Remember the political campaign that got started by a bankruptcy lawyer pretending his vocation was “Fullerton Parent” and who was endorsed by a gaggle of political crooks, liars and bagmen?
Well, it appears the crooked campaign of Andrew Cho got itself in trouble by heisting images from the Friends of Coyote Hills website in order to strike an environmentally friendly posture.
The funny thing about this is the obvious attempt to cover ground lost to Cho’s opponent, Fred Jung, on the open space issue. Cho has been repeatedly hit by Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform as a puppet of overdevelopment lobbyist Jennifer Fitzgerald, our departing Mayor-for-Hire who has her fingerprints all over every apartment prison block built in Fullerton over the past 8 years.
Rudy says thumbs up, way up, to suckers, who are born every minute.
The idiots who run FSD agreed to pay some chucklehead named Rudy Ruetigger $2000 as a motivational speaker at an August management retreat. We reported about that, here.
Ruetigger, a shameless self-promoter actually talked somebody into making a fictional movie account of his pathetic football efforts at Notre Dame.
The luck of the Irish was about to run out...
Despite immediate ridicule, the FSD stuck to their guns.
What sort of lessons were learned by FSD management at this retreat? Maybe Superintendent Mitch Hovey or one of the pathetic Trustees who voted for this will travesty will stop by and enlighten us.
Over the years we’ve learned that boldfaced spin and self-serving regurgitation of misinformation is a regular indulgence for those union mouthpieces over at the Liberal OC. Like most, we quickly grew tired trying to make sense of the noise emerging from the OCEA’s propaganda machine and so we’ve learned to ignore it. But every once in a while someone new comes along and gets sucked right into the blue vortex.
A few weeks ago, Chris Prevatt wrote this blurb supposedly “Busting the Myths” about how public employee pensions don’t cost us hardly anything and the real problem is… well something somewhere else. He backed that up with the audacious claim that public employee compensation only sucks up about 10% of California’s budget, a dubious statement which was then re-quoted by OCEA booster Nick Berardino in this letter to the OC Register.
Well somehow our perplexed new Friends over at UnionWatch.com stumbled upon Prevatt’s steaming pile and decided to break down this mythbuster’s logic. In a lengthy post based on conservative figures and some elementary math, the unnamed blogger discovered that the LiberalOC was off the mark by a factor of six. In fact, conservative calculations pinned public employee compensation at about 67% of California’s budget, far more than Prevatt’s 10%, putting public employees right back at the top of the lineup as a primary suspects in the case of California’s budget woes.
So nobody really knows if it was Prevatt or Berardino who initiated the transmission of this blatant error, but it doesn’t really matter. It served their purposes for a few moments and a couple of union adherents probably sucked it up and will continue to pass the falsehoods along. At least now the rest of us know better.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Fullerton 4th District candidate newcomer Jamie Valencia has maintained, even slightly increased her lead of about 130+ votes over the Democrat Central Anointed and Chosen One, Vivian Jaramillo. Jaramillo had a lot of help from the Democrat establishment. Like these worthy people:
Elected Officials
Lou Correa Congressman CA 46
Josh Newman CA State Senator
Tom Umberg CA State Senator
Sharon Quirk-Silva CA Assemblymember
Doug Chaffee OC Supervisor
Natalie Rubalcava Anaheim City Council Member
Ahmad Zahra, Dr. Fullerton City Council Member
Shana Charles, Dr. Fullerton City Council Member
Aaruni Thakur Fullerton School District Trustee
Ruthi Hanchett Fullerton School Board Member
Joanne Fawley Fullerton Union High School District Trustee
Susan Sonne Buena Park Mayor
Jaramillo had support from the government paper pushers’ unions and many of the hardhat trades. But significantly the cops and “firefighters” backed Valencia.
The forced smile may not last…
Team Jaramillo had two problems all that support couldn’t overcome. Problem one was “Kitty” herself, a 70+ year old low-level municipal code enforcement “officer” who pulls in a $85k per year pension. Her constant complaining and victimhood narrative didn’t help.
Patsy Scott Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag, but at least he got his 15 minutes of fame…
Then there was the Scott Markowitz drama – an obvious and in the end, unnecessary election interference case capped off by criminal guilty pleas and perhaps an ongoing investigation by the District Attorney into the question of who suborned Markowitz’s perjury.
Did the ensuing negative attention linking Jaramillo’s backers, and maybe Jaramillo herself to the criminal behavior of Markowitz and his co-conspirator(s) affect the outcome for her? Of course it did. Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform tattooed “Team Jaramillo” for the connection, even as Fullerton BooHoo did their level best to look the other way.
And then there’s the question of Markowitz’s affect on the election outcome. Markowitz has over 800 votes and will get more; still, it’s hard to say what sort of specific impact he had on the race – particularly vis-à-vis Linda Whitaker, the other non-Latino named person in the election. However, even with all of Markowitz’s votes, Whitaker would still be in 3rd place, 272 votes behind Jamie Valencia.
