Patty Murray's smear campaign gets national attention

[island911]

A Washington State Smear Campaign - WSJ.com

in a nut-shell, every time Dino Rossi runs for something, the Dem's break-out the law suits to slow him down.

Yay for representing the people, and not just protecting their over-paid gigs.


Anyway, wasn't Rossi the guy who squared away our State's budget a decade or so back? --I guess that the professional bureaucrats want to keep their jobs (no mater how worthless the job may be) And they see Rossi as a threat to that. :-/

[genrex]

Nowadays, it seems like politics is a season of the year.

Road construction, politics, indoor spiders, and finally the holidays.

I rank politics slightly above giant house spiders...

[bonkers]

Originally Posted by genrex

I rank politics slightly above giant house spiders...

Hairy with lots of legs and always getting where you don't want it to be?

[john walker's workshop]

Rossi's a sleezebag. murray is definitely the lesser of two evils, which is how politics and voting works.

[Jeff Higgins]

Both are established cogs in the big machine. A vote for either is a vote for the status quo. Unfortunately, that's what we're left with.

[island911]

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

Rossi's a sleezebag. ....

Likely. He is after all trying to become a politician.


. . . but at least Rossi doesn't look like he just fell off of a Dutch-Boy paint-can label.


Seriously, Murray is big into spending big (our taxes AND future higher taxes). Rossi is at least a fiscal conservative. ....well, compared to Murray.

[m1franck]

And this topic relates to Porsche's how???? Aren't their political forums for this dribble?

BTW, if any politician was worth a pound of chicken crap they would be able to get a real job! They all have sold their souls to their campaign contributors & the special interest group they are in bed with.

[island911]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Both are established cogs in the big machine. A vote for either is a vote for the status quo. Unfortunately, that's what we're left with.

Apparently Rossi only has his past State Senate gig.

per wikipedia

State Senate tenure

In 1992, Rossi ran for a Washington State Senate seat in a district representing suburbs east of Seattle, Washington in the Cascade foothills. After winning a divisive Republican Party primary, he lost the general election. In 1996, Rossi ran again for the State Senate and was elected.

Rossi served in the Washington State Senate from 1997 until December 2003, when he resigned to spend full time running for governor.[10] During his time as senator, he gained a reputation for being a political consensus builder with a proven ability to build bipartisan coalitions.[11] When the Senate Republicans gained the majority in 2002, Rossi became chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee that writes the state’s two year operating budget. It was in this position that Rossi was widely credited for closing a $2.7 billion budget deficit without raising taxes.[12] He passed this budget with bipartisan support,[13] gaining praise from members of both parties, including the ranking Democrat on the budget committee. The budget chief for Democratic Governor Gary Locke said of Rossi in 2003, “The really good legislators move from one side to the other really effortlessly, and I think Dino did that.”[11]

Rossi sponsored a number of bills as a state senator prior to his role as chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, including the Two Strikes bill that puts child molesters away for life after a second conviction.[14] In 1998, he sponsored the Mary Johnsen Act,[15] named for a Sammamish resident who was killed by a drunk driver. The bill required ignition interlock devices for certain convicted drunk drivers in the state of Washington. Rossi received the national finalist award from Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his work. He also sponsored the Dane Rempfer bill[16] that boosted penalties for those who left the scene of a fatal accident, named after a 15 year old boy from his district who was killed in a hit-and-run. It was his work on the 2003 budget that spurred others to recruit Rossi to run for governor.[17]

Not exactly a cog in the machine . . . being that he hasn't been in the machine for quite a while. ...and that he obviously defunded some BLOAT

Personally, I'm getting the idea that Rossi is too smart to really want the job. --unlike most egotistical politicians running. . .in tennis shoes.

[john walker's workshop]

from the seattle times this morning.

PREV of NEXT




Dino Rossi
Related
In late 2008, after his second unsuccessful campaign for governor, Dino Rossi told friends he was done running for office. His well-trodden campaign website soon began promoting his return as a real-estate investor.

