Martin Wisckol Caught Pimping for Linda Ackerman – Again.
Maybe the Register’s Martin Wisckol is worried about the impending collapse of his employer and is thinking about future work writing press releases for Dick and Linda Ackerman. Looks like he has already started.
Last Wednesday Wisckol tossed up this powder puff blog post addressing the issue of Linda Ackerman’s “experienced businesswoman” self-applied label. Exercising all the journalistic curiosity of a sea cucumber he coughed up this pearl:
I asked her last week what her business was. She responded that she was on the Board of Directors of the USCB collection management company, a director on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, was finance director of the Marian Bergeson Series, and was executive director of the state Capital of California Preservation Fund (I haven’t been able to find a Web site for that).
Good enough. Sounds like business stuff to me.
Sorry Martin, but it’s not “good enough” just because she said so. To pass along this tripe suggests that you are either stupid, lazy, or are shilling for Ackerman, Inc. Since we assume the Register doesn’t knowingly employ overtly stupid people, the options are narrowed.
We’ll help out by citing our post that pretty effectively dispatches the Ackerman “experienced businesswoman” fable.
Let’s recap. Linda’s on the board of a collection agency, USCB; a job she got by virtue of her husband’s influence and that meets three or four times a year? That may provide a little extra pocket money, but it hardly constitutes what a reasonable person would call business experience.
She’s on the executive committee of the Marian Bergeson blah blah blah. A training ground for female GOP politicians. Another part-time gig base on her political connections. In any case her self proclaimed responsibility (from her own website) is “finance development” not “finance director”, ya chowder head. Development means calling up lobbyists and asking them for money. You know, Martin. The same lobbyists who lobbied her husband.
Likewise she got an appointment to the Board of the MWD – a political, not a professional appointment, Marty. Do you really think she would have gotten that without her husband’s name. So she goes to a government agency meeting once a month to be told how to vote. No business experience there, either.
A committee to restore the historic working spaces of the Capitol. WTF? Are you kidding, Martin? That sounds like business to you? To us that sounds like the bored wife of a legislator or a socialite, or both. There’s probably a real good reason there’s no website.
Well, Martin, we have just covered the sum and substance of Linda Ackerman’s “business” experience over her 45 years of adulthood. And here it is, again:
- No real experience in the private sector
- Never owned or operated a business
- Never employed anybody
- Never signed the front of a paycheck.
In fact, Linda Ackerman’s only real experience is raising money from lobbyists, for this or that personal Ackerman benefit, mostly her husband’s campaigns. And for that she was amply recompensed for her part time work. Come to think of it, we’re now pretty sure the woman has never even held a real job of any kind.
So come on Martin, how about a little real work yourself. Quit passing along Ackerman campaign mush gussied up as the truth. Why not try to do something honorable before you get the axe?
if linda had gone to my college, she could have gotten a bakelor’s degree just by telling her professors how smart she be and playing monopoly on the quad. I know of one successful head of an orange county agency who be walkin away with a niiice pension cuz he got his degree at johnboy college
So did the reporter mess up Ackerman’s “finance director” job title or did she forget it herself? Either way, it’s pretty funny.
This is kind of instructional and also opinion for anyone in Ackerman’s position considering running for office. Or for that matter, trying to come to grips with describing what they have done.
While serving on committees and boards is important and also gives one a lot of experience (and I do think that anyone who is given a chance to be on one should do it), it’s not a job. While I don’t mind if someone with this type of experience runs for any public office, and in fact might be very competent and have sharper insights than their counterparts, it would be far better not to “pad” their accomplishments by trying to make it something that it is not.
Business experience to most people means someone who has worked for another person several days a week, or has owned their own business and knows the joys and headaches of having one.
Unless someone falls into one of those categories, they should just be honest by saying that over their life they have done various philanthropic endeavors which includes serving various boards and overseeing the use of foundation funds bla bla bla.
