Darrell Issa - Car-thief / arsonist / scumbag

[SoCalDem]

http://ochairball.blogspot.com/2011/01/darrell-issas-dark-and-shady-past.html

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Darrell Issa's Dark and Shady Past


The New Yorker has a profile on Darrell Issa, the republican who called Obama the most "corrupt" president in modern times, and the man who's intent on weakening the Obama administration in his new position as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

...............................
On March 15, 1972, three months after Issa allegedly stole Jay Bergey’s car and one month after he left the Army for the first time, Ohio police arrested Issa and his older brother, William, and charged them with stealing a red Maserati from a Cleveland showroom. The judge eventually dismissed the case.
While the Maserati case was pending, Issa went to college. Just before 11 P.M. on Friday, December 1, 1972, two police officers on patrol in the small town of Adrian noticed Issa driving a yellow Volkswagen the wrong way down a one-way street. The police pulled him over, and, as Issa retrieved the car registration, an officer saw something peculiar in the glove compartment. He searched it, and, according to the police report, found a .25-calibre Colt automatic inside a box of ammunition, along with a “military pouch” that contained “44 rounds of ammo and a tear gas gun and two rounds of ammo for it.” Issa was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. The policeman asked why he was armed. “He stated in Ohio you could carry a gun as long as you had a justifiable reason,” the report said. “His justifiable reason was for his car’s protection and his.” Issa pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of possession of an unregistered gun. He paid a small fine and was sentenced to six months’ probation. Read more
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Everyone has a past, but Issa's is filled with darkness.

Other miscellaneous Issa facts: Issa's company brought us the Viper car security alarm, his mother was Mormon, his grandfather Lebanese, he's good at fixing things, he likes gadgets, he crashed into the back of a driver and left the scene, he has an image manager, he was suspected of burning down a factory of his company but not before removing a computer and upping the insurance:
.................................
Issa’s early business career was equally tumultuous. He started his car-alarm empire by acquiring the Steal Stopper brand in what was essentially a hostile takeover. A man named Joey B. Adkins owned the company, and Issa loaned him sixty thousand dollars. When Adkins was late on a payment, Issa went to court and foreclosed on the loan. Two days later, Adkins told me, Issa called and said that he wanted Adkins to come visit him at his new office. He gave Adkins the address of Steal Stopper. “I just took your company,” Adkins recalled him saying.
Once in control, Issa allegedly used an unusual method to fire Jack Frantz, an employee. Frantz told the Los Angeles Times that Issa came into his office, placed a box on the table, and opened it to reveal a gun. Issa told the paper, “Shots were never fired. If I asked Jack to leave, then I think I had every right to ask Jack to leave. . . . I don’t recall . I really don’t. I don’t think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.”
Issa was soon suspected of doing something worse: burning down the factory. The initial notion that an electrical socket had caused the fire was challenged. The science of determining whether a fire was caused by arson can be flawed. But a fire-analysis report commissioned by the St. Paul insurance company, and dated October 19, 1982, a month after the incident, concluded that the fire was “incendiary.” The report cited “suspicious burn patterns,” such as “two separate major areas of origin,” and it said, “No accidental source of heating power was located at either of these two major areas of origin.” The manner in which stacks of cardboard boxes burned was inconsistent with an accidental fire. A flammable liquid appeared to have been poured over the boxes. The blue flames seen emanating from the roof were evidence, according to the investigators, of burning carbon monoxide that is produced when an accelerant like gasoline ignites. The black smoke was also a clue. “Such black smoke normally occurs in a fire only when a hydrocarbon is burning,” the report said. When investigators tested burn damage from inside the factory, they found “the same identical mixture of flammable hydrocarbons” in four samples taken from diverse locations.

[hobbit709]

1. He's the perfect repuke in other words.

[Odin2005]

2. And the Right got after us over Teddy's car crash? Hypocrites.

[SoCalDem]

4. Here's more about his military "service"

From The Archives: Issa Snared In '98 In His Own Military Exaggeration
Christina Bellantoni | June 2, 2010, 4:09PM

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/from-the-archives----issa-snared-in-his-own-military-exaggeration.php

As several politicians have been snared thanks to fibbing about their military records, TPM took a trip down memory lane exploring others who exaggerated service. It turns out that 12 years ago when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was running for Senate, the San Francisco Examiner uncovered that his Army record was in doubt.The Examiner published in May 1998 a devastating article detailing the conflicts between Issa's public statements and public records. A focus in the story was Issa's claim he protected then-President Richard Nixon as part of an "elite Army bomb unit" at the World Series in 1971. But it turns out Nixon didn't even attend the games.

