Setting The Bar Low Archives - Page 2 of 107 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 6, 2024November 6, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Morning After Pill

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.

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 22, 2024October 22, 2024Behind Closed Doors

Markowitz Cops Plea

by The Fullerton Harpoon30 Comments

Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

According to the OC Register, phony 4th District candidate, Scott Markowitz pleaded guilty yesterday. In exchange for the plea Markowitz gets a day in jail, probation and a month of community service. Felony charges are dismissed by DA Todd Spitzer.

I’ve never seen the wheels of justice grind out a product so quickly.

But what is the product?

As FFFF writers and commenters have noted, Markowitz’s fate was largely irrelevant given that the whole thing was orchestrated by others connected to the cause of electing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, including politicians and Democrat operatives.

Since prosecutors are not given to giving anything away I think we can speculate that Markowitz named a name. Or two. We may surmise, I think, that the investigation into who set Markowitz up in the first place is ongoing. On the other hand this sort of case is probably perceived by the DA as a hassle without a lot of glamor and some potential political pushback from Dems he needs in a non-partisan election.

As to Markowitz, maybe we can let the poor sap get on with his life, free of the encumbrance of a felony rap.

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, 2024Setting The Bar Low

Vivian Jaramillo Throws Little Helper Under Bus

by Grover Cleveland12 Comments

From an LA Times OC article, I harvested this gem of a response to the Scott Markowitz arrest and perjury charges:

“I agree with DA Spitzer that voters must have total confidence that every election is being carried out in a fair and unbiased manner,” she said in a statement. “I welcome their investigation into the alleged actions of my opponent and we will continue to run a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to South Fullerton residents.”

And who agrees with DA Sptizer? Why, none other than Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, who remains the only beneficiary of the fraudulent, election rigging campaign of Scott Markowitz and his accomplices.

Notice how Jaramillo disingenuously refers to Markowitz as her “opponent,” as if he were and ever was a real candidate. This line was fed to her by a campaign consultant to create distance between Jaramillo and Markowitz. It may not work. One of her endorsers is Diane Vena who also signed Markowitz’s papers. And Markowitz was guided by Ajay Mohan, a Democrat Party operative. He obviously acted in concert with others, and no mangling of language or logic is going to change that.

Notice also how she also uses the present tense to describe the DA’s investigation. It’s not over Kitty, and some of your team, maybe even you, may end up implicated in the collusion to commit a crime. That’s a crime, too.

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, 2024October 14, 2024Behind Closed Doors

Monday Robotext

by The Fullerton Harpoon11 Comments

Here’s a fun robotext message that just went out to nine thousand D4 voters reminding them of Team Jaramillo’s scam candidate and the DA complaint thereof. Simple and effective

Maybe this will make Democrat Central reconsider their meddling in Fullerton elections by creating sham candidates. Maybe it will make Diane Vena, Ajay Mojan, and Scott Markowitz regret their participation in electoral fraudulence.

But probably not.

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 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.