A week and a half ago Fullerton councilman Ahmad Zahra agendized an item to dole out $200,000 from the General Fund to immigrants hassled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He thought it was an excellent opportunity to burnish his own immigrant travails to the full house. He didn’t bother sharing any of the details of his own arduous trail to citizenship, of course – like his marriage fraud – a federal crime.
Fortunately, the distinguished ladies of FFFF’s Fine Arts, Cinema, and Book Club Division have recreated the elevation of the poor, Syrian immigrant to what he is now – a poor (targeted, don’t forget!) American citizen.
Enjoy the histrionics: the wistful smiles, the knowing head bobs, the empathetic tone.
I guess Zahra figures he can get away with telling only a small part of his heroic origin story, even if it changes a little now and then. The whole story, or most of it, was hidden for decades in order to create the Zahra brand he sells to the ignorant.
I guess we’ll see what the 4th District voters have to say.
Last Tuesday the Fullerton City Council voted 4-0 in closed session to file an amicus brief in support of the Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem lawsuit filed by the ACLU, et al. against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for their violations of basic civil rights.
Turns out the aye vote was cast by Zahra, Charles, Jung, and Valencia. Dunlap apparently found it impossible to vote one way or the other.
A good chunk of Fullerton’s liberal brigade was on hand to exhort the Council to support the lawsuit and they took the opportunity to do so for an hour and half. When the Council finally “reported out” of closed session the announcement of the decision produced applause.
This was the right decision.
You could try reading it…
Whatever one thinks about illegal immigrants and their place in American society and our economy, there’s no escaping two basic facts. Everyone has the rights of due process in the United States per the 5th Amendment. We are all protected against unfounded search and seizure by the 4th Amendment. Case closed.
What we have been seeing in California is the wanton disregard for the Constitution by a lawless administration that has zero respect for it, and is more interested in exercising a race-based reign of terror by a collection of masked and heavily armed goons. The State of California and the municipalities therein have a moral obligation to say something and do something, at least.
I guess your position on this issue depends on what you really believe about yourself. If you’re willing to support the war being waged on our streets by anonymous, unaccountable, and violent agents of the federal government – a veritable Geheime Staatspolizei; if you are willing to see the federal government send its troops to patrol the streets of America in peacetime, you are living in the wrong country.
A fellow named Doug Bowen has become an internet star for aggressive, vulgar and abusive behavior toward a couple playing fetch with their dogs, as well as a Fullerton College security guy just trying to do his job.
Mr. Bowen was highly offended because the people were using the green strip adjacent to the south college parking lot, next to Bowen’s house. The activity caused Bowen’s own dogs to bark on his side of a fence. This was on July 29th,
Improvised doggie park…
Abraham Cano and his girlfriend captured the incident on video that has gone viral on social media as such confrontations often do.
Racist neighbor threatens us, claims he knows the chief of police in Fullerton and sits on the advisory board. Everything is on video! Please share he thinks he’s untouchable, threatening to call ice on us because we’re Latinos over playing fetch with our dogs in a public space. #fullerton#RacistNeighbor#ExposeHate#JusticeForAll#ktla#fullertoncollege#racism
The kicker? This enflamed hemorrhoid was a member of the Police Chief’s Advisory Council. Not anymore. It seems that even the FPD has limits, even though Bowen believed he was in tight with cops as demonstrated in his attitude. But Bowen was arrested hauled off to the Fullerton clink and booked, charged with threatening bodily harm. Good for the FPD. The case has been sent to the DA.
Now Bowen could have just gone down as another obnoxious asshole Karen – abusive, entitled, and making up shit to defend his privilege, but no. At one point he mutters that he was going to call ICE, adding a layer of racism to his résumé. Well done fella.’
The story took another weird turn today. A Friend decided to contact Mr. Bowen via the telephone. The respondent was an FPD cop named David Alarid. What? Why are Fullerton police answering this miscreant’s phone? Is he in protective custody of some kind?
This afternoon our boys in the White Van saw four cop cars at Bowen’s house. So what gives? Are Fullerton taxpayers footing the bill to provide security for this donkey? I sure hope somebody presents this blowhard with a bill for police protection.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
At least so they say. Small businesses and local entrepreneurs, “play a significant role in driving community engagement, creating jobs, and fostering a sense of belonging among residents,” intones Saksia Kennedy. They need fairness from the City when it comes to outdoor dining permit fees.
Hugh Berry Way
Her model example is Les Amis that rents space from the City on left over property when the old Redevelopment Agency blew an opening from Wilshire Avenue to the parking lot off Malden. Apparently Les Amis is getting hit with back rent that was suspended due to Covid and the rent cost is real big.
