Having reacquired Spiral Genetics, the genome sequencing company she co-founded fresh out of college a decade ago, Adina Mangubat has taken a couple of key steps to pave the way for a fund-raising effort she intends will move the company onto the global stage in the rapidly emerging DNA testing field.

Adina Mangubat To refer to Mangubat as a seasoned and tested CEO at the age of 32 might be a surprising description to those unaware of the path she's taken for the company she launched at age 22, fresh out of the University of Washington.  
Adina Mangubat 

But it's an apt description, given her process over the past couple of years. Or maybe more accurately the last couple of months. Two years ago she guided her company into a merger with a Bay Area bioinformatics company, then a few weeks ago did what she describes as an "un-acquisition" that paved the way for putting together a partnership with Microsoft that will dramatically expand Spiral Genetics' impact, internationally as well as nationally.

Closing the Microsoft partnership, the goal for which is to train algorithms to predict which people may be at risk of cardiovascular problems later in life," followed Adina's participation, along with her team, in Silicon Valley's Y Combinator, which she describes as "the number one start-up accelerator in the world."   

The fund-raising effort soon to get underway will permit Mangubat to scale up a broader international presence for her company as dozens of countries are undertaking large-scale genome sequencing of their populations. The company's first raise was a $3 million venture-led series A round in 2012.  

"This creates a unique opportunity to be able to find correlations between people's genomes and their medical history, which will lead to the discoveries that massively impact drug development and disease diagnosis in the future," Mangubat says of the growing effort to sequence the genomes of large populations.

"Ultimately, comparing genomes at scale will power novel discoveries that lead to new diagnostics and drug discovery," she added during an interview.

I asked Mangubat to give a layman an understanding of what widespread genome sequencing could bring about.

"DNA is life's chemical alphabet and if we could read and decipher what our DNA says and does, it would be a massive leap in our understanding of how to help our bodies overcome disease," she explained.

"The first step to read DNA is sequencing, which turns this chemical signal into a digital alphabet. The technology to read all 3 Billion letters of each person's DNA fast at not a lot of cost," she added. "The next challenge is figuring out which combinations of letters do what. Today, less than 1 percent of the function of genetic variations in humans are understood."

"Spiral Genetics has built tools for comparing large groups of people's DNA against each other to help decode the mystery," she said. 

In reference to the new fundraising, Mangubat said: "The pitch is that we make large scale genomic data mining possible.  There is a unique thing happening in history where we have reached a point of critical mass for sequencing. 

"To date, the globe has sequenced 1.5 million people's whole genomes.  And now there are 50 countries that are doing large scale sequencing of their populations to optimize their healthcare systems," she said.

"With just those groups alone, they have committed to sequencing 20 million people over the next five years and this creates a unique opportunity to be able to find correlations between people's genomes and their medical history," she said.   

"That will lead to the discoveries that massively impact drug development and disease diagnosis in the future.  Existing tools are not built to handle this scale of data.  We are making it possible to mine through this data to find the answers we've all been looking for."

With a successful raise, we are going to scale up multiple countries we are working with,' said. Spiral Genetics has been working on small projects with four countries but will look to dramatically scale up its genome work with two of those will the additional funds

With a father who was a doctor and a mother who ran the business details of the practice, Mangubat was exposed to medicine from her earliest years.

But her degree was in psychology and her exposure to the idea of genome and DNA came from a classmate in the entrepreneurship program at UW, who co-founded the company with Mangubat and remained for a time as a partner with Mangubat in growing the company in its early years, 
 
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of challenges she had to overcome in starting a company as complex as Spiral Genetics as a kid just of out college.

"The toughest challenge is not the lack of experience but the lack of network," she quickly noted. "Experience can be supplemented when needed and (in some cases) experience can be detrimental as one can have pre-existing ideas about what is or is not possible."

"But the power of a strong network makes such a massive difference for doing anything, whether it's fundraising, recruiting, connecting with potential customers, finding a good lawyer, etc. ," she said. "At 22, I had a very small network to pull from and after 10 years of actively building relationships, it's a completely different game."

Development of her network was undoubtedly enhanced pretty dramatically when she was named a Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 For Science and Healthcare seven years ago at the age of in 2013 and in 2017 a Forbes All-Star Alum for 30 Under 30s.

Bobby Brett, the long-time owner of the major-junior hockey Spokane chiefs who is heading into the Western Hockey League finals this weekend, is convinced the advent of National Hockey League (NHL) play in Seattle come 2021 will create a family among the Northwest's local hockey teams.

Brett, part of professional baseball's best-known band of brothers who bought Spokane's class A short-season professional baseball team, the Indians, in 1985 and added the junior hockey team in 1990, says the yet-to-be-named Seattle NHL team "will be the region's team."

Bobby Brett
Journal of Business photo"The time will come when players drafted by the Seattle NHL team will be assigned to one of the region's junior-league teams and develop a following and then wind up being called up to Seattle, and people will follow the deeds in the NHL with a 'that's our guy," Brett predicted.

Brett uses the easy example of Tyler Johnson, a local Spokane kid when he was drafted by the Chiefs in 2005 at the age of 15. Three years later he began a three-year starring role with his hometown team before he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2011. In his 2014-15 rookie season where he was named to the NHL All-Rookie team.

Had a Seattle NHL team been around and been the team to draft Johnson and help him move to stardom, he would have been the embodiment of every teen-age hockey hopefuls dream and his fans firm fans of Seattle's NHL team.

This column was meant to be about Brett's more than three decades of ownership of the Spokane Indians, which the Brett brothers bought after a seven-city search for a minor league baseball team they would buy. They bought the team for less than $150,000 and grew it into what has been described as "a gold standard of minor league ball" in its value today.

As we sat down in the office of our mutual friend, Spokane angel-investment leader John Pariseau for an interview this week, it was meant to be focused on baseball. But Brett's hockey team and its performance and its role in Spokane sports since Brett bought the team in 1990 drew my attention.

The Chiefs begin their best-of-seven WHL Western Conference championship series against the Vancouver Giants this weekend.

Bobby and his brothers have been about baseball their whole lives. Ken, drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 1966, was an athletic phenomenon, equally gifted as a hitter or a pitcher. And while he wound up as a journeyman pitcher playing for 10 teams, several teams had considered drafting him as a left-handed center fielder.  

Ken, who was a co-owner with his brothers when they finally settled on Spokane, died of a brain tumor in 2003.

Younger brother George played 21 years for the Kansas City Royals as a perennial American League All-Star who was eventually named to baseball's Hall of Fame.

Bobby played in the minor leagues in Billings and San Jose before deciding he could make more money in business, building and owning apartments in Southern California.

Of the brothers' search for a baseball team to buy, Bobby explained the process: "I'd looked at seven cities, and Spokane just happened to be my seventh stop. With the first six places I visited, the town wasn't right or the ballpark wasn't right or something wasn't right. So I was very discouraged."  

"I landed in Spokane. We wanted to buy a team, and this was the place I liked. There was a real airport, a real downtown with a beautiful downtown park," He told an interviewer a few years ago. "I went out to the baseball park, and it was all run down, but I thought, geez, you just need a little paint, a little of this and that. So, Spokane was the one we bought."

And Bobbie, with the support of his brothers, quickly created a winner with the Indians winning the Northwest League title in four consecutive years from '87 to '90 and winning four more titles since then.

Although Bobby was involved in the Spokane community from the moment the Bretts bought the team (they also own the Class-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes in California and the Tri-City Dust Devils, also of the Northwest League), Bobby remained an absentee owner, visiting maybe four times a year.

But that changed with the purchase of the Chiefs.

"I had gotten married in 1988 and we had a kid a year later," Brett explained. "We lived in Manhattan Beach, which is a great area to live in if you're single or married with no kids. But it's hard to raise a kid with all the stuff that happens at the beaches in California."

"I thought, if we buy the hockey team, maybe I'll move up there for six months and get it off the ground and see how I like it," Bobbie explained. Six months has turned into nearly 30 years.  

He's become more than a sports-teams owner.
Major junior hockey, for those not familiar with it, becomes not just a community thing but a family affair. And that's part of his community commitment.

"We draft the kids when they are 15 and they can play on our team at 16 and continue until they are 20 so some kids are with us for four years," Brett explained, noting that the team helps find homes for the kids to stay in and families to live with and makes sure they become part of their high school environment.  

"Fully 70 percent of the players in the NHL came from major-junior hockey." Brett said.

There are 60 cities in three leagues of the Canadian Hockey League with the four Northwest cities of Seattle, Everett, Portland and Spokane part of the Western Hockey League.

His involvement in real estate since he was in his mid-20's and has continued into today is a focus that has also benefited Spokane.  

As one Spokane business leader explained to me: "Bobby is a master preservation person."
When I asked Brett about that, he explained: "We own 13 or 14 buildings downtown, older properties in need of renovation for which we got property-tax abatement.

So in some respects, it might be said that Brett is not only at work building Spokane's sports future but with real estate investment expertise, helping preserve its past.

Disagreement between Washington's Democratic House of Representatives and the Democratic Senate over a proposed capital gains tax will likely keep the tax from being included in the state's operating budget for next biennium.

And that could be well for both those for whom the lawmakers should be seeking to provide opportunity and for the wealthy that many legislators would merely like to squeeze.

With Sunday's sine die adjournment of the 2019 Legislature's regular session looming, there appears virtually no likelihood that the two houses can resolve their differences over the most controversial piece of the tax increases they seek to impose.

There is obvious business pushback over any new taxes the lawmakers might pass in an economic environment in which state forecasts of surging new revenue already provide the lawmakers with $5.6 billion more to spend in the coming biennium without new taxes.

