Search Results for: 10,000

Yeah, yeah… “liberal media” and all that. You know, liberal like the National Review Online:

The GOP now craves such bipartisan cover in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Republicans trumpet every Democratic connection to Abramoff in the hope that something resonates. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), took more than $60,000 from Abramoff clients! North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan used Abramoff’s skybox! It is true that any Washington influence peddler is going to spread cash and favors as widely as possible, and 210 members of Congress have received Abramoff-connected dollars. But this is, in its essence, a Republican scandal, and any attempt to portray it otherwise is a misdirection.

Abramoff is a Republican who worked closely with two of the country’s most prominent conservative activists, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Top aides to the most important Republican in Congress, Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) were party to his sleazy schemes. The only people referred to directly in Abramoff’s recent plea agreement are a Republican congressmen and two former Republican congressional aides. The GOP members can make a case that the scandal reflects more the way Washington works than the unique perfidy of their party, but even this is self-defeating, since Republicans run Washington.

Ooops. Somebody strayed from the GOP talking points.

What with their low-bid ground crew constantly driving trucks into airplanes, it looked for a moment there like once proud Alaska Airlines was going to the dogs. Apparently not:

Saturday night, just a day after Alaska Airlines increased its monitoring of ramp operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a baggage worker threw a crate containing a border collie into the cargo hold of a plane instead of using a conveyor belt.

The dog’s owner, Lisa Ross of Woodinville, was watching from inside the terminal around 11 p.m. when a ramp worker picked up the crate holding her 40-pound dog, Jace, tipped it at a 45-degree angle and then heaved it over his head into the jet.

Fortunately, her 50-pound Australian shepherd, Tucker, was spared the trauma because the baggage handler couldn’t lift the crate.

Ross complained to an Alaska gate agent, who went down to the tarmac and spoke with the workers. They admitted throwing a dog but said it was a different one, Ross said.

Oh. Well, that’s okay then. I mean, as long as it was a different dog, then no harm done.

An Alaska supervisor told Ross that the airline would pay for any veterinarian bills, according to the Alaska incident report. “I do not know why the ramp agents didn’t use a belt loader when boarding the first dog except they must of [sic] been in a hurry,” the supervisor wrote in the report.

Or perhaps, they just really like throwing dogs.

Last May, Alaska fired its unionized ground crew and replaced them with low-priced contractors from Menzies Aviation. But as long as the Airline can keep its ticket prices down, I’m sure passengers will forgive the occasional dog tossing or sudden decompression at 22,000 feet.

According to an inside source, another Alaska Airlines jetliner was hit and damaged by ground crews today at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Unlike last week’s hit-and-run that resulted in a nearly catastrophic decompression at 26,000 feet, this incident was properly reported and the aircraft was taken out of service. Airline officials have yet to respond to my inquiries.

Well… um… I suppose it’s good news that the low-bid, contractors Alaska hired to replace their union baggage handlers last May actually reported this incident. Now if only Alaska can teach them to stop driving into their airplanes.

UPDATE:
Well, I suppose I owe the low-bid contractors an apology. They didn’t drive the baggage truck into the airplane. They towed the airplane into the baggage truck.

It was the second such incident by an employee of Menzies Aviation in 10 days. Passengers were boarding the 737-700 about 11:30 a.m. for Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport when the plane was moved by a tow tug, causing the jet to strike a baggage loading machine and the open passenger door to hit the jetway.
…
A spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines said the tow truck, operated by an employee of Menzies Aviation, accidentally pulled the plane forward about three feet. That means the tow truck would have been put into reverse.

Well, that makes me feel much better. Next time I fly Alaska I’ll just have to remember to quickly leap from the jetway into the airplane, just in case they move the plane as I’m trying to board it.

Um, I’m guessing Sharon’s stroke was most likely due to the fact that he was a bitter, old, fat tub-o-lard… but hateful televangelist Pat Robertson insists it was the Lord’s work:

“He was dividing God’s land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America.”

Media Matters has a transcript and video clip of Pat Robertson once again threatening divine retribution against anybody who disagrees with the right-wing political agenda. Robertson goes on to suggest that Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination was also an act of God.

What a prick.

Snohomish County is the latest WA county to move to all mail-in elections.

In a 3-2 split, Democrat county Councilmen Kirke Sievers, Dave Gossett and Dave Somers this morning outvoted Republican Councilmen Gary Nelson and John Koster.
…
The council made the move to avoid a state mandate to purchase machines to provide a paper audit trail for those who voted at the polls. That would have cost $860,000, plus ongoing storage costs.

Like King County, Snohomish will set up regional dropoff points on election day where voters can deposit their ballots in person. 35 of the state’s 39 counties have either switched to all mail-in voting, or have announced plans to do so.

On a related note, King County Elections has posted a PDF of the Election Center Report evaluating their performance during the November, 2005 election. It’s really detailed, so I haven’t had time to more than skim it, but it’s certainly far from the “shoddy” effort alleged by some OCD bloggers on the right.

State GOPolitburo Chairman Chris Vance is either a liar or a fool… or both. Of course, this isn’t really news to anybody who has followed WA state politics over the past year or so, but it’s worth repeating, especially when he sends out one of those blatantly false press releases like yesterday’s doozy.

In response to the state Dems’ Santa stunt, in which they called attention to the $14.3 million parting gift Safeco is giving outgoing CEO Mike McGavick to kick off his Senate campaign, Vance accused the Dems of hypocrisy:

Maria Cantwell never resigned from Real Networks in 2000, she simply took a “leave of absence.” During 2000, the company paid her $10.5 million in salary and stock options. Cantwell then funded her campaign with this money.

That is a complete and utter load of crap.

