Something Else 3rd Anniversary
Today marks the third anniversary of the publication of Something Else, the tragic story of a non-profit training institute that made a huge difference for hundreds if not thousands of working Tucsonans before it was gutted and destroyed by TREO.More accurately, TREO wished to take over the training institute, and the scheme almost worked. They infiltrated the board of directors and slashed the non-profit's funding to inflict severe financial losses. Then their moles cited the bleeding as a reason to replace the existing director with, naturally, one of them.
Well, no. Said existing director learned of the scheme and had said goons ousted from the board. Liar and thief TREO chief Joe Snell, who stole money from the institute ($132,500), from the Microbusiness Advancement Center ($54,000), and from a Goodwill training program for the handicapped ($30,000), didn't get to snarf the "Business Convergence Center" he touted before the council and board of supervisors. Instead he was treated to a new word, "Cloth" and significantly enhanced awareness that he doesn't do a thing for his salary.
The institute imploded in a matter of months. The following year Raytheon built its own training center. Other businesses that used the institute, numbering over 100, now just go without.
posted by x4mr at 7:58 AM
11 Comments:
And yet somehow TREO continues on ... depressing. At least in the intervening three years people have begun to see it for what it really is.
Yes, Sirocco, TREO does linger on, as does the MTCVB and DTP and the bloated PCC.
To x4mr's credit we have indeed come a long way in three years. TREO is a tiny shell compared to what it was in 2005. Granted, the people that left were the ones who did something. All that remains are the pure schmucks. People still smile and nod about sociopath Snell and feed his arrogance, but in the back of their minds they know he's a crook.
The whole town has heard of "cloth" and Kozachik obviously gets it. Star reporter Rob O'Dell is now solidly in tune with what this blog and "Something Else" exposed, and he had the balls and somehow got the approval to publish material that spells it out, especially about Rio Nuevo.
I've said it before, but well done, x4mr. We've all learned a lot.
I sure would love to have been a fly on certain walls in July and August three years ago when TREO was consulting attorneys and thinking about posting armed guards at its building.
Armed guards! Hah!!
Teya Vitu was in bed with the cloth, so he wouldn't do anything, but Rob O'Dell took notice as did Carli Brousseau, who wrote an article about TREO's taking the MAC money.
The attorneys (wisely, I think) advised TREO not to mess with x4mr, whose research was mind boggling. SAIAT board members were approached by lots of people asking, "Is it all true?" to which they said, "Every word."
They also realized that since he was at SAIAT (and the director) during the time he was writing, he had every pertinent document imaginable, from the annual finance audits to board meeting minutes to hundreds or thousands of emails. He had everything.
Under normal circumstances, a person who does this faces retaliation, but x4mr became a graduate student! You can't fire students!! Hah!!
And Teya is still in bed with the Cloth.
What x4mr did in the face of such adversity is frankly quite admirable. He blogged anonymously for months but then, like SAIAT, let his anonymity slip in a controlled burn. His real name broke simultaneously with his resignation. As Sirocco knows, he wrote about "SE" months before it was published, and even promised its publish date. Impressive.
TREO was caught completely off guard. It would have been fun to watch the cloth as people started devouring the blog and SE. x4mr posted the pdf of Snell's letter lying to Huckelberry! And then Scarpinato wrote an article noting x4mr's blog was ranked fifth in the whole state.
I hear the cloth now, "He'll never work in this town again!"
True, but not in the way they meant.
I can tell you are winding down, x4mr, or at least shifting.
It seems like the whole AZ blogosphere is dying on the vine. Blog for AZ (especially AZBlueMeanie) is pretty good, but that's it. The right wing blogs are broken records.
You made a huge difference at SAIAT, x4mr, and I think your blog and SE have made a difference in the last three years.
One hell of a lot more difference than TREO's circle jerks.
People should read Cigar Man's comment at Requiem for a Murdered Dream.
Awesome.
I did read Cigar Man's comment from late 2007, at Anonymous' suggestion.
All I can say is, if you pissed off Dan Eckstrom, that says it all about your inevitable fate, and it says it all about how this one-horse town operates.
It was actually Art Eckstrom that got upset. He just went batshit when he learned that the SAIAT director had a salary higher than his. I'm serious. That was it. That was the caused of his hissy fit.
The man was in charge of workforce development, yet had a fourth grade education, very weak reading skills, and resented the highly educated. He despised Steve Juliver, who chaired the WIB at the time. With hindsight it's plain as day that the whole thing was pure fiasco. The SAIAT business plan, even though it was produced by Eller students, was utterly absurd, as was the Bob Hagan SATC groups (remember the clusters?) assertions about training demand. Ironically, SAIAT started as pure Cloth.
We weren't supposed to actually do anything. That's why PCC went nuts when we started actually training people.
Which, of course, is what Cigar Man said the first time I met him in 2004. Thanks to him I got into the PhD program when I did, which allowed me to secure an assistantship upon resigning plus a fellowship grant. I owe him big time.
If I had the character of a Snell or a Lyons, I might still be there, hanging out with cloth, attending luncheons, providing tours, conducting training need surveys, graphing the results in Powerpoint, presenting training plans to stimulate growth and enhance regional attributes to attract capital investment. I could probably make $85,000+ just yapping about the ongoing enhancement of the strategic training methodology for the fortification of regional workforce readiness in the 21st century.
I figure I'd need two or three nice suits, a dozen ties, a good smile, and boatloads of praise for TREO, MTCVB, etc., and the extraordinary contributions they make to the community every day.
Poco Bravo has a good blog, as does Tucson Progressive. Following the same issues. They just don't use the term "Cloth" ... yet.
I don't think you'll find many fans of the Poco blog here. For no reason whatsoever, that guy trashed Matt a few months ago with commentary that was completely wrong, horribly researched, and some of it downright kooky.
He posted a photo of Matt at his job in Kentucky (creepy). Instead of taking the time to find out, he dissed Matt's doctorate with "has a PhD in something," said this blog was right wing (go figure), and then made psychological assessments that were incredibly inaccurate and stupid.
I'm not talking about an article with some mistakes. He was ALL WRONG. The only thing he got right was the spelling of Matt's name and where he works.
Paco is even more unglued about Rob O'Dell. Maybe Rob seduced his girlfriend or something, I dunno. That guy has some loose screws.
Speaking of blogs, I agree with Nav's comment. I still like this place, but I agree that the AZ blogs have gone downhill, kind of like the choir blogging remarks posted here a few months ago when x4mr almost quit.
Well, Poco has shut down his blog now anyway.
Post a Comment
<< Home