And the protests over a possible capital gains tax provision is the most logical for business to oppose, particularly now because of the impact an ill-thought-out version of such a tax could have on the opportunity for future job creation.

The "opportunity" I'm referring to is the Qualified Opportunity Zones created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 with those zones basically being census tracts designated by the governors of each state where development could occur and where those putting up the funds to seize those opportunities would get capital gains reduction or deferral.

Gov. Jay Inslee, with the help of Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib, was an early and enthusiastic advocate for picking census tracts that could best serve the goal of supporting the economic opportunities and creating jobs in less well to do parts of the state. Each opportunity zone is selected from the state's census tracts.

So it would seem that if Inslee thought through what's at stake in imposing a capital gains tax now, he would be saying "don't pass that now." But some would suggest urging Inslee to "think it through" might be an issue in itself.

Over the past year, professional firms and wealth management companies have been promoting their OZ expertise to clients and prospects while states have begun to compete to lure investors to projects coming about or envisioned on their lands where the benefits of the new federal tax law could come into existence.

A key issue, beyond the fact that all states that impose a capital gains tax acknowledge that it is a tax on income and an income tax is unconstitutional in this state, is that states with a capital gains tax have moved or are moving to bring their state capital gains tax provisions into harmony with the new federal one.

Meanwhile, the IRS has been tinkering with the rules, issuing proposed changes several times in the past year and leaving uncertainty for those seeking to be early users of the tax advantage for projects ranging from hotels to manufacturing facilities.

The tax rates on capital gains range from California's 12.3 percent to North Dakota's 2.9 percent. Oregon's rate is 9.9 percent, above but similar to the 8.9 percent proposed for the Washington capital gains tax.

Most all of the states understand that failing to give a capital-gains break similar to what the federal tax law will provide is likely to put them behind the eight-ball in appealing to those seeking projects that will maximize their benefits.

And since the federal law will permit anyone anywhere owing tax on capital gains to invest those dollars in a project in any Opportunity Zone in the country, the example I share with people is the guy in Keokuk, IA, who needs to find an Opportunity Zone somewhere in which to invest his gains. He will go looking for a project he likes in Montana or Oregon or Washington, make his investment watch the tax-break dollars pile up.

If he's going to give up 10 percent of tax savings on his gain by investing a Washington zone rather than an equally interesting project in Montana, why would he do that?

Thus the importance of a state staying in the herd of states that are adding state tax breaks to the federal ones. But that takes planning and such planning isn't possible during what's left of this legislative session.

Lisa Brown

As states begin to compete to create the most attractive Land of OZ to lure investors and create new businesses and jobs, the state of Washington and the Port of Seattle have taken key steps in the past few weeks that could put them at the front of the pack employing the benefits of new federal tax law.
 
OZ refers to what is officially called Qualified Opportunity Zones that come about under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The QOZ provision in the legislation approved by Congress will permit those owing capital gains tax to delay, reduce or even totally avoid those taxes by investing in special funds designed to start businesses and provide other steps to help economically distressed communities.
 
Virtually every major accounting or law firm or wealth management company in the country has been inviting clients and prospects to learn all about the details of what have become known simply as Opportunity Zones, or OZ.
 
And while the message in many of those explanatory sessions by professional firms has been the prospect to create funds for investment in real estate projects, funds could be particularly appropriate for energizing the prosperity of small and diverse firms that have not had access to equity capital to grow and expand.
 
And that's where the recent separate initiatives by the State Department of Commerce and the Port of Seattle come into play in a manner that gives this region a leg up in that competition among states for attracting new investment to job creation.
 
Ralph Ibarra 
The development for the state was Spain's first-ever Memorandum of Understanding with a state to promote economic cooperation to benefit trade relations and boost business opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses in both Spain and Washington State.  
 
The agreement was signed in Madrid March 1 between Lisa Brown, the new director of the state Department of Commerce, and Maria Pena Matcos, chief executive officer of the public agency attached to Spain's Ministry of Industry.
 
The Port of Seattle's initiative was issuing a "Request for Qualifications" for a $200 million renovation of 29 acres near Pioneer Square in Seattle to provide for the port's fourth cruise ship berth that would accommodate super-size cruise ships.  
 
That parcel, for which the Port is seeking a partner, is located within an Opportunity Zone that extends across the property on which T-Mobile Stadium and CenturyLink Field are located and extends into the International District.
 
The Port's Request for Qualifications intriguingly contains the sentence: "It should be noted that Terminal 46 is located within a Qualified Opportunity Zone," suggesting it intends to use the tax-break incentive in seeking to attract a wide array of businesses to develop on the site, or nearby.
 
So what kind of developments are being created in other regions with Opportunity Zone funds? A potentially appropriate example was the announcement by a Scottsdale, AZ, based wealth development company called Caliber of plans for a new hotel development at Tucson Convention Center, which is in a designated OZ.
 
For Ralph Ibarra, president of DiverseAmerica Network, the agreement with Spain and the Port's announcement represent important steps to dramatically benefit small and diverse businesses.    

To Ibarra, a consultant to the public and private-sector corporations and institutions who has brought long-standing support of small and diverse business to his consulting activities,
the agreement with Spain and the Port's announcement represent important steps to benefit small and diverse businesses.  

He sees both developments as important steps"particularly appropriate for energizing the prosperity of small and diverse firms that have not had access to equity capital to grow and expand."

In fact, Commerce Director Brown said her immediate priorities include helping address the sustainability of infrastructure financing programs and enhancing the agency's outreach activities - especially with rural and underserved areas - to ensure communities in need can access Commerce programs and services.
 
The statement put out following the signing of the agreement noted that it 'builds on a foundation of approximately $9 billion in trade activities currently taking place between Spain and the State of Washington. It acknowledges common strengths in aerospace, information and communication technology, cybersecurity, clean energy technology, life sciences, maritime, agriculture, and other sectors, and formalizes plans to explore opportunities for Washington companies in the Spanish market and establish future opportunities for Spanish companies to create jobs in Washington."

Ibarra, who chairs the Washington District Export Council, suggests Opportunity Zones "hold great promise to accentuate and expedite beneficial outcomes" from the Agreement with opportunities for Washington companies in the Spanish market and for Spanish companies to create jobs in Washington.

Ibarra brings some awareness of the extent of potential represented by the state's agreement with Spain since some years ago he prepared and escorted an aerospace manufacturing firm from this state to various meetings with Spanish aerospace companies at a U.S.-Spain Aerospace Industry Summit.

"And now, whether its Spain or Washington State, any individual relationship that comes about is going to need some sort of facility, whether distribution or manufacturing, in place and that's where Opportunity Zones can come into play to facilitate those relationships," Ibarra said.

 

A LinkedIn entry from my son, Michael, noting the 20th anniversary of the launch of 
eastside business journal brought back memories of the effort to create the "local" business voice for Bellevue and other Eastside communities as they were starting to emerge as economic entities more independent from Seattle.

Eastside Business JournalMy decision, as publisher of Puget Sound Business Journal, to create a separate weekly business publication with its own staff, readership and highly focused coverage of business on the Eastside, as well as involvement with its business community, was a realization that a Seattle-based and focused publication couldn't build close relationships east of the lake.

Michael was an experienced young public relations and marketing professional when I convinced him to leave the public relations firm, The Fearey Group, to become general manager and overseer of a weekly start-up business newspaper.  

Microsoft was already more than a decade along in turning out young millionaires with its stock, as well as new software and computer products from its Eastside headquarters, and in fact, that year spun out its Expedia division into a separate Bellevue-based public company.

And the Eastside had become the global mecca for the rapidly growing telecom and cellular industry as home to not just McCaw Cellular and Nextel but also Western Wireless, which in 1999 spun off its star telecom subsidiary, VoiceStream, which has since become T-Mobile.

Willows Road, along with the west side of the Redmond Valley, had actually become the region's high-tech highway more than a decade earlier with a number of companies like Physio-Control and Rocket Research building their headquarters along the west hillside above Willows Road.

And of course, Kemper Freeman had already, for a couple of decades, been scaling the retailers' mountain and reigned as the most prominent retailer developer in the region.  

By 1999 he was on the way to creating a retailing center that would make his Bellevue Collection of Hotels, retailers, and restaurants leap past Seattle as a destination for shoppers and diners.

Of course, the EBJ launch came two years after Amazon's IPO changed the nature of Seattle's ability to compete with the tech growth on the Eastside, and soon surpass all in growth of revenue, profits and employment. Of course, now Amazon seems intent on possibly turning the Eastside into a second headquarters now that New York has been jettisoned.

Thus 1999 was an interesting time to seek to create a successful and impactful special-interest (business) publication in Bellevue and the Eastside, a time when two Seattle daily newspapers, The Times and Seattle P-I, made life difficult for the much smaller and profit-stretched Eastside Journal in the quest for readers and dollars from the Eastside.

So I told Michael to come up with some events that EBJ could put on to attract visibility and support and promised to make sure PSBJ didn't do the events as a counter to keep EBJ from gaining a foothold, which interestingly PSBJ adverting and editorial leadership hoped to do. It was a competitor, after all.  

Thus I took the unusual business role of holding the big dog back so the puppy had a chance to grow.

For a newly minted young newspaper executive with a twenty-something staff and seeking to carve out readers and advertisers from a young, partly tech, audience, the logical event for Michael to create was one honoring youth.

So he launched Eastside 40-Under-40, geographically designated even though there was no other 40-Under-40 event in the Northwest. In fact, I don't think there was one on the West Coast at that time.

That eventually became the regional event run by PSBJ, with the "Eastside" dropped from the 40-Under-40 name.