The money Cantwell cashed out in 2000 came from the stock options she had vested during her four years working as a Vice President at Real Networks. Early Real Networks employees were granted generous, five-year option schedules with the first fifth vesting after one year, and the rest vesting in six-month increments. Because Real Networks was a tiny, risky startup at the time she joined — whose shares might have eventually been worthless — the strike price on her original option grant was only pennies a share.

Unlike McGavick, Cantwell’s vesting schedule was not accelerated when she left Real Networks, and she wasn’t granted any additional options. Vance’s claim relies on a single line in a 2001 article in The Olympian that clearly misunderstands the nature of these transactions. Option grants are not declared as income until they are exercised and the shares sold. The fact that Cantwell exercised these options in 2000 does not represent compensation for that calendar year, but rather the realization of the capital gains from the options she had previously vested throughout her tenure.

Quite simply, Vance lied. Real Networks most definitely did not pay Cantwell $10.5 million in 2000. She bet four years of her life on a risky startup, and while handsomely rewarded, anybody who has ever worked for Rob Glaser will tell you that she earned her money the hard way.

Clearly, Vance was just trying to deflect attention from the fact that Safeco is giving McGavick $14.3 million during an election year… money that he is then free to spend on his own campaign in unlimited quantities. McGavick, who has represented the insurance industry for years, is essentially being paid to run for office, and if elected would surely represent the industry’s interests over that of ordinary Washington citizens.

But I also want to point out to my friends in the media, that this is yet another instance where Vance has boldly and shamelessly lied to your face. He dishonestly fed you information that was factually wrong and easily disproved. He dissed you.

Any reporter who takes anything coming from the Vance-led state GOP at face value, is a chump.

Funny, funny clip from The Daily Show (via Brad’s Blog) of Jon Stewart sticking it to Bill O’Reilly.

UPDATE:
Hey, check Dan Savage’s rant on Slog:

This “War on Christmas” bullshit would be amusing if it weren’t so fucking scary. This aggrieved/oppressed majority stuff doesn’t just smack of fascism, it is fascism.

Savage directly compares the Christian right’s assertion that American Christians are an oppressed minority to Hitler justifying his invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland by claiming that German-speaking people were being persecuted. Over the top? No more over the top than this whole “War on Christmas” crap. Savage continues…

The “War on the “War on Christmas'” is about a majority seeking to eradicate public tolerance for, or evidence of, the existence or rights of the minority groups with which it shares this country. It’s cute and funny now, and O’Reilly’s a blowhard and a gasbag, but it’s one small step down a road that’s lead to gas chambers in the past.

But, hey, let’s all salute Christmas��Merry Christmas, Bill!

Stiff-armed salutes, of course, are preferred. Next year they may be mandatory.

Man… I just wish Dan would loosen up and speak his mind for a change.

Wow. Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper has a guest column in The Seattle Times (originally published in the LA Times.) And… well… wow.

Sometimes people in law enforcement will hear it whispered that I’m a former cop who favors decriminalization of marijuana laws, and they’ll approach me the way they might a traitor or snitch. So let me set the record straight.

Yes, I was a cop for 34 years, the last six of which I spent as chief of Seattle’s police department.

But no, I don’t favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD.

This is an issue that has troubled me a lot recently… one on which my personal views have nearly travelled a full 360 degrees over the past twenty-five years.

I started from a quasi-libertarian position grounded in my personal experience of the relatively harmless recreational drug use that surrounded me in college (I myself smoked a little pot, but quickly outgrew the vice.) While a strong streak of uptight prudishness kept me clean, I had close friends who did a lot of illicit drugs. I didn’t approve — and I let them know it — but I understood at the time that a drug conviction would cause far more harm than the drugs themselves, resulting in expulsion if not imprisonment, and costing them all the privilege and opportunity that our Ivy League education afforded us.

Over time though, my stance hardened, perhaps out of concern over the destructive scourge of crack cocaine, maybe just out of a need for consistency with my strong views on restricting access to tobacco. I was never a huge supporter of the so-called “War on Drugs” and its focus on interdiction — and I’ve never understood our nation’s irrational demonization of marijuana — but I also didn’t favor outright legalization. That, it seemed to me, would be giving up on a very real public health crisis. While my college friends were lucky enough to dodge a life of addiction, many other drug users are not.

But… in recent years I’ve come back around to my original position, not out of any shift in my view on drugs, but out of sheer utilitarianism… as Stamper points out, prohibition simply does not work, and in fact causes more societal harm than it seeks to prevent.

It’s not a stretch to conclude that our Draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and ’90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We’re making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?

I’ve witnessed the devastating effects of open-air drug markets in residential neighborhoods: children recruited as runners, mules and lookouts; drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between rival traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets; dedicated narcotics officers tortured and killed in the line of duty; prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders; and drug-related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environmental disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. All because we like our drugs

As election workers tally the last of the late absentees, the Republicans’ failure in last Tuesday’s election has become more and more pronounced.

The anti-roads Initiative 912 — considered a sure thing back when the state GOP officially endorsed it — is now losing by over 9 points… a stunning reversal of fortune. Of course, the sore losers on the right initially tried to dismiss this as yet another example of socialist Seattle forcing its will on the rest of the state — a silly excuse considering we cast votes by the person, not the square mile — but when all the ballots are counted, I-912 will fail in 10 to 12 counties.

So here’s some perspective: if the GOP had succeeded in randomly disenfranchising 9 out of 10 King County voters… I-912 still would have failed statewide.

Meanwhile, back in King County, Executive Ron Sims continues to stretch his lead over mechanic David Irons. A few days back, our friend Stefan pointed towards Sims’ meager 13 point margin as a hopeful trend, but I wonder how buoyed he feels now that it has grown to nearly 16 points, and Irons’ has dropped below the magic 40 percent mark?

