Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Over at the OC Weekly, Gustavo Arellano is sharing the now familiar image of Fullerton cop, Manuel Ramos, one of the thugs who instigated the beating death of Kelly Thomas, and who is out on $1,000,000 bail. Of course he adds his own twist.
It does make you wonder if the obese Ramos has put in a claim for disability yet. It’s sure to be approved.
Tarnation, Doc HeeHaw’s all het up on the topic a’ water rates and consarn it if’n he ain’t a-gonna share his mental commotion. Until suddenly he remembers he been told ta shut up!
So why didn’t somebody tell him that 15 years ago, and why won’t he just do it oncet and fer all?
FFFF’s anonymous news clipping service just forwarded this announcement from the Quirk for State Assembly campaign that Loretta Sanchez is hosting a fundraiser for her.
Since it’s at Sanchez “home” I can understand the need for secrecy. Still, given the fact that Loretta’s home used to be in high-toned Palos Verdes as she represented the barrios of Anaheim, Santa Ana and Fullerton, we may be forgiven for wondering where she actually sleeps.
Anyhow, if you’ve got $250 or more and are inclined to drop by let us know how it went and please send pictures!
In a stunning reversal of previous statements, Fullerton’s acting police chief, Dan Hughes, today admitted to FullertonStories that something is terribly wrong in the department. Here are some of the highlights:
“When it was just a couple of things that got out we knew we could get by just avoiding the questions and denying everything, or even going with the old ‘a couple of bad apples’ dodge. Goodrich and Lou Ponsi were working like a well-oiled machine. But when new incidents kept coming to light, and coming, and coming, it became progressively harder to cover that all stuff up,” he said with a slight groan.
“I smiled, I stood in front of the flag, I acted indignant, and believe me, I appreciate all you did to help,” he added with a wistful smile. “You guys were great.”
“Finally, covering up just became a full-time job and I knew it was time to admit the obvious: there is a inbred Culture of Corruption in my department, and frankly, I don’t have either the desire or the ability to clean it up,” he said.
“I’ve been with the force for almost thirty years, including running the operations of the patrol function. If anybody is responsible for the sad state of this department it’s me. Rincon, Ramos, Cicinelli, Mater, Mejia…” he said in a whisper that trailed off into a series of quiet sobs. Regathering himself he concluded “therefore, I will resign as soon as another Acting Chief can be uncovered.”
The boys in the White Van are back, out of rehab, and once again patrolling the streets of OC.
They have intercepted and decoded a file containing the following video emanating from Dick Ackerman’s topiary compound within a top-secreted gated community in Irvine. Will this hit-piece be effective in salvaging the political careers of the Three Blind Mice? Will it resonate? You decide!
Here’s bipedal embarrassment Dick Jones, by golly, trying to defend his pal Pat McKinley for hiring a one-eyed cop, by likening it to a Burger King hiring someone with Down Syndrome who’s just “tickled” to pick up your trash.
Go figure how many folks Jones just insulted with that premature ejaculation.
Doc Hee Haw’s little speech begs the questions as to whether or not a one-eyed man is physically capable of being a street cop at all; as to what sort of physical and psychological exams were applied to Jay Cicinelli by his patron Chief Pat McKinley; and whether or not Fullerton’s Risk Manager had approved this risky hire.
And naturally neither Jones nor McKinley bothered to share the embarrassing fact that Cicinelli had been rejected by the LAPD as physically unfit for duty in Los Angeles, and that he was receiving a disability pension from that jurisdiction.
I wonder if anybody else caught the irony of a mentally and morally disabled jackass pontificating about ‘heppin’ out the disabled.
There’s just no doubt about it. Fullerton is at least twenty, maybe thirty years past needing new leadership. Well, hell, really any sort of leadership at all.
Thanks to the generosity of Tony Bushala and the hard work of the Fullerton Recall team, the once seemingly impossible is going to happen: The Good Old Boys Club is going to be unceremoniously shown the door. For good.
So who do you think should run to replace the Three Tired Tree Sloths?
Share your preferred candidates and be sure to explain why. Good, clean fun for all!
Here’s a clip of the Channel 4 coverage of the Recall signatures submission.
