Friends For Fullerton's Future
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Carpetbagger.
After second helpings of aloo tikki and tandoori baked nan, our own beloved blowhard Dick Jones seems to be having trouble staying awake during the Indian Independence day celebration held last summer at Harry Sidhu’s “elegant Yorba Estate.” You remember, his home in the 3rd District that he swore under penalty of perjury that he had abandoned for the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue.
Over at the RedCounty blog, Matthew J. Cunningham’s posts are becoming increasingly dronish and petulant – just like always seems to happen when an election nears.
His latest post about the OCGOP Central Committee endorsement of Shawn Nelson is a case in point. Apparently he wasn’t at this big event (could it be because he’s not yet ready to explain his huge windfall from The Meathead’s Children and Families commission?). So he’s getting his talking points from somebody who was – probably lonely Sidhu supporter and John Lewis partner Matt Holder.
You would think that when your bosses candidate gets wiped out 47-8 you would just keep your mouth shut and say nothing. But not our motormouth buddy – who goes on and on and on about how the thing is unfair and Nelson just won because he did better at the forum, how the questions weren’t good, how it was all due to political whipping and how Sidhu, not Nelson has been fully vetted through the last election cycle (? Nelson’s been through three!).
Not a single word from Cunningham about carpetbagging, perjury and perpetual candidacy! Did it not occur to Cunningham that maybe, just maybe the OCGOP Central Committee members were turned off by Sidhu’s voter registration fraud, and his two bogus addresses on top of his inarticulate, scripted performances.
Well, too bad for Cunningham and Lewis and Sidhu, but that genie is out of the bottle and ain’t going back in. So just accept it and quit yer bitchin’.
Anyhow, congrats from inside the electrified fence of the Desert Rat compound out on beautiful Screech Owl Road to Nelson for an important victory.
Over three weeks a go we made a public records request of the City of Anaheim to produce the phone log, the work product, and e-mails of a woman named Annie Mezzacappa.
Now you may well wonder who this individual is and what this has to do with anything pertinent. Ms. Mezzacappa is the personal assistant to Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu and she is a part-time public employee. It is rumored that it is she, not the virtually unintelligible Sidhu who scripts his performances. Yet, she is also his campaign employee and she is the contact person on all those e-mail blasts Sidhu sends out touting his endorsement by some dude or other from Stanton. See the potential problem? We were kind of curious to see if a public employee might just be doing Sidhu’s campaign business out of the Anaheim City Hall, and even on company time.
Anyway, our Intrepid Travis just got a letter from the Anaheim Deputy City Attorney. Mezzacappa’s phone log is ready. But after 24 days they are denying the request for 6 months of emails and work product because:
“The request is vague, overboard and uncertain in that it fails to request an “identifiable” record.”
Total BS. They seem to be saying that unless you can tell them exactly the document you want they’ll just say screw you. And they get to determine what is “overboard.” And that really defeats the purpose of requesting public records, doesn’t it?
We’ll be picking up those phone logs and let you know if anything fun pops up. In the meantime, we aren’t giving up on those other records, either.
He didn’t mean to. It just came out. Asked about how long he had lived in the 4th District Harry Sidhu admitted “two-and-a-half months.” That’s ten weeks, folks, and takes us back to February 1st when Sidhu cooked up his second 4th District address. The one on Lucky Way.
Seems Hide and Seek Sidhu has conveniently chosen to forget his alleged residence at the beautiful Calabria Apartments in the month of January – the one he swore to twice under penalty of perjury. Well, he may pretend to have forgotten have, but we wont!
And of course we will be sending this video to the District Attorney to further support our case that Mr. Sidhu is a perjurer.
UPDATE: Anaheim’s Cynthia Ward has an excellent summation of the forum on Red County, here.
And what a depressing event it was. The WAND (West Anaheim Neighborhood Development Council) forum was almost as bad as the NUFF event in January. Give them credit for giving it a go, but they didn’t have a lot to work with.
This time Tom Daly was gone, but Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway actually showed up. Better for them if they hadn’t.
Apart from the consistently coherent and concise answers to audience questions by Fullerton Councilman Shawn Nelson, the remainder of the five candidates could only demonstrate their almost complete ignorance about what a County Supervisor does. Their answers were alternatively muddled, idiotic, or evasive. It was pretty painful to watch. But watch I did. And I filmed the event to harvest future fruits.
