The Desert Rat, Author at Friends For Fullerton's Future

December 1, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

The Moral and Mental Degeneration of Pat McKinley

Way out here at the end of Screech Owl Road it gets pretty quiet. With the exception of the wind and the occasional rotor-thump of the Marine helicopter squadrons you have few distractions to clutter your thoughts. And lately I’ve been giving some thought to Pat McKinley, former Fullerton Police Chief, and now city councilman.

mckinley-she-bear — Lookin' out for the ladies, oh yeah!

Back in October the Friends were treated to one of the most startling revelations of moral failure imaginable when McKinley was cornered at a women’s club lecture on self-defense, and was asked to explain what women should do when a cop like Albert Rincon attacks them in the backseat of a police patrol car. See, McKinley hired Rincon and despite numerous complaints Rincon stayed on streets, eventually getting the City embroiled in a civil suit and earning the wrath of a respected federal judge.

McKinley’s shocking response to the Soroptimists: “Those ladies aren’t like you;” and the sexual battery was only “inappropriate touching;” “not a good thing, but it ain’t a dangerous thing.” “Call Chief” is what McKinley recommended women do when sexually battered by a Fullerton cop! No FFFF didn’t make that up. Here’s the video.

Later, McKinley tried to wriggle out of his statements by explaining that what he really meant to say was that the women in question were not “credible,” the implication being that he, McKinley, was the proper judge to determine what sort of women are credible or not. Given that as Chief, McKinley hired a virtual rogues gallery and gave them all badges and guns, it’s sort of hard to imagine why anybody would consider McKinley an authority on moral credibility. McKinley’s lame defenders actually put out the word that McKinley had somehow been tricked into saying all those awful things.

But now consider this inescapable fact: the Fullerton City Council just agreed to pay out $350,000 to only two of these “not credible” women. What the Hell? If McKinley believed they were not credible why on Earth did the City consent to settle? Maybe it had something to do with the harsh upbraiding the Fullerton Police Department received courtesy of Judge Andrew Guilford. If it did, you would think the taxpayers of Fullerton were due an apology from somebody. Anybody.

I also note then when asked by David Nazar if he was proud of the Fullerton PD, he immediately said yes, hesitated, and then added “except for the two.” Since I presume he was referring to Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, we can conclude that he has no regrets about hiring Albert Rincon in the first place.

It’s about time the anti-recallers get their stories straight because you can’t have it both ways. Either McKinley is a disgusting misogynist or he’s losing his marbles. Well, gee, maybe it’s both.

November 24, 2011November 24, 2011About Us

Thanksgiving from the Desert

by The Desert Rat45 Comments

Friends, greetings from my lonely and dusty compound way, way out on Screech Owl Road – past the meth labs and the Boho Sci Arc schtickers.

Two year’s ago FFFF published a Thanksgiving message from one of our errant bloggers, the original Harpoon. It was just so doggone pithy and pleasant that I figured it would be better to reproduce it than write my own. So here it is.

Dear Friends, Happy Thanksgiving. Some of you may wonder what an old, crusty, salt-bitten sea gherkin like the Harpoon is thankful for (some of you may not, and may not care).

I am thankful for being part of a society in which I can hurl my outrageous barbs (i.e. my current working version of the truth) at powers-that-be, and not get locked up;

I am thankful for having a bunch of fertile words and ideas bequeathed to me by people a lot smarter than I am, who happily deigned to bestow their gifts, Bodhisattva-like on the rest of us;

I am thankful for our Friends – a rare few who are able to view the socio-political terrain, and realize that we can do better – a lot better, and who are not terrified by the thought of criticizing the Chimps in Charge.

I am thankful for all the inert Clumps in the dead, sterile center, who peer out to the fertile, incubatorial edges of their paltry weltanshauung and start to sweat yellow fear pellets; for without them we fringers would have no frame of reference ourselves.

And so, from the cold, green-gray waters of the Sea of Japan, I wish one and all of the Friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

November 18, 2011November 18, 2011Bruce Whitaker

Pat McPension Gets Leash Yanked

by The Desert Rat125 Comments

McPensiononshortleash — Releasing his inner She Bear may be problematic.

