"Dick" Ackerman Archives - Page 7 of 9 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 2, 2012February 7, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

So Who Do Downtown Developers Support?

Update: Gentle Friends, I forgot to remind you that Pelican Ontario was also shaken down, er, contributed $300 to Pam Keller for her Fullerton Collaborative just ’cause they care so darn much for Fullerton.

Here’s a snippet from the anti-recall Protect Fullerton Form 460 – indicating a healthy contribution from Pelican Ontario LLC.

What is Pelican Ontario? Why that’s the partnership proposing “Amerige Court,” that god-awful downtown Fullerton monstrosity in which millions of dollars worth of land is to be given to the developer for free. What’s that you say? Free? Of course. Because to people like McKinley, Jones, and Bankhead giving public resources to private interests without due consideration isn’t a gift of public funds, it’s being pro-business. We get stuck with the traffic and they get the campaign contributions.

You have to admit it takes a lot of nerve to attack Tony Bushala as a downtown developer when he isn’t, and at the same time take the money from people who have millions of reasons to prop up the Three Dyspeptic Dinosaurs. But these worthies are not bothered by ethical nuisances like hypocrisy.

February 1, 2012February 1, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Bankhead, Jones and McKinley Are Proud of Their Supporters

by Joe Sipowicz136 Comments

View the Report

The Anti-recall squad is boasting of its broad range of fundraising support, including developers, city contractors, and the police union. Naturally the Fullerton cops have given liberally to the defense of the Three Dithering Dinosaurs – a whopping $19,000 last fall. If you peruse the FPOA’s Form 460 you will certainly discover some familiar names. Names like Goodrich, Mater, Tong, Hampton, Nguyen, Mejia, Power, Siliceo, Coffman, Blatney, Craig, Thayer, Wren and other by now familiar characters who have a vested interest in supporting the sclerotic regime that has permitted a Culture of Corruption at the Fullerton Police Department.

But the names that really jump out at you are serial sex pervert Albert Rincon, and the two goons, Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, who have been charged with the murder of Kelly Thomas. I don’t know about you, but I would just feel ashamed having those names on my list of supporters. But apparently shame is not an emotion experienced by Mssrs. Bankhead, Jones and McKinley . These fine gentlemen say they are proud to be supported by law enforcement.

Well, I predict that they are going to come to regret that pride.

January 23, 2012January 23, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Salutation From The Great Lakes State

by admin37 Comments

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!

January 22, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Don Bankhead The Perpetual Politician

by Jan Florys Dog46 Comments

Here’s a clip of the Channel 4 coverage of the Recall signatures submission.

It’s entertaining and sort of sad at the same time. The sad part is the sight of the lonely “no recall” sign in Don Bankhead’s front yard, and of course the interview with Bankhead who seems completely lost, as usual. His wishful thinking about bad signatures is really sort of pathetic, and you might even begin to feel a sort of pity for the old fool. But of course he loses potential sympathy by claiming to rely on the experience of those with more campaign experience that he. The inference is clear enough: Good Ol’ Don is just an amateur, citizen-type elected representative: an innocent octogenarian babe in the woods.

But wait a minute! Let’s back up that bus and check out Lunkhead’s electoral experience:

1988 – Fullerton City Council

1990 – County Sheriff

1992 – FCC

1994 – recall from FCC (June)

1994 – election to a different seat FCC (November)

1998 – FCC

2000 – California State Assembly Republican Primary

2002 – FCC

2006 – FCC

2010 – FCC

That’s ten elections in 23 years!

Jebus O’ Jebus. Bankhead is addicted to running for public office. He craves it like a cheap junkie craves black tar heroin. This June’s recall election will mark his eleventh election. Now it might be a bit unfair to count recall elections in the mix, but, nevertheless I humbly submit that there is no one in OC more with more political experience than Bankhead. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

January 21, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

The Wisdom of Hollis Dugan

by admin63 Comments

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.

January 20, 2012January 23, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Amateur Hour at Anti-recall HQ

by Joe Sipowicz29 Comments

Ackerslime2 — I'll be happy to take your money and waste it. Been doing that for years.

How many tens of thousands of dollars of Pat McKinley’s pension bucks have Anti-recall leaders “Dick” Ackerman and Dave “Dick” Ellis squandered so far?

The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing life form conferred no added intelligence.

Tens of thousands? Here’s a hopeful blurb from Dick Ellis’ pathetic website:

Rescission Cards Flood In After Mailer Exposes Over 80 Bushala Code Enforcement Violations
Click here to view

Uh, yeah, right. Those were the cards wishfully cast out, blindly, into a sea of possible Recall signatories. The idea was that some folks would take back their recall signatures when they learned what a monster Tony Bushala is.

The “flood” turned out to be more of a trickle that evaporated before it could even form a puddle.

Now that signatures have been submitted, we also know the fruits of Dick Ackerman’s campaign genius: 145 cards returned for each of the Three Dithering Dinosaurs. 145. And many of those are the names of dead jazz musicians, infamous criminals, and assorted fictional movie characters living at impossible addresses.

Consider that when compared to over 17,000 signatures gathered for the Recall on each of the Ossified Fossils and you will understand the breadth and depth of the Anti-recall failure. And be sure to recall Pat McKinley’s winning margin in 2010 – 90 votes.

How many tens of thousands of dollars were wasted on the Anti-recall mass mailing efforts? I don’t know. But I suggest that if you want to find out, you inquire of the experts in wasting our money: Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley.

