Utah to Patrick Byrne: No Sale

Early returns show that Utah voters have resoundingly defeated the school voucher initiative pushed by the ancestral wealth of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

Byrne, meanwhile, is behaving .... well, the way Patrick Byrne always reports when he doesn't get his way. He throws a tantrum. A Utah blogger reports:

On Channel 2, Patrick Byrne (aka Parents For Choice in Education) just said that, although he does not concede the voucher result yet, the preliminary results show that "Utahns just don't care about kids." This guy is certifiable.

No, not at all. A childless, lifelong bachelor who is a product of private schools, and has never worked a day in his life, knows more about the public school system than the collective wisdom of the people of Utah. Everybody knows that!

The Utah polling results show that, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, you can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that, if you are Patrick Byrne, you can't even do that.


© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.



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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

The 'Thousand Clowns' Principle

I call it the "Thousand Clowns Principle," based on the Herb Gardner stage play and movie of that name from the 1960s. There's a famous line in that movie about apologies, which I have modified to the simple, "The most that you can expect from life is an apology."

That brings me to the corporate clown, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, who is being roasted alive in Utah for not apologizing for his comment that he thinks minority kids who don't graduate from high school should be "burned."

That was an incredibly dumb comment for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that his own marketing director was a high school dropout. (Of course, her being Caucasian, I guess that doesn't count.)

There are two possibilities:

1. He meant it.
2. He didn't mean it.

If he meant it, then, well, forget about an apology. But if he didn't mean it, if it was just hyperbole or rhetorical excess, then he should have no problem apologizing.

The third possibility, that he didn't say it, is not possible because he did. Here is a video of him saying it.

Byrne being Byrne, he takes the position that he didn't say it. As in the old Groucho Marx joke, "What are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?"

No surprise here.

Byrne has always lied when backed into a corner or even when not backed into a corner. His lies and deceptions have been chronicled by Sam Antar. Also, he has never apologized for his company's stalking and smear campaign against critics (which came with his blessing, so he could hardly apologize for it), or for his nutty "Sith Lord" comment, or for being a generally lousy CEO.

Nor has he apologized for calling Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a "cracker" and a "gangster."

Or for the mud he has slung at every member of the media, ranging from Bethany McLean of Fortune to Joe Nocera of the New York Times to Roddy Boyd of the New York Post to Herb Greenberg of Marketwatch to moi, who hasn't covered his butt with kisses.

Most CEOs would have long since been discharged for behaving like such a buffoon, but most companies don't have quite so supine a board of directors.

Time and time again, he has proven that he is precisely the kind of person that you want on your side in a campaign: by speaking out for the other side.

What's different from the past is that this time Byrne's target is not his critics or non-existent conspirators but the people of Utah, the majority, who don't like school vouchers.

One blog's reaction, entitled "You May As Well Burn These Bridges," was typical:

I'm no expert, but you'd think a sliver of humble pie would go a long way to retain the trust of your shareholders, not to mention keep you from looking like an unapologetic executive who answers to no one. That is not the way to become a trusted, influential company.

The problem is just that: he is an "unapologetic executive who answers to no one."

No one, that is, except his customers. Here's a comment from one of them:

You know, I’m pleased that Patrick Byrne refused to apologize for his comments. Many times whites apologize for racist comments to merely apease the black community; however, he has shown that he really doesn’t care what we want. Thanks Mr. Byrne, continue to stand firm in your convictions, as will I. I will no longer shop on your website, nor will my friends.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.



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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

Patrick Byrne: 'You May As Well Burn Those Kids'

Herr Byrne pontificates on kids, and the burning thereof

Overstock.com's SEC-investigated CEO Patrick Byrne knows a lot about burning cash-- his money-losing company is an expert at that. But Byrne apparently confuses burning cash with burning kids.

And not just any kids. Poor Hispanic, Native American and African-American kids. They're down on their luck. They can't finish high school.

Burn them!

As he continues his charm offensive in Utah, where the lifelong bachelor is campaigning for school vouchers -- yesterday he called voucher opponents "bigots" -- Byrne has brought a refreshing Hitlerian tone to the voucher debate.

Dissatisfied with driving away potential supporters by using smear tactics, Byrne has decided to pull out all the stops and really alienate them.

Here are his exact words in a TV appearance, brought to my attention by an alert Utah reader:

Right now 40% of Utah minorities are not graduating high school. You may as well burn those kids. That's the end of their life in any signif... that's the end of their ability to achieve in this society. If they do not get a high school education, you just might as just throw the kids away.

Here's a Youtube video, so you can see for yourself.

I guess that's easy enough to say when you're the son of an insurance industry executive, and have never had to work a day in your life. Just burn the underclass. Useless people. Untermenschen.

I have no idea if Byrne really believes that people such as that don't have the right to live. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if he did. (This kind of thing makes me wonder. Who's writing his scripts: Judd Bagley?)

Byrne's millions may allow him to buy this voucher election, but it won't buy him a whit of common sense, or any of the integrity or emotional maturity that most people get without spending a dime.