You want perspective? At 39.9 percent of the vote, Irons’ — who had about $800,000 of campaign and independent expenditures on his behalf — polled only 3 points better than HA favorite son Richard Pope did in his last countywide race, spending nary a dime. (Say what you want, but on a cost-per-vote ratio, Richard kicks ass.)

Just a little perspective.

UPDATE:
To be fair to David Irons, as Roger Rabbit astutely points out in the comment thread, he’s apparently slightly more popular than cigarette smoke.

King County vote totals:
David Irons - 194,804
No on I-901 - 172,844

Way to go, Dave.

As reported in today’s Seattle P-I, the Democrats are challenging the bogus voter registration challenge-cum-intimidation scheme the Republicans trod out just days before last Tuesday’s election.

Democratic lawyer David McDonald said Monday state law requires the challenger to supply the actual address at which the challenged voter resides — something Sotelo did not do.

“The law is pretty clear,” he said, adding that the challenges should be dismissed out of hand.

I’ve obtained a PDF of McDonald’s letter to Dean Logan, but the gist of his legal argument is a fairly simple one. RCW 29A.08.830 clearly states that “the person filing the challenge must furnish the address at which the challenged voter actually resides.” If that’s not clear enough, the Voter Registration Challenge Form, as defined by WAC 434-324-115 restates that requirement twice:

If the challenge is based on residence, RCW 29A.08.830 requires the challenger to provide the address at which the challenged voter actually resides.

Yet the Republicans made absolutely no effort to verify the challenged voters’ actual residences. Instead, they just creatively enhanced the Challenge Form, adding on a new check box:

Pretty sneaky, huh? Too lazy and irresponsible to do the work necessary to provide the voter’s actual address, as required by law, the Republicans simply concocted a new category for challenging a voter’s registration, and tacked it onto the end of the form. Go check out WAC 434-324-115… there is no sixth check box! Sotelo & Company made it up!

I checked with King County Records & Elections; the form the KC GOP used was not the standard form provided by the state or the county. Thus there can be absolutely no possible way to chalk this up to human error or an innocent misreading of the law. Knowing that they had not done due diligence, and had not met the requirements of the voter registration challenge provisions, the Republicans intentionally modified the challenge form to suit their needs.

Thus Lori Sotelo’s affidavits were not only perjurious… they bordered on fraud.

Why would the Republicans file nearly 2000 bogus voter registration challenges when they knew they would likely not hold up in court? I can think of only two reasons: a) this was part of a campaign of voter suppression and intimidation the GOP has been pursuing nationwide, and b) it was a desperate, last minute PR stunt… the death-cry of their yearlong campaign to discredit KCRE, and by association, Ron Sims and the Democrats.

If it was merely the latter, it explosively backfired. Due to the GOP’s unwillingness to do the work required by law, hundreds of voters were wrongly challenged, either through dumbfuck errors (like apartment buildings Sotelo claimed not to exist) or through a cynical misrepresentation of state law. Many of the challenged voters live in house boats or in commercial buildings… “nontraditional” addresses WAC 434-208-100 clearly contemplates:

No person registering to vote, who meets all the qualifications of a registered voter in the state of Washington, shall be disqualified because of a nontraditional physical address being used as a residence address. Nontraditional addresses may include shelters, parks or other identifiable locations which the voter deems to be his/her residence. Voters using such an address will be registered and precincted based on the location provided.

Just because an address appears to be nonresidential does not mean it is an invalid registration address. That is why the law requires the challenger to provide evidence of the voter’s actual address.

Ironically, McDonald concludes his letter by citing the precedent set by Judge Bridges in the GOP’s failed contest lawsuit.

As a result of the recent close Gubernatorial election, this State has recently undergone extensive litigation concerning the meaning of its election laws. One of the clearest judicial results in that exercise was the decision by Judge Bridges that voters could not be stripped of their votes (or registrations) based on just such assumptions. […]

Those principles were not enshrined by the Legislature and recognized by Judge Bridges simply to make it difficult to challenge elections or voter registrations. It shouldn’t be easy for a private party to challenge a voter’s registration and our state’s law plainly imposes specific and high standards. A challenge which fails to include essential, statutorily-required elements is patently insufficient to meet those standards.

In relentlessly attacking KCRE, the Republicans hope to add weight to the myth they’ve perpetuated, that Democrats somehow “stole” the 2004 gubernatorial election. But there’s a reason why they cannot find a single auditor to support their allegations that KCRE is rife with fraud, corruption and incompetence… why a Republican Secretary of State and a Republican County Prosecutor have dismissed their charges while Republican federal prosecutors refuse to investigate… and why a cherry-picked, elected judge in a Republican county dismissed their case with prejudice. It has no merit!

The Republicans hope that if they puff out a thick enough smokescreen, voters will eventually see fire. But I think voters are smarter than that, for rather than discrediting KCRE, stupid, cynical stunts like this one end up discrediting the accusers.

What the GOP has proven here is not that there are thousands of illegal registrations, or that KCRE refuses to do its job, but that GOP leaders are more than willing to disenfranchise innocent voters for the sake of a cheap, publicity stunt…. or worse. Every “reform” the Republicans champion is intended to suppress the vote, and whether you believe this is based on a cynical electoral strategy or a sincere philosophical difference, the result is the same. Should the Republicans have their way, thousands of legal, WA voters would be purged from the roles, while tens of thousands more would have their ballots discarded as unreadable by the vote counting machines.

Our state elections laws strike a delicate balance between preserving the integrity of the voter rolls, and protecting the franchise of eligible voters. Given the opportunity, the GOP would clearly tip this balance steeply in the wrong the direction.