A summation: Art Brown is a typical government statist-type guy; Rosie Espinosa is truly virtually clueless, still knows nothing about the County government and isn’t afraid to show it; Richard Faher is actually starting to become annoying – running against the Federal government – except when it comes to marijuana laws when he becomes a big government pussycat.
Of the seeming top tier candidates, I have to say that nothing has changed my previous observations. Harry Sidhu is just an empty suit; his answers, when intelligible at all, were evasive. He did admit to living in the district for only two and a half months – since February 1st – thus confirming his previous perjury. Galloway’s responses were generally equally feather-headed, and most seemed to hinge upon “collaboration” – that lefty cure-all for everything that ails us. She also made a big deal about pandering to the Anaheim residents about getting their “fair share”, bragged about the money she’s spent on them, and the need to elect somebody from Anaheim (presumably her). And significantly, neither Sidhu nor Galloway who are both making “jobs, jobs, jobs,” their platform, could name a single specific job that they, as a Supervisor would create.
On the High Speed Rail boondoggle Galloway came out as a big booster since there is no amount of your money she isn’t willing to flush down the toilet; Sidhu waffled hard, pretending for the evening that he wasn’t already bought and paid for by Curt Pringle’s money machine. Nelson, as he has in the past, came out strongly against the ill-conceived fiasco in the making. Ditto on Pringle’s massive ARTIC plan that requires $140,000,000 Measure M money. Incredibly, Galloway tried to claim that ARTIC was not tied to the HSR; and Sidhu got excited and blurted out that the cities of north Orange County voted for the extension of Measure M, despite the fact that the claim by Nelson was that what they had voted on did not include all that dough for an Anaheim transportation center. Comically, Galloway claimed it would become the transportation hub of Southern California. Anybody wanna bet?
Except for Nelson, who demanded departmental audits and outsourcing, all the others completely botched the budget question – turning it into a Rock Candy Mountain wish for jobs, jobs jobs. Of course Galloway’s solution is to spend our way out of the budget hole with public works projects. Somehow.
On the really topical issue of County island annexation they all pretty much fumbled it, seeing it as an autonomy issue, and failing to recognize the inherent dysfunctionality of the County as a service provider, although to his credit Nelson was the only one to provide examples to fix some of that dysfunction. On the issue of equalization of funding none of the other five really knew what they were talking about, and showed it, although once again Nelson recognized the issue as a purely political problem. Sidhu’s feeble response was to work hard with others. Somehow. Galloway pandered to Anaheim, as usual.
On the question of code enforcement none of them could say much of anything that was informed. If any of them are aware of current County code enforcement policy or procedure, none of them shared that knowledge with the audience.
Questions on marijuana, eminent domain, bike trails in Carbon Canyon and the homeless invited meandering, uninformed responses, and got them.
Maybe the best question had to do with length of residence in the district with Nelson clocking in at 39 years and Art Brown at 36. Galloway claims she has lived in the district a whopping 7 months, although if she did, she spent the first four months living illegally in a Lincoln Avenue office use zone. As noted above, Sidhu confirmed his perjury on voter registration documents.
The final wrap up statement provided a fitting end to the evening. Faher was out cutting the grass in left field – but not in his front yard, apparently. Espinosa was exploring County “crevices.” Brown was fixing non-partisan potholes. Galloway expressed her profound faith in the Almighty and the depth of her “compassion” and her “caring,” oblivious to the irony of having to publicly advertise one’s own empathetic excellence; of course this is just code for taxing us to satisfy her political agenda. Sidhu, sticking as closely as possible to his prepared script demonstrated his willingness to go down with the same, lame sinking “jobs, jobs, jobs” ship. And he almost seemed to get angry that somebody wouldn’t be impressed that he has represented 40% of the district for six years – even though he has almost nothing to show for it.
Which leaves us with Shawn Nelson. Of all the candidates he was the only one who could muster intelligent and informed and decisive answers. And in the end his closing statement reflected the same message, delivered unequivocally: accountable and conservative leadership for the 4th District.
Wow, that Harry Sidhu sure is a frugal guy. Or a perjurer.
A useful utility bill shows that the Sidhu’s apartment generated a $7.04 electricity bill in January 2010 – the month that he claimed to have lived at the Calabria Apartments on two voter registration forms.
84 kilowatt hours might be enough to run a 100 watt light bulb for a month. Or maybe he sat there in the dark and listened to the radio.
