Reason Hit and Run
(Edit: I got $2.37) - Apparently I Sued Citibank
My latest Citibank Visa bill includes a credit for 73 cents, my share of the "SCHWARTZ SETTLEMENT REFUND." As a reader of Overlawyered.com noted last month (along with many other people who scrutinize credit card bills faster than I do), the money comes from an $18 million fund created to settle a class action lawsuit challenging Citibank's 10 a.m. deadline for payments. The refunds ostensibly are compensation for inappropriate late fees, but a Citibank recording explains that it was impossible to allocate the money with any precision and that qualifying customers generally received less than a dollar. The lawyers got $9 million.
The Saddam Effect. Or Not.
Here's two reports about the effect of Saddam's capture on insurgency in Iraq.
The first, from the Washington Times, says "that guerrilla attacks [in Baghdad] have dropped sharply since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein."
The second, from Knight-Ridder via the San Jose Mercury News, says "Saddam Hussein's capture three weeks ago has not slowed the anti-American insurgency in Iraq, which now seems more entrenched than ever, according to a review of recent attacks and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials."
Now that that's all cleared up, we can really enjoy the weekend's football games.
Bread, Circuses, Racecars
Eszter at Crooked Timber notes that the Hungarian government has decided to drop $4 million to sponsor a Formula One racer. She writes: "If this happened in a country with adequate social services and few people living in poverty then perhaps one could contemplate its legitimacy. But in a country with as many social problems as Hungary, I find it hard to swallow."
Commenter Dan Simon adds a perceptive postscript:
While I personally don’t care for the idea of $4 million in government money being spent on a Formula 1 team, I take some small consolation in the fact that lots of ordinary Hungarians of little means will probably get some enjoyment out of it. If instead the government had blown $4 million on, say, a Rothko for the Hungarian national art museum, how many low-income Hungarians would have been likely to get a big thrill out of it—and how many Crooked Timber collectivists would have complained?
Sure, But Is It Worse Than the Holocaust, Too?
"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy." --Christopher Byron of the New York Post, on the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
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