UPDATE:
A week after the election, Sotelo today rescinded 12 more challenges.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Snohomish County Council race between Republican Jeff Sax and Democrat Dave Somers… but simply have run out of time. So instead I’ll point you towards Lynn at Evergreen Politics, which has the latest on Sax’s last minute, building industry funded smear campaign.

In a last minute attempt to prevent Somers from retaking this seat, Sax has mailed out and distributed at least six different last-minute pieces containing lies and more lies. They’ve also slapped “GAY endorsed” all over every large Somers sign in the district.

There are few races in which the differences between the candidates are as stark as this one. Dave Somers is a fisheries scientist and land-use analyst, with an established record as a former councilman of a reasoned, managed approach to Snohomish County’s explosive growth. He is endorsed by every major paper.

Jeff Sax on the other hand, is a pro-sprawl, building industry shill… a sitting councilman, currently under criminal investigation for leaking confidential documents, who was also caught building a house without a permit. Even a top Snohomish County Republican privately called Sax “an embarrassment to the party”… and for the GOP, that’s saying something.

Let’s just put it this way… if this were a lesser-of-two-evils race between Jeff Sax and David Irons Jr., I’d cast my ballot for Irons in a heartbeat.

UPDATE:
I’ve updated the post to include a picture of one of the vandalized signs. The Seattle Times has more about the vandalism (via Progressive Majority):

Snohomish County Council Democratic candidate Dave Somers awoke Sunday morning to the news that someone had appended black-and-white stickers to some of his campaign signs declaring, in big block letters, that he is “gay endorsed.”

When told what the signs said, Jim Donner, a volunteer for Somers’ Republican opponent, Jeff Sax, shot back: “Well, he is, isn’t he?” But he denied the Sax campaign’s involvement.

The small print on the signs attributed them to the liberal political group Progressive Majority, but Washington Progressive Majority director Dean Nielsen said his group had nothing to do with them. The group is supporting Somers’ candidacy.

So my question to the trolls who will defend this vandalism… if I were to paste “Fascist Endorsed” stickers to Sax signs, with the small print attribution “Paid for by the Building Industry Association of Washington”… that would be okay, right?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Progressive Majority has more on last minute dirty tricks against progressive candidates:

Down in Clark County, the local Republican Party emailed 2,000 of its supporters to notify them that Steve Stuart [campaign website], Progressive Majority’s candidate for County Commissioner, had fallen on financial hard-times. In the very same email that GOP operatives claim they will not make Steve’s financial troubles a political issue in the race, they encourage their activists to contact their local news media about just this issue. It’s a political about-face and voters deserve better. Steve has huge community support in Clark County – this is just another example of smear tactics from a desperate campaign.

And out in Port Orchard, voters received a fake “Voter Guide” for City Council that compares conservative Jim Weatherill with Progressive Majority candidate Fred Chang [campaign website]. The hit piece stereotypes Chang for being Chinese-American as well as being gay, and notes that he’s endorsed by “ultra-liberal political organization, Progressive Majority Washington”. Weatherill claims he’s not involved, even though the mail disclaimer reads that it’s paid for by his campaign committee. Given that Fred won the primary with 48% to Weatherill’s 28%, the conservatives are pulling out their dirty tricks in the final stretch.

It’s time to tell GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance to stop the bullshit!

Have you or anybody you know been disenfranchised by the WA State Republican Party? Download the list of all 1944 voters who have had their registration challenged, and look for yourself.

It took less than 24 hours of voter backlash before the GOP was forced to belatedly withdraw 140 of their challenges (PDF)… after these voters had already received notice that their votes would not count unless they attended an administrative hearing. That kind of sloppiness is already inexcusable when it comes to a citizen’s right to vote, but I betcha on closer examination we’ll find a helluva lot more “mistakes.”

As the GOP’s incredible fuckup has just illustrated, the process of cleaning the voter rolls has never been as simple as the Republicans have tried to make it out to be in their cynical and patently dishonest efforts disparage King County Records & Elections. And like all counties, King has never been nearly as hands off as the GOP’s lying press releases would lead you to believe. Indeed cleaning the ever changing voter rolls is a constant and time consuming process, especially in a county with over 1.1 million registrations, where thousands of voters are moving, marrying and dying every day.

According to a fact sheet produced by KCRE, the county routinely runs queries to screen out post office boxes, duplicate registrations and deceased voters. Since the last election:

• Over 9,500 duplicate registrations have been merged.
• Over 8,900 deceased have been removed from the voter rolls.
• Over 73,000 registrations have been put on inactive status.

And that doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of new and canceled registrations and address changes that are processed every month. Some of these transactions are initiated by voters, others through the routine operations at KCRE. For example, take this anecdote I recounted back in August:

As a case in point, a friend of mine recently bought a house in West Seattle. I was over there for dinner the other night, and she told me how that very day, she had called King County Elections to change her address… and was surprised to learn that she was already registered at her new house! When she inquired how, she was told that they had mailed her a voter registration card, but that it was returned to KC Elections with a forwarding address; so they updated her records and mailed her a new card. Indeed, the new card was in her mailbox that very same day.

Talk about service. Call to change your registration, immediately look in your mailbox, and there’s your new voter registration card.

Now that’s the type of positive headline you’re never going to read

In touting his qualifications to manage King County’s $3.4 billion budget, David Irons Jr. likes to talk up his “25 years of successful small business experience,” even bragging to Northwest News that he “formed three start-up companies.”

