Yesterday teachers launched another demonstration along Harbor Boulevard to promote higher taxes (yours) to pay for higher pay and bennies (theirs). FFFF was once again on hand to remind folks of the hundreds of teachers in Fullerton pulling down more than 90K for nine month’s employment.
Yes, my jaw is retractable.
KFIs John and Ken were there too to engage in an intelligent conversation with the protesters as only they know how to do. And guess who was there to defend the indefensible? That’s right – Pam Keller – the prototypical Fullerton Boohoo out of whose mouth hardly anything intelligent has tumbled in living memory. But that has never kept her from opening it. Wide.
Hey Pam, your'e on the clock collaboratin', right?It's all about the kids you idiot!
In a follow-up post today The Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana describes the (lack of) investigation by our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas into the evident illegal lobbying of fellow repuglican Dick Ackerman. Of course the DA could find no wrondoing. Not looking for evidence is an excellent way of not finding any.
Now that Ackerman’s actual invoices have surfaced, revealing what we have know for over a year, and what was based on the Dickster’s own words, the DA seems to be a little nervous. Here’s what his spokesholess Susan Kang Schroeder had to say:
“The evidence we had supports the findings we made,” she said. “If anyone has further evidence that is contrary to the evidence we have, we’ll be glad to look at it. And it may bring us to a different result.”
Further evidence. Of course she means all that embarrassing stuff that would have actually been part of any sincere investigation in the first place, and that would have freed the DA from having to rely entirely on Ackerman’s say-so for the truth. But the important thing here is that the DA is apparently welcoming new evidence. And since that evidence has already been published on a blog and is in the public domain, may we assume a new and this time an honest investigation is in the offing?
The smile turned to painful grimmace as the appendage was pulled ever farther into the wringer.
Over at the Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana reports that his uncovering of Dick Ackerman’s billing logs from his days as a lobbyist for the rogue Fair Board has spurred a formal investigation by the State Fair Political Practices Commission.
See, former legislators are prohibited from lobbying their former colleagues for one year after their departure. Ackerman left the State Senate at the end of 2008 and started making those embarrassing calls in the summer of 2009 – in order to facilitate the sale of the Orange County Fair to a secret cabal made up of its own Boardmembers. We first wrote about that a-way back here in the fall of 2009 passing along the excellent work of the OC Progressive and Vern Nelson at the Orange Juice blog.
See that guy over there? He didn't do anything wrong. He told me to say that.
Of course the most embarrassing part of this slimy episode was the way one year later our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas tried to whitewash the whole stinking affair in order to protect his ‘puglet pals. See, T-Rack has plenty of time to harass Toyota and Muslim students at UCI, but apprently he has a lot less taste for going after political miscreants of either party.
But the truth will out, as they say. And the Ackerman deal just keeps resurfacing. Of course the FPPPC has no real authority except to levy fines and it looks to me like a real prosecutor is really what’s called for here.
Okay, we’ve had some harsh criticism of the Voice of OC in the past, but today Norberto Santana came out with a great expose about OC Fair-employed lobbyist Dick Ackerman, husband of former carpetbaggress Linda, both of whom are residents of Irvine.
I told the DA everything was on the up and up. And that's what he went with!
Last year our do-nothing DA whitewashed Ackerman’s role in the ’09 OC Fair sale matter, saying he didn’t lobby the Legislature in violation of State law. How did the DA reach this conclusion? It wasn’t through investigative work, that’s for damn sure. Naturally, Amen Corner repuglicans like Matthew J. Cunningham crowed when the whitewash came out, but they’ll be eating crow soon enough. See, Santana got hold of Ackerman’s Nossaman Law Firm’s original billing records. And even though those records were laundered through some “environmental” consulting firm called LSA, the details prove what we here at FFFF have known since the fall of 2009: Ackerman was acting as a lobbyist and that in 2010 the DA was covering it up. The Nossaman billing records show phone calls to members of the State Legislature at $500 an hour. And that was illegal.
I gotta eat the feathers, too?
We didn’t have the billing, of course. We just had Dicky-boy’s own words:
“In order for the fair to be sold, it would require budget language to authorize the state to sell it,” he said. “I did some preliminary work to get the language in the budget.”
Preliminary work? Well, that’s one way of describing it; and that pesky budget language sure wasn’t going to jump into the bill all by itself, now was it?
Well, Friends, don’t expect any legal remedies anytime soon. Just remember the name: Ackerman. When you hear it, or read it, or smell it, you can bet some monkey business is afoot.
