Last night the City Council appointed a new Mayor for 2025. And guess what? It isn’t Ahmad Zahra, the evasive and prevaricating Middle Eastern medic. He’s been on the City Council for 6 years and has never been able to get two other votes to make himself Mayor.
Why not?
It’s because the majority of his colleagues don’t like him. Not at all. From his self-serving behavior, his sanctimony, his manic publicity seeking, his peddling salacious gossip about his colleagues to local blogs, and his filing a false police report against the new Mayor, he has demonstrated time and again his toxic personality, clearly unfit to be the figurehead of the city.
It’s never even been necessary for the other councilmembers to consider Zahra’s illegal immigration into the country through a phony marriage to a woman in Arkansas; or his assault and battery case against a woman; or his serial plagiarism of water articles written by an Orange County Water District bureaucrat to appear to be some sort of expert.
Last night meeting did have some fun moments, too, that FFFF will share from the video stream when it’s up.
George Bushala, a new local hero…
Of course there were the usual gaggle of boohooing Zahra disciples, people dumb enough to fall for his routine. But one man, George Bushala stood up and completely dismantled Zahra – by actually citing the facts about the man’s background narrative – not the bullshit his followers like so much to lap up. It was a damning bill of indictment and it was beautiful to behold.
Bushala’s statement wasn’t stoically accepted by Zahra, who cried out that he was the victim of a personal attack – pretty rich coming from the creep who has been orchestrating public demonstrations against Jung, Dunlap and Whitaker for several years; demonstrations full of insult, character assassination and innuendo. Personal enough? The non-plussed Zahra had to be admonished not to interrupt public speakers.
From the back of the audience one crazy-bonkers woman started screaming about lies against Zahra. She kept interrupting Mr. Bushala, who calmly waited each time before requesting to able to continue. After being castigated by Dunlap to shut up, the belligerant shrew finally left the chambers in a fit of purple pique, before the cops could hustle her out.
Crazy is as crazy does…
And guess what? It was none other than one of the operators of the “independent newspaper” The Fullerton Observer, Sharon Kennedy!
New Mayor.
Anyway, as far as the vote went, Nick Dunlap decided to nominate Shana Charles for Mayor, a gambit no doubt mean to get some love from Fullerton Democrats. Of course it won’t; and in any case Shana Charles nominated Zahra. Jung nominated himself. And the result was Charles 1, Zahra 2 and Jung 2. On the second try it was 3-2 Jung, with newcomer Jamie Valencia supporting her political mentor. So we’ll be favored with Jung’s rich baritone act for 2025. We’ll also hear about the horrible unfairness of it all for a while, but if you think about it, Zahra could have made Charles Mayor but he obviously didn’t want to. Misogyny?
A special meeting of Fullerton’s City Council is taking place tonight. Why? To address the so-called 6th Cycle of the Housing Element of the General Plan and the concomitant Housing Incentive Overlay Zone, or HIOZ, for those who prefer government acronyms.
Where’s the Class 2 Bikeway?
The City Council has already postponed rubber stamping this twice which is odd, because they usually clean their plates like good little boys and girl.
People who need people…
Friends may recall that City staff proposed the opportunity overlay to construct as many as 30,000 new units with almost zero City control. This, even though the Sacramento houseacrats only demanded 13,000. I say “only” even though this lower number would still add twenty to thirty thousand new residents to Fullerton with new, massive apartment blocks on re-zoned commercial and industrial property.
I previously opined that the 30,000 number was just a dodge, to give the City Council the appearance of having fought a tough fight to “save” Fullerton, while quietly acquiescing on the destructive 13,000 mandate. This would be of particular benefit to the 2026 re-election chances of Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra, both of whom are ardent lefties and both of whom would love to see those 13,000 units without regard for the damage dome to the City’s schools, roads, infrastructure and neighborhood cohesion.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a roll-out of the usual suspects singing hosannas to the Council for acceding to the 13,000 units.
Somebody’s gotta suck it up…
And that hypothesis seems right on. The Council has already directed staff to remove the Chapman and Commonwealth “corridors” from the HIOZ plan where the application would have been the most damaging and controversial. And paring back the scale of the disingenuous plan gives a victory to the Save Fullerton crowd who may have actually believed the 30,000 units was an authentic proposal. That group includes some our friends at the Fullerton Observer who will happily embrace the 13,000 as a wonderful compromise.