Thus it was with some disappointment that I found the Seattle Times’ profile of Irons’ business background to contain nary a word explaining, um, exactly what it was he actually did at any of these “start-ups”… you know, his responsibilities, duties, accomplishments… the actual executive experience that allegedly prepares him to manage a county government larger than that of thirteen states.

Well, there’s apparently a good reason why the Times’ failed to detail Irons’ day-to-day management responsibilities at All Points Cable TV, Brigadoon.com and CCPI… according to sources at all three companies, Irons didn’t really have any. Indeed, a close examination of his resume reveals that far from the “25 years of executive experience” he claimed on Up Front with Robert Mak, Irons really only has maybe 3 or 4 years to his credit… and even that is suspect.

Let’s start with his parent’s company, All Points Cable TV. In a 1997 resume, Irons made some truly impressive claims:

Wow. That’s quite some resume. On paper, this guy sounds like a can-do, jack of all trades. Of course, a 1999 resume from his first Council run was slightly less effusive:

But under the scrutiny of a high-profile campaign, Irons’ 2005 website is cautiously more concise, reducing his tenure at the family company to a single bullet point: “VP & co-owner All Points Cable TV – 1982 to 1995.”

Okay, let’s forget for a moment the question of whether Irons actually lied on his resume, for this isn’t really about lying on his resume, no matter how much of a lie his resume apparently is. This is about what he actually did at All Points Cable TV (as opposed to the lies on his resume), and whether it gave him any of the vaunted management experience Irons claims to possess. For example, I mentioned to his sister Di that “VP & co-owner” made it sound like her brother had a significant role running the place… and she actually laughed. “David…?” she chuckled, “he fixed the trucks.”

Hmm. That seemed odd.

So when I talked to Irons’ mother, I made a point of reading to her the rather effusive prose on her son’s 1997 resume, and… well… she laughed. “99 percent of what he wrote, there’s not one bit of truth to it,” Janet C. Irons told me. According to his mother, David occasionally went out on construction jobs, but mostly worked alone in the garage, maintaining vehicles and equipment. He was “an excellent mechanic” his mother told me, but didn’t get along very well with people.

I didn’t talk directly with Irons’ father, but the Times reporter did. And what did David Sr. have to say about his son’s role at the company?

David Irons Sr., while acknowledging that his son had the title of vice president, said he was a co-owner only in the sense that he held company stock. He said his son’s role was limited mostly to construction work and maintaining the company’s trucks. “He did a lot of welding,” Irons Sr. said.

A lot of welding. Uh-huh. Perhaps that’s Irons’ plan to fix the Viaduct should I-912 pass?

The real owners of All Points Cable TV, Irons’ own parents, insist that during his 13-year tenure, he was not involved with the management and operations of the company… at all… and that he didn’t even have an office. (On the radio last week, Irons’ mom referred to her son as a “grease monkey.” ) And Irons has presented absolutely no evidence to the contrary.

Furthermore, the timeline makes it indisputably clear that Irons could not possibly have “formed” the start-up as he claimed; his parents started the company in the late 1970’s while David Jr. was still up in Alaska working on the pipeline — you know… welding. The Irons did not bring their son into the family business until 1982, and didn’t start compensating him with stock until several years after that.

But once again, this is not really about Irons’ completely bogus resume, and how he bogusly lied on it. This is about whether his tenure at the family business gave him any of the management experience he boastfully touts. And the answer must be no, for even at its height the company never employed more than a dozen people, none of whom reported to David Jr… a fact he has never disputed.

Thus from the 25 years of successful small business experience and 3 startups Irons claims to have formed, we must subtract 13 and 1 respectively… so we’re down to 12 years and 2 startups. Still, not too shabby, but not at all what Irons claims.

On to Brigadoon…

On all of his resumes, Irons claims to have served as Chief Operating Officer of Brigadoon.com from 1995 to 1997… which I suppose he credits for 3 of his 25 12 years of successful small business experience, and 1 of his 3 2 vaunted startups. In fact, while I couldn’t pinpoint his actual start date, it appears his entire tenure at Brigadoon was only about 15 months, less than a year of which he served as COO. Furthermore, it was far from “successful”, unless of course, you measure success by how many millions of dollars your company ends up owing investors, vendors and employees when it finally goes belly-up… in which case Brigadoon could be described as an enviable triumph of free market capitalism.

So, how did a grease monkey like David Jr. end up as COO of a multimillion dollar dot.com bust like Brigadoon? The same way the cussing, wrench-throwing welder earned himself the title of “VP” at a local, cable TV company: daddy.

After the sale of his cable business, David Sr. had a few million dollars burning a hole in his pocket, and what better way to multiply his fortune than to invest in a company with the brilliant business plan of giving away free internet service to schools in a risky gambit to dominate a saturated dial-up market on the cusp of being decimated by broadband? (Yeah, yeah, I know… I have the benefit of hindsight… but I’m on a roll here, so bear with me.) As nutty as the entire Irons clan might now seem, David Sr. was a fairly well known and respected Eastside figure back then. A self-made millionaire and a former US Coast Guard Commander and Chief of Aviation — who Jr. himself used to refer to as “a hero” — David Sr. could not only bring a desperately needed cash infusion into the ambitious company, but also provide the credibility necessary to lure in other investors.

And so when Brigadoon’s predecessor started into negotiations with David Sr. in the latter half of 1995, one of the first things they did was offer a sales/marketing position to his recently unemployed son, David Jr…. despite the fact that the marketing department had few if any trucks to maintain. (On the other hand, there weren’t many loose wrenches lying around either, so it was a relatively safe hire.) And so at the age of 43, David Jr. finally got his first office. Or… maybe it was cubicle. Either way, it wasn’t in a garage. Um… I don’t think.