The OC County Registrar of Voters will be posting continuing ballot counts every day at 5pm. This will continue until all the mail-in and election day drop off ballots are counted, and each day the remaining number will diminish. At this point, there is no reason to suspect that the remaining 4th District ballots won’t break pretty much the same way as the election day and Wednesday counts.
Those pesky Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform are at it again, updating their previous introduction of Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo to reflect the fact that the stooge candidate created by her team to draw votes away from her opponent Linda Whitaker is now charged with perjury and got hauled off the the Santa Ana Jail a few days ago. Busted.
Poor patsy Scott Markowitz, the stooge in question is facing two felonies while the identity of his manipulators remains a secret. For now.
However we do know the name of the one and only beneficiary of Markowitz and his MAGA ballot statement: Vivian Jaramillo who disingenuously referred to Markowitz as her “opponent.” No, we meant to be an ally in her election and of course she knows it.
Meantime, Republican Central had this to say about the Markowitz Scandal, laying out some facts, and teeing up additional questions.
“Markowitz was a registered Democrat, who switched parties before submitting fraudulent nomination documents hours before filing then proceeded to campaign as a ‘MAGA Republican’ to split the vote away from our only endorsed Republican and help the lone Democrat in the race,” the statement read.
The OC Republicans know all about this bad behavior. They did it in 1995 and the scandal drew in Curt Pringle, Scott Baugh, Dana Rohrabacher and some of their underlings.
That’s if you are Ahmad Zahra, the Fullerton City Councilmember who knows nothing about small business, but who does know a lot about self-promotion to people who don’t know better. Zahra likes to peddle his “economic development” wares, but is really just an unemployed parasite desperate for a paying government job. He doesn’t know anything about running a business large or small.
If you hurry you can make it to this morning’s “Small Business Forum” organized by Zahra, at the Fullerton Community Center.
This brilliant 2 hour event features the State Treasurer Fiona Ma who at one time was some sort of an accountant, but who has been a professional politician for a long, long time. She had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit a while back that cost the State $350,000 but, like Zahra’s assault and battery plea, the details are consigned to secrecy.
Time to come clean…..
There are two panels optimistically labeled “dynamic” which seems pretty unlikely. One panel features a unionista and some stooge from the North OC Chamber of Commerce, an organization that stopped representing small businesses 25 years ago, instead currying favor with government agencies. What they could possibly discuss is anybody’s guess.
And I have a couple of questions. First, who authorized Zahra to use the City seal, and who is paying for the rental of the conference room at the Community Center?
About a week and a half ago FFFF linked to a story in the venerable Orange Juice Blog, documenting how our Fullerton D5 Councilmember, Ahmad Zahra, a visiting tourist from Syria, headed to Little Rock, Arkansas and got married to a woman.
Those facts alone would be enough to warrant a sideways glance toward a man who says he gave up a career as medical doctor to live in his car in Hollywood while pursuing his dream: a film-making career.
Zahra’s narrative quagmire gets stickier because of his own origin tale in which (according to his own bio) he always knew he was gay.
So why would a gay man, aware of his gayness, marry an Arkansas woman whom he says he “liked?”
The obvious answer, bolstered by subsequent events, is that our young visitor was looking for a foothold for permanent residency in the United States.
In case you think getting this marriage to do the residency trick might be a real hurdle, a frightful bureaucratic undertaking, a rigorous examination conferring validity, consider the following tale told by a young woman named “Amanda” to the Arkansas Traveler about her Arkansan marital experience with a Middle Eastern immigrant. After their marriage, the immigrant needed to get his status as a permanent resident established:
The couple sits in front of a USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) agent and answers a series of intimate questions.
“I heard horror stories about the interviews where people are dragged away from each other,” Amanda said. The penalty for getting caught is five years in prison with a $10,000 fine for the American and permanent deportation for the foreigner.
“I had never been so scared before in my life,” Amanda said. They sat there in a large pale waiting room surrounded by other couples with a pile of paperwork and photo albums on her lap – their entire marriage legitimized.
But instead of the expected – “What are his favorite colored socks? What kind of toothpaste does he use?” – their interview took only five minutes. “OK, you’re both Jewish, good. Are these your names? Good. Your address? OK, thanks.”
And what anniversary might that be, Friends may be asking.
Not gone, but almost forgotten…
This Wednesday, March 27th, marks the one-year anniversary of a deadline date agreed to by the City of Fullerton and one Mario Marovic, a downtown bar owner. Not much of a deadline, huh?
Hey, that’s not yours!
