Here’s Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz hanging out with the recall crew while the signatures were being counted last week.
Thanks for the photo, Ricky.
We get a lot of e-mails from folks all over the place. The following, from a guy named Howard, is not atypical. A familiar thread is the theme of municipal cultures of corruption and lack of leadership across the republic.
Name: Howard McLay
Privacy: You may publish this under my name
Subject: Fullerton Leadership Mess
Since the death of Kelly Thomas, I have read the FFFF blog weekly.
I’m amazed at the depth of coverage of this clowncil.
I am also amazed at the height of the corruption and spending within the city.
This leads to an amazement of “How did it get this bad” considering all the info published in the FFFF blog.
This is not a criticism by any means of the good people involved or the people of Fullerton. For I live in Wayne County Mich where there is a FBI investigation ongoing with our leader, and the world knows about the Detroit mayor.
So my amazement is really…how in the world did our government get so lax in oversight, in checks and balances, to have these messes all across America.
My hope is that your recall, and the investigation into the killing of Kelly, comes to a just ending. Keep up the pressure!
Howard, thanks for the kind words and well-wishes. We will indeed keep up the pressure!
Today, we received this insightful comment from long-time FFFF blogger Hollis Dugan that I made a post all by itself. Here ya go:
I have been watching the goings on from both sides of this since last summer and I have some thoughts. I guess I could make this several separate comments but here goes:
Battle Prep: It is obvious to me the other side is outmatched. Before anyone thinks this is a biased view, allow me to explain. Dave Ellis, sleaze bag extraordinaire, is used to ambushing unsuspecting politicos with his street fight tactics and getting some success. Go in to a fight that the opponents think has some rules of congeniality and decorum and Dave just blows them out with under handed tactics, lies tied to good timing (the last minute accusation type mailers) and he catches people off guard and rolls them.
In this case Dave has met up with some experienced ninja warrior street fighters. Dave’s usual tricks are bush league compared to what this crowd is already used to after battles with the local police union, the Ackerwoman v. Norby race, Sidhu/unions v. Nelson etc. This crew is battle tested and motivated to fight to the death because it is what they believe. Dave Ellis is a hired gun who cares zero about Fullerton or its issues. Dave will do only when paid and he has nothing at stake.
Recall Signatures: The anti recall group just cant get their head around the idea that 17,000+ people signed the petitions therefore, a ton of the sigs must be faulty. I’m sure it has never occurred to the that A) All newly registered voter sigs on a recall are 100% by nature. Having registered probably a few thousand new voters over the last 5 months, the recallers really need to get 8500 valid sigs from their remaining 15,500 sigs. B) It clearly has not occurred to the anti recall fools that with modern technology voter signatures can be verified and purged as collected. In other words, if all those volunteers appointed one among their ranks to verify sigs as they were collected over the last 5 months or so, the validity rate is going to be through the roof, not the other way around. Think this didnt happen? Please re-read above. This crew is battle tested and street savvy. Count on it (pun intended).
Withdrawl cards: Nothing screams failure louder than the return of 145 cards after several thousand dollars were spent on the Hail Mary play from the anti recall group. Earth to Dave Ellis: in order to withdraw a sig one must have signed the petition in the first place.
The only people who would have signed the petition were those that felt it was worth their time to challenge the three subjects of the petition. No doubt the signers could have had their own reason to want any of the three out of office or used one of those reasons offered by the sig gatherers.
Regardless of why each person signed the petition one thing we know for sure is the anti recall effort didnt even attempt to show the petition signers their original reason for signing was invalid. Rather than debunk some lie being perpetrated by the recall sig gatherers the anti recall crew chose to attack Tony Bushala. I ask, is there anyone who signed the petition based on their fondness for Mr. Bushala’s good citizenship?
In other words, the other side failed to consider intelligent people could very well agree with everything on the mailers disparaging Mr. Bushala and still think the three old guys need to be recalled. Best case scenario the anti recallers may have ruined Mr. Bushala’s run at city council but how the hell was that going to help their cause?
No one was going to withdraw their sig because their original reason for signing it was never addressed.
Excuses: I am amazed that at every step including Bankhead on the tv last night, the three old coots are constantly believing that this just cant be real. Don said on channel 4 last night that he has been told by “experts” a lot of the signatures will not be valid. McKinley said on national tv the cops may still get out of this because they have a good lawyer. Jones had seen worse injuries in Viet Nam than Kelly’s and just couldn’t imagine how he could have died.