By February of 1996, David Sr. had invested over $400,000 and loaned Brigadoon an additional $100,000, controlling 23% of the outstanding shares, and earning himself a seat on the Board. Shortly thereafter, David Jr. was promoted to COO, a meteoric rise for a mediocre man, who up until that point barely had any experience managing his own anger, let alone a staff.

At this point the Irons family and my sources at Brigadoon tell starkly different tales of what was really happening at the company, but from both accounts one gets a pretty clear picture of COO David Jr.’s initial role: he was a mole installed to protect the family’s interests. Irons’ parents claim that they soon discovered Brigadoon to be under-capitalized, vastly mismanaged, and rife with illegal and ethically questionable accounting and stock maneuvers. However, my Brigadoon sources cite frequent, harassing letters from the Irons’ attorney-daughter Janet A. as evidence that the family was merely flinging trumped up accusations in an effort to seize control of the company. By June 5, 1996, after weeks of negotiating and angry letter writing, Brigadoon bought out David Sr.’s stake in the company… but as noted in a timeline provided by the Irons family: “DWI Jr. remains an officer.”

It was a month later that David Jr. sent a letter to Brigadoon’s board, which the Times’ article attempted to spin into a noble display of business ethics.

By July 1996, David Irons was just about fed up with Brigadoon.com, the Internet startup where he was chief operating officer.

He typed a letter to the board of directors, warning of “irregularities” including questionable stock sales and “manipulation of numbers” to boost the company’s image for investors.

Unless the company hired a securities expert to correct the problems, Irons feared, he could be held personally liable. Though he wanted to stay, Irons wrote, “my family and my personal integrity must come first.” He’d resign if the problems were not fixed.

Let’s be clear. By July 1996, David Jr. had only been COO for a few months, and not only didn’t he “type the letter”, he didn’t even compose it. As an accompanying cover letter explains, this letter, like all those associated with the Irons-Brigadoon disputes, was written by attorney-daughter Janet A., and in such context appears to be more of a mild blackmail note than an effort to genuinely fix problems at the company. Indeed, the letter closes with the following threat:

I will keep the contents of this letter confidential if the Board acts, however it is bound to become a topic of discussion within the company if I am forced to resign on August 15. I desperately hope that will not be necessary.

The letter alleges serious irregularities and securities violations “too numerous to list in their entirety”… but apparently not so serious or numerous that he ever bothered to notify authorities or warn other investors. In fact, David Jr. stayed on at Brigadoon, despite the alleged irregularities, profligate spending and shaky finances until February 1997… at which time he exited with the plum rights to one of the company’s only profitable assets.

How did David Jr. manage this little business coup?

In a July 2000 expose of the financial chaos that was Brigadoon, the Times mentions a little episode that David Jr. likes to spin into a tale of his own selfless, Christmas spirit:

Before Christmas 1996, Hansen promised employees they’d be paid, but he failed to follow through when an investor backed out. Irons said he was furious and put $50,000 on his credit card to make payroll.

But the truth behind this incident is much more Dickensian than David Jr. lets on, for it was good old-fashioned greed rather than holiday goodwill that prompted Jr. to whip out his credit card. COO David Jr. was intimately aware of the company’s precarious financial straights, and as Randy Fink, a former vice president at Brigadoon put it, this was an opportunity to “get out of there with some skin.” David Jr. had the company over a barrel, and so he collateralized his $50,000 emergency loan with the rights to one of Brigadoon’s only profitable assets: the convention center contracts that now form the basis of David Jr.’s current company, CCPI. When merely two months later David Jr. called in the loan, he knew that Brigadoon could not pay… and so he resigned as COO in February 1997, taking with him the lucrative contracts, and most of the employees from the business unit that served them. That, and $100,000 from his parents, put him in business on his own.

“He took advantage of a situation there and obviously feathered his bed at the expense of the Brigadoon shareholders,” Fink said. “It was one of the last major assets that was available and he ended up with it.

Brian Nelson, Brigadoon’s former general counsel is even more blunt in his assessment, characterizing the transaction as “loansharking” terms. “David was an officer, and he had a fiduciary responsibility to do what was best for all the shareholders, not just himself,” Nelson told me. “This deal did not appear to meet those obligations.”

The incident raises a number of unsettling questions in addition to that of whether David Jr., as COO, violated his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders… the most obvious being whether he received better treatment than Brigadoon’s many other creditors — most of whom came away with nothing — and if so… why? One can only speculate, but it seems reasonable to wonder if the spectacularly one-sided deal that put the company’s last major asset in the hands of an unhappy ex-COO had anything to do with his threatening letter from July 1996? Whatever the merits of the family’s allegations, Brigadoon saw fit to first buy out David Sr.’s shares (plus interest), and then eventually buy out David Jr. as well, giving him a sweetheart of a deal that apparently satisfied him enough to keep him quiet on his charges of wrongdoing.

And while Brigadoon wasn’t forced into bankruptcy until a little more than a year after David Jr.’s departure, it is also fair to question his claim that he had no role in the company’s failure. Surely, the loss of the lucrative convention center business must have exacerbated Brigadoon’s faltering bottom line. And if we are to believe that David Jr.’s own mismanagement didn’t contribute to the company’s well documented problems, one must ask… what exactly is it that Jr. did there during his brief tenure anyway?

Well, don’t look to his resume for answers, for according to Nelson and others, David Jr.’s Brigadoon blurb is just as self-aggrandizing as his fantastic tales of his years at All Points Cable TV. For example, the 1997 resume specifically names a number of corporations and organizations in which David Jr. claims “personal negotiation of Internet service contracts”… claims refuted by some of the people who actually did the negotiation. David Jr. did in fact attend some of these meetings, but according to one source, he was told to “sit in the corner and keep his mouth shout.”

