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Category: Fullerton BooHoo
A BooHoo is a knee-jerk supporter of government activity – whatever it may be. Most BooHoos are self-proclaimed liberals, but very many avowed “conservatives” are nothing but titanic BooHoos – using conservatism to get themselves elected.
We’ve burned quite a few pixels explaining how Pam Keller’s is using her non-profit, The Fullerton Collaborative, as a vehicle to peddle influence, fund political activists, and profit Keller herself through excessively convoluted financial relationships.
But some of our loyal Friends still don’t get it.
That’s admittedly understandable, since the entire contraption is remarkably complicated. But to help everyone wrap his or her cerebral cortex around the many conflicts of interest, we present this valuable flow chart to demonstrate where The Fullerton Collaborative’s money comes from and where it goes. Naturally the nexus of the whole tangled web is Pam Keller. And that’s the big problem.
Click for an eye-opening experience...
Enjoy following the arrows. After perusing this chart there really is no excuse for not being concerned about the manifest conflicts of interests on the part of our City Council woman Pam Keller.
If it's in my interest, it's in the public interest, too!
Hoo Boy! So this is how a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative squanders our money.
In the fall of 2008 Pam Keller attended the California League of Cities Annual Meeting, a useless agglomeration of bureaucrats and bureaucrat lovin’ electeds who like to micromanage everybody’s life while we pay for it.
The event was held at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach, a luxury hotel, exactly 26.1 miles from Fullerton. The distance is so vast that Pam decided to stay at the hotel for three nights and amassed a bill of $1236.10. Check out the payment vouchers, the hotel invoice, and even a handwritten request for nine buck’s reimbursement for parking, here.
Seems Pam also took along a guest, and, among other treats, they may have availed themselves of a trip to the LB Aquarium that was included in the deal.
Even if we disregard the questionable usefulness of attending one of these taxpayer funded boondoggles, what on earth was the need for Keller to stay at a hotel whose drive-time distance Mapquest lists at a mere 28 minutes?
And I have to wonder how all of Keller’s lefty knee-jerk supporters could possibly countenance this sort of profligacy of public money. $1,200 could be used collaboratively to feed a lot of homeless people, right?
Now to be perfectly fair (I am a very fair person), Fullerton’s two RINOs, Don Bankhead and Dick Jones also attended this conference and also racked up big bills. At least Jones went alone.
Friends, this is likely not the only Keller taxpayer-funded junket and rest assured, we will be providing examples of others in the very near future if we find them.
It’s a politician’s nature to be ambitious, and Fullerton City council person Pam Keller is a politician. Maybe even a pretty good one. She’s part of a fairly wide local network of activists and do-gooders and has, seemingly already put some of them to political use.
So what higher office might beckon? The idea of cracking into the exclusive club of congresscritters, a la Loretta Sanchez, has probably crossed her mind. Ed Royce is getting up there and the GOP is shrinking. Is that feasible? Dunno. Ed probably thinks so, but he’s afraid of his own shadow.
Six more weeks of winter?
State Assembly? State Senate? Paradoxically these may be even more difficult for Keller to crack than the Congress nut – simply because she would no doubt find herself running against other Democrats in primaries, including, perhaps even Sharon Quirk-Silva, who toyed for a bit with a run to replace Mike Duvall.
Well, we speculate for the fun of it. Keller’s first challenge is to get herself re-elected in 2010. And a big part of that challenge will be fighting off the inevitable OC GOP attack orchestrated by Royce that may likely target her unique, um, talent at mixing government, philanthropy and personal ambition.
I just came across this youtube clip from last summer. It is about our congresswoman Loretta Sanchez and her performance at some sort of “prayer vigil” organized last August, ostensibly to supplicate the Good Lord for the provision of universal health care.
As you can see, Loretta’s not real interested in praying, or even in keeping her big bazoo shut, but rather in the worst kind of political self-promotion. But Ms. Motormouth and her relationship with the Almighty is not the main topic here.
Instead I direct your attention to the promoters of this alleged “prayer vigil,” the Orange County Congregational Community Organization, known as OCCCO. Sound vaguely familiar? Last summer some of its members popped up out of the blue at a city council meeting to speak in favor of the proposed Redevelopment expansion. FFFF subsequently discovered that Pam Keller’s “Fullerton Collaborative” had bestowed $26,000 on the OCCCO for “community organizing.” Fullerton Harpoon wrote about this stuff here. The blog has already noted that Collaborative director (and Fullerton City Councilwoman) Pam Keller is a paid employee of the Fullerton School District.