Pantomime…
Why all these meetings? Maybe it’s a necessary part of this Kabuki to give the façade of public review to something that was always a foregone conclusion – satisfying the knuckle headed legislators and the faceless bureaucrats in Sacramento; and their running buddies in the Southern California Association of Governments, and the California League of Cities.
And why a Special Meeting, other than to instill a sense of Heap Big Emergency about bowing to the diktats of an out-of-control legislature?
I have to admit I haven’t been paying much attention to the development of Fullerton’s “6th Cycle” General Plan Housing Element. I figured it to be a fruitless paper chase in which a consultant got paid a bunch of money to produce umpteen pages of incomprehensible gobbledygook. Turns out I was right about that.
If the paper fits, push it!
The other thing that caused indifferent resignation on my part was the housing mandate decreed by the State Housing and Community Development Department, often referred to as “State HCD.” It so happens that their mandate for Fullerton was to create the opportunity for 13,000 new residential units, as determined by yet another faceless bureaucracy, Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), whose mission is to do whatever the State wants, regardless of what is good for its constituent members. The 13,000 units are part of SCAG’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA, pronounced ree-nuh). These people sure love them some acronyms.
Where these 13,000 unit opportunities are supposed to go in a built out city is no mystery. It will require re-zoning commercial, office professional, and industrially zoned property to admit new residential use. Lots of it.
Well, that’s bad enough, but our crack Community Development Department saw fit to propose a new zoning overlay that could accommodate 30,000 new units. You read that right. 30,000 units, a sum that could increase Fullerton’s population to near the quarter million mark. Their justification? It’s so they won’t have to do anymore bowing and scraping to State HCD. At least not for a while. Or so they say.
The whole thing is ludicrous. First, the rationale for giving the Sacramento boneheads more than they demand is crazy. It’s like paying a million bucks in ransom when the kidnapers only asked for half a mil with no guarantee they won’t do it again. Then there’s the practical side of this. There would be no new roads, no new sewer and water superstructure added, no new schools built, and sixty thousand new auto trips daily. And don’t forget the inadequate parking. It’s a farce piled on top of another farce. But somehow everything will work out, our six-figure experts tell us..
The mechanism to perform this new housing miracle is the called the Housing Incentive Overlay Zone (you guessed it, there’s an acronym – HIOZ). Staff and their consultants have identified hundreds and hundreds of real estate parcels that would receive the new overlay zone, but they don’t seem to be unduly concerned about the effect to the City of Fullerton of losing land for commercial and industrial purposes. It seems that in the grand bureaucratic scheme of things, satisfying other bureaucrats in Sacramento is even more important than losing that sales tax revenue they’re always hunting around for like rabid wolverines.
Pantomime…
Well, fear not, Friends. In reality the 30,000 units was likely just Kabuki theater meant to look like a good faith effort to outdo even the demands of anonymous paper-pushers at SCAG. The City Council discussed this issue last week and there’s no way any of them are going to give the State more than it wants.
Of course, there’s another possibility, too. A political one. The utterly incompetent Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles, Fullerton City Council’s two ultra-liberals, are up for re-election in 2026, and, cynic that I am, I have to wonder if they both won’t use this silver-platter opportunity to campaign on how they defended Fullerton’s quality of life by fighting hard against 17,000 apartments that were never going to happen anyway. Now that would be cynical, wouldn’t it?
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
Right on cue, the Fullerton Observer has begun to bitch about the Fullerton’s 4th District election, as their favored candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, tool of the Marijuana Cartel, slips farther behind Jamie Valencia. The target of their irritation is Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform. The author? “Staff.”
Staff.
Once again Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform sent out fliers to homes filled with disinformation and outright lies this election targeting District 4 City Council candidate Kitty Jaramillo. In past elections, the same group made outrageous and false claims against candidates Ahmad Zahra, Shana Charles, and Ruthi Hanchett – all won their races.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Free Speech Clause protects false speech when viewed as a broad category, but the government may restrict limited subcategories of false speech such as defamation and fraud. A very good discussion of deception in political advertising is available by visiting https://www.freedomforum.org/lie-political-ads/
Hoo boy, whataloada bullshit. The rest of the article is a recitation of money collected and money spent, derived from public documents. What is completely missing is a single example of an untruth told about Vivian Jaramillo. Dispensing legal advice is not the Kennedy Sisters’ strong suit, obviously. And the reference to fraud is positively comical, given their diligent effort to ignore the fake candidacy of Scott Markowitz created by Jaramillo’s supporters to help her win.
See my badge? I’m a reporter!!
