When you have a crappy product it’s pretty hard to sell. Think Yugo.
No, thanks.
But really? Won’t anybody help the gerontocracy cling to power in Fullerton? Apparently, almost no one will. It could be that contributors to the cause in the fall were underwhelmed by the bang they got for the bucks they handed over to Tricky Dick Ackerman and The Human Salamander, Dave Ellis.
The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing creature was slow and painful.
Yep, Protect Fullerton-Recall No filed their 460 on Monday for 1/1/12 through 3/17/12. The results? Somewhat less than impressive.
$4,224.00 raised
$9,765.70 spent
$3,841.69 left over
Most of the funds were from early in January – before they sent that last pathetic mailer advertising the recall. The only recent donation was $2,000 from some presumably ancient lady named Mary Ransom.
Holy Smokes! Dave Ellis really took them for a ride. $2,500 to Delta Partners. $500/mo to host that crappy website.
I know I said that. But that was way back yesterday!
Tuesday was a big day for Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk Silva. Only the day before Quirk-Silva had issued a bold press release to her pals in the liberal blogosphere stating that she was going to request that her colleagues on the city council suspend the illegal 10% water tax. She even helpfully explained why the new 6.7% number was a load of manure.
Here’s what she said, quoted verbatim from a press release sent to an admiring Liberal OC: “I will also call upon members of the city council to join me in a motion to stop any further diversions of water revenues to the general fund until these questions are answered,” Mayor Quirk-Silva asserted.
Naturally, when the chips were down, SQS chickened out. Don’t believe me? Here she is, right after Councilman Bruce Whitaker made the motion she herself had said she was going to make, that is, agendize the suspension of the illegal 10% tax on our water.
Oops.
Well, there you have it. Quirk decided to side with the blowhard who attended (and fell asleep at) the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting, and put off the decision to do the right thing for some other day.
The courage of Monday morning evaporated by the next afternoon.
When the topic of the Fullerton’s illegal 10% water tax was brought up the other night, Councilmember Bruce Whitaker was right there to propose agendizing the immediate suspension of the tax. And Triassic, soon-to-be recalled Don Bankhead was there to stall, stall, stall.
The funny thing is that Bankhead cited his presence at the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting as some sort of evidence that he knew something the others didn’t. Bad idea, Bonehead.
See, if you’re going to brag about going to a meeting it might be an excellent idea to stay awake during it.
Apparently the much-anticipated Joe Felz Water Study is in, and it says that the illegal 10% water tax is…drum roll, please…illegal. But get this: rather than an honest study, the consultants were clearly told to gin up as much plausible reason to keep as much of the 10% as they could. The result? It’s only 6.7%. Yay!
The only problem is that to reach 6.7%, the consultant cooked up the idea that the Water Fund owed the City rent on land where water reservoirs are located! According to Ad Hoc Water Committee member Greg Sebourn, the total annual rent was figured at $1,374,000 – well-over half of the existing tax.
Of course this scam raises all sorts of new issues, as scams generally do. Such as: the reservoir in Hillcrest Park supports a play field on its deck. Does the City rent this back from the Water Fund? Bet not! The reservoir up at the top of Euclid is situated in a cactus patch patrolled by goats. What’s the rental or development value of a nature park? I dunno, but it’s not much. Has the Water Fund been paying for maintenance on these properties that should have been the responsibility of the General Fund? Bet so.
Then of course there’s the issue of whether the waterworks itself paid for fee title to any of these properties in the first place, a way back when. I wonder if the consultant even bothered to check. Bet not.
And there’s the embarrassing fact that there is no arm’s length relationship between the people that impose the rent and the people that pay it. The City Council can demand any amount of rent they want – then agree to pay it. Why not? The proceeds go to pay their own pensions! Now, that’s not very good, is it?
In any case, the public may find it a bit confusing and unseemly that at the eleventh hour the bureaucrats and their hand-picked consultant are burning the near-midnight oil to drum up ways to charge as much for water as they can that they can keep siphoning money into the General Fund.
Will you please shut up.
Will the city Council buy into this load? Well, of course they will. The vote will be 4-1, and it will be up to the citizens and voters to rectify the scam at the ballot box.
Our job is to continue to expose the fraud for what it is.
