Thoughts on the Boston Bombing

by Rant on April 16, 2013 · 21 comments

in Boston

By now you’ve heard. There were a couple of explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterday. Last I checked, three people were killed and 130 people were being treated for injuries sustained in the blasts. By now, it wouldn’t surprise me if the numbers on both counts climbed.

One of those reported killed was an eight-year-old girl. Who may have been running to show support for the victims of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last DecemberOr maybe she  who was just a spectator in the wrong place at the wrong time. The boy, Martin Richard, was apparently moving to greet his father at the finish line when the bomb exploded. But still. Eight years old. Her His life snuffed out in an instant. [Update: Edited after SarcasticTom on Twitter tipped me off that the victim wasn't a little girl.]

I’m not going to link to too many articles in the post. Two commentaries I’ve seen stand out: This one by Bonnie D. Ford of ESPN.com, and another one by Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal. As of a quick search a few moments ago, The Guardian is reporting that no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. And Boston.com has comments by President Obama and others. OK. That’s it for any links.

I first heard about the bombings a few minutes after they happened, when a co-worker noticed on Twitter that a couple of explosions had occurred. He was hoping that it was just a fluke, that it was something akin to an accidental explosion of a gas line. But at the same time, he was also suspecting something worse.

A short while later, searching Twitter and Google News, I ran across some people complaining that there was so much coverage of the events in Boston, when other terrorist attacks had occurred in Iraq and elsewhere yesterday. And if you search, you can easily find articles about a rash of bombings in Iraq yesterday that killed at least 42 people, according to CNN.com.

And let me say, all attacks on civilians anywhere in the world should be condemned. They are tragic and unnecessary losses of life. Sadly, we’ve come to expect certain types of horrors in other parts of the world. And maybe because of that, the media pays less attention to those events. Gives them short shrift.

Or it could just be a case of proximity. What happens in my neighborhood is more immediate and compelling than something that occurs halfway around the world. The closer we live to an event, the more likely it is to affect people we know. My wife has friends who compete at Boston, actually. Some were there and are safe. Others missed this year’s race, and they are safe, too.

There is another element to this, though, that keeps floating around in my mind. And that is, regardless of what happens elsewhere, the thing about the bombings in Boston is that we don’t expect them to happen at an athletic event (unless you’re a Hollywood filmmaker whose movie is “Two Minute Warning“, and that’s about a psychotic sniper, not a bomber). Sports events are supposed to be celebrations of the triumph of human spirit. Especially long, grueling endurance events like the Boston Marathon.

And yet, in the midst of that, someone — or some group — decided to inflict horror on those in attendance. For what purpose, we don’t know. Responsible media outlets and commentators have noted that it’s too soon to say why this occurred. Bravo to them for that. I suspect we all have our mental checklist of the usual suspects. And we could play a parlor game of what might have motivated such an evil deed.

But what’s the point? Playing parlor games doesn’t change the fact that people died for no good reason. Merely because they were attending or participating in a sporting event. After the Oklahoma City bombings, a whole lot of commentators jumped on the bandwagon that it must’ve been foreign terrorists that did such an unspeakable thing — ignoring the obvious question of, “Why Oklahoma City?” And in the end, it was a bunch of home-grown terrorists who committed the crime.

It hasn’t begun, yet, but you can bet there are some media outlets that will be bent on smearing certain politicians, asking, “Why didn’t (fill in the blank) take action to stop this heinous crime?” You know it’s going to happen. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But in a week. Or a month. Or a couple of months. It’s going to happen. And I’m going to call bullshit on that right now. Unless they have specific information that someone knew ahead of time and did nothing, that is just a crock, merely to gin up controversy and ratings.

Such behavior deserves the mocking it will get by the likes of the Jon Stewarts and Stephen Colberts of the world. And by the rest of us. It’s irresponsible to the n-th degree. And those who do it should be roundly drummed out of the journalism profession.

What we know is this: Some evil, sick, twisted individuals unleashed a couple of bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday. For reasons as yet unexplained. People died. People were injured. For. No. Good. Reason.

When the long arm of justice catches up with the perpetrators, I certainly hope they get punishment in line with their crimes. The darker side of me wishes we could blow them up once for each person they killed or injured. But, of course, that’s not possible.

Yes, those other events yesterday are just are just as tragic. Should the media have focused more on them rather than on the events in Boston? Maybe. It may depend on where you live. Terrorism at a sporting event is pretty big news. At least, it is in my neighborhood.

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This time a week ago, Lance Armstrong was probably worried about the impact of the Justice Department joining Floyd Landis’ whistleblower lawsuit against Armstrong and others who owned/ran the US Postal Service/Discovery Channel cycling teams. A week later, the politicians in Washington, DC have shown just how dysfunctional and incapable of governing this country they truly are, and Armstrong must be sitting in his house in Austin or Aspen or Hawaii or wherever the hell he’s living at the moment thinking, “I wonder if those automatic budget cuts will mean the Feds won’t be so dogged in pursuing me as Travis Tygart was.”

