Boohooism

A Streetcar Named Desire

Posted by Mr. Peabody in Boohooism, Hidden Government Agencies, I Ain't a Swallerin' That, MSM Falls on Face, No News Is Bad News, Orange County Government, Repuglicanism, Small Stuff Adds Up, The Culture of Corruption, Watch Your Wallet on February 24, 2013

It was bound to be a rocky ride.

Last week the ever helpful Fullerton City Hall scribe Lou Ponsi scribbled a story about how Fullerton needs a transit dedicated line from the CSUF area to the Fullerton “metro center.”

No, I am not kidding. “Senior” Planner Jay Eastman believes Fullerton has a metro center.

A cynic might conclude that the sole purpose of this venture is to more efficiently direct college kids into the open air saloon that downtown Fullerton has become.

Trolley? Bus? Light rail(!)? The world is Jay Eastman’s oyster, just so long as somebody else is picking up the tab. In this case the OCTA is going to pay 90% of the cost of a “study” to determine just what Fullerton needs: $270,000 worth, with us paying the other $30,000.

All of which goes to show that OCTA has an awful lot more money than they know what to do with.

101 Comments

Prepare to be “Educated”

Posted by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy in Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Hidden Government Agencies, Orange County Government, Shawn Nelson, The Culture of Corruption, Transparency, Watch Your Wallet on February 17, 2013

shawn-nelson

The other day a sharp-eyed commenter noticed that OC Supervisor Shawn Nelson is rolling into town on Tuesday to make a “presentation” about his homeless shelter proposal over on State College to the City Council. The County wants to buy a run-down commercial building and put north OC’s homeless in it. They are already in escrow.

As a former liberal myself I am very well-aware of the idea among my former soul-mates that everything is about education, as in: if only these dummies in Fullerton knew the real story there is no way they could possibly oppose our grandiose plan.

All I can say is beware of politicians with big ideas and lots of our money.

106 Comments

We Get Mail: A Most Unhappy Neighbor

Posted by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy in Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council, Hidden Government Agencies, Home Town Hero, I Ain't a Swallerin' That, No News Is Bad News, OC's Fourth District, Orange County Government, Shawn Nelson, Transparency, Watch Your Wallet on January 31, 2013

Friends, here is a letter sent to Mayor Bruce Whitaker and thoughtfully provided to us from a citizen who live in the Chapman Park neighborhood across the street from the proposed site of a County homeless shelter.

I omit this individual’s name and number to spare them annoying calls from the bureaucrats but it was included in the letter to Whitaker:

Subject: proposed homeless shelter

Mr Mayor,

This is in regards to the proposed homeless shelter to be opened in the old Linder’s Furniture building on State College in Fullerton. I am a long time Fullerton home owner (almost 30 years) and live in the Chapman Park tract directly across State College from the proposed site. I would like to voice my adamant opposition to this project! If the shelter goes in at this site you are opening us up to security and safety issues, property value drops & outright living in fear. We have a park in our tract that will potentially become the hangout for the people of the shelter, all they have to do is walk across State College Blvd and they are at the pedestrian entrance to our housing tract. This park is a little league park full of kids on the weekends, and homeowners including myself walk the park frequently in the mornings and evenings. A great many of the homeowners in this tract are older single women like myself who live alone and the thought of our community/tract being opened up to this kind of influx of homeless and mentally ills is frightening. I have already had my house broken into and robbed in the recent past and what is being proposed will bery likely increase the chance of this happening again. It’s bad enough that our neightborhood has been turned into a parking lot by the students from Cal State Fullerton and the city won’t help us with that issue, now we are going to be asked to have the residents of this shelter desend on us also. I know this seems like the old “not in my backyard” standard but truthfully this is a very disconcerting and potentially dangerous situation for us. It seems like there must be an available building in a more industrial location rather than this one so close to homes, little league fields and schools. And what happens when the over/under pass project reaches State College?

I know my voice probably doesn’t matter and nothing will change as it appears deals have already been made and this is being railroaded through but I hope at the very least that the pedestrian entrance at the corner of State College and Fender will be completely sealed up. And when our houses get broken into or tagged and the mentally ill and homeless accost us at the park I hope you will personally come visit us to see what you have allowed.