It’s entertaining and sort of sad at the same time. The sad part is the sight of the lonely “no recall” sign in Don Bankhead’s front yard, and of course the interview with Bankhead who seems completely lost, as usual. His wishful thinking about bad signatures is really sort of pathetic, and you might even begin to feel a sort of pity for the old fool. But of course he loses potential sympathy by claiming to rely on the experience of those with more campaign experience that he. The inference is clear enough: Good Ol’ Don is just an amateur, citizen-type elected representative: an innocent octogenarian babe in the woods.
But wait a minute! Let’s back up that bus and check out Lunkhead’s electoral experience:
1988 – Fullerton City Council
1990 – County Sheriff
1992 – FCC
1994 – recall from FCC (June)
1994 – election to a different seat FCC (November)
1998 – FCC
2000 – California State Assembly Republican Primary
2002 – FCC
2006 – FCC
2010 – FCC
That’s ten elections in 23 years!
Jebus O’ Jebus. Bankhead is addicted to running for public office. He craves it like a cheap junkie craves black tar heroin. This June’s recall election will mark his eleventh election. Now it might be a bit unfair to count recall elections in the mix, but, nevertheless I humbly submit that there is no one in OC more with more political experience than Bankhead. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
Found this in our “in basket” tonight from an anonymous correspondent:
Here’s an in-depth article written by Sally French at the OC Register detailing the philanthropic spirit of the downtown Fullerton’s Slidebar “club,” and its owner, Jeremy Popoff, who has been much-maligned by people on this mean blog.
Unlike Friends for Fullerton’s Future, Sally recognizes somebody who gives back to the community – and in a big way. Feeding 700 people mac and cheese ain’t free!
The cynics on this site will say that this was merely a publicity stunt perpetrated by a douchebag with a guilty conscience or a Fear of the Living Jehovah. And I say: how much chloersterol and empty carbs have any of you given the hungry?!
Well Friends, here they are. The 2011 Fringie® winners. I hope you appreciate all the tears, blood and sweat that went into this production. You probably don’t, and that makes it easier for us to wreak havoc on your synapses and bend your reality this away and that. In life you deserve what you get. And Fullerton deserves it’s Fringie® winners.
In the category of Dumbest Thing Said By a Politician the winner was a foregone conclusion. When you’re dealing with nincompoops like Don Bankhead and Doc Heehaw Jones, the competition is fierce. But nobody, and I mean nobody could match the ignorance, stupidity, and sheer insensitivity of the genuine and heartfelt remarks made by Pat McKinley at the Soroptomist She Bear gathering. See, to McKinley if you are the wrong kind of woman getting sexually attacked in the back of a cop car “ain’t a dangerous thing.” Just call Chief.
In the category of Creepiest Political Stooge the award goes to a tiny shrunken head named Bill Gillespie. Unlike the rest of the anti-recall stooges (who have or will profit from the current Sclerotic Regime), Gillespie appears to be a stoogin’ just for the sake of stoogery. And that takes a very special kind of personality, indeed.
The Scariest Ghost of Fullerton Past was a landslide vote for former Fullerton councilman A.B. “Buck” Catlin, who was recalled in1994 for imposing a completely unnecessary utility tax on Fullerton and who thus earned the undying love of liberals and RINOs alike, who actually named a street after him. This specter emerged in 2011 to defend the indefensible – including Don Bankhead who was recalled right alongside him almost twenty years ago.
In the ever-popular category of Best Image, the Fringie® goes to the pair of charm-boys Ramos and Cicinelli, who created what is arguably the scariest pair of mug shots in Orange County history. These two goons in uniform are poster boys for a police force that is out of control and that answers to nobody – yet. Believe it or not, there are people in Fullerton who can look at these faces and not feel betrayal and disgust. Three of them are on the City Council – for now.
A lot of bad votes were taken in Fullerton in 2011, and the Selection Committee burned the midnight oil choosing the winner of the Worst Vote 2011. And by winner, I mean we all lose. Buying four times as many raincoats as you need at $90 bucks a pop? Embarrassing. Hiring a con man to deliver a pep talk to your overpaid, pampered educrats? Shameful. But when it come down to all ’round crooked dealings, the vote to jump bag man Dick Ackerman’s client from eighth place to the front of the Redevelopment multi-million dollar, low income housing bonanza line, earns first place. For Ackerman, Fullerton is just a plantation to be worked, and worked hard; and his overseers, Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley are there to make sure their anti-recall team leader gets his share of the tribute levied on the rest of us.