One day in summer of 1999, I wandered over to Bellevue from my PSBJ office to check in and found folks on the staff en route to a day-long Going Public seminar that attracted a large audience of entrepreneurs, prospective investors and wealth managers to listen and learn from a panel of experts Michael had assembled.

Then Michael came up with a CEO interview breakfast event he dubbed Eastside Executive Forum, with his first interviewee being the region's then Beer Master, Paul Shipman, creator of Redhook.

Another CEO interview featured HomeGrocer.com CEO, Terry Drayton. Do you remember that Bellevue based company that sprang into existence with the first fully integrated Internet grocery that grew across the West and across the south before being forced by tight cash for growth to sell out in the fall of 2000 to competitor Webvan?

It wasn't long before the reality of having created a direct and growing competitor in basically the same market began to sink in for the parent company and EBJ and its staff were folded into PSBJ. Michael soon departed the media business to focus on a business-development career in other industries.

And with the demise of the P-I and the closing of the Eastside's daily newspaper, by then renamed the King County Journal, in 2006, and the recent dramatic cutbacks by profit-focused Sound Publishing as owner of the area's shrinking pool of weekly newspapers, memories of the local business newspaper that was have been stirred anew.

"A lifetime ago and yet there isn't a day I'm not reminded of something I learned in those years," Michael wrote in his LinkedIn message. "Thanks, Pop and EBJ Peeps."

The LinkedIn message got several thousand views and many comments, including this from the head of an Eastside wealth management firm.

"Michael: you and your team's work had a huge impact on the Eastside at a critical juncture of growth along every path - business, economic, community, stature, maturity, and poise. I miss the voice of EBJ. I relish my fond memories of all of your events and the friendships forged over robust dialogue."

Rhonda Rhyne, whose leadership as president of an innovative cardiovascular medical device company made her one of the most honored biotech CEOs in San Diego for over a decade until she guided the sale of the publicly traded company, may be headed for a repeat performance, this one on Seattle's Eastside.
 
Rhyne is now CEO, president, and director of Prevencio Inc., a Kirkland company that has developed a test that is purported to be "significantly more accurate than stress treadmills for diagnosing obstructive coronary artery disease." She has guided the company since August of 2013, a few months after its conversion to a C corporation.
 
Rhonda RhyneRhyne's San Diego honors over 12 years at the helm of publicly traded CardioDynamics included the 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year award for medical products and Deloitte's Fast 50 Award for 50 Fastest Growing Tech/Life Science Companies in Southern California for nine consecutive years from 1999 to 2007. It was exactly a decade ago that she led CardioDynamics into a sale to Bothell-based SonoSite at a 69 percent premium.
 
This past year was one of the significant developments for Prevencio, with major presentations on its series of cardio-related tests in which Prevencio's focus has been on demonstrating improved diagnostic accuracy and helping keep patients from undergoing unnecessary, expensive, and invasive tests.
 
This year is a key one for the company as Rhyne has just returned from major presentations at a Biocom event in San Diego where Rhyne says she had an opportunity to advance discussions with potential partners and to "educate the biotech, medical device and venture capital worlds on what Prevencio is doing to advance cardiac medicine."
 
Now she heads to New Orleans late this week for sessions at the American College of Cardiology where researchers from Europe and from a major U.S. healthcare system will present accuracy studies which she says "further validate the robustness of our AI-driven, multi-protein novel HART blood tests." HART is the company's trademarked name for Heart-related ARtificial Intelligence-driven, multiprotein Tests.
 
The studies, Rhyne says, 'help drive awareness and adoption, partnerships, and eventual exit."
 
In the short term, the American College of Cardiology sessions will pave the way for the company's next fund-raising round in April when its B-1 round of $7-$9 million, which will include conversion of a $4 million note that is part of Prevencio's total to-date $11 million funding, is planned.
 
Prevencio's product explanation is complex to the layman. But Rhyne explains the company "utilizes Machine Learning (Artificial Intelligence) plus Multi-Proteomic Biomarkers plus Proprietary Algorithms to deliver cardiovascular diagnostic and prognostic tests that are significantly more accurate than standard-of-care stress tests, individual biomarkers, genetic markers, and clinical risk scores."
 
Study results announced last year, including by the European Society of Cardiology, credit Prevencio's diagnostic testing with producing promising results for an array of cardio-related diseases, including those relating to kidney disease and to peripheral artery disease (PAD) in diabetes mellitis.
 
The company's lone competitor for diagnosing coronary artery disease was a Stanford spinout whose lab tests had what Rhyne describes as "significant limitations" that led to Medicare canceling coverage late last year and thus the company went out of business after raising and spending more than $300 million.
 
"Our plans for partnering with other companies for licensing and commercialization will keep our burn rates low and facilitate partnerships, widespread dissemination, and exit," Rhyne said.
 
Rhyne's introduction to the medical instruments industry and coronary testing came early in her career when, after quickly tiring of being a pharmacist, she went to work for Quinton Instrument Co., the Bothell-based company that was a pioneering innovator in medical devices.

The devices she sold for Quinton ranged from stress treadmills to cardiac diagnostic equipment.
 
So she sports a smile when she suggests that her company is positioned to replace the diagnostic treadmill systems that were the medical devices with which she started her career in that field more than 30 years ago.
 
I asked Rhonda, during one of our interviews, why she had returned to Seattle after establishing a dominant Biotech presence in San Diego.
 
"My husband was in Seattle so after 12 years of being a couple (met, dated, engaged, and married) and not living together I thought it was prudent for our relationship and marriage," she replied.

New York Gov Andrew Cuomo has laid to rest any doubt that the political fallout from Amazon's decision, in the face of loud but relatively small opposition, to abandon its plan to bring its HQ2 to New York will drift across the national Democratic party landscape heading toward the 2020 elections.'
 
An open letter released last Sunday on Cuomo's web page was written by New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica who basically derided those whose opposition led to Amazon's decision as either stupid or liars.
 
As Mujica ungently said of opponents of the project who claimed Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation: "This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental ignorance of basic math by a group of elected officials."
 
Mujica, whose letter has become fodder for blog comments across the political and economic spectrums, said there were three reasons the Amazon deal fell apart.
 
"First, some labor unions attempted to exploit Amazon's New York entry. Second, some Queens politicians catered to minor but vocal local political forces in opposition to the Amazon government incentives as 'corporate welfare.' Third, in retrospect, the State and the City could have done more to communicate the facts of the project and more aggressively correct the distortions."
 
On the third point is where Mujica took opponents of the project to task for his charge of "blatant untruth or fundamental ignorance."  
 
He explained that "The city, through existing as-of-right tax credits, and the state through Excelsior Tax credits -- a program approved by the same legislators railing against it -- would provide up to $3 billion in tax relief IF Amazon created the 25,000-40,000 jobs and thus generated $27 billion in revenue."
 
The fallout from Coumo's withering criticism of Amazon critics, through Mujica's superbly crafted narrative, coupled with the emerging influence of newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, could make New York ground zero for a major rift among Democrats, and not just those in New York.
 
Those elected officials scorned by Cuomo through Mojika's commentary, included Ocasio-Cortez, who has gathered growing support from elected Democrats on the left as well as left-leaning groups around the country, particularly after she promised that candidates like her will be on the ballot in an array of locations next election.
 
I looked through a variety of political and economic blogs about the Amazon debacle and found several that made compelling reading.

But the one that I found most compelling, though politically partisan, was from an economics blog called Marginal Revolution done by a couple of economics professors at Gorge Mason University in Virginia.
 
"I can only think that this is some sort of cognitive dissonance that prevents people of a certain politics slant from mentally processing words that go against a deeply held stereotype," wrote the prof, Alex Tabarrok. "Amazon is big. Bezos is rich. Obviously then the state gave them unique benefits. That's the only message that the left wing brain is neurologically capable of hearing, even though, in this case, it is the opposite of what happened."
 
His comment made me think his "certain political slant" likely fits both political fringes and it was then I realized it's been exactly a decade since the modern-day Tea Party came into existence, in either February or April of 2009, depending on which event its fans took to be the launch.
 
There obviously isn't going to be a liberal Tea Party, even if "neurological incapacity" can be found far out on either fringe. But what's happening in New York in the Amazon aftermath makes it clear there could be a mirror image of the Tea Party with the mirror folks shouting "yes, taxes!" in reply to the "no on taxes!" Or "more government" to"no government."
 
That's the "balance" of equally potent fringes which, even if each appeals to about 15 percent of their parties, will be reflected in pressures on the middle as the next election nears.
 
And because the liberal "Tea Party" mirror is coming about a decade on from the original, it will be affecting political positions more than in the past for Democrats. And thus it will be interesting to see how the positions of Washington State's two presidential wanna be's, Gov. Jay Inslee among the Democrat hopefuls and Starbucks' Howard Schultz as an independent, might change.

Watching the free-for-all of analysis and commentary over Amazon's misadventure romance with New York City, we're talking about the company now, now its CEO, over a second headquarters made me think of my senior-sprinter friend and author Steve Robbins. Although he is acknowledged as the most prolific author of management textbooks, he may now have an outline for one he's never written.
 
I'm referring to Amazon's unprecedented suddenly announced decision that it was no longer planning to build a second headquarters in a section of New York City's Queens neighborhood of Long Island City.  
 
I say suddenly announced because no one can be certain that Amazon's decision to turn away from New York was as quickly made as the announcement might suggest. Like the world third's richest company may have begun to have a change of heart soon after its early November announcement that unexpectedly there would another "second headquarters", adding Northern Virginia in the announcement that New York was the pick.
 