Sign me

A very unhappy Fullerton resident

Hopefully this tax-payer’s voice will matter, although the odds seem against it.

109 Comments

Two Kinds of Deflection

Posted by Mr. Peabody in Boohooism, I Ain't a Swallerin' That, Law 'N Disorder, MSM Falls on Face, Orange County Government, Pam Keller, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk, Shawn Nelson, The Crime Beat, The Culture of Corruption, The Observer, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on January 30, 2013

In the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of the FPD, two different yet eerily similar tactics emerged for deflecting responsibility away from the cops.

Fullerton’s antique liberal crowd quickly banded together so that society itself could be blamed, not the FPD: the problem was not murderous, corrupt or even incompetent cops. Oh, no. The problem was one of homelessness and the solution was to provide a homeless shelter! Why Kelly would probably even be alive today!

On the other hand, the anonymous cop-protectors keep insisting that the problem lay with poor parenting for Kelly’s death, as if a schizophrenic, 35 year-old man was somehow the responsibility of his parents, and as if that somehow exculpates the six cops who beat him to death and stood around laughing as he died in a pool of his own blood.

Of course both groups relied heavily upon a completely comical whitewash of the FPD Culture of Corruption by paid-for opinion of Michael Gennaco.

Two different cliques, two very similar tactics.

62 Comments

The Great Plutonium Scare and The Local Media Dust Up

Posted by Mr. Peabody in Boohooism, The Culture of Corruption on January 26, 2013

It is no secret that we here at FFFF have little use for the brainless Establishment boosterism that some clown named Davis Barber dishes out at a website called FullertonStories under the rubric of fair, balanced journalism. Of course this man is entitled to ladle out any crappy pabulum he likes and can call it anything he likes, even “journalism.” Who can ever for get the ridiculous lies by Richard Fritschie, happily passed along by Barber in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder.

However, this story is about a hoax earlier this month, a false tale that somebody was in possession of plutonium at the FPD HQ. Apparently the Homeland Security apparatchiks rode to our rescue and our local leaders, as usual, were given little or no information about what was going on. This was reported in The Fullertonion, here, and here. A news source was Mayor Bruce Whitaker.

At the next council meeting Mr. Barber, apparently offended that he had not been granted an interview, showed up to chide mayor Bruce Whitaker for not returning his frequent entreaties to talk to him. This public importuning resulted in offending the good folks at The Fullertonion who took umbrage at the assertion that they were somehow inferior to FullertonStories as a journalistic endeavor, and who share the whole story, here.

A tempest in a teapot to be sure. But underlying this fracas is the reality that Whitaker didn‘t choose to communicate with Barber, a choice obviously based on some cause.

It may very well be that Whitaker, like FFFF, sees FullertonStories and Mr. Barber just a shill for whatever his pals in the Fullerton City Hall bureaucracy want him to promote. During the past two-years’ revelations of serial crimes committed by the FPD, and an illegal rip-off of almost $30,000,000 in an illegal water tax we’ve heard virtually nothing from Barber that could possibly be construed as reflecting negatively on the egregious behavior of the City Manager, the City Attorney or any employees of Fullerton or their protectors on the City Council.

And when you think about it that’s quite a feat.

Anyway, thumbs up to The Fullertonion whose mission really appears to be promoting an informed public.

58 Comments

Homeless Shelter A Big Step Closer

Posted by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy in Big Brother, Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Orange County Government, Shawn Nelson, Strange But True, Watch Your Wallet on January 20, 2013

Linder

It appears that the good folks down at the County of Orange, allied with the local professional do-gooders are intent on placing a regional homeless shelter at 301 S. State College, in Fullerton.

The only problem is that nobody decided to let the neighbors know; or, even our own City Council, it seems.

The County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to proceed with the purchase of the old Linder’s Furniture store for $3,150,000. Yes, you read that right. Fullerton Mayor Bruce Whitaker showed up to the meeting asking for more time so that his City Council could at least be afforded the opportunity to at least get briefed on the matter (gee that would have been nice). Some neighbors showed up, too, but to no avail. They may as well have stayed home.

