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The law prepares for intelligent cars

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In terms of “realistic visions of the future,” Minority Report is one of my favorite movies. Not because I think mutants will one day be able to predict criminal action, but for all the little things. People taking drugs through their eyes, invasive technology recognizing and advertising to you without your consent and, of course jet pack police. Just kidding on that last one, what I like is the transportation system—GPS tracked, intelligent cars that can be both automated to travel to its destination and driven by the person inside.

That’s where we’re headed, and sooner rather than later we will need to figure out how to handle the new technology in our legislature.

It began back in June 2011, when Nevada passed the first driverless car legislation in American history. Of course it wasn’t intended to put driverless cars on the road, but to allow Google to continue testing its designs in the safety of the Nevada desert.

The law was originally introduced in March 2011 as bill AB511. It defines an intelligent, autonomous car “to mean a motor vehicle that uses artificial intelligence, sensors, and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself with the active intervention of a human operator.”

Now, this legislation is pretty much just there to give the Nevada Department of Transportation authority to decide how these sorts of vehicles should be dealt with in the future, and how they should be tested in the present. But don’t let that fact distract from the somewhat shocking realization that the government has been forced to create laws for real life driverless cars!

We are still a few years from having to deal with widespread, or even public, use of driverless cars, but already states like Florida are introducing legislation similar to that in Nevada.

Smart people are starting to think about the future of truly smart cars at places like the Santa Clara Law Review Symposium a few weeks ago. Here are some of the big questions:

  • Liability: If cars can still, to some degree, be controlled by humans, do we give them some degree of responsibility for keeping them out of trouble? If the whole point of having a robotic vehicle is so that the driver/passenger can do other things besides drive, should we really expect them to be able to make snap decisions when it’s necessary?
  • Shared road space: Automatic cars would follow the rules, would it be a cut and dry case if a human driver collided with a driverless car?
  • Cultural acceptance: People don’t even believe that cars you plug in are as safe as gas guzzlers, how long will it take people to accept that cars can be perfectly controlled. What’s interesting here is that humans are almost certainly worse drivers than robotic cars will be by the time they hit the road. They will be more safe, less prone to distraction and ill-mood. A robotic car will never experience road rage. Yet, will humans, en masse, accept that the occasional robo-glitch is less frequent than human error? Will regulations be necessary to insist on drivers using intelligent technology? There’s a precedent for that sort of action from the NHTSA when their is tested technology that just makes everyone safer.
  • Criminal element: How do we account for people who commit criminal acts using intelligent cars. Specifically with regard to unmanned vehicles and terrorist attacks.

All of these ideas and issues will need to be established in advance of intelligent cars taking the roads. What’s ironic is that we are always integrating our minds with technology. We store data on phones and computers rather than in our brains. We communicate instantly via text and internet instead of waiting to call friends from home or (gasp!) until we see them again. We know these behaviors are dangerous, yet many states resist state texting laws. We can’t have it both ways. Either we give in to the fact that technology can make us safer and more efficient and plan for its use, or we swear off those same technologies.

Of course we’ll never do the latter, so it’s nice to see some states and very smart people are thinking about the former.

 

The SOPA legal fight and the politicization of the tech community

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The cutting-edge tech community has long maintained a distance from both national and local politics. Instead, a sort of techno-libertarianism has characterized the politic leanings of those who have developed the internet culture and the programs and technologies we use it today.

But the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a wide-reaching bill introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas in 2011. The bill is currently before the House Judiciary Committee, but already the online court of public opinion has weighed in. Tech Dirt has been at the fore of the movement, railing almost daily against what it sees as a major infringement on what makes the internet so great in the first place: freedom of speech and content without regard to copyright.

For the first years of its existence, the internet was a largely legilislation-free zone. Enforcement mechanism were even more sparse. As a result, it became the cultural hub of free speech, self-creation, innovation and cat videos.

Of course a new, unregulated medium presented challenges to companies that had profited from the old systems. Tower Records fought the change and lost, heavily. They didn’t lose to free content on Napster, but to a program that distributed music without having to travel to then walk around a Tower Records.

