My idea of a “good business person” and their idea isn’t necessarily the same.
Posted by: Donna
Candidates who run as successful owners of businesses love to tell voters how they should vote for them because, you know, they own successful businesses. Which makes them uniquely qualified for for public office because they’ll run their office like they ran their business!
On Sunday Square Off the issue of Republican AZ State Treasurer candidate Doug Ducey’s non-payment of property taxes came up and I didn’t get a chance to speak to it because Brahm Resnik was ready for the next topic. Apologies to Andrei Cherny because I wanted to say something but the show goes by fast. Had I been able to, I would have said that Ducey’s tax delinquency is the least of the problems with him. Dude’s got a sordid history of hosing Cold Stone Creamery franchisees over. Stephen Lemons of the New Times covered it a few days ago.
Indeed, many former franchisees who got into Cold Stone during the Ducey years — from 1995 to 2007 — have similar complaints about Cold Stone and what they refer to, over and over again, as a failed business model.
They say this business model encouraged expansion at all costs and hobbled them with high-priced goods they were obligated to purchase from Cold Stone-approved vendors. And they complain about Cold Stone’s erstwhile two-for-one coupons, with the franchisee picking up the tab on the freebie, and the fact that stores were located too close together, thus diluting sales.
This year, in a review of the 10 most-popular franchises, CNNMoney.com noted that Cold Stone franchisees have a 31 percent failure rate.
“The product is sweet, but the financials can be bitter,” notes the article. “In the last 10 years, almost one in three [Small Business Administration]-backed franchisees defaulted on [its] loan. It’s an expensive shop to start, too: The initial franchise fee is $42,000.”
Far more devastating was a June 2008 piece by Richard Gibson in the Wall Street Journal that detailed the plights of ex-franchisees, some of whom had gone bankrupt, losing homes and life savings in the process.
In my Congressional District, CD3, where just about every Republican and his dog is running for the seat, the putative front-runner is a guy by the name of Steve Moak. Steve Moak runs a nonprofit called Not My Kid, where he purports to educate parents on the dangers of drugs and other “destructive behaviors”. He’s under attack by his closest competitor in the race, Ben “Brock Landers” Quayle for not disclosing the relationship between Not My Kid and the home drug testing kits that his for-profit company (surprise!) sells on his tax forms. Again, the New Times broke the story and this time is was writer James King.
In 2004, Moak bought First Check Diagnostics, a California company that makes home drug tests. That same year, he and his wife began a program through notMykid called Project 7th Grade.
Project 7th Grade provided at-home drug tests for parents of children in the program. The idea, as Moak told New Times last week, is to give parents the tools to see if their kids are using drugs, as well as to provide a deterrent for kids who may be tempted to get high.
Moak says if a kid goes to a party and is offered drugs, being able to say “no, my parents drug-test me” would provide the kid with an easy way to decline the pusher’s offer without lookin’ nerdy.
Guess what brand of drug tests Project 7th Grade provided those in the program: the same ones produced by Moak’s for-profit company, First Check Diagnostics.
Simultaneous with the creation of Project 7th Grade, the operating budget for notMYkid shifted from funding education programs to fueling the use of the drug tests produced by Moak’s for-profit company under the guise of the new program.
Moak finally disclosed the relationship in 2007, when he sold First Check Diagnostics for $25 million, because the sale made him more vulnerable to an audit. In this case, unlike with Ducey, I’m going to say the tax thing is a bigger deal than the sleaziness of Moak’s business model. Not telling the IRS about the connection between the Not My Kid nonprofit and First Check Diagnostics is pretty stinking dishonest and on a par with Doug Ducey bamboozling Cold Stone franchise investors.
This gets to the crux of the problem with thinking that “success” in business translates to being a good candidate for public office. If making big profits for your corporation and amassing a large personal fortune is the be all and end all of how we should judge a candidate, and we don’t look at the whole picture, then I guess Bernie Madoff would make an outstanding State Treasurer or Congressman.
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Which makes them uniquely qualified for for public office because they’ll run their office like they ran their business!
Remember the “First MBA President™” meme. That worked well. To be fair Shrub did bankrupt the Rangers, so I geuss he did run the country like he did his business.
Hey! Doug (loosie) Ducey is helping people keep their jobs! “course it’s lawyers, judges, etc., but what the heck.
Good old Stevie (wata) Moak will bring his business ethics to the table.
Ha! CD3. Sorry, but it’s turning into politican Clown Depot 3.
Neeners, I’m in CD5. (sticks nose in air)