Boohooism Archives - Page 34 of 38 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

June 24, 2010June 24, 2010Boohooism

Jobs Jobs Jobs!

That was Hide and Seek Sidhu’s campaign mantra. And it seems as if his pals at the OCEA are serious about creating jobs, too. Here is an entry from craigslist a helpful Friend forwarded:

Communications Coordinator

Date: 2010-06-23, 9:07AM

The Orange County Employees Association was established in 1937 and represents many employees of the County of Orange and numerous cities and districts in Orange County. We are looking for a person with creative and organized thinking, excellent multi-tasking skills, outgoing personality and a desire for a career in a people-oriented field. This position requires an enthusiastic individual, self-motivated, who strives to get the job done right, exercises good judgment, pays attention to detail, and is always willing to learn something new. We are located in Santa Ana and would prefer that the successful candidate live within 20 miles of our office.

Job Expectations:

Under limited supervision, provide a wide variety of moderately complex communication services, including but not limited to developing a quarterly magazine, updating website content, writing articles, and administering election campaigns. Required to have an in-depth knowledge of journalism principles and practices and English composition.

• Must have some journalistic experience and be able to demonstrate the ability to write in a clear, concise, creative and expeditious manner.

• In a very fast paced environment, have the ability to be well organized, creative, remember complex tasks and follow through daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.

• Supervise and work closely with Communications Coordinator (Graphic Designer).

• Serve as Senior Editor of the quarterly magazine; plan and produce each issue from beginning to end, including identifying articles, writing articles, and developing and working with others regarding ideas for magazine layout. Work closely with printing company and post office.

• Manage website content. Create content to be posted daily or weekly, ensure that the website is up-to-date. Recommend major changes to website design, direction and content to ensure it accurately represents and communicates information.

• Must be able to work on multiple assignments simultaneously, use common sense and experience to prioritize work and budget time according to the importance of the project and the time available. Assignments must often be completed under tight deadlines.

• Develop and produce presentations, determine focus and format of presentations, research and develop editorial and graphic content, compile necessary materials.

• Be highly skilled in the use of computers and the internet, with quick working knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook. Website experience highly desired.

• Establish schedules, strategies and communications methods for providing effective communications and marketing programs that promote OCEA’s goals.

• Consistently follow through assignments to completion, honor deadlines, be detail-oriented and punctual at all times. When needed, work afterhours to get the job done without being asked.

• Be willing to assist others, and commit to placing team and organizational goals ahead of personal ambition.

• Must be dependable and at work each day.

• Must have a positive attitude.

• Work directly with staff, when needed, to proof or write necessary written materials.

• Responsible for the gathering, preparation and control of records for the Communications Division.

• Take photographs of a wide variety of onsite and offsite meetings, activities and events.

• May serve as member of a team on communications-related projects.

If you are interested in this exciting opportunity, please email your resume with a cover letter that includes salary history, and samples of your writing to employment@oceamember.org. We offer competitive salary with excellent benefits. No phone calls please.

Compensation: Competitive salary, paid medical, 12 holidays, sick time, comp time, 401k matching, pension
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Hmm. I got to thinking about this, and a natural candidate came to mind. Aw, come on. You were thinking the same thing, right? Go ahead, admit it:

Of course they will not be paying anybody 200 simoleons an hour, but hey, in this downturn a job’s a job, right?

June 19, 2010Boohooism

Everybody Talks The Talk

by admin11 Comments

fartboy1 — Us rock-ribbed Republicans believe in lots of transparency and accountability.

It’s true. Ask anybody. Everybody says they want accountability and transparency in government, especially political candidates; but those in authority have a lot of incentive to keep their doings free from risk – the risk of being exposed as responsible for some screw-up or other; and the risk of fighting the inertia produced by institutional dead weight in a gravity-free environment. And of course the ability to pass along lucrative contracts to their pals.

And all this bring me to the point of this essay: it’s time for the Orange County Board of Supervisors to take charge of semi-autonomous agencies that have been operating under the public radar. Two of these “hidden governments” spring most immediately to mind: the Children and Families Commission – that seems to have been operating as a cash cow for the local repuglican machine, and the OC Cemetary District, ditto.

