On Howard Dean

It's worth noting that a local company, Convio, is running the Deanforamerica.com site for Howard Dean, most importantly his fundraising efforts. They've raised $7M this quarter, with over $800,000 yesterday. The opinionjournal.com had an interesting bit on the fundraising yesterday.

This campaign is fascinating from a technology perspective, because they are using "best of breed" technology all over the place. They've got a blog running on Moveable Type, they are using meetup.com to organize local meetings, they've got a .tv site for media clips (not sure this is best of breed), in addition to the Convio software which is managing their main site and fundraising (and "friend-raising" where people get their friends to donate).

I'll also note that Lieberman and Carey both host through Convio as well, although they obviously don't get it as well as Dean does.

So I read the most horrifying news. Of course, it's so surreal I have trouble believing anyone is actually serious about it. So here it is. According to the Austin Business Journal, a group of investors is proposing a casino (yes, I said casino, as in Las Vegas) for Austin. Yuck. The proposed place is at Red River and Ceasar Chavez. (Didn't we just finish cleaning up downtown less than 10 years ago?) Of course, casinos not being legal in Texas, the first order of business is to legalize gambling (start a lottery and it's all downhill from there). Luckily for us, there are 24 *other* proposed casino sites in Texas, so there's plenty of potential money to hire vetern Lege PR (read lobby) firm Christian-Hubble to get the issue to a statewide vote.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that the Austin development is being led by Barry Keenan, who (and I quote) "says he is prohibited from ownership in a casino due to his conviction in the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., when he was sentenced to life in prison plus 75 years. The courts later changed his sentence to 12 years and he was released on parole after four and a half years." Although this story sounds familiar, I can't remember what the deal was. I'll see if I can find out and let you know.

Here's the story of the Frank Sinatra Jr. Kidnapping. According to the article, Keenan rationalized he'd be doing the Sinatra family a favor by kidnapping old blue-eye's son, as it would bring them closer together. What a dumbass. About as dumb as trying to get a casino in downtown Austin.