Yesterday, on another thread folks were asking about the upcoming vote for next year’s mayor. I’ll be doing a post on that, real soon. In the meantime enjoy this post by the Desert Rat that was originally published on December 13, 2010. It includes some valuable video in which you may watch the Three Deaf Dinosaurs in action.

– Joe Sipowicz

Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. Pat McPension, he of the $215,000 a year pension (yes, you read that right), exercised his second vote in office denying the Mayor Pro Tem job (if you believe in things like fair rotation) to Sharon Quirk-Silva. SQS’s problem is that she is a Democrat, and hence, in some people’s eyes, the embodiment of all evil.

Now why would Pat McPension stick it to a woman who actually endorsed him in his recent election bid? Well, if you don’t know that answer you haven’t been paying attention to Fullerton politics for the past 30 years.

Check out McPension’s opening statement for clues. Then watch the painful yank on his choke chain.

Aha! Lois Godfrey. Queen Bee of the Raymond Hills Repuglican Women, an organization dedicated to promoting RINO candidates just like Pat McPension. In fact her husband was the worst one of the bunch. These idiots actually think Doc Jones is a real conservative!

Now Lois and her electric blue-haired gaggle have been backing these zeroes since the 1980s when their patron saints were Dick Ackerman, Buck Catlin, and the hideous gargoyle, Linda LeQuire.

And of course let us not forget the role of Little Corporal, Ed Royce, for whom no candidate is too old or stupid to be foist upon Fullerton for his own purposes.

So McPension owes his dubious political accomplishment to these worthy repuglicans; and at the first opportunity they must have made it very clear to their new boy what was expected of him from those who got him elected.

Just for the Hell of it I added Sharon Quirk-Silva’s pretty dignified admonition to her colleagues after the vote. While I don’t agree with a lot of her politics, I will note for the benefit of the brain dead repuglicans whom I know read this blog:

Quirk voted against the illegal Redevelopment expansion. She voted against the worthless Richman housing project. She voted against the idiotic Transportation Center Master Boondoggle. Your repuglican heroes voted for all three!

So go stick that in your blue wigs and smoke it!

October 26, 2011October 26, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Yup, Don Bankhead Was At that Ritzy Hotel, Too!

by The Desert Rat39 Comments

They put a mint on my pillow! — They even put a little chocolate mint on my pillow!

Here’s a really fun post I did about 20 months ago making sure people knew that it wasn’t just a spendthrift Democrat who blew over a grand at a fancy hotel at a useless League of Cities meeting. Turns out the RINOs Bankhead and Jones did, too. The way they see it, it’s their money, not yours.

– The Desert Rat

Okay, like I said the other day, I’m a fair guy. Fullerton Mayor Don Bankhead attended that fall of 2008 League of Cities Meeting in Long Beach right along side Pam Keller. Like Keller, Bankhead also put in for a double occupancy room for three nights. Here’s the smoking gun.

Over $1100 for a swank hotel room barely 25 miles from Bankhead’s house. And this during the vast economic melt-down of late 2008. Bad judgment? Sure, to you or me. But not to a guy who has likely spent twenty years going to these schmoozefests on our dime.

A juicy side-irony is the fact that this is the same piece o’ manpower that Doc Jones seems to think is the right guy to lead Fullerton through tough economic times. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the dimwit Jones. Hell, Jones was at the no-tell hotel, too!

Well, anyway, Don Bankhead, like Pam Keller, is up for re-election this year, if in fact he decides to run, which of course he will. So you can bet the desert acreage that both of them are going to be targets because of their willingness – no, eagerness – to waste, public money.

October 25, 2011October 25, 2011Behind Closed Doors

They’re Having A Party!

by The Desert Rat132 Comments

Looks like the anti-recall sponges and parasites have decided to hold a party to raise money for the Three Blind Mice.

Well, good for them, say I. After all, we really need to see what kind of creeps will support the incompetents who created and tolerated the Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department.

Here’s the flier:

View the flyer

Of course they were going to trot out the Jurassic McClanahan and Catlin – who were both recalled alongside Bankhead in 1994 for imposing a tally unnecessary utility tax on Fullerton. Oh! And here’s Jan Flory who not only supported the utility tax, but even wished it were doubled. And all of them voted year after year to stick us with a 10% tax on our water bills for no damn good reason other than that they could get away with it. Oh, yeah, they also supported every single Redevelopment boondoggle, giveaway, disaster, and money pit.