A few weeks ago Larry Bennett posted some wild-ass claim on his website that the Recall had broken some rule about reporting expenses . He was threatening to call the Fair Political Practices Commission by February 22. In the words of Doc HeeHaw, it looks like Larry’s a-steppin’ on his own weenie, again.
Our Recall Treasurer, Helen Myers, called the FPPC, and here’s what she learned:
Dear Tony,
As per your request I reviewed the assertions made by Larry Bennett on the anti-recall website and discussed them at length with the FPPC. As per my initial beliefs I confirmed that we are in compliance in all matters raised by Mr. Bennett’s post.
Obviously we are aware that we did not launder funds or misreport income and expenses, but the claim that we’re in violation of an election code by not reporting payments made by Tim Whitacre to his people is incorrect according to the FPPC. All expenditures, large and small, were correctly reported on form 460 and form 461. It is pretty clear to me that Mr. Bennett was reaching rather desperately, which was made even more obvious by the fact that he would have simply filed a complaint had he truly had legal basis. In case you care to read for yourself, According to the FPPC Campaign Manual 3, page 7-19; you will read:
The names of individuals paid to collect signatures (petition circulators) are not required to be disclosed on the campaign statement. However, a business entity, including a sole proprietorship, that contracts with a committee to obtain signatures must be identified. For example, if Hector Gonzales is an independent contractor that contracts with a ballot measure committee to obtain signatures in Sacramento County and he does not personally ask voters to sign petitions, but contracts the work to college students, the names of the college students are not required to be disclosed. Hector Gonzales must be identified as a vendor to the committee.
I correctly issued to Mr. Tim Whitacre a 1099-misc. form in the amount of $64,177. And he, in turn, issued 1099-misc. forms to those persons who collected signatures through his company. I also verified with the FPPC via telephone that these expenses were, indeed, properly reported. Frankly, Bennett’s comments are simply foolish.
As a side note, it amazes me that somebody like Larry Bennett is working so hard to keep such persons in office. Does he somehow have his snout in the pig trough?
After discovering that Fullerton was not biting on their “Bushala Buying Fullerton” fairy tale, the Anti-Recall committee moved on to their pathetic and even hysterical Plan B: maybe Fullerton will believe that both Tony and Chris Thompson were hooked up several times by the Fullerton PD, hauled and away and placed under investigation by the Orange County DA?
Since this story can be factually disproven, they might want to consider going back to their buying Fullerton strategy.
This week, Larry Bennett attached his name to this mailer which can be seen (here) and additionally attached it as a file to an email blast which can be seen (here).
This monolithic mailer must have cost a bundle to send out. Along with a giant pair of handcuffs and the header of “Busted”, it includes three more postage paid opportunities for voters to tell Bankhead, Jones and McKinley what horrific leaders they have actually been.
The Fullerton Recall has had an uninterrupted and remarkably cooperative relationship with now Interim Chief Dan Hughes and the Fullerton PD with regard to our signature gathering activities at retail locations. It is informally understood between our campaign and the FPD that they WILL NOT arrest our people for signature gathering activities. But in California it is legally incumbent upon any police officer to assist any citizen in executing a citizen’s arrest if the accuser claims to witness a crime.
The bottom line is that signature gathering in front of multi-tenant retail centers s is protected by the First Amendment and legal precedent.
But a number of times, supermarket managers upset by the unwillingness of the Fullerton PD to agree that a crime is occurring, have chosen to file a citizens arrest. The process takes 3 minutes. The police take your name, fill out some paperwork describing the citizen’s accusation, issue a “release” to the signature gatherer and submit a copy of the accusation to the DA to review. Chief Hughes has confirmed that in every case, the DA has quickly and formally disregarded the accusations for lack of evidence.
There are NO pending cases against Tony, myself or any of our signature gatherers. Note that we continue to gather signatures during the “arrests” and after the police leave.
Most notable with all of this continues to be the absolute unwillingness of the anti-recall campaign to address or debate the real issues of the recall:
An absence of management over out-of-control Fullerton cops.
The theft of $27 million of taxpayer’s money with an illegal franchise tax.
The planned doubling of our exorbitant water rates.
A multi-million dollar annual city budget deficit.
Bankhead and Jones’ effort to secretly and retroactively spike the pensions of their buddies who run city hall.
Putting every Fullerton voter $1,700 in debt with a $124 million unfunded city employee pension liability.
Absconding with $10 million per year of revenue for schools and public safety through an illegal and massive expansion of the corporate welfare known as Redevelopment.
