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.

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.

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."

Mike Heavey is a decorated Vietnam veteran, former Washington State legislator and retired King County Superior Court judge who each year marks his now 15-year remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by climbing a mountain, with his 30-year friend, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, sometimes among the climbers.

But it's likely Heavey, 72, will want to be best remembered for his creation of an organization called Judges for Justice, which he formed in 2013 to identify wrongful convictions that leave innocent people imprisoned who can only be freed if someone makes the effort to have them exonerated.

Heavey's comments and the phrases that pepper them leave little doubt that the man who spent 14 years in the Washington State legislature and a dozen years as a superior court judge views the conviction and imprisonment of people who turn out to be innocent as a scar on the face of a nation.

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 Washington Supreme Court's decision to strike down the death penalty as unconstitutional brought back memories of the 1963 hanging of Joseph Chester Self, which I covered for United Press International as a young reporter. It would be the last hanging in Washington State for nearly 30 years.

Last week's ruling in which the court held unanimously that the death penalty was "arbitrary and racially biased" was the fourth time that a high court has decreed that Washington's death penalty was unconstitutional, for a variety of reasons, but capital punishment was approved anew after each of the three previous occasions.

And while the court's ruling last week included the comment "death as a penalty for crime is not in itself unconstitutional," and "We leave open the possibility that the Legislature may enact a 'carefully drafted statute," the decision noted that it would be very difficult to do that in a constitutional manner.

At the time of Self's execution 55 years ago, the state didn't have a gallows in the Old West style, but rather a large room at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, a "death chamber" as it was referred to, a short walk from Death Row where those sentenced to die awaited the outcome of their appeals process. It was later, to rectify a court decision throwing out the death penalty, that a legislature made fatal injection an option for the condemned prisoners.

Only men have been executed in Washington and, interesting in light of the court's statement about the death sentence being "racially disproportionate," of the 14 who went to their deaths between and 1947 and 1993, 13 were Caucasian, including Joe Self, and one was Hispanic.

Washington's governors have routinely passed on the opportunities over the years to interfere with the death penalty being carried out, until current governor Jay Inslee imposed a moratorium on the death penalty and has now announced he would veto any effort to restore it.

Mike Lowry, who was then in his first year as Washington governor, was the last to weigh whether to permit a condemned man to hang, although two men were subsequently executed by lethal injection during Gary Locke's time as governor.

I once asked Lowry to recall that hanging and his thoughts about it. In the process of answering, he disclosed that a personal visit with the condemned man at the state penitentiary had been part of what he referred to as "the considerable time" he spent reviewing the case of Charles Rodman Campbell.

"I received delegations from opponents of capital punishment and, of course, from family and friends of the people he murdered," Lowry recalled. "In the end, I could not justify in my own mind reversing the 13-year legal process that included all the appeals that were made by his defense lawyers exercising his constitutional rights."

"One of the reasons I did not commute Mr. Campbell's sentence to life without the possibility of parole is that there was a very legitimate fear that he might try to kill a prison employee or other inmate," Lowry added.

I chuckled at the thought that Inslee might have taken Lowry's example and met with either one of the death row prisoners or members of the family of one of the victims before rendering his far-reaching decision

Lowry, who died 18 months ago, conceded during our conversation that is was possible there would be other executions in Washington State, noting: "I feel for whoever is governor at that time and I hope he or she will explore every opportunity to find a solid justification to commute the sentence to life without possibility of parole."

In fact, Campbell, who was executed for the murders of two women and the eight-year-old daughter of one of the women, all of whom had their throats slit, perfectly fitted the profile of a killer who deserved to die, for those who believe there may be a societal issue, not merely a legal issue in capital punishment discussion.

The late true-crime author Ann Rule wrote a chapter about Campbell in one of her books and described him as "a killer straight out of a nightmare." And then-Atty. Gen Christine Gregoire observed after Campbell's execution: "The death penalty is not something to be taken lightly and should be reserved for only the most heinous crimes. If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Charles Campbell."

Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote that "no penological goal" was served by capital punishment. But some would argue that capital punishment could also have a societal aspect, since academic discussions of the purposes of punishment always refer to five purposes, including retribution.

And as a friend who spent years in the prosecutor's office observed to me, "closure for the families of murder victims should be a very important consideration."

At a time when the U.S. Constitution has become the focal point of conversation and discussion across the nation, with an alarming amount of the discussion heatedly political, it's heartening to learn about the little-known competition among high school students across the country to create a deeper knowledge of the nation's founding document.

The program is called "We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution" with programs in all 50 states involving thousands of students in a national competition that culminates in the spring with national finals sponsored by the Center for Civic Education and conducted at the national conference center in Leesburg, VA.

The finals are designed to simulate a congressional hearing, presumably without the rancor that characterized the convention that adopted the constitution and that has been passed down through legislative bodies since then to the Congress of today.