And Dick Ackerman? Ho ho! We’re onto that slime ball’s influence peddling schemes. Just a few weeks ago the Three Desiccated Dinosaurs awarded the lobbyist Ackerman’s clint a multi-million dollar subsidy for an unnecessary housing project. Awarded for services rendered, no doubt.

Well, there’s your sad crew of anti-recall characters. Here’s a thought: let’s sweep the whole rotten Phalanx of Failure into the garbage can of Fullerton history – once and for all!

Can anybody say protest at the Villa del Sol?

October 2, 2011Behind Closed Doors

More “Leadership” Poultry Courtesy of Loretta Sanchez

by The Desert Rat181 Comments

When I was a kid, liberals were all about civil rights, social justice, anti-police corruption, women’s rights, etc., etc., etc.

Maybe professorial tenure, home mortgage interest deductions, and appointment to a City Community Service Commission or Bicycle Committee tends to make one complaisant. I don’t know.

In the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of the FPD, and the revelation of a potential serial sex offender in FPD uniform, Fullerton’s liberals have been silent as a graveyard. A great letter to the Fullerton Observer by a guy named Steve Baxter sums up the situation to perfection.

Maybe this silence marks the difference between a statist liberal and what is now being called a “progressive.” I don’t know.

But one thing I do know: the first category includes our esteemed Congressional She-Bear, Loretta Sanchez, whose district includes south-central Fullerton, as well as some of the locations where women allege they were sexually assaulted in the backseat of an FPD patrol car!

Here’s an e-mail from one of the recall petition signature gatherers who re-enforces the ugly truth that Ed Royce isn’t our only congressional problem.

I was at the Stater Brothers today with my recall petition and I had an interesting conversation with a 50-ish red-headed woman who happens to work for Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. I asked her if she was interested in signing my petition to recall our City Councilman and Mayor and was sort of shocked when she declined. As she was putting away her groceries I asked her what Ms. Sanchez position was on the recent events that had occurred in Fullerton, and she told me that Ms. Sanchez was staying out of the matter because it didn’t involve her constituents. I said that that was odd because I had voted for her in the last election and that I live in West Fullerton. She said that Loretta’s district only encompassed a sliver of Fullerton and that where Kelly Thomas was beaten to death was out of her district!

I sort of left it at that, however when I got home and checked the district map for Loretta Sanchez I saw that not only is my home in her district, but the site where Kelly Thomas was beaten to death is maybe 200 feet from the boundary.

Is there any way that you guys can inspire this champion of women’s rights to engage in what’s going on here in Fullerton? I got the distinct impression that Loretta Sanchez was looking to stay out of the fray and distance herself from what’s going on in her district, and I think that it’s important that she get involved or make a statement on what her position is pertaining to violations of Kelly Thomas’s civil rights, as well as the violation of the these recent allegations of sexual assault under color of authority by members of the the Fullerton Police department.

Best Regards,

p.s. I’ve changed my political affiliation to “decline to state” on my voter registration so there is no love lost on Loretta.

http://lorettasanchez.house.gov/our-district/district-map

It’s pretty obvious that Ms. Sanchez has seen her main chance in trying to ignore things in Fullerton and hope like hell that no one will ever associate her with what was done, or in her case what hasn’t been done. Comically Ms. Loretta found time from her busy schedule to attend the Fullerton Library re-opening – a building also not in her district – while 500 feet away people of good will were protesting the murder of a helpless homeless man at the hands of the FPD.

Disgustingly, Sanchez seems a lot more interested in the civil rights of Vietnamese women (who live eight thousand miles outsider her district) than with her own constituents.

Sanchez could get the Department of Justice fired up with a phone call. But even that smallest of gestures would require a modicum of courage.

September 20, 2011September 20, 2011Dead heads

Don Bankhead, Champion of Ethics and Civil Rights!

by The Desert Rat240 Comments

Bankhead3 — Laughing all the way to the Blank. Head.

But not recently.

Politicians should always be careful about what they say. The public has a nasty habit of remembering their pronouncements.