Is it possible Amazon execs hadn't thought things through about New York until Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blassio pointed out, as they welcomed the company, that New York is a union town? That fact had assumedly already been digested by a company that doesn't go for union organizing.
 
The business fallout from this may simmer for a time but will likely disappear. Bu the political fallout will likely continue for New Yorkers into the next general election and maybe beyond.

Meaning from a business sense, Amazon will likely be able to go on as if nothing happened. As a former top Amazon executive told me, "the world is a very big place. If one doesn't want us, others will."
 
But politically, the rift between the New York Democratic party power structure and the newly emerging powerhouse of left-wing forces, some elected and some not elected, will echo down the coming months.
 
I called my roommate from college days at Marquette, who retired after fashioning a prominent New York legal career, to ask him his thoughts.
 
"A lot of the politicians who were against the Amazon deal didn't represent the district so they had no skin in the game and Governor Cuomo is outraged at the politicians who had no constituent reason to get involved but screwed it up," he said.
 
"Regarding the idea that unions opposed Amazon, a non-union giant, coming to New York: that doesn't make sense," he said. "The municipal employees union was very opposed because they feared the multi-billion dollar package the city had put together for Amazon would come out of their salaries and future raises.
 
"But a majority of the unions are upset that Amazon walked away. Do you think any of the construction-related unions weren't excited about what the future held for them?"
 
The Amazon-New York situation represents the conundrum that areas seeking to attract new business face. If a city or state don't offer the incentives, they are often out of consideration.  If they do play the game, they are open to public pressure to back off.
 
A longtime business leader in this state, when I asked about that conundrum, told me he thinks the days of corporate incentives or breaks are coming to an end.
 
"This movement among millennials to the left is going to reset the political system, including things like corporate incentives," he said.
"The selection process was, in my judgment the height of corporate arrogance in a time when the tide is going the other way," added my business-leader friend.
 
"The variables which help strengthen public support for a company's actions are the goodwill a company builds in the community and the public support they build," he added. "Boeing has been a master at that, something they learned after the 1972 cutbacks from the demise of the SST."
 
So back to Steve Robbins and his management textbooks. I haven't seen Robbins, who moved from Seattle to Cleveland a few years ago and turned 76 last month, for a decade but was caused to recall his leaving me far behind in various 100-meter races in masters and senior games events. But fortunately, I got to talk with him after or over coffee about both writing and running.
 
I'd love to get hold of him now to get his view of the management aspects or lack thereof, that might have been in evidence in the non-dramatic drama of Amazon's decision.
 
I flipped through his nearly three dozen titles, of which he has sold 10 million copies and that have been translated into 20 languages, to see if any of the titles, all available on Amazon, might suggest he's already been there in the discussions and lessons in his management textbooks.
 
Robbins' books focus on conflict, power, organizational politics and interpersonal skills. Which of those were in evidence or absent, and to what extent, would make interesting cocktail lounge or boardroom, discussion.
 
I was intrigued at the title of one of Robbins' books: "Divide and Conquer: The ultimate guide for improving your decision making."
 
It occurred to me that the way Amazon left the New York political scene in taters definitely demonstrated an ability to divide, as was also evidenced in the embarrassing snafu of the Seattle City Council and its aborted head tax.
 
I'll leave the "conquer" to those cocktail lounge conversations.

A most interesting, and broadly important, corporate takeover battle is taking place in full national view but unfortunately, it's apparently attracting only modest attention from the general public, perhaps because of declining numbers of the public view the issue at stake as all that important.

Lawmakers in both Washingtons are in the consumer-privacy crosshairs amid a growing awareness, and thus anger, of how little people are able to keep private about themselves.  
 
While both the Washington Legislature and Congress are deliberating bills the lawmakers hope can be crafted to satisfy both tech giants and consumers, there is an increasingly uncomfortable sense among legislators at both the state and federal levels that they had better not rile consumers further on the privacy issue.
 
And interestingly, part of the script for how this struggle between the tech industry and individuals over privacy plays out may be written in Washington state, either with the legislative tax hammer that is almost uniquely available in this state or by an emerging Bellevue company that hopes to take the privacy issue out of the hands of the tech giants.  
 
The tax tool is the state's business and occupation tax, a use tax on gross receipts rather than profits, which can and has been imposed in a punitive manner. The business start-up company is Helm, which has created a relatively inexpensive device, about the size of a router, that lets consumers send and receive emails from their own domain. More on both the b&o and Helm later.
 
At the federal level, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is proposing sweeping new legislation that would empower consumers to control their personal information, create radical transparency into how corporations use and share their data, and impose harsh fines, even prison terms for executives at corporations that misuse Americans' data.
 
As Wyden has put it: "Today's economy is a giant vacuum for your personal information - Everything you read, everywhere you go, everything you buy and everyone you talk to is sucked up in a corporation's database. But individual Americans know far too little about how their data is collected, how it's used and how it's shared,"  
 
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said he expects the state legislature to address privacy in the upcoming session, saying he has begun discussions with tech leaders in the state "about a privacy policy that is consistent with innovation and also consistent with fundamental rights of privacy." And Inslee expressed confidence about getting a policy, probably in this session, that will be pleasing to innovators and consumers."
 
"Pleasing" to the big tech companies like Facebook, Google and hometown Amazon is an almost amusing word for a governor to use when "acceptable" to the tech giants is the best that is likely to happen with any state legislation that constrains the manner in which personal information is being collected and used.
 
That's particularly true with citizen pressure on lawmakers here and in other states after California's Assembly and Senate overwhelmingly passed a far-reaching piece of legislation called the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA). The measure largely mirrors protections offered to European citizens under the recently implemented General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is likely to drastically change the ways that American companies store and trade in consumer information for Californians.
 
The law allows Californians to ask firms collecting and selling data: what do you collect, why and with whom do you share it? And it allows California residents to opt out of the sale of their data and to request deletion of their data.
 
And in addition to Wyden's zeal on behalf of privacy, the passage of CCPA is spurring the tech industry to seek Congressional action on something they could at least reluctantly accept to avoid what they are protesting as a possible "patchwork approach to privacy policy" if each state enacts its own version.
 
So in the event Washington lawmakers approve legislation that makes its citizens happy about new state protections for privacy, and then Congress approves a law that offers dramatically less protection that supersedes what states like California, and Washington, have put in place, how can this state preserve the protections it will have given its citizens.?
 
A suggestion, borne or my political-writing background: The state, led by its Democrat Atty. Gen. Bob Ferguson, could put in place a privacy policy that companies would be told they must comply with or a special B&O tax rate of some compelling amount, maybe even 25 percent, will apply to those firms not honoring our privacy policy.  
 
Would Ferguson have the courage to confront major tech companies either located here, like Amazon or having a significant presence here like Google and Facebook? Given the fact that he'd like to be Inslee successor as governor and that his key role is first and foremost "preserving the rights of the individual," he could fatally impact his political hopes if he failed to follow the public demands on this issue. And in fact, if he failed to take a protective step demanded by citizens, they could use the initiative process to create a special b&o tax rate themselves.
 
This wouldn't be a law, since the federal government if Congress passes a privacy act, would likely have pre-empted states passing laws governing privacy. But legislation imposing a different b&o tax and the significantly higher rate has a long tradition protected by decisions of the Washington State Supreme Court.
 
Would what I am talking about be legal blackmail? Consider that there are almost three dozen B&O classifications with rates often unexplainable, like parimutuel wagering having a rate of .0013 and gambling contests of chance, .015. The latter, incidentally, is the rate for "service and other activities," which includes professional firms like attorneys as well as consultants-the rate I pay.
 
And how law firms came to be taxed at the highest rate is instructive for how lawmakers in Washington can use the b&o. In the 1993 session, lawmakers sought to extend the sales tax to the legal profession but the attorneys brought their lobbyists to the fray and successfully defeated the effort. Presto, came the highest b&o tax suddenly applying to attorneys, just about tripling their tax.
 
I once asked the late Gov, Mike Lowry if that came about as punishment by a Democratic governor (him) and Democratic legislature and he let out one of his classic shoulder bouncing laughs.
 
When I discussed the privacy issue with Bellevue-based research analyst Jim Hebert, he noted that Congress has been through a major privacy-invasion crisis and solution before. He was referring to the reforms in consumer credit law to combat excesses of the credit agencies.  
 
"The agencies collected information on you, kept it and sold it to banks and others, with statistics disclosing that 40 percent of the information was wrong and no one knew it," Hebert said.  
 
The outcome was legislation enacted requiring that all such data the credit agencies collect is now turned over to a third-party organization that polices the data's accuracy and makes it available to consumers.
 
"Credit bureaus weren't put out of business or even really damaged by the corrective legislation," Hebert noted.
 
So back to Helm, the Bellevue company that was the idea of  Giri Sreenivas and Dirk Sigurdson, two entrepreneurs who had sold a security startup and raised a $4 million seed round from top venture capital firms last year.
 
"Right now, nearly all of the data that comprises your online life is stored in a massive data center," Sreenivas wrote in a blog he posted. "You don't own it. You can't see it, you can't touch it - and you don't know who can. That dream of a device that would make data 'ownable' to the individual - not a stranger - is what led to Helm."
 
Their device connects to a home network and pairs with a mobile app that lets users create their own domain name, passwords, and recovery keys. Helm supports standard protocols and works with regular email clients such as Outlook or the Mail app, with encryption protecting the connection between the device and the apps.
 
A key challenge for privacy champions is the apparent uncertainty about the extent to which younger generations will care enough to get into the fray as opponents of the big tech data collectors, although a recent survey I saw said there's growing disillusionment among people in their twenties and thirties surrounding social media.
 
