How do you measure glumness in Washington?

Glumness of Washingtonians has plunged to a new low below zero, says pollster Stu Elway, lower than it was during the Great Recessions of 2008 and 2009. How do you measure glumness, which is pessimism as opposed to optimism?

By asking questions like do you expect things to get better during the next year, i.e., nationally, in the state, and where you live? A couple of years ago, the answer was yes, today the answer is no.

What sets my glumness meter off, however, is not so much the economy but what’s happening in the general population. Take a gander at what I’ve clipped out of the newspapers I take, the Kitsap Sun, Seattle Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Times. They are all in 2011.

Mason County prosecutors have charged Candace L. Ralston, 42, with three counts of first-degree theft and one count of forgery in the loss of $190,000 from Alderbrook Inn and Spa at Union where she worked as a bookkeeper. Accountants said she took most of the money from the resorts cash deposit systems, by creating a “gift cards payable” line to cover the thefts. A check forged in the manager’s name paid for a vacation in Mexico.

The former bookkeeper for the Washington Judges Assn. has been charged with stealing nearly $425,000 from her bosses. Prosecutors say since 2007 Barbara Jo Ericsson wrote checks to herself or organizations she was affiliated with, forged the name of the assn. president and presented phony records to hide where the money really went.

A Marine captain was sentenced to six years in federal prison for skimming $1.69 million from government contracts meant to assist the economic development of Iraq. Eric Schmidt, 40, was a logistics officer for the Camp Pendleton based First Marine Division dealing with contracts for Iraq firms. He worked out a deal to award contracts to an Iraqi contractor who was in cahoots with his wife. Mrs. Schmidt used the money to buy fewer or inferior products than called for and had them delivered to Iraq, where her husband falsely certified the goods having been provided by the contractor.

Kinde Durkee, 58, campaign treasurer for a slew of Democratic candidates in California, was charged with stealing over $1 million. She managed the funds of the Democratic Party of Los Angeles for at least 12 years and kept track of incoming and outgoing funds. The money went for mortgage payments and nursing home care for her mother.

A Bellevue woman has been accused of stealing $457,000 from Microsoft Corp. A federal indictment says Maryvone Phansiry managed a debit card program to help the company’s interns pay for housing. From 2007 to 2009 she obtained debit cards in the names of interns and withdrew the money herself from various ATMs.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle says Shea Saenger, 60, Whidbey Island, scammed an elderly Ellensburg man out of more than $2 million. She befriended him online in 2005, about 10 months after his wife died, told him she was single and she’d marry him if he helped her. He had a poor memory and she convinced him to rewrite checks he’d already sent her. She claimed she needed money for an uncle who did not exist, surgeries she never had and didn’t need and purchase of a car. She sent half the money to relatives in Arkansas and Tennessee.

I’ve got more but let’s end on an optimistic note. Because of a surge in thefts from museums of rhino horns that are sold at fabulous prices for their purported aphrodisiac effect on men, officials at Natural History Museum at Tring, England, replaced all their real horns with replicas. Thieves broke in the other days and made off with the replicas.

––Adele

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340)