Unlimited Terms of Endearment Part XXVII, A Thousand Words (more or less)

This story remains under the media radar to this very day. You know how you can tell?

Howard Rich has been the focus of attention since July and was partially glimpsed even earlier in the spring by any number of state reporters. Actually, he's been doing this since at LEAST 1992 (although in 1983, he and Paul Jacob were in Connecticut under assumed names, Jacob being on the lam from the FBI at the time and all). So, for a long time, Howard Rich has been running initiative campaigns.

But, to this date, 14 days before the election in which Howard Rich's ballot measures will succeed or fail in seven states -- perhaps eight, depending on the Montana Supreme Court, and a bizarre election in which the people of Montana will STILL vote on the currently disallowed measures -- to this very date, only a single photograph of Rich has been used by the media, taken by the media, or found by the media: the high-school-yearbook sized "smiling" Howie Rich from the ALG website, first located by Barbecue & Politics in South Carolina, then by 4&20 Blackbirds in Montana, and then used by PBS' NOW newsmagazine, and used by the San Francisco CHRONICLE as the model for a line drawing, and now used in like manner by a like periodical -- and no, I don't remember which one, nor is it valuable in any manner to locate the link or research it.

How futile would it be to research the non-research of the media? Because that's what it would be, and that is what it is.

WHERE is an actual picture of Howard Rich? I've posted those that are publicly available that I could find. But no media story has yet gone THAT far.

(hey, at least the SF Chronicle DID
something, although, cropped, he does
sort of look like "My Favorite Martian")

I should, perhaps feel more than a little sheepish that I only caught additional Richian referenda in Colorado and New Hampshire, except that no one much seems to have noticed, either.

Come on.

I'm just a lone blogger with a simple computer and a dial-up line. If I can find photos of Howard Rich, then why can't some photographer or camera crew get some footage of Howie? Certainly when you're unrepentantly trying to change the laws in what began as dozens of states, you're surely a public figure, and a newsworthy one.

But no: Howard Rich and his shadowy backers can shovel tens of millions of dollars into state after state; can launch a DOS attack on eight states, and threaten all 24 initiative states by the end of the year ... and we can't even get a fresh photo of Howard Rich.

How damned incompetent is that?

The media has gone so dead to sleep that even when their noses are smeared in it, even when the story has proceeded for months now (California just discovered it in October, it seems), nothing much happens. Howie Rich, New Estate York Magnate Developer Kelo, TABOR, etc. etc. etc.

Same story. Over and over again. It's so morbidly somnambulant that here we are, precisely 14 days before the election, and we don't even have a news PICTURE of Howard S. Rich, although we've seen the door to the building he operates from at 73 Spring Street, NYC 10012, thanks to reporter Maria Hinajosa of PBS' NOW.

But, on the face of it, something weird and 'newsworthy' is going on. I know it's complicated, media. But it's still your job to notice.

Here's the latest figures on what "America At Its Best" has gotten in funds for its campaigns in Nebraska and Idaho:

AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT
20 N WACKER DR
CHICAGO, IL 60606
$ 2030000.00

FUNDS FOR DEMOCRACY (sic)
73 SPRING STREET, #408
NEW YORK, NY 10012
$ 400000.00

CLUB FOR GROWTH STATE ACTION
20 N WACKER DR
CHICAGO, IL 60606
$ 50000.00

NATIONAL TAXPAYERS UNION
108 N ALFRED ST
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
$ 100000.00

[Source: Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission]

Some rich guy(s) think(s) that the USA is his/their own private model train set, and tinker(s) with the tracks in (over the past two years): Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, California, Idaho, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arkansas, Montana, Kansas, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Nevada, and lord-knows-where-else.

CONTRA COSTA TIMES [Calif.]
Oct. 17, 2006
Lisa Vorderbrueggen

"In the eight states with initiatives, Rich-led organizations provided 88 percent of the funding, according to the Center for Public Integrity. In California, Rich's groups have contributed $3.3 million of the $3.6 million collected...."

But do we have so much as a photograph? Not the 'official' photograph that Howie Rich chose. But a NEWS photo. Just one? Anyone? If he was picked up by the local cops for drinking, they'd have a picture.

