BartBlog

John P. Martin and Jeff Whelan, The Star Ledger, November 20, 2007

When U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie announced a $311 million settlement to end a probe into kickbacks by leading manufacturers of knee and hip replacements, he touted the agreement as a groundbreaking development for consumers and the industry.

The deal also proved to be lucrative for Christie’s old boss.

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was one of five private attorneys whom Christie hand-picked to monitor the implant makers. Now Ashcroft’s D.C.-based firm is poised to collect more than $52 million in 18 months, among the biggest payouts reported for a federal monitor.

Disclosed in SEC filings, the arrangement calls for Zimmer Holdings of Indiana to pay Ashcroft Group Consulting Services an average monthly fee between $1.5 million and $2.9 million. The figure includes a flat payment of $750,000 to the firm’s “senior leadership group,” individual legal and consulting services billed at up to $895 an hour, and as much as $250,000 a month for expenses including private airfare, lodging and meals.

A spokesman for Ashcroft said yesterday the former attorney general was “uniquely qualified” for the role as monitor and more than 30 professionals at his firm were working on the matter. The spokesman, Mark Corallo, called the fee structure “consistent with any other large-scale monitoring circumstances,” but could not immediately point to similar cases.

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The Tulsa World, November 23, 2007

Richard Roberts sent a letter to the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents on Friday tendering his resignation as university president effective immediately.

The regents will meet Monday and Tuesday to determine action in the search process for a new president.

Executive Regent Billy Joe Daugherty will continue to assume administrative responsibilities of president, working together with Chancellor Oral Roberts, until the regents meeting.

In his letter of resignation to the board, Richard Roberts said, “I love ORU with all my heart. I love the students, faculty, staff and administration and I want to see God’s best for all of them.”

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April Marciszewski, The Tulsa World, November 22, 2007

A former Oral Roberts University senior accountant filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming he was forced to quit because he refused to stay silent about ORU and others allegedly requiring him to falsely list assets as expenses.

Trent Huddleston’s lawsuit claims “he was directed, against his will and over his objections,” to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, the Oklahoma Tax Commission and the public “in particular for the protection of . . . Richard and Lindsay Roberts . . .”

Richard Roberts is on a leave of absence as ORU president while university regents and independent auditors investigate allegations made in an earlier lawsuit by former professors John Swails, Tim Brooker, and Paulita Brooker. That suit claims the Roberts family misspent ORU and Oral Roberts Ministries money, among other allegations. Lindsay Roberts is his wife. Both are defendants in the earlier lawsuit. They have denied wrongdoing, and Richard Roberts has said that he pays for his family’s personal expenses.

Huddleston’s suit was filed by attorneys Gary Richardson and Paul Boudreaux. They also filed the earlier lawsuit, as well as two lawsuits filed Wednesday from ORU students, one claiming his potential degree has been devalued and the other claiming the history department has been decimated and he cannot complete his history degree. All of the suits were filed in Tulsa County District Court.

ORU Director of Public Relations Jeremy Burton said the university declined to comment on the student cases and was reviewing Huddleston’s allegations. Richard Roberts’ attorney did not return a call just before 5 p.m. Wednesday.

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Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, November 18, 2007

John McCain often says on the campaign trail that he wants to take on the system in Washington. Usually, he’s talking about congressional spending and pork-barrel projects. But he also wants to challenge the system of protection that forces presidents to live life in a bubble.

“It’s my intention, if we win this nomination, to reject Secret Service,” he said during one of his many conversations with reporters on his Straight Talk Express this weekend. “Why do I need it?”

He adds: “The day that the Secret Service can assure me that if we’re driving in the motorcade and there’s a guy in a rooftop with a rifle, that they can stop that guy, then I’ll say fine. But the day they tell me, ‘well, we can’t guarantee it,’ then fine, I’ll take my chances.”

McCain rejected Secret Service protection in 2000, after winning the New Hampshire primary. But he wants to go further, rejecting the massive security apparatus should he become president.

“It’s the inconvenience,” McCain said. “It’s the inconvenience it causes people. It’s a waste of the taxpayers money. It’s just everything I don’t like.”

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Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post, November 17, 2007

The ardent supporters of Rep. Ron Paul, the iconoclastic Texas libertarian whose campaign for the presidency is threatening to upend the battle for the Republican nomination, got word yesterday of a new source of outrage and motivation: reports of a federal raid on a company that was selling thousands of coins marked with the craggy visage of their hero.

Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of “sound money” advocates that for the past decade has been selling a private currency it calls “Liberty Dollars.” The company says it has put into circulation more than $20 million in Liberty Dollars, coins and paper certificates it contends are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho, are far more reliable than a U.S. dollar and are accepted for use by a nationwide underground economy.

Norfed officials said yesterday that the six-hour raid occurred just as its six employees were mailing out the first batch of 60,000 “Ron Paul Dollars,” copper coins sold for $1 to honor the candidate, who is a longtime advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve. The group says it has shipped out about 10,000 silver Ron Paul Dollars that sold for $20 and about 3,500 of the copper $1 coins. But it said the agents seized more than 50,000 of the copper coins — more than two tons’ worth — plus smaller amounts of the silver coins and gold and platinum Ron Paul Dollars, which sell for $1,000 and $2,000.

“They took everything, all of the computers, everything but the desks and chairs,” the company’s founder and head, Bernard von NotHaus, said in a telephone interview from his home in Miami. “The federal government really is afraid.” Von NotHaus changed the name of Norfed to Liberty Services earlier this year, but affidavits for government search warrants served yesterday continued to use the older name.

News of the raid lit up Ron Paul online forums yesterday, the latest unlikely episode in a campaign that began as an idiosyncratic bid by the veteran congressman but has grown into a cause with the potential to influence the GOP contest. Paul, 72, has attracted droves of disaffected Republicans and independents to his platform, which includes ending the war in Iraq, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and adhering to a strict libertarian interpretation of the Constitution.

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CBS News, November 13, 2007

WASHINGTON – (AP) A judge who lost a $54 million lawsuit against his dry cleaner over a pair of missing pants has lost his job, District of Columbia officials confirmed.

Roy Pearson’s term as an administrative law judge expired May 2 and the D.C. Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges has voted not to reappoint him, Lisa Coleman, the city’s general counsel, wrote Nov. 8 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press.

Pearson was one of about 30 judges who worked in the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles disputes involving city agencies. He had held his position for two years.

The Washington Post and The Washington Examiner, citing sources familiar with the case, reported the commission’s decision last month. Coleman refused to release a copy of a letter to Pearson informing him of the decision, saying it is considered a personnel matter.

Pearson’s lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court claimed Custom Cleaners, owned by South Korean immigrants, did not live up to Pearson’s expectations of “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” as advertised in store windows.

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April Marciszewski, The Tulsa World, November 14, 2007

A quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted “no confidence” in President Richard Roberts and voted in favor of “greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances” in a 3-1/2-hour meeting Monday night.

Donald R. Vance, professor of biblical languages and literature and one of three authors of a summary of the meeting, said tenured professors want to help ORU’s board of regents do what is right. The professors’ motions let regents know the voice of the faculty, he said.

The vote of no confidence in Roberts as president and CEO of the university was made “without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university” and “is not to be construed as a judgment of guilt or innocence with regard to the present lawsuit against the president and the university,” according to the list of motions and summary of the meeting faxed to media by Gary Richardson, an attorney for the three former professors who are suing ORU, Roberts and other ORU leadership.

Vance said he did not give the report to Richardson.

The vote regarding Roberts did not address his leadership of Oral Roberts Ministries, and “most people personally like him,” Vance said.

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Google pushes 100-mpg car
Offers millions to advance plug-in hybrid vehicles and other technologies that link nation’s transport system to the electric grid.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
June 19 2007: 11:53 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Google said Tuesday it is getting in on the development of electric vehicles, awarding $1 million in grants and inviting applicants to bid for another $10 million in funding to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon.
The project, called the RechargeIT initiative and run from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, aims to further the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – cars or trucks that have both a gasoline engine and advanced batteries that recharge by plugging into the nation’s electric grid.
“Since most Americans drive less than 35 miles per day, you easily could drive mostly on electricity with the gas tank as a safety net,” Dan Reicher, director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google.org, wrote on the organization’s Web site. “In preliminary results from our test fleet, on average the plug-in hybrid gas mileage was 30-plus mpg higher than that of the regular hybrids.”
The project also aims to develop vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, allowing cars to sell their stored power back to the nation’s electricity grid during times of peak demand.