Effervescent Emancipator! Dinosaurs, brick veneer, burning money? Yes, Friends, it’s outta here! Touch ’em all!
Congratulations to the Fullerton Savage for the winning entry in our city seal contest. Fullerton truly has much to be proud of.
Savage, your new Nancy Sanchez CD is on the way.
Molly McClannahan used to call Alan Morton “The Conscience of Fullerton.”
At some point back in the 1990’s, the city retained an expensive consultant to design a sign to be painted on the Union Pacific bridge (my idea) over Harbor Blvd. Alan voluntarily designed the “Welcome to Downtown Fullerton” sign on his home computer, saving the city thousands of dollars.
Alan would constantly question city staff’s wisdom of using legal size paper for staff reports instead of letter size, which is what they use today. Staff’s answer was that they had no choice because the file cabinets were designed for legal size paper.
One of my all time favorite council meetings (I’ll have to YouTube it someday) was when Alan chucked an illegally placed Sa For Council sign during the public comments and the sign almost hit Sa en la cabesa. You go Alan!
I believe it was the great recall that really got Alan energized as an activist. From there, it was off to the races for Alan. He continuously ragged on the council to televise council meetings, and now they are. He would speak on almost every important item on the council’s agenda. His activism helped save Fullerton taxpayers millions of dollars.
Recently, at the ripe age of 86, Alan was having breakfast with three of his buddies. While chatting with one of the servers, Alan took a deep breath and that was it for our feisty old Friend. Alan gave of himself and asked for nothing in return. People like Alan Morton are Fullerton’s Future.
Quite recently Dan Chiemlewski of the deadly boring LiberalOC blog put up a post about censorship and civility or something. I noted this pearl from the self-righteous and sanctimonious Dan C., who styles himself a real reporter:
Comments on FFFF are a free for all and so is sock puppetry (thanks guys for that visit to my home by the Anaheim Police Department on the day of my son’s graduation for a comment by a “Dan Chimichanga-Cub Reporter” who threatened to cut Harry Sidhu’s brake lines. I’m sure you found it hysterical),
Well, here’s what the commenter actually said.
#9 by Dan Chimichanga, Cub Reporter on June 16, 2010
Sidhu better check his brake lines every time he gets into a car between now and November. That’s all I’m saying.
Now the context of the post (and others like it at about the same time) were all about how Dan Cs carpetbagging darling Lorri Galloway had vaulted back into third place in the 2010 4th District Supe’s race. Mr. Cub Reporter got the message and commented: if Hairbag Sidhu were to pull out of the race, then Anaheim Hills’ Precious Princess might assume the second position in the fall run off against Shawn Nelson. Hence the warning about brake linings was a snide shot at Galloway’s vaulting ambition perhaps playing out by disabling one of Hairball’s BMWs. That’s perfectly obvious to anyone who put the comment in context. It was joke.
Okay it wasn’t very funny, but it sure wasn’t a threat. And anybody who tried to make it into one was either disingenuous or a damn fool. And anybody who keeps persisting in this nonsense is deliberately lying. Not the sort of behavior you’d expect from a proud member of the OC journalism corps. Come to think of it I wonder what part Dan C. might have played in reporting that alleged “threat” to the Anaheim PD in the first place.
Sock puppet, out.
Could the real reason that Fullerton School District superintendent Herr Doktor Mitch Hovey told his IT guy to deny FSD network access to our blog was because some of the district employees were addicted to our humble little blog and spending way too much of our (tax payers) dime/time blogging and not working?
Well, that sure seems plausible. And it’s true that we have been a lot less than enthusiastic about some of the goings on at District HQ, from the bogus laptop scam to the Board’s congenital rubber stamping. Oh, and yeah, the Pam Keller Collaborative swindle. That probably stirred up some resentment among the rank and file.
Yet, instead of telling the employees to knock off the blogging and getting back to work, it appears that the good doctor simply denied them access to our blog. And only our blog. I’m sure those same employees are still surfing the internet; it’s sort of like an addiction, and as with most addicts when they give up one addiction they replace it with another.
So I have to wonder what we are being replaced with. Youtube, OC Weekly personal ads, Hulu?
And I also have to wonder who is next on the censorship hit parade.
One of the benefits of writing for the Best Blog OC 2010 is that they let you write anything you want.
And so I present this: the final moments of my alma mater Cal Tech’s great victory over the sad geeks at Occidental College. It’s been 25 years since we won a league basketball game. In that time we have produced 9 Nobel laureates.
Oxy. Part-time school of Barry Obama and intellectual womb of Chris Norby.
Well, it’ll probably be another 25 years ’til my homies win another conference game, so please indulge my enjoyment.
Today the ever-increasingly pathetic OC Register ran an editorial trumpeting the creation of something called the Association of California Cities, a homespun effort to replace the California League of Cities. The Register wants us to believe that anything that replaces the League is a good thing. To which I respond: not so fast.