His political exile lasted less than 18 months. But those were a good 18 months for Rossi.

Despite a deep recession and a bruising real-estate market, Rossi's personal financial portfolio quickly expanded. He bought into partnerships on three multimillion-dollar deals and was paid well for speaking at a seminar on foreclosures.

As in Rossi's past business dealings, his recent investments were aided by political supporters, including two brothers who hired Rossi to solicit investors for their Everett-based real-estate company, Coast Equity Partners.

Democrats have seized on Rossi's past business deals, attacking him as "sleazy" for buying a building with a pair of lobbyists when he was a state senator and for starting his real-estate career with a man later convicted of defrauding investors.

How much Rossi mixed business and politics is unclear when it comes to his most-recent business venture. The names of investors he brought to Coast Equity are protected by limited liability companies, a common practice in real estate.

If elected to the U.S. Senate, Rossi said, he would put his assets in a blind trust, turning over his investments to a financial manager to avoid any appearance of conflicts of interest.

He said he is proud of his 26-year record in real estate and has nothing to hide.

"People don't invest with you because you are an elected official, they invest with you because they know you know what you're doing," he said recently. "I've done this from ground up, starting with nothing, and they know that."

Recruiting "accredited" investors

Rossi joined Coast Equity Partners in January 2009 at the invitation of co-founders Tom and Shawn Hoban.

Tom Hoban, the Snohomish County finance chairman for Rossi's 2008 gubernatorial campaign, said he shares Rossi's conservative Catholic values and sees Rossi as a "bit of a celebrity" in commercial real-estate investment.



Rossi's role is to bring in "accredited" investors — people with five or six figures to invest — and to sell them on potential deals.

Hoban said the firm is "pretty risk averse," avoiding land speculation and favoring income-generating apartment buildings and office buildings.

"In good times we leave a lot on the table," Hoban said. "In times like these, we may be the last man standing."

Connie Niva, a longtime Democrat and former Port of Everett commissioner, said she has invested with the Hobans because she trusts them, and that their Republican politics "have never entered into our business."

That hasn't stopped Democrats from attacking Rossi's work with the Hobans.

Earlier this year, while Rossi was still considering whether to enter the Senate race, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) sent researchers to scour public records for dirt on Coast Equity.

They found and publicized a $20,000 property-tax debt owed on an Everett commercial property — portraying it as evidence of Rossi's ethical lapses.

Hoban said the tax flap was overblown. He attributed the late taxes to a building tenant, a motorcycle dealership, that had gone out of business.

Unable to recover the taxes from the tenant, the ownership group — which included the Hobans and other investors — elected to pay the semiannual taxes late, with a penalty.

Rossi had nothing to do with the building, which was purchased before he joined the firm, Hoban said. The DSCC effort to connect Rossi to it was "an unbelievable stretch," he said.

After the publicity, Coast Equity hired former state Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, a Democrat, to write a letter to the DSCC warning it against smearing the company's reputation with misleading attacks.

A DSCC website trumpeting Rossi's history of "dirty deals" now contains no references to Coast Equity.

Sizable real-estate portfolio

Rossi already had a sizable real-estate portfolio when he joined Coast Equity. He owns a 135-unit Lake Stevens apartment building worth $1.9 million, and holds part ownership in a $4.2 million Sodo commercial building and a $4.6 million medical building in Mill Creek.

Since joining the Hobans, he has earned a small ownership stake in three other deals: a Puyallup mobile-home park property acquired for $2.6 million last March; a Ballard condominium building bought out of foreclosure for $6.5 million, also in March; and a $9 million apartment complex in Arlington purchased last June.

Though he has criticized Fannie Mae's lending practices on the campaign trail for contributing to the nation's economic meltdown, Rossi signed onto a $5.8 million Fannie Mae loan for the Arlington apartment complex.