So how thin is David Jr.’s Brigadoon resume? Well, one of my favorite bullet points is particularly telling:

Publications; Determined time-line to profitability was beyond resources of company and crafted elimination of department and reallocation of staff;

Um… so… in talking about his role in the Publications Department, he’s actually filling space on his resume by telling us what he didn’t do. (And by the way, the department he eliminated and staff he reallocated…? It consisted of a single person.)

The problem for David Jr. is that when it comes to Brigadoon, he tries to have it both ways. He wants to point to his brief tenure as COO as evidence of his management prowess, yet he refuses to take responsibility for any of the company’s problems. He tries to claim that the company slipped into bankruptcy only after he left, yet in internal documents and interviews with reporters he paints a picture of a company that was dramatically mismanaged and financially shaky from the day he arrived to the day he left. It may in fact be true that apart from stealing away one of Brigadoon’s only profitable assets, David Jr. did not contribute directly to the company’s eventual failure… but it is hard to argue that he did anything to help prevent it either. Far from fixing the company’s problems like the hands-on, can-do executive he pretends to be, David Jr. simply up and quit.

Former Brigadoon employees and officers describe him as anything from a “dangerous mole” to a “harmless figurehead”, and while some avoided him as a “bully”, others seemed to genuinely like him. But nobody, on or off the record, could recount to me a single accomplishment… which I suppose explains why the Times’ profile is equally thin in reporting his actual role at the company, beyond his title.

In fact, Irons held the title of COO for less than year, at a company that in no way could be described as “successful.” By his own account, he was not a founder, and did not “form” the startup. He was just a manager, hired and promoted at his father’s behest, with no prior qualifications to recommend him for the position, and no pertinent educational preparation. (It’s not like he was one of those snotty, newly-minted MBAs that started to infest the dot.com world during the mid 90’s… he never even graduated from college.) Finally, it is not at all clear what, if anything, David Jr. actually did at Brigadoon during his very brief tenure, other than sign his name to all those threatening letters penned by his sister Janet.

So from his alleged 25 12 years of successful small business experience, and 3 2 startups he supposedly formed, we must subtract 3 and 1 respectively, for a new total of 9 years of “executive experience” and 1 remaining startup. That brings us to CCPI, a company that rents temporary internet access to exhibitors displaying at Seattle’s WA State Convention Center, and several other venues.

I could only find a single CCPI employee willing to speak to me, and very off the the record, so I can’t really add much new information to what little has already been written about the company in the mainstream press. But I can tie up a few loose strings.

As has previously been noted, CCPI was not your typical “startup”, having essentially sprung fully formed from Zeus’s head at the time David Jr. left Brigadoon, convention center contracts and staffers in hand. Thus, with CCPI, David Jr. didn’t so much “form a startup” as he did purchase a fully functional business unit, and then slap a new name on it.

Having neither the technical expertise nor the managerial experience to operate a “high-tech” company, David Jr. has reportedly been a hands off CEO since the company’s founding, leaving the day to day operations in the hands of the managers who ran the business unit for Brigadoon… perhaps the wisest executive decision Jr. has made during his 25 12 9 years of “successful small business experience.” CCPI employees consider David Jr. to be an “absentee owner”, rarely seeing him at the company’s Bremerton offices… a long commute from his Sammamish home. And David Jr. himself has admitted to reporters that he has spent no more than 4 to 6 hours a week on the business since choosing to run for County Council in 1999.

Instead, David Jr. claims that he is responsible for the company’s “vision”, telling the Times that he’s learned a lesson from the high-flying, nose-diving Brigadoon, preferring a slow growth strategy for CCPI that may not be sexy, but is guaranteed to last. To which I respond with one cautionary word of free consulting advice: “WiMAX.”

Unlike David Jr., I have actually formed a technology startup with nothing but an idea, some credit cards, and a foolish dream, and thus I’ve had the opportunity to be personally reamed by vendors like CCPI while exhibiting at various convention centers around the nation. When an ethernet cable and three days of spotty internet service costs more than a year of residential DSL, you can be sure that exhibitors are searching for an alternative. So far, CCPI has resisted the trend to move its convention centers from hardwired ethernet to wireless WiFI networking, and over the next few years, as broadband WiMAX networks become established nationwide, CCPI’s business model will go the way of the dinosaurs… just like Brigadoon’s dial-up market.

So much for the vision thing.

Still, despite hiring a former pizza salesman with no technical experience to run his company in his absence, CCPI has managed to stay in business since 1997… so I suppose David Jr. deserves a little credit for that. So lets charitably give him two years of successful executive experience from 1997 to 1999, plus maybe half a year of experience for his 5-hour work-weeks since then.

So if you’re hiring David Irons Jr. based on his claim of 25 years of successful executive experience, here’s a more realistic assessment of his resume:

All Points Cable TV: 0 years of executive experience
Brigadoon.com: less than 1 year of unsuccessful executive experience
CCPI: 2.5 years of successful executive experience. (Maybe.)

As to the number of startups he’s formed, I’d say the answer is none… though I suppose an argument could be made that CCPI vaguely fits the description. But however you add up the numbers, there is no doubt that Irons has vastly less executive experience than he boastfully claims on any of his resumes.

Irons likes to point out that by comparison, Ron Sims has no private sector experience… but what Sims does have is nine years as executive of one of the largest county governments in the nation, managing a $3.4 billion budget while earning triple-A ratings from all three top credit agencies, even as many other municipal governments around the state teeter on the edge of insolvency.

While the Seattle Times may have failed to sufficiently dissect Irons’ resume for its readers, there’s a reason why its normally Republican-leaning, strongly pro-business editorial board enthusiastically endorses Ron Sims, and soundly rejects the candidacy of his overmatched opponent. Of David Irons Jr. they write: “his resume and leadership skills pale in comparison.”

