Our Town Archives - Page 3 of 22 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 11, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Got Headache?

If not, and if for some perverse reason you want one, I recommend watching the final hour of the September 25th Planning Commission meeting.

The Commission’s job was to make recommendations to the City Council about the City’s plan to placate the State of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development’s demand to plan for the inclusion of 13,000 new housing units in a city that is effectively built out. The housing numbers are ejaculated by the Southern California Association of Governments – an unelected body run by bureaucrats – and adopted by the State. And cities can just sit down up and shut the fuck up. The numbers are appalling and would mean another 25,000 residents with the attendant traffic, parking and burden on schools and infrastructure.

Amazingly, California being California, the environmental impacts are brushed aside with a bureaucratic flick.

The specific agenda of the evening was to review the new Housing Element of the General Plan, and the pertinent Zone Code Amendment that adds a “Housing Incentive Overlay Zone” or (HIOZ) to hundreds of commercial and industrially zoned parcels of land.

I have never seen five people so confused and so fundamentally incapable of dealing with the business in front of them in my life. Motions were made; substitute motions were moved; secondary substitute motions were made. Some were opaque; some were vague; some disappeared altogether; some were retracted. Some blossomed into nonsense. Some issues were bifurcated. Confused discussion was interlarded into motions without seconds. Staff was dragged into the motion process.

The Chairman, poor Peter Gambino lost control of the meeting, try as he might.

One Planning Commissioner, Arnell Dino, seemed particularly adept at muddling everything up; another, Doug Cox, seemed to want to run the meeting, and kept interjecting and interrupting out of order, and kept asking for repetition after repetition of proposed motions; Commissioner Patricia Tutor seemed just as befuddled as the rest, trying to connect motions to the three resolutions proposed by staff. Commissioner Arif Mansouri, who unfortunately oversimplifies his pronouns and drops definite articles at least stuck to his motions, all most to the end; his goal was to removed the Chapman and Commonwealth corridors from the proposed housing overlay incentive zone that could put high density housing up against low density, single family neighborhoods.

An hour of everybody’s time was completely wasted as the sinking Commissioners struggled mightily to grasp a hold of any plausible object that appeared to float.

Ironically, at the end of the meeting a self-exhausted Planning Commission just rubber stamped everything that was put in front of it and passed it along to the City Council for approval.

In the end some of the participants actually seemed to be laughing in a mirthless sort of way. What the audience thought of this clownish death march is best left to the imagination.

Some zoning details were kicked to a Special PC Meeting that was be held last Wednesday. I declined to watch fearing for my sanity.

The issue is coming to the City Council on November 19th and we can be sure of two things. Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles will push hard for the maximum urbanization of Fullerton, and clarity will be the first casualty of the hearing.

November 6, 2024November 6, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Morning After Pill

by Grover Cleveland24 Comments

The results of the November 2024 Fullerton elections are almost settled.

School bonds L and N passed comfortably. And why not? The districts used your money to educate you, and the beholden contractors, trades, architects et al. spent $300,000 to put us all farther into debt. Yea! Property taxes and rents and the cost of commerce are going up. But, hey, it’s all for the kids, right?

In the City Council 2nd District election, Mayor Nick Dunlap pummeled the old warhorse, Jan Flory, whose try at a 4th time around the track came out of the gate without a rider. The result so far is a massive 28 point victory.

In the 1st District, incumbent Fred Jung walloped a guy named Matt Truxaw, who can now retreat back into the murky obscurity from which he was trolled by Ahmad Zahra. This one wasn’t close, either – a 44 point gap

The 4th District is close – real close. Newcomer Jamie Valencia leads OC Dem Central darling Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, a woman whose candidacy was so shaky the Dem Party created a phony non-Latino candidate to help her out. Right now the difference is about 130 votes in Valencia’s favor. Can late mail-in ballots save Kitty’s litter? We’ll probably know by the end of the day. Linda Whitaker, who didn’t seem to campaign at all finished a distant third. But we see you there, Scott Markowitz, the perjurer set up to help Jaramillo. He has 766 votes right now, enough to suggest that his phony candidacy could be considered to be an effective element in the election. Cause for legal action? That would be fun.

