Here is a re-print of as FFFF Thanksgiving message from way back in 2011. There is no mention of downtown noise bungles, Trails to Nowhere, Walks on Wilshire or boutique hotels. Bankhead and Jones are long dead. The Recall a distant memory. However, the message is still very pertinent, and it’s way easier to reproduce an old one than come up with a new one.
As we pause today to give thanks for whatever we have to be thankful for, please consider how fortunate we are to live in a nation where freedom of speech actually means something.
This blog has never abused that basic right. We are abusive, rude, enlightening, abrasive, endearing, funny, not funny; we are free with our opinions, but never make things up. And we always remember what Dick Jones, Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley do not: that we derive the right from ourselves, and not from the government that would make us fill out a little blue card to speak to them.
We have been accused of being angry. Hell, yes we’re angry: as our elected representatives cut ribbons and hobnobbed at Chamber of Commerce mixers and rubber stamped every idiocy put in front of them, our city (ours, not theirs) was turned over to a gang of grifters, liars, thugs, pickpockets, perverts and killers.
These same buffoons have turned downtown Fullerton into a urine-soaked, booze addled free-for-all upon which our city council unleashed a band of uniformed goons hardly better than the low-lifes they invited into our city.
They have given their campaign contributors free land and even public streets upon which to erect the overbuilt stucco’d monstrosities that have swallowed up the historic downtown. Are they even ashamed? Hell, no, they are proud of what they have done and apologize for nothing.
Yes, there is anger; yet, anger tempered by hope. Hope that with a clear, sharp message Fullerton can be relieved of the dead hand of an ancient and corrupt regime. That message of hope is being delivered by the Fullerton Recall campaign.
You are all welcome to share that hope. And be assured: the winter of discontent will give way to a new year and spring of accountability and responsibility on the part of Fullerton’s elected representatives.
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.
In what is shaping up to be Fullerton’s most expensive Council race ever, newcomer Jamie Valencia has increased her lead from yesterday’s 19 to 41. Here’s the November 19 tally.
At this point 41 votes is a significant lead and the trend for the past three counts is in Valencia’s favor. I don’t know how many ballots are left to count from the so-called provisional ballot pile. And then there’s the possibility that Valencia and Jaramillo are doing ballot “curing” in which ballots (that include a vote for a candidate) that have been disqualified by the Registrar of Voters are validated by the voter himself. Some of these may already be counted and the remaining such ballots, if any, may add to the totals.
And hey! Look there! The confessed perjurer Scott Markowitz, whose phony candidacy was created by the dope lobby and Democrat supporters of Vivian Jaramillo, is only 3 votes away from 1000, proving that the slimy idea to take votes away from Linda Whitaker was a well-calculated one, given the Democrat/Dopers expectation that she would run a real campaign.
After votes were counted today the Fullerton City Council District 4 leader is Jamie Valencia. Again. She gained 15 votes in today’s count and has a skinny six vote lead. Here’s the updated data.
This is good news for those opposing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, darling of the OC Democrat Party officialdom, and the bride-candidate of the Long beach Marijuana cartel who pumped $60,000 into an Independent Expenditure Committee dedicated to getting her elected; and to get themselves an MJ ordinance in Fullerton.
Miss Kitty. The “good guys” were stoned and happy…
Jaramillo had chipped away at Valencia’s Election Night lead over the week succeeding the election until she had a 13 vote lead on Wednesday night. But yesterday, Valencia gained a little ground back – 4 votes, and today 15 votes.
People way smarter than I am might be able to explain the ebb and flow of these things. I suspect last minute ballot bundling on the part of the OCDems/Marijuana League may have accounted for the 150 swing last week. If so is that over? Let’s hope so.
Fake candidate Scott Markowitz may get a 1000 votes. After Pleading guilty to to perjury and falsifying election documents. This is not a ringing endorsement for the intelligence of the 4th District voter. His mission was to help dupe or be the dupe of Democrat nominators, to create a fake election committee with an R next to his name; to get his name on the ballot; and, to submit a Trumpy ballot statement. After that Markowitz disappeared. He attended no election events and raised not a penny.