Opponents of the bill argue that copyright legislation can’t change market dynamics. People will always choose the easiest, simplest way to acquire what they want–if it’s free, all the better. That’s essentially what David Price, the piracy guru at Envisional, the research firm often used by big media companies like NBC that want to curtail piracy, said at this year’s Consumer Electronic Show.

“The content owners are really fighting the tide of the Internet,” Price said. “They’re trying to fight the flow of the Internet which is all about making content as widely available as possible, as easily as possible, as quickly as possible. They’re trying to hold back the 1.4 billon users of the Internet from doing what the Internet wants them to do.”

It’s a powerful statement. What lawmakers behind the bill don’t recognize, says Price, is that legislation is not the answer. You cannot sue your way to victory. I-tunes would have put Tower Records out of business even if Napster had never existed.

Today, Bit-Torrent allows users to download tons of content quickly and without complication. It’s simply the most efficient way on the internet to acquire content. The Torrent system harnesses the power of the internet–that a lot of people are on and want the same things– to boost speeds of acquisition and sharing. No mainstream outlet uses it effectively.

Legislation might shut a site like Bit Torrent down, at minimal cost to the host and with no action affecting the people who participating, many of whom are likely spread around the globe. It’s impossible to constrain the options of people on the internet, so all you can do is to compete by putting out a safe, legitimate, and most crucially, cutting edge technology and hoping that people decide to use it.

The SOPA issue highlights a growing tension between the tech community and congress. The essential mistrust is a belief that those on Capitol Hill just don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to tech issues, and are using their power in ignorance of well known best practices.

But this is also the fault of the tech community that has isolated itself from the concerns of real-world governance. However, this dynamic is changing. Code For America is an organization that, like Teach For America, sends smart people in to a tough situation. But instead of education, Code For America addresses the tech deficit in American cities.

Founder Jennifer Pahlka sees people migrating from the tech community to public service. The goal: equip the government with the tools to react as efficiently as the internet does. “It’s something that needs levers and inputs far deeper than just voting for a candidate,” says Pahlka. “In 2000s, people wanted government to look more like businesses. Now people say to us ‘so you want the government to work like an internet startup.’ And we say ‘we want it to look like the internet itself. Anybody can participate, you can create in a permissionless way to create the world you want to live in.”

This is, of course, the tack that national lawmakers should take as well. Collaborate with the experts in the field and find out what works and what doesn’t, then legislate around that. The internet is a frontier, but it isn’t lawless, only self-policing. The quickest gun isn’t some rugged law man, but a collective impulse to find the easiest way of doing things.

In legislating the internet, Congressmen like Lamar Smith would do well to observe that a lack of government regulation is not the same thing as lawlessness.

Faulty DePuy hip replacements disappoint thousands, will cost billions

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My Dad and I used to play basketball together nearly every day in a park out back of our apartment. The hoop was only about nine and a half feet, so he could touch the rim, which seemed pretty incredible to my nine year old self. When I (we) got older and I became too good at basketball for us to compete, we could still play tennis, a game that is nearly as mental as it is physical. Even when I could run circles around my dad, I wasn’t fast enough to cover the whole baseline against his precise serve and volley attack.It has been more than five years since my father and I have played any sport besides golf together. The reason is that his hips are congenitally weak, and like his mother, aunt and sister, my Dad needed his deteriorating hip replaced before he was 50. In fact, he had to get both replaced with metal ball and socket joint that they told him would last about 10-15 years.

After surgery, my dad took years to recover as he struggled to fit physical training in a busy work routine. Today, he is nowhere near as mobile as he was a couple years before the surgery and the solution is hardly pain free. But so far, discomfort and decreased mobility is the only major side effect.

Thousands of Americans are not so lucky. They’re finding out that the painful and expensive procedure to replace the sensitive hip joint may have included installing a faulty part. This is tragic news for those who sacrificed a great deal of time and resources to feel better, and it’s going to cost a ton to fix.