Well, okay, we really know this is a backhanded swipe at the Santa Fe Depot Cafe that pays no rent on patio space outside. But we will never be told by the Observer that this is because the space is open to and used by the public, gratis.
Nevertheless, the point is interesting about public space being used for private purposes; in theory, rents should be uniform for similar purposes; but some locations may not be able to support the rents that others do because of location and other factors, a simple truth that supports individual assessments.
But hey, wait a minute. Since when did the Observer Sisters ever give a rat’s ass about businesses? Neither one has ever run a business, let alone an entrepreneurship – what ever the word “entrepreneur” might even mean to them.
For the past year the Fullerton Observer was actively engaged supporting the idiot decision to close West Wilshire Avenue at Harbor Boulevard to traffic and to keep the busy street closed. The resulting “Walk on Wilshire” was a dismal failure to anyone paying a modicum of attention: it was an inconvenience to motorists, hardly anybody used it, it lost money, and worst of all, it hurt the small businesses and property owners in the 100 block of West Wilshire who noticed a decline in business after the street was closed. A “pilot program” became a virtual bureaucratic make-work program with no end in sight.
The Kennedy Sisters made it their mission to save “WoW,” and in doing so even ran ads in their own publication, trying to put public pressure on local businesses to support the scheme. Hardly the behavior of those wanting to advocate for small businesses, is it? They never mentioned to their readers the activities of City Hall employees who deliberately kept Wilshire businesses and property owners in the dark about what they were doing.
“Okay, Joe” I can hear you saying, “so what.” We all know that the Fullerton Observer is locked into ossified ideological boneheadedness, uber alles. I know that’s true. But it’s a little breathtaking to observe people who are so steadfastly free from self-awareness; who have a world-view where practicality is so completely absent; and where it’s always the thought that counts, not the cost – even if the thought is patronizing, nonsensical, or unable to stand the scrutiny of normal people.
Yep. You read that right. As reported in the Voice of OC last month, DA Todd Spitzer and his former bad cop Shawn Nelson were popped for retaliating against Tracy Miller, one of the Deputy DAs. It seems that Spitzer hired his best bud Gary LoGalbo at the DAs shop who proceeded to sexually harass a bunch of women; Miller said she was targeted by Spitzer and Nelson for whistleblowing. This is the frat boy kind of garbage so common in the workplace.
A jury believed Ms. Miller and awarded her three million bucks. That’s a lot of scratch. And many other suits are till outstanding.
Shawn Nelson, Todd Spitzer, and Joe Sipowicz have one thing in common. None of us will have to pay a dime of that award. Nelson and Spitzer are protected by the typical indemnification that goes with public employment. And I live in Lincoln County, Nevada.
But OC residents will pay plenty. About a dollar for every person in the county; about $150,000 for very man woman and child in Fullerton. So Sorry.
For Spitzer the case is just another in a long line of employee related legal suits dating back his days as a County Supervisor. He’s been busted for racial profiling and recently lost a $2,000,000 case for retaliating against a DA investigator. Ouch. He’s costing OC a helluva lot more than he’s worth.
Well fed on your dollar…
The equally morally egregious Nelson once a Fullerton Councilman, used to be a hardcore Spitzer enemy until he saw him as a was to become a judge – a long standing wet dream job. But he was never going to get it without help – an official job with the DAs office. So Nelson endorsed Spitzer over Rackauckas in 2018 and in return got the job as Spitzer’s in-house enforcer. He also got an undeserved job title (he was formerly a defense lawyer) and a free pass to a judgeship via an election against a nobody. The Bar Association described him as “unqualified.”
Spitzer’s response was a non-apology of the “I’m sorry my well-intentioned actions were misinterpreted” type. Nelson, as a judge didn’t have to say anything, hiding behind the “He can’t comment” as parroted by some court flunky to the media.
Ever ask yourself how America got stuck with not one but two Trump presidencies? There are lots of reasons, including the fact that a great many Americans are generally stupid, incurious, nativist, fearful of this or that, and of course, did I mention really stupid?
But there’s something else going on here too, and that’s the phenomenon of ordinary folk who are just sick and tired of liberal academic preachers preaching to them about how to live, what to believe. This is precisely why there is so little outcry among the masses about Trump’s war on academic elites.
They had it coming.
For decades the problem of an impractical and ideological driven agenda telling everybody how to talk and how to behave and what to think has gotten worse and worse. There was bound to be a reaction.
What does this have to do with Fullerton? Well, I’ll tell you. Fullerton is an academic backwater – with a third-tier university and a junior college; and that means that these institutions and their camp followers are going to try extra hard to polish the produce of their politically correct world-view. In some circles this passes for enlightenment – just like accepting at face value any idiot who checks the right boxes.
