California Victims Of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund
Tuesday, January 27, 2015

In the waning days of the 2001-2002 legislative session, then Assemblymember Kevin Shelley gutted and amended AB 55. As introduced, AB 55 would have amended the Elections Code. Instead, AB 55 became the vehicle for the enactment of the deeply flawed California Corporate Disclosure Act, Cal. Corp. Code § 1502.5.   AB 55 also created The Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund, Cal. Corp. Code §§ 2280-2296.  Rules governing the fund are found at 2 CCR §§ 22500 – 22507.  The VCFCF is administered by the Secretary of State’s office.

In the early years, the fund was criticized for receiving only a handful of claims and paying out a paltry amount of money (the maximum amount that may be paid to a claimant is $50,000).  In 2014, the VCFCF received 77 claims and paid 269 (including claims submitted in prior years).  A total of $3,894,450.23 was paid to claimants and at year end 52 claims were pending.

Did Alexander Pope Read Pico della Mirandola?

Recently, I started reading Pico della Mirandola’s De Hominis Dignitate (About the Dignity of Man). Pico was a fifteenth century philosopher known for his elegant Latin.  I hadn’t progressed very far in Pico’s short book before I was immediately struck by the similarity to the famous lines of Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man, which appeared nearly 300 years later.  Below is the introduction to De Hominis Dignitate and the beginning of Epistle II from Essay on Man:

De Hominis Dignitate

Essay on Man

That man is the intermediate of creatures, servant to those above, king of those below, by the sharpness of his senses, by the comprehensiveness of his reason, by the light of his intelligence, the explainer of nature, placed between eternity and transience and (which the Persians say) bound to the world, by no means wed, by the testimony of David placed a little below the angels.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

 

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