Rossi said the loan was chosen by a mortgage broker, and that it was "silliness" to see any tension between the loan and his campaign rhetoric.

Besides, he noted, Fannie Mae's apartment-building loans have remained relatively strong, unlike Fannie's troubled single-family lending.

Rossi said declining real-estate prices make it a good time to buy the type of income-generating properties he favors.

"My real-estate purchases are even more conservative than my politics," he said.

His investments — including money he makes selling access to his list of political donors — appear to generate at least $240,000 in yearly income, according to figures from the financial-disclosure form Rossi filed for the U.S. Senate campaign.

Rossi also made $16,000 for speaking at real-estate seminars aimed at teaching investors how to make money buying foreclosed properties, including million-dollar lakefront homes.

Fertile ground for political attack

Rossi's past business dealings have proved fertile ground for Democratic attacks.

In his 20s and early 30s, Rossi worked alongside real-estate financier Melvin Heide during the 1980s even after Heide's illegal practices came to light. Heide eventually landed in prison for fraud.

Rossi was not accused of any wrongdoing.

In 1997, a year into his term as a state senator, Rossi invested in a Federal Way apartment building with a pair of Olympia lobbyists, Richard and David Ducharme. The father and son pair also later invested in a Bellevue bank Rossi helped found.

Richard Ducharme was the lobbyist for the Building Industry Association of Washington, the powerful homebuilders group that later became Rossi's biggest supporter during his gubernatorial runs.

Rossi also has had ties to Michael Mastro, the real-estate financier facing one of the largest bankruptcies in the region's history. Rossi bought two apartment buildings in the 1990s from Mastro, who also loaned Rossi money for the deals.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a national nonprofit watchdog group, put Rossi on its list of "Crooked Candidates" — a roster that included mostly Republicans but also some Democrats and independents — for his past associations with Mastro and the Ducharmes, among others.

Rossi should disclose his co-investors and the people his partnerships owe money to, said Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director. "Given his background, you wonder what kind of influence these people would have over him. That's a legitimate concern."

It is impossible to identify all of Rossi's current business partners, because his investments are held by limited liability companies (LLCs) that shield their investors from public scrutiny.

The personal financial-disclosure form he filled out in June — a requirement for federal candidates — lists the assets of nine LLCs but does not disclose those entities' liabilities or debts.

Rossi said he hasn't brought any lobbyists into the Coast Equity purchases, and does not believe the investors should be public. "These are regular folks looking for retirement income. They're business people. They're not even known to each other. They know us; they trust us."

Neither Rossi nor his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, have agreed to release their federal income-tax returns.

A return to politics

Rossi celebrated his 50th birthday last October at an intimate dinner with family and friends at Maggiano's restaurant in Bellevue. He joked with his daughter, a college freshman, about her new love interest, and talked about playing golf.

But he didn't say anything about politics, even with dinner companion J. Vander Stoep, a previous political adviser.

"I know he genuinely had no political plans," Vander Stoep said.

"He not only had no plans, he didn't expect to [have them] anytime soon, if ever."

But that changed within months.

Early this year, national Republican leaders feared they wouldn't find a credible challenger to Murray. They aggressively courted Rossi, who says he was initially skeptical.

His longtime political website, dinorossi.com, had been dormant for more than a year, directing visitors to his new job at Coast Equity.

On the morning of May 26, Rossi ended months of speculation by declaring his Senate candidacy — and his website flipped back from business into campaign mode.

[island911]

Wow, JW, that's some serious innuendo ladden crap. --But hey-- The Seattle Times.

The worst is their calling "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) " a " national nonprofit watchdog group," --more like a Socialist activist group.

Clearly massive innuendo and distortions are needed . .we wouldn't want anyone talking about Patty Murray's past 18 years of massive spending (of our tax dollars, btw)

[genrex]

Oy vey...

[john walker's workshop]

of course everything in the times is untrue. is there a faux 13 news station that has the real skinny?

