Day: May 22, 2015

Hightail Update

I received several phone calls and emails as a result of the revelation that all CRA records were wiped by George Park. I keep recalling Aaron’s claim that they have superior intellect since they have been trained in the financial services industry. Yeah, right.

My nagging question from yesterday is why were any of these accounts set-up using personal email addresses? The data belongs to CRA not George. Why not use Membership@ CRAGOP.org or something like that. My blog site comes with 100 email accounts and I’m sure the CRA site includes many email accounts as well. It’s not that hard to find, but I did alter George’s email address in the entries below.

Oh, I have confirmation that the Hightail account was approved by the CRA Board and paid for by CRA—not George Park. The account was paid thru July 2015. Furthermore, George was not authorized by the Board to delete records or post anything to his personal Dropbox account.

The remainder of this post was submitted by the Sith Lord.
Oh, the Sith Lord says some folks are not up on Star Wars references and are mispronouncing his name. The “i” in Sith is pronounced with a short “i” sound. It rhymes with myth.
To learn of Sith Lords see this link Wikipedia-Sith Lord Article

Hightail
Deleting the Hightail Lite Account was completely unnecessary.
From Hightail:  How-to-Remove-or-Cancel-a-Free-Account

Hightail currently does not provide an online option to permanently delete a free Lite account.  While we will accommodate requests made through a support ticket, we HIGHLY recommend not having your account deleted.  Removing your account will delete all account history and all files stored immediately, and there are no recovery options.  The free Lite account has no billing associated with it whatsoever, so even if you don’t have the need right now for your account you will never be charged and can simply use it at your convenience.
If you choose to have your Free Lite account permanently deleted:
Please email Support@hightail,com from the accounts email address you would like to have removed. We will email you a confirmation and a reply must be sent back from the registered email address to confirm the cancellation.

Note that George had to go out of his way to delete the Hightail Lite Account.
Our correspondence with Hightail Customer Service:

Hello Tom,

I just spoke with Alice and wanted to provide more clarity. The account that was originally registered to: gparkjr@…. was cancelled as requested by George on 4/30 and then the free LITE account was deleted per his request. For your records here is the email:

Brian C. Sahagun Apr 30 10:07 pm
Hello George,

Thank you for contacting Hightail, we appreciate your email.

Per your request your account under: gparkjr@…. has been removed from our system.

Please let me know if there is anything further I can do to assist you, we are here for you.

Thank you,
Brian Sahagun
Hightail Customer Support

To get answers to your common question please visit us at http://www.hightail.zendesk.com

gparkjr Apr 30 02:20 pm
I have removed or already retrieved copies of all the files I need from this account. I have cancelled the subscription plan as well. Please delete the free account effective immediately and delete all data that my be left in the account immediately.

At this point since the account was deleted from our system the files have all been removed from our servers as well so there is no way for us to retrieve them at this point.

Please let me know if there is anything further I can do to assist you, we are here for you.

Best regards,

Shelly Maynard
Manager, Customer Services

Mailchimp
NEWS FLASH!!!  The Parks Are Lying, again.  Okay, that really isn’t news to anyone at this point.  We were told by Mailchimp that a user had deleted the lists, campaigns and templates from within the account.  Furthermore, closing the account was unnecessary.  Mailchimp allows a user to pause its monthly billing up to twice a year and there is no limit to the length of time an account can stay paused.  This would have given the CRA Board time to consider options regarding our email program while keeping the lists, campaigns and templates in place.
From Mailchimp:  Pause Monthly Billing

Before You Pause Billing
MailChimp offers a couple of ways to change your monthly billing options. If you know you won’t be sending any campaigns for a short period of time, but you need to retain access to the other data and features in the account, you can Pause billing. You won’t be able to send campaigns or tests, but you can design and preview campaigns and templates as usual, and you can purchase Inbox Inspections as needed.
As soon as you pause, sending for the account is turned off and the current billing period ends. There is no limit on the length of time an account can stay paused, but because the Monthly Plan is a discount program that isn’t designed to be frequently turned off and on, you can pause only twice a year. This limit allows us to accommodate seasonal senders, while still keeping things affordable for everyone and continuing to roll out great features.
List management continues while your account is paused, so your list may grow or shrink during the time your account is paused. New subscribers will receive confirmation and Welcome emails.

Aaron and George are intellectual and technological idiots if they think they can get away with this stuff and not leave a wide trail of evidence behind.  They are either delusional or hubris has gotten the better of them.
Maybe this can be the afternoon update on your blog!

