Back in January 2007, Mayor Bloomberg issued a report complaining that "the prevalence of meritless securities lawsuits and settlements in the U.S. has driven up the apparent and actual cost of business — and driven away potential investors" — and then his own city law department turned around and sued Apple over the city retirement fund's investment in Apple stock, which was up 600%.

At the time, it prompted a New York Sun editorial, "New York Versus Apple," that commented on the irony of the suit while also reporting that the class action law firm representing New York and its pension fund in the case had, in a classic revolving door situation, earlier hired aboard a city lawyer who had been responsible for managing the city's pension litigation.

In December of 2007, a federal judge, Jeremy Fogel, dismissed the city's case, prompting a second New York Sun editorial on the topic.

Now, nearly four years after the commencement of the original groundless litigation, through sheer persistence the city and its class action lawyers have wrung from Apple a settlement offer that they will seek preliminary approval of from Judge Fogel, according to a New York City press release.

The proposed settlement is a horrible deal for current Apple shareholders and for anyone with an interest in the rule of law. It would take $20.5 million away from current Apple shareholders and distribute the money as follows:

The New York Times has an interesting article about the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Alas the paper characteristically trots out some "expert" employed by a non-profit (what would we do without experts?) to say that profits are bad:

Philanthropy experts say commercial companies play an important role in combating poverty by creating jobs. But they say these "social enterprises," as they are sometimes known, cannot be solely relied upon to address the many entrenched causes of poverty.

Moreover, as the fallout from the global financial crisis has made clear, the profit-maximizing tendencies of businesses can hurt society, said Phil Buchanan, president for the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a research organization based in Cambridge, Mass.

Nonprofits are effective because they can "take issue with the unbridled pursuit of profit at the expense of people's lives," Mr. Buchanan said. "I think some of that gets lost in all of the hype around social enterprise."

The New York Times, in reporting Henry Kravis's pledge of $100 million to Columbia Business School, says, "Columbia Business School has long been known as a breeding ground for financiers, including the venture capitalist Alan J. Patricof (class of 1957), the late buyout specialist Lionel I. Pincus (class of 1956) and Citigroup's chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit (class of 1980)."

Nothing against Alan Patricof, Vikram Pandit, or Lionel Pincus, but if one is going to go naming famous Columbia Business School graduates in the world of finance, maybe you might put Warren Buffett on the list?

David Carr has a long article in the New York Times attributing the bankruptcy of the Tribune company to the takeover of an owner "with virtually no experience in the newspaper business."

From the article:

"They threw out what Tribune had stood for, quality journalism and a real brand integrity, and in just a year, pushed it down into mud and bankruptcy," said Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst with Outsell Inc., a consulting firm.

This strikes me as faulty analysis, or at least as oversimplification. Plenty of owners with lots and lots of experience in the newspaper business have taken their companies through bankruptcy or at least lost lots of money and lots of market value over the same period. And even before Sam Zell took over, many of what became the Tribune papers had been led, from 1995 to 2000, by Mark Willes, who was elevated to the post of CEO of Times Mirror after a career in which he, too, had virtually no experience in the newspaper business.

The final paragraphs of a Bloomberg News article on the Obama administration's effort to raise taxes on the "rich":

James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist and author of the 1998 book "Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay," said the Obama strategy should be seen as a first step toward rebalancing the tax system.

"We don't need higher taxes, we need better taxes," Galbraith, a former executive director of the Joint Economic Committee, said in a phone interview. "Putting income in the hands of people who need it, and not in the hands of people who don't, is the right economic policy."

Thomas Sowell has a new column about the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid:

Senator Harry Reid is playing the race card, saying that he can't see how any Hispanic can vote for Republicans. But this is the same Harry Reid who in 1993, rejected "those who ask us to wink at illegal immigration" and warned against having "the social and cultural makeup" of the country "radically altered" by these immigrants.

In 1993, Senator Reid introduced a bill-- the Immigration Stabilization Act--to cut back on all immigration, both legal and illegal.

Senator Reid said: "Our federal wallet is stretched to the limit by illegal aliens getting welfare, food stamps, medical care and other benefits, often without paying taxes." He said, "Safeguards like welfare and free medical care are in place to boost Americans in need of short-term assistance," and added: "These programs were not meant to entice freeloaders and scam artists from around the world."