According to a lengthy report in the New York Times, “Medical and legal experts estimate the hip failures may cost taxpayers, insurers, employers and others billions of dollars in coming years, contributing to the soaring cost of health care. The financial fallout is expected to be unusually large and complex because the episode involves a class of products, not a single device or just one company.”

The issue is that metal on metal hip replacement joints are failing within a few years of their installation, instead of the promised 15. Patients feel as though they’ve been sold a false bill of goods, and want some measure of restitution. They are heading to the courts en masse to find it.

The infamous DePuy hip replacement product was recalled last year, and so far 3,500 cases have been filed. The Times referenced a decade-old case also dealing with metal hip replacements from Sulzer Orthopedics that cost the company $1 billion in damages. This case is expected to “dwarf” Sulzer’s.

DePuy is attempting to work on a case-by-case basis to help finance the cost of the corrective surgeries, but the Times reported that results have been mixed, at best. Many patients’ expenses have not been covered in full, and all signs are pointing to an enormous amount of litigation of the Johnson and Johnson division.

More than 125,000 hip replacements were performed in the US last year, and a third of them involved the metal on metal joint system.

That’s the same system my dad has sitting in either hip. We’re lucky that so far, he hasn’t had the issues with infection and sharp pain that can come when metal rubs on metal and splinters.

But thousands of Americans who hoped to turn their lives around with surgery are getting far more surgery and expenses than they bargained for, with poorer results than they were promised. Right now, individuals are footing most of the bill.

But Forbes expects manufacturers will eventually shell out $5 billion to correct the defective system. That money might cover the tangible costs, but it certainly won’t do much to restore consumer confidence. Even for those whose surgeries have thus far been successful, it now feels like a waiting game. But instead of a surgery looming 15 years down the road, the worry is that at any moment, another extremely expensive, invasive, painful surgery could be necessary.


Government recommends ban on cell phones, even hands-free tech

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The National Travel Safety Board have recommended a ban on all drivers from using electronic devices while driving. It’s about damn time. The proposed ban would extend to cell phones, even hands free devices like Bluetooth ear pieces, but would allow for drivers to use cell phones in an emergency, and GPS navigational devices.
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While the recommendations are far from binding, and it’s unlikely Congress will take any action that gives the appearance of “Big Government” meddling in personal lives, it should at least influence the decisions of legislative bodies.

According to NBC news, NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman summed up the organization’s sentiment “No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life.”

Hersman also indicated that the catalyst for the recommendation was a tragic accident in Missouri that killed two people and injured some 38 more. The pile up was blamed on a 19 year old driver who sent or received 11 text messages in the 11 minutes leading up to the enormous mess of collisions.

Well said. In 2010 alone, distracted driving killed more than 3,000 people. This is the kind of thing that is completely preventable, and it’s encouraging to see signs that research might drive policy decisions on this issue.

However, there’s serious pushback on the idea that it’s absolutely necessary to be fully focused while driving. A study in Wayne State questioned the efficacy of previous studies that touted the dangers of distracted driving. However other studies, like one out of the Texas Tech Institute have shown that drivers using phones, especially to text, are incredibly dangerous on the road.

Despite mounting evidence that using a phone while driving is dangerous, only 10 states currently have hand-held phone bans. Texting presents a more self-evident danger, and 35 states have correspondingly adopted texting while driving bans.

The big news here isn’t that people are acknowledging how dangerous phones can be in the car—I think we all get that part. What’s great for road safety advocates is that this is also banning hands free devices. There’s long been a myth that using hands free phones is safe. But when you’re on the phone, your mind is still distracted, even if your hands aren’t.

Advocacy group Focus Driven writes that, “studies show hands-free devices provide no benefit.” With carmakers doing more and more to integrate distracting technologies in cars, it’s important to acknowledge that hands-free is not the same as distraction free.

Here’s hoping that the recommendation can help push through bills that propose tying Federal funding to states that accept distracted driving laws.