January 19, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Bulls Eye! Charges of Illegal Lobbying Leveled Against Anti-Recall Team Leader

by Grover Cleveland44 Comments

Well, really, are you surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Political fixer, bag man, phony charity rip-off artist, carpetbagging spouse, lynch-type mob manager, lobbyist and, not coincidentally, head of the Fullerton anti-recall effort, Dick Ackerman, is about to be haunted by the Ghost of Crookedness Past.

Vern Nelson, the editor of the Orange Juice Blog, and staunch defender of the OC Fairgrounds against a swindle set up by Toad-in-Residence (and, not surprisingly, Anti-recall campaign manager) Dave Ellis, will be delivering a challenge to the DA’s whitewash of Dick Ackerman’s role as an illegal lobbyist in the slimy attempt to sell off the Fair to a group of insiders composed of Fair Board members themselves.

The dirty deal took place in the summer of ’09 when Ackerman started making calls to legislators on behalf of enabling legislation (that he only admits he “helped write”) even though he, himself had been out of office for less than a year – in direct violation of State law. Predictably, our honorable DA gave Ackerman a clean bill of health in the fall of 2010; but Lo and Behold!, in early 2011 Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC uncovered Ackerman’s actual billing records! You know, those embarrassing records the DA didn’t bother to look for. These records indicate illegal calls to legislators – which is exactly what Ackerman apparently told DA investigators he didn’t do. Uh, oh! Dick’s in a wringer!

When Santana published his discoveries, DA spoksholetress Susan Kang was quick with the smarmy defense: we reached the conclusion we did based on the evidence we had.

Wow. It’s amazing what you can’t find when you don’t look!

Well, Nelson is now calling Ms. Kang’s bluff and challenging on our do-nothing DA to do his job by re-opening the Ackerman case.

A year has passed, but the Statute of Limitations hasn’t.

January 15, 2012January 16, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

The Shameful Water Triple (Er, Quadruple) Dip

by The Desert Rat78 Comments

UPDATE: Of course the comment from “Do the math” is right on the money. The 10% in-lieu fee is defined as a percentage of gross revenue – including the in-lieu fee itself! This tricky little dodge adds 10% of the 10% – an add-on of yet another 1% to the cost of your water bill! Uh, oh! Quadruple dip!

– The Desert Rat

Way back in 1970 the Fullerton City Council passed Resolution No. 5184 dictating that 10% of the gross revenue collected by the Water Department was a reasonable amount to cover ancillary costs from supporting City departments. Here’s the key language from the Resolution:

That an amount equal to ten percent of the gross annual water sales of the Municipal Utilities Department during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1970 is hereby transferred to the General Fund in payment for the services of the Finance Department of the City and of the City Administrator, the City Attorney and the City Clerk to the Municipal Utilities Department of the City as a part of the operating costs of the waterworks system of the City during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1970.

That at the end of the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1971 and at the end of every fiscal year thereafter, a sum equal to ten percent of the gross annual water sales of the Municipal Utilities Department of the City shall be transferred to the general Fund of the City in payment for the services, during such fiscal year, of the Finance Department of the City and of the City Administrator, the City Attorney and the City Clerk to the Municipal Utilities Department of the City.

What sort of justification proved that 10% of the water revenue in 1970 should have gone to the General Fund is anybody’s guess.

In 1982 the City Council passed an ordinance permitting itself the authority to collect an “in-lieu” fee from the water utility as a fixed percentage of revenue. Despite the name change, the City continued to add the historic 10% to Fullerton’s water bills, and rake it off directly into the General Fund – without so much as a second thought.

A bit confusing? Not really. The original justification for the fuzzy 10% figure was to reimburse the City for vague incurred costs; calling it an in-lieu fee never changed the inescapable fact that the 10% amount was supposed to pay for actual costs associated with running the waterworks. Either way, as of 1997 and the implementation of Prop. 218, that became illegal.

Flash forward to today, and peruse this year’s budget documents. The Water Fund is Fund 44. Check out the total column on the right.

Summary of Appropriations by Fund.

Notice the amount directly allocated in the 2011-12 budget to the City Manager and Administration: $1.7 million ($29,917 + $1,678,962).

Now let’s see some actual charges. Observe Fiscal year 2009-10, over there, in the left column.

Summary of Expenditures and Appropriations by Fund

Good grief! As you might have guessed (based on this year’s budget), in 2009-10 the City directly charged the Water Fund over $1.5 million for the City Council, City Manager, and Administrative Services; plus fifty grand for Human Resources, and $100,000 for Community Development!

And this means that those services that were originally being used to justify the 10% levy on our water bills are already being charged directly to the General Fund. Double Dip!

Of course it gets worse. We now know the 10% is a double dip; but hold on to your water bill. Because the directly charged costs for “administration” are considered part of the base waterworks cost; the automatic 10% in-lieu fee (which was supposed to pay for “administration” but that pays for nothing), is applied to that! That increase this year is at least $170,000, if you add 10% to that $1.7 million figure we saw in the first table. Triple Dip!

And that, Friends, is a triple gainer off the high board and right into the deep end of the pool.

January 2, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Never Got Our Day In Court

by admin124 Comments

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.

January 1, 2012January 1, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds?

by Mr. Peabody40 Comments

Remember the assertion by dithering dinosaur Don Bankhead that without Redevelopment, Fullerton would be a ghost town?

Or, to put it another way:

Is Fullerton doomed to become a ghost town? Bankhead thinks so or he wouldn’t have said it, right?

Or could Fullerton become an incubator of interesting and profitable businesses run by people whose ideas are not grounded in government subsidies and write-downs, gifts, and grants? Old big-government liberals like Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley have more faith in central government economic intervention and subsidy than they do in any free market ideals. And that’s how we ended up with a saloon in every other building in downtown Fullerton.

What do you think?