Starting Five

1. Hey, I know that Danica Patrick taking the pole at the Daytona 500 is the biggest thing ever (according to SportsCenter), but let’s lead with a college basketball coach shoving his player right in front of the entire arena. Cal coach Mike Montgomery shoves Golden Bear Allen Crabbe during a timeout, and if this happens in the Big Ten, ACC or Big East, it leads SportsCenter. It’s, you know, kind of a big deal.

A few items: Cal trailed by 12 at that point, and went on to win by eight. Crabbe would finish with a game-high 23 points. Montgomery called the timeout at 16:31 of the second half, or 31 seconds before the mandated TV timeout, so you know he was pissed. The Golden Bears (16-9) are actually in the midst of a terrific month, having won five of six and taking down a pair of top ten-ranked conference foes, Arizona and Oregon.

Still, what will be the repercussions of the shove? Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour released a statement saying that the shove was “unacceptable” but that she is confident that it will not happen again. In other words, she’s the Lanny Breuer (read on, it’ll become clear later) of athletic directors. Which is to say, why punish someone if it will upset the system’s chances of success?

2. The captain, Derek Jeter, meets the media, describes his offseason as “absolutely terrible”. Even though he spent it in his 30,000-square foot Florida mansion with Hannah Davis. When Jeter complains that cable is more annoying than _____ , he actually can do so with the DirecTV genie seated right beside him.

 

3. No one writes more important stories, more consistently, than Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. In the latest issue he combs through both the HSBC and LIBOR scandals (“Too Big To Jail”), the former of which represents the formal end of justice in the United States. This is excellent writing and reporting (more than just a screed, Taibbi finds a whistleblower, Everett Stern, whose tale is part Office Space, part Michael Clayton). Taibbi himself concedes in the opening paragraph that “People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street”, but later writes “There is nobody anywhere growing weed strong enough to help the human mind grasp the enormity of this crime.” More on this in Reserves.

4. Harold and Kumar Win the Lottery? A pair of brothers in Wichita, Kans., win $75,000 in the lottery and, while celebrating with marijuana and meth, accidentally blow up their home. Something about refueling their bongs with butane. As lifelong Sunshine State resident Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated wondered on Twitter, “How did this not happen in Florida?”

5. ESPN hoops dude Andy Katz appears (via the Subway Fresh Take hotline!) on Mike & Mike this morning and guest host Mike Hill asks him if he wouldn’t mind sticking around until after the break. Then, after the commercial, Hill thanks Katz for sticking around. Andy Katz works for ESPN. Mike Hill works for ESPN. Where was Andy going to go, Mike? Don’t insult your audience.

Also, during the second segment –which was little more than an excuse to promote “Katz Corner”, Andy’s new college hoops program– Hill asked Jim Boeheim’s favorite reporter if teams that lose their star player should be evaluated differently by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Obviously, a reference to Kentucky. Katz replied with a 90-second filibuster about what the Wildcats must do to make the tournament without ever ANSWERING THE QUESTION.  Answer the question!  “ANSWER THE QUESTION, CLAIRE!”

Reserves

There was an NBA All-Star Game. It looked a lot like Slamball. We always enjoyed Slam Ball.

Get ready for “Djesus Uncrossed.” “When you get to heaven, say ‘Hi’ to my Dad.”

The latest on the Oscar Pistorius murder case.

President’s Day Quiz: How many times does the same surname appear twice on the list of U.S. presidents? Answer at bottom.

Our favorite 89-inch tall high school basketball player, Mamadou Ndiaye, goes for 24 points, 12 boards and eight blocked shots as Brethren Christian (Huntington Beach, Calif.), defeats Pasadena Polytechnic, 65-50, in the 5AA state playoffs.