Photo Credit: Jason Weaver

Big Branch avoids real justice in $209mil settlement

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fast cash loans today “I’ll believe corporations are people when Rick Perry executes one” is becoming a popular catchphrase amongst people fed up with the perceived lack of corporate accountability in criminal courts.

That sentiment courses through a scathing New York Times editorial on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia. Alpha Natural Resources will foot the $209 million dollar bill which contains civil and criminal penalties for the role of its subsidiary, Massey Energy.

Despite the enormous figure, the families do not feel justice has been served. The Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration blasted the Upper Big Branch for “a series of basic safety violations at UBB that were entirely preventable.”

The investigation found “multiple examples of systematic, intentional, and aggressive efforts by PCC/Massey to avoid compliance with safety and health standards, and to thwart detection of that non-compliance by federal and state regulators.”

Essentially, the men who died were condemned to do so by the negligence and greed of a large corporation. But Federal though prosecutors were able wring this settlement that will pay $46.5 million to the victims’ families, bringing criminal charges against specific executives who knowingly put people in harms way may prove impossible.

This is more than just a failure of one company to play by the rules, but of system that allows mining companies to set their own rules—violate them, then pay only monetary consequences.

Overall, mining safety laws are weak. Safety violations, excepting instances in which records are falsified, are only misdemeanors. There’s little doubt that the coal mining industry’s powerful lobbying efforts have kept such regulations intact.

Even though this was the largest coal disaster in 40 years, no legislation has been passed that would close the loopholes that encourage coal mines to push the limits of safety. The bulk of the settlement agreement money will go to improving infrastructure in the mine, fines for safety violations and a miner safety foundation.

It seems like industry leaders from finance to coal are getting off easy for damages to individuals by asking their corporations to foot the bill. But in this case, if prosecutors got what they could, what’s most disturbing is the government’s inability to pass new legislation that would close up these loopholes. It’s been 20 months, and nothing has changed.

In public discussion, “regulation” has become a bogeyman, the enemy of progress. And yet corporate regulation has been on a steady decline for a half century.

Pizza is a vegetable. It wasn’t pizza grease that clogged the movement to make school lunches healthier, but the food production lobby.

The government was designed with a system of checks and balances in mind. But so far, it seems that corporations willing to spend millions on lobbying are exempt from the check the government must place on corporate exploitation of power.

Crushed: Viral video producers unsuccessfully sue South Park

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The makers of South Park fear no lawsuit. At the end of their controversial “Trapped in the Closet” episode derided Scientology and exposed a number of church “secrets,” the main characters scream “well fine! Go ahead and sue me!…I’m not scared of you! Sue me!”

The Church of Scientology is known to be litigious group, but they never came after South Park formally. Instead, Tom Cruise used his leverage with Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom, to keep the episode from re-airing.

Of course, as soon as Cruise was no longer promoting Paramount Picture’s (owned by Viacom) Mission Impossible: 3, the episode was replayed multiple times, and it survived on the internet at South Park Studios and in pirated form.

Having seen Tom Cruise and Scientology fail to take on South Park, the makers of the popular Youtube Video “What What (in the butt)” should have known to leave well enough alone. South Park parodied the video in an episode on internet viral videos, and Brownmark, the company behind the original, filed a suit for copyright infringement.

Strangely enough, South Park actually licensed the music, but not the video, which Brownmark produced.

No matter, Brownmark won’t be seeing any money from licensing fees–quite the opposite.  The court was so heavily in favor of South Park and Viacom that the suit never went to trial, and now the court has ruled that Brownmark must pay attorney fees, over $30,000, for even bringing it up.

Here are some gems from the decision:

“To begin, the defendants’ fair-use argument was very strong, and Brownmark’s legal position was objectively unreasonable. The Court took the somewhat rare step of deciding this case at the motion to dismiss stage, precisely because the defendants’ fair-use defense was so strong, satisfying all four fair-use factors.”

 

“First, the Court found that South Park’s work was a “clear” parody, which one could gather quickly and easily from watching the episode.”