Which is a lot better than none. We would be remiss not to offer a tip ‘o the cap to County Supervisor Shawn Nelson for taking on the obscene pay raises handed out by the County CEO Tom Mauk to a couple of his cronies.
The egregious raises were given out three or four years ago within months of these employees being promoted to new jobs by Mauk. The multiple raises went well into double digit territory, as uncovered during a Performance Audit of the County’s own Human Resources Department.
As an ad hoc subcommittee studying the findings of the audit, Nelson and Supervisor Pat Bates recommended reversing the raises, and were supported by John Moorlach at the December 6th Board meeting. Supervisors Bill Campbell and Janet Nguyen fought hard to keep the astronomical raises in place.
Well, kudos to Nelson, Bates, and Moorlach for calling the CEO on his hypocrisy and for taking a big step in the direction of accountability at the County Hall of Administration.
Well Friends, here they are. The 2011 Fringie® winners. I hope you appreciate all the tears, blood and sweat that went into this production. You probably don’t, and that makes it easier for us to wreak havoc on your synapses and bend your reality this away and that. In life you deserve what you get. And Fullerton deserves it’s Fringie® winners.
Mr. Luv, lookin' out for my own Luv-ly Ladies of Fullerton®, oh yeah!
In the category of Dumbest Thing Said By a Politician the winner was a foregone conclusion. When you’re dealing with nincompoops like Don Bankhead and Doc Heehaw Jones, the competition is fierce. But nobody, and I mean nobody could match the ignorance, stupidity, and sheer insensitivity of the genuine and heartfelt remarks made by Pat McKinley at the Soroptomist She Bear gathering. See, to McKinley if you are the wrong kind of woman getting sexually attacked in the back of a cop car “ain’t a dangerous thing.” Just call Chief.
The Incredible Shrinking Stooge
In the category of Creepiest Political Stooge the award goes to a tiny shrunken head named Bill Gillespie. Unlike the rest of the anti-recall stooges (who have or will profit from the current Sclerotic Regime), Gillespie appears to be a stoogin’ just for the sake of stoogery. And that takes a very special kind of personality, indeed.
Rebels Fire on Fort Sumpter
The Scariest Ghost of Fullerton Past was a landslide vote for former Fullerton councilman A.B. “Buck” Catlin, who was recalled in1994 for imposing a completely unnecessary utility tax on Fullerton and who thus earned the undying love of liberals and RINOs alike, who actually named a street after him. This specter emerged in 2011 to defend the indefensible – including Don Bankheadwho was recalled right alongside him almost twenty years ago.
In the ever-popular category of Best Image, the Fringie® goes to the pair of charm-boys Ramos and Cicinelli, who created what is arguably the scariest pair of mug shots in Orange County history. These two goons in uniform are poster boys for a police force that is out of control and that answers to nobody – yet. Believe it or not, there are people in Fullerton who can look at these faces and not feel betrayal and disgust. Three of them are on the City Council – for now.
Heh, heh. Those guys owe me big time. And you're going to pick up the tab.
A lot of bad votes were taken in Fullerton in 2011, and the Selection Committee burned the midnight oil choosing the winner of the Worst Vote 2011. And by winner, I mean we all lose. Buying four times as many raincoats as you need at $90 bucks a pop? Embarrassing. Hiring a con man to deliver a pep talk to your overpaid, pampered educrats? Shameful. But when it come down to all ’round crooked dealings, the vote to jump bag man Dick Ackerman’s client from eighth place to the front of the Redevelopment multi-million dollar, low income housing bonanza line, earns first place. For Ackerman, Fullerton is just a plantation to be worked, and worked hard; and his overseers, Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley are there to make sure their anti-recall team leader gets his share of the tribute levied on the rest of us.
The Best Video of 2011? Once again the Committee was presented with several deserving nominees. In the end, however, there was consensus: the utterly comical portrait of a cop goon with important things on his mind carried the day. Yes, friends, you know what I’m talking about: Fullerton cop union boss Barry Coffman, with visions of donuts and pizza dancing through his hollow skull as he hands out tickets for “excessive horning!”
And the piece de resistance, the Failed Face of Fullerton 2011. How else can one sum up the arrogance, prevarication, sense of self-entitlement, and all ’round porcine attitude that has come to characterize Fullerton leaders and their masters in the police department. Come up with a better image. I challenge you.