The anointing oil was greasy and left fingerprints, and didn’t take…

A Valencia victory would certainly be the bitterest pill for Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles and all the other Dem small fry like Sharon Quirk and Josh Newman. More importantly, it would solidify a common sense approach to the stupidity and turbidity of City Hall inventions like the Trail to Nowhere, the Wank on Wilshire, the boutique hotel disaster, etc. Even more significantly it will affect the issue of liberal marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton – Zahra’s pet cause.

The Fullerton Observer Sisters can be counted on to bemoan a Jaramillo loss and blame evil developer influences for having the temerity to tell the truth about poor Kitty.

Speaking of Newman, he is currently losing his State Senate job to the dopey librarian from Irvine, Steven Choi, for which we would be eternally grateful if it holds. He would leave a ridiculous, gerrymandered district he couldn’t win as his lasting legacy. He’s 14,000 votes behind, which is a lot, but of course late ballot counts could change that over the days ahead – like they did for him in 2016.

The power couple looks a lot less powerful these days…

Quirk won as expected, but with a Jaramillo loss and the possible defeat of her hand-picked elementary school board candidate, Vanesa Estrella, she may have some political throw-weight problems, especially in a run for County Supervisor in two years. But that school board election is close. Incumbent Leonel Talavares is only ahead by 46 votes this morning.

Another bright note is the victory of some guy named James Cho in another elementary school board race. He crushed forever incumbent Hilda Sugarman, and good riddance there, too. There may not be much of a practical difference but cleaning out the cobwebs is always a good idea.

November 4, 2024November 4, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Fullerton Election Eve Thoughts

by Grover Cleveland36 Comments

Thoughts? My first thought is that Fullerton will never change, will never elect responsible and accountable City Councils who will appoint anything but ridiculous members to Commissions and never demand accountability from their staff. And that city staff will always get what it wants, and will keep pushing their agenda until a weary council concedes, or a compliant council agrees.

My second thought is a cliché. Hope springs eternal. We have never seen a strong City Council develop policy and direct staff to implement it. But it remains possible, if vey unlikely.

In District 1 the election is a foregone conclusion, incumbent Fred Jung will tattoo the weird, clownish Matt Truxaw, whom somebody pulled from obscurity, elevated to slightly above obscurity, and who will return to it Wednesday morning.

I know who I want to work for, and it isn’t you!

In District 2 we have the affable and earnest Mayor Nick Dunlap opposed by the octogenarian Jan Flory, the three-time political re-tread who has left her claw marks all over Fullerton’s worst disaster in the past 30 years. If you want mean, sanctimonious, vindictive, and inveterately pro-bureaucracy liberal, she’s your choice. She claims to be the “most experienced” candidate, which suggest an utter lack of self-awareness. Why she wants a fourth lap around the track is anybody’s guess. It seems highly unlikely that there are enough of Flory’s ilk to beat the eager-not-to-offend Dunlap, and I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.

Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

That leaves the 4th District, the place where Democrat operatives created a fake MAGA candidate, Scott Markowitz, to draw votes GOP votes away from incumbent Bruce Whitaker’s wife, Linda, who is running to replace him. Markowitz has copped to a perjury rap, leniently reduced to some community service. Did he rat on anybody? Let’s hope so.

Were there rats aboard the sinking S.S. Markowitz?

The would-be beneficiary of the Markowitz crimes is Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, among whose Democrat supporters must have been participants in the Markowitz election fraud. She is yet another superannuated liberal; she wants high density housing, no overnight parking restrictions, and oh, yeah, a new Golden Age for Fullerton’s underpaid and under-pensioned employees.