You can see by the video that despite the presence of a somebody who looks likes he’s got a mitre on his head (A bishop?) these folks are really all about politics, too.
Apparently some folks in Fullerton such as Sharon Kennedy see nothing wrong with this happy intertwine of religion and the politics of cash, the laundering of government funds that ultimately find their way into overt political causes, and finally with the obvious attempt by Pam Keller to use the tangled network to help promote fraudulent and misguided “economic development” policy by the City. Actually these people seem to like the web.
I don’t like it, and neither should you. There is an insidious process going on here and it ain’t good.
How come our electeds don’t seem to be able to grasp simple concepts; why have they no resistance to the bureaucratic sales pitch; why must they obscure their own ignorance in a cloud of asinine nonsense or outright lies?
If it was hard we couldn't do it!
Last Tuesday night the Fullerton City Council/Redevelopment Agency approved the idiotic Richman housing project, a staff-concocted, no-bid, pet project that proposes to subsidize ownership of condos. The vote was 3-1, Sharon Quirk-Silva, dissenting. Shawn Nelson took a powder.
Why is this project idiotic? First we believe that the ownership of a house is something that should be available equally, and not doled out by the government to its own selected recipients.
Second, the units in this project will have to be perpetually restricted to people whose income levels qualify. Perfect: perpetual housing bureaucracy! The necessary deed restrictions are a pretty significant encumbrance and will just add to the financial shakiness of the whole enchilada. But without these restrictions the original buyers would be in line for a massive windfall courtesy of all of us, when they sell.
A third point, as was admirably developed by Sharon Quirk-Silva, the proposed occupancy restrictions would very likely disqualify people who need housing the most. Which leads to the fourth point. These units will not count against Fullerton’s most neglected RHNA category – low and very low income. Which leads to:
Five. Dick Jones claimed that approving the Richman project is required to satisfy some legal mandate – it is THE LAW. That’s just a tin-plated, bald-faced lie. The SCAG RHNA allocations are goals, not a legal mandate. Cities are required by the State HCD to provide evidence of programs used to achieve those goals – not specific projects. And, in any case hypocritically, this project does not address the most urgent RHNA category of all which means that for folks who profess to really like this sort of thing, an opportunity has been lost.
Finally, FFFF has tried to promote better, more sustainable design in government-subsidized projects. And this project just promises more of the same old architectural crap we’ve been getting all along.
And now that we contemplate this fiasco, we feel the need for a last minute adendum to the Fringie Worst Vote category.
We knew the first post-mayoral vote edition of the Yellowing Fullerton Observer was going to have a Page One sob story recounting how Pam Keller was robbed of her birthright. The only question was who was going to write the tale of woe. That duty fell upon Liberosaur Vince Buck, who’s been an uncompromising shill for the idiotic council lefties for years and years.
Not known for agility
Mr. Buck is not given to hysteria, so the tenor of the article is pretty calm. Still, the assertions therein were, as usual, appalling pea-brained: the woman was rejected by the boys; and it was her turn; Bankhead and Nelson voted they way they did for political reasons (Oh no, the horror!).
Of course Buck didn’t bother to correct the previous erroneous assertions of his editoress that other localities have a “rotation” – implying some mechanism for school yard-type “sharing” of the mayor-ship. He also didn’t share the choice irony that The Observer has endorsed the chowderheads Bankhead and Jones time and time and time again.
Vince Buck awaits the salad
What was really funny was Buck’s claim that Nelson voted for Bankhead to get the latter’s endorsement for his upcoming Supervisorial campaign, while in the next breath he (accurately) reminds us of how little the Bankhead endorsement did for the Ackerwoman. Of course, we already knew that, and Nelson must, too! Bankhead’s endorsement is as worthless as Zimbabwean currency.
Oh, boy! Pudding cups!
It just doesn’t seem to have occurred to poor, cliche-riddled Vince that maybe Nelson just really dislikes Pam Keller. And by dislike we mean a don’t-walk-ahead-of-him-down-a-dark-alley sort of dislike.
Well it happened last night. Joe and I made a quick trip out to Pechanga to blow our lottery winnings and so we missed it.
Wait 'til next year. If there is a next year.