And that’s putting it charitably.

As Dino Rossi continues to maintain his silence on Initiative 912, the message-sending, KVI publicity stunt cum ballot measure is beginning to expose deep rifts in the WA state Republican Party.

Prominent Republicans from the business community, including Western Wireless Chief Executive John Stanton, have contributed mightily to the campaign to preserve the tax.

They hope to draw a distinction between themselves and the more conservative anti-tax base and help diffuse the partisan politics behind the support for the initiative.

Mainstream Republicans of Washington, a group of moderates, has endorsed the No on 912 campaign and is spending about $80,000 (most of it from Stanton) for direct mail opposing the initiative.

“Republicans have a long history of defending user taxes and particularly the gas tax,” said Mainstream Republicans Executive Director Alex Hays. “The gas tax is constitutionally required to fund roads and ferries. Taxes don’t get much fairer than that. You drive on the roads, you use gas, and therefore you pay for the roads.”

Hays said virtually every Republican to hold statewide office has come out of the mainstream movement. Mainstream members include Stanton, Secretary of State Sam Reed, Attorney General Rob McKenna, Commissioner of Lands Doug Sutherland and Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner.

Rossi should take note. Stanton, who has contributed over $100,000 to the No on 912 campaign, has often been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor or other high office, and while at this point in time it would be surprising to see any Republican seriously challenge Rossi for the 2008 nomination, the Sammamish real estate salesman cannot take for granted the enthusiastic support of business leaders, particularly a potential rival like Stanton who clearly disagrees with Rossi on substantive policy issues.

Of course, Rossi ran very well in 2004, pretending to be a mainstream Republican, but as he’s proven with his conspicuous silence on I-912, Mainstream Republicans in the business community and elsewhere really can’t count on him to support their agenda. If three years from now the state and regional economy is strong, and business leaders are largely satisfied with Gov. Christine Gregoire’s job performance, they will open their wallets less widely to support a challenger who has failed to support them in return.

“For a lot of the politicians, this is a vote (the public vote on 912) that they realize is best argued on the merits rather than turned into a partisan issue,” Stanton said. “I was on a podium with John Carlson,” the radio talk show host and I-912 supporter, “and he talked about sending a message. This is not about sending a message,” Stanton said.

“Or if it is, it’s about sending a message that transportation’s important.

And don’t think that Stanton and other business leaders haven’t been shy about sending a message of their own. That a lowly blogger like me should receive an earnest phone call from “Executive X” was a subtle message in itself. Less subtle was his questioning of whether Rossi “fully appreciates the political ramifications” of his failure to speak out against I-912. More recently, the Seattle P-I reported that Boeing would be diverting money away from the parties and giving it directly to those individual legislators who voted for the gas tax increase… implying that those opposing the tax should expect zilch. As the P-I editorial board wrote:

The state Republican Party backs I-912. Boeing opposes it. All but the most clueless of Republican candidates will get the message.

Is Rossi really that clueless?

I suppose it is possible that Rossi really does oppose the transportation package, and believes that we can afford to continue to delay maintenance and improvement projects… that he’s so deeply entrenched in the reactionary, anti-tax wing of the GOP that he’s willing to dismiss the fervent opposition to I-912 from the businesses and wealthy executives who financed his last campaign. If that’s true, he should just come out and take a principled stand.

Or perhaps Rossi quietly agrees with Stanton, but is willing to sacrifice the economic welfare of the state as part of a political gambit he hopes will weaken Gregoire for 2008? If that is the game he is playing, he should understand that even “winning” doesn’t come without risks. Assuming she governs well, Gregoire’s approval ratings will continue to climb, the further removed we are from the GOP’s viciously dishonest — yet effective — election contest PR campaign. And Gregoire won’t sleepwalk through a rematch the way she did the 2004 election: 2008 is going to be a meaner, more energetic, more costly campaign, and if Rossi expects to be competitive, he’ll need business leaders to continue to cut the big checks that he and his fellow Republicans have come to take for granted.

But my guess is, before they open their checkbooks again, some of these executives are going to look back at the I-912 campaign and ask: “Where was Rossi?”

Dino’s got a few more days to answer the question.

Man… that was easy:

Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush ended his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court Thursday and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the “radical right wing of the Republican Party.”
…
The withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting potential bad news for the administration on another front – the possible indictments of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq hit 2,000.

My regular readers must have noticed that I commented little on the Miers nomination, preferring instead to sit back and watch the normally disciplined Republican Party implode on its own. Let this be a lesson to those few moderates and true conservatives left in a position of authority within the GOP… the far right wing of your party expects absolute loyalty and allegiance from you, but should you stray one tiny step from the Good Book, they’ll throw you to the lions without a moment’s hesitation. They don’t give a shit about fiscal conservativism or federalism or strict constructionism… they’ll stop at absolutely nothing in pursuit of their theocratic agenda, even if it means turning on a Republican president at a time he desperately needed party discipline to save his crumbling administration.

Whatever her qualifications, Miers was without a doubt a reliably pro-business, corporate attorney who could be counted on to favor the GOP’s financial backers for decades to come. But even this devout, born again, Evangelical Christian failed to pass the religious right’s rigid litmus test, that demands justices who will criminalize abortion and homosexuality, while undermining our nation’s sacred tradition of separating church and state.

And isn’t it curious… that her dramatic, surprise withdrawal comes on a day the White House expects criminal indictments of high-level members of the administration? I guess it should come as no surprise that Karl Rove would sacrifice a Supreme Court nominee in an effort to save his own skin.