This picure was just too fun not to give a second pass. Enjoy the image of two eerily look-a-like carpetbaggers and scampaigners.
Here’s the details on tonight’s edition of the Martha Montelongo show. Listen live Saturday night on AM870 at 11PM or online at KRLA870.com.
Steven Greenhut, CalWatchDog.com‘s editor in chief and former deputy editor and columnist for the Orange County Register and author of Abuse of Power: How Government Misuses Eminent Domain, joins Ron Kaye, publisher, editor and columnist for RonKayeLA Blog in a discussion on Redevelopment.
And on Education, a Superior Court Judge ruled this month in favor of the ACLU versus The Los Angeles Unified School District over the district’s last hired first fired layoff policy. It is a landmark decision hailed as such by education reformers, but teacher’s unions denounce it as a step toward dismantling tenure policies.
Larry Sand of the California Teacher’s Empowerment Network joins Martha to talk about this ruling, the firestorm it has caused statewide, and you can be sure nationally as well, and what happens next. He’ll also speak with us about a little known law that was passed by the legislature last year, as part of a move to capitalize on the President’s Race to the Top financial incentives for states to adopt certain education reform measures.
With much hullabaloo, the OC District Attorney’s PR machine announced the first mobile application “ever launched by a prosecutorial agency.” A dubious use of taxpayer dollars, sure. But there’s more to this app than just Rackauckas’ duplicitous grin.
An FFFF staffer who installed the T-Rack app immediately discovered an alert indicating that the DA was seeking out his current location via GPS and cell triangulation. Hey, that’s pretty creepy!
Of course, the irony of the DA’s mobile intrusion is not lost on FFFF. Remember when his bumbling prosecutors couldn’t manage to track down Supervisorial hopeful Harry Sidhu after he lied about his residence at the lovely Calabria apartments in Anaheim? We even got real Private Eye to gather the evidence and draw him a map. It was a slam dunk.
But even with the goods sitting right under the prosecutor’s nose, Anaheim’s craftiest carpetbagger still managed to elude justice… at least until the voters finally caught up with him.
Back to the app: I’m not sure what the DA really had in mind with this little gimmick, but experts generally agree that it’s best to keep The Man as far away from your cell phone as you can.
He sure is.
See, Bruce campaigned on a platform of reforming Redevelopment, recognizing that redevelopment grabs needed funds from schools and other core government functions. And where does it go? To subsidize boondoggle after boondoggle with no accountability; and the creation of “affordable” housing empires in which staffers create fantastically expensive housing for less poor people than the ones they pay off to skeedaddle.
Well, at Tuesday “emergency” Redevelopment/city council meeting Whitaker stood tall and was the lone vote against an 11th hour encumbrance of funds meant to stymie Governor Brown’s long-overdue plan to put Redevelopment in California out of business. His argument is clarity itself, and he opposed the panic mode plan.
On a sad note, Sharon Quirk went a long with the pro-Redevelopment crowd. Well, we obviously have more work to do.
Anyway, here’s Bruce:
The Gov has proposed axing Redevelopment in California and redirecting its revenue back to local municipalities and school districts. Of course the Redevelopment camp followers are squealing like stuck pigs.
Today the Register entertained two essays on whether or not to keep Redevelopment. On the no side was Assemblyman Chris Norby who wrote a pretty comprehensive obituary for this misguided government revenue scam. On the pro side? Some unknown stooge from Brea – one of the most heavily Redevelopment bond indebted municipalities in California, and a poster child for Redevelopment havoc and abuse.
We just received the following note from a visitor named “Otis T. Jacksone”:
In a belated blow to Linda Ackerman and Assclown Sidhu supporters, the Illinois court ruled that residency requirements are enforceable and Rahm Emanuel is therefore ineligible to run for mayor of Chicago. After years of rulings that created all sorts of loopholes in the 130 year old Illinois law, the supremes employed a little common sense and removed Emanuel from the ballot due to the fact he had lived in D.C. for the prior year. Illinois law requires a candidate to live in the district for one year before the election.
California should take note. The California constitution has long required a candidate to be a resident of his district one year prior to filing. The Sidhus and Ackermans of the world have ignored the law feeling it was unconstitutional. Maybe Illinois is on to something. No Carpetbaggers!
And now, back to the letter.
According to commenter Art Brown the plaintive Redevelopment wail signed by Mayor HeeHaw on behalf of all of us was actually scribed by the League of Cities and sent out as a boilerplate template for the incompetent locals who, presumably, couldn’t be trusted to mount their own intellectual and philosophical defense of Redevelopment (think: “we neeeed the muh-nie!”)
Of course there is space at the end of the missive to insert one’s community’s dubious Redevelopment accomplishments. And Fullerton did.