By March 27th, 2023, Mr. Marovic was required to have started demolition of the so-called “bump out,” an illegally constructed room addition built by the Florentine Mob two decades ago on City property. Marovic had gotten rid of the Florentines, finally, but decided that the leasehold on the room addition was somehow ripe for the encroaching. So he began remodel work on the leasehold right along with the rest of the building that he does own.
Busted.
Meet the new proprietor, same as the old proprietor…
Well, the Earth has made an entire revolution of the Sun.
The City Council may occasionally talk about this in their hush-hush, top secret “Closed Session” meetings, but the public is not to know what is happening, even as our money and property are being frittered away. We do know that Marovic has threatened a claim against the City, but so what? Why would that be cause for the City to ignore Marovic’s breech of contract and seize the public property that Marovic encroached on illegally?
Staying awake long enough to break the law…
The reason could be that our esteemed lawyer, Dick Jones of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm, believes upholding agreements is not a winning strategy. Of course this third rate pettifogger has won so few cases for us, and has lost so many that we may feel confident questioning his judgment.
Or, it could be that the feckless and spineless City Council has been individually persuaded by Marovic that it’s in their best interest to ignore the deal, and that they should just let Marovic keep raking in the bucks thanks to a Conditional Use Permit that was contingent upon the removal of the room addition.
Yes, Friends, it’s that time of year again, when Fullerton’s City Council chooses one of its number to act as Mayor for the upcoming year.
Time to come clean…..
And as predictable as the summer monsoon in Bangladesh, the Fullerton Observer has begun laying the foundation for another wailing session, decrying the mean council trio of Jung, Dunlap and Whitaker for passing over Observer inamorata, Ahmad Zahra, the preening, deceitful, egomaniac councilman from District 5, who has gone well out of his way to alienate the three, any one of whom could get him chosen Mayor.
Here’s the doleful headline:
Will District 5 Get Mayoral Representation at the City Council Meeting on December 5?
It’s sort of fun to read the litany of complaints and grievances that follow, written by somebody called Jack Hutt, whose angry essay is just another attack on Fullerton’s three more or less sensible representatives.
Mr. Hutt starts decrying the fact that a mayoral rotation policy is not being followed. Well, what a shame that is. A council not feeling bound to adhere to a policy it evidently disagrees with.
Hutt does ponder the question of the motives of Jung, Dunlap, and Whitaker, a little:
“One has to wonder what happened in closed sessions that made council members Jung, Whitaker, and Dunlap publicly disrespect Zahra. Will the council members ever tell the public the reasons?”
Good question. And yet poor Hutt doesn’t seem to realize Closed Session deliberations are cloaked in secrecy by law. It doesn’t really matter to Hutt anyhow, because in his very next sentence he telegraphs his intent:
“Or is it so petty or phobic that it can not be uttered?”
Now our offended writer has rolled three insults into one conclusion. The three are either so petty, or gay-hating, that they must cower in fear, terrified to let the public know how low they are.
Later, Hutt rolls out his big gun:
“He also survived a vicious negative campaign funded by Tony Bushala.” Whenever the Observer crowd gets agitated enough they relentlessly name the object of their greatest fear and loathing: Tony Bushala. Hutt follows suit, of course, but as usual omits the fact that Zahra’s 2020 campaign was diligently manicured by him and his sycophants to omit facts like his real biography, his servitude to the marijuana dispensary cartel, his constant self promotion, and his arrest record; that the campaign against Zahra was aggressive, but honest every step of the way; that Zahra dished out over $100,000 to keep a Latino candidate from representing a Latino district. Oh, and Zahra was party to the creation of a fake Latino candidate, Tony Castro, to siphon votes away from Oscar Valadez
Comically, Hutt wraps up his essay with a shot at Nick Dunlap’s lack of interest in his job and makes a hopeful pitch for none other than…Jesus Quirk-Silva:
“...Jesus Silva, who was Gerrymandered out of District 3, now lives in District 2, and although this district is marginally Republican, it is competitive, and he would be a formidable candidate.”
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
Now, it wouldn’t be an Observer article without repeating an old lie heard over and over and over again. Quirk-Silva was, as we all know, gerrymandered into District 3 which gave him the opportunity for a free run at Greg Sebourn’s job in 2018 when he was still a city-wide councilman. The redistricting map done in 2022 cleaned up the previous nonsense with rational district boundaries that left Quirk-Silva with no district to run in since he was now in District 2 – and we’re all better off for that.
Here’s the truth: it takes three votes to get elected Mayor. End of story. The facts of precisely why the three councilmen don’t trust, don’t like, don’t want to choose Zahra as Mayor are evidently real. And Zahra is probably better off if the real reasons of antipathy toward him don’t come out; and if they were to emerge, I suspect Zahra is counting on the head-in-the-sand obliviousness of his fife and drum corps to ignore any cogent reasons that might be forthcoming. It’s victimhood uber alles.
