Popular Posts

Friday, July 29, 2016

Open Letter to Mike Wittler, KPUB CEO

July 28, 2016

By fax: 830.257.8078
Mike Wittler, CEO
KPUB
P.O. Box 294999
Kerrville, Texas 78029-4999

Re: KPUB loan to City of Kerrville

Dear Mr. Wittler,

My wife and I have lived in Kerrville since 2003 and have owned our home here since 2006. We are customers of KPUB. I strongly object to KPUB’s plan to loan $6,000,000 to the City of Kerrville. The loan is not a good business decision, is unfair to your customers, and it is illegal. KPUB’s Tariff for Electric Service states at page 37:

Overbilling and Underbilling
If billing is found to be in error, a billing adjustment shall be calculated by KPUB….
If Customer was overcharged, KPUB shall refund Customer the full amount for the entire period of overbilling.

The funds that KPUB intends to lend to the City is not KPUB’s money - it is held in trust for its customers. Corporate officers can be held personally liable for misapplication of fiduciary property. 

Jack Pratt, who served on the KPUB board while also serving as mayor, tried to sell this scheme as being “good for the children.”  Aside from the obvious conflict of interest, what would be good for the children would be for KPUB to refund the money so that parents could buy books, supplies and clothes for the upcoming school year. It would also give a boost to the local economy. 

I respectfully demand an accounting of the funds and the refund that is due me. I hope other customers will make the same demand. If enough of us do so, and KPUB chooses to breach its duties, maybe we can get enough people together for a class action lawsuit.

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Richard L. Ellison





Mike Wittler, CEO
July 28, 2016
page 2

cc: Mayor Bonnie White
Stephen Fine
Gary Stork
Gene Allen
Glenn Andrew
Mark Armstrong
Zeke MacCormack





Thursday, July 14, 2016

Dallas Police Use of Robot to Deliver Bomb - Bleeding Hearts Wring Their Hands

Some of the bleeding heart types have been handwringing about the Dallas police taking out the cop killer using a robot to deliver explosives. On some of the lawyer blogs they are wailing about  the poor suspect (can’t call him a murderer or assassin) being denied his “due process.” Some compared it to using drones to kill terrorists. Well .... what's the problem?

I’m glad the police killed him and it was fitting and right the way they did it. As for “due process,” here’s my take on whether the police followed the law.

Under Texas Penal Code Sec. 9.51, a peace officer is justified in using deadly force against another when and to the degree the officer reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary to make an arrest, or to prevent escape after arrest and 1) the officer reasonable believes there is a substantial risk that the person to be arrested will cause death or seriously bodily injury to the actor or another if the arrest (or action) is delayed.

In my career I’ve sued police officers three times, so I am not shy about holding them accountable when they have crossed the line. In the Dallas case, any lawyer who would sue the police should be laughed out of court. And I’m fed up with all the Black Lives Matter crap. The media will say that some upstanding father of five was shot by police. They leave out the fact that all five children are illegitimate, by different “baby mamas,” and the poor victim didn’t support any of them, or that he had an extensive criminal record.

Ribbons and Teddy Bears Don't Help

Every time there's another terrorist attack in Paris, Boston, Orlando, Sacramento and now Dallas, people start little memorials with teddy bears, ribbons, flowers and so on, and have vigils and send out their "thoughts and prayers." The lead story in today's Kerrville Daily Times is about a group of homeschoolers and their mothers standing in front of the police departments holding signs saying if you support the men in blue honk your horn. The picture shows two kids and one adult. I suppose this makes the well wishers feel warm and fuzzy but it does nothing to fix the problem. Why not raise money for the families of the fallen officers?

If you know who to contact to contribute to a fund for the families and the officers who were wounded but survived please email me or post a comment. You can do it anonymously.

Disbarred Lawyer Named the Richest Attorney in the World
Money Inc. recently announced the world’s richest lawyer, and he’s disbarred. Richard “Dickie” Scruggs of Mississippi has an estimated $1.7 billion of wealth, and the publication stated that when he was a practicing attorney, the University of Mississippi Law School alum had accumulated almost a $1 billion suing various companies.
However, Scruggs’ winning streak stopped after pleading guilty for judicial corruption in 2007. He was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to federal prison for six years. Now at 70, he is a free man who was allowed to keep his wealth, and he went on the record stating that he blamed himself for his downfall. Scruggs had been convicted of bribing Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter with the promise of getting him a federal judgeship. DeLaughter had been presiding over one of Scruggs’s cases. The wealthy attorney was also convicted of bribing another judge with $40,000.