These guys are going to go to the finish line having no idea what happened before, what is happening now or how it happened at all. They are all going to be former council members before they ever figure out what their role was in their own undoing.
It’s like they say, ignorance is bliss. It is also painful to watch.
Moments ago the Fullerton Recall team turned in well over 50,000 signatures from Fullerton voters to initiate a recall election of councilmembers Don Bankhead, Dick Jones and Pat McKinley. The reason? Their simple failure to provide competent leadership for our city.
The individual totals are:
- Don Bankhead: 17,064 signatures
- F. Richard “Dick” Jones: 17,587 signatures
- Patrick McKinley: 17,603 signatures
Next, the city clerk will turn over the signatures to be verified by the OC Registrar of Voters. Once the requirement of 10,554 valid signatures for each recallee is met, an election must scheduled by the Fullerton city council.
In that election, which will occur sometime before this summer, Fullerton voters will decide both if they want to recall each of the three officials and which candidates will replace them.
I want to give a special thank you to all of our dedicated signature gatherers who worked so hard to bring in 60% more sigs than are required.
Friends, over the past couple of months you may have noticed anonymous comments on some of our posts referring to “George” and “Jorge” and some sort of hit-and-run issue. Those comments referred to my brother George and came from inside the FPD. I let them go. Then. But not now.
This is a cautionary tale about a Culture of Corruption in the FPD that encourages the harassment of law abiding citizens. Getting a ticket from Barry Coffman for “excessive horning” is bad enough. Getting prosecuted for a non-existing “crime” is intolerable. Unfortunately this sort of thing has become business as usual with the FPD. It appears to be not only tolerated, but encouraged. And that’s what happens when the civilian authority abdicates its responsibility to oversee the cops.
Here’s the story.
Back on the morning of February 28, 2011 my brother George was driving east down Walnut Avenue, and turned right into the driveway of our office building parking lot. A car had parked quite close to the entry of the driveway, and as he turned in he heard a distinctive sound. After parking he noticed that the front bumper of the car was lying in the street.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t hit the car in any way, and there was no other damage to that car, or to his own vehicle; and he noticed that the bumper had been jerry-rigged at some point to stay on with sheet metal screws. He believed his right front tire just hit the thing as it lay in the roadway.
George kept watch on the car, and later in the afternoon a woman came to pick it up. He explained the situation and told Mrs. Bumper that he didn’t think he was responsible, but that he would help put the bumper back on with secure connections to the chassis the next day. She was grateful and drove off.
The next day her husband showed up and demanded that George buy him a new bumper. George suggested he go away and take his bumper with him.
Mr. Bumper filed a police report and soon George was interrogated by a couple of FPD cops. He told his story for the third time. The next thing he knew he was being charged by the District Attorney with Hit and Run, Unsafe Turn and Illegal Tampering With A Vehicle!
Story recap: No hit. No run. No unsafe turn. No tampering. No evidence. No witness. No nothing. Yet our esteemed DA, following the advice of FPD, had decided to prosecute my brother.
Of course George had to hire a lawyer who made six different court appearances on this idiotic “case.” Finally the DA blinked and offered George the DNA “spit and acquit” deal he makes with campaign-contributing food poisoners. George said no. With a trial date looming the DA’s office just dropped the whole thing on September 20th.
Too bad, in a way. I really looked forward to seeing those FPD clowns on the stand to explain and defend their evidence. Now the public will never see the facts behind what can only be described as a malicious attempt to intimidate and harass me through my brother.
Well, guess what, boys? It didn’t work.
How much police, DA and court time and money was completely wasted in this effort to try to push around a citizen and taxpayer? Who knows? Five different DA employees had their spoons in this soup, as well as judges, bailiffs, court scribes, etc.
But I know one thing. There is an entrenched Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that runs pretty deep, and it needs to end soon!
A while back we had a new City seal contest here that was won by The Fullerton Savage. The Savage won a CD by local talented artist Nancy Sanchez. Nancy plays regularly at Steamers.
Nancy recently won the Orange County Music Award for “Best Latin” and was also nominated for “Best Jazz” as well.
She is currently recording her first full length album of Pop/Folk songs which she has penned in the last few years, and like most struggling artists, is in need of financial help in order to complete her goal.Nancy has chosen www.kickstarter.com as a way of connecting with fans and friends in order to help her achieve her goal with donations towards her recording process.