The Fringies® wouldn’t be complete without the Annual Special Fringies® awarded to those who have earned distinction. One way or another.
First we award a Special Fringie® to Kelly’s Army – that ragtag assortment of lefties, libertarians and people of conscience and who banded together to show the entrenched sea anemones and their clown fish that in this country sovereignty inheres in the people, not in their politicians, and certainly not in their uniformed praetorian goon squad. Americans of good will came together – without permits, without government approval, without budgets and police power to do the right thing. A “lynch-type mob?” No, Heehaw, Americans exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Got it?
Another Special Fringie® goes to those witnesses who were willing to come forward with what they knew about the Kelly Thomas murder. God bless them, and especially God bless that OCTA bus driver who made sure the immediate eye-witness testimony without coercion or threat was recorded for posterity.
We award a Special Fringie® to Marisa Gerber of the OC Weekly, who alone among those paid to do reporting in Orange County actually did a detailed investigation of the Fullerton Police Department’s Culture of Corruption. Well done, Marisa.
With age came wisdom.
For all round cowardice and pusillanimity we recognize Fullerton’s establishment liberals who have sold their souls for mortgages, Volvos, tenure, timeshares in Taos, and whatever else they hold dear. When the chips were down they were weighed in the balance and found wanting. Hell, they weren’t there at all. A guy named Baxterdealt with them far better than we ever could.
See those four cops over there? Trying them would be too much work.
Lest we forget others who did nothing when they ought to have, let us award a Special Fringie® to our do-nothing DA Tony Rackaukas. Yes Rackauckas brought charges against the killers Ramos and Cicinelli. He also let the latter off with a puny bail; he let the other four cops at the Kelly Thomas murder scene off the hook completely; he has done nothing about the fact that their superiors coached fraudulent reports about the murder that ignored key facts; he knows and apparently doesn’t care that cops at the murder scene were witnessed confiscating cameras and film; moreover, he ignored the evident perjury by Kenneth Hampton and Frank Nguyen in the bogus Veth Mam prosecution; and he ignored the findings of his own investigator that Albert Rincon had sexually attacked a dozen women in false custody. What a guy.
Licking boots just came so darn naturally...
And to the “main steam media,” particularly those employees of the Orange County Register who until this day continue to refer to the Kelly Thomas bludgeoning death as a scuffle, a confrontation, a fight, an altercation, or some other similar unadulterated bullshit, we award you a Special Fringie® with Poison Oak Clusters and the fervent hope for a decidedly low circle in Hell when the time comes.
Fritschie. Image artistically enhanced.
Finally, a Very Special Fringie® to Fullerton Stories, an on-line (mis)information source that has remained remarkably incurious about the string of criminal and unethical behavior by Fullerton’s cops over the past several years. This operation hit rock bottom when it posted an interview with alleged itinerant jewelry peddler Richard Fritschie (above) who not only claimed to be a witness to the Kelly Thomas murder, but who took it upon himself to defend what even the DA confirms was a crime perpetrated by members of the FPD. How the rat Fritschie hooked up with Fullerton Stories in the first place certainly makes one think of the ever helpful FPD media contact Andrew Goodrich, and I’ll just leave it at that. I wonder what Fritschie’s reward was. A pack of smokes?
Well, Friends, these are the Third Annual Fringies®. It’s been a helluva year for you humans in Fullerton, and I thought I had it rough when my mistress was whacking me with that broomstick everyday. Still, 2012 promises to be better in so many ways.
And don’t forget Friends, the immortal words of Cassius in Julius Caesar: “the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
This is a new category for the Fringies® and will be awarded to that douchenozzle who best represents what’s really wrong with Fullerton, jumping the tracks-wise. The Nominating Committee had all sorts of trouble winnowing out the finalists, but in the end the selections were made. It wasn’t painless, no. But it was hard work that had to be done.
Union Über Alles
1. Andrew Goodrich. The swinish face of Fullerton to the media. The liar, coverup artist, and police union boss who inexplicably is still employed by the City to hand out misinformation and punish the few journalist who dare write the truth. Proof positive that the cops run the City Council, not the other way around.
Lookin' out for the ladies, oh yeah!
2. Ex Police Chief Pat McKinley, now councilman-by-93 votes, who developed his world-view under Daryl Gates; who thinks it’s pretty much okay for cops to grope certain kinds of women, and who explained to a national audience that Kelly Thomas’ facial injuries were not life threatening.
