyer?”
“You’re rich.”
“Well, rank has its privilege.”
“Yes indeed, and we will do the best we can for you. We will try to get a change of venue on the grounds that you have already been tried in the press. That may work. It’s up to the judge. But we will argue you weren’t going that fast, your expensive car malfunctioned, you only had a few drinks, you thought you hit a big snake, and your alcohol level was high only because you drank something after the crash because you were in pain and jumpy and needed something to relax you and you happened to be near and friend’s house who gave you a few drinks. We can argue all of this but there’s only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody will believe it. But all is not lost. We can bring in the best expert witnesses to testify that all of these impossible things could happen. But I think your best bet is the jury.”
“How tell?”
“Jury selection is the key to any trial. That’s why we spend so much time on it. We need to get the right jury, and that will require hiring an expert to get the kind of jurors we need to win this thing, or at least not lose everything. Such experts cost money, but it is our best shot.”
“Mr. Lawyer, you mean we need an expert at jury selection to get some really gullible people?”
“No, Mr. Goodenrich. They could be dumb as ducks and I could be at my usual brilliant best, but they still won’t believe it. No, we need a different kind of juror. We need a juror who wants to be on the jury. Most people don’t. They don’t have the time, or they are prejudiced because their ex was an alky, or they are married to the judge, or their brother lost the same kind of case, or it will cut into their bar time or they’ve been planning a trip to Ireland for years. … They’ll say anything to get off the jury. But we need people who really, really want to be on this jury. It’s our best chance. We need grounds for an appeal, and if the judge doesn’t screw up royally, we got to hope for jury misconduct. And that’s why we need an expert in jury selection. We need somebody who can spot a juror who will screw up and give us a shot at a new trial, which will take time.”
“I see,” Mr. Goodenrich says glumly.
“You see, my friend, if somebody wants to be on a jury you know something is fishy. You have to ask what is their motive. And suppose their motive is to make money on the case. You know, the O.J. stuff. And maybe they see an advantage in a certain outcome and might try to influence the other jurors, talk about the case, go out of their way to learn stuff out of court. Maybe even write a damned book. That’s not likely to happen, but you never know. My sense is we are going to need an appeal, and all this stuff could be grounds. It’s a long shot, but it’s a shot.”
“So what if we get an appeal?”
“Time. It all takes time. If we lose you might stay out on bail and be under house arrest or whatever, but then we can start all over trying for another trial, and this time we will have more ammunition, citing the stuff the smart-ass columnists write as prejudicial and requiring for a change of venue, to Alaska or some place where everybody is drunk all the time. There’s a lot of stuff we can do.”
“And how much time would we get?”
“Mr. Goodenrich, I will shoot to string it out for 20 years. By then we all may be dead. But it all depends on the right jury. We may need to hire an expert to find us the right jury expert.”
The latest scam is in today’s Sun-Sentinel, front-page play.
People are being threatened with lawsuits for pirating adult videos. It is similar to the suits about stealing music a few years back. In this case, it is also a form of extortion, an attempt to get people to avoid embarrassing publicity by settling out of court.
Now we fully recognize that nobody reading this essay has ever seen an adult film, with the possible exception of everybody reading this, but that’s not the point. The point is that this is just one more example of people using (and abusing) the legal system by filing lawsuits they never intend to litigate. The idea is to get people to pay less money than a full-fledged lawsuit would cost. So they pay a grand, or even less, to avoid paying 10 grand to fight the case.
This hits close to home, and it goes back a few years. Does anybody remember the fax machine? We used to fax, as did many businesses, advising potential clients of special sections – restaurant issues, etc. But we never sent a fax without the potential client asking for information. It always, and I say again always, began with a phone call from one of our ad reps, and the potential advertiser asked us to send information via fax.
Along comes Peter N. Price, attorney out of Hollywood, Fla. He threatens to sue us for sending unsolicited faxes to several clients. He wants to settle before litigation, for maybe $500 per fax. We call the lawyer’s clients, who say they had no problem with us, and don’t want to be involved. Therefore, we say no, and accuse the lawyer of extortion, but that means hiring an attorney, and we have the unfortunate condition of having lawyers who are serious about their work. So we have responses, hearings, postponements, the usual B.S.
Meanwhile, we are looking up Price, and find he has a reputation for odd lawsuits. We also engage in some testy phone conversation, at which we are good, having once aspired to the stage. It turns out that Price has an associate whose name is Michael Satz. Coincidence, that the name is the same as our longtime state attorney?
Of course, we advised the state attorney, which cost us nothing but a phone call, and produced no action that we know of, but in the meantime, and the meantime is several years, our legal fees grew to about $10,000. Which is exactly what these scams are about. What businessman in his right mind would spend 10 grand for something that might have gone away for $500? Well, maybe you can call it principle.
How about a happy ending. Unknown to us at the time, Peter N. Price’s fax scam was the minor league of his calling. In 2010 he was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge James Cohn to 46 months in jail, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,712,766.92 in restitution. Mortgage fraud. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