Pam Keller was denied her turn in the Mayoral tether ball court, forgetting that to be Mayor you need three votes. Her posse must be sorely disappointed with the shut out. The Yellowing Fullerton Observer will no doubt be putting out a special edition decrying the end of civilization, and the barbarians at the gate, and whatever other nonsense they can cook up; maybe they can get some delish quotes from the gal with no “political whatevers.”
Anyway, Friends, get ready for a tsunami of self-righteous boohoo outrage.
Those little marshmallows really make the cocoa better...
Don Bankhead, who has been on the City Council since right before The Flood, will be mayor again next year. He voted for himself, as did Dick Jones and Shawn Nelson. We have been told that Ol’ Doc Jones coughed up a supremely sublime HeeHaw Moment that we will be sharing later. Apparently Nelson kept his mouth shut, which shows unusual perspicacity for a politician; we have to wonder if he isn’t still plenty pissed off at Keller for her attacks on him after he stood up for the citizens of Fullerton on the pension spike finagle last year.
As a consolation prize Keller got to stay mayor pro tem, a pretty useless ballot designation, but at least the word mayor is in it.
You want funny? We got funny. Just listen to this nincompoop try to promote Pam Keller’s mayoralty – while waving around a copy of the widely discredited Fullerton Observer! Enjoy!
A new month, the same old weeping by the Fullerton Observer about how the good ol’ boys are keeping poor Pam Keller from her entitlement to be mayor when the next term starts. It’s not fair! Not fair!
(Ed. – Never a word about Keller’s dismal votes on massive projects or her unique working relationship with FSD/Fullerton Collaborative, but that’s another story.)
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the person who is entitled to be mayor is the council person who can get two other people on the council to vote for him. Pretty simple. Nothing else really matters.
The author of this indignant drivel lays out a conspiracy tale of events behind the scenes to keep a Democrat out of the presiding chair; and as usual the plot centers around Shawn Nelson, without whom the Observer would have a lot less to natter on about. Ironically the tangled web includes Observer favorite Don Bankhead and by necessity another Observer endorsement recipient – Dick Jones! Observer chickens coming home to roost? God, let’s hope so!
Politics might be going on. The horror! Of course despite the Observer trying to emphasize the ceremonial (i.e. non-political) aspects of the mayorship, the fact is it is a very coveted title when re-election time rolls around – as it does for Pam Keller, next year. Aha! Politics!
So is a scheme being worked out to elect somebody else mayor for 2010? Possibly. Quite likely, although since none of the supposed principles would be likely to talk to Sharon Kennedy about it, it seems much more likely to be a pure guess on her part. Our congressman Ed Royce loves to meddle in these affairs; to him it seems easier than simply turning on the light and opening the closet door to discover that there really is no monster in there. Just some mops and brooms.
And speaking of politics, maybe The Observer should quit endorsing Ed Royce puppets like the chowderhead Jones and focus on somebody who could actually be counted on to support Keller for mayor. Oh no! More politics.
It was a fun party with an open bar. And then Dave Lopez showed up…
We missed an Ackerwoman press release about a week and a half ago (sorry but we really hate going to that site). It touted Fullerton “educational leaders” who have endorsed Linda Ackerman: Hilda Sugarman, Ellen Ballard, Minard Duncan, and Lynn Thornley – a who’s who of Fullerton RINOs and liberal educrat types. It’s really hard to find any term other than “followers” to describe this little band, but such are the extravagances of campaign rhetoric.
Our old pal Minard was even assigned his own hilarious quotation: “I first got to know Linda when she was a member of the PTA at Rolling Hills School in Fullerton. She has been a vital member of our community for over 30 years…” A member of the PTA? Well whoop-de-doo! Is that Duncan’s threshold for being qualified to serve in the Sate Assembly? Guess so. And of course trust Minard to use the wrong (present) tense. She hasn’t lived in our community for over 30 years. She spent the last ten living in another community!
Well, we know Ackerwoman’s residency is a lie, even if Minard won’t talk about it: she lives in Irvine and rents an address in Fullerton. She also advertises herself in this press release as “an independent businesswoman” and we now know that that’s a falsehood on two counts. We have also discovered her fake charity that diverts lobbyists contributions towards Hawaiian vacations for her and her pals in the legislature, although such flagrant fraudulence seems not to have made much of an impression on Duncan and his pals on the FSD board.
It’s sort of depressing to see these folks turning a blind eye to prevarication and misrepresentation. Makes you wonder a bit about what kind of values are being passed along via the FSD.
