f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

Burlington TV station WCAX reports this afternoon that disbarred NY lawyer

Andrew Capoccia has been found guilty of all 13 charges against him in a

federal fraud trial, and faces prison terms of five to 20 years on each charge.

Capoccia, 62, was accused of defrauding thousands of his “debt-reduction

services” clients of about $23 million.   (WCAX.com, April 5, 2005; The Albany

Business Review, “Vermont Jury Finds Capoccia Guilty,” April 5, 2005))

 

  Your editor has been complaining about Andrew Capoccia’s conduct

since Dec. 1997.    I continue to believe that most of the harm to consumers could have

been avoided, if bar grievance committees in NYS had lived up to their responsibilities

years ago, when Capoccia’s behavior first came to their attention — through his massive

ad campaign, from clients, or from me –long before he had injured ten or twelve thousand

clients.  See blame bar counsel for letting Capoccia harm clients.

update (April 6, 2005):   I read an account this morning for the first

time of Capoccia’s testimony in his own defense.  It does not surprise

me, but it sure should make the do-nothing Grievance Committees, who

failed to investigate his conduct, cringe (Albany Times Union, March 31,

2005):

“And Capoccia said his company, created in Colonie in 1997

and at one point with as many as 11,000 clients, would have

had no problems with the authorities had he been allowed

to run it correctly.

 

” ‘What was being done was perfectly legal, perfectly ethical

and … sanctioned by the Ethics Committee of the state of New

York,” he told the jury.”

 

“tinyredcheck”  Tom Cahill’s NYT op/ed piece today, The Price of Infallibility, makes

the very important point that “there is no single Catholic tradition; there are rather

Catholic traditions.”  Pope John Paul II is truly a great man and politician.  However,

by stressing the tradition of central authority and papal infallibility (only declared in

the mid-19th Century by a pope far less saintly than Karol Wojtila), he may someday

be credited with destroying his Church, by making claims to certitude that belie the

Church’s early roots and that leave no room for thoughtful doubters.  In response to 

Steven Bainbridge and other certatistas, Cahill would say:

“In using ekklesia to describe their church, the early Christians meant to

emphasize that their society within a society acted not out of political power

but only out of the power of love, love for all as equal children of God. But

they went much further than the Athenians, for they permitted no restrictions

on participation: no citizens and noncitizens, no Greeks and non-Greeks, no

patriarchs and submissive females. For, as St. Paul put it repeatedly, ‘There is

no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all are one in Christ

Jesus’.”

• 
  
  
  

  I would also add that it is difficult to be impressed with John Paul II’s

  
  

  “outreach” to other Christian faiths, when it was always done in the

  
  

  context of:  “Let’s all unite (or merely make peace), but remember I’m

  
  

  the CEO and doctrinally infallible head of the Only True Church.”

  The opposite of certain.  Torn between J. Craig William’s claim that blogging is

advertising, and my own dissenting opinion, The Patent Baristas have decided to place the

followingstatement on their weblog:  “This May be an Advertisement.”   Ever on the lookout

for inflected reiteration traps, Prof. Yabut asks:   “This may be a disclaimer, but is it a disclaimer

disclaimer?”

 

Advertencia:  You’ll find a warning at Overlawyered.com today on lawsuit cash  

advances over today, where Walter Olson has collected useful links, and gives Eliot

Spitzer some good press.

 

 

• 
  
  from dagosan:  

now it’s Spring:

peeps

melting on the dashboard

           

                            [April 5, 2005]

 

 

spring breeze

my dead grandfather’s rocker

creaks on the porch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

around the eyes

of the old fisherman

permanent ripples

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a friend dies . . .
    the surrounding mountains seem
    taller and closer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on the old snow shovel       cherry blossoms

 

 

 

George Swede from Almost Unseen (Brooks Books, 2000) 

except: “a friend dies” – The Heron’s Nest (March 2002)

 

 

 

  Evan Schaeffer is four days late with his April Fool’s posting. 

He has fun describing a tragic end to LexThink.  Part of me wonders, though,

about joking that named individuals have died, given the everlasting

nature of web searches and the inability of many Americans, as shown on

Evan’s website,  to recognize satire (especially when the dateline is not April 1).

 

  Well, my daily dose of Daily Whirl is apparently gone forever —

I was referred to Daily Rotation this morning.  Thanks again to aggregation

pioneer Robert Helmer for the fine service.