Back in 1990 during his failed bid for County Sheriff (remember, right before his “total disability” pension claim), Don Bankhead needed a hook to get folks interested in his bad comb-over, lackluster self. So he discovered that he was really a reformer who was interested in establishing an “ethics unit” at the OCSD, you know to clean up the mess over there. Read all about it in an LA Times article, here. Enjoy the rich irony as Bankhead pontificates:

“We’ll put the shine back on the badge and we’ll all have a good clean Sheriff’s Department,” Bankhead said. “If no one’s rights are violated, we won’t get sued.”

Now fast forward to Tuesday night’s Fullerton City Council Closed Session Agenda that is littered with lawsuits against Fullerton and its lawless police department. If ever there was a department in need of an ethics unit it would be the FPD – over which Bankhead has refused to provide civilian oversight since 1988.

In the past few months the media has learned of FPD personnel charged, convicted, or alleged to have participated in grand theft, credit card fraud, kidnapping and sexual battery, assault, false arrest, and perjury, all culminating in the brutal bludgeoning death of a mentally-ill homeless man. And Mr. Ethics? Silent as a graveyard.

A word of advice, Mr. Bankhead. Time to get going establishing that ethics unit where it will do the most good. In your own department.

September 16, 2011September 16, 2011Dead heads

The Monumental Misrule of Don Bankhead

by The Desert Rat76 Comments

Yes it’s been a long, long time. When he first climbed the steps to his throne and surveyed his Fullerton domain the year was 1988. Ronald Reagan was president.

Don Bankhead has been on the Fullerton City Council for 23 years. With a few weeks off for bad behavior – an unnecessary Utility Tax and subsequent recall in 1994 – this monument to sub-mediocrity has been demonstrating his dubious mental faculties every other Tuesday night since dirt was young.

I will always fondly remember when Dick Ackerman referred to him as Don Blankhead. Now how many times did Don hear that as his fellow Fullerton cops chuckled at the dunderhead behind his back?

So now let’s take a moment or two to review Mr. Bankhead’s singularly inept career in Fullerton.

Back in 1988 Bankhead tried to get the job of Fullerton Chief of Police. He failed when the council chose somebody else. Ironically, Dick Ackerman who was on the Council then, was well aware of Blankhead’s utter incompetence. And so, out of spite, he ran for the city council: Lo and Behold he won! On the city council he believed that no one would would laugh at him anymore. And he believed people would laugh with him instead of at him. He was wrong.

Bankhead also suddenly revealed what he never told anybody when he interviewed for the Chief job, or even when he ran for County Sheriff in 1990: that he was a virtual cripple from a series of earlier alleged mishaps that, if true, would have made Inspector Clouseau look like an Olympic gymnast. His scam made the news, but the nice people in Fullerton were too polite to say anything. But we all knew.

Throughout the 1990s, Bankhead supported every single Redevelopment subsidy, boondoggle and giveaway of public money to fly-by-night developers; here is my pithy summation.

In the past ten years he has smiled that dim, senile smile as he turned downtown Fullerton into a booze-soaked battle field that costs the taxpayers of Fullerton $1.5 million every single year, all to the benefit his cynical and parasitical “supporters.” He had the effrontery to claim that without his interventionist Redevelopment Fullerton itself would be a ghost town! He tried to lie his way out of that idiocy. It didn’t work.

or to put it another way:

A darling of the cop union he voted for the bank-breaking 3@50 pension formula that has created a massive and permanent unfunded liability for the taxpayers of Fullerton; he continuously voted for the illegal 10% utility tax on the water ratepayers of Fullerton, money that has gone to pay his own bloated pension.

Of course Bankhead was propped up every step of the way by his “public safety” union allies for whom he performed such acts of generosity with our money.

What Bankhead doesn’t want anyone to know is that in the course of his political career he has pulled down hundreds of thousands of dollars snoozing through footling meetings of various agencies and commissions about which he knows absolutely nothing – but for which he applied the same rubber stamp he has wielded so disastrously in Fullerton.

Although Bankhead is a Republican, and supposed to be some sort of conservative, the inescapable fact is that he is big-government in a big way. And if big-government could help him or his developer buddies score big, so much the better. After all who was really watching? FFFF, that’s who. Here we busted Bankhead for blowing $1200 staying at a four star Long Beach Hotel, on our dime – a mere 25 miles from his house in Fullerton!

This year, finally, the extent to which Bankhead has aided and abetted an incompetent and criminal police department has finally surfaced, and the extent of the damage this simpleton has caused Fullerton has become crystal clear.