 

“South Park’s use was insubstantial.”

 

“…it is most likely that South Park’s use would have spurred demand for the original, making the viral video’s spread more rapid after its exposure to a national television audience.”

Inquiring further, the Court finds that Brownmark’s legal positions were also objectively unreasonable, and thus their position was frivolous.

 

“Not only was South Park’s video a parody, but South Park substantially transformed its version from the original. South Park did not directly copy Brownmark’s original video and insert it into the episode;[2] rather, South Park created a video that purposefully mocked the obscure images and song of the original, all in an attempt to poke fun at the original, its viral popularity, and internet crazes as a whole.”

 

Further, the Court is convinced that Brownmark’s motivation in filing this suit was questionable. Not only was Brownmark’s position unreasonable, but it also waited nearly two years to file a lawsuit, only after being repeatedly rejected with warnings that South Park’s use was copyrighted. (Docket #34, Ex. B). This demonstrates an attempt by Brownmark to use the threat of litigation against the defendants as a sort of “sword of Damocles”—hanging by a thread over the heads of the defendants while Brownmark attempted to extract a licensing fee.”

Yeesh! Finally, the court did take some pity:

“While Brownmark’s legal action was unreasonable, the Court fears that imposing financial ruination on a small company, like Brownmark, for an attempt to protect its rights might result in similarly-situated plaintiffs with stronger claims refraining from enforcement.”

 

In fact, the court is waiting to see how much Brownmark can afford before handing down a fine. Perhaps that generosity made the court feel better about the (justifiable) venom coursing through the decision.

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Is legal entrepreuership the new trend?

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When resources become scarce, traditions built during fat times must be changed in favor of leaner, more innovative practices. In a time of online legal services, a depressed economy and law school fees that remain sky high, many lawyers have been forced to reconsider their expectations for a career on law.

Traditional pathways to success like legal school to big firm associate to big firm partner are becoming rarer and rarer, according to an article in the New York Times that extensively details a growing trend in the legal profession: entrepreneurship.

In some ways the forces encouraging entrepreneurship are the same ones that are driving changes in law schools and in the hiring practices of major firms. Operations need to be leaner. For large practices, that means hiring people who need as little training as possible, and attracting clients by offering cheaper services via not billing them for hours spent training new associates.

So those new associates need to go to law schools that offer more practical training. If students are still willing to pay $150,000 per year for schooling, they better be able to find real employment directly after graduating. In down years for employment, it becomes that much more crucial to have more than just a theoretical understanding of the law.

For people striking out on their own, there can be some competitive advantages to running a two or three person shop. Fees are lower because there are fewer hands for the client’s money to pass through before it reaches an attorney. This is especially aided by the low cost of doing business out of a home office or rented space with an internet connection.

The Times story referenced one start up firm that offers legal services for flat rates as opposed to billable hours. That, in addition to more efficient pricing, can give them a leg up on larger firms, though there is always the risk that something will be delayed in court and force them to eat the extra work. And while a startup of any nature will take tons of hard work, once its up and running, lawyers have the ability to set their own hours and find a work-life balance that may be more elusive at a larger firm.

This sort of business agility is important to today’s startup culture. When new companies are just getting going, they don’t have the capital to afford to retain an expensive, high profile firm. Though large conglomerates and major mergers are happening all around, it’s important to note that media, business and the way we consume pretty much everything is being individualized and fragmented. It makes sense that the legal world would follow suit.

Of course there will always be plenty of room for the big boy law firms, and they will continue to dominate the most high profile cases. And in some ways, larger firms that can absorb losses can act as haven for lawyers that might be otherwise discarded. But the economics of the legal landscape are shifting and smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to stay ahead of the curve.