The Fullerton new year brings with it a strange atavistic political regime: an elderly, under-informed, pro-staff, pro-Redevelopment, pro big government RINO majority. It sort of reminds me of the Ackerman-LeQuire-Catlin axis of ignorance that held sway in Fullerton in the 1980s. Things only got worse when Don Bankhead added his own special brand of undernourished intelligence to the equation in 1988.
So what does the new year portend? One thing to look for is the return to the old method of selection of city commissioners by committee – a committee made up of retired public employees who have the time and desire to weed out the intelligent, the skeptical, the individualistic sorts who might actually make a city commission do something besides rubber stamp whatever nonsense were being peddled by staff.
In recent years the process has been made much more accountable by having personal recommendations made by council members. And folks like Keller and Quirk-Silva who in the old days would never be able make important appointments finally had some real influence in the municipal sausage factory.
Of course this sort of accountability is anathema to the old-timers who understand the value of Fullertonion group-think, fear informed opinion, promote government “stability” and who above all else want responsibility as diffuse and elusive as possible, so that when the inevitable “mistakes were made” mantra is chanted it will be as hard as possible to assign a name to the screw-up.
Will the dinosaurs work hard to keep Bruce Whitaker and Sharon Quirk-Silva from making key appointments? Just wait and see. And just wait for the Jan Flory good-government types to come out of the woodwork to promote the Old Boy Network.
Friends, we just received this e-mail from one of our readers who calls him/herself “Disillusioned Ex-hippy.” We publish it verbatim, although the images are our contribution.
I have it on excellent authority that Pam Keller and her posse threw a going away party for themselves the other evening in which pity pots on which to sit were handed out at the door. I was invited but chose not to attend.
Well, I’m not sad. Good riddance. Keller accomplished next to nothing in her four year term. That’s why a lot of us are celebrating her departure – even many of us who supported her in 2006. In fact she turned her back on her promises to Fullerton about developers and their undue influence. That’s was just a big lie.
The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play...
And BTW, Pam the meanie blogs aren’t the the cause of divisiveness in Fullerton. What is the cause of divisiveness is a city council that just ratifies the decisions put in front of it by the staff; a city council too lazy, too stupid, or too supine to think and act for itself – unless a weird, erratic outburst is called for.
In an article yesterday, the OC Register lit up Deputy DA Mike Flory for six instances of courtroom misbehavin’ between 2001 and 2005 – more than any other prosecutor in the entire state o’ Californy.
Flory? Why does that name sound familiar? Maybe because this guy is the offspring of former Fullerton Councilmember, Jan Flory.
A study emanating from Santa Clara Law School tracked 707 cases in which Courts of Appeal cited misconduct; then they laboriously tracked down the names.
Apparently the 4th District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana has not been happy with Mr. Flory’s behavior, including his apparent dislike of artists, philosophers, and “Hispanics.”
What has been going on since 2005 is anybody’s guess. We do know that Flory tried to get himself elected judge a couple years ago with disastrous results. As the article acidly notes:
Flory once aspired to be a Superior Court judge, but received criticism during his 2008 run for a judicial seat. Presidents of both the Orange County deputy sheriff’s union and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association accused Flory of lying in an attempt to secure their endorsement. The Orange County Bar Association rated Flory as “not qualified” to be a judge.
Yikers!
And to cap it off the Assistant DA. Bill Feccia (which I am told is Italian for bullshit) claims the study is somehow biased. Well, let’s have Bill’s own words take us home:
“Mistakes are sometimes made in the heat of battle, and sometimes tempers get frayed,” he added. “But this is the finest class of people you’ll find anywhere.”
Three days in the monkey cage left lingering damage...
Yesterday, OC Register homunculus and repuglican lackey-chronicler Frank Mickadeit wrote up a story about possible contenders to a Todd Spitzer 3rd District Supervisorial run in 2012 – as a prelude to a Spitzer DA run in 2014.
The big names – outgoing assemblyman Chuck DeVore and Dick Ackerman deserve special attention, and we’ll get back to that in a bit.
But first let’s relish Mickadeit’s effort to stir up anti-Spitzer sentiment for the benefit of our Do Nothing DA who is actually endorsing serial law breaker Roland Chi in Fullerton’s city council race. As is well known, Mickadeit dances to the tunes fifed out by GOP bigwig Michael Schroeder and his wife, DAs spokeshole Susan Kang. In return for providing this entertainment Frank gets to smoke cigars and sip brandy with the Schroeders.
It seems not unlikely that besides the congenital name-dropping instinct, Frank is throwing out these big names as a counter to Spitzer’s own vaulting ambition, as in: not so fast Todd, boy.
Will nail down the Eagle Scout vote.