A former public employee and million dollar pension recipient herself, Jaramillo actually told the OC Register that she intends to represent the public employees. Jaramillo sought the endorsements of the local Democrat small-fry politicians, including the egregious Zionist Lou Correa. It’s an old-timey strategy but does anybody really care about that kind of thing in 2024? Jaramillo raised a lot of cash from unions. Has she used it wisely? We’ll know tomorrow night, possibly.

Linda Whitaker has been mostly low-profile from what I can tell. Like Jaramillo, she is another 70-something who seems, well, not too fired up. Not much has been heard of Linda except for except a couple forums and a lot of campaign signs.

4D voters saw some door hangers that included an odd photo of old bikers with Whitaker signs. I don’t know if Ms. Whitaker did any direct mail or is mostly counting on her husband’s name ID with voters.

Word on the street is that the Whitakers took off for a week during the campaign to go to Fullerton’s Italian Sister City, which isn’t a good look for any candidate who wants to win, and wants people to think she can. Could this be right? It has the ring of truth.

Finally, there is newcomer Jamie Valencia who has conducted a disciplined, well-organized, well-funded campaign, the campaign of somebody who looks an awful lot like a winner, and who may prove to be the biggest surprise in north Orange County politics in a long, long time. Will Valencia be the big beneficiary of the anti-Jaramillo campaign waged by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, and not Linda Whitaker? This would be a fun twist.

She got the OC Register editorial team’s endorsement and that, ironically, might hurt Whitaker more than Scott Markowitz ever would have.

Valencia is an attractive, comparatively young woman with kids, a registered ER nurse, and has got the endorsement of the police and fire unions, a helluva coup whatever one’s feelings about those unions might be.

Finally we have the school bond measures L & N, another deep reach into our pockets by grossly overpaid and overstaffed educrats. The fact that we are still paying off previous bonds doesn’t seem to have resonated with these folk, to whom we are nothing but a payday loan opportunity, wherein we pay the principle and interest. In these campaigns, the school districts use our resources to educate us while they shake down out-of-town architects, consultants, construction contractors and subcontractors to pay for the election. They often use district employees, facilities and even students as part of their campaign – it happened last time.

A guerilla opposition campaign has been waged by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform with simple but effective signs and robotexts: bond costs are paid for by everybody one way or another.

Will the bonds gather the necessary 55% majority to succeed? The districts’ last bond effort failed in the March 2020 primary. That was right before the pandemic and it’s hard to see a path to success this time, either.

October 25, 2024October 25, 2024About Us

The Hypocrisy Of Fullerton BooHoo

by The Fullerton Harpoon18 Comments

I was watching the League of Women Voter’s candidate forum a few days ago and I couldn’t help but notice how the Fullerton Boohoo darlings, Jan Flory and Vivian Jaramillo, kept attacking the incumbents for their refusal to “listen to the people.” Well, okay politics.

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

The two examples cited were the idiotic Trail to Nowhere and the equally stupid Walk on Wilshire. Ironically, the former was approved unanimously by the City Council; and Council majorities have kept the latter, the money-losing and annoying “WoW” alive for years.

If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!

The fact is that both of these wasteful and useless “projects’ were the brain children of bureaucrats in City Hall and became the vanity projects of the egregious Ahmad Zahra and the lamentable Shana Charles who were instrumental in both cases in getting people to show up and harass anybody who might be exercising common sense. And right there to create the news and also report on it were the Kennedy Sisters, Skaskia and Sharon, who saw nothing wrong with trying to intimidate downtown businesses in the case of the moronic Waste on Wilshire.

This sort of “public support” is not organic; it’s artificial, and that’s why it’s commonly referred to as Astroturfing. Hence the irony that the same people who ginned up the “support” are the ones braying to demand that the Fullerton City Council “listen to the people.”

Well, irony isn’t the strong suit of people like Flory and Jaramillo. Neither is honesty. But self-serving sanctimony is.