Because quite frankly, serving on boards and committees is important, and by casually trying to make yourself look like a titan of industry, you belittle the experience. So tell us what you did on those committees, what mission you helped, how much money you raised, what networks you established. Take for instance if a person were in the Peace Corps, or worked for years as a missionary in Africa –this completes a picture of you that is far more interesting than trying to confuse people with generic titles that are akin to frosting on a cake.
I’m sorry to see that she was caught. This was completely unnecessary, and perhaps the Marian Bergeson group is in part responsible for this “botoxed CV.” If this is the advice they’re giving their candidates, then I think they can assume that everyone is going to be seriously scrutinized. It’s an incredibly snobby way to present oneself, totally unreal. This falls into the insistence of the GOP to talk big, look big, be glossy that is a turn off to the upcoming generations. And it does show that they are unaware of how social media and networking can easily find out the loose threads in one’s claims.
Whhoooops…. Clarification: I’m sorry she made a decision that meant she would be caught. It would have been so easy to go the other way.
What this post doesn’t mention is that the soft setup quoted above was used to precede harder scrutiny of Ackerman’s claim that she had “grown her business” in Fullerton. You can read the entire article I wrote here: http://totalbuzz.freedomblogging.com/2009/10/14/ad-watch-linda-ackerman-as-businesswoman/23591/
In any event, I laid out the facts for the reader to interpret as they choose. The above criticism of Ackerman could not have been written with the information in my article.
However, your approach to attacking me here would make Art Pedroza proud.
Oh, except Art doesn’t hide behind the cloak of anonymity.
Sorry Martin, but I read your whole post too. At the end you just concede that some people might call fundraising for her husband a business. Do you?!!! Never said, did you?
You deserve to be attacked for that drivel. Why didn’t you just ask her if she had ever even held a real job – apart from being paid $75,000 as a “consultant” by her husband.
Sad, sad, sad.
We cloaked anonymous bloggers are just so mean!
Martin, maybe Red County is hiring.
In my two years working at USCB, from data monkey to receptionist, the only Hackerman I ever remember at our Fullerton offices was Dick–and that was once. Being I personally delivered messages to former USCB head Mel Shaw and saw everyone who went inside his cool-as-hell office (now that I’m remembering it, I recall an exotic bird in a cage…), I would’ve remembered a Linda. Then again, maybe she started working after I left…
Joe – I see both sides of the argument on whether her fundraising is a business or not. I personally don’t have a strong feeling about it one way or the other. It’s amibguous enough that I thought I should write about it.
“I personally don’t have a strong feeling about it……” It does’nt matter what you think Martin. It matters what you report and the manner in which you do it.
If you think that serving on a board or running her husbands campaign fund is equal to say a jr. accountant at BofA or a clerk at Ingram Micro, you should be writing for the Fullerton High School paper.
You can’t be serious.
Team Wickadeit strikes again. Without Greenhut to balance out the tools, this paper is screwed.
Martin, tell you what. Why dontcha ask Mrs. Ackerman all about the Pacific Policy Research Foundation that she co-founded? More “business experience”!
Dick can tell you how educational it is!
Grover, that’s more of a “Watchdog” story that should be investigated by Sforza or Saavedra. Wisckol doesn’t got the stuff to piss off his friends.
Wisckol’s “Total Buzz” is a site recommended bt the stooges at Brown Klownty! “Nuff said!
Martin,
I guess if someone who was running for office said they had been a fundraiser, I’d ask them for whom did they raise funds? I’d ask them if this were a full time job, with a salary. I’d ask how long they worked there as well. And then, of course I’d call the office because there’s nothing like getting confirmation of facts. What kinds of projects were the monies for, and what foundations did they get the money from? Did they write grants? How much was raised?
I’m sorry your radar didn’t go up when she said she raised funds for the Bergeson group. The reality of that is that she was raising money for a PAC. A small one at that, which probably doesn’t have the funds for a full time or even a part time paid fund raiser.
Interestingly, what a lot of people assume when someone says “finance development” is that they’re doing it for some non profit organization that helps a lot of people. But this group solely exists to “groom” people for public-paying jobs, which in the end was quite self serving because this included herself as well. Whoopeee!
Remember, confidence in reporting the news isn’t the same as competence.