The Kennedy who seems responsible for this diatribe is most likely Sharon, the elder sister. She had been engaging the public in the effort to peddle the “Markowitz acted alone” narrative, and “anyhow none of it matters cuz we say so.” By her own admission she consulted with one of the key participants in the fraud, namely Diane Vena – who “willingly”signed the Markowitz nomination papers even though she had endorsed Jaramillo. Team Jaramillo. Jesus H., Vena’s name was on Jaramillo’s website!
“Sharon K.” actually replied to one person on her blog who questioned the Observer assertion:
BradyRhoades
Are there examples of what’s being called “disinformation and outright lies”? That would be helpful, thanks.
Sharon KBrady – the “Team Jaramillo Busted “ mailer sent out by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform shown at the beginning of this article is a good example of outright lies. Kitty and her team had nothing to do with the candidate who was charged with falsely signing his nomination papers.
Now how on Earth does Sharon Kennedy know that Kitty and her team had “nothing to do” with Markowitz? Because they told her? The fact that Jaramillo’s active supporters were involved in the creation of the Markowitz candidacy is more than sufficient evidence that her “team” knew about it and at the very least failed to report what they knew after a crime had been committed.
But now the Observer Sisters have sunk to a new low. Not only using “staff” as a byline, but also responding to comments by inserting an “edit” into the comment itself. Check it out.
Sharon K
Brady – the “Team Jaramillo Busted “ mailer sent out by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform shown at the beginning of this article is a good example of outright lies. Kitty and her team had nothing to do with the candidate who was charged with falsely signing his nomination papers.
BenjaminHow do you know that? Did you investigate the matter? Or did you ask Kitty and her team? Just because you believe something doesn’t make it fact or truth or journalism. It is just opinion right?
(Reply to Benjamin – Happily we know who putout the disinfo negative mailers claiming “Team Jaramillo Busted” because of the required disclosure on the mailer clearly naming Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform. The OCDA investigated the candidate who falsely claimed he had witnessed the signatures on his nomination papers and found no connection to Jaramillo campaign.)
This is another another way to make up stuff and be non-responsive without using her name. Notice how Sharon answers a question that nobody asked. Benjamin wants to know what about the fliers is untrue. She responds by saying who created the fliers (there’s nothing mysterious about the origin). What sort of fool would be satisfied by that sad misdirection?
But then it gets even worse. Kennedy the Elder is still pretending that Markowitz acted alone (really only a minor clerical error), but she asserts without a shred of evidence that the Orange County District Attorney found no connection to the Jaramillo campaign. The DA has said nothing of the kind and most certainly would not have confided in either of the Weird Sisters.
Here’s another example of the response embedded in comment technique:
Marian
I do not appreciate that the clickbait title and the story supports only 1 side. There was another group supporting Vivian Jamarillo that spent much more money. Why are you not citing that?
Answer to Marian – because the group that supported Jaramillo did not use dirty deceptive campaign tactics which is what this article is about. There are a few more in this Dirty Politics series coming up.
Sharon will not talk about the massive infusion of pro-marijuana money supporting Jaramillo. Oops. That would be bad. So the issue is brushed aside because they didn’t deploy what she considers “dirty deceptive tactics” although she hasn’t shared any of those with her readers. She does promise more of these undocumented claims in a breathtaking “Dirty Politics” series that will no doubt knock the wind out of contemporary journalism as we know it.
A comment by “Jeff” suffers the same fate as poor Marian’s:
Jeff
Wasn’t the other candidate in District 4 running so the Latino votes can be taken away so Kitty could win? That’s dirty campaigning!
Also, I would like to know what false claims were made against Zahra?
===== Response to Jeff: please remember that one comment from you is enough. If you continue with the various pen names you will be blocked. You are mistaken about the District 4 issues. Search for “Markowitz” or “Zahra” to come up to speed on either of those stories that we printed quite some time ago. All the character assassination hit pieces put out by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform are totally false and meant to lower the bar for their favorite candidate to win – which, by the way, is not Whitaker.
Jeff’s remark about “Latino votes” is off, but he wasn’t going to get a honest answer anyhow. His point about the Markowitz candidacy being “dirty campaigning” is right on the mark, so naturally it must be ignored. He asks for examples of false claims made against Zahra, too, a perfectly reasonable request. He is admonished to do his own Observer searches which would of course, only discover more Kennedy unsubstantiated claims, but no concrete examples.
Sharon isn’t done. No. There has been “character assassination” (oh Lordy!) by “totally false” hit pieces meant to “lower the bar” so the favored candidate would win. Her description sounds a lot more apt for the Markowitz caper, doesn’t it? Finally, the mind reader Kennedy interjects that the favored candidate was not Linda Whitaker, a bit of information meant to be meaningful, somehow, but that is irrelevant to any topic at hand.