I learned about the program from my granddaughter, Emma, then a senior at Portland's Franklin High School, a year before her mother, Oregon Supreme Court Justice Meagan Flynn, became part of an unusual lineup of coaches at Franklin. 

That team of coaches this year includes, in addition to Meagan, fellow Supreme Court Justice Rives Kistler, as well as a retired Oregon appellate court judge.

Grant and Lincoln high schools in Portland have carved out roles as perennially among the top three high schools in the nation with Grant finishing first in the national competition last year and Lincoln third.

There's little likelihood that when Grant or Lincoln teams return with their national recognition there are celebrations to congratulate the winners, or that the parents at those schools even know much about the event. Anyone aware of the importance of informed citizens in creating forms of governance would find that disappointing.

But apparently among the students at Grant and Lincoln, the old story of "success breeds success" is at work.

"They are very selective in who they pick and they have developed a strong draw to students,' Meagan said.

Washington State high schools lag far behind the performance of their Oregon counterparts. Six Washington high schools are involved in the constitution competition.

They are: Eastlake Evergreen, Heritage, Orting, Overlake, Tahoma (Tahoma frequently winds high on the list of national honorable mentions)

Students from the six Washington State High Schools participate in the We the People State Competition on the Capitol Campus in Olympia each spring.

About 40 Franklin students gather each Monday evening with 15 to 20 coaches and the high school's advanced placement teacher to go over questions and discuss aspects of the constitution.

The questions they deal with would make interesting fodder at adult gatherings if the idea of discussing the constitution in other than the occasional irrelevant conversations about getting a new one occurred to them.

As Meagan explained to me when I asked her how the evenings go, "We usually split into six individual units during the evening and help the kids work on their answers to the prepared questions or have them practice answering random questions about their topics.  In the competition rounds, they give their prepared answer and then spend six minutes fielding any questions about the topic that the judging panel wants to ask. The questions are mostly along the lines of taking a position and defend your answer with specific examples, rather than closed-ended questions."

The questions the students deal with are compelling and hopefully could prompt some of their parents to gather and say "hey, let's have a discussion about this."

Three questions gleaned from a multi-page list that the students deal with attracted my attention:

  - "How does the Constitution limit government power to protect individual rights while promoting the common good?"

  - "what arguments can you make for and against giving each state the right to send the same number of members to the Senate?

  - "If a law has been properly passed by the law-making branches of a democratic government, why should judges have the power to declare it unconstitutional? Do you agree or disagree with the position implied by this question? Why or why not?"

During the national finals, more than 1,200 students testify before a total of 72 judges, in panels of three. The judges are history, political science, law, and education professors, members of the legal community, and others with knowledge of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

According to the Center for Civic Education, "Since the inception of the We the People program in 1987, more than 28 million students and 90,000 educators have participated in the program and more than 30,000 students have participated in the national finals."

I asked Meagan what she views as the value of the program.

"It makes good citizens," she said. "Students learn about the Constitution and how it relates to current events and they learn to take information and form an opinion, based on facts."

I think we should form an adult version of "We the people."

On the 10th and 15th anniversaries of 9/11, I shared an article written a few days after that tragic 2011 September day by a former, now late, United Press International colleague, Al Webb.  From his post in UPI's London bureau, Webb did a wrap-up of the grief that citizens of every country shared on our behalf. As another anniversary of 9/11 arrives, I share again Webb's article that captured that display of shared pain in a way that deserves, or rather requires, remembering. And its rereading stirs a compelling question to ponder: whether the global regard for us that outpouring of affection evidenced remains our national treasure or whether it is now merely a squandered legacy.    

By Al Webb
LONDON (UPI) -- A small girl with a Cockney accent shyly waved a tiny American flag, and a queen brushed away a tear. In a Scottish town that has known its own tragedy, a lone church bell tolled. On a German river, foghorns sounded a low moan.

Across countries and continents, waves of sympathy for a nation in anguish rolled on. A young woman in a Kenyan park wept over the sad headlines in newspapers spread on the ground. A one-time terrorist donated blood for the victims. Hundreds stood in line in cities from Dublin to Moscow to sign books of condolences.  

And over the outpouring of grief and mourning for the lives lost in the boiling flames and rubble of the World Trade Center towers and a wing of the Pentagon, time and again came the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," sometimes in places where it had never been sung before.

In a gesture reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner," symbolizing his solidarity with another troubled people a half-century ago, the Paris newspaper Le Monde perhaps summed it up best: "We are all Americans."

In London, where the little girl with the funny accent and her American flag pressed her damp face against the gates, the band performing the traditional Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace suddenly did something it had never done before -- it struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner."

For 45 minutes, the Mall in front of the palace became a little piece of America for hundreds of its citizens who were there because there were no planes to take them home. And the band of the Coldstream Guards played on.