But in a comment that leaders of the privacy battle would find disappointing, one of the millennials in the survey was quoted as saying "I feel like our generation has been raised to not be so worried about online privacy because it just feels like there is no alternative. Ultimately I do value privacy in theory, but it feels like it's a cost of participating in society. Not just online."

-0-

An amusing post-script to last week's column
 
An email from a Russian friend provides a post-script to last week's column in which I suggested the formation of a business that, for a fee, could crowd the fringe in congressional or legislative races, helping ensure the re-election of moderates of either party.
 
Natalia Blokhina, who helps guide a Moscow-based fund management company that invests in U.S. companies, as well as companies elsewhere, sent me an email saying it was an interesting column.
 
Because I sought to help introduce Natalia to companies in which her fund might invest, I emailed her back asking if her fund might be interested in being an investor if the idea of a Save Our Middle LLC took hold.
 
"It would be interesting to tell people we have Russian investors in our company," I joked to her.
 
"We wouldn't want to be involved in a political company," she replied quite seriously.
 
You can search the column I did about Natalia at Flynn's Harp: Natalia Blokhina.

The state Department of Commerce is convening a day-long session in Seattle next week to help an army of accountants, attorneys, developers, and investment advisors get a better grasp of the unlikely new Federal tax tool that will allow the wealthy to make money while making a difference.

It was 50 years ago that James Elias, then a local Portland area telephone company manager, suddenly became a political giant killer when he agreed to run the U.S. Senate campaign of a popular Republican legislator and proceeded to guide the defeat of an Oregon icon known as "the tiger of the Senate."

The insider-trading quagmire in which New York Congressman Chris Collins finds himself may be occurring at the perfect time, in the midst of an election season, to inject an issue of substance rather than merely another political issue into congressional races around the country. The question is the need for closer scrutiny of personal financial involvements of members of Congress.

Brian BairdCollins' troubles stem from charges by Federal prosecutors that he used his seat on the board of a small Australian drug company to tip off his son and others that the company had failed a critical human trial and that the thousands of dollars of stock they all held would be taking a disastrous hit.

That was the first time I knew, the naïve soul that I must be, that members of Congress could sit on boards of publicly traded companies, thinking it beyond question that someone assumedly serving the best interest of constituents who elected them couldn't also fulfill the fiduciary duties to shareholders that a board member has.

Brian Baird, the former Democratic Congressman from Washington's third district whose major impact was his leadership in achieving legislation that now requires members or Congress to abide by the same investor rules that govern the rest of us, thinks it doesn't even deserve to be elevated to the legitimacy of a question.

"Being a member of Congress is a full-time job," said Baird. "I put in 70 hours a week during my time in Congress and the idea that I could also fulfill a fiduciary obligation to shareholders is preposterous."

Thus the issue that Collins' apparent insider-trading transgressions opens up for injection into congressional races is a close scrutiny of all financial activity by incumbents, not just involvement on boards.

One problem is that while members of the Senate are prohibited from serving on corporate boards, members of the House are not, though they can't be compensated for serving in such roles. But while a member of Congress files a financial disclosure report each year, there's no central database where that information is available.

But Baird thinks there should be, and that it would be well if some government-watchdog organization could digest and disseminate it and thus provide the opportunity to evaluate the financial conflicts of those running for re-election. That could be a welcome factual issue to inject into those campaigns rather than merely political rhetoric. And perhaps it would impact some election outcomes, thus frightening others in Congress to shed inappropriate financial dealings.

It might be uncomfortable for some incumbent Republicans to come down too hard on questionable financial activity, given the track record of many members of the cabinet of President Trump who may have made it appear that unseemly financial activity was a requirement for selection.

But lest that come across as a political comment rather than a journalistic observation, I'll add that Democrats could also have a bit of discomfort if they are too critical of the current environment given that the "Queen of the Questionable" may be House Democratic leader and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  

No one who saw her mishandling a question in the now famous 60 Minutes segment relating to questionable investment activities by members of Congress would possibly argue with that characterization of her relating to at least past financial involvements.

Baird spent half of his 12 years in Congress in a frustrated, and futile, effort to gather support for his legislation to make it illegal for lawmakers to engage in the kind of financial transactions that those in the real world know as Insider Trading and for which ordinary people can be sent to jail. Baird and one or two supporters offered it each session but couldn't even get a committee hearing.

Then came the 60 Minutes piece by CBS reporter Steve Croft, which amounted to merely highlighting the replies of then-House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Pelosi to his unexpected questions about their stock transactions. Boehner merely like someone hiding from the truth but Pelosi looked, like someone simply incompetent, stuttering ..."I don't understand your question. Um, You aren't suggesting I'd ever do anything that wasn't in the best interest of my constituents...?"

Croft's reporting exposed how members of Congress and their staff traded stocks based on nonpublic information to which they had exclusive access, the very issue Baird's ignored legislation was designed to address.

The news program sparked a public outcry and lawmakers by the dozens scurried like frightened rats to get aboard as supporters of the bill amid the public outcry, and so in April of 2012, the measure titled the STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) was passed.

Despite the passage of the legislation he pushed, Baird said in an interview last weekend: "The whole issue of conflict of interest in Congress is something they have never addressed."

"I'd love to see a study about how often members or Congress excuse themselves from voting on something because of conflict of interest," he added.

And wouldn't it be heartening if the media focus on Collins' legal challenges over his financial activities led to the kind of public outcry, particularly during an election campaign, that could stir a congressional rush to get on board a reform effort as happened with the rush to pass the STOCK Act.

A small Bellevue-headquartered technology company has won a landmark ruling from a controversial patent-appeals board that executives and key shareholders of the little company suggest could lead to multi-billion-dollar patent-infringement settlements with some of the nation's largest tech companies.

David vs. Goliath is an overdone metaphor. But in the case of Voip-Pal.com Inc. (Voip-Pal), which has a suite of patents on technologies dealing with what are known as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and that have been the focus of its legal battles with the likes of Apple, AT&T, Verizon and now Amazon, it may be an understated metaphor, particularly since there are multiple Goliaths.

Amazon is the latest tech goliath to be sued by Voip-Pal. The small company contends, in its June 15 suit filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, that Amazon's Alexa calling and messaging services uses Voip-Pal's patented technologies to direct voice and video calls and messages.

The stage was set for the suit against Amazon, following suits against Verizon, AT&T and Twitter, by a decision from what's known as the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which unexpectedly tossed out the combined effort by Apple, AT&T and Verizon to have all or parts of Voip-Pal's patents ruled invalid.

Voip-Pal has now filed $9.7 billion in lawsuits against the major companies mentioned above. And about 60 companies have received "introduction letters" advising them of the VOIP patents and that the companies might be infringing on those patents, more suits are possible. However, execs say they expect that many of those companies will merely decide to license Viop-Pal products rather than face suits, given the PTAB decision.

In fact, according to Voip-Pal president Dennis Chang, "we could make an enormous amount of revenue just licensing our patents since people have been infringing for years." Chang, who joined the company in 2009, helped guide the 2013 share-purchase acquisition of Digifonica, a small private company that built the portfolio of patents now owned by Voip-Pal.

If Voip-Pal's developments were a work of fiction, it would contain most of the dramatic elements, ranging from tension and contrast to conflict, mood and symbolism, necessary to make it a spellbinder attracting substantial interest.  

But the fact that the company is real rather than fictional sets up a different set of dramatic elements of which it is playing a part, all relating to the 2011 America Invents Act that spawned the PTAB. Those elements range from unrest in the investor and entrepreneurial communities to criticism from courts all the way up to the Supreme Court as well as potential Congressional action to change the federal Act.  

And with the proposal now gathering support in Congress that would restore health to what many are referring to as "America's crippled patent system," Voip-Pal could become the leading edge of small-companies' pushback against the perceived inequities in the current "unintended consequences" of a 2011 law.  

I first learned of Voip-Pal and its unprecedented string of patent-infringement suits from Sandy Wheeler, a significant shareholder who was co-founder and key executive of fitness-equipment manufacturer Bowflex that, through acquisition of other fitness companies, became the Nautilus Group Inc.

Wheeler, an Ellensburg resident who was key in building the Bowflex brand into the second most recognized name in the world of fitness equipment. He has since founded several other companies in addition to becoming a significant Voip-Pal shareholder.

Wheeler, a longtime friend, is not a rookie when it comes to patent-infringement legal actions since four years ago he was involved with a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Nautilus.

After Wheeler alerted me to the Voip-Pal story, I was intrigued, as I searched for any stories about the company or its various suits against the giants of the tech and telecom industries, that I could find little in the way of coverage and certainly not in major media. That despite the fact that the company's website is rich with news releases, video interviews and YouTube pieces and other efforts to attract coverage.

Voip-Pal stock is traded Over the Counter as VPLM, last traded at .07 and over the past 52 weeks, the stock has ranged from a penny a share to 45 cents, with the high occurring late last year after the PTAB ruling. The company has a market cap of about $125 million but that obviously ebbs and flows with the stock price.  

The Voip-Pal effort to stir greater attention clearly relates to the desire by key shareholders to see the stock begin to reflect what they view as its "true value," as the suits move toward the expected outcomes.  

Emil Malak, Voip-Pal CEO, said in a telephone interview that "given the strength of the patents, and the decision of the of PTAB, I fully expect that the infringing entities will either license or acquire the Voip-Pal technology, bringing major returns to our shareholders."

Malak, a Vancouver, B.C., investor and inventor, and other company executives feel that the PTAB decision means the major tech companies may decide that it is more logical financially to pay the licensing fees to Voip-Pal rather than face the treble damages that would be an option for the company if the infringements continue.

