I owe Karl Schwarz an apology (and the DU board)

[ProdigalJunkMail]

During the course of this morning Mr. Schwarz and I have been in contact via email. He has given me reason to believe that he has legitimate reasons to not divulge the patent information that I have repeatedly requested from him.

Karl, I am sorry. Please forgive me for being too suspicious and not willing to accept you at face value. The only excuse I have is that we have been burned too often as a country by people claiming to be things that they are not. As a matter of a personal flaw in my character, I am no longer able to accept claims due to my deep seated cynicism. And while I am not convinced that you are who you say you are, you have certainly allayed some of my fears.

Good luck in your endeavours and I will certainly understand if you have no wish for further correspondence. I probably would not.

theProdigal (David)

OnEdit : I prefer my crow to be served medium rare with a nice Cabernet

[Soloflecks]

1. Not so fast.

You're not the only one who was suspicious, and I've seen the same queries at other forums. In this age of disinfo and liars he should expect to be challenged and not take this personally and neither should we. Thank you for this update.

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. Just to let you know..........

I also have a patent and I would not willingly give out my patent number to anyone who asked. If my competitors are interested, then let them do the legwork. I am not going to make their jobs any easier.
Sometimes things are not as simple as they may look.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

3. the problem that I encountered was that I DID the legwork

and nothing was to be found...hence the suspicions.

theProdigal

[seemslikeadream]

4. Thanks ProdigalJunkMail

for your courage and cynicism.

[Jose Diablo]

5. It is important to challenge information as to its validity

There is nothing wrong with challenging and asking for proof when someone provides information about events.

And I imagine part of that process is to verify the messenger to help validate the integrity of the information.

ProdigalJunkMail, you did what should have done and in fact was done. As for myself, I really was not concerned about the messenger so much as wondering if the message was valid.

Seeing how you have been convinced the messenger has passed the gauntlet of verifying the integrity of the messenger, have you had time to verify the message itself is true.

I am most interested in Karl's information about the Taliban/Brandis(sp) connection as the real motive to invade Afghanistan. It seems to me, seeing how the motive given for the invasion was 9-11, and there was in fact preparations for the invasion of Afghanistan far in advance of 9-11, the coincidence of the timing becomes extremely suspicious. Looking at it from a perspective for a motive for whomever was the brains behind 9-11, it would seem to me the Taliban and OBL had more to lose than gain by 9-11.

If a crime is committed, a prime question to ask is "who gains"? I am sorry, but I see no gain whatsoever for the Taliban and OBL. However, for those behind the corporations that are now putting in the pipeline and those that will benefit from the transport of the petroleum products from the middle Asia, well I would think they have far more to gain. They become the prime suspects in the crime.

Why don't you focus your very good skills of vetting information into determining if the message is accurate, now that you are comfortable with the messenger?

Think of it as atonement to make-up for being suspicious of the messenger. You know, this would not be a bad thing to do. I wish I had the skills and tools to follow the money.

[foreigncorrespondent]

6. PJM...

...don't sweat it, my friend. We have been so burned during the last four years that it was nice to see someone actually challenging the validity of the person in question.

I read what you were saying in that thread, and I agree with you, 100%. If he is who he claims to be, then he is the one who needs to show us that, and especially if he expects our support. After all, we aren't about to make fools of ourselves for someone who doesn't want to truly prove themselves to us, are we?

I wouldn't put it past a repuke morAn to play this kind of game to see if we take the bait. Well sorry, but I am with you, I am not fishing this time around.

[ret5hd]

7. my suspicions...

are that he is (purposely) attempting to serve as a distraction from other areas of investigation, regardless of whether or not he is who he says he is.

Would anything in your correspondence with him allay any of these types of suspicions? I am willing to eat crow, and even enjoy it, if the recipe is good enough.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

8. he has at least convinced me

that the patents that he claims to hold might indeed be held in such a way that national security and national advantage in the competitve market might be at stake...

Having said that, I am still not 100% convinced, but since the majority of my argument against him could potentially not be valid (I still have my questions) I decided it was best if I come here and announce it...

Keep searching...
theProdigal

[ProdigalJunkMail]

9. crow eating kick n/t

[ProdigalJunkMail]

10. final crow eating kick

my pennance has been served...

[highplainsdem]

11. Prodigal, I don't believe you owe him an apology,

and I don't believe he's established that he is who he claims to be. I will admit, though, that I don't know enough about the specifics of patents to know whether his excuse for not giving out the patent numbers is legitimate. It might be in this case. But it's also quite possible that he simply doesn't hold those patents, because his other claims aren't verifiable.

As I pointed out in message 62 in the "NEW" thread about him (which is now taking as long to load as the original one), he hasn't answered people questioning his claims to be a successful CEO and a former GOP insider.

It he were really a successful CEO, it's very odd that there aren't news stories about him and his companies, some of which would turn up during web searches. Ditto if he were really a GOP insider whom other Republicans had urged to run for office (I think he said they wanted him to run for governor of Arkansas). Even if his role as a GOP insider had never been mentioned in any news story, it's highly unlikely that they'd urge a businessman no one had ever heard of to run for office. It just doesn't make sense.