How’s that for a run-on rambling sentence? This kid’s got some serious talent for droning on, eh?

Here’s the thing, though. Armstrong ain’t likely to catch such a lucky break. Chances are, the folks at the Department of Justice thought about that before signing on to the lawsuit. So, even though budget cuts will cut a pretty wide swath, whoever made the decision to intervene probably anticipated reduced funds and decided to do this anyway. Which is bad news for Armstrong. In the last week, I read somewhere that the government has a track record of winning or settling 80 percent of these types of cases when they get involved. So right now, it’s an odds-on bet that some amount of money — yet to be determined — will be flowing from Lance Armstrong’s bank account towards the US Treasury.

Curiously, the government didn’t intervene regarding every defendant listed in Landis’ lawsuit. They are currently pursuing Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel, Tailwind Sports LLC and Tailwind Sports Corporation. Conspicuously absent in the list is Thomas Weisel, the financier who backed the team even before Armstrong’s string of (now-nullified) Tour de France wins. VeloNews’ Neal Rogers penned an analysis of why the Feds didn’t go after Weisel a few days ago. In his article, he offers the following quote from a Baltimore lawyer:

“The government’s action would be interpreted several ways,” wrote Mark Stichel, a Baltimore-based attorney who has litigated civil cases in state and federal courts throughout the U.S., in an e-mail to VeloNews.

“One interpretation is that the government believes that Armstrong and Bruyneel were the primary architects of the fraud on the government,” Stichel wrote. “Another interpretation is that the government may have reached or is near reaching settlements with the other defendants and that Armstrong and Bruyneel were balking at settlement so it intervened against them only to prod them into settlement.”

Rogers goes on to point out that the government could change their minds and go after Weisel. But they have only about 60 days from when they joined the Landis lawsuit to do so (counting the days, that would be until about April 20th, if I did the math right).

One possible reason they didn’t decide to go after Weisel and Bill Stapleton and Bart Knaggs, as Rogers mentions, is that the Feds may be close to reaching settlements with each of these individuals. And they may have joined the Landis case against Armstrong in order to get a bigger settlement out of the former seven-times Tour champ. Rumor had it that Armstrong and his lawyers were trying to settle for $5 million, which given the potential damage award in the case (up to $90 million) seems like a pretty paltry sum.

But if the government doesn’t get settlements out of Weisel, Stapleton and Knaggs, does that mean Armstrong and Bruyneel would be on the hook for the total damages — assuming the case goes to trial and damages are awarded? Probably not. Tailwind Sports LLC and Tailwind Sports Corporation are also listed as defendants, so it stands to reason they might bear some of the financial brunt of any damages awarded. But if these organizations have no assets and are no longer doing business, just how much could Uncle Sam squeeze out of them? Not much would be my guess.

Weisel, Stapleton and Knaggs must surely have known the score about the team’s doping program. And I don’t think it stretches credulity to say that they benefited. But how strong a case can the Justice Department bring against those characters? That’s hard to say.

And that brings up another possibility for why the Feds chose (for now) not to go after Weisel and the others. Maybe they don’t think the evidence is strong enough to win. Given that the government will now be cutting back as a result of the sequester, perhaps the decision not to take on Weisel and the others boiled down to ensuring the most effective use of department funds.

Somewhere down the road, the case will be over, and financial penalties will likely be applied. Lance Armstrong is probably going to be writing a check for much more than the $5 million he offered to settle the case. How much more? No idea. Substantially more, I’d guess.

With the odds heavily favoring damages or a settlement, one person is likely to walk away from this case richer than he was before. Floyd Landis. Given the likelihood that the Feds will prevail, Landis looks set to receive somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of whatever the government gets. Landis may well wind up laughing all the way to the bank.  Which will be good news to those who are looking for refunds of their donations to the Floyd Fairness Fund.

There’s a certain amount of irony in the fact that Armstrong’s ill-gotten gains may wind up paying off Floyd’s supporters. Poetic justice, even.

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Travis Tygart Gets His Say

by Rant January 27, 2013

The story of Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace is far from complete. Tonight, 60 Minutes broadcast a follow-up to Armstrong’s confession to talk show host Oprah Winfrey. In the piece, Scott Pelley interviews Travis Tygart, the head of the US Anti-Doping Agency and long-time Lance Armstrong nemesis. (Print version of the story here.) Overall, it’s [...]

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The Interview, Part 2

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The Interview, First Impressions

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Lance and Oprah plus The Legal Ramifications of Coming Clean

by Rant January 15, 2013

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