The Bad Penny That Keeps Popping Up: Ackerman The Lobbyist
Over at the Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana reports that his uncovering of Dick Ackerman’s billing logs from his days as a lobbyist for the rogue Fair Board has spurred a formal investigation by the State Fair Political Practices Commission.
See, former legislators are prohibited from lobbying their former colleagues for one year after their departure. Ackerman left the State Senate at the end of 2008 and started making those embarrassing calls in the summer of 2009 – in order to facilitate the sale of the Orange County Fair to a secret cabal made up of its own Boardmembers. We first wrote about that a-way back here in the fall of 2009 passing along the excellent work of the OC Progressive and Vern Nelson at the Orange Juice blog.
Of course the most embarrassing part of this slimy episode was the way one year later our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas tried to whitewash the whole stinking affair in order to protect his ‘puglet pals. See, T-Rack has plenty of time to harass Toyota and Muslim students at UCI, but apprently he has a lot less taste for going after political miscreants of either party.
But the truth will out, as they say. And the Ackerman deal just keeps resurfacing. Of course the FPPPC has no real authority except to levy fines and it looks to me like a real prosecutor is really what’s called for here.
Disbarment, anyone?
Even if Ackerman’s found guilty of breaking state law (which it’s obvious he did), it wont mean much…. a fine, an adda boy, and another lobby contract.
I didn’t lobby. I couldn’t have. Because that would have been illegal.
That was actually stoopid Van Tran’s exact line, at the November 2009 town-hall meeting. “Of course Senator Ackerman didn’t lobby. That would have been illegal.” An auditorium stuffed full of Derailers laughed him off the stage.
Well, at least he’s gone. The only thing I like about him is that the ‘pugs made Nguyen stand next to him in last fall’s ass kicjing – to the dim bulb Loretta!
You know the “challengers” to the OC Right Wing noise Machine have written more posts about Travis Kiger than they have about Ackerman and the Fair scandals.
Hmmm.
Add Jon “FLASHMAN” Flieshman and Matt “JUBAL” Cunningham to that list #4.
It’s almost a joke that this keeps getting mentioned, but until people realize that these guys are running a self serving MONEY GRUBBING scheme out of their homes, not even legit business locations. I feel compelled to keep it up.
EXPOSURE BUILDS IMMUNITY!
I’m tired of your tricks Dick!!!