UPDATE: The local NAACP has demanded an apology. Byrne responded with the same obfuscations that, I expect, he'll be directing toward the SEC as its formal investigation of him and Overstock proceeds.

My advice to Byrne: stick to not selling toasters.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.



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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

Patrick Byrne Wows 'Em in Utah

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne took time out from defending himself from a formal SEC investigation to weigh in on an upcoming Utah ballot initiative on school vouchers.

Being a childless bachelor. a product of privilege and private schools who has never had to work a day in his life, he has really wowed the good working people of Utah, as you can imagine.

Byrne being Byrne, he immediately has begun his reverse-Dale Carnegie act, making enemies and alienating people. His latest gaffe is smearing opponents of the initiative -- 60% of Utahans, according to recent polls -- as "bigots."

I rank that right up there with the time he almost had a fistfight with a lobbyist, after the Utah state legislature revoked his pet naked short selling bill.

It will be interesting to see if Byrne, who is pouring his ancestral wealth into the voucher jihad, will be able to buy this election. If so, it will give him a possible second career after Overstock collapses. Perhaps he can buy himself a seat on the Salt Lake Board of Education? Stay tuned.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.



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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

Respectability Can't Be Purchased

No substitute for a conscience

It's always struck me how corporate and Wall Street miscreants try to buy respectability, using their ill-gotten gains to contribute to political and religious causes.

Randolph K. Pace, operator of the notorious Rooney Pace penny stock firm of the 1990s, gave large sums to Jewish charities in New York City. Bob Brennan of First Jersey Securities also tried to buy his way to respectability, before he was caught and hauled off to jail. More recently, Richard Altomare, the loudmouth ex-boss of Universal Express, was appointed to three committees by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after a federal judge found his company to be rife with fraud.

So I was not surprised to read that Patrick Byrne, the wacked-out CEO of the Overstock.com corporate train wreck, has been busily trying to buy respectability. The Salt Lake City Tribune reported yesterday that Byrne has been a major bankroller of an effort to force a school voucher program down the throats of the parents of Utah:

A pivotal local contributor to the voucher effort is Utah entrepreneur Patrick Byrne. The founder and head of Overstock.com has pumped $290,000 into the "yes" effort. Byrne has single-handedly financed a Republican legislators' PAC, Informed Voter Project, with a $200,000 donation.

What Byrne does with his ancestral wealth -- Overstock is, of course, bleeding cash -- is his business. But it makes you wonder: Why is a confirmed, fortysomething, childless bachelor, a product of private schools all his life, meddling in a public education system that he has never experienced and knows nothing about--and cares about even less?

I can understand Byrne throwing money away on his nutty "naked shorting" obsession. It was recently reported that Byrne took $120,000 of Overstock's scarce cash and flushed it down the toilet by throwing it at a lobbyist to push his goofy stock market conspiracies. Not including state contributions or bucks to federal candidates, Overstock has pissed away $680,000 on influence-buying since 2005.

It's funny to see Byrne whine about "co-opted regulators," as he is a major "co-opter" -- and an abysmally inept one at that. Remember that this is the same individual who practically got involved in a fistfight with the majority leader of the Utah legislature, and who has called Alabama Senator Richard Shelby a "gangster" and a "cracker." Does he really think his bucks will make people overlook that he has behaved like a spoiled brat?

No surprise here. This is a co-opted regulatory system that swims on a river of corporate cash -- some of it hard-earned, some of it stolen, and some of it, as in the case of Byrne, obtained by selection of the right parents.

But what's with this school voucher thing? After all, it's not as if Byrne has ever shown any interest in kids learning. You don't see him donating his vast ancestral wealth to actual schools or kids or anything meaningful. Since his own education was private schools paid for by his millionaire daddy, ex-GEICO CEO John Byrne, it is not surprising that he would push a program that would undermine the educational system for ordinary working people.

One Utah commentator noted:

One of the most amazing facts about the money being spent on the November voucher referendum was published in this morning's Trib but it wasn't inside the big story, it was at the very end of it:

If all the money spent on the referendum campaign so far went directly to the classroom, it would have:
* Paid to educate 380 Utah public school students;
* OR covered the annual costs of 17 average-sized classrooms;
* OR funded a year's education, with plenty left over, of all 310 students enrolled last year in the Piute School District.
* OR provided 1,143 private-school vouchers, with a mean value of $1,750.

So Byrne's faux political posturing is not only grimy and cynical, but also typical of a man who has a special aptitude for wasting money. Just look at Overstock's financial statements, if you want to see more of that.

Sam Antar provided the best analysis of this phenomenon that I've found, describing how Crazy Eddie tried to buy its way into the good graces of respectable society:

Fraudsters like myself, we build a whole world of respectability around ourselves. I gave money to a lot of charities while I was committing my fraud. My cousin Eddie, he gave a lot of money with his stolen money to a lot of charities. He gave a lot of money to politicians. He built wings on to hospitals and built a big aura of respectability around him and people were in awe of him. This is what fraudsters do.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.



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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.