When the the idea of legalizing marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton came to the City Council in 2019, public speaker after public speaker, in English and Spanish denounced the idea as bad for Fullerton. The percentage must have been 30 to 1 against dispensaries. And where was Jan Flory, defender of the untermenschen? That’s right. She was voting to permit dispensaries in the closing months of 2019 – before the election that would usher in a new, anti-dispensary Council majority.

When the new Council revoked the Flory-Zahra-QuirkSilva dope ordinance and the vast majority again being in favor of disallowing dispensaries, guess who was there. Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, that’s who, the enthusiastic marijuana advocate who proclaimed dispensaries were “right for Fullerton.”

Amazing how these twin pillars of public advocacy had no such interest in overwhelming public opinion when it came to legalized dope and it didn’t suit their ambitions; a public opinion, by the way, that was not ginned up by City bureaucrats, politicians or brain-dying ideologues, but that represented genuine public sentiment.

October 17, 2024Behind Closed Doors

Hello Kitty. Ouch. Ouch.

by Grover Cleveland46 Comments

Those pesky Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform are at it again, updating their previous introduction of Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo to reflect the fact that the stooge candidate created by her team to draw votes away from her opponent Linda Whitaker is now charged with perjury and got hauled off the the Santa Ana Jail a few days ago. Busted.

Poor patsy Scott Markowitz, the stooge in question is facing two felonies while the identity of his manipulators remains a secret. For now.

However we do know the name of the one and only beneficiary of Markowitz and his MAGA ballot statement: Vivian Jaramillo who disingenuously referred to Markowitz as her “opponent.” No, we meant to be an ally in her election and of course she knows it.

Meantime, Republican Central had this to say about the Markowitz Scandal, laying out some facts, and teeing up additional questions.

“Markowitz was a registered Democrat, who switched parties before submitting fraudulent nomination documents hours before filing then proceeded to campaign as a ‘MAGA Republican’ to split the vote away from our only endorsed Republican and help the lone Democrat in the race,” the statement read.

The OC Republicans know all about this bad behavior. They did it in 1995 and the scandal drew in Curt Pringle, Scott Baugh, Dana Rohrabacher and some of their underlings.

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Bushala Says Markowitz Scandal Not Over

by Grover Cleveland45 Comments

Poor Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

Phony Fullerton 4th District candidate Scott Markowitz has been arrested by the DA and charged with perjury and falsification of public documents. Somebody other than Markowitz circulated his nominating papers, but he attested that he did.

Normally, in these types of situations that would be the end of the story. Except that in the case of Markowitz – a political unknown – he had help. How much coaching he got, and by whom, remains something of a mystery, but it’s obvious that his perjury was suborned by others.

I’d sell out my own mother for 10 votes, and I have…

We do know that one of his manipulators is the former Executive Director of the OC Democrat Party, one Ajay Mohan who accompanied Markowitz to the City Clerk’s office to pull papers. Was Mohan the circulator? Was it somebody else, somebody that the nominators trusted? Who wrote the carefully crafted and cynical MAGA statement Markowitz got on the ballot? Certainly not Markowitz.

Who else may have benefitted from the scam will give us a clue to the extent of the election rigging. Vivian Jaramillo is the number one suspect since Markowitz’s candidacy was meant to attract non-Latino voters from Linda Whitaker.

I will get what I want, one way or another…

One layer deeper, we can discern the shadowy figure of Ahmad Zahra, Fullerton’s 5th District representative who desperately needs Jaramillo’s support to finally become America’s first gay, Arab, Muslim Mayor; and who also needs Jaramillo to finally bring home the marijuana dispensary bacon.

Then there’s Ada Briceno, the current Chairwoman of the OC Democrat Party, the group that endorsed Jaramillo without even talking to anybody else. There’s a big prestige issue here, the ambitious Briceno has a record – she was certainly aware of the Tony Castro scandal in 2022, when her ED Mohan created the fake Latino candidate in Fullerton’s 5th District to protect the egregious Ahmad Zahra.