Will Bankhead become the first man in California history to be recalled from the same office? Let’s work for it!

Don Bankhead, this is your life: a sad, belabored death march of cognitive meltdown, incompetence, lackeydom, and buffoonery. Fortunately your quarter century misrule is coming to a merciful conclusion. Fullerton is finally waking up and finally deciding that it wants real leaders – not clownish cartoons – on its city council.

September 2, 2011September 2, 2011Dead heads

Doc Hee Haw, H2O and Hitler?

by The Desert Rat26 Comments

One of the reasons F. Dick Jones is being recalled is his loyal support of an illegal 10% tax tagged on to Fullerton’s water users. We’ve written about this before. So here’s a fun replay post on the subject just to show you the befuddlement of our illustrious mayor.

– Mr. Peabody

A reasonable person might well be excused for wondering how a balanced individual would connect Adolf Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland with a proposed water rate increase. Hell, we’ve been watching the cornpone brayings of Doc “Hee Haw” Jones for so long that no idiocy he spouts is surprising. Enjoy this erudition:

Okay forget the Hitler reference that might be more germane to a discussion on government economic policy such as Redevelopment. The real point of sharing this video is to show how Dick Hee Haw casually countenances the 10% in lieu “fee” rip-off because it isn’t “wasted,” i.e. is spent on things like cops. Forget the fact that Jones voted in the deplorable public safety 3 @ 50 that has buried Fullerton in retirement unfunded liability; forget that cops do nothing to provide water to the water rate payer; but, consider this: THE FRANCHISE FEE IS NOTHING BUT A TAX ON THE WATER USERS OF FULLERTON TO HELP PROP UP CITY HALL’S NON-WATER RELATED BUDGET.

A water rate increase automatically increases the lieu fee that is based on gross revenue, plain and simple. Well, not simple enough for Doc Phogbound to wrap his pea-sized brain around, apparently. Jones is all about funding big government by hook or by crook, and the phonier the scam, the better.

August 6, 2011August 21, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Fullerton Police Department Dysfunction

by The Desert Rat185 Comments

Out here on Screech Owl Road I’ve been tuning in on the doings in sleepy little Fullerton that is sleepy no more. It’s hard to miss. You’ve made world-wide news – and not in the way anybody wants to become famous.

Anyway, I got to wondering the other day about the Police Department spokeshole, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a bumbling oaf who has made a real hash out of public relations in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas homicide.

For a while I tried to make sense of the weird things he was saying, and obviously leaking to selected individuals, individuals who then exercised no intellectual scrutiny over what they were disseminating.

My friends back in Fullerton informed me that Goodrich is a shot-caller in the Fullerton Police Officers Association (FPOA), the local cop union. These are the boys (and girls) in blue who pour tens of thousands of dollars into Fullerton elections to get the most simple minded pro-cop lackeys they can find into office. Over the years they have succeeded marvelously.

Then all of Goodrich’s bullshit started to make sense: Kelly Thomas ran; he was combative; he had “legal documents” that didn’t belong to him; a photograph of a dirty, muscular, mean-looking guy was released purporting to be a two-year old booking picture of Thomas; two cops suffered “broken bones” in the encounter. All this trash was floated out to the public to discredit the victim and divert attention from the horrific bludgeoning death perpetrated by the police.

Of course, later it was revealed that there were no broken bones (the cops were back on the street); the identity of the man in the picture was challenged; the so-called legal documents in Thomas’s possession was trash Kelly had fished out of a dumpster; reports from people who knew him that Thomas was basically a harmless dude.

So who does Goodrich really work for? Fullerton taxpayers pay his salary, but it is crystal clear that he he is working for his brethren in the FPOA and will do anything he can to obfuscate, obscure, misdirect and mislead you – the very people who pay his lavish $130,000 a year salary plus benefits.

This becomes even more troublesome when you consider that he is one of the leaders of the union that has hired a lawyer to defend the six cops that participated in the Thomas beat down.

Who in God’s name permits a union officer be the official spokesman for a city department? The egregious Chief Mike Sellers, for one. And, naturally, the ex-cops on the city council Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead, as well as the buffoonish Dick Jones, of course – another individual embraced by the cop union.

Well this crap has got to stop. Sellers should be fired of course, and he should take his union spokesman with him when he goes.