Let’s give this some more thought…
Finally, one of Kennedy’s commenters who seems to think journalism is going on there, explurts:
P.D.
Great article, but why don’t you unmask the membership of this libelous outfit?
I think Kitty SHOULD sue for libel!
Well, P.D. I agree. I think Jaramillo should sue for libel, too. I’m not sure what the cause would be, or what damages have been incurred, but it sure would be fun to get Jaramillo, Markowitz, Dem operative Ajay Mohan, Diane Vena, and even Sharon Kennedy deposed under oath.
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.
Let them eat dog!
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.
Last week the wretched waste known as “Walk-on-Wilshire” was extended another three months – to the end of January, 2025.
At the City Council meeting a cavalcade of comedy ended with a fun twist. More on that in a bit.
Hitchhiking to the airport…
Right out of the gate we learned from Ahmad Zahra that he had to jet away that very evening for parts unknown because of his “day job” as a “producer.” He didn’t elaborate on what he produces; or where or how or what. But he also says he’s a doctor and the faithful believe. Cynical people think that his plagiarizing gig at the OC Water District was his first paying job.
Any how he admonished the crowd he helped manipulated to be there, to exercise brevity. They didn’t.
What you see depends on where you stand
Of course Fullerton BooHoo was fully mobilized to defend the idiotic and continue spilling disinformation all over downtown. Listening to these uninformed nitwits you’d get the idea that a botanical garden had sprung up in the 100 block of West Wilshire, a veritable garden spot in an endless plain of burning sulphur.
It was brutal to listen to the whole damn thing. Jesus H. Christ, what utter nonsense.
It was fun the hear our old pal Diane Vena pontificate; I would have been hard pressed not to ask her about her role in the Scott Markowitz perjury conviction, but that’s another story.
In the end Shana Charles, the boobish mastermind behind this boondoggle made a motion – the usual temporizing – more study needed to make the Wilt of Wilshire permanent; and also to apply the same study to the rest of the block – all the way to Malden Avenue.
Then the fun started. The Mayor-pro-tem, Fred Jung intervened with a “friendly” amendment to the motion. Half-measures were wrong if Fullerton was going to do this thing, said Jung, and he proposed dumping the existing couple hundred feet as part of future study and go for the whole enchilada – the other 400 feet to Malden.
The public health doctor is in…
Doctor Charles got giddy. And greedy. In her haste to promote her hobby horse, the PhD of Public Health agreed and the motion passed 3-1, Whitaker voting no and Dunlap abstaining. Some Fullerton boohoos rejoiced, but they rejoiced too soon. Why?
Because now staff has direction to address only the entire block as relevant.
Closing the entire 100 block of West Wilshire block is a much different animal than the keeping the existing 200 feet that the City has nursed along with temporary extensions and the comical phrase “pilot program.” Much different indeed. Closing the street would entail cutting off a dozen commercial businesses on the south side of the street from direct auto access; another half dozen offices on the north side would be cut off, too.
The Villa del Sol parking lot, and the east end of the Promenade parking structure could only be reached via a narrow alley off of Whiting, itself a traffic restricted street at Harbor Booulevard.
At least 35 parking spaces would be lost or made useless.
Some businesses would actually no longer have useful street addresses if the street were to disappear.
In short, the Jung Amendment was a non-starter, a rather creative effort to stall the issue, and force a new council majority, if there is one, to start over again in February.
It was entertaining to see Charles go for this. Perhaps she could see the Jungian end run and decided that she needed the three votes to keep it alive, so she went along with it. If so she must be counting on Vivian Jaramillo to win in District 4.
Well, she’s at it again. The old warhorse appears yet again to darken our collective doorstep with her presence. Janesse “Jan” M. Flory was on the Fullerton City Council from 1995 to 2003, then reappeared in 2012 like the Ghost of Christmas Past. And yet, she still wasn’t done, getting herself appointed to the Fullerton City Council in 2019, and continuing her history of incompetence, negligence and indifference to her constituents.
She’s running for the 2nd District council seat currently occupied by popular Mayor, Nick Dunlap. Her rationale? That’s not hard to figure out. She is running to protect Fullerton’s highly compensated and highly unresponsible public employees.
Flory must 80 years old if she’s a day, and Fullerton has changed a lot since 1994 – thirty long years ago, but Flory doesn’t seem to have changed at all. The sneer. The disdain for anyone not toeing the bureaucratic line, not accepting any bullshit emanating from City Hall.