As tear-stained faces lifted and sang along, as Americans and British and other nationals waved Old Glory, the marches rolled -- "The Liberty Bell" after the national anthem, followed by "The Washington Post March" and "Semper Fidelis" and finally, heart-rendingly, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

What the Coldstream Guards had triggered was the greatest mass demonstration of grief in Britain since Princess Diana was killed in a car crash four years ago. And as with Diana's death, a carpet of flowers, children's toys, poems, letters, all illuminated by tiny candles, built up this time at the fortress-like U.S. Embassy in London.

Amid the hundreds of bouquets, a single American flag was wrapped around a tree. One woman pressed her tear-dampened lips to its fringe in a soft kiss.  

The sweeping tide of mourning reached its crescendo at 11 o'clock Friday morning when Britain, France, Germany and scores of other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia went silent for three minutes, in honor of the innocent dead in America.

In Paris, the elevator at the Eiffel Tower stopped halfway to the top. Buses, trams and cars halted in their tracks across the continent.

In Spain, more than 650 city and town halls became gathering centers for tens of thousands who bent their heads in silent prayer -- and then, at the end of the three minutes, they lifted their eyes and applauded in that people's traditional tribute to the victims of terrorism.

On the River Elbe leading into Hamburg, ships flew their flags at half-mast. The minutes of silence crept by -- and at the end were broken by the sound of a thousand foghorns rolling across the water into the city's very heart.

In Lockerbie, Scotland, there was no applause, no singing, no bands, only the ringing of a single church bell and the flutter of flags at half-mast. This is a town with singular links to America, forged in a terrorist attack in the skies 13 years ago.

In all, according to an estimate by The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London, some 800 million people across Europe joined in the three minutes of silence.

At Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, once part of a dividing line between freedom and tyranny, a crowd of some 200,000 -- among them Germans whose relatives had died in terrorist attacks -- gathered beneath a black banner bearing the words, "We Mourn With You."

In Paris, crowds jammed the Place de la Concorde, itself a symbol of reconciliation, while church bells rang for five minutes before the silence.

In the government's Elysee Palace, "The Star-Spangled Banner" rang out, while over the French airwaves, radio stations played John Lennon's "Imagine."

The bankers of Switzerland are not noted for their sentimentality, so they dealt in their own currency. At the end of the three minutes of silence, they announced they were donating more than $500,000 to the families of the victims of the atrocities in America.  

Lloyd's of London, the insurance market-based in the British capital and one of several insurers of the World Trade Center, rang its Lutine bell and observed a minute of silence in memory of the dead in America -- some of them in the several broker offices Lloyd's has -- had -- in the WTC.  

In Belfast, the bullets and bombs of Northern Ireland's own form of terrorism, known as sectarian violence, went silent as tens of thousands from both sides of the divide -- Roman Catholic and Protestant - gathered in front of a makeshift stage at City Hall, to stand in silent tribute.

It is a city that knows the heartache of terrorism. "We have suffered for 33 years," said Betty McLearon. "People here have to be admired for the way they can cope with it. It will take the people in New York a long time to get over this."

In Moscow, the Russians observed a minute's silence as they laid wreaths and floral tributes outside the U.S. Embassy, once a symbol of the Cold War. Thousands of Muscovites lined up patiently to sign books of condolences.

In turbulent Israel, a nurse gently inserted a needle into the right arm of Yasser Arafat, himself a one-time terrorist who is now head of the Palestinian Authority. In a demonstration of support, he was donating blood to help the American injured.

Back in London, the minutes of silence were followed by a service of remembrance in the capital's majestic St. Paul's Cathedral, led by Queen Elizabeth II herself. In the audience of 2,400 inside, Americans hoisted the Stars and Stripes for the rest of the world to see via television.

Outside the cathedral, the tens of thousands who could not get in waved their own tiny flags and listened over the loudspeakers that carried the words and music for blocks around.  The cathedral's huge organ rumbled into life, to open the service, appropriately, with the American national anthem.

Then something happened that has never happened before, certainly not in public and doubtless not even in private. Softly, the queen began to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Now, the British monarch does not "sing" national anthems. When they are played, she never even opens her mouth. Until now.

 But Queen Elizabeth sang it all, this song whose words were written 187 years ago during Britain's last war with her lost American colonies, through the final words, "O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave." With the last note, the queen gently brushed away a tear.  

That said it all. 
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When Tracy Wood heard that John McCain had died, the woman who was the only reporter on hand when McCain and 102 other POWs were released from the Hanoi Hilton in March of 1973, she was "really sad. That guy went through so damned much and the remarkable thing is he seemed to learn from each setback and become better for it."