The name Aaruni Thakur has also been mentioned, in the comments section below. He deserves special attention. Apparently his family lives and owns property on Wooodcrest, not far from the abode of Scott Markowitz. He and his family have given a lot of money to Jaramillo, and his previous fake carpetbaggery in the 4th District in 2020 gives a fine example of his moral compass.

Above the lowly riffraff are politicians who have invested their political prestige in Jaramillo’s candidacy and who may want to protect that investment while also creating office holders beholden to them. These include Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk, State Senator Josh Newman, and Congressman Lou Correa. How shallow or how deep are the roots of the Markowitz Conspiracy?

All of these issues are presented as a prelude to the topic of this post, which is a letter from Fullerton activist, Tony Bushala to the District Attorney Todd Spitzer asking that the investigation into the situation be continued to find out who got Markowitz to lie.

It’s very clear that at least one other person was involved in suborning perjury. One would have to be relentlessly stupid, a Kennedy Observer, in fact, to believe that Markowitz the political novice, himself was the sole director of this play; that he cooked up the plan; that he decided to create a campaign committee for appearances; that he decided to change his party affiliation; that he that he made sure his new affiliation was on his FPCC documents when it wasn’t required; that he, for some reason, needed and recruited a surrogate to circulate his petition; that he conceived and wrote his ballot statement; that he knew nothing else was required and quietly disappeared, his apologists at the Observer saying he was somehow “threatened” into hiding.

There is an old Latin apothegm: qui bono? Roughly translated the question asks “who benefits” from a given situation whose origins may not be completely clear. Well, let’s find out.

October 15, 2024October 15, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Scott Markowitz Arrested For Perjury

by The Fullerton Harpoon43 Comments

Scott Markowitz, the phony 4th District Candidate was arrested by District Attorney personnel last night for perjury. He was booked into the Santa Ana City Jail.

As FFFF has continually claimed, Markowitz was a set-up candidate, created by prominent Democrats to draw votes away from Linda Whitaker to help her opponent, Vivian Jaramillo.

I’d sell out my mother for 10 votes, and I have…

Apparently, Markowitz’s nominating signatures were collected by somebody else, but he signed the affidavit claiming he did. That’s perjury, and substantiates our conclusions about the rest of the sordid scheme.

Perjury is a felony, and whoever set him up for this had better hope that Markowitz is willing to keep his mouth shut. If he sings he may very well incriminate the people who dragged him into this perjury, in which case we would have a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is also a felony.

Democrat Ajay Mohan is in this up to his eyeballs, of course. What about others? I keep hearing the names Ahmad Zahra and Aaruni Thakur, Ada Briceno and even Congressman Lou Correa.

Did Fullerton Observer Diane Vena know about this? She seems to have concocted tales to tell the gullible about the details of her participation. What about any of the other nominators? What about the Fullerton Observer itself, that has studiously avoided any mention of the perjury scandal.

The immediate question is what impact this will have on the 4th District election. Mass circulated campaign material has already tied Markowitz as a set up to help Jaramillo, so this is just more ammunition for the next couple of weeks. The beneficiaries of this news are obviously Linda Whitaker and Jamie Valencia, the former of which can point to the conspiracy as evidence of her own election chances.

October 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Flory Flips. Flory Flops. Sort of.

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

If you watched the so-called Fullerton City Council candidates forum a few weeks ago, you’ll have noticed something very funny.

New and improved. At least that’s her story.

On the question of marijuana dispensaries, candidate Janesse “Jan” Flory displayed some mental gymnastic exercises.

She first noted that on the City Council she approved Ahmad Zahra’s dope ordinance that would have allowed dispensaries within 100 of somebody’s house. That ordinance was crammed through at the end of 2020 before a new City Council majority could take over. When the new majority did take over they almost immediately pulled the plug on the ordinance in 2021.