Here’s a robotext recently received by a voter in Fullerton’s 2nd District.
Experience? We all know experiences can range from good to horrendous.
It’s nice to see Janesse let us know her campaign promises, because they remind students of Fullerton history that she was front and center of the disasters that she helped create. We can skip over the illiteracy of the writing and focus on the issues.
Fix our roads and streets? Who the Hell was running the City for 14 years while the pavement went to shit? That’s right, you, Janesse. “Saving” the ridiculous money pit called Walk on Wilshire? Really?
You want to hire more cops and firefighters? Who gave those guys the budget busting pay and pension increases? That’s right, you Janesse.
You want civility? Who treated her constituents like trash when they had the effrontery to stand up for themselves? That’s right, you Janesse.
And now for some fun history, yanked from FFFF headlines, a Flory of bill of indictment.
Too much scotch, not enough water…
In 1994 Jan Flory, supported the unnecessary utility tax and actually proclaimed she wished it were doubled.
In 1995 Flory directed the City Attorney to disclose confidential legal advice in order to build a low-income housing project.
Looking down at someone is best…
In 1998, and in years after Jan Flory cheerfully supported the illegal Water Fund diversion, a tax, to support her pals in City Hall.
In 2000 she supported the disastrous retroactive “public safety” pension giveaway, a breathtaking gift of public funds.
Don’t go there…
In 2000 she approved the $3,000,000 Poison Park, a Redevelopment acquisition of contaminated, gang-infested property on Truslow Avenue, an action she never acknowledged or demanded accountability for. The goddamn thing is still sitting there with a fence around it, 25 years later.
In 2012 she banded together with the cops to get herself elected, and then protected the Fullerton Police Department from reform. The Culture of Corruption continued unabated.
Well, it might have happened like this…
In 2016 she favored Police Chief Danny “C’mere, Big Boy” Hughes with a big, wet, goodbye kiss, three days after he tried to organize the cover-up of the drunken Wild Ride of City Manager, Joe Felz.
The hours are great. So is the pay!
To get appointed to the City Council in 2019, she bribed the unemployed Ahmad Zahra with a lucrative seat on the Orange County Water District.
On her way out the door (again) in 2016, she supported the dishonest “bar owners map” for Fullerton’s first redistricting effort, allegedly created by the miscreant scofflaw, Jeremy Popoff that gerrymandered Jesus Quirk-Silva into a free run for City Council.
The closer you look, the worse it gets.
During the years of the Flory, Fitzgerald, Quirk-Silva, Zahra budget deficits, Flory lied to the public, insisting that the budget was balanced, when in fact, the City was raiding reserve funds to pay for increased employee contracts. Or maybe she simply doesn’t understand what deficit spending means.
Don’t Reward the City’s Stupidity
In 2019 Flory embarked with Zahra, Quirk-Silva, and Fitzgerald on an idiotic, spiteful legal vendetta against this blog, Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee, that cost Fullerton upwards of a million dollars in settlement and legal fees.
In 2020, on her way out the door for the third time, she voted in favor of Measure S, the ill-fated sales tax increase for which she was put on the Council to support.
If there were time and temperament, I could examine even more closely Flory’s “experience,” but, really why bother? Why recall all the Redevelopment boondoggles she supported in the 1990s, or the Downtown booze culture that she helped create in the early 2000s?
Mu’u mu’us and wood beads: I have always hated you, and I always will…
Flory’s bile and animus, directed at anybody who challenges City Hall – citizens and taxpayers, has been going on since 1994 and is well documented.
She once proclaimed that the City department heads were “the heart of the City,” And that tells you all you need to know about Janesse “Jan” M. Flory.
You have to enjoy it. Even when the laugh is not so much heartfelt, but the reaction to a painful example of utter head-in-the-sand stupidity; or as in this case, breathtaking lack of self-awareness.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
A Friend alerted me to a post on the the Yellowing Fullerton Observer website, in which the “editor” thereof, one Skasia Kennedy wrote in high dudgeon about campaign signs posted by Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia on – wait for it – public property! Railing against these criminals, Kennedy admonishes all Fullertonions to “know their rights” and report the illegal signs to the City!
It’s odd that this worthy woman and crack journalist failed to identify other lawbreakers – like Sharon Quirk, and the supporters of the massive school bonds who are in violation of the letter of the law. It’s Jung they despise over there, and of course they are all in for Vivian Jaramillo, Ms. Valencia’s opponent. It’s also amusing that they never cared about this issue before, so we can surmise a level of desperation about Jaramillo’s candidacy chances.