Someone ran up a $631.80 utility bill at Harry Sidhu’s “Elegant Yorba Estate” for the billing period ending in March 2010.
That’s strange since he was supposedly living in a rental house on beautiful Lucky Way down near Garden Grove during that time.
Hmm. House guests?
So far as we can tell, no. He has already committed perjury twice in his attempt to carpetbag the 4th Supervisorial District where he doesn’t live. We have filed a complaint with the DA.
Okay. So honesty is not Sidhu’s strong suit (whatever that may be still escapes me). So when a Friend from Anaheim sent along a recent Sidhu mailer, I really wasn’t too surprised by one incredible statement. According to Hide ‘N Seek, he claims:
“I have never voted to increase fees or expand the reach of government”
Now Sidhu has been on the Anaheim City Council for almost six years. Is he really going to ask us to believe that in this time he has opposed all of the myriad fees that are chronically and habitually passed by city councils? Things like utility rates, park fees on developers, parks and rec charges, permit fees on builders. even the fees to make copies of documents, etc., etc., etc.? And how about on other boards on which he serves as by virtue of being a city councilman? He states positively that he has never voted for a single one – for almost six years.
Anybody wanna bet?
You know what Harry? I think that’s another lie we can chalk up to you – as fraudulent as your so-called registration at the dismal Calabria Apartments.
Shall we start the investigation?
Down in Anaheim Cynthia Ward (aka Colony Rabble) has been trying to raise the profile of the California High Speed Rail (CHSR) project that will inevitably cut a swath out of neighborhoods as it makes its way to Curt Pringle’s Platinum Triangle Ghost Town.
In Fullerton (except for us) I’ve heard nary a word.
It’s pretty evident that this massive boondoggle was promoted to bamboozle the State’s electorate into floating another 10 billion dollars of indebtedness and to divert it into the pockets of huge engineering and public works contractors. Conservatives used to call this income redistribution. Now some of them call it jobs, jobs, jobs.
It is telling that Repuglicans Curt Pringle and Harry Sidhu both back this massive waste, plus the unconscionable OCTA uber-subsidy for their ARTIC choo-choo stop, as does Anaheim’s own Precious Princess Lorri Galloway, a union puppet who can be expected to do anything necessary to promote expanded union membership.
But I digress, yet again. Damn. Sorry.
How come there has been almost no discussion about this monster project and its potential right-of-way through Fullerton? Buena Park has recently learned to its dismay that the HSR will either take out part of their station or dozens of newly built houses built as part of a TOD scheme. Does our City Council know something they’re not telling us?
So what is happening in Fullerton? There is only one available route from BP to Anaheim, of course, and it will have to follow the BNSF/old UP rights-of-way. What will this mean to property owners and businesses in the way? What sort of traffic disruptions will this cause over the major north-south streets over the years? Aren’t we entitled to know?
At the January NUFF forum Shawn Nelson came out against the HSR; but what of the other councilmembers? Isn’t it time for a public hearing on this topic if, indeed anybody in City Hall is serious about transparency?
Shawn? Sharon? Pam? Dick? Don? Is there something you’d like to share with us? Why not agendize this issue. Now. Let’s have at it out in the open.
And maybe this should be a campaign issue for the fall. And maybe we need somebody on the OCTA like Nelson who is not going to just go along with Pringle.
P.S. For some fun watch this CNN video that is really little more than an infomercial for HSR: what a sweet deal for the tiny percentage of California’s 40 million people who just have to get between LA and SF in a hurry (they won’t, of course).
Try not to giggle at Pringle’s performance, if you can.
How else can I explain the weird post put up on the Mauve County blog by a guy called Thomas Anthony Gordon accusing me of “voter intimidation?”
You see I busted Gordo last week for being the guy who was circulating last minute petitions for Harry Sidhu’s carpetbagging effort to get himself elected to the GOP Central Committee for yet another district (69th AD) that he doesn’t live in. Sean Mill over at the OJ Blog has also done a post on the comical doings of Gordo.
Gordon responded by claiming that my publishing the petition forms was a species of intimidation. Imagine that! Sharing a public document – with the public! The horror! Does Gordon really think these worthy folks might be ashamed at promoting the circus carnie campaigns of Hide and Seek Sidhu?
And could it really be that the charming Gordon is really just ashamed at being found out to be the lackey of the perjurer Sidhu? Well, that would presuppose a sense of shame, as Joe Sipowicz would say.
Still he didn’t really believe anybody was going to swallow that load, did he?