Tracy Wood on arriving for first POW release
(From the private collection of Tracy Wood)Wood was a 25-year-old reporter for United Press International who had been in Viet Nam for only a year when word came that McCain, who had been imprisoned under constant torture for five years, and the others would be released two months after the agreement between the U.S. and North Vietnamese to end the war.
  
Wood made up her mind that she would be in Hanoi for the release of the POWs at a time when every reporter was trying to find a way to get to Hanoi. She first tried to set up a press pool (meaning a group of reporters sharing resources) flying into Hanoi from the Philippines.  

But, she recalled in a phone interviewSunday, "Nixon himself vetoed any press pool plan, apparently because he didn't want any of the   prisoners photographed and have the photos sent back to this country."

"So that meant that I had to try a different way," she said.

Thus with a mix of pluck and luck, Wood decided to just ask the North Vietnamese directly for permission to be in Hanoi for the release. And they gave her permission.

Then how to get there, since there was no way for her to merely hop a flight from Saigon? She decided to take commercial flights from Saigon to Bangkok, Thailand, then to Vientiane, Laos, where she caught the Aeroflot flight that was the only commercial connection to Hanoi.
 
There she learned that AP photographer Horst Faas and an NBC cameraman named Chris Callery were on the same flight, but she proudly notes she was not only the lone reporter but also the only American journalist since Faas was German and Callery from England.
 
She explained with a laugh that the photo she sent me of her arrival in Hanoi dressed in a miniskirt was because she had dressed for commercial travel rather than for the usual military lift into battle zones in jungle fatigues.
 
She said the three journalists "got to stand very close" as the POWs were walked through the iron gates at Ly Nam Prison to the plane for their flight to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, but they weren't able to talk to McCain or any of the others. She noticed that McCain, 36, his hair graying, limped noticeably as he and the other prisoners walked along a wall from the prison to their waiting flight.
 
Wood's arrival in Vietnam a year earlier was also a mix of pluck and luck since it was as a reporter in UPI's Sacramento Bureau, at the same time I was a reporter in UPI's Olympia bureau, that she decided she wanted to go to Vietnam. We didn't know each other then, except for bylines we'd occasionally see on UPI's wires.
 
"Of the more than 2,200 journalists who were accredited by the U.S. military to cover Vietnam between 1965 and 1975, only 70 of them were women and most of those went in only for a short time to cover specific stories, such as someone from their town," she once told me to explain how hard the challenge of getting there would be.
 
Wood didn't get to Vietnam until 1972 when she was 24 and it took careful planning to get to the New York bureau where her lobbying would be closer to the decisionmakers.

Tracy Wood arriving for final POW release (Cronkite in the background) Her immediate boss on the UPI cables desk didn't think a woman should cover wars. But Wood had the good fortune to work for UPI, whose top editors Roger Tatarian and  H. L. Stevenson believed in the ability of women to report just as well as men, and dispatched several high-visibility female correspondents to the war zone. Then it was Wood's turn.
 
Wood made two other trips to Hanoi after the one in which McCain was freed, as the POW's were released in stages in 1973.
 
"On the final trip, we had to rent a plane," she recalled. "CBS was so sure the North Vietnamese would give Walter Cronkite a visa that they tied up every available plane from Hong Kong south, but in the end, Cronkite and the CBS crew had to go on my visa, along with the others in the pool and we all used Cronkite's plane.
 
"I was afraid he would be furious, but he was incredibly nice and told me I was just doing my job," she added. "Remember, he was a war correspondent for United Press in World War II. Really classy guy."
 
Wood, who spent years as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles times after leaving UPI in 1975, is now the editor for the Voice of OC, which bills itself as "Orange County's non-profit, non-partisan newsroom."

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 we celebrate the nation's birthday, honoring the date in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, it seems like the appropriate time to celebrate the American dream framed by that declaration, as well as give thought to who gets to dream it.

Two things made me think of that. The first was a feature today on Geekwire, the Seattle-based technology news site, focusing on the American Dream that guided immigrant entrepreneurs and tech leaders to this country and success. The second was a poem written by an immigrant fifth grader in San Diego about a conversation between "The Wall and Lady Liberty."

The Geekwire interviews had the tech execs explaining why they chose the U.S. as a place to build their lives, families, and dreams and thus were able to fulfill their American dream and became highly successful. It's worth going to the Geekwire site to take a look.

Guadalupe ChavezI had a chance to read the poem by Guadalupe Chavez after a prominent immigration-attorney friend of mine in San Diego who is a judge in an essay event for immigrant fifth graders from around the nation told me about the contest and the San Diego youngster who took second in the nation.

Kimberley Robidoux, a San Diego partner in the Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Maggio-Kattar, is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's San Diego Chapter and a judge in the Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest. The contest challenges fifth graders across the country to reflect on and write about the theme "Why I Am Glad America Is a Nation of Immigrants."