The Children and Families Commission is a poster child for liberal, under-scrutinized government. You may agree with its goals and method of revenue collection. But even if whole-village child rearing and confiscatory income redistribution are your cup of tea, you have to admit that paying a connected political operative like Matthew J. Cunningham $200 an hour to update Facebook and read blogs and hand out toothbrushes must diminish from the resources available to actually help kids. And what’s with all the lobbying? Hundreds of thousands worth in any given year at the State level, with Anaheim’s mayor-for-hire Curt Pringle being the chief beneficiary.

And then there’s the Cemetery District that paid Pringle to find a new graveyard and paid him another $25,000 as bonus for finding a site in Brea. I’m not even sure if Brea is going to go along with this, but let’s hope Pringle’s fee included guaranteed entitlements from the city. But I digress. The real issue here is why the District hired Pringle at all to do the work of a real estate professional whose compensation would have been a partial commission from the seller, not the taxpayers.

Well, we’ve got some new blood on the 5th Floor of the Hall of Administration, and hopefully these guys will start to attend to these and other agencies that need to be examined, made accountable, taken over, and if appropriate, disbanded. Sure, the ‘pugs will squeal and squawk.

And that’s when you know you’re doing the right thing.

June 17, 2010June 17, 2010Boohooism

Bill Campbell Weeps For Human Relations

by Mr. Peabody11 Comments

Self-styled conservative 3rd District Supervisor Bill Campbell, who supported Harry Sidhu and who sits atop the Children and Families Commission – where he directs public largess to his pals and cronies, supports the OC Human Relations Commission.

Does he ever.

Here’s a clip of Big Bill actually choking up over the possibility that the Board of Supervisors might actually do the right thing and pull the taxpayer plug on this nonsense.

Notice that his focus is not on “measuring” anything, but is anecdotal and really is just about “showing” that the County has concerns for everyone. Typical.

Oh, and way to be in touch with your feelings, big guy.

June 16, 2010August 15, 2011Boohooism

The End May Be Near for Rusty Kennedy’s Human Relations Commisssion

by The Desert Rat16 Comments

An evanescent smile?

Talk about a hold over from a different era. No, not Rusty Kennedy (above), but the OC Human Relations Commission that has given him employment for Lo these many years.

But the final curtain may be about to ring down upon a typical 1970s “feel good” venture – a government operation that has no specific metrics for performance and no objective criteria for success. In other words, a typical lefty government program.

At their preliminary budget hearing on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors broke 2-1-1 on whether to keep this dinosaur around any more. Nguyen and Campbell who seem to want to cater to the unquestioning liberal vote want to keep this dinosaur; Campbell, whose adherents describe as conservative, was actually moved to tears by the very though of it. John Moorlach voted no. Pat Bates abstained for reasons that only Bates could possible explain.

Which means that when he votes on June 29, Shawn Nelson’s first budget decision may well involve pulling the plug on the comatose patient. Well, we say do it. Do Not Resuscitate!

June 16, 2010June 16, 2010Boohooism

Pacific Strategies – Normally Loquacious Hugh Hewitt Needs, Gets Help Organizing Thoughts

by Grover Cleveland12 Comments

Happy Hewitt — I was just too doggone busy to be bothered with it.

UPDATE: Gustavo Arellano has weighed in over at the OC Weekly.

Here’s a compilation of invoiced time Matthew J. Cunningham spent ghost writing for the supposed conservative Hugh Hewitt,who is a proud member of Rob Reiner’s Children and Families Commission.

Hewitt is Cunningham’s blog mentor who encouraged him to start what is today called “Red County”.

As noted above Hewitt is also a commissioner on the CFCOC, and thus Cunningham’s boss.

It’s odd that the presumably literate Hewitt can’t write his own letters and “op-ed” pieces if he believes so strongly in the Commission. He needs his buddy Cunningham to do it at a cool $200 an hour; and he’ll do it too, dammit, no matter how many hours it takes.

Of course it’s also odd that Hewitt is on this ridiculous commission in the first place, unless one recognizes it as a platform to dispense patronage to old pals.

