Month: April 2023

After my last post questioning whether Henry Haas is a fake person who is part of confidence job, I learned that indeed Mr. Haas has many interests and acquaintances, now extending to the airport and as a supporter of Jeff Walker, a candidate for the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Board.

Here is a letter which Mr. Haas wrote in July 2022, bullying for an apology from a person who had felt threatened by Mr. Walker at past meetings of the pilot’s association:

The email begs many questions:

• Is Henry Haas a lawyer?
• Does he have a firm? (“Haas and Associates”)
• Is he Jeff Walker’s lawyer?
• Who did Haas interview? They must know who Mr. Haas is.
• How was Mr. Haas able to listen to audio recordings? Whose recordings were they?

So we now know that Mr. Walker — instead of attempting to behave in a less threatening manner, or taking the neighborly action of learning from the person why they had felt threatened and promising to cease those activities — sicced Mr. Haas upon that volunteer Board member with legal threat.

Tomorrow, at the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation Board, the company has hired two security guards to promote a sense of security for all members attending and wanting to hear — without continuous interruption — about the public issues being discussed by the Board.

By the way, remember from my previous post that I had received a letter from a Stewart Nelson of “Haas and Associates” only nine days prior:

What’s the con and how is Jeff Walker involved?

Remember the movie called “The Sting”? Robert Redford, Paul Newman. Robert Shaw. It won seven Academy Awards for twists and turns of a group of con artists who scored $500,000 on a fake horse race, and then a fake FBI raid on the gambling parlor, and the fake shooting of Robert Redford at the end.

The Windermere Con Job is entering a new phase: fake NextDoor posters.

In recent weeks we’ve seen two new people join the neighborhood page: Henry Haas and Harry Haas. But who are they?

Burnet County Appraisal District records don’t show them as property owners here.

And yet both Henry and Harry — out of nowhere — seem to have in-depth knowledge of all that has gone on here the last several years, and Harry yesterday chimed in with his expertise on the Public Utility Commission hearings. Hmmm.

Henry, before his account was removed, had posted a picture from my business Facebook page, from a 2019 event where I served as the moderator for a candidates forum before a Pedernales Electric Cooperative Board vote. Here’s the photo:

Henry Haas thought that to be evidence enough to link me to a recent indictment of County Judge Oakley on counts related to his use of a Burnet County car to travel to a PEC meeting, and his alleged tampering of evidence by clearing the road of a car bumper at a gas station fender bender. The cases just recently hit the news and the cases are pending. In the photo above, Judge Oakley is behind me. Henry Haas cropped his NextDoor photo so that only Judge Oakley and I appeared together.

Wow!

So therefore, Henry Haas concluded, Judge Oakley and I were “brothers in arms” in corruption. Seriously? Give me a break. What kind of high school dropout logic is that?

But “Henry Haas,” whoever he or she really is, counts on their Windermere Oaks followers to believe their portrayals of corruption / incompetence / whatever. They also count on their followers to ignore other evidence, portraying everything posted by me or the water company or others to be “propaganda.”

Now, out of the blue yesterday, a “Harry Haas” showed up on the Windermere NextDoor scene. I will address his posts later. NextDoor apparently shut down Henry Haas’ account.

What makes all of this so funny and surreal is that last summer I received a letter from a “Stewart Nelson” from a “Haas and Associates.” I received it about six weeks before the first attempt at a trial in the Ffrench, Dial, Sorgen vs. WOWSC and Directors matter.

Notice how fake it is. A questionable PO Box 4567 in Burnet. No phone number. No email address. And go ahead and google search for Haas and Associates. Doesn’t exist.

If anyone knows of this Stewart Nelson, the Democrat Action Network, or Haas and Associates, let me know. Maybe I’m missing something.

To me, it is more evidence of the Windermere Con Job playing out before your eyes. Why are people going to these lengths? What’s their Con?

I moved here in 2014 and while I can’t exactly remember which year I attended my first water company annual meeting, I do remember being amazed at the “passion” expressed by some people who berated and belittled the Board and management of our water company. It caused me to question what was going on! Their “passion” was so convincing, and they seemed to have really deep knowledge of what they were talking about.