"We use an honor system that the parents did not write the essays or participate," Robidoux told me. "But also most of the 5th-grade teachers have the students write the entries at school so we are very confident that a parent did not write the entry."

So here is Guadalupe's Essay:

"Lady Liberty: Come in! Come in! Welcome to the United States of America! Pleasure to meet you! The Wall: Wait... No! No! Stop! Leave! You're trespassing! Lady Liberty: What's wrong with you? Why are you so close-minded? We've always welcomed people here. People have traveled from all sorts of places like China, Mexico, Philippines, Japan, Canada, Australia, and so many more. The Wall: No. No. No! I'll block their path. They're different, maybe dangerous. They shouldn't come in, they are not welcome. Lady Liberty: What's wrong with you? Many of the people that live here in America are immigrants. So if we push them away, that will mean fewer workers, less money earned, no variety of food, and no more diversity. Basically, there would barely be anything for the citizens. The Wall: No, no, we don't need them. We have our American citizens. We get nothing from them. Lady Liberty: Unless you are a Native American... Wait, no, not even them! Even they migrated here from Asia through the land bridge that existed in the Bering Strait. Every person that lives here nowadays has ancestors who brought something to America. The Wall: Yeah, right! They only bring problems. Lady Liberty: That's not true! They bring so many different things we enjoy day-to-day. Just think. Look around you. What do you eat? The Wall: Well, my favorite food is tacos with spicy sauce and soft tortillas.Lady Liberty: Guess what? That's not from America! What do you do in your free time? The Wall: I text, and use Twitter most of the time.Lady Liberty: Well, guess what? The iPhone you are texting with was invented by Steve Jobs whose father was a Syrian immigrant. What's your favorite song? The Wall: Oh I love Bob Marley songs! (begins singing) "One love, let's get together and feel alright." Lady Liberty: Yeah, definitely Bob Marley, who came from Jamaica, getting us all together and making us feel alright. Well, singer-songwriter Bob Marley grew up in Jamaica. I'm surprised that even when you're just sitting there without moving you don't notice the beauty that immigrants bring to the country. Just look around! The Wall: I only see fields and factories from here. Lady Liberty: Well, most of these fields that grow beautiful crops of oranges and avocados are worked by people from Mexico.The Wall: I guess you have a point. I'll try to be more open to new ideas. I guess you are right, we've always been a country of immigrants and whether I like it or not, they've had a huge impact on the country we are today. Lady Liberty: Thank goodness, you were making me so angry I was turning green."

I asked Kimberley to keep an eye on the young fifth grader to watch what comes of Guadalupe Chavez.

With three key decisions she has faced since becoming Seattle mayor, Jenny Durkan has left some of those affected wondering "What was she thinking?" But in none of those decisions has she raised that chorus from so many groups, some in anger and some from among her own supporters who are dramatically disappointed about the decision not to include interim police chief Carmen Best in the group of finalists for the permanent chief 's job.

Mayor DurkanAs a fan and friend of Jenny Durkan's late father, a liberal Democrat who was a political power in the legislature whom I got to know while I was a young political writer, I was pleased to see her elected mayor and had high expectations that she would show leadership and guide Seattle back toward normalcy.

It was a belief shared by many business leaders in Seattle and beyond who felt that if Durkan wasn't the best mayoral candidate they could hope for, she was for sure far ahead of the other candidates who aspired to succeed disgraced former mayor Ed Murray. And many felt she might actually come to be a throwback to when Seattle's mayors had a more broadly appealing definition of "liberal" than that on display with most of the current City Council members.

Then came the three key decisions she has had to make as the city's chief executive.

First was her decision to appeal the King County superior court ruling that the City Council had broken state law by enacting a city income tax. She had debunked the then-planned tax at the time she filed last spring as "probably not constitutional," and added it's "not the solution we need now." Then admitting, in dramatic understatement, that it was a "longshot," she filed an appeal to the State Supreme Court in December, leaving many legal minds aware of how the state's highest court follows its own rules to muse "what was she thinking?"

Second was the City Council plan to impose a head tax on the city's largest employers. She pushed back on the council's original plan to levy a $500 tax on each employee at those large companies to raise $75 million a year to address the city's homeless crisis and in the end negotiated a compromise that seemed to appease Amazon and others.

Now the head tax, which Durkan signed into law, faces the prospect of a November vote on an issue that has caused businesses and elected officials in other cities to jeer at Seattle's willingness to tax jobs. And the fact Amazon is among prominent firms raising money for the ballot test indicates the city's largest employer actually wasn't okay with the head tax idea.

But most compelling for Durkan's future is the decision not to include acting chief Carmen Best, an African-American woman, and a native of the Seattle area who came up through the ranks in a 26-year career whose involvements have brought her vocal support from community groups and within the police-force community she guides.