Markowitz’s role was simple: take votes away from the conservative in the election, Linda Whitaker for the benefit of Vivian Jaramillo.
It’s just a few cents a gallon. Suck it up poor people!
Meanwhile, in our State Senate District, Fullerton’s Gas Tax Josh Newman keeps gaining ground on the dopey Steven Choi from Irvine, but still trails by well over 7,000 votes. He’s come from behind before, but this one is starting to look like game over. If it is, Josh can go back to moderating Neighbors United For Fullerton meetings where I’m told he got his start in OC politics.
Otiose Fullerton 4th District candidate Vivian Jaramillo pulled ahead of her rival, newcomer Jamie Valenzuela yesterday – by 13 votes. Jaramillo has steadily gained since election night in what seems to be a non-statistical anomaly. It’s pretty clear that the late Jaramillo GOTV mail-in effort is paying off now.
We now know who paid for that effort – the Marijuana Dispensary Cartel – who dumped in an astounding $60,000 into a pro-Jaramillo PAC, the green laundered through the grocery store union.
We can also surmise with a lot of confidence that it was the Dope Cartel that had a hand in the creation of the fake candidate, confessed perjurer, Scott Markowitz.
The shoe fit…
If Jaramillo wins, Fullerton will have a pro-dope majority, and Jaramillo, the candidate who made it her platform to bitch about incumbents “not listening to the people,” will, ironically, jam the dispensaries into Fullerton, despite overwhelming opposition from her common folk – real working families.
I will get what I want, one way or another…
Just as importantly Ahmad Zahra, the immigration fraud, “doctor” and “film maker” would finally get to play gay Arab Muslim Mayor. One wonders how the often hysterical Zahra would handle a steady stream of abuse like the kind he orchestrated against his colleagues over the past four years.
As far as municipal finance goes, a new majority could exercise its wisdom without being able to blame Mssrs, Whitaker, Dunlap, and Jung. There still would not be a 4/5ths majority to put a general tax on the ballot, but Zahra, Charles and Jaramillo could certainly put a specific tax on a 2026 ballot. And all that new brainpower ought to be able to come up with something to address Fullerton’s economic cliff.
If you check the Independent Expenditure forms on the City Clerk’s website you’ll notice the comically named “Working Families For Kitty Jaramillo, Yadda, Yadda.” This committee was “sponsored” by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324, in beautiful Buena Park. At first glance you might think this was an odd sponsorship given the name of the union and the nature of Jaramillo’s would-be job. A second glance at the committee’s inaugural Form 497 filing is even more astonishing – $60,000, paid through the national HQ in Washington DC.
Hmm. That’s a lot of cabbage from the grocery store and food service workers for this council seat.
The day before the election the OCEA, the union of government paper pushers, chipped in $25,000 more.
At least this OCEA contribution to the PAC makes some sort of sense, since Jaramillo proclaimed to the OC Register that she wanted to represent City Employees in their battle against oppressive management (the taxpayers). The amount is unprecedented for the OCEA, however.
But what about the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324? Why the involvement, and why the massive donation and the expenditure for campaign workers? Well, let’s go to their website and see.
It turns out that Local 324 represents employees in the cannabis business. Well I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell ya.
Suddenly all sorts of things fall into place. The connection between the Long Beach marijuana cartel and Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, whose previous support of the most liberal dispensary plan was rewarded by the cartel.
I find it really difficult to believe that the workers themselves ponied up this cash, but I don’t find it difficult at all to believe that their employers and their employers’ lobbyists did. As OC saw in the case of Ahmad Zahra’s pal, the now convicted Melahat Rafiei, 60 grand is chump change. So who really kicked in that dark money, laundered through the home office, into the campaign to elect Jaramillo, and what did she promise them?
And did all those paid precinct walkers tell their targets a word about marijuana dispensaries 101 feet from their homes? Bet not.
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.
Those celebrating the impending defeat of Fullerton 4th District candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, may have been celebrating too soon.