Why Minnesota? A legal update on the NBA labor battle

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After months displaying a disheartening inability to compromise and bickering amongst the NBA Players Association and the owners, the league and its players are going to court. The NBA Players Association decided to file a disclaimer of interest, which disbands the union to allow for an anti-trust suit, but differs from decertification. Decertification is a more aggressive legal maneuver, and is a complete dissolution of the labor union, whereas a disclaimer allows the current union leadership to regain their positions after everything is settled.
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The players felt for months that the NBA was not negotiating in good faith, a somewhat fuzzy term that can only be evaluated subjectively, and that that lack of faith made fair negotiating impossible. The owners think the union is bargaining in bad faith by walking away from the negotiations to take the fight to the courts.

But the reality is that, if we take the last collective bargaining agreement as the starting point, the owners have won massive monetary and “system” concessions from the players. At this point, the system, or the rules that govern the length of contracts and, players and agents argue, the freedom of the free agent market, is the primary issue. The owners and players have essentially agreed on the amount of total revenue that will be paid the players as a group each season, but owners want to mitigate their risk when signing a player by shortening contracts and making it more difficult for players to earn as much money by switching to a new team.

Though the number of players and teams affected by such restrictions each year would be relatively small, the owners and players have picked this hill for the negotiations to die on. As a result, big names like LeBron James and David Stern have been supplanted by David Boies, one of the highest profile lawyers in America.

Boies has been portrayed in Recount and will be played by Morgan Freeman (an interesting casting choice; though Boies is white, he gives off the same grandfatherly charm as Freeman) in an upcoming movie about the Proposition 8 struggle in California. More importantly, he also represented the NFL in its legal battle with its own union earlier in 2011. In fact, Boies is returning to the very same state in which he and the NFL defeated the NFL’s union, this time representing the NBA players.

This week, the NBA consolidated its case from California to its other in Minnesota, and Boies seems to have learned a thing since his last go around. Instead of filing for an injunction to force owners to end the lockout, as the NFL players did, Boies is seeking a summary judgment declaring the lockout illegal, thus avoiding the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which prohibits a judge from issuing an injunction in a labor dispute.

But why Minnesota? The NBA players and owners both have plenty to lose from a lost season, but owners maintain control of their teams far longer than the average player stays in the league which means they’ll be better situated to reap the benefits of a good deal long after every player currently in the league retires. Thus, the owners are reportedly less concerned than the players are by the prospect of a season-long shut down. So Boies wants to get things moving quickly, hoping to secure a summary judgment before too much more of the season is chewed up, and Minnesota’s courts are less congested than California’s.

Of course in a big industry legal battle like this, it’s unlikely anything will move with too much haste. The NBA could delay the start of things by moving to have the case transferred from Minnesota to the Southern District of New York, a court that has issued numerous league-friendly rulings over the years.

International Sanctions, OFAC and the butterfly effect: Why US foreign policy matters in unexpected ways

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Part of what I hope to get at in contributing here to Groupblawg is to talk about legal issues that affect businesses internationally. Especially interesting to me, either because I’m a geek or a Greek, are the decisions and events that have unexpected and far-reaching side effects– let’s call them legal “butterflies”.
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The US sanctioning strategy is one such butterfly. The International Bar Association’s (IBA) Annual Conference is here in Dubai this year. It afforded many of us the great opportunity to hear some terrific speeches. Adam M. Smith of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) gave a talk mainly focused on sanctions on Iran, but that also provided a general overview of sanction regimes generally. Since the IBA is clearly focused on this, it seemed like a perfect topic for my first post here at Groupblawg.

A brief overview for the uninitiated: The executive branch has control over foreign policy matters under the Constitution and for at least 200 years it has initiated economic sanctions against foreign governments. Normally, sanctions are just one of a host of other diplomatic tools used to influence individuals and governments hostile to the US. Notice I didn’t use the words “punish” or “force”: these sanctions are not meant to do either, otherwise, certain due process requirements would attach. Instead, they are just meant to influence. The executive branch still has this authority, but now it is largely under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) (50 USC s. 1701-1706) in which Congress gave the President fairly broad authority in declaring an international emergency that had to be dealt with by sanctioning people and governments. Today, over 5,000 individuals, banks, and governments are on the sanctions list, aka the Specifically Designated Nationals (SDN) list, that also includes banks and companies.