Meanwhile, across the continent in Orlando, Fla., at another Christian school, four-foot-five (53-inch tall) Julian Newman had 16 points, 12 assists and four rebounds in Downey Christian’s 94-31 defeat of Heritage Prep. Newman is only 11 years old but plays varsity. According to this story in yesterday’s New York Times, he sinks “100 free throws, 200 floaters and 200 jump shots every day.”

 

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So, more on Matt Taibbi’s piece, “Too Big To Jail”. My thoughts, enumerated, so as not to lose your attention.

1. THE DEAL: What basically occurred here is that the U.S. Attorney General found British banking monolith HSBC (which operates in the U.S., as well, and thus was subject to a federal investigation) guilty of, consistently and unreservedly, over the course of nearly a decade, banking with the world’s most evil people and institutions. Helping drug cartels launder money and assisting in the funding of jihadists, as well as clandestinely banking with Iran. All of this after the Justice Dept. had warned HSBC — more than once– that it was skating on think ice.
So who goes to jail? Nobody. Instead, HSBC is fined $1.9 billion, or about five weeks’ income. Breur argues for the fiscal penalty over jail time by saying, “In the world today of large institutions, where much of the financial world is based on confidence, a right resolution is to ensure that counter-parties don’t flee an institution, that jobs are not lost, that there’s not some world economic event that’s disproportionate to the resolution we want.”

2. As Taibbi writes in response to Breur’s statement, “This is bullshit.” Put it this way. The mob kills a member of your family. In fact, the mob shakes down your family’s business and when your dad refuses to pay, they murder him. They do this to a number of people. But you know what? The garbage is being picked up on time — and the mob is in charge of waste management– so, you know, why screw up a good thing? That’s the mentality here. And it stinks, from Breur directly up to Barack Obama. There’s no excuse for this.

3. Taibbi talks about “outrage fatigue” regarding Wall Street. Another factor is that often the concepts are a little too esoteric for Joe the Plumber to properly understand or appreciate. Face it, half of us thought that the LIBOR scandal was about a pharmaceutical drug. However, what is transpiring here is as heinous as anything Pablo Escobar ever did.  LIBOR was about the world’s biggest banks fixing interest rates on a daily basis to jimmy the market; it would be like all 32 NBA coaches getting on a daily conference call, with the league’s referees, to discuss who would win that night’s games and by how much…and I know that there are a few of you out there who believe that already occurs.

4. The penalty is proof that the only real commodity is time. You cannot extend it, cannot inflate it. HSBC was only too happy to part with $1.9 billion (what do the bankers care? It’s not THEIR money) as opposed to anyone actually going to jail.

5. It may be too soon to acknowledge now, but the Obama Administration’s lasting legacy may be that it accelerated the end of civil obedience in our nation. Time and again, first in 2009 with the bailout and the decision not to prosecute anyone involved with the sub-prime loan mortgage crisis, and now with HSBC, the lesson to all Americans is that keeping the system intact — no matter how corrupt it may be — is more important than justice.

In nature devastating shocks to the system take place all the time. Hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis. Nature recovers. Likewise, it might have been a shock to the system to allow other banks besides just Lehman Brothers to fail; it might lead to a short-term fiscal apocalypse if HSBC went under, but guess what? Where there’s a void, the market fills it. That’s capitalism.

We’ve saved the banks. We’ve lost the trust of the people. Fair trade? I don’t think so.

6. Why am I, and why is Taibbi, so upset? Because this story proves, beyond any doubt, that justice is not blind. “An arrestable class and an unarrestable class,” Taibbi writes. “We always suspected it, now it’s admitted. So what do we do?”

We sit and wait for the next, larger and even more pernicious scandal. And we watch as politicians wring their hands and wonder what we all could have done to prevent it.

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POTUS quiz answer: Six. Adams (John and John Quincy); Harrison (Benjamin and William Henry); Cleveland (Grover and Grover; same man, non-consecutive terms); Johnson (Andrew and Lyndon) ; Roosevelt (Theodore and Franklin Delano) and Bush (George and George).