The only real news story I could find about his business dealings, as I pointed out in that message, was essentially just an interview he'd done, and since there was no background in the story, I'm guessing the reporter just contacted him after getting one of his many self-promoting press releases. God knows he's very good at spreading those around. Other than that, the only references to his business deals by someone other than himself or people echoing his own statements about himself were from the two message boards I posted links to, where the words "crook" and "scam" were used to refer to his previous dealings.

And then there was the Arkansas Supreme Court opinion on a case that a Karl W. Schwarz of Little Rock was involved in. I'm not 100% certain that the Karl WB Schwarz of Little Rock who's posting messages here is the same person as the Karl W. Schwarz named in that court case, who filed a deliberately erroneous property deed in an attempt to keep his ex-wife Lois from having certain property she was entitled to. But that web page, which I posted the link to earlier, is among the very few pieces of information I have been able to turn up about anyone named Karl Schwarz in Little Rock.

And yesterday I found a web page with another court case with even more damaging information about the Karl Schwarz involved in that divorce, which was incredibly messy (two couples split up, married each other's spouses, and argued for years over property and child custody). There he's referred to as Karl "Bill" Schwarz -- I think Mr. Schwarz mentioned once that the W is for Wilhelm, and I can easily see him going by Bill instead in the heartland -- but the Karl "Bill" Schwarz named there, whose ex-wife is Lois, is apparently the Karl W. Schwarz mentioned in the other case. That's at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=ar&vol=1996a/960918/ca94-695&invol=1 , and it would be damaging to his "conservative Christian" self-description even if he is the high-powered CEO and GOP insider he says he is. Which I don't believe he is.

He isn't posting here as one more anonymous participant. He's peddling a book, and promoting himself as a "leader of The Movement," to quote his own silly statement. He's appearing on radio shows. And he's asking us to believe him because he's supposedly an insider, even though he hasn't done anything to prove it. If he were trying to sell us anything other than stories so many of us want to believe, we'd be demanding that he prove who he is.

And when I tried to find some evidence that might verify his claims, since he's refused to provide any, instead I turned up web pages that only make me question his honesty and ethics even more.

I do believe he's spent quite a bit of time researching his book, as someone pointed out in response to my message about his background in the "NEW" thread. It's obvious he knows the material. He also seems to have cobbled together his version of stuff that was already out there on the Internet, and he's trying to market it to us.

He's getting a lot of attention because so many of us are disgusted with the Bushes and their cronies. He's voicing outrage we feel. But if we allow him to set himself up as a spokesperson for Democrats and progressives -- and he's doing just that when he claims he's the "leader of The Movement," as he did on the Kerry board -- then we're going to look like complete idiots, gullible idiots, if he ISN'T who he claims to be.

And that why it's so vitally important that he actually give us some proof.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

12. I appreciate your stance

and the information here is quite interesting. The reason I post an apology here is that I was basing most of my distrust of him on a lack of patent information. He presented me with valid reasons why the patents MIGHT NOT be available to the public so I am apologizing based on that.

However, as I have stated before, I am not convinced that he is this person he claims to be...but I am at least willing to give him a little more leeway now.

Time will tell...
theProdigal

[ima_sinnic]

13. as someone who has been in Mr. Schwarz's position of being

doubted and challenged on a discussion board, to the point of ridicule, I say screw you and your suspicions. What I noticed about the nay-sayers in my case (not on this board) was their absolute desperation to discredit me because they wanted to discredit what I had to say about the illegitimacy of the Iraq invasion and so proceeded to make ad hominem attacks on me.
I have had several e-mail correspondences with Karl Schwarz and am satisfied that he is who he says he is and a courageous patriot. what does his divorce case have to do with what he is trying to get out about the depth of corruption in BushCo? as far as I'm concerned, that is just petty gossip and irrelevant. keep digging around and you'll be sure to find mud to fling--but you can find that for about darn near anybody, now, can't you?

[ProdigalJunkMail]

15. just a note...there have been no ad hominem attacks in this case

all that was done was to challenge him to produce proof of his claims. I called him out on several occasions. He refused to give satisfactory answers here and for some reason waited until we were in direct communication to give a possible reason...

theProdigal

[highplainsdem]

16. I'm sorry you were ridiculed on that other board

just because people wanted to discredit what you were saying. I don't have a problem with much of what Mr. Schwarz is saying, almost all of which I've seen brought up elsewhere. My concern is with his claims to be an insider, someone who has enough information about the Bush administration that isn't generally available that we should view him as a leader (not to mention buy his book).

And while I wish his personal life wasn't at all relevant, he made it relevant with this column, at http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/101404Schwarz/101404schwarz.html , which is largely about John Fund, William Bennett, and David Dreier's personal lives. I agree with him that they're hypocritical scumbags. But if Mr. Schwarz is going to attack other Republicans for being hypocritical and unethical, for being phonies, then it's very important that he not be open to similar charges. He wrote there, at the very start of the column: I cannot say for you, but I am rather picky about who I follow in this life or associate with in business or personal activities. I have an aversion to following people who are unethical, immoral or are just flat out liars or phonies.

I'm baffled that he can write something like that and then react the way he has to people asking him to provide some evidence that he is who he claims to be.

[Proud_Lefty]

14. Thanks for digging deeper Prodigal

I respect you asking questions and seeking the truth. That's what I love about DU. We expect truth and won't settle for anything less. I'm even more happy you've been communicating directly with Karl as many others of us have been doing.

Your apology is sincerely touching. Thanks.