"After the years of developing and testing, and obtaining the related patents, Voip-Pal is ready to license or offer for sale its patented technologies," said Malak.

The three-member PTAB, frequently criticized as a tool of major companies, issued a unanimous 3-0 decision in favor of Voip-Pal's position and thus its patents stay intact, as issued and granted by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

The PTAB, whose image is as a pawn of big companies, made its unexpected decision on behalf of Voip-Pal with the potential consequence of threatening the traditional paternalistic legal interaction that has become the hallmark of patent and trademark infringement actions brought by small patent holders.

Malak, in explaining the suit against Amazon, said: "After investigating Amazon's Alexa platform and Echo line of products, our technical team has concluded that the calling and messaging functions infringe our patents."

"Amazon's foray into communications seems to be part of a larger trend of giant corporations battling for market dominance by offering Internet-based communication products that integrate with traditional telephony networks," said Malak,

The suits all stem from the fact that in 2004, Voip-Pal's now wholly owned Digifonica subsidiary, began developing, inventing and patenting many of what Malak contended are "the same communication methods that are now being employed by today's Internet giants."

It was a revolutionary idea at the time, three years before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, when most people were making calls using landline-based phones or cell phones, with information traveling over phone lines and cellular networks.

Malak said in our telephone interview: "We had the vision that within 10 years, the Internet would become the primary means for telecommunications," adding that his team "realized that, in the future, calls, media, and messages would be primarily routed using the Internet, with a seamless transfer to cell phones, landlines, or computers wherever necessary."

"The PTAB is a 'non-appealable' court and Apple knows that and they are not going to get any traction with their request," Wheeler told me. "They simply know that their letter request delays everything...but their days are numbered."

The PTAB itself is an interesting business story that I was surprised to find hadn't received a lot of media attention, despite negative comments by federal courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in one case, made reference to what it called PTAB "shenanigans" in its legal actions

The PTAB was formed in 2012 to implement the America Invents Act of 2011, a measure passed by Congress and signed by the president that critics have said transitioned the U. S. from a "first to invent" patent system to a system where priority is given to the first inventor to file a patent application, a system that tends to benefit large companies.

Part of the criticism that has been leveled at PTAB is what has been referred to frequently as "systemic problems," such as judges not having to disclose conflicts of interest when sitting to rule on patent-validity issues that could involve companies they previously worked for or in which they have an interest.

But in Voip-Pal's case, PTAB's apparent growing sensitivity about allegations of those systemic problems may have been beneficial to Voip-Pal's victory against Apple since the original three-judge panel appointed for the case was unexpectedly changed to a new trio of judges without any real explanation. Voip-Pal executives say the new panel, appointed from among the more than 100 patent judges that can be tapped for such cases, "gave fair review on all the merits" of the proceedings.

Meanwhile, bi-partisan legislation titled The Stronger Patents Act, which sponsors say would "restore patents as property rights and give startups a better chance to protect their property from entities with much greater resources," is likely to begin making its way through Congress.

Observers say the act, filed in both the House and Senate, is "designed to strengthen the United States' crippled patent system."

As reactions to the head tax the Seattle City Council imposed on the city's largest businesses reverberate across the community, there are some realities that both supporters and opponents of the tax either missed or avoided but that may still be considered, particularly with a likely public vote in November looming.

Despite the extensive media and community groups' comments and response to the tax, which is aimed at raising almost $240 million over five years toward dealing with the cost of housing and services for the city's homeless, there were some issues and ideas possibly overlooked amid the heated exchanges between the two sides.

So as friends and associates and readers of the Harp pressed, mostly good-naturedly, with "don't you have any thoughts to share on this issue?" I decided I did.  

One was the ongoing realization during the back-and-forth rhetoric and eventual compromise negotiated by Mayor Jenny Durkan that brought the per-employee tax down to a little over half the $500 per head the City Council wanted to impose, there was no mention of the city income tax now awaiting Supreme Court decision.

So Durkan, who in laughable understatement, said it was "a longshot" as she announced last December that she was going ahead with the appeal of Superior Court Judge John Rule's decision that the tax was illegal, committed the city to pay attorney fees when we now know there are more pressing needs for that money.

Under the tax passed by the City Council last year then ruled illegal by Judge Rule. Seattle residents would pay a 2 percent tax on annual income above $250,000, while married residents who file their taxes jointly would pay it on income above $500,000.

I expected as I listened to the debate, that some business leaders might suggest "we'll accept the head tax if you agree not to pursue the income tax idea." Obviously, many of those business leaders would pay in the tens of thousands of dollars if the income tax were actually imposed. That is if they didn't decide to move from Seattle.  

And as remote as the city's chances of a favorable Supreme Court ruling are in this case, the fact is that at some point a Democratic governor and a legislature that has a sufficient Democrat majority is likely to enact a state income tax. That would likely remove the current legal prohibition against a city imposing an income tax.  

Negotiating an agreement in which the city would agree never to impose both an income tax and a head tax might be a protection against an even more business-challenging future.

But at this point, it's pretty obvious that business and other opponents of the head tax intend to put an initiative on the November ballot to have the electorate decide on the head tax.  

Dozens of businesses, including Amazon, Vulcan, and Starbucks, have already pledged more than $350,000 to a No Tax On Jobs campaign. Intriguingly, those putting up money include prominent Bellevue business leader Robert Wallace, although he has always played a leadership role in the Seattle business community as well.

Meanwhile, Pierce County elected officials have stepped up to announce a sort of reverse head tax. The group, representing a number of cities in the county, said the will be devising a plan to give businesses a $275 tax credit for each family wage job created in the county.

Since the City Council and others are making it clear that the city's ability to find the money to cope with the homeless crisis is a growing challenge, that realization should be accompanied by a commitment not to waste money on other things.

What immediately comes to mind in that money-wasting category is the $250,000-plus the city is paying in legal fees to defend City Council member Kshama Sawant in lawsuits resulting from her intemperate and insulting comments towards those she happens to disagree with.

It's "only" a quarter million dollars. But statistics on costs of providing homeless services would suggest that those attorney fees for Sawant would provide for maybe 25 or 30 homeless peoples' needs, including housing.

How about another initiative that would prohibit the city, which already pays for its own legal department, from hiring outside attorneys when a member of the City Council is sued, particularly when it's within the council members' power to avoid a suit by merely being careful about what comes out of their mouths?  

And when the city wastes millions of dollars on bike-lane overruns and transportation-cost foul-ups, the reaction to the City Council needs to become: "Your ineptitude just left dozens (hundreds) of people on the streets for another year."

When I called a friend of mine this week, he told me as he answered his cell phone that he had been listening to a CD on American history that at that moment was discussing the Stamp Act, which was the final straw for Colonists in their increasingly contentious relations with the King and Great Britain. It led to the revolution.

"Wouldn't it be interesting if the head tax somehow became the today equivalent of the Stamp Act tax in stirring some game-changing response to the city as the equivalent of "the king," he chuckled.

When Washington Trust Chairman and CEO Peter (Pete) F. Stanton was honored last week in Spokane as a laureate of that community's Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame, it was appropriate recognition for the fourth generation leader of the state oldest and largest privately held commercial bank.

It was appropriate in part because, with the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame event not held this year, for the first time since it was created in 1987, the Spokane event is the only recognition of lifetime business achievement being held in the state this year.

Stanton was honored, along with Jack Heath, Washington Trust's president and chief operating officer, and local business executives Penn Fix and Debra Shultz of Dodson's Jewelers were also honored as laureates at the Spokane JA organization's 18th annual Hall of Fame.

Natalie Vega O'Neil, President & CEO of Junior Achievement of Washington, attended the Spokane event and got her first taste of Hall of Fame events.

"It was wonderful to witness the Spokane community coming together to celebrate those who have given back so much to the region," she said. 

Stanton has guided the fortunes of Washington Trust since Pere's great-grandfather bought the bank, founded in 1902, in 1919.

Stanton was 34 when in 1990 he assumed the role of president, second youngest bank president ever in Spokane, second only to his father, Philip Stanton, who had become president of the bank in 1962 at age 31.

Pete Stanton has been chairman and CEO since 2000, the year he named Heath president.

In an interview we did a few years ago, Stanton explained the success of his bank during the 2008 to 2011 period when many other banks, including three local competitors, fell into disaster.

"When something has been in your family for four generations, stewardship becomes very important," he said.

"That doesn't mean we spend our time looking in the rearview mirror," Stanton added.
"We're focused on the future, but securing that future has always led us to have concentration limits on our lending."

It was that "limit on concentration" that allowed Washington Trust to avoid the disastrous rush into real estate and construction lending that felled a large number of banks, including three of its locally based competitors, although Stanton's bank found itself eating some bad loans.

Sterling Savings Bank, publicly traded and about twice Washington Trust's size, and American West, about half its size, ran afoul of bad loans and wound up eventually being acquired, though Sterling re-emerged under new leadership and returned to successful operation before being acquired by Umpqua Bank.

During that time of financial trauma for many banks, Stanton's bank went on an acquisition and growth path that brought it to a network of branches spread across three Northwest states. including a large and growing presence in the Puget Sound area.

Stanton suggests that Washington Trust's success is built on what he refers to as "our three pillars of real strength: commercial banking, private banking, and wealth management."

Meanwhile, while there has not been any formal announcement of the fact, the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame is not being held this year. JA's leadership transition that brought O'Neil aboard and budgetary challenges resulted in the halt to the event created in 1987 by JA and Puget Sound Business Journal.

Because the JA organization has become Junior Achievement of Washington, its statewide role has meant that business leaders from across the state need to be considered for inclusion on the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame. Thus far only Leroy Nosbaum, the CEO of Itron, was a Spokane business leader inducted as laureate.