DeVore wouldn’t be a bad supervisor and might actually bring some refreshing relief to a County operation dedicated to doling out medical and social services compliments of the federal government. But he needs a job. Now.
Dick Ackerman? Well he does live in a “top secret, gated community” in the 3rd District which s a far cry from his claim to have moved to Fullerton last year so his old lady could run for the State Assembly. Apart from that he’s got some explaining to do. Such as the Pacific Policy Research Foundation scam we reported about here, years of RINO accommodating votes, his dubious behavior vis-a-vis the OC Fair sale. He’s also 70 and we sure have seen enough geriatric retirees at the County over the years.
My top-secret gated estate is in the right district. Now if only that white van would quit following me around.
Worst of all, is Ackerman’s perpetual backing of the worst kind of liberal, staff-stooge candidates here in Fullerton.Pro-Redevelopment, big government chuckleheads like Don Bankhead, Doc HeeHaw Jones, Pat McKinley, Aaron Gregg, and a long list of similar tools, simply selected to keep the scary Dems out – Democrats whose political philosophy is practically indistinguishable from Ackerman’s RINO herd.
The fun part of this is that either one of these worthies running would put a serious crimp in Der Pringle’s master plan of putting Orange’s dreary RINO Carolyn Cavecche into that seat.
I received a call this morning from our 4th District County Supervisor Shawn Nelson asking if I would be willing to help coach a youth football clinic at Craig Park. Supervisor Nelson, aware of the fact that I played high school and Division I college football and that I had coached high school and Pop Warner football, needed someone to fill an unexpected vacancy on his coaching staff. My Sunday alternatives were to either spend the day helping 6 to 17 year olds learn a bit more about football or make more No McKinley signs. No brainer. I dusted off the old whistle and off to the park I went.
The event, billed “OC Parks and Sports Day,” was packed with eager kids with more energy than the energizer bunny. My day was not only fun and rewarding but a lot more interesting than I expected. During a break in the action I met the legendary Anthony Davis, but also the not so legendary OCEA union boss, Nick Berardino. Both were entertaining characters: AD reminisced of the days when he played smash mouth football at USC, and Berardino reminded me about the days he spent a million dollars bad mouthing Nelson in the last election, how that million bucks only moved #2 (Harry Sidhu) up 6 percentage points, and how he still got his as kicked by 12%.
Bernardino went on to explain to me that they (the employee union) were afraid of Nelson, but have learn that Nelson is not the monster they though he would be. Nick further explained that the problem in the county is corruption in upper management and the county employees (the worker bees) are the only ones that actually pay into their retirement and the people that are on Easy Street are the upper level managers including county CEO Tom Mauk who’s package equals around $350,000 per year (while collecting over $100,00 from his retirement pension from the city of La Habra). Nick and I both agreed that it’s always the little guy that gets dumped on and the corruption in the county needs to stop. Amen to that!
Kicking back @ Craig park
Supervisor Nelson tells me that he will start checking into the pay and benefits of mid to upper management, and also find out if they actually do anything except shuffle paper back and forth to each other.
Looking down from doggie heaven on you folks I get some interesting perspectives on things. Like right now Fullerton has not a single female liberal running for the city council.
Back in 1982 & 86 it was everyone’s fave featherhead, Molly McClanahan; in 1988 it was Maryevelyn Bryden, a humorless old bat who was trounced by the still marginally cogent Bankhead; in 1992 it was my former broomstick wielding mistress, Jan Flory, who was chain-whipped by the incomprehensible Julie Sa; in 1994, 1998, and 2002 Flory ran again and actually won a couple of times. In 2004 and 2006 Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller emerged, right on cue to claim their liberal XX chromosonal birthright. In 2008 it was the hapless Karen Haluza.
But now, in 2010? Nobody. The closest thing the Fullerton liberal crowd can point to is Doug Chaffee. And he isn’t a woman.
But wait! All is not lost! There’s always the hand-picked Ed Royce candidate and darling of the Dick Ackerman/dim-bulb Federated Republican Women crowd: Patrick McKinley.
On September 7, Jan Flory gave McKinley $200 – more than she spent on dog food for me in ten years. McKinley’s website also boasts the endorsement of McClanahan, too. So what gives?
Are the Fullerton Dems so sad and pathetic that they have to go along with Royce and Ackerman tools, the same repuglican goons who have worked so tirelessly for decades to undermine Democrat candidates and electeds? Remember that Ed Royce was the sole creator of Leland Wilson who knocked off the liberal beloved Flory in 2002.
And you know, now that I come come to think of it, I have to wonder if these endorsements don’t say just as much about McKinley as they do Flory and McClananhan. Hmm.