In return for donations, Nancy offers incentives that range from an advanced copy of the finished album, to a brand new acoustic Ovation guitar, House Concerts, a private invitation to the CD release party (in-studio), a Steamers Jazz Club Concert package and even the chance to record a vocal track on one of Nancy’s tunes to be used on the recording!
Here is a link to her Kickstarter page:
…and here is an article just written from the O.C. Weekly.
Co-Producers
Evan Stone & David J. Carpenter
Here’s a couple of interesting e-mails from the final day of July, 2011, between Acting City Manager Joe Felz and soon to be MIA Police Chief Sellers.
On the surface it seems that Acting City Manager Joe Felz is unhappy with Lou Ponsi for writing “Very Old” news. But maybe he is really upset that the public gets to hear (again) that the cops who killed Kelly Thomas had been out on the streets for over three weeks like nothing had happened; or that maybe Sharon Quirk looks like she is actually in charge. Sellers seems to be concerned with the latter, and he can already see the writing on the wall.
“Hopefully the remaining three council members don’t feel left out” is code for: “Make sure the Three Dead Tree Sumps get lined up, fast!”
“Lou is Not a bad guy from what I understand,” means that Sylvia Palmer and Andrew Goodrich have previously informed Felz that Ponsi is a reliable regurgitator of their crap.
By the way, is anybody else appalled by the weird punctuation and capitalization deployed by these $200,000+ per year bureaucrats?
UPDATE: Here’s a vintage FFFF post from several years ago. I promised to re-run it once in a while. It’s been about 28 months so here ya go!
Dear Friends:
The other day we got an e-mail from a thoughtful friend who said that he agreed with much of what we post about here, but is pained to hear folks attacked for “style and presentation” rather than policy, and that in the end we “have to work together to build a better community and the personal attacks only make that process more difficult in the end.”
I have to chuckle just a bit when somebody says “your attacks are personal.” That’s another way of saying we name names, express our outrage colorfully, and want accountability, something that has been sorely lacking in Fullerton for as long as I can remember. And I, for one, take that personally. Nobody likes to be called stupid, but when you act like you’re infallible and yet keep doing stupid or thoughtless things you not only invite ridicule, you deserve it. We use satire, sarcasm, and attempts at humor because these are good tools to get our points across – something you can’t do being brushed off at a council meeting twice a month. We want to get people’s attention – everyone’s.
And so I set out to tell the Fullerton story from my perspective, and the perspective of others who felt the same way I did, and those who had been effectively excluded from the decision making process. We decided that we would tell the truth, as we saw it by describing facts and presenting the names of people who took bad decisions or who acted in their own interests instead of the interest of the public. That sounds like taking on a pretty big responsibility, and I didn’t do it lightly, nor do I believe that I am better than any one else. But I have this forum and I intend to keep up the pressure on our electeds and their staff to take responsibility for their actions. We have invited comment or correction from anybody – something you’ve never yet seen happen at City Hall.
In closing, it is our intention to help build a better community for Fullerton’s future. But we’re going to do it our way. Sometimes you’ve got to knock over a few Sacred Cows to clear the road.
Now that the Governor’s decision to put the kibosh on Redevelopment in California has been upheld by the State Supreme Court, our lawsuit to stop the illegal expansion of Fullerton’s Redevelopment project area is becoming something of a moot point.
Too bad, because we really wanted the City to try to defend its ridiculous findings of blight in front of a judge.
Well, we’re not going to forget that the bogus attempt was made, and made hard by Fullerton’s Redevelopment junkies – Bankhead, Jones and McKinley. These guys are absolutely hooked on government creating dimwitted master plans, buying into stupid boondoggles and handing out taxpayer subsidies and freebies to their pals and campaign contributors.
In the coming months we will be sure to remind Fullerton citizens of the City’s history of expensive Redevelopment failures and the part played in these disasters by our “esteemed” City Council.
Well, Friends, 2011 was a record year for our humble little blog. We’ve had 2,013,945 visitors, and counting. I wonder what next year will bring for a blog that all began here, the day I questioned the ridiculous and deteriorating Redevelopment Styrofoam light fixtures at the downtown plaza.
See what I mean?
That was just three short years ago, and since then we’ve taken on every Sacred Cow of Fullerton’s reactionary old guard – from ridiculous Redevelopment boondogglery to a police department stewed in rampant corruption. And we’re not done yet, not by a long shot.
Stick around as we continue to poniard the pompous and demand accountability from the unaccountable. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll experience a whole range of emotions. We promise.