CalPERS Voting Data Clarified
In this post from last week, I voiced some skepticism about CalPERS’ second quarter voting statistics. According to CalPERS, they voted at 6,847 meetings during the quarter and on 67,072 resolutions. This yielded what seemed to me to be an improbable 9.8 resolutions per meeting. Anne Simpson, CalPERS’ Senior Portfolio Manager and Director for Corporate Governance, explained to me that CalPERS counts each vote with respect to a director as a “resolution”. I had been considering the vote on election of directors as one matter as that is the way it is typically presented in proxy statements (e.g., “Proposal No. 1″). Nonetheless, I understand that each director presents a separate voting decision on the part of CalPERS and can fairly be counted as such.
More Whistleblower Statutes
I’ve added the first reader submission to my listing of whistleblower statutes. University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Joan Heminway cites Internal Revenue Code Section 7623.
How To Persuade Like Pericles
Last month, I wrote on “How to Argue a Contracts Case Like Aristotle“. This month, I turn to Pericles, the famous Athenian statesman during the first years of the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century B.C.E. That bitter, long-fought conflict pitted democratic Athens against the military diarchy of Sparta. Archidamus II was one of the kings of the Spartans and a contemporary of Pericles. It seems that Archidamus was once asked whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler. Archidamus replied “‘ἐγὼ καταβάλω παλαίων, ἐκεῖνος ἀντιλέγων ὡς οὐ πέπτωκε, νικᾷ καὶ μεταπείθει τοὺς ὁρῶντας ([whenever] wrestling, I throw him down, he [Pericles] contradicts me, says that he was not thrown down, and changes the minds of the very ones who were watching about the victory)”. Plutarch, Pericles ch. 8 § 4.