Money was the object.
3. Dick Ackerman. The carpetbagging slime-sack from Irvine who has millions of reasons to protect the Three Dithering Diplosaurs on the Fullerton City Council, and not one of them decent. No, basic decency has nothing to do with this political fixer, lobbyist and bagman. The sooner he is chased out of our city once and for all, the better.
Will you please shut up!
4. Doc “HeeHaw” Dick Jones, the loudmouthed lout and bully who famously characterized law-abiding protesters as a “lynch-type mob” and who claimed to have seen far worse injuries than Kelly Thomas’ that were survivable. To a world-wide audience shocked at the police killing of a harmless homeless guy, Jones represented entrenched, sclerotic, ignorant authority. Those who have watched Jones in action for 15 long years saw nothing new.
Well, there are the depressing choices. And now for a flea bath and rinse.
How ashamed can one dog get? I haven’t felt so embarrassed since my mistress had my masculinity removed. Ouch. Thanks to timely reminders from some helpful Friends, I add two late entries to the Nominees in the category. They are ten and eleven. And I predict they will gain immediate support for the award.
– JFD
Still images are fun and artistic, but there’s nothing quite like a little moving picture to stir up some good, clean fun. And in the popular Fringie® category of Best Video, the Nominating Committee had lots of submissions from which to choose. Some have been nominated for their auteurship, others for their comedic value – intended, or otherwise. Enjoy.
1. Back in the innocent days of May 2011 it looked like the most action this blog might see in2011 was a little fun in the sun. Here’s our admin doing a tuck and roll, Glamis-style. His ctitics will note his head goes into the sand, but that’s better than having it go up his backside a la the Three Dead Tree Stumps.
2. In June we discovered an amusing video by some entertaining FJC slackers who could tell useless architecture when they saw it. And that puts them way ahead of trustee Molly McClanahan and her pals at Fullerton Heritage. Also notice the appearance of aggrieved FPD trolls in the comments thread.
3. In July we shared the video of Fullerton cops in action, featuring Mr. Kenton Hampton beating up an innocent witness, Veth Mam, for the unforgivable act of video recording the incident. We discovered later that Mam was actually prosecuted and absolved of attacking the cops! Hampton and cohort Frank Nguyen lied on the stand that Mam had jumped on some cop’s back. No charges of perjury from the DA. Hmm.
4. At the end of July we shared the first video of the Kelly Thomas murder, a shocking revelation of the extent of the damage inflicted on the homeless man by a gang of Fullerton cops. 940,00 people have watched this video.
5. In mid-August the weekly protesters took to the streets in a defiant march from the police station to the spot in the Transportation Center where Kelly Thomas was bludgeoned to death by members of the Fullerton police department. For an hour the streets of Fullerton really belonged to us again. Power to the people!
6. In mid-September KFI radio hosts John and Ken invited Fullerton citizenry to honk at FPD HQ in protest of the ham-fisted tickets handed out by Andrew Goodrich, Barry Coffman & Co. And honk they did!
7. Sleepy Bankhead becomes an unintentional movie star.
8. Confusing our tax dollars with handing out candy to kids is nothing new for Doc HeeHaw who’s been doing it for 15 years. Here he is handing out millions of simoleons to the anti-reacall team leader, Dick Ackerman!
9. Will you please shut up!
10. Watch Fullerton cops orchestrate the Tickets for Honkers Scam (see Nominee #6, above) and enjoy union president Barry Coffman harassing a law abiding citizen. And especially notice the last bit where Mr. Desk Cop can’t find the pen hole in his own shirt. I wonder if this is symptomatic issue for Mr. Coffman. Arf!!
11. And here’s an artistic take on Mr. Goodrich & Coffman, courtesy of a creative Friend. Excessive horning? WTF? That’s stupid even to me and I’m just a dog!
Of course the most important video of 2011 is still not available for public inspection. That’s the video WE own. The killers have seen it; their bosses have seen it; the DA and his minions have seen it. But for some reason the people’s elected representatives are still not permitted to see it – denied by the people who ostensibly work for them. We now know that’s just a sham. The cops run Fullerton and thanks to the incompetence of Jones, McKinley and Bankhead they run it any damn way they please. But that’s coming to an end.