Mr. Brown’s claim certainly has the ring of truth to it. It reminds me of a gang of dope addicts defending their habit.
As to the letter itself, observe the following:
The claims that Redevelopment is a job creator and some sort of economic engine is, of course, utter nonsense. It is indeed a massive boon to subsidized corporations and Redevelopment master planners, consultants and bond salesmen. Redevelopment is simply a zero-sum revenue diversion scheme whose manifest failures are immediately forgotten. The funniest part of the letter may be the way one bent branch of government uses the screw-ups of another (SB 375 and AB 32) to justify itself.
Then there is the hilarious claim that Redevelopment is really poverty-stricken, once the bond holders are paid off!
You would think a letter honestly outlining the effects of Redevelopment in Fullerton would have described just a few of the disastrous quagmires that Redevelopment and it organizers have gotten us into: boondoggles amply illustrated in these pages. But no. No Harbor/Commonwealth; no SRO; no Poisoned Park; no endless succession of useless downtown master plans; no attempt to relocate a McDonald’s 200 feet. Wait. Come to think of it they did: cited as an accomplishment is the idiotic Richman housing project!
Affordable housing. Where poor people are cleared out and replaced by less poor people. And this was never one of the rationales for Redevelopment. The housing set-aside was created to protect the poor from dislocation due to the great Urban Renewal mega projects of the 1950s and 60s.
Well, there you have it. An intellectually and morally bereft letter signed by a clown who cannot grasp anything more complicated than a fried chicken.
Are you surprised?
Looks like the City recently purchased some fancy letterhead. Too bad they spelled Bruce Whitaker’s name wrong. Jerry Brown probably won’t know the difference, but we do.
D’oh!
More on Crazy Doc Heehaw’s letter to the Gov later…
An urgent meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday afternoon at City Hall. While most meetings are scheduled for 6PM or later, this one is set for 4PM, forcing many to leave work early in order to speak at the meeting.
The urgency of the council/Redevelopment Agency meeting comes after Governor Brown announced his intentions of squashing Redevelopment Agencies as component of saving money and redistributing funds to their normally allocated destinations.
This afternoon’s Agenda has only one item:
In a nut shell, City Hall sees their glass house shattering and is looking to pull out as much money as possible from the Redevelopment Agency in order to install street lights in the Lemon/Truslow area, stabilize the slopes along Harbor Boulevard just below the YMCA, work on Hillcrest Park, and build a parking garage at the Fullerton Transportation Center.
In all, the City/Redevelopment Agency is looking to move $14,100,000 from the Redevelopment agency coffers to the City of Fullerton coffers to help cover some of the upfront costs associated with these projects.
If any of those mentioned sound familiar it’s because just last Tuesday the City Council decided to ask Congress for some money to address them.
This sounds like the scheme of someone who desperately pulls out every bit of equity from their house ($14.1M from RDA’s tax increment), maxes out all of their credit cards ($29M in tax bonds) for that new sports car (town homes and condos and garages) knowing they are about to get slapped by a court-ordered judgment (governor’s proposed budget) that will surely leave them penniless.
Once again, the lack of leadership has manifested itself by the procrastination of City Hall to tackle our crumbling infrastructure. Water-mains continue to erupt forth from our streets like Old Faithful while the ever-expanding potholes begin to resemble the Grand Canyon. At this rate, residents will be able to sell tickets to the spectacle as our city sinks into the abyss of municipal doom.
The Orange County Register is reporting that the Food Truck Jamboree is coming to the Hyatt Regency Irvine January 27th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Imagine if Downtown Fullerton had something like this but on a weekend. Maybe add some music and activities for the kids.
Unfortunately, many communities do not support food trucks because they compete against brick and mortar restaurants and generally have lower operating overhead. Local government doesn’t like food trucks for a few reasons. Their tax structure is such that they pay their sales tax within the city/county which they’re based and not where the tax was collected. Some cities have began regulating food trucks in an effort to capture tax revenue and level the playing field for local businesses. The fact that the trucks can drive into a city, sell food for an hour or two, then drive out of the city has caused code enforcement officers to take notice and issue citations for not having a city business permit.
Sadly, redevelopment agencies give cheap taxpayer funded loans to new businesses to come into town and compete against long existing and well established businesses, many of which are already struggling under the weight of employee benefits, higher taxes, and a depressed economy.
So, as one arm of a community attempts to level the field, another arm, the redevelopment agencies, cuts deep ruts and pits for the losers while building up a taxpayer funded framework for their chosen winners.
I support food truck operators in their endeavor of the American Dream and prosperity. I don’t see the trucks as a threat to local business so long as everyone adheres to the often cumbersome regulations governing businesses and food safety.
Food trucks may not always be the healthy choice when it comes to food consumption but they will certainly help to spur some healthy competition.