News on the Edge - Kings, Hucksters and the Walking Dead

Exit the King
It pays to be an accused criminal. 

 The number of words devoted to you in the press exceeds that of some local business leaders.

Brian Dinning, who allegedly bilked investors of $2 million and ran scams ranging from diamond mines and sweet scenes of property on the Indian Ocean, had eight stories written about his exploits since last June.


They ran from 200 to 400 words.

Stories about Ed Woodard, former CEO of now defunct Bank of the Commonwealth, have pockmarked the pages of the press for months.

And I’ve lost track of the articles, as well as their word count, published about Mr. Shereshevsky, who deprived close friends and the Orthodox Jewish community in Norfolk of over $200 million.

But Dorto, the embattled CEO of VIT, who announced his retirement, effective March 31, gets 224 words and an online photo.

Maybe Dorto should have embezzled money from the state, though from the indignant statements of some lily-livered legislators, it sounds as if he did pick pocket the state’s precious stockpile of money.

Vilified by legislators and betrayed by state administrators and bureaucrats, Dorto decided to go play tennis and golf instead of listening to bloviating ignoramuses. (Credit for this phrase goes to conservative columnist George Will, describing Donald Trump.)

Exit the king. Love him or hate him. And many did both.

Enter the fools, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Actually, they’re already here.

Walking Dead 

The results are in.

The tech ghouls on Granby Street have hatched another batch of walking dead.

They are the Hatch 5. 

Sounds like the Chicago 7. Or the Wilmington 10.

Hatch, a marketer’s dream, has been funded by four local companies and the city of Norfolk.

The companies, including a prominent law firm and a media giant, invested $10,000 apiece in Hatch.

The city donated space.

In return, the Hatch Einsteins and the four investors get an equity stake. Supposedly.

Now Hatch, guided by the PT Barnum of the tech set, Zack Miller, wants a lease of a year from the city.

In the former Design Center on Granby Street, the place pitched during the go-go days of the housing boom when Norfolk’s slogan was “Come Home to Norfolk.”

What else does Hatch want?

Continue support of entrepreneurial efforts through Department of Development support services.

Say again?

Does this mean money, staff time, marketing, or a combination of all three?

It isn’t spelled out in the presentation posted on the city of Norfolk’s Web site.

But what was hatched, besides five struggling companies?

According to the presentation, this is what was hatched.

◦ Each of the five original businesses have graduated from the Accelerator Program and are executing their business plan from the advice they received from their mentors.

◦ Vibrant and dynamic environment of collaborative efforts focused on growing sustainable businesses in Norfolk.

◦ Increased the population of business people that are passionate about associating with like minded entrepreneurs in downtown Norfolk.

Give Miller credit for his efforts and his sales pitch, which, apparently, has won converts to his cause.

But remember the adage of America’s most successful huckster: “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.”

Irony
DATELINE: January, 2013, Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach celebrates 50 years as a city.

The merger of the two-square-mile resort town of Virginia Beach and the much larger suburbs and farms of Princess Anne County make up Virginia's most populous city, one which sprung from considerably more modest roots than the “bustling urban cultural center” that characterizes Virginia Beach today, the city’s Web site said.

DATELINE: January, 2013, Norfolk

Norfolk NAACP celebrates the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1863.