Michael B. Glenn

Michael Glenn (born July 8, 1980), is an American entrepreneur, freedom activist, politician, and founder and CEO of the web and mobile app development company Devion.

Glenn is a Newport Beach 2014 city council candidate and freedom activist who describes himself as a Laissez Faire Republican, and cites his reason for running being increased taxes and expenditures by the city. He is noted as being the first local politician in America to accept campaign donations in the Bitcoin digital currency.

Personal life, business, and political career
Glenn is not married as of March, 2014. Glenn has strong Irish ancestry whose hobbies include studying philosophical and economic theories, building and launching aerospace rockets, developing software for personal use, writing, and photography.

Glenn moved to Newport Beach in 2005 from Portland, OR. Glenn has had a long career in internet technology, and currently manages the company Devion.

In 2013, Glenn was a newcomer to politics, and quickly began making headlines for his use of technology in the political field, a particularly unique phenomenon in the city of Newport Beach.

Bitcoin in politics
Glenn was the first local politician in America to accept Bitcoin, second in total only to Mark Warden. Glenn was candid about how his Bitcoin collection process works since first announcing their acceptance, explaining that he doesn't truly accept Bitcoin, but simply allows them to be pre-processed into USD using Coinbase as a vendor in the same fashion that Visa and Mastercard are vendors for other monetary transactions. Despite his candid reports and disclaimers, one UCI professor publicly challenged the idea of Bitcoin usage in politics, raising many questions that Glenn had already answered in his initial release. Glenn replied with a detailed blog entry retort, debunking the professors quips.

Other technology in politics
Glenn has a mailing list of voters estimated at 10,000-25,000 people who he regularly communicates with, and he documents open rates of over 40%.

Glenn manages a Facebook page of the name Save Newport, whose growth has been large given the average age of Newport Beach residents. As of March 2014, the page is over 2,000 members and has a weekly reach of over 11,000 people. His Facebook posts frequently receive "like" counts in the hundreds.

Glenn has admitted to having other political technology projects "in the works" with release dates spanning June–November 2014.

Political issues
Glenn cites his reason for running as being the Newport Beach Dock Tax, which he claims degrades California's Prop 13 and Newport Beach's Measure V. He cites the percentage-increase in taxes as a historic high, and also mentions Newport Beach's $237m City Hall as another reason for questioning the fiscal responsibility of the 2013 City Council (this far exceeded the city's original estimate of $46m, and also far other nearby cities spent $20m)

Glenn was the first public citizen to warn of the possibility of beach seizure by the California Coastal Commission, and specifically cited the "seizure" of Malibu's beaches in August 2000, showcasing that this was not only theoretically possible, but had occurred previously with other demographically-similar cities. Glenn published the warning on his site and local papers, drawing similarities between the preludes to Malibu's seizure and the situation in the years of 2013-2014 with Newport Beach. Notable for this is the fact that lobbyists for the Coastal Commission quietly passed AB988, giving the Coastal Commission authority to execute a Local Coastal Plan for the city of Malibu, and thereby giving the Coastal Commission control over Malibu's beaches, instead of Malibu itself.

In March of 2014, Glenn pointedly argued against Socialism taking root in Newport Beach, identifying three different factors in then-mayor Rush Hill's plans for the city, including the city purchasing and selling charcoal at-cost, and the city contemplating socializing both a golf course and a harbor taxi service.

Professional Career
According to LinkedIn, Glenn has worked with Fortune 100 companies including AOL and AT&T Wireless. Glenn held positions of CTO in several companies before entering into a software development contract with Trident University, leading to the founding of his company, Devion.