[john walker's workshop]

Essex Porter
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News

Posted: 5:25 pm PDT September 21, 2010
Updated: 6:33 pm PDT September 21, 2010

TACOMA, Wash. -- Boeing tanker jets are at the center of what could be the first major controversy in the race between Sen. Patty Murray and Dino Rossi for one of Washington’s Senate seats.

The topic of Boeing building tanker jets for the Air Force came up during a conversation between Murray, Rossi and KIRO 7 Eyewitness News' partners, The News Tribune. Rossi was asked about what the World Trade Organization calls illegal subsidies to Boeing’s rival Airbus and whether the Pentagon should take those subsidies into account when it awards the tanker contract.

“No not as far as I'm concerned, no,” Rossi responded.

Boeing has been competing with Airbus to win the $35 billion contract for several years. Supporters claim the contract would be worth some 11,000 jobs at Boeing’s Everett plant.

Rossi declined a request for an on-camera interview, though his spokeswoman said “Dino will represent Washington, not France.”

Murray has won the support of Boeing machinists for her fight to force the Pentagon to include the illegal subsidies as part of the decision-making process in awarding the contract.

“This is about a tanker contract and an unfair playing field, and [Rossi] can try and obscure the issue anyway he wants to away from it, but it's very clear that he said [to The News Tribune] that he was willing to give an unfair advantage to Europe over Washington state workers,” Murray said.

In fact, Murray on Tuesday introduced legislation to force the Pentagon to take those illegal Airbus subsidies into account.

So far, there as been no response from Rossi on whether he supports it

[Producerjohn]

New Dino ad?

YouTube - Dino Rossi TV Commercial

[island911]

Originally Posted by Producerjohn

New Dino ad?

YouTube - Dino Rossi TV Commercial

LOL . . .and it had a Porsche in the spot.

Spot-on too, about Rossi being "the least interesting man in Washington" ...being so bland to use MATH to balance a budget.

In the end, all I want is for our govt to stop all off the high-dollar kick-backs and wasteful spending.

[island911]

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

Essex Porter
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News

..... Rossi was asked about what the World Trade Organization calls illegal subsidies to Boeing’s rival Airbus and whether the Pentagon should take those subsidies into account when it awards the tanker contract.

“No not as far as I'm concerned, no,” Rossi responded.
...
Rossi ..., though his spokeswoman said “Dino will represent Washington, not France.”

Murray has won the support of Boeing machinists for her fight to force the Pentagon to include the illegal subsidies as part of the decision-making process in awarding the contract....

First, WTO is evil. Second, Murray is falling into the trap of allowing the WTO to usurp authority in a situation that they should have NO authority. Murray is just the type to support a foreign world control organization like the WTO.

Beyond that, also consider the fact that Boeing is far from existing without govt money. I mean, sure, airbus gets some direct subsidies, whereas Boeing's are indirect; but airbus has been quick to point to Boeings indirect $'s. (again, not the most balanced reporting there.)

The Question is; do you want Boeing to be competitive in building tankers? ..or should they get the contract (no matter what the cost) because they are the only American company making planes big enough?

[island911]

btw, did Murray actually secure the jobs for Boeing? ...or is she just saying that she really really tried hard?

[teenerted1]

securing jobs for boeing isnt her job

securing WASHINGTON jobs is her job...where is that second 787 line going again?

[gtc]

What kind of crack are you guys smoking? It's not the government's responsibility to secure jobs for us, or to waste our tax dollars on handouts to corrupt or inefficient companies like Boeing.
I think it was Rob who said something to the effect of "If France wants to sell us subsidized planes below cost, why not let them?"

[island911]

Well, IF securing hand-outs is her job, Murray really should not have been so quick to sign-on to Obamacare. The States which held out -- that didn't trip while running exuberantly to the Obamacare sign-up sheet-- got billions of Fed tax dollars redirected to their respective States.

Maybe she needs new tennis shoes?