June 16, 2010June 16, 2010Boohooism

Important 4th District Election Report

by admin24 Comments

lorrisfortune1-270x300 — 4 may not be your lucky number

In a stunning reversal of fortune, 4th District Supervisorial candidate Lorri Galloway has leaped back in front of now 4th place holder Art Brown by two dozen votes.

“We told you this would happen,” exulted campaign front man Dan Chmielewski. “Third place is great. 4th place would be a disaster. This really proves that Galloway lives in the district and that her heart lies here. I can’t tell you how proud we are of Lorri. This is all about relevance. I gave Lorri two hundred dollars and I am very relevant.

June 14, 2010June 14, 2010Boohooism

Downtown Fullerton Redevelopment Failure

by The Desert Rat11 Comments

In 1974 the various Redevelopment project areas were created in Fullerton, including the area that includes the downtown.

This was at the very tail end of the urban renewal era of social engineering that gutted old neighborhoods and districts across the land only to see the creation of bureaucrat-planned ghost towns and vast housing projects that nobody wanted to live in.

Although the downtown area was pretty much left to its own devices in the 70s, the 80s saw a new and noxious interest in re-inventing the area according to the whims of the Redevelopment manager and whatever cookie-cutter standardization idiocy was emanating from central planning workshops. Anybody remember the embarrassing concrete trestles?

True, the old businesses were leaving, put out of business by a new Mall culture. But what was the cure? Specialty retail, standardized street furniture, stamped concrete paving, design guidelines, and a plethora of silliness whose only aim seemed to be to create a roofless mall (an obviously pointless goal) – and provide employment for the Redevelopment manager. Hideous trees were planted that destroyed the sidewalks and on-street parking was removed, spelling final doom for what was left of the downtown businesses, but it was all part of the Master Plan, see? And new Master Plans kept being spit out every five years or so.

And while the City professed an interest in historic preservation, and even took credit for it, historic buildings kept disappearing – either completely or under a wall of brick veneer.

Things weren’t working. A ban on churches and pawn shops and junk yards couldn’t alter the fact that the low rents were pulling in businesses that weren’t “specialty retail.” They were mom and pop second hand stores masquerading as “antique” this and “vintage” that.

Ah! Much had been accomplished, but more work needed to be done. Job security for life!

The FFFF pages are strewn with the ugly history of the late eighties and the nineties when an unaccountable city staff engaged in boondoggle after boondoggle with a complaisant council going along every step of the way, and always taking credit for “revitalizing” downtown Fullerton.

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

Huge apartment blocks were approved, giving away millions in profits to favored developers through entitlements and grants. City streets were handed out like Monopoly deeds. The hope was that a captive residential audience would have to patronize downtown business. Synergy was the watchword of the day!

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

A new phenomenon was beginning to emerge in the late 90s. The subsidized restaurant. And a new booze culture was coalescing. Was it policy or accident? Who can say now. But what is inescapable is that for more than a decade the City’s actions and lack of actions had demonstrable effects. And the effects weren’t salutory. The restaurants morphed into bars and the bars morphed into bootleg night clubs and dance halls. The latter weren’t shut down; they were permitted. And then they were subsidized by the taxpayers with free fire water lines.

Every night the downtown area was filling up with drunken out of towners; fights, rapes, a murder. The City Manager wrung his hands. The downtown area was costing over a million dollars a year more to manage than it was bringing in in revenue.

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

In the 2000s the merry chase for revitalization continued apace with lustful Redevelopment eyes alighting on a vast Fox Theater project, cynically calculated to leverage popular interest in the Fox Theater. Aha! The anchor project that would make all the other pieces fall into place: success was at hand! Sure, we could move the McDonald’s a couple hundred feet. Six million? No problem! Environmental impacts? No big deal.

Then there is the Amerige Court monster. Aha! The anchor project that would make all the other pieces fall into place: success was at hand! Environmental impacts? No big deal.

And now Redevelopment in downtown Fullerton is 36 years old. Let’s put this in perspective: Fullerton was founded in 1886. And that means for 30% of its life span downtown Fullerton has had Redevelopment. And in 2010 the very sort of business that redevelopment bureaucrats find abhorrent starts up in the very heart of Redevelopment territory. See the irony yet? I do. It’s not about sex, it’s about failure. Oh, well.