John Stossel has a new column on ObamaCare:

Obamacare has barely started taking effect, and the evidence is already rolling in. I hate to say we told them so, but ... we told them so. The laws of economics have struck back....thanks to the compassionate Congress and president, parents of sick children will be saved from expensive insurance -- by being unable to obtain any insurance! That's how government compassion works.

Generally I'm of the view that there are conflicts of interest everywhere and that, since they are impossible to avoid entirely, they just need to be managed and disclosed. But Barry Diller sure seems to be skating right up against the line in his Washington Post Co. directorship.

First the Post Company sells Newsweek for $1 plus the assumption of liabilities and a bunch of employees — only to see reports that Mr. Diller's Daily Beast is in serious talks with the new owner of Newsweek about some kind of partnership. If Mr. Diller saw a path to profitability for Newsweek, shouldn't he have spoken up while the Post Company still owned it?

A for-profit college is suing Florida State College at Jacksonville, its president, and its chief lobbyist for "tortious interference with a business relationship" and "injurious falsehood" in connection with what it says was "a false and misleading campaign in the Florida press and the national media designed to disparage Keiser University and to drive Keiser and other proprietary schools out of business."

The complaint, filed yesterday in Broward County, Florida, names two money managers, Steven Eisman of Frontpoint Financial Services Fund, LP, Greenwich, Conn., and Gilchrist Berg of Water Street Capital, Jacksonville, Fla., as "co-conspirators."

Jonathan Mahler's Sunday New York Times magazine article about Nolan Ryan's ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team reported, "The Rangers seem to fall somewhere between a large-market team whose financial model depends on big TV contracts, reliable ticket sales and lucrative sponsorship deals, and a small-market one that relies on the league's mandatory revenue-sharing to supplement the income provided by its more modest fan base."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer weighs in on Bill Gates Sr.'s support for increased income taxes in Washington state (an issue we flagged here back in May):

Comparing the nine states with the highest tax rates on earned income to the nine states with no income tax shows how high tax rates weaken economic performance.

In the past decade, the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates have seen gross state product increase by 59.8%, personal income grow by 51%, and population increase by 6.1%. The nine states with no personal income tax have seen gross state product increase by 86.3%, personal income grow by 64.1%, and population increase by 15.5%.

It's striking how the high-tax states have underperformed relative to those with no income tax.

This idea of means-testing Social Security, which we have been covering here, really has the potential to mix up the usual sides. Today Bob Herbert, a left-of-center New York Times columnist (call the squad squad, as Safire used to say), criticizes would-be-speaker-of-the-House John Boehner: "That's Mr. Boehner, for you — always willing to stick his neck out for the elite. When it comes to policies of particular concern to ordinary individuals and families, however, his generosity of spirit and passionate willingness to help vanishes. He believes, for example, that Americans who are at least 20 years away from retirement should be unable to receive Social Security before they are 70, and that Social Security benefits should be means-tested."

The New York Times has a useful article on state-based Republican opposition to President Obama's spending plans for high-speed rail. From the article:

"The bottom line is that high-speed rail is a national program that will connect the country, spur economic development and bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S.," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman, said in a statement. "It will also transform transportation in America, much like the Interstate highway system did under President Eisenhower. It's hard to imagine what would have happened to states like Ohio and Wisconsin if their leaders had decided they didn't want to be connected to the rest of the country back then."

They are going to invest in high-speed rail and "green technologies" while de-emphasizing Britain's financial services industry, the Financial Times reports.

A Democratic congressman from New York, Anthony Weiner, is calling on the New York state insurance superintendent to limit health insurance premiums, which Mr. Weiner says the insurance companies otherwise plan to increase by an average 16% in 2011 over 2010.

"When the rate of inflation is barely 1.5% and personal incomes are flat, it is a clear case of overcharging when rate increases are at the level we have seen," Mr. Weiner said in a press release.

The release said that "As part of the health care reform legislation passed by congress, $1 million was sent to New York State to facilitate oversight of the health insurance industry."

In a letter to the state insurance commissioner, Mr. Weiner said, "I am calling upon you to use your authority to freeze or limit the increases you approve this year." He said that while some companies have attempted to use the ObamaCare law as an explanation for their increases, "in fact...much of the new law has yet to go into effect."