It was easy to walk away with the notion that all the volunteer board members who have ever served the corporation and its members have been corrupt, inept, incompetent, whatever. And now that NextDoor has added even more thunder to their “passion” even more community members seem convinced that year-after-after the water company boards are made up of “those people,” a derogatory term that allows neighbors to feel good about setting themselves against neighbors who are actually trying to serve the community.

Over time though I came to understand that it was the same small group of people who were standing up, year after year, loudly berating the volunteers, dissatisfied with one matter or another: Land sale. Company debt. Audit. Online bill payment. Whatever. They change the goal posts year after year, raising new issues to convince new people about volunteers’ supposed ineptitude, corruption, whatever. 

Now that I am four years into being on the Board of Directors for the water company, I have come to realize that the “passion” of some members should be understood for what it is: a “Confidence job.”

The term “Confidence job” got its meaning from William Thompson, a man in the late 1840s who walked the streets of New York asking complete strangers: “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” Many people did! Thompson was pleasant and unthreatening in appearance, and many of his victims thought they recognized him as a previous acquaintance. They misplaced their confidence in him, and he stole their watches. Thus was born the notion of a “con job.” Read more here. 

To use a dictionary definition, the con job is an act or instance of duping or swindling, of talking glibly to convince others or get one’s way.

In my opinion, we have people in Windermere who have the gift of glib talk, convincing others of one thing or another, to get their way.

It’s truly remarkable, but their ongoing CON JOB continues every day, every month, every year, one email or NextDoor post after the other. The quantity of their emails and posts shows their obsession with continuing their con.

Here are examples I’ve seen on emails and NextDoor Posts regarding WATER COMPANY elections:

• Two dead people voted last year.  Wrong. Actually three did. Here’s how: Water company memberships and their voting rights don’t “die” with the death of a member listed on a water company account. The widow, widower, heir, or executor to that property is entitled to vote that membership account until the account changes ownership (via sale of the house or hangar). The surviving current account owners voted in three cases last year. In his complaint to the Public Utility Commission (PUC)  about so-called election irregularities, Jeff Walker glibly alleged that two votes of dead people should be thrown out. Eliminating those votes — and disenfranchising those members — would have given him the election. However, he conveniently failed to tell the PUC about a third “dead voter” as that vote would have been from a supporter who had signed a petition in support of Walker’s PUC complaint. 

•  The company spent $25,000 to keep Walker off the Board. Nope. Walker did not formally ask the PUC or the company to install him on the Board. Instead, he asked for the PUC to possibly take over the WOWSC. Big difference. And again, since all his complaints were shown to be con jobs, the PUC dismissed the case.
• Some ballots sent in early are not counted. They are. Some members in our community have so strongly believed that pre-meeting ballots are thrown out that they have marked some ballots and envelopes with invisible ink and turned them in to WOWSC ballot box at the pavillion. Then, after the election, they inspect the ballots with the ultraviolet lights, to see whether those envelopes and ballots were somehow tampered with. After their inspection, they found that the invisible ink marked ballots were all there. They don’t tell the community about that.
• During ballot counting, the Independent Election Auditor can’t mark ballots as “provisional” because it is not authorized by the Bylaws. So what. Marking ballots as provisional for future determination of validity is standard practice by vote counting authorities. But Walker’s complaint challenged the use of provisional counting, again in order to validate a vote that would have been cast for him, even though it would have been cast fraudulently by a non-member. 
• The water company was caught “red-handed” last year. Wrong again. I’d seen that said many times in emails from one of the neighborhood critics of the water company. That particular critic never informs his marks that the charges were dismissed.

For those who remember the Paul Newman, Robert Redford movie “The Sting,” a con job can be long, elaborate, and detailed to the n-th degree. Don’t count out that con jobs, for whatever reason behind them, are occurring now. 

Today we will see the Mother of All Con Jobs, from the ratepayer’s representatives filings to the Public Utilities Commission. They are going to throw the kitchen sink at us. I can’t wait to read it! Come back for analysis.