Last week our local skewspaper, the Coeur d’Alene Press, ran an online comment which its writer and the skewspaper’s website attributed to “Todd Tondee.”  Some of us in Kootenai County, Idaho, recognized that as the name of one of our elected Board of County Commissioners.   The comment, eventually deleted by the Press, contained language which offended some county residents.  The Press’s pseudonymous censor, “Moderator 99”, sufficiently explained that the comments had not been made by Commissioner Todd Tondee but by an impostor who had assumed his name.

That probably could and should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.

According to an online Press article dated June 22, 2013, and headlined The real Tondee files a complaint, Commissioner Todd Tondee submitted a formal criminal complaint alleging false personation to the Coeur d’Alene Police Department.  A Coeur d’Alene Police Department sergeant has assured him the complaint would be investigated.  The article also goes on to say, “Coeur d’Alene Press Managing Editor Mike Patrick and Mike Alexander, who manages Coeur d’Alene Press online division, have discussed the issue and will fully cooperate with the investigation.”

Unfortunately, there’s more to this story. (more…)

The Kootenai County, Idaho, Board of County Commissioners and the Kootenai County Planning Department decided that the existing Kootenai County land use code is confusing and outdated.    They determined the best approach to clarifying and updating the code would be to spend a pile o’ taxpayer dollars to hire a consultant do it.  Enter Kendig Keast Collaborative (KKC) to oversee the project.

According to the project’s website, the end product will be known as the Unified Land Use Code (ULUC).  ULUC’s objectives will be to:
– Make the code easier to use, which will make it easier to understand requirements and obtain approvals for the development and use of property;
– Revise or eliminate existing code provisions that are frustrating landowners because they are unnecessarily restrictive (i.e., they go further than they need to in order to achieve their stated objectives), or too difficult to understand; and
– Help implement Kootenai County’s Comprehensive Plan, which represents the hard work of the County’s residents in figuring out and articulating where their diverse values meet. (more…)

I seriously doubt that too many of our county and local politicians have even heard of Montreal’s Charbonneau Commission, so its lessons will be missed.   Missed…ignored…same difference.  We are in Idaho, after all.

We provided information about it in our June 18 post titled Another Mayor Arrested – Corruption.

The Charbonneau Commission has remained in the public eye in Quebec largely because of the reporting of diligent news media, especially Montrea’s newspapers The Gazette and The Globe and Mail.  But it would never have launched had it not been for relentless public pressure on Quebec Premier Jean Cherest  to appoint a courageous Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau to lead the inquiry.

The title of today’s post, though, was a quote taken from The Gazette article on June 21.  That article is a story of how a civil engineer bought public contracts in the local construction industry.  It was a way of life, a cost of doing business, a cost of getting those juicy public contracts for construction and engineering work.  The story notes,

As Quebec continues to delve into the deeply-rooted system of kickbacks, bribes and illegal fundraising that link the province’s construction industry to politicians and civil servants, stories like Raymond’s [the engineer) are becoming increasingly familiar.

The Gazette’s June 21 article is, once again, an excellent tutorial on how municipal corruption happens.  Read it in The Gazette, because these are stories you will never see in the Coeur d’Alene Press or The Spokesman-Review.

Well, yet another mayor pledging to clean up corruption in his city has been arrested — on 14 counts of corruption.  This time it’s Mayor Michael Applebaum, the mayor of Montreal, a city of approximately 1.65 million in Canada’s Quebec province.

According to an O.Canada.com article headlined Development projects at centre of charges against Montreal mayor, “The charges, 14 of which are levelled against Applebaum, who was mayor of the borough [Montreal’s Cote-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grace borough] from 2002 to 2012, relate to what officials with Quebec’s anti-corruption squad called ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ in bribes in exchange for municipal support and approval for the two real-estate projects between 2006 and 2011.”

Applebaum and a couple of other suspects were arrested by the Quebec Provincial Police, known there as the Sûreté du Québec or SQ, and the Unité Permanente Anticorruption or UPAC, Quebec’s special anti-corruption squad.  A Globe and Mail online article headlined Behind the bribery allegations that have enveloped Montreal’s mayor provides more details about the charges.