The Best Video of 2011? Once again the Committee was presented with several deserving nominees. In the end, however, there was consensus: the utterly comical portrait of a cop goon with important things on his mind carried the day. Yes, friends, you know what I’m talking about: Fullerton cop union boss Barry Coffman, with visions of donuts and pizza dancing through his hollow skull as he hands out tickets for “excessive horning!”
And the piece de resistance, the Failed Face of Fullerton 2011. How else can one sum up the arrogance, prevarication, sense of self-entitlement, and all ’round porcine attitude that has come to characterize Fullerton leaders and their masters in the police department. Come up with a better image. I challenge you.
The Fringies® wouldn’t be complete without the Annual Special Fringies® awarded to those who have earned distinction. One way or another.
First we award a Special Fringie® to Kelly’s Army – that ragtag assortment of lefties, libertarians and people of conscience and who banded together to show the entrenched sea anemones and their clown fish that in this country sovereignty inheres in the people, not in their politicians, and certainly not in their uniformed praetorian goon squad. Americans of good will came together – without permits, without government approval, without budgets and police power to do the right thing. A “lynch-type mob?” No, Heehaw, Americans exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Got it?
Another Special Fringie® goes to those witnesses who were willing to come forward with what they knew about the Kelly Thomas murder. God bless them, and especially God bless that OCTA bus driver who made sure the immediate eye-witness testimony without coercion or threat was recorded for posterity.
We award a Special Fringie® to Marisa Gerber of the OC Weekly, who alone among those paid to do reporting in Orange County actually did a detailed investigation of the Fullerton Police Department’s Culture of Corruption. Well done, Marisa.
For all round cowardice and pusillanimity we recognize Fullerton’s establishment liberals who have sold their souls for mortgages, Volvos, tenure, timeshares in Taos, and whatever else they hold dear. When the chips were down they were weighed in the balance and found wanting. Hell, they weren’t there at all. A guy named Baxter dealt with them far better than we ever could.
Lest we forget others who did nothing when they ought to have, let us award a Special Fringie® to our do-nothing DA Tony Rackaukas. Yes Rackauckas brought charges against the killers Ramos and Cicinelli. He also let the latter off with a puny bail; he let the other four cops at the Kelly Thomas murder scene off the hook completely; he has done nothing about the fact that their superiors coached fraudulent reports about the murder that ignored key facts; he knows and apparently doesn’t care that cops at the murder scene were witnessed confiscating cameras and film; moreover, he ignored the evident perjury by Kenneth Hampton and Frank Nguyen in the bogus Veth Mam prosecution; and he ignored the findings of his own investigator that Albert Rincon had sexually attacked a dozen women in false custody. What a guy.
And to the “main steam media,” particularly those employees of the Orange County Register who until this day continue to refer to the Kelly Thomas bludgeoning death as a scuffle, a confrontation, a fight, an altercation, or some other similar unadulterated bullshit, we award you a Special Fringie® with Poison Oak Clusters and the fervent hope for a decidedly low circle in Hell when the time comes.
Finally, a Very Special Fringie® to Fullerton Stories, an on-line (mis)information source that has remained remarkably incurious about the string of criminal and unethical behavior by Fullerton’s cops over the past several years. This operation hit rock bottom when it posted an interview with alleged itinerant jewelry peddler Richard Fritschie (above) who not only claimed to be a witness to the Kelly Thomas murder, but who took it upon himself to defend what even the DA confirms was a crime perpetrated by members of the FPD. How the rat Fritschie hooked up with Fullerton Stories in the first place certainly makes one think of the ever helpful FPD media contact Andrew Goodrich, and I’ll just leave it at that. I wonder what Fritschie’s reward was. A pack of smokes?
Well, Friends, these are the Third Annual Fringies®. It’s been a helluva year for you humans in Fullerton, and I thought I had it rough when my mistress was whacking me with that broomstick everyday. Still, 2012 promises to be better in so many ways.
And don’t forget Friends, the immortal words of Cassius in Julius Caesar: “the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
Understand?