The project, apparently the brainchild of our own Supervisor Shawn Nelson, is located across the street from a single family neighborhood and an elementary school, too. It’s hard to tell what is motivating Nelson, but judging by comments to the Voice of OC and the Register he seems intent on proving to the housing bureaucrats and Fullerton’s liberals what effective leadership looks like. Unfortunately he forgot that leaders need to build consensus around their ideas, not dictate them from on high.

Anyway, the pictures of the building on the County’s website show a decrepit 45 year-old building that I think is going to have to be completely rebuilt before humans can spend the night in it. Nobody has even begun to calculate those costs, although the County has 150 days to do “due diligence” whatever that may mean. You may count on many times the purchase price before they are done; running the operation will be a non-profit paid for by you and me.

The other four Supervisors are probably snickering at Nelson behind his back. They’ll get credit for their humanitarian propensities. East Fullerton gets the booby prize.

185 Comments

County Wants To Build Homeless Shelter On State College

Posted by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy in Behind Closed Doors, Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Downtown Fullerton, Hidden Government Agencies, I Ain't a Swallerin' That, Orange County Government, Setting The Bar Low, Watch Your Wallet on January 10, 2013

Fullertonstories is reporting here, that the County of Orange wants to build a homeless shelter on south State College in Fullerton. They may be soon buying the Linder Furniture store for $3,000,000.

This may not be good news to the folks who live in the single family neighborhood across the street and who take their kids to the Commonwealth Elementary School which is virtually adjacent to this site. The folks I know over in the Chapman Park area have heard nothing about this venture, which makes me wonder whose big idea this was and why the neighbors have not even been informed.

Amazingly, it would appear from the article that the County’s “search criteria” only included that the shelter be on a bus line and moved away from Downtown Fullerton. Nice.

How much of this “plan” has already been secretly approved by our own City Council goes unmentioned. Has a deal already been work out with the City? It’s hard to believe the County would buy real estate without the approval of the City Council, or at least the City staff.

Apparently the County Board of Supervisors is voting on this purchase Tuesday. I wonder when the government plans on telling anybody about this.

137 Comments

Sharon Quirk, Poor Little Rich Girl and The Myth of the Union/Corporation Dichotomy

Posted by Joe Sipowicz in About Us, Behind Closed Doors, Boohooism, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Tom Daly, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on December 3, 2012

I was struck the other day by a post on the Voice of OC(EA) about Sharon Quirk that started out with Q complaining that there is now a target on her back by the GOP who want their Republican seat back. The rest of the post is the typical mush-drivel we’ve come to expect of the local media so I’ll let that pass.

What intrigued me was the absurdity of making yourself out to be a target by the very sorts of people who got you elected. What am I talking about? Check out this post from OC Political. Quirk got almost $300,000 funneled into her campaign account over the course of 18 days – laundered through various county Democrat Central Committees, including obscure Del Norte County – 800 miles away.

As expected, a lot of it came from public employee unions. But a lot of it also came from giant corporations like AECOM, Blue Shield, AEG, and of course, our good friends at Disney. So it would appear that Quirk was obviously looked favorably upon by these corporate behemoths, despite their subsequent attempts to distance themselves from their odd gifts to distant Democratic County Central Committees.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

The whining lefties are forever complaining that the lavish benefits, pay and massive pensions showered upon public employee unions are somehow a necessary counterbalance to all the misfeasance and excessive compensation of those greedy private business exec bastards. Of course it was always a false choice, but that falsity has never been made clearer by the fact of big corporations bellying up to Quirk’s bar.

The fact of the matter is that big corporations like big government. They are comfortable with it; they profit from it. Whether Republicans or Democrats are at the helm matters not a whit. Think big corporate subsidies, tax loopholes, and onerous regulations that chase small businesses out of business and you will start to get the picture. Big business likes balanced government budgets, and if that takes raising taxes on the rest of us, so be it. The very last thing they want is a small government advocate like Chris Norby. Think OC Business Council and you will understand that these people have no interest in anything other than a smoothly run plantation. You and I are the coolies that make the thing run for the benefit of our overseers.

Or to put it another way, the public employee unions and the big corporations both regard the taxpayer the same way: we are just pigeons to be plucked.

It’s actually rather amusing that Sharon Quirk is trying to gin up sympathy for her re-election against the big, mean Republicans, even before she is sworn in. Her dim-witted supporter may fall for that. She really doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Just ask Mickey Mouse.

269 Comments