Members of the Police Guild, the police union, were "extremely disappointed and angered" by what's happening with Best, according to Guild President Kevin Stuckey.

The Seattle Police Foundation, the non-profit entity that helps the police department enhance relationships with the community, improve employee development, and assist in providing the latest in equipment and technology, avoids taking political positions because of its 501c3 status. But it's known that its leadership was surprised there was even a search for a permanent chief launched since there was a broad sense that Best was the chief they wanted.

The question "what was she thinking" implies a lack of transparency, not a good image for Durkan to allow to develop. And her decision to intentionally bypass Best totally lacks transparency.

Best, a native of Tacoma who grew up locally, whose husband works for Boeing and whose college-graduating daughter is getting married this fall, was one of five finalists forwarded by a review committee but the mayor's own staff trimmed two, including Best, from the list.

Durkan will be choosing a new chief from a trio of male hopefuls, including one African-American. And in fairness to the mayor, the selection committee and its chairs, including former King County Executive Ron Sims and a respected interim mayor and former City Council member Tim Burgess said there was a sense among them that the next chief should come from elsewhere.

That was a reference to the reforms in the Seattle police department that have taken place the past half dozen years after a federal civil rights investigation led Durkan, then U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, and the Justice Department to guide Seattle to an overhaul of all aspects of the department. The reforms were in the wake of findings of excessive use of force by the department.

Durkan launched the search for a new chief earlier this year after Kathleen O'Toole stepped down as chief at the end of last year. Best, an assistant chief, was named interim chief, although she announced she would seek the job of permanent chief.

Listening to Durkan seek to explain Best's exclusion keeps the "what was she thinking" sense in the forefront and is likely to echo down the coming months.

Carmen Best"I completely understand that people are disappointed, for various reasons; that perhaps their candidate didn't make it through," Durkan said at a news conference. "And I love Carmen Best. But I also love the fact that she is a team player and has said to me that her focus is moving forward. I am going to respect that."

Best obviously can't respond to whether or not she said that to Durkan. Nor could she explain to those who were on an interview committee that the reason police are sometimes bring criticized for not being responsive enough to calls from citizens is that the city council has removed the tools that allow police to respond.

Can you imagine Best giving an honest answer like: "well, the City Council has tied our hands with decisions like eliminating the ordinance against loitering?"

So "what was she thinking" in removing from the list of candidates for permanent Seattle police chief the acting chief whose choice would have been supported by community groups, women's groups, minority groups and, maybe most importantly, the police officers who will work under her?

That question will haunt Durkan, particularly whenever a police and community issue comes up in the future.

The greatest clue to leadership is the ability to respond positively to constituent push back. In this case that could mean figuring a way to reverse course and get Best back on track to being permanent police chief.

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.

As former governor and U.S. Senator Dan Evans moves toward completion of his memoirs, it's appropriate that he pauses at the chapter on the 1968 campaign to take special satisfaction in mentally revisiting the details of a failure that became one of his most important contributions. That was his leadership role in advancing the career of the man who would become the Father of Affirmative Action.

It's the story of a strategy hatched a half-century ago by the three top Republicans in Washington State to accelerate the political career of Arthur Fletcher, a little-known black politician from Eastern Washington, by setting him on what they hoped would be the road to the governorship. They hoped that with their help he could eventually succeed Evans and become the first elected black governor in the nation since reconstruction.

Daniel J EvansFletcher was a self-help advocate who had been elected to the Pasco City Council in 1967, representing the largely black community of East Pasco. The effort by Evans, Secretary of State Ludlow Kramer and the GOP attorney general candidate Slade Gorton to help Fletcher win the lieutenant governor's race in 1968 failed.

But because of visibility Fletcher gained in that campaign, in which he ran against popular Democratic incumbent John Cherberg, and national attention that occurred because of a role at the Republican National Convention, newly elected President Richard Nixon would tap him in 1969 to be assistant secretary of labor.

Fletcher had founded the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative to keep local anti-poverty efforts alive, and Evans, a liberal Republican, saw him as the type of political leader who could bridge racial differences at a time of high local and national racial tensions.

Fletcher had already built a reputation in other parts of the country for his activities that set him on the road to becoming a political anomaly as a Republican civil rights activist.

In his home state of Kansas, he had been involved in the mid-50s in the black community's case against the Topeka School Board that became known as Brown vs. Board of Education. And he campaigned among black voters for the 1954 election of liberal Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Hall, with whom he became closely associated during Hall's single term and later when both moved to California.

Arthur FletcherAnd after playing college football at Washburn University in Topeka, KS, Fletcher played professionally for a brief time, including a year as the first black player on the old original Baltimore Colts team in 1950.

When the '68 election year dawned, Fletcher was already gaining media attention in this state. As UPI's state political editor, I recall doing a story on Fletcher, and other Puget Sound area reporters soon also had written about him, which helped propel him into an attention-getting role with Washington voters.

