Brancaccio STILL doesn't get it. The failure of the CRC and the Ballpark Scam.

Whiney Lou Brancaccio continues his spew of editorial (and situational) idiocy with this morning's snivel-fest: Press Talk: Let's play ball … someplace else.

I am eternally grateful that the ballpark scam crashed and burned.  I'm thinking of setting up a memorial to the CRC Scam as we likely bury it forever this week.

Those who have had permanent blinders installed like Brancaccio are utterly incapable of introspection or respect for the people of this county:

Privately, I had coffee with Big Mike a number of times and cautioned him that this would not be an easy road. We both know Chicago well, and Big Mike figured he'd seen plenty of politics in the Windy City. I told him he hadn't seen nothin' yet.

Apparently, Brancaccio, who's been here at least a decade to our detriment, has yet to figure out the same thing: this ain't Chicago.  The downtown mafia doesn't get to call the shots.  The people here, more often than not, will have the final say.

Yamamoto is credited with saying it best, perhaps:

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Brancaccio rather foolishly suggests that there was "local support" for this rip off.

There was practically ZERO support for this scheme to rape the people of the entire county to benefit the Yakima Millionaires, except among the same Identity Vancouver, CRUDEC, Chamber of Horrors scum involved in the CRC Scam.

He then points out the two most egregious liars in politics, Tim "The Liar" Leave-it and Steve "Strike Out" Stuart, as supporters, apparently unable to recognize that the support of those two political pariahs' high profile shilling for the Ballpark Scam, combined with the support of himself and the other lying slime at the rag essentially guaranteed its demise.

There certainly was local support for the ballpark. Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt and Democratic County Commissioner Steve Stuart were big backers. Other community movers and shakers were on board as well.

Like the CRC Scam, Brancaccio fails to understand that that THE most critical element in this passion play in this, or any other project where the people are going to have to pay directly out of pocket is the support of the PEOPLE.

That those in the downtown cocoon wanted this poorly located theft to take place is irrelevant.  It's what the PEOPLE want that matters.

And then THIS beauty:

The Columbian supported it editorially. We said, "It would be good to have a professional team here, the stadium also would be heavily used by the community for other things and the entertainment tax would only hit those who already can afford to spend money on entertainment."

First, it wasn't a "stadium."  It was going to be a ballpark.

The rest of that is a smoke-and-mirrors lie of the type that Brancaccio lives on.  The descriptive terminology only was changed when it started to become so clear that a blind man like Brancaccio could see it that Ron Arp's abysmal failure of a campaign was getting nowhere as a scam under the guise of a "Ballpark." So, they tried the "stadium" approach.

Second, a year earlier, this same liar wrote in an editorial:

But back to luring the baseball team over to this side of the river. That would require a stadium with at least 8,000 seats, which would cost about $40 million. As we've editorialized before, there appears to be no way any of that money could or even should be provided by taxpayers. That hurdle hasn't discouraged Leavitt, though. Theres still a lot of interest in bringing Beavers baseball or Triple-A baseball to Clark County. Private interests are working on a financing plan, he said. To which we respond: Great! Work away! Which is a nice way of saying don't come begging to cash-strapped city or county governments.

Brancaccio's situational ethics are part and parcel as to why he and the paper he runs have become a cancer on our community... he admitted himself that "...there appears to be no way any of that money could or even should be provided by taxpayers."

A year later after printing that, what's his take?

Something completely different.

But situational ethics is his hallmark.

In everything from the Benton hiring using a system put in place by democrats to allow them to bypass the usual rules to hire managers, to the ballpark to the CRC rip off, Brancaccio's "flexible" ethics on the issues confronting this community are the thing.

What Brancaccio and the rest of them SHOULD be doing is getting rid of their own arrogance.  What they SHOULD be doing is looking inside themselves to figure out why their efforts are such abysmal failures.

And the reason is quite simple:

They cannot get the support of the people of this county.

More importantly, like an alternative to the CRC Scam that they lie about having been "vetted" (We all know by now that no consideration was given to any other alternative: it was going to be loot rail into Vancouver all along, and no consideration was given to any other possibility) they never even try to get our support for their Hitler-like plans.

The arrogance that the Brancaccios, the Montagues, the Leave-its, the Stuarts, the Mike Briggs of the world exhibit is simply astounding.

That in the face of their now almost decade-long campaign of lies, distortions, exaggerations and deliberate efforts to ignore the people has resulted in the deaths of these projects is ultimately inevitable.

The question is this: will they learn anything from it?

Or will their monumental egos deny them the opportunity for an actual opportunity to engage in some introspection... some self-examination... some tiny effort to begin to understand what went wrong and why?

Brancaccio snivels that:

If you look at the I-5 bridge proposal — gasping its last breaths as we speak — we're becoming known as the "just say no" community. We now bear the burden of a community struggling to try to move forward.

He AGAIN blows it by failing to realize what commenter Dennis Henry wrote in response:

I disagree, Lou. We are a "Say yes to sanity" kinda city, which unlike Chicago actually wants to pay it bills and not overburden fellow citizens with BIG schemes that do nothing but to make someone else a lot of money at the citizens expense. It appears to me to be a fad.

Its like a lot of folks get together every years to see what BIG project they can sell to politicians promising the moon and delivering a tax due bill. The Amphitheater Fad and even the Convention Center Scam were exposed by Mainstream news reporters (Gasp) before our City and County determined they were the perfect thing to draw money away from Jansen beach.

Thanks all the same, Lou, but most folks here prefer sanity to policy by fad.

Precisely.  And Brancaccio is seemingly incapable of understanding this basic truth.  Sanity and common sense are the thing, but Brancaccio and the rest's massive egos keep them from understanding that.

This is a golden opportunity to reconnect with those who matter the most: the people.

And 15 will get you 20 that they'll blow it off and change nothing.

Here's a hint, Lou: you cannot whip the people with lies, with exaggerations, with omissions and with insults like those favored by you and your pit yorkie for almost a decade by selectively presenting information that tends to only support your agenda while ignoring the volumes of it that tends to do the opposite.

Will they ever learn?

If history is any judge... the answer is likely "no."