Here’s a quote from the article, the first couple of paragraphs dutifully and immediately passed along verbatim by Red County repuglican flunky Matthew J. Cunningham:
Orange County cities often have stood for sensible, taxpayer-friendly municipal reform in a state where fiscal sanity is the exception rather than the rule. So, while we applaud the 21 O.C. cities that left the League of California Cities (and its Orange County division) and started their own Association of California Cities Orange County, we also want to ask, “What took you so long?”
We’ve long had a beef with the Sacramento-based League, which is essentially a taxpayer-funded (dues come from city coffers) lobbying organization that tilts toward big government. Currently, the League is battling Gov. Jerry Brown’s sensible plan to close down the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies – those fiscally profligate entities that abuse eminent domain and dole out corporate welfare to companies that build development projects hatched in City Hall.
I can’t remember any OC cities that “stood for sensible, taxpayer friendly municipal reform…” so that’s a load of manure right there. But notice the anti-Redevelopment hook there at the end of the second paragraph. Cunningham obviously did. But he didn’t bother passing along the very next tidbit from the editorial:
Certainly, one finds support for redevelopment among Orange County officials, including some whose cities have fled the League…
Well Jesus H.Crisco, that’s the understatement of the freaking year! Is there a single municipality in OC that isn’t addicted to Redevelopment like a low grade junkie is to black tar heroin?
The Rag pathetically goes on to cite as some sort of local OC accomplishment the totally discredited Anaheim “Freedom Friendly” policy of “upzoning” property, a conspiracy that put dozens of businesses out of business, hundreds of workers out of work, that was engineered to produce vast profits for Kurt Pringle’s clients, and that has left the Anaheim city scape cratered, dark and dismal. The editorialists who are employed by The Register may think we can’t tell the difference, but boy are they wrong.
Of course you can check out the leadership of the new Association. It doesn’t inspire any sort of confidence. In the roster we find a sad collection of small town political hacks, bag men (and women), and poseurs whose only true resentment of the League is likely based on the fact that it precludes them from cashing in on anything. Oh, yeah we know the sort: the brain dead, yet greedy city council members who make up the boards of things like the OCTA, the Vector Control District, and the Sanitation District: just the perfect sort of drones who can be manipulated to direct “policy” in the direction of the Pringles, Dick Ackermans and John Lewises of the oh, so conservative Orange County.
Cunningham claims the inaugural dinner was the scene of near euphoria. Eu-effing-phoria. For him and people like him who cash in on government largess there was probably every reason to feel giddy.
The real question is why should we poor plantation hands substitute one collection of overseers for another?
First off, let’s get one thing clear. Some of my best friends are liberals. We go way back. They are confused and misguided, but I like them and they like me (I think).
Then there are some of the local Democrats who are no better than our OC repuglican crew – except that they inhabit a Red County and don’t get to tap into the scratch. You know who I mean: The sad sacks at Liberal OC, for for whom no idiot Democrat is too low or too stupid to dream up outlandish apologies.
It seems that the chief of this scabrous tribe has got it into his noggin to criticize my friend Travis Kiger for an incomplete and unsatisfactory application to the Fullerton Planning Commission. Dan Chmielewski thinks this is some sort of breech of transparency and takes Travis to task as some sort of hypocrite. Of course, the idea of anyone who prostitutes himself for Boss Agran’s crooked Irvine machine talking about transparency is downright laughable.
Alas, Travis didn’t list an employer or a single reference. Well so what? The appointment is a recommendation from a City Councilman (Bruce Whtaker) who is personally responsible for the appointment. And that’s what we promote here: accountability. Dan C and his cohorts should try it some time.
Here’s the truth: upon assuming office Travis will have to submit a Form 700 and then Curious Dan and Jerbal Cunningham can have a look at his financial interests. And that’s transparency.
The other day, we posted about some pea-brained, freeze-dried idiot who tried to link our alleged hate-speak on the type of violence perpetrated by some loonatic in Arizona.
Well, shit-howdy, that didn’t seem quite fair. We here at FFFF don’t advocate violence. But if we did, we might advocate slappin’ yer favorite Fullerton official up along side the head with a 350 pound, frozen albacore. But don’t count on using pointed objects, fire arms, slingshots, or any other dangerous objects. No, it’s gotta be a 350 pound tuna. And it’s gotta be frozen.
The Friends won a minor victory in the courtroom today as our motion to (s)quash a subpoena was granted by an Orange County Superior Court judge. The subpoena would have compelled us to reveal identifying information of a blog commenter to an Anaheim city employee, who is suing an anonymous John Doe for defamation.
A series of arguments filed just before the hearing centered on the inherent nature of Friends for Fullerton’s Future itself. Is it a business, an unincorporated association, a global shadow conspiracy, or just an Internet domain? The judge didn’t want to go there. And really, who can blame him?
So we won on a technicality and the plaintiff vowed to serve the subpoena again. Outside the courtroom we implored her to focus on the nasty stuff left on other websites and drop the case against FFFF’s comparatively mild missive, leaving it to whither away into Internet nothingness where is just may well belong.
Will she listen? Doubtful. She seems as hardheaded as we are.