We do have ONE spoken interview (thanks to Ray Ring). We have a few shreds of email exchanges with reporters. We have an oft-repeated sound bite about "helping out local activists" -- which has proven patently absurd. We have one article with some biographical data. (His father sold eggs.) And that's it.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of new/old news, here's a little breaking news on the old/new Colorado Howard Rich initiative on term limiting judges, funded almost entirely by "Colorado At Its Best" which also ponied up $50,000 to the California Prop. 90 Campaign:

http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organizations/glenview_il_60025.asp

AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT INC
240 WAUKEGAN RD STE 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC
(c/o STACIE D RUMENAP)
240 WAUKEGAN RD
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

ARIZONA AT ITS BEST
240 WAUKEGAN RD STE 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

COLORADO AT ITS BEST
(c/o DENNIS POLHILL)
240 WAUKEGAN RD STE 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

LEGISLATIVE EDUCATION ACTION DRIVE
240 WAUKEGAN RD # 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

PARENTS IN CHARGE FOUNDATION
240 WAUKEGAN RD STE 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

SOCIALSECURITYCHOICEORG INC
240 WAUKEGAN RD STE 200
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

US TERM LIMITS
240 WAUKEGAN RD
GLENVIEW, IL 60025-5159

Bravo, media! Huzzah! You proud warriors of the Fourth Estate have mounted a race that wouldn't challenge the sprinting abilities of a tree sloth. Take a bow. You've earned it.

Or just consider Oregon. Paul Farago and Kurt Weber have led the campaign since August.

Which is odd, or ought to be, to the Oregon media.

Why? Well, Steve Law of the Salem STATESMAN-JOURNAL, in his February interview with THEN-official petitioner Ted Berthelote (a retired Washington State dentist, who retired to Oregon in 2002 to the exclusive resort community in Bend, Oregon, just down the road from the Tom Weiskopf-designed Broken Top Golf Course), got two strange utterances from Berthelote:

First that Berthelote had been "recruited." Secondly, that Berthelote refused to reveal who had recruited him for the petition drive:

Oregon might vote on term limits again
Initiative would put 14-year cap on total service for legislators
STEVE LAW
[Salem, Ore.] Statesman Journal

February 7, 2006

Berthelote, who moved to Oregon four years ago, said he was approached by term-limits backers who read a guest opinion column that he wrote for The Bulletin in Bend. He declined to say who would run the campaign or identify the backers.

"I guess you'll just have to find out," he said.

That ought to have raised an eyebrow or two somewhere, one would think. And then, when the petitions had been turned in and the ballot measure certified, out come scuttling Paul Farago and Kurt Weber.

And THAT ought to have raised an eyebrow as well.

Farago was a founding board member of U.S. Term Limits in 1992, immediately after its dumping by the Koch brothers (as the Citizens for Congressional Reform, whose stated purpose was to elect a Republican congress, by term limiting out the Democrats) and purchase by Howard Rich. I don't expect the Oregon media to know that. But I DO expect them to have some inkling that Farago has been the chief petitioner for this proposal in Oregon, going back to 1994.

So, why the 'bait and switch'? Why would Mr. Farago want to keep his identity secret through the early part of the process?

I mean, when your name is associated with "Term Limits" in Oregon like "bread" is with "butter," why the sudden shadowy anonymity? Why the subterfuge? Is there something DISHONEST going on here?

Alas, torpid in their siesta, the Oregon media sleep blissfully on.

And why is Kurt Weber's name the name on all those faxes that bombarded Oregon school and governmental offices with requests to see vast quantities of email two weeks ago?

And what is the connection between Weber's and Farago's recent stints as paid employees/officers of the Cascade Policy Institute in Portland?

Inquiring minds might want to know, but the media most assuredly doesn't seem to. They seem to be watching that glowing butterfly in the commercials they run for the geriatric demographic that watches the evening network news.

Which I don't understand.

It was quite a bemusement last night when a door-to-door pony-tailed graybeard came to my door last night to warn me about this "Howard Rich" guy from New York and warn me not to vote for measures 41 and 48. I nodded soberly, took his handout card and wished him well in his canvassing.

He felt a need to tell me what was going on, as I've felt a need to tell YOU what's been going on. But I can tell you this much, media:

Every time I espy people who have learned about this whole sorry morass of rich pettifoggery, they get MAD. They want to know WHY nobody told them about this before.

And, you know what, media?

That's a damned good question.

Picture this: Howard Rich. I've got a thousand words here, more or less, and I'm willing to trade.

Courage.
.