Jaramillo, staunch defender of Fullerton’s underpaid and under-pensioned employees made a big gap closure yesterday, narrowing Jamie Valencia’s lead by more than half, down to a mere 55. She trails 2653 to 2708.
What accounts for the big blob of Jaramillo votes coming through the hose? I don’t know but those ballots were nowhere near the overall percentages, which suggests a ballot collection supposedly harvested by Fullerton School District food service union workers deployed OC Dem Central, and submitted as a batch.
Jamie Valencia
Whether this huge disparity will continue to erase Valencia’s election night lead remains to be seen. It doesn’t look good for Valencia, still it’s better to be ahead than behind, right?
Whitaker, Linda
Meantime, the total for candidate Linda Whitaker is 1442 and remains about the same – 1200 votes behind Valencia, more or less.
Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag, but he got his 15 minutes of fame…
And Scott Markowitz, the dummy surrogate for the Jaramillo campaign who pleaded guilty to perjury and “dropped out” is on his way to 900 votes, proving that his illegal presence on the ballot does indeed have an effect.
In the close Fullerton Elementary School Board race in D5, Sharon Quirk’s empire-building fortunes have taken a turn for the better as her hand-picked candidate Vanesa Estrella, has taken a 57 vote lead over incumbent and union-supported Leonel Talavares; a result, if it holds, that would mean zero practical difference to actual governance that will remain 90 minutes of gold star distribution and a rubber stamp on real district business.
The OC Registrar of Voters won’t report again until Monday at 5 pm.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Fullerton 4th District candidate newcomer Jamie Valencia has maintained, even slightly increased her lead of about 130+ votes over the Democrat Central Anointed and Chosen One, Vivian Jaramillo. Jaramillo had a lot of help from the Democrat establishment. Like these worthy people:
Elected Officials
Lou Correa Congressman CA 46
Josh Newman CA State Senator
Tom Umberg CA State Senator
Sharon Quirk-Silva CA Assemblymember
Doug Chaffee OC Supervisor
Natalie Rubalcava Anaheim City Council Member
Ahmad Zahra, Dr. Fullerton City Council Member
Shana Charles, Dr. Fullerton City Council Member
Aaruni Thakur Fullerton School District Trustee
Ruthi Hanchett Fullerton School Board Member
Joanne Fawley Fullerton Union High School District Trustee
Susan Sonne Buena Park Mayor
Jaramillo had support from the government paper pushers’ unions and many of the hardhat trades. But significantly the cops and “firefighters” backed Valencia.
The forced smile may not last…
Team Jaramillo had two problems all that support couldn’t overcome. Problem one was “Kitty” herself, a 70+ year old low-level municipal code enforcement “officer” who pulls in a $85k per year pension. Her constant complaining and victimhood narrative didn’t help.
Patsy Scott Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag, but at least he got his 15 minutes of fame…
Then there was the Scott Markowitz drama – an obvious and in the end, unnecessary election interference case capped off by criminal guilty pleas and perhaps an ongoing investigation by the District Attorney into the question of who suborned Markowitz’s perjury.
Did the ensuing negative attention linking Jaramillo’s backers, and maybe Jaramillo herself to the criminal behavior of Markowitz and his co-conspirator(s) affect the outcome for her? Of course it did. Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform tattooed “Team Jaramillo” for the connection, even as Fullerton BooHoo did their level best to look the other way.
And then there’s the question of Markowitz’s affect on the election outcome. Markowitz has over 800 votes and will get more; still, it’s hard to say what sort of specific impact he had on the race – particularly vis-à-vis Linda Whitaker, the other non-Latino named person in the election. However, even with all of Markowitz’s votes, Whitaker would still be in 3rd place, 272 votes behind Jamie Valencia.
The OC County Registrar of Voters will be posting continuing ballot counts every day at 5pm. This will continue until all the mail-in and election day drop off ballots are counted, and each day the remaining number will diminish. At this point, there is no reason to suspect that the remaining 4th District ballots won’t break pretty much the same way as the election day and Wednesday counts.
