By George Fallar 
I stand accused INTERNATIONALLY of being obsessed with the Coyotes and their fate in Glendale, AZ. Mea culpa, I am, as are more fans than the average person would believe. We are, hopefully, a force to be reckoned with especially now that we aren’t being distracted by another outstanding season turned in by our Coyotes.
Touchy Feely Time
Other than people who are bullies, most people have an extreme aversion to bullies. So, bullies will congregate in packs, you’ve seen them since the first day you went to school. As time goes on in our lives, and cheerleaders and football stars age out of shape, bullies become more difficult to spot. Some will have given up bullying, having decided that the “Golden Rule” is actually pretty profound. Others, however, just go a little bit underground and wear different clothes.
There’s liberal bullies, conservative bullies, musical bullies, sexual bullies… bullies in every color of the rainbow and in every corner of the world. How do you spot the new age bullies, though, is there some sort of detector available at Radio Shack? Is there ONE thing they all have in common like a lightning bolt scar on their face?
Alas, there is not, boys and girls. We all have to come up with our own devices to detect bullies out in the wild. The more clever the bully is, the more difficult it is to even detect you ARE being bullied!
Be careful out there, my brothers and sisters, and please, whatever you do, do NOT become a bully yourself!
Situational Ethics Time
These pages are full of what appear to the naked eye to be conflicts of interest, hyprocritical philosophies AND actions, and many connections between people and organizations that all boil down, allegedly, to the same thing. Sure, it might just be paranoia and an overprotective attitude toward my hockey team, but it boils down to Goldwater Institute repeatedly bullying through simple intimidation and actual legal actions the City of Glendale (CoG) for their interest in Jobing.com Arena and the Phoenix Coyotes Hockey Club. Further, my theory is that the underlying reasons for the relentless zeal of Goldwater attacking CoG is twofold.
The first reason is that Jerry Moyes (we’ve detailed already his deep connection with Goldwater) will do anything in his power to destroy any deal between the NHL and any buyer. Why? He feels he is owed millions of dollars that the bankruptcy judge denied him and the NHL has no intention of paying him. If, for example, there was a large relocation fee (some have guessed $60M) paid to the NHL in a Coyotes transaction, there would be more money available to divvy up with Moyes and Wayne Gretzky.
Secondly, and perhaps slightly more “out there” is the presence of Diamondbacks guy Ken Kendrick (Moyes is also a minority owner) everywhere that Goldwater goes. Does he have the right to politically support who he chooses? Of course. However, since the Diamondbacks compete directly with the Coyotes for ticket dollars at the end of the hockey season and indirectly all year for limited expendable season tickey money, losing one option for people to spend their ticket dollars on would be helpful.
Since Goldwater mysteriously chooses NOT to pursue any baseball related stadium “gift clause” violations, it smells even funnier, doesn’t it?
But, Who Is Joe Cobb?
Yes, I digressed on purpose.
Joe Cobb and Ken Jones are the two Glendale residents recruited by Goldwater (to give them standing in the suit) for their latest attempt at derailing the Coyotes deal by negating the vote of the CoG City Council. Joe and Ken are also the two people pushing for petition signatures on a petition to get the vote by the CoG City Council that ratified the lease agreement with Mr. Jamison for the Coyotes. If they are successful in obtaining enough valid signatures, the current deal could go before the Glendale voters in November of 2012.
Joe Cobb is running as a Libertarian for congress in the 7th district against Ron Pastor. He appears to be a very bright fellow. His platform is illegal immigration based. He is against it. Joe is an economist.
We see something a little odd, especially for an economist where the math is very simple. Federal Election Commission (FEC) law permits individuals to donate up to $2500 (click here) to a candidate. When looking at donations for 2007, it appears that MAYBE Joe donated a total of $2600 to Ron Paul. As well as not being an investigative reporter or lawyer or anything other than a working stiff, I am surely not an economist. But, to me at least, $2600 seems to be $100 OVER the amount allowed by federal law. Now, there is a question as to whether Joe actually donated too much, so click here to read his FEC records for 2007.
You will note that the first three pages, in chronological order, list Joe’s address. I won’t publish it here on the web, Joe deserves some privacy from interwebs spiders and robots, but make note of the address in your brain. I’ll wait. Got it?
Okay, Joe’s contributions to the Ron Paul campaign neatly follow the federal rules, as a good federalist would make sure they did. Each time a contribution is made, that contribution and the TOTAL contribution for the election cycle is listed. 03/19/2007, $1000; 04/04/2007, $300 and total $1,300; 05/21/2007, $1,000 and total $2,300. That’s obviously all fine and well under the $2,500 federal limit. But, on 12/16/2007 there’s another donation to the Ron Paul campaign.
Looking at that page (page 4 of the PDF), you will note some “similarities” and some oddities. The first thing you will notice is that the amount donated in the election cycle to date is $300, the total of the current donation. So, the donation must NOT be from Joe, who has already donated $2,300 and another $300 donation would put Joe in direct violation of federal law. I’m not sure what the philosophy of Libertarians are regarding campaign donations, but surely they object to breaking the law.
Yet, the address is identical. The name is VERY similar, looks like Joe Cobb “Mr Treasurer” with his employer listed as “Young Voters PAC”. Mr. Cobb never listed an employer before on his earlier donations, so the implication is that the donation from the “Young Voters PAC” at the same address is actually the entity that donated the money, right? I suppose that’s possible and maybe even legal. I wonder if anybody will ask Mr. Cobb about these donations, because it sure looks like a violation to my untrained eye. Maybe there is some sort of PAC loophole, but I couldn’t find the “Young Voters PAC” in a few searches of the interwebs. I mean WE all know it’s the same Joe Cobb, right?
Keep the faith, Coyotes brothers and sisters, keep punching until the othe guy goes down.
In the meantime, please avail yourself of Coyotes Political Action Committee resources as they grow, volunteer if you wish, and keep checking InformGlendale.com for the latest REAL information on the Coyotes fiasco.
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