Early in the '68 campaign year, Sam Reed, a young Republican who would become the Secretary of State, created Action for Washington, an organization designed to attract young people into active political campaigning. Reed attracted the involvement of other young Republicans who would themselves become elected officials in this state.

Evans noted that it was an era of enthusiastic and sometimes disruptive youth activism, fueled by civil rights and the war in Vietnam. 

"Sam turned that activism into vibrant political activity, encouraging volunteers to join and then decide which candidates they wished to support," Evans recalled in an interview for this column. "No mention was made of political parties until the organization grew to be a potentially important force in the 1968 election."

The Action for Washington young people chose to support him and Kramer for re-election and to support the election of Gorton as attorney general and Fletcher as lieutenant governor.

"These young political activists were enthralled by Fletcher, a big man and former pro football player who carried a commanding presence and spoke with conviction in his resonating baritone voice," Evans said. 

The young people attracted to Action for Washington distributed flyers and yard signs featuring, as did newspaper ads and television commercials, what Evans remembers as the foursome of Kramer, Gorton, Fletcher and him "striding side by side with clean-cut confidence." All were in their early 40's.

At the 1968 Republican National Convention, for which Evans was the keynoter, Fletcher had a role promoting his self-help philosophy to an audience eager to attract black voters. Among those drawn to Fletcher's convention message was Nixon himself.

Fletcher returned to Washington after the convention and in September defeated prominent hydroplane driver Bill Muncey to win the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor. But he was defeated in the November general election by Cherberg, despite the support of the other three Republicans who all won their statewide races.

After Nixon's election, he appointed Fletcher Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. With responsibility for the wage and hour regulations for the nation's workforce and supervision of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, Fletcher now had the power to revoke federal contracts and debar contractors from bidding on future work.

On June 27, 1969, Fletcher implemented the nation's first federal affirmative action program, which required federal contractors to meet specified goals in minority hiring for skilled jobs in the notoriously segregated construction industry.

But after two years, Fletcher's affirmative action programs had earned him so much enmity among the leaders of the skilled construction unions that he was forced to resign.

President Nixon gave him a brief assignment on the United Nations delegation under Ambassador George H.W. Bush, which began the friendship that would take Fletcher's political career to even greater heights.

"Art played an important role nationally after losing the election for Lieutenant Governor," Evans noted. "That role may have been more important than if he had won the lieutenant governor race. However, he would have been a highly successful  incumbent and could have risen to higher elective office."

"At that time it could have had a huge impact on race relations and who knows how history could have changed," Evans summed up in an email to me. "He was a remarkable man and one I admired immensely. He lost the race interestingly in King County. If he had half the margin I had in King County he would have won."

Evans was kind enough to share a couple of passages from his book, from the chapter on 1968, including this:
"I'm confident that if Art Fletcher had been elected lieutenant governor he would have succeeded me, perhaps in 1977. In any case, sooner rather than later."

"Happily, Fletcher's political career was far from over. After he served two years as President Nixon's Assistant Secretary of Labor. He went on to serve in the administrations of Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush and became known as the 'father of affirmative action.' Fletcher headed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as president of the United Negro College Fund coined the wonderful phrase 'A mind is a terrible thing to waste.'"

"Those were remarkable achievements, but how I wish Washington could have been the first state in the union since Reconstruction to elect an African-American governor. That would have been a proud boast."

Evans' reflections on Fletcher, with whom he remained friends until his death in 2005, deserve a broad visibility and make clear he has been forever torn between satisfaction of the role Fletcher came to play nationally and disappointment about what might have been for both Washington and the nation.

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.

There is an increasing sense that this country's population has come to be divided between those who think the term "fake news" describes the offerings of conventional media and those who are convinced the phrase best describes certain well-publicized tweets and texts.

So it's perhaps appropriate that a gradually increasing attention is being focused on a movie about four professional journalists who were certain, in the face of all the forces arrayed against them, that the then-president and his administration had concocted a "fake news" tale to justify a war in Iraq.

Joe GallowayThe movie is Shock and Awe, the title drawn from the campaign of that name created by the leaders of the administration of George W. Bush in preparation for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a preparation built on the premise that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the term "fake news" wasn't part our culture then, especially being applied to a president.

The movie, conceived and directed by Rob Reiner, has been described as "the politically charged story" about the four reporters from the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain who first looked into the Bush Administration's attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 terror attack. Thereafter their stories followed a theme that the allegations of WMD's were intentionally inaccurate.

One of the four was iconic Vietnam correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, then more than 35 years into his career covering wars and those who fight them and thus the voice of experience that the two youngest reporters turned to for help in finding their way through the fabrications formed to keep the nation focused on the need for war with Iraq.