Let’s take Fullerton’s leading liberal politicians, two individuals who revel in the tile of “Doctor” and who, like the conscientious patent medicine peddler, love to dispense their dubious wares.
They believe they are smarter than you are…
First exhibit for the prosecution. Shana Charles, a CSUF teacher whose specialty is “public health” a silly academic field of activity ginned up to fill the ranks of graduate schools. Ms. Charles is naturally a barely contained wind bag whose supercilious and lengthy lectures are truly annoying. But despite the smiles there is no doubt that Charles considers herself a superior intellect, perfectly suited to the role of moral preacher.
My second exhibit is none other than the good Doctor from Damascus, the self-righteous Ahmad Zahra, whose pontifications on moral probity and the defects thereof practiced by his colleagues are common fare at council meetings. Like his ally Charles, Zahra’s lectures run on for a long time and are characterized by hand-wringing and finger pointing. Yeah, Zahra looks down on you and me, and why not? He’s a member of the cosmopolitan intelligentsia, see?
Naturally Zahra and Charles have no experience that would actually help them understand their constituents. Who needs experience when ideology is so potent? Their playground is the unaccountable arena of feeling good about their liberal thoughts, and of course in telling everybody else what to do. This is exactly the high-handed moral bossiness that pisses off so many people.
In Fullerton we also know that our liberal moral and truthy exemplars have proverbial feet of clay.
The idea of the adipose Shana Charles lecturing anybody on any sort of health, is preposterous; wasting millions just to pay heed to the all-important concept, efficacy be damned – bike trails that nobody will use – is especially painful.
And then there’s “Dr.” Zahra, an unemployed parasite with no income (read his Form 700 for fun) whose speechifying on morality, the spirit of the law, and so forth is remarkably hypocritical even for a low-grade politician. We’ve seen his record: a phony marriage to a woman in Arkansas to stay in the country; claiming exoneration for an assault and battery case where there wasn’t any; plagiarizing articles to appear like an expert on water issue; and filing a false police report against one of his colleagues. What a guy.
These people need fuel to keep their fire going and that sustenance is provided by the various academic flotsam who think that Zahra and Charles represent everybody – instead of just themselves. In fact these folk are the ones who are always nattering about “the people” who want this or that (expensive) nonsense; and largely because “they” are “underserved” the classic liberal/bureaucratic label that patronizing boohoos stick on Latinos, and blacks and anybody else who needs a financial or bureaucratic middleman to give them something “nice.”
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention those other purveyors of liberal tripe, the Fullerton Observer Sisters, Sharon and Skaskia, whose censored blog and twice monthly screed is dedicated to supporting whatever nonsense is ladled out by their heroes, too dumb to understand the extent of how they are being manipulated.
Early yesterday morning Fullerton police had some sort of run in with what is characterized as an unhinged guy in Lemon Park. After some sort of scuffle the guy croaked. Hmm.
Here’s the notification by the Fullerton Police Department, replete with the usual self-serving lingo.
Now why am I reminded of the Kelly Thomas incident?
Erratic behavior, additional officers (to assist in investigation?!), uncooperative male, more officers needed to restrain, oops cop “violently bit” on the arm by suspect causing injuries (note the use of the plural), paramedics arrive, guy pronounced dead at “local hospital.”
Something about this whole episode seems surreal. A guy holding a “smoldering” cardboard box? More superhuman strength, of course suggesting the ol’ PCP, meth, whatever. We are informed that the suspect began to “show signs of a medical emergency” which makes me wonder about what sorts of “restraint” were used.
Of course at the end of this literary masterpiece we are reminded that the ever-vigilant District Attorney Todd Spitzer will conduct an “independent investigation” that will be nothing more than a condemnation of crazy homeless dudes and a clean bill of health for the FPD.
According to the Fullerton Police Department, their employees killed another person Saturday night.
Responding to a domestic dispute call in the 700 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue the cops arrived on the scene and discovered a 19 year old male “matching the description” on the sidewalk. Here’s the tale from the press release:
Despite repeated commands from officers, the suspect was noncompliant. In a sudden turn of events, he lifted his shirt and pulled what appeared to be a handgun from his waistband, prompting an officer-involved shooting.
Officers immediately began life-saving measures until paramedics arrived, but the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. A pellet gun, closely resembling a Smith & Wesson handgun, was recovered near the suspect.
Oh, no. Another one of those dreary FPD press releases that always sound like an immediate exculpation rather than a simple statement of the bare facts
At the point of first contact the cops confronted a guy who may or may not have done anything wrong. We know he wasn’t juiced because if he had been the statement would have said so. There goes Excuse Option One.