Much has been accomplished, but clearly more work needs to be done.

June 13, 2010June 13, 2010Boohooism

Sex and The Liberal OC

by admin9 Comments

A few months ago at the NUFF blogger’s forum I was confronted by a near-hysterical guy babbling about anchor babies and who knows what else. I didn’t know who he was or what he was talking about. He was almost in tears.

Turns out he is a slightly unstable fellow called Claudio Gallegos – a Liberal OC blogger who was making stuff up about what he thought he saw on our blog.

Yesterday this odd fellow did a post on the same Adam Townsend article about “The Naughty Teddy” that we posted about.

Of course this Gallegos loon tried to blame Shawn Nelson for being behind the City’s effort to investigate this business even though the Townsend article said nothing about Nelson. He used Townsend’s article to claim that FFFF was collectively harassing the enterprising ladies who operate this store. Another casual lie of the sort that drives the Liberal OC engine.

Did poor Claudio bother to read the original post? If he had he would have seen that it was one person’s opinion and that many of our bloggers and regular commenters were okay with the use. And he would have realized that the gist of the post was an ironic condemnation of 40 years of Redevelopment failure in downtown Fullerton – as conceived by Redevelopment standards themselves! Of course all this presupposes a basic intellectual honesty from this guy, which of course would be a contradiction in terms. He linked to the Desert Rat’s post from yesterday, but not the original post. How dreary.

OC Liberal readers were offered a 20% discount on store merchandise, and I think that’s just great. Now Dan and Chris and Claudio know where they can do their early Christmas shopping.

June 10, 2010Boohooism

Doc Jones Brings Ashes to the Christmas Tree?

by admin5 Comments

Always a memorable quotation in every box. That’s the Doc Hee Haw product line. And ya never know what’s going to pop out.

Here is his ‘poneness wringing hands (or finger wiggling?!) about the heart-breaking budget cuts. You wouldn’t think you were dealing with a conservative, here, would you? Actually he sounds a Hell of a lot like a big gummint Dem; which is basically what he is.

A real conservative would relish taking the opportunity to cut back inflated salaries, bloated pensions, and silly services that are always “popular” with somebody or other. But no. I really believe him when he says how terrible it is to cut the budget.

And here is one of the basic conflicts we at FFFF have with our local Republican leaders who keep backing RINO nitwits like Jones simply because they are registered as Republicans.

Anyway go ahead and enjoy.

June 7, 2010June 7, 2010Boohooism

SIDHU SLAMS GALLOWAY!

by Mr. Peabody18 Comments

POST UPDATE FROM ADMIN: A DEMOCRAT FRIEND CALLED ME LAST NIGHT TO INFORM ME THAT SHE HAD RECEIVED A HIT MAILER (BELOW) ON SATURDAY. IT WAS THE SAME MAIL PIECE THAT HIDE-N-SEEK SIDHU HIT LORRI WITH BACK IN 2004. LOOKS LIKE HARRY’S FIGHTING WITH PRECIOUS FOR 2ND PLACE. WHAT’S NEXT, SIDHU HITS FAHER, ROSIE OR ART? WELL IF HE DOES, HE’D BETTER DO IT QUICK BECAUSE TODAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR MAIL.

At least he did in the 2004 campaign mailer a Friend forwarded to us. And we faithfully reproduce it below. The basis of Sidhu’s assertions come straight from an Orange County Register article by Marla Jo Fisher from 1995.

As you know we don’t have a lot of respect for old Hide and Seek, but hell, when you’re right, you’re right.

Ye gods! A history of multiple bankruptcies, tax liens, evictions and judgments, unaudited books. And she wants to be in charge of the County budget? Yikes!

Perhaps the most telling behavior described in the Fisher article is the creation of a new “charity” on the day before the previous one declared bankruptcy. Well, like the dopers say – ya gotta keep the buzz going.

Maybe the cute little teenager routine really works at dodging accountability for dubious behavior. But will it get her elected County Supervisor as a carpetbagger?

lorrigalloway — All that legal stuff got me a little dizzy...

The Galloway clan seems to be doing alright. Who knew the hopscotching “charity” business payed so well?