And that statewide role now has prompted discussion, particularly among members of the laureate selection committee, that the Hall of Fame event, if and when it re-emerges, should be rebranded as the Washington State Business Hall of Fame.

O'Neil has indicated the array of events that JA puts on each year will be evaluated over the next few months, presumably to determine which will continue.

But she did announce that a new Puget Sound Business Hall of fame display will be unveiled soon at the World Trade Center in Seattle.

As co-founder of the event, with JA, 31 years ago and part of the selection committee since then, I've been on hand each year as the business community leadership has looked on while a new class of their most admired and successful predecessors was welcomed to the laureate ranks. Thus it's difficult for me to imagine that there won't be a 2019 JA Hall of Fame banquet.

As Bastyr University celebrates its 40thanniversary and gives special recognition to the man who founded the naturopathic school and served as its president for 22 years, there will undoubtedly by some reflection on the decades-long struggle by naturopaths for recognition and acceptance by conventional medicine.

But the growing awareness of the importance of holistic healthcare, and the expectations a more health-savvy populous has come to have, and will more so in the future, accelerate the demand for integrative medicine, a phrase that means the convergence of conventional and alternative medicines.

In addition to celebrating its founding and its founder at the May 10 luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle, Bastyr will be introducing its new president, Harlan Patterson, who was chosen by the Bastyr Board of Trustees last month to guide the school after the six-year board member stepped in as interim president last July.

Dr.Joseph PizzornoPatterson brings a mainstream higher-ed background to his new role, having been Vice-Chancellor for Finance and Administration at UW Tacoma, and former Executive Director of the Washington Vaccine Alliance.

Back in 1978, with Portland-based National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM) deciding to close its Seattle branch and the legislature considering the elimination of the naturopathic license, Dr. Joseph Pizzorno Jr. and two other naturopathic physicians viewed the challenges to their profession as an opportunity.

Thus the three, Drs. Lee Griffith and William Mitchell Jr. and Pizzorno, all graduates of NCNM, moved to create a new naturopathic school in Seattle, a step that not only protected the licensure in Washington State but opened doors in the naturopathic field by building the school's curriculum on a science-based foundation.

Much has happened with Bastyr as it has grown in impact on the 51-acre wooded campus on the Eastside to which Pizzorno moved the school in the mid-90s, including the launch by now-retired president Dan Church in 2012 of Bastyr's San Diego campus, making it the only naturopathic college in the State of California.

Pizzorno, during his tenure, guided Bastyr to become the first accredited university of natural medicine and the first center for alternative medicine research funded by the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine.

The challenge of acceptance by conventional medicine that naturopaths still often face is pointed up by the absurd encyclopedic entries by Wikipedia, entries on naturopathy. Bastyr and Pizzorno that contain not information but tasteless and ridiculous putdown. Phrases like "pseudoscience and quackery" for Bastyr and, describing Pizzorno, one of the nation's most recognized and respected naturopaths, as "promoting dangerous and ineffective treatments."

Such intentional inaccuracies apparently aren't surprising to that who note that Wikipedia not only accepts but solicits large donations from organizations or individuals who may wish to have specific entries written to their liking and approval.

"Looks like the 'Quack Busters' got to write up the Bastyr Wiki," Pizzorno told me with a chuckle. "Those of us who are advancing this medicine use the number of times they go after us as a measure of success."

"There is a small posse (some NDs suggest "army" rather than "posse") of traditionalist doctors fighting the relentless march of alternative medicine into the mainstream," he added.

Pizzorno, honored numerous times over the years, travels worldwide, consulting, lecturing and promoting science-based natural medicine and collaborative health care and is obviously quick to do pushback of those who denigrate or fail to understand his approach to healthcare.

Thus he is unabashed in his summary of the struggles of naturopathic medicine, summing it up as: "The big challenge is that natural medicine and our foundational concepts have been actively suppressed by the vested conventional medicine interests for over a century. This has meant that the social and fiscal standing of NDs has always been under attack and patient access impaired through discriminatory licensing laws and blocking insurance reimbursement."

With respect to insurance coverage, former Washington State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn told me that while the number of states requiring insurance coverage for alternative medicine is growing, implementation and policing remains in the hands of the State Insurance Commissioner. 

After Washington lawmakers passed a law requiring insurance coverage, insurance companies went to court to challenge the requirement and Senn, an attorney and supporter of naturopathy, went to the 9thCircuit Court to uphold the law.

An increasing awareness of the importance of diet, exercise, and lifestyle on health has drawn a growing number of people, and not just millennials, to alternatives to conventional medicine and its practitioners. And for many, the search for alternatives leads to naturopathic medicine.

It was as I pursued all my options in deciding how to deal with my prostate cancer in 2011 that I visited a naturopathic physician, Dr. Eric Yarnell, on the Bastyr faculty, and learned of artemisinin, an extract derived from an ancient Chinese herb.

I had known a little about alternative medicine, but learning of artemisinin and the fact that it was being viewed as a cancer-fighting agent caused me to want to learn more both about the herb and about Bastyr, even though I finally decided, with advise from Yarnell, interestingly, that I should have a prostatectomy.

I wrote about artemisinin (search Flynn'sHarp: artemisinin) two years ago when the 85-year-old Chinese herbalist who discovered its ability to fight malaria won the Nobel prize for medicine. It's now also being viewed as a possible agent to fight, or possibly prevent, certain cancers, attracting National Institutes of Health and state funding to explore the possibility.

I've grown more focused, in recent years, on seeking the best practices and practitioners from conventional and alternative medicines for my personal healthcare, coming to understand that I make the final decisions on my healthcare and who provides it. But I have maintained a high respect and regard for my MDs, including my long-time internal medicine doc, who knows I tell people she once saved my life, and my prostate surgeon, for whom my respect has become friendship.

In addition, I look forward to regular breakfast or luncheon meetings with a couple of the most respected medical-practice leaders in the region.

But on the alternative-care side, I have an array of healthcare providers, each highly regarded in their specialties, ranging from acupuncture to high-intensity training (search Flynn's Harp: high intensity), to Reike to Feldenkrais, all attracting increasing attention from those growing ever more attuned to health issues ranging from performance enhancement to personal awareness.

I've been intrigued by the number of friends and associates who have come to take a similar approach to their own healthcare.

And in conversations about that fact, there's inevitably been a shared frustration that our conventional docs frequently put down the value of our alternative docs and we wish that they would come to understand the value each brings to healthcare, in other words, integrative medicine.

Perhaps promisingly, conventional medicine has come up with an alternative to alternative medicine. It's called Functional Medicine and some medical doctors are rushing to get certified for the new practice model that actually borrows much from the philosophy and practice of naturopathic practitioners.

Prominent physician and New York Times best-selling author Mark Hyman calls Functional Medicine "the future of conventional medicine, available now." He notes that "it seeks to identify and address the root causes of disease, and views the body as one integrated system, not a collection of independent organs divided up by medical specialties."

But back to old-reliable Wikipedia, which sums up Functional Medicine as a "collection of totally nonsensical gobbledygook."

Intriguingly, Pizzorno has been a leader of the Institute for Functional Medicine since its beginning, serving on the board since the organization was formed, including several years as chair and now as treasurer.

Pizzorno, who also is editor in chief of Integrative Medicine, a Clinician's Journal, has for decades been advancing the healing side of medicine and advancing naturopathic medicine in an array of venues.

• Heather Greenlee, Director of Integrative Medicine at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
• Patricia Herman, Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
• Wendy Weber, acting director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
• Laurie Mischley, whose research into Parkinson's Disease, including her exploration of the novel mechanism of introducing glutathione, the brain's primary antioxidant, to the central nervous system for Parkinson's patients, has brought her attention and respect on a global level (Flynn's Harp: Laurie Mischley).

The unfortunate accident in Tempe, AZ, March 18 when an Uber autonomous Volvo SUV struck and killed a woman who was walking a bicycle across a darkened street has stirred a strong reaction, in this state and elsewhere, from both sides in the discussion about the national push toward a likely autonomous-vehicle future.

One the one hand, supporters who have fed the vision of that possible autonomous future point to what some see as Uber's effort to produce an autonomous fleet "on the cheap," employing too few lasers and radar sensors. They argue that the careful use of sensor-device clusters to detect objects in front of and around the autonomous vehicle is a key to the safety of the driverless cars.

On the other side are those who, for a variety of reasons, would love to slow the pace of progress of the autonomous-vehicle movement. Some are obviously concerned about safety, a group more likely to be from the older generation. But others don't want the disruption of existing transportation plans, i.e. progress on rail commute.

More than a few in the Puget Sound area, for example, are fearful that the move to autonomous vehicles could have a negative effect on their "train," the network of commuter rail lines that are part of the $54 billion ST3 transit package approved by the voters in November of 2016 as an environment-protecting alternative to increasing traffic congestion. To many of its apostles, the ST3 project is like the "Holy Rail," not merely a device to slow traffic congestion.

And thus one of the concerns among autonomous vehicle (AV) advocates is that ST3 and the Sound Transit board that oversees it will come to view autonomous vehicles as a threat to completion of the rail-based plan for the region and use its power and influence to delay or stall progress. After all, most predictions about AV's are that they could come to dominate commute-hours traffic even before ST3's projected 2041 completion date.

And in fact, national transportation officials have made it clear that if autonomous vehicles move as rapidly as anticipated toward a ubiquitous presence on streets and highways, there will be an impact on planned and existing rail-transit programs.

