Wednesday Open Thread: White Collar Death Penalty, Wright Wrench, Weyes The Dream Elf Girl

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gonna take a strap-on to your snap-on

I’d like to start by thanking the readership for giving a warm welcome to John Marks and his “Test Tracks” series. We have four more episodes of that ahead, along with a generally accelerated content schedule for the spring. I’m sitting on about two dozen very interesting guest posts, as well. Without further ado…

You have to wonder if maybe they’re doing it right

you’d think she could afford a real bird

I think you all know by now that I’m occasionally hiding some genuinely fringe left-wing beliefs behind my facade of casual Gen-X prosperity-gospel right-wing McMansion white supremacy — and that perhaps explains why I’m not completely horrified by the decision to sentence Vietnamese businesswoman/scammer Trương Mỹ Lan to death over a bank fraud case. She had six tons of paper evidence against her, apparently.

The way it worked was: After making a fair bit of cash in the hotel and restaurant business, Lan secured government permission to merge three existing small banks into the brand-new Saigon Commercial Bank. (“Which,” the dumb-ass international press loves to note, “is located in Ho Chi Minh City.”) Using hundreds of proxies and shells, many in the names of complicit relatives, she evaded a Vietnamese law limiting her to 5% of bank ownership and assumed effective sole control of SCB. Then she loaned herself… 44 billion dollars, representing 93% of the bank’s loan portfolio.

Most of the time, she used the money to “buy” property, which is a different thing in Vietnam than it is here because in theory the government is the final owner of all property. Think of it more like permission to use. It’s effectively the same, until the day some Minister Of The Interior decides it’s not. But she did have four billion or so dollars in cash put on pallets and shipped to her house. What’s the big deal? Just a bit of mad money, you see. Not a big deal. We send that kind of cash to Iran and Israel all the time, just so they have stuff to shoot at each other.

Her sentence has two critical provisions: she must return $27 billion of the misappropriated funding, and she must undergo death by lethal injection. In her shoes, I’d tell the government to go fish for those “billis”, yo — but it’s also thought that the death penalty might be waived, if she returns the money. That’s what they call a significant incentive. As is always the case at this level of the game, there are all sorts of hidden loyalties and agendas at play, from a potentially difficult succession at the head of the Party in the near future to some kind of Chinese mob controlling Saigon, er, Ho Chi Minh City — but Vietnam does execute a few hundred people a year, and Mrs. Lan could be one of them, even if she is by far the richest.

What’s your immediate response to the idea of the death penalty for bank fraud? The old-school lefty in me loves it. Consider that the sheer scope of the harm a scheme like this can do far exceeds the sort of 77-IQ-drug-addict-kills-family situation that usually generates a death-penalty verdict in the States. Why kill low-functioning people for ignorant acts of passion while at the same time moderating the punishment given to their “betters” for carefully planned and deliberately executed decade-long effort in the service of evil? Why not execute a Sackler or two, in exchange for the million-plus overdose deaths caused by their will to profit?

Mario Puzo wrote that “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.” But only the latter can die for it. Should that change?

You got the Wright stuff

We’ve been a little short on Made In The USA posts, lately, so allow me to bring this back with a bang. Yesterday I took delivery of the Wright 952 full-polish metric wrench set, pictured at the top of this post, which I’ll be comparing in use with my Proto Anti-Slip wrenches and my Eighties-era Craftsman pieces.

Project Farm likes the Proto more than Snap-On or Wright, but if you read the various tool forums populated by crusty and bitter old mechanics, you’ll find that only Wright and Snap-On have any serious-user fanbase. It’s also believed that Snap-On is the best at removing stubborn bolts, with Wright a close second. Project Farm’s testing affirmed that Snap-On is the very best on the box side and second best on the open side, with Proto edging Wright on both tests — but PF tested the non-anti-slip Wrights, so maybe the test isn’t completely definitive.

A few nice things about Wright’s combination wrenches: they’re not that expensive, running about $200 for a complete set on Zoro after the ubiquitous 15% discount. That’s way below the ~$800 you’d pay for the same sizes at Snap-On, and not that much about Harbor Freight’s $119 Icon set, which is missing the top three sizes. Wright supplies the wrenches in a lovely denim roll. They’re machined and polished to a higher standard than either the Protos or the Icons. (Sadly, I don’t own any Snap-On combination wrenches with which to compare.) The sole defect on my set: the 19mm wrench has a light stamp on a small part of one side.

