The other day the OC branch of the California Republican Assembly voted to endorse Harry Sidhu in his carpetbagging quest to be our next County supervisor. Good heavens, now that’s a switcheroo! Just look what the CRA had to say about our buddy Sidhu less than two years ago– when the office-hungry politician ran for another job he wasn’t qualified for:
One of our Friends has alerted us that over at the Mauve County, blog where the atmosphere is getting bluer every day, Matthew J. Cunningham has scribbled out one of his tedious Excedrin-not-included posts, this time attacking an excellent post written on our blog by John Seiler, right here.
This was Seiler’s post that described the attempted smear on Shawn Nelson by somebody called Thomas Anthony Gordon – a semi-literate goon from Santa Ana, on the Mauve blog. We previously had some fun with goof-ball Gordo and his Mauve County playmates, here, and here.
Too many big words...
What’s really funny is that Gordon is apparently incapable of addressing Seiler’s post himself – too much subtlety of thought going on, no doubt – so into the breach leaps Mr. Wordsmith to counterattack – a pretty good indicator that that Cunningham was the one who helped set up Gordon for all this nonsense in the first place, just like we thought.
What’s really funny, or pathetic, depending on your point of view, is that John Seiler is a strong libertarian conservative – the very traits that should be applauded on a “right-of-center” blog. But no. According to Cunningham, Seiler, whose keyboard Jerb couldn’t carry, is just another Ron Paul nut. Apparently Seiler’s concept of limited government is way out of fashion at Mauve Central where self-interest has always trumped principle.
Well, Jerb has one thing going for him. We know he reads our blog regularly. And even though he has stopped posting comments here under multiple aliases, we’re pretty sure that his ongoing contact with a citizen’s blog that promotes responsible government will do him some good.
This magnificent structure is like no other house in Fullerton.
About 23 years ago, the Chancellor of FJC told me that the NOCCCD was interested in acquiring the magnificent Mission Revival Hetebrink House because the JC needed more parking and the property would make a great parking lot. Little did he know that I was the founder of Fullerton Heritage. I was however, unable to convince him that the house was a significant structure and should not be torn down (especially with our tax dollars) for a parking lot.
The following week I introduced myself to the old-timer who lived on the property and who had been living there since he was 14 years old! His dad had built the house out of concrete bricks that were made on site. Oh, the stories John “Pete” Hetebrink told me about growing up in Fullerton were just amazing, I just wish I owned a video camera in those days.
Over the next several years Pete and I continued meeting and then one day I asked if he would like the house to be registered on the National Register of Historic Places to help save the house from the wrecking ball after he was gone. Heck, he was in his late 90’s at the time. He told me that decision would require both his sisters Hyacinth and Dorthy’s consent. So we arranged for a meeting at which time I had prepared an application for the National Register of Historic Buildings and Places. They were very exited that the house their dad had built and the house that they all grew up in was going to become a landmark. So we had a “signing party” and the rest is history.
Pete has since died, and the house has been passed on to other family members.
A friend of mine called me this morning and asked if I knew what was happening to the Hetebrink house, so I drove over there and this is what I saw.
This old house is falling apart
The property had some serious structural problems twenty years ago that were unaddressed because the Hetebrinks didn’t have the resources to make the repairs. Things have only gotten worse as indicated by the deteriorated balcony at the second floor loggia.
Hopefully the heirs of Pete Hetebrink can start addressing the deterioration of this great house.
A little less than 20 years ago, some friends and I stood in front of the Fullerton City Council pleading with the Redevelopment Agency to build a pedestrian underpass at the train station instead of a steel bridge overpass. We had three reasons. The first was expense: an underpass was about half the cost of a bridge. Second was the matter of practicality and convenience: it is easier for a pedestrian to climb 24 steps versus 49; not to mention the cost of maintaining two elevators. Third, the bridge was going to tower over the Historic Santa Fe Depot – a real incongruous pairing and one in which the Depot suffered.
When the question was asked to the city staff during the public hearing about the possibilities of an underpass the Fullerton Redevelopment Manager Terry Galvin answered that an underpass would be too dangerous and could end up smelling like urine and besides, “nobody builds underpasses.” He even dug up an incident (and only one!) where somebody got stabbed – in Raton, New Mexico. Ooooooh, so scary! The fact of the matter is that an underpass would have been a mere 50 feet long – a little more than half the distance from home plate to first base!
The staff also dismissed Vince Buck’s brilliant idea of using the existing Harbor grade separation to get people from one side of the tracks to the other, a solution that would have been the most practical and cost efficient of all!
What has always bothered me about the city staff is that when they want something they will not give the city council all of the pertinant facts to make an intelligent decision; or they will deliberately inflate the project they want and diminish options they don’t want. And then the city council does not hold anyone on staff accountable for the messes they create. And that my Friends, is the history of Redevelopment in Fullerton.
A couple years later I was at the Oceanside train station and guess what?
25 steps in all
Of course lots of local Metrolink/Amtrak stations now have underpasses including Orange, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and many others. Money was saved, citizens were spared visual monstrosities, and maintenance costs were minimized.
But in Fullerton we have Molly McClanahan (who voted for the bridge), and her immortal words: hindsight is 20/20.
Almost twenty years later and the City of Fullerton doesn’t even seem to bother with the graffiti etched into the elevator towers’ glass.
Dear FFFF, the wife and I just rented the movie “Lenny” with Dustin Hoffman as the comedian Lenny Bruce. I almost immediately thought of your blog.
Lenny Bruce was well-aware of the power of mindless convention – the way our society hides its flaws and resists change by a smothering blanket of linguistic propriety.