We don’t know what those “commands” given by the police were, of course, or even if they were reasonable. It will be interesting to see and hear what sort of dialog ensued during this confrontation. Was it calming, or was it the sort of thing that might prompt escalation?
Then there was “…a sudden turn of events.” What is this a high school creative writing class? For some as yet unknown reason this young man decided on the ever popular Excuse Option Number Two: suicide by cop. The inevitable “waistband” is deployed by the cop writer, although the PR had earlier stated that the culprit had been waving a knife at Dad at the incident address. I’m not sure who wanders around with a pellet gun shoved in his pants but there was one, apparently that (closely!!) resembled a Smith and Wesson handgun.
We will be comforted to know that all will be revealed within 45 days via one of those Critical Incident Community Briefing Video.
We’ve seen his own flailing effort to create a controversy over Councilwoman Jamie Valencia’s campaign contributions, going so far as to basically accusing his own City Attorney of incompetence in the matter. And that’s not the only unforced error made by this little fellow.
Zahra says take a hike!
Back in January Zahra decided not to re-appoint his Planning Commissioner Arif Mansuri, a gentleman FFFF has noted as a diligent and intelligent representative with actual professional credentials. Zahra instead appointed a young guy named Adrian Meza.
Never heard of Meza? I didn’t either so I did some research. The guy is one of those identity politicking “progressive” types, without any discernable ability who hang around politics for critical self validation – just like his apparent mentor, Ahmad Zahra. Meza says he is a Digital Marketing Specialist, whatever that means, and works for a company that arranges egg collection and surrogacy for gay people. What this has to do with experience in land use and planning is beyond me.
More importantly, Meza is a member of the that preachy and self-righteous crowd that doesn’t do an awful lot of thinking for themselves. Naturally he has been a writer of some kind for the Fullerton Observer that touted his video about how bad Fullerton’s roads are. The video recommended new taxes, of course, and even spent time wedging in support for the Trail to Nowhere with a hat tip to the community disservice of FFFF.
His bio on linkedin suggests he is still a Parks Commissioner (his first listed title!) and and even lists his efforts for the Observer as some sort of real job. Other stuff is part-time work in municipal park departments. Of course, like Zahra, he describes himself as a “videographer” with one amateur attempt listed. Man, talk about fluffing. We do have another Zahra on our hands.
Nothing left but empty bloviation…
Anyway, this selection has come to grief, apparently because Mr. Meza doesn’t currently live in Fullerton. as required by law. WoW. That’s embarrassing. How is it that Zahra didn’t know his guy doesn’t live here? And an even better question would ask whether Meza has been on Fullerton’s Park and Rec Commission while not a citizen of Fullerton. That would look bad. The question deserves an answer from Zahra; if Meza was willing to be on our Planning Commission illegally there’s no reason to suppose he had no qualms about being a Parks Commissioner while living, say, in Anaheim.
Of course no one will get an answer from Zahra about this, because no one will ask. Hopefully one of the other Councilpersons who ratified the nomination will try to find out. But I doubt it, Fullerton being Fullerton.
That’s the way it looks. FFFF’s attorney Kelly Aviles sent word to the City that Friends for Fullerton’s Future was planning a periodical publication and wanted to dispense it on City property – City Hall, the Fullerton Library, the Community Center. You may recall our post.
Our lawyer has not heard anything in the past four and a half weeks. There is an obvious stall tactic, of course. This means one of two things. Could it be because the City doesn’t know how to respond? Or, maybe the City wants to ignore the request just hoping somehow it will go away.
Staying awake long enough to break the law…
We do know that there is no love lost between FFFF and Fullerton’s astonishingly still employed City Attorney, the I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm of Jones and Mayer. These cut rate pettifoggers, hand job lawyers, and low percentile law school grads don’t like us because of our myriad posts outlining their incompetence, corruption, and self-dealing. They even tried to sue FFFF and a couple of its writers a few years back. Their loss must still hurt their misplaced professional pride.
Obviously, the immigration and marriage fraud Ahmad Zahra doesn’t like us because we are anti-Muslim homophobes, which hilariously corresponds exactly with his exercise in self branding. Whether his pal in the “progressive” ideology charade, Shana Charles is opposed to an FFFF presence in City Hall is unknown.
No comment…
What about Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung? We have been sort of nice to them when they do good things; also not so nice when they cave in to Fullerton’s boohoo phalanx. Are they trying to blackball us? I don’t know and I don’t know if Jamie Valencia has even heard of our humble blog.
Whatever the dynamics, we’re not giving up. If a squalid rag like the Fullerton Observer, with its innuendo, errant information, sanctimonious and blatant politicking can be disseminated on public property, so can our proposed chronicle.