In essence, OFAC prevents companies from trading with SDNs without a license from OFAC for specific purposes, like medical or humanitarian efforts. Also, if you are listed on OFAC’s list, you are essentially black-listed from conducting financial transactions globally because of a particular quirk in the global financial system: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York clears all international trades that require US dollars and the US dollar is by far the most widely held foreign currency reserve in the world at over 60%. What this effectively means is don’t use the US dollar in “cash” to pay for things like commodities or to clear international financial transaction. Any time such a trade is made, it must cross into the US, if ever so briefly, to be cleared by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This dynamic gives the sanctions tremendous reach and power.

But why do sanctions against Iran, Syria, Cuba, drug traffickers, terrorists affect U.S. businesses, especially those doing only minor trade abroad? Well, the US government can and does punish companies for violating its sanction regime, even for relatively minor amounts of trade. Just last week, Wilson Tool of Minnesota was fined $15,000 by OFAC for conducting selling its punch presses without an OFAC license to a company in Iran. The deal itself was only worth $10,304.33.

So what’s the take away for businesses? Make sure that you know who you are doing business with and have a process for checking those people against sanction lists. There are a variety of computer programs that can help you do this, but, in general, your bank will do this as part of its standard operating procedure. If you’re a US company, make sure that your US bank is somehow involved in the money transfer so that they can pre-screen the deal. If the company or individual that you’re negotiating with doesn’t want to be paid through your US bank (or another international bank that will run similar checks), think twice about the deal and who you’re sitting across the table from.

And, as always, CALL YOUR LAWYER.

John E. Katsos is Assistant Professor of Business Ethics and Law at the American University in Dubai School of Business Administration. He has his JD and MBA from the George Washington University and his BA from Haverford College. Follow him on twitter: @jekatsos.

Photo Credit: Pablo Garcia

Federal Court: Texas redistricting plan “discriminatory”

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The answer to how America’s political climate has become so hostile and why Republicans and Democrats seem so unwilling to forge compromise of any kind might be most easily explained by the effects of local redistricting. It’s a practice that allows those in power to geographically exclude people who might vote for the other party by redrawing lines that dictate which vote gets counted where. Districts that are completely partisan don’t elect the middle ground, they elect candidates that pander most to their base—those who can be “most republican” or “most democratic.” Once on Capitol Hill, there’s little incentive to work together if the goal is to preserve one’s place in power, and that means appealing only to one side of the aisle back home. займ онлайн взять за несколько минут
So it comes as little surprise that redistricting plans from state representatives of Texas, whose government is dominated at every level by Republicans, would be viewed skeptically by a federal judicial panel in Washington, DC. This week, that panel ruled that the Texas legislature employed “improper” means of shaping congressional districts to better reflect growing numbers of minority voters.

Critics of the Texas plan worried that the map would not reflect the number of Latino residents because it created only one new minority-dominated district and three more that would easily go to the Republican base. Because the Texas legislature has a history of excluding minorities through redistricting, it is required to receive pre-clearance for redistricting from the Justice Department.

There’s a growing movement across America to handover redistricting powers to bi-partisan commissions. Of course, in place like California and Florida, where incumbents have tortuously gerrymandered districts to protect their own interests, these commissions aren’t all that popular. But they are necessary, as the courts can only approve or reject new plans and cannot proactively seek to redraw maps to reflect populations rather than politics.

The duty of redistricting in Texas now falls to a panel of three federal judges in San Antonio, who must create and ratify an interim redistricting plan for the sure to be contentious 2012 elections. The District Court’s decisions will likely favor state democrats as the republican majority has had the power to further entrench itself during a decade of dominance.

This is a classic example of judiciary forces providing a much needed check on the government representatives eager to cement their party’s power. What’s worrisome is that so much damage has already been done, and it’s only through attempts to attain more power that courts will have the ability to intervene in states that have not adopted independent commissions.