ADDENDUM on June 18, 2013, at 3 p.m.:  Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum resigned today.  Interesting paragraph from the Reuters article:

His departure will do little to help the reputation of Quebec, where a two-year public inquiry led by Judge France Charbonneau is unearthing almost daily allegations of contract rigging, kickbacks and fraud going back many years.

That is a very succinct and well-stated reason for pursuing public corruption rather than choosing to ignore it.

ADDENDUM on June 19, 2013, at 8:15 a.m.:  Here is a pretty good primer on how to bribe public officials with what appear to be legitimate campaign donations.  Here is another one.

Now the ass-covering begins.  Formally and bureaucratically, it’s known as the damage assessment.  How much damage to the national defense and security has actually been done by the disclosures of former Booz|Allen|Hamilton employee Edward Snowden?

The lead paragraph in the Washington Post’s article headlined  Investigators looking into how Snowden gained access at NSA frames it accurately.  “Counterintelligence investigators are scrutinizing how a 29-year-old contractor who said he leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents was able to gain access to what should be highly compartmentalized information…”

It’s the right question to ask Snowden’s former employer and the NSA.  Here is Booz Allen’s official response. (more…)

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, has identified himself as the source of highly classified documents about NSA and FBI signals interceptions.

In an article headlined Edward Snowden:  the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations, The Guardian newspaper reports Snowden’s reasons and motivations for the disclosures.  Snowden has taken refuge in Hong Kong.

What are your thoughts about his actions?  Is he a patriot?  A criminal?  A traitor?

How do his actions differ from those of Daniel Ellsberg?

If you’ve been reading the skewspapers or watching eyewitless news on the television, you’ve been hearing quite a bit about the major telecommunications carriers like Verizon cooperating with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Within the last few days, you’ve also heard that major technology and Web companies have also been sharing information with the NSA in a program named PRISM.

To get a narrow glimpse at what the NSA can glean from internet transactions, read one of its own unclassified publications titled Untangling the Web:  A Guide to Internet Research.   Since it’s only 650 pages, you should be able to easily finish it in one night.

Long ago I learned magicians use physical misdirection to divert the audience’s attention briefly from what will be a necessarily unnoticed but critical action vital to the success of the trick.

For example, the magician introduces his beautiful assistant to the audience with an elegant flourish of his right arm and hand.  The audience’s eyes follow the smooth movement of the magician’s arm and hand directing them to look stage right to see her walk on.  In the meantime with the audience completely captivated by the beautiful assistant, the magician’s left hand is loading up the real deception.

That’s what happened at the Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting on Tuesday, June 4.  (more…)

On Tuesday, June 4, 2013, the Coeur d’Alene City Council will consider a proposed city ordinance intended to  “…prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations based upon sexual orientation and gender identity/expression…”

OpenCdA hopes that all members of the City Council have diligently researched already-applicable federal and state laws and, more importantly, that those council members have compared the quality of remedies already available under existing law with the remedies proposed by the ordinance.

And then, there’s the money to be made… (more…)

As OpenCdA reported yesterday, Mary Souza has declared her intention to file as a candidate for the office of Mayor in the 2013 Coeur d’Alene City Election.

Most people who have followed OpenCdA since its inception know that it was founded by Dan Gookin (now Councilman Dan Gookin), Mary Souza, and me.  To Dan and Mary’s credit and out of respect for the people in the community, both of them chose to withdraw from OpenCdA when they became candidates.   Mary has indicated that she will not be commenting on any of the various blogs, including OpenCdA.  In my opinion, that’s very wise.  Words written on a blog can be twisted and taken out of context.

Dan occasionally adds comments to posts here, and Mary has given me permission to reprint her email newsletters when they are distributed.

I encourage our readers to become more informed about and more involved in our local issues.  Our day-to-day lives are most affected by what goes on here rather than in Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac or even in Boise.    Given the poor quality of news coverage in Coeur d’Alene, Kootenai County, and north Idaho generally, I hope the candidates for Mayor and City Council in Coeur d’Alene will actually get out and talk with small groups in the communities.   If you’re invited to attend a group in your neighborhood, show up and don’t be afraid to make comments and ask candidates any questions about local issues that concern you.  You and I are part of this larger community, and we have something to offer.  In those personal, face-to-face settings, you’ll find that you have the ability to quickly and definitively separate the honest and competent candidates from those whose principal talent is shoveling equine feces.