In Fullerton the governing class has managed to perpetrate all of its follies for decades through an accepted code of silence masquerading as a brainless civility that would more accurately be described as servility. There has been zero accountability as amply demonstrated in your many Redevelopment series.
Neither the Observer crowd, nor the Rotarian types, nor the Chamber of Commerce types will breath a word of criticism about City Hall – hell no, that would be rude. And anyway, docility is just so much safer and nicer and even more profitable if you’re nice to the right people.
Other local blogs cloak themselves in a mantle of self-righteousness that is just a cover for their own naked prejudices, hypocrisies, inadequacies and self-interest. You can’t spend all your time kissing the backsides of corrupt politicos and hope to accomplish anything except getting chapped lips.
Just to let you know, I appreciate the gonzo journalism approach. When you’re fed up, mad as hell, can’t take it anymore, you have to shout. You are performing a civic duty that nobody else will touch.Thanks.
“Fullerton Rudy”
Well, thanks, Rudy. And thanks for being a Friend of Fullerton!
A little while ago we received the following e-mail from Art Brown, the avuncular councilmember from Buena Park:
Subject: 4th District Supervisor
I just got off the phone with Tom Daly. He is pulling out of the race for supervisor today and filing to run for his current position of Clerk-recorder.
As it had been my intent to run for supervisor in the past but stood aside for Tom I am filing for the supervisors race on Monday. I feel with my experience in local government over the past 24 years and my record OCTA representing the 4th district that I am the best candidate for the job.
You what??!!
We have not yet verified this information, but it sure has the ring of truth. Daly’s desire for the job may have been tempered by the reality of abandoning a great paying job with no requirements, no performance standards, and no term limits. The idea of a rough and tumble campaign may not have been too appealing, either; but if Tom think he’s out of the woods, he’s may have another think coming: he has well-endorsed opponent in the Clerk’s race and eight years of office baggage to haul around with him.
But we will say this for Daly in parting the Supe race: AT LEAST HE LIVED IN THE DISTRICT.
And to Art Brown: thanks for the heads up and welcome to the party. Supes on!
If heart says anything about a cause this cause has heart. However, the hill to climb is steep (and expensive) . Tuesday late afternoon, I happened to be driving down Amerige when I came across a group of folks who were marching for a cause of saving Coyote Hills.
The other day I did a post about visiting the latest Harry Sidhu address and noted that I went up to the door and knocked on it. The door was opened and I asked for Harry. The woman who answered the door said Harry wasn’t there. I asked her if she knew that Harry was carpetbagging. She said that I should speak with Harry. I told her that I sent Harry an email, but I have not heard back from him. Then I said goodbye and left.
No threats, no intimidation, no trespass. Just a constituent trying to find out if his would-be representative actually lives in the district – not an unusual desire given the fact that this is the guy’s third voting address in four weeks.
Some folks in the local blogworld think I’ve done something wrong in trying to pin down the elusive Harry Sidhu by going to this address. It seems the sanctimonious bloggers at both the Blue and the Mauve County blogs who mask their own self-interest with empty talk about “reasoned debate” have their panties in a wad. The horror! Imagine – dropping in on a carpetbagger who has already cooked up one fake address just to see if he actually lives in a second. Why you’d think I had committed a home invasion!
Wrong, kids. Since local “journalists” don’t seem to be too interested in checking up on the legitimacy of carpetbaggers and scofflaws, I’m going to do it – a citizen checking up on the doings of politicians whose ambitions seem to know no bounds and who want so desperately to be my representative.
And if Harry “moves” again I’ll go visit that address, too. And you can come along.
Instead it is about the self-interested, war-mongering hypocrites of the both Repuglican and Democratic parties who believe that starting wars is good for America, and what’s good for America is good for everybody else.
Local Libertarian Andy Favor shared this youtube clip over at the Mauve County where the fat heads like to throw around meaningless phrases like “islamo-fascism” proving that they know nothing about Fascism, and hope that nobody else does either.
Thanks, Andy.
Yes, let’s admit it: George W. Bush was right in 2000.
Harry Sidhu’s short lived “residency” at the Calabria Apartment, #116 is over, as we reported, here. We can’t say he moved because that would imply that he actually lived in an apartment behind the Linbrook lanes bowling alley in the first place, and nobody was buying into that load of road apples. But he has a new voter registration address.
So why the “move”? Obviously an implausible address had to be replaced with a plausible one. This was effected at almost the same moment Sidhu assembled his campaign “team.” A coincidence? Yeah, right.
Here’s Sidhu’s re-registration form at the OC Registrar of Voters office, where Harry has become a recognizable regular customer:
This other day I decided to find out where Harry “moved” to this time. It’s on the very scruffy southern edge of Anaheim in a new little four house subdivision; the signs on the adjacent street say Garden Grove.
Anyhow, I rang the doorbell and was greeted by Mrs. Harry Sidhu. I asked if Harry was home and she told me no; I told her I had sent Harry an email questioning his residency in the 4th Supervisorial District and that he hasn’t sent me a response. I asked if she realized what Harry was doing was called “carpettbagging” and she told me that she did not believe they were carpetbagging because they moved into the district. I wonder if Harry told her that people who move into a district just to run for office are called carpetbaggers? I told her who I was and she told me that I was talking to the wrong person. We said goodbye and off I went.
Upon leaving I had to ask myself whether Mrs. Harry is just a day-time stage prop at another fake residence, or whether the family was really going to try living there. When you see the house and the neighborhood its still a real big stretch. Although there’s no pool hall next door, the neighborhood is a far cry from the Elegant Old Yorba Estate in the 3rd District, that’s for sure.