The Just Us Brothers Part 4 Antelope Valley Republican Assembly

Following the purge of consultants from CRA in 2011, the Parks began to explore the new environment that they had created. Celeste Grieg had survived the coup attempt by Karen England but she had proven vulnerable. Over the next two years, Aaron and George found and recruited John Briscoe to challenge Celeste for statewide President. When Celeste stood for election in 2013, the Park brothers threw all their weight into the Briscoe campaign. For the first time in memory, a sitting CRA President lost re-election. This was April of 2013.

After Briscoe was elected, the Park brothers began participation in a series of special projects that were kept from the Board. That is not to say that nobody knew about them just that nobody was talking. The Board as a whole was left out. There were a whole series of “side deals” and “off the books” financial activities that were conducted. It is clear that John Briscoe knew about them but never brought them before the Board.  If the Treasurer knew, he never put them in his reports.

The first of these concerns the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly.

The Parks characterized the fight with Karen England as a battle to remove consultants and politicians that were using CRA as a “pay to play” organization in order to buy CRA endorsements. Money for political access was reportedly prohibited with the Parks overseeing the Membership and Chartering process of CRA. They claimed then—as they do now—to be the bulwarks of fraud prevention in the group. As you continue to read, please keep this in mind.

I heard rumblings about this transaction several weeks ago. Thru a series of emails with the principals involved, I was able to verify the following.

On December 10, 2013 a resolution passed by the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly is published on Aaron’s blog. Here is the Link
(Please note that this resolution was also passed by the Santa Clarita RA. This is quite possibly the last time Aaron ever praised the SCVRA on his blog.)

This resolution was issued in support of California Senator Steve Knight and encouraged him to run for Congress. The first two Whereas clauses are omitted.

  WHEREAS; conservative state Senator Steve Knight has been a longtime member of the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly; and

WHEREAS; if elected, Steve Knight will be the only person from the Antelope Valley ever to serve in Congress; and

WHEREAS; Steve Knight earned a 100% voting record from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association; and

WHEREAS; Steve Knight has consistently fought for second amendment rights and the sanctity of life; and

WHEREAS; Steve Knight continues to stand for the same conservative values as he promised us he would in his first campaign as he does today;

THEREFORE; be it resolved that the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly opposes Tony Strickland running for the 25th congressional district and will support state Senator Steve Knight with our delegates to the California Republican Assembly endorsing convention if Congressman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon decides to retire in 2014.

The next day, December 11, 2013, the Steve Knight for Senate 2016 campaign committee issues a check to CRA for “CAMPAIGN PARAPHERNALIA/MISCELLANEOUS”

Source: Secretary of State

There is no record of CRA giving any material goods to Senator Knight in return for this check other than good will. While the check was written to CRA, it arrived with the understanding that this $4,000 was to be used as a club credit for the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly. Using this credit meant AVRA did not have to submit any dues payments until the credit was used-up.

I contacted AVRA about this matter and confirmed the money came from Steve Knight and surprise of surprises, the CRA contact was George Park.

We “have submitted numbers/accounting accordingly with our annual membership documents as required for all CRA units to the CRA Membership Chair.”

Email from AVRA member

The only question that I could not ascertain was how much of the $4K balance is remaining.

This transaction has been kept off the books of CRA. It should have been carried on all Treasurer Reports since George deposited the check. The Board was kept in the dark. John Briscoe had to OK this arrangement.

Per accounting rules, such an obligation should be shown on the CRA books as a long term debt (over one year). I don’t fault AVRA because of this; however, the few leaders that hid this from the rest of the Board should answer for this.

In my mind this raises a whole host of questions:
Why is a politician allowed to prepay chapter memberships years in advance?
Why did the CRA leadership—including the Membership Secretary—OK this arrangement?
Why was this kept from the Board if it was such a great idea?
Why not let other politicians do this?
Would George let Ted Gaines or Tom McClintock do this in Placer County?
Were campaign laws followed when CRA deposited this check?
What is the current balance that CRA owes AVRA?
Why didn’t Knight just donate to AVRA? He gave them $1,000 directly in 2014.

Source: Secretary of State

Were it up to me, I would cut AVRA a check today and be done with this. Make them submit their dues just like any other chapter. Why do they get a pass on following the rules the rest of us have to abide by?

Stay tuned, more on the next thrilling episode of the Just Us Brothers.