Anyway, it’s not Kennedy hypocrisy that this post is about, well, not exactly. It’s about a fun exchange between a reader and Ms. Editor herself, when the former accuses the latter of subjective harassment of her political adversary, Mr. Jung. Then Kennedy goes sideways-funny. Check it out:
Fullerton Troll got a good laugh out of that as well he/she might. The Fullerton Observer is and always has been about emotional responses to civic issues, especially the ones that signal some sort of virtuous liberal high ground. Well, Hell that’s easier than actually finding out real facts and reporting, right?
It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…
And so Kennedy and the Observer not only beat the drum for nonsense like the Trail to Nowhere and the Wake on Wilshire, they refused to print a single fact that would undermine their glandularly-charged objectives. In fact, the Kennedy women, mere et fille, have actively participated in both of those boondoggles, throwing all inconvenient objectivity aside. Emotions? Check. Preferences? Double check.
This Skasia Kennedy is so damn stupid that I really think she believes her bullshit, Running free ads in that paper for “Walk on Wilshire?” Refusing to tell the public that it’s a money loser? Refusing to even address the dozen good reasons not to waste $2,000,000 of public money on the dismal Trail to Nowhere? Do those sound like the actions of someone who is free of bias and journalistic integrity?
Spencer Custudio of the Voice of OC has a dutiful write up of last week’s League of Women Voters’ Fullerton candidate forum. One of the statements caught my eye, attributed to the strange individual Matt Truxaw, who is being offered up as a sacrificial offering by Ahmad Zahra and Fullerton Boohoo.
Here’s what Truxaw had to say on the topic of municipal finance:
When asked how to reverse the city’s finances and generate more tax revenue, Truxaw said city officials should consider expanding things like Walk on Wilshire – a closed section of Wilshire Avenue in downtown where people can dine and shop in the street that started during the pandemic.
Gone but not forgotten…
Well, Matt, you can’t “shop” in the street, so there’s that. But seriously, no one seems to have informed this poor, uninformed boob, that the Wake on Wilshiredoesn’t generaterevenue for the City of Fullerton. It never has. The taxpayer’s “investment” on this boondoggle is so far in the red that it will never make a positive contribution to the City’s bank account. But let’s not let cooler heads consider this idiocy with any sort of objectivity.
No on bothered to tell Truxaw that you can’t lose your way back to fiscal heath.
No, the Wake on Wilshire is no longer an object that a few Fullertonions can consider dispassionately. The idea of closing a public road to cars has so bewitched the credulous that they will make up any sort of nonsensical lie to defend it. And lie #1 is that the thing is, or magically can become, a money maker – instead of what it is, another Fullerton financial sinkhole.
Like the Trail to Nowhere, the Wake on Wilshire has now assumed talismanic value to its adherents; and once again, it is symbolic of two City Councilmembers “not listening to the people.” In this case “the people” is a new set of half a dozen goobers dredged up by public health doctor, Shana Charles and few other Fullerton Observer nitwits.
The public health doctor is in…
City councilmember are supposed to be leaders. And you don’t lead by indulging the stupid make-work projects of your bureaucrats. You’re supposed to be able to ask honest questions and demand honest answers. But this is Fullerton, where no bad idea ever dies…so long as the public employees and their enablers want it.
That’s if you are Ahmad Zahra, the Fullerton City Councilmember who knows nothing about small business, but who does know a lot about self-promotion to people who don’t know better. Zahra likes to peddle his “economic development” wares, but is really just an unemployed parasite desperate for a paying government job. He doesn’t know anything about running a business large or small.
If you hurry you can make it to this morning’s “Small Business Forum” organized by Zahra, at the Fullerton Community Center.
This brilliant 2 hour event features the State Treasurer Fiona Ma who at one time was some sort of an accountant, but who has been a professional politician for a long, long time. She had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit a while back that cost the State $350,000 but, like Zahra’s assault and battery plea, the details are consigned to secrecy.
Time to come clean…..
There are two panels optimistically labeled “dynamic” which seems pretty unlikely. One panel features a unionista and some stooge from the North OC Chamber of Commerce, an organization that stopped representing small businesses 25 years ago, instead currying favor with government agencies. What they could possibly discuss is anybody’s guess.
And I have a couple of questions. First, who authorized Zahra to use the City seal, and who is paying for the rental of the conference room at the Community Center?