It is because of my friendship with Galloway, both of us alums of the news service UPI, and because many in the Seattle area came to know him during his two visits to do Vietnam veterans interviews and several interviews he and I did, including the Seattle Rotary, that I decided to do a Harp about the movie. 

Regular readers of the Harp will recall that Joe Galloway has been the subject of a half-dozen Harps in recent years (Google Flynn's Harp: Joe Galloway).

Eventually, the four including Knight-Ridder bureau chief John Walcott, played by Reiner himself, came to be described as "the only ones who got it right," but before that, they had to weather immense pressure and scorn, not only from the White House but also from some editors of their own newspapers.

For example, there is the story of the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer saying bluntly that the tone of their stories doesn't "fit in." And Galloway recalled "There is a scene in the movie where Walcott confronts the Philadelphia editor for choosing to run New York Times b.s. over our story. He tells the editor 'will you be running the Times correction and apology when that comes out?'"

There is a perhaps ironic juxtaposition of the timing of the release of the critically acclaimed The Post, whose storyline about the Washington Post's publisher, Kathrine Graham deciding to confront the Nixon White House by publishing the Pentagon Papers, and Shock and Awe detailing a confrontation with a different president and more recent time.

In fact, Reiner, who says he wanted to make this film for a long time, suggests that the struggle he had to secure U.S. distribution for the movie might relate to his belief that "American audiences might not be ready to confront the subject."

I didn't think anybody in America could stomach it," Reiner said. "I don't think they can stomach it now, to be honest with you."

(Editor's Note: This is the last of four articles on Washington residents for whom roles in the 1968 presidential campaign brought national prominence. The original articles, written on the 40th anniversary of that memorable campaign, were also the launch for this column and are reprised here on the 10thanniversary of Flynn's Harp and 50thanniversary of the '68 campaign.)
                     --------------  

Kitty Kelley was a spunky young woman from Spokane for whom the 1968 presidential campaign was the launch pad for a highly successful but controversy-punctuated career as a biographer of the rich and famous.
 
In a very real sense, the then-26-year-old who had, by accident, become a highly visible figure in Sen. Eugene McCarthy's quixotic quest for the presidency, may have been one of the biggest winners of that campaign.
 
Kitty KelleyOne of my favorite memories of covering parts of that campaign of 50 years ago as a young political writer for United Press International was a chance encounter with her at the 1968 Democratic state convention in Tacoma, a decade on since we had become friends as high school students in Spokane.
 
I glanced across the crowded hall and, seeing her for the first time in 10 years, I made my way through the crowd, said hello and asked her what she was doing there.
 
"I'm Gene McCarthy's press secretary," she said with a laugh. McCarthy, of course, was the out-of-nowhere senator whose run for the presidency had energized the anti-war forces, particularly the young, who became a change-the-world political force that year.
 
"What the heck do you know about being a press secretary?" I asked.
 
"I decided I wanted to be one and did some research and found that two of the senators didn't have one," she responded. "So I picked McCarthy, made an appointment with him and told him I wanted to be his press secretary. He asked me 'what does a press secretary do?' and I told him we'd figure that out together. So I got the job."
 
That was more than a year before McCarthy's growing outrage at the Vietnam war caused him to emerge from anonymity as the political leader of the anti-war movement
 
Thus that campaign brought Kitty contact with political leaders as the campaign moved across the country and the contacts she made that spring and summer of '68 helped provide the exposure and experience that would allow her to launch her literary career.
 
I watched with interest and amusement in the years since then as her ability to uncover long-hidden secrets and get the "ungettable" story on those about whom she produced a string of unauthorized biographies stirred the ire and criticism of the rich and famous and their friends.
 
She described her reporting style as "moving an icon out of the moonlight and into the sunlight." But those she wrote about often didn't care for the sunlight on their privacy.
 
And because she was an attractive blond woman with the nickname "Kitty," those stung by her tell-all biographies of Jackie Onassis Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family and Oprah Winfrey, as well as other journalists, found it easy to dismiss the quality of her work.
 
What may have been the high point of her controversial career came just prior to the 2004 presidential election when her look at the personal and business lives of a sitting president and his family was published.
 
"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," was the target of a full-court press from the Republican Party, including a GOP memorandum to radio talk show hosts that denounced the book as "New Kelley Book, Same Old Slime." The fact that she was a Liberal made the denunciation from the talk-show hosts even easier. The book was ranked Number 1 on Amazon.com as it was released.
 
Over the years, when controversy swirled around her work, I've smiled to myself to think back on that encounter in Tacoma with a young woman I'd known as a Spokane teenager who had used brains and guts as substitutes for experience and privilege to carve out a high-visibility career for herself.
 
She thus exemplified a fast-growing group of young women who did likewise in the late '60s and early '70s, creating important roles for themselves in what had been, prior to that, a "man's world," and opening the way for others of their gender to do the same.