The Examiner scoured military records and concluded that Issa's service on the squad "was marred by a bad conduct rating, a demotion and allegations that he had stolen a fellow soldier's car."It cited his 1998 campaign biography saying he served in the Army nine years, even though records showed he served just over five years. He was enlisted from 1970-1972 and was in a college Army ROTC program from 1972 through 1976, the Examiner reported. It also noted that an Issa press release said he was "detailed to the Army security team" which traveled with Nixon, and quoted from a 1990 San Diego Union story that said Issa "was on a bomb disposal unit for President Nixon and got to see the 1971 World Series because Nixon wanted to go and the stadiums had to be secured."

Here's the key part:

The records show that Issa's service on what he terms an "Army security team" amounted to less than six months on a bomb-disposal squad in 1971. That's scant experience to qualify him for presidential security duty, former GI bomb experts say. Issa couldn't have guarded Nixon at the World Series because the president didn't attend, according to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda.

snip

The paper wrote that former soldiers "said it was impossible that Issa would have been involved if, as his service record indicates, he had been reassigned to the supply depot during the games." Another source confirmed to the Examiner that Issa "had indeed served temporarily with a bomb detachment that had protected the president" in a "short-term" post. The Examiner said in their investigation that Issa routinely cited his Army service while running for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). The paper also reported that Issa denounced Boxer as "someone who 'hates the military.'" Read the entire Examiner piece here.

The Examiner also interviewed a former GI who said Issa stole his car, and said their piece mentioned the auto charges following a Los Angeles Times report detailing the 1972 arrest of Issa and his brother on suspicion of auto theft. Those charges were dropped and Issa said at the time he was wrongly targeted. He also has blamed his brother for the incident. "When people ask me why I got into the car alarm business, I tell them the truth. ... It was because my brother was a car thief," he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. An Issa spokesman questioned the relevance of this story given that Issa is not on the ballot like Mark Kirk or Richard Blumenthal, and provided us with a commendation that then-Lt. Col. Wesley Clark bestowed upon Issa in 1980 for exemplary service.

You can read it in full here, but here's a highlight:

"CPT Issa consistently demonstrated an unusually high standard of professional ethics. ... This energetic, enthusiastic, and intelligent officer has the potential to be successful at any military job at any level. ... This officer's performance far exceeded that of any other reserve officer who has worked in the battalion. He demonstrated rare initiative, forcefulness, and competence in upgrading the unit's administration prior to the Annual General Inspection. He would be an outstanding commander or staff officer at Battalion or Brigade level. Promote ahead of contemporaries. Unlimited potential." Spokesman Kurt Bardella also issued this statement when given an opportunity to comment: "Congressman Issa is very proud of his distinguished record of military service and that's reflected by the fact that he was honorably discharged." He said anyone "who wants to challenge or scrutinize his record of service" should read the Clark praise.

[BonnieJW]

8. Any Issa constituents here?

Send this to him for a little light reading. What a great election brochure to send to his precincts! I think everyone in his area should know the kind of scum they're sending to Congress.

[XanaDUer]

3. Dems need to hammer this home about this dude

all the time, a lot, etc. A car thief has some nerve calling a, Ivy League graduate corrupt.

[SoCalDem]

9. Every time he holds a hearing, SOMEONE needs to make a reference

to car theft :)

[XanaDUer]

12. Our side should hire people to shout out stuff like this

in public.

[SoCalDem]

13. They would be removed from the hearing.. We need congresspeople

to cleverly insert references to car theft/insurance fraud into their intros/questions & then ask Issa if he agrees:evilgrin:

[MindPilot]

5. Well, when it comes to corruption...

this guy is a fucking expert.

[bahrbearian]

6. Grand Theft Issa

[PatSeg]

7. Fascinating article

Sounds like he'd be the perfect presidential candidate for the republican party.

[Cleita]

10. Not only that, there is anecdotal scuttlebutt that he

cheated on the petition drive to recall Gov. Grey Davis, which ended up getting us Arnold, the worst Governor ever. I really wish the Attorney General of California would subpoena the paid petition gatherers and put them under oath to tell us exactly how they got the signatures.

[SoCalDem]

11. He cheated like MAD, because HE was the front-runner

Cheney & Co LET him run amok with all his petition thugs, because they knew all along, that he was just the "teaser-horse"..and when he had done all the work, they would push their Austrian Stallion into the stable..and ole Darrell would go back to the barn, frustrated & crying like a baby:)

[lonestarnot]

14. Viper snakefaced looking snake, slippery slimey snake. Get's away with shit. Lots of shit.