My favorite thing about the Wrights? They are made 32.6 miles from my house in Barberton, Ohio, using USA-sourced steel. I’ll keep you posted on how my crew rates them as we prepare for a congested first half of the racing season.

When Karen met Kate

What does your humble author like even more than Black Bloc radical chic or Ohio-made steel? Female singer-songwriters, of course. I don’t like to talk about it, by which I mean I never miss a chance to mention it, but in my late teens I very nearly shared a stage with Sarah McLachlan at “The Patio” in Columbus, Ohio — before I was gang-tackled off said stage by both members of the event security staff.

The first Mrs. Baruth was utterly disgusted by my fondness for Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Fiona Apple, and the aforementioned Ms. McLachlan, referring to them as “the whining women”. In my comparative defense, I felt compelled to mention that at least I never paid $3.99 for the cassette single of “After All” by Peter Cetera and Cher.

“Of course I bought it. Twice, in fact. It’s our song,” she informed me.

“I’d prefer to think that our song is ‘You’re Gonna Get Yours’ by Public Enemy,” I responded. Well, not every marriage is meant to last.

In my late middle age, I have found myself listening to those old albums — Little Earthquakes, The Kick Inside, Surfacing, and so on — yet again. Happily for me and my determination to not sink entirely into the comforting arms of the past, however, there’s a new(ish) generation of singer-songwriters carrying on in this tradition. The standard-bearer for the movement is Mitsuki “Mitski” Miyawaki, currently having quite a career moment on the strong reception accorded to The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We, most notably the TikTok-omnipresent track “My Love Mine All Mine” and the astoundingly subtle video that accompanies it.

She’s great, but she’s not my favorite at the moment. Who is? Well, I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know who Natalie Mering, aka “Weyes Blood”, was — until she collaborated with Caroline Polachek on a re-release of the latter’s “Butterfly Net”. (It’s pronounced wise, since you failed to ask. Wise blood.) Since then, I’ve had her remarkable LP Titanic Rising on repeat. It’s just long enough for me to ride my Blackbird to work, assuming I can average 83mph or better for the whole trip.

Miss Mering has a background in completely dismal and atonal Portland “rock” but in her late twenties gave that up for her natural calling — delivering lush, sentimental songs that sound like they were written by Kate Bush but sung by Karen Carpenter. She admits the former influence but denies the latter. What a shame, as Karen Carpenter was like Jimi Hendrix, only with a better voice, more instruments in her performance portfolio, and broader musical ideas.

I love the fact that Natalie is not afraid to sing in her natural range with a strong vibrato, almost like the original “pop” records of the Thirties. And I adore her look, which is right out of my Sophomore Year Of College Perfect-Girl Dreambook plus those little elfin ears that stick out of her long hair! She’s 35 years old, which seems young to me now in precisely the same way that 23-year-old Sarah McLachlan seemed to 19-year-old me like an experienced older woman.

Any of the tracks on Titanic Rising, the concept of which is somehow related to climate change in a way only comprehensible to goofy, completely spoiled white girls, would be completely at home on Kate Bush’s Never For Ever. The first four tracks are a masterpiece together, while “Picture Me Better”, written in memory of a friend who committed suicide, is heartbreakingly enjoyable.

Those of you who watch the “Tiny Desk” concert above will perhaps be amused by the Extremely NPR Image that I’ve extracted from it, featuring Natalie’s Very Serious Slide Player juxtaposed with Dave Matthews’ water bottle. Chris Thile’s something, and a printed lyric sheet for “Rubber Band Man” by the rapper and part-time movie star T.I:

Maybe that NPR editor who criticized NPR in public and then got suspended for his trouble had a point. Anyway. If only I could listen to this wonderful, somber music in peace, rather than have to endure the griping of my son about it. “This is terrible. I want to hear Weather Report.”

“Why are you bullying me? Why do you get to make all the choices, huh? What does your mother listen to, in the car?”

“I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“Well, tell her she’s not allowed to play ‘After All’. That’s our song.”