At the forum, Flory claimed to have had an epiphany, in which she finally educated herself (a little late, no?) on the matter, and discovered to her surprise that the issues of revenue and impacts to communities had been overstated and understated, respectively. She had changed her mind, she said. Oopsy. Could Flory have been misled by her precious “staff?” Well, let’s not go to that inevitable outcome of Flory’s thought process.

But Janesse wasn’t through. After establishing her case against dispensaries she concluded that she was “on the fence,” a sort of tie the bow on the ribbon of saying nothing that really mattered.

Although she tried real hard to make herself sound informed and decisive, listeners still have no idea where Flory sits on the matter of marijuana dispensaries But where she sits doesn’t look very comfortable.

October 13, 2024October 14, 2024Bruce Whitaker

Linda Whitaker Hangs Out

by Grover Cleveland15 Comments

A Friend sent in some images of a door hanger produced by 4th District Candidate Linda Whitaker. I don’t know if it’s two sides to the same one, so I’m calling it one hanger. It’s good to see Whitaker establishing a ground game.

On this side we see a picture that I’ve been told is a much younger Linda with City Hall in the background. I hate the use of old pictures by candidates and politicians who are much older-looking, but they all do it, of course. Here, Ms. Whitaker is touting her experience around City Hall for more than twenty years as the wife of outgoing Councilman Bruce Whitaker, although for some reason she omits reference to her husband. We are admonished that “we need to move forward.” From what to what isn’t stated

This hanger image shows Whitaker at various life stages and gives us some really non-specific promises. I would have like some specificity about how she’s going to work, not just the vague idea of work itself. Still, it seems in Fullerton you don’t win elections by annoying anybody with details, even if you have them.

The bottom picture on this side is simply bizarre. Thankfully, Linda has eschewed the usual stiff-gestured, in-the-can pictures with kids, oldsters, and various ethnicities. But I can’t imagine who the Whitaker campaign thinks is going to be impressed by the support of a superannuated motorcycle club.

Overall, the piece isn’t bad, motorcycle gang notwithstanding, and many folks may find it reassuring. It’s not too slick and doesn’t have the feel of an overproduced, fancy campaign piece.

October 11, 2024October 11, 2024Behind Closed Doors

More Hypocrisy from Fullerton BooHoo

by Grover Cleveland8 Comments

If you were paying attention in 2022 you may recall that the City of Fullerton went through a redistricting process based on the results of the 2020 Census.

The legacy of Jan Flory’s “Bar Owner’s Map,” ostensibly created by Douchebag Supreme, Jeremy Popoff in 2016, was fresh in everybody’s mind. Three districts had been gerrymandered with tentacles to reach into downtown Fullerton – in violation of one of the basic tenets of district map making – compaction.

The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…

One consequence of the 2016 map was to give recently elected at-large Jesus Quirk-Silva a shot a running early for the first District 3 race in 2018 against Greg Sebourn, a race that Quirk-Silva won.

When 2022 rolled around and the Council created a redistricting committee Fullerton’s lefties squealed in displeasure that Sebourn was appointed to it. He’s going to make a district that he can run in, cutting out Quirk-Silva, so they said. How dastardly. Members of the committee must forswear not to run in a district they created, so they said.

Well, the districts were cleaned up, Quirk-Silva who had been gerrymandered into D3 was removed from it, and Sebourn didn’t run again.

But one fact seems to have gone unnoticed by all the self-righteous libs clamoring against the Council, the new map and against Sebourn. And that fact is that current Council candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, the person who sued the City to make a district she could run in, was also on the Redistricting Committee.

Not only did she support new gerrymandered maps that would protect Quirk-Silva, she supported the district she is now running in. How’s that for ironic hypocrisy?

But it’s not surprising. In their sanctimonious world, the boohoos of Fullerton’s left can’t accept the possibility that their own interests and beliefs might be effected by any sort self-serving or let alone bad behavior, which is why no one mentions the unethical and possibly illegal effort by Team Jaramillo to work a phony candidate on the ballot, a sham candidate whose only job is to divert votes from candidate Linda Whitaker.