But at this point, Gov. Jay Inslee has put the full weight of his office behind an AV future. Inslee not only moved forcefully last summer to seek to put Washington State at the forefront of states welcoming an autonomous future and issued an executive order to allow and support testing of autonomous vehicles but reiterated that commitment last week.

Inslee told leaders of technology and business at the 20th anniversary of the Alliance of Angels investment group that "The future of transportation will be in Seattle," and he elaborated by saying the region is going to be "the autonomous vehicle center of the U.S."

Inslee seemed to be pushing back not only on those seeing the challenge for the future of autonomous travel in the Tempe fatal accident but also on an op-ed piece in that morning's Seattle Times by a think-tank "fellow" named Daniel Malarkey for an organization called Sightline Institute.

Shabana Khan weathered opposition from the U.S. squash establishment when she put on the Men's World Squash Championship for the first time in this country in 2015 in Bellevue. So she knows she will face a perhaps even stronger pushback when she launches West Coast Squash, designed to bring a stronger and more convenient focus on youth squash in the West.

Khan, one-time national women's squash champion and a distant cousin of the most respected squash family in the world, plans to launch her new series of western youth squash tournaments next month.

Shabana Khan and YasmineKhan's YSK Events, her company that put on the Men's World Squash event and followed that with creation of a Bellevue stop on the national professional squash tour that is similar to the pro golf tour and an event to showcase the nation's top high school squash players, is becoming a 501c3 to oversee West Coast Squash.

In fact, YSK Events is hosting a US Squash Gold tournament May 18-21 and will have the West Coast College Squash showcase for top student talent that will run concurrently with the pro event.

And she has also made her events an opportunity to showcase the Boys and Girls Club in Bellevue's Hidden Valley. 

But the reality that community and sponsor support has been lacking for Khan, despite the participant enthusiasm and parental involvement, may mean she can't afford to continue either the proof high school showcase events.

That will leave her to focus on the development of West Coast Squash for which she has had interest from teams in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah and Vancouver, B.C. in hosting tournaments.

 "We see a great opportunity to vastly increase participation numbers across all of these states by creating a program focused on providing a platform that allows them to thrive in Squash and school while not spending a ton of money on travel," Khan said.

Khan says West Coast Squash (WCS) is a competitive Junior Squash series that stresses education, sportsmanship, and competitiveness while offering a tournament structure that provides a limited amount of time away from school and multiple paths towards gaining a WCS ranking. 

"WCS will provide a platform for youth to achieve success in competitive Squash with a path to playing for Squash teams at top colleges around the country," she said.

"Because it is much easier to accrue points and enter large tournaments being located on the East Coast, where most of the tournaments are held, it puts kids who live in the East at a huge advantage to gain points, spend less on travel, and not miss as many school days," she added. 

"On the other hand, a family located on the West Coast is at a large disadvantage due cost of travel and school missed. We believe it is counterproductive for children to tell them that they must do well in school and a sport that requires them to miss multiple school days to play in a high-level tournament," said Khan. 

Squash, which is a racket sport similar to racketball, played by two or four players in a four-walled court (glass walls for most international events that are broadcast globally) using a small, hollow rubber ball. 

Squash for decades was a sport played mostly in New England, New York City and a handful of cities in the West with Seattle in the forefront of those. Squash players and fans represented a highly targeted and sought after demographic of men and women with median incomes of more than $300,000 and an average net worth of nearly $1,500,000.  

But in recent years the U.S. has been one of the three countries in the world where squash has been growing fastest in popularity. And that growth in interest has coincided with a decline in racketball, thus leaving the courts available for squash more numerous at YMCAs and sports clubs.

Khan has bitten off a challenge with West Coast Squash and will need some substantial help in meeting her financial goal.

"The target would be $100,000 to get us going but $500,000 is our ultimate goal to achieve our staffing and to have more clinics and offer scholarships to kids who will need assistance for travel and entry fees for a couple of years," she said.

But she has some innovative ideas, like "naming rights," naming tournaments after families for sponsorship fees, and using technology that would, for example, allow students to use an app to locate tournaments they might like to enter,

Her track record includes not just the men's world event in 2015 and the Bellevue pro and student events but the first-ever-in-the-US Women's World Championship that she and her father, Yusuf, put on in Seattle in 1999. 
   
Her father was nine-time squash champion in India before coming to this country to be head pro at the Seattle Tennis Club, soon thereafter establishing the Seattle Athletic Club and building it into one of the key squash locations in the West.

In fact, YSK Events, which she founded in 2015 to focus on squash events, is a family affair in several ways. She serves as chairman while sister Latasha, who was women's national champion when Shabana defeated her to take the crown, sits on the board.

It's also a family affair in that the "Y" in YSK stands for both her 11-year-old daughter, Yasmine, who was 14th in the country in her age group last year and her father, Yusuf. The "S" and the "K" are her initials.  

A search of the internet for squash and Khan turns up the fact that the list of champions over the decades is replete with those named Khan.

One entry notes: "The great Khans are the kings of squash with all of its greatest champions not only from one nation but from one single family in the nation--the Khans of Pakistan.

"That is where all this crazy stuff comes from for me," Shabana chuckled. "I am not scared of this effort I'm undertaking--well, maybe a little bit--but the family that I come from can't back down very easily."

A decade of harping, actually producing a weekly email column under the title "Flynn's Harp" most every week for the past 10 years, is cause for pause and reflection.

For nearly a quarter-century guiding the fortunes of Puget Sound Business Journal, my creative outlet from the business challenges was the weekly column that permitted me to share thoughts on people and issues with PSBJ's readers.

It was the spring of 2008, two years after my retirement from PSBJ, that my friend Pat Scanlon, whom I now refer to as my digital guru because of his background in digital media with national media companies, said to me: "You should have an online column." To that, I replied: "Why?" So he said: "Let me show you what I've put together" and lo, the layout, and format of both email and web versions, missing only a column title, was there on my computer, causing me to muse: "So what would I write about?"

Because it was a general-election year, I had already written a piece reflecting on the 1968 presidential campaign in which I had been fortunate enough, as a young political writer for UPI, to be immersed. The 1968 campaign was one that had high-visibility roles for four people from Washington State and I had put all of that into a piece without knowing where I would try to place the article.

When I began thinking of the "what would I write?" I realized that I could divide that 1968-campaign article into four parts, one for each of the four people I had included as key players in that long-ago campaign. Then, presto, I'd have a month's worth of columns! Then I'd be four weeks on the way to have time to think of a fifth and a sixth column, etc.

Thus then-Gov. Dan Evans, who was 1968 GOP convention keynoter, mountaineer Jim Whittaker, who became like a brother to Sen. Robert Kennedy, Egil (Bud) Krogh, a young Seattle attorney who became a Watergate figure, and author Kitty Kelly, a high school friend, became the first four profiles of the
Harp.

Since we are coming up on what, now that 2018 has dawned, the 50th anniversary of that campaign, detailed 40 years on in a reflective piece in a national magazine in 2008 on Robert Kennedy's quest for the presidency as "the last good campaign," I decided to revisit those four columns in this 10th year of The Harp.

So over the coming weeks, I will be inserting those columns into the flow of
Harps, repeating the recollections from a presidential campaign now half a century removed but one in which all four of those personalities I wrote about remain active today. But I will also during the coming months be reprising other columns that had particular and special meaning to me.

I figured the best way to get the column going as an e-mail offering back in 2008 was to send the first one to about 600 of my closest friends and contacts (some I hadn't touched base with for several years), hoping they would either read it or ignore it but not tag me as SPAM.

Over time, as I've met new people in my "retirement" activities and consulting, I've added another 1,000 names.

So it now goes weekly to about 1,600 recipients whom I describe as business leaders, mostly Washington State but 100 or so in California, Hawaii and a few other states, as well as current and former state and local elected officials, and four college presidents.

Doing the column regularly, with the personal requirement that it be original material, in other words, facts and information not yet brought to the public's awareness has provided a satisfaction.

But even more so have been the responses from many to the emails, some moving, some laudatory, some critical. I have specifically always acknowledged the latter.

I like to tell people the column has resulted in more friendships than I had as PSBJ publisher because then, business people who read my columns and editorials were merely part of a mostly faceless audience of readers. Now the "readers" are those who are kind enough to let me into their email box weekly and most proceed to open long enough to see if that particular one is interesting.

So over the course of 500 columns, I have come to know people and their successes and challenges, and issues that impact them, in ways that would never have been the case except for the column.

I have now become an evangelist for doing email columns, urging my friends and business associates to create columns, advising "not weekly!" and admonishing "if you do it, it needs to be not about yourself or your business but about the knowledge you can impart from your experience."

A couple of friends have taken me up on it, the first being Don Brunell, retired president of the Association of Washington Business, who recalled in an email to me this week the occasion for the launch of his column that now appears in a number of weekly newspapers.

"We were at the Coeur d' Alene Hotel for AWB's Executive Committee retreat and we were having a beer in the lobby bar in 1995, bemoaning how we got our butts kicked by Mike Lowry in 1993. The D's controlled Olympia and Lowry would chastise business:  'you mean to tell me you guys can't afford a latte a day to pay for health care for your workers.'"  

 "We were talking about getting our message out and you said:  'why don't you write a weekly column?'  So I gave it a try. That's now almost 23 years ago."

The other is Al Davis, a friend and former longtime client, who is a founder of Revitalization Partners, a noted Seattle-based business management and advisory firm. Early last year he packaged the columns he and business partner Bill Lawrence have written bi-weekly over the last three years into a book.

When Al and I met for me to get a copy of the book, he told me to open the cover and read what was printed on the facing page. There was a thank you to several people, and to me for convincing him he could write a column!