The Monumental Misrule of Don Bankhead

Yes, I am the king!

Yes it’s been a long, long time. When he first climbed the steps to his throne and surveyed his Fullerton domain the year was 1988. Ronald Reagan was president.

Don Bankhead has been on the Fullerton City Council for 23 years. With a few weeks off for bad behavior – an unnecessary Utility Tax and subsequent recall in 1994 – this monument to sub-mediocrity has been demonstrating his dubious mental faculties every other Tuesday night since dirt was young.

I will always fondly remember when Dick Ackerman referred to him as Don Blankhead. Now how many times did Don hear that as his fellow Fullerton cops chuckled at the dunderhead behind his back?

So now let’s take a moment or two to review Mr. Bankhead’s singularly inept career in Fullerton.

Back in 1988 Bankhead tried to get the job of Fullerton Chief of Police. He failed when the council chose somebody else. Ironically, Dick Ackerman who was on the Council then, was well aware of Blankhead’s utter incompetence. And so, out of spite, he ran for the city council: Lo and Behold he won! On the city council he believed that no one would would laugh at him anymore. And he believed people would laugh with him instead of at him. He was wrong.

Bankhead also suddenly revealed what he never told anybody when he interviewed for the Chief job, or even when he ran for County Sheriff in 1990: that he was a virtual cripple from a series of earlier alleged mishaps that, if true, would have made Inspector Clouseau look like an Olympic gymnast. His scam made the news, but the nice people in Fullerton were too polite to say anything. But we all knew.

Throughout the 1990s, Bankhead supported every single Redevelopment subsidy, boondoggle and giveaway of public money to fly-by-night developers; here is my pithy summation.

In the past ten years he has smiled that dim, senile smile as he turned downtown Fullerton into a booze-soaked battle field that costs the taxpayers of Fullerton $1.5 million every single year, all to the benefit his cynical and parasitical “supporters.” He had the effrontery to claim that without his interventionist Redevelopment Fullerton itself would be a ghost town! He tried to lie his way out of that idiocy. It didn’t work.

or to put it another way:

A darling of the cop union he voted for the bank-breaking 3@50 pension formula that has created a massive and permanent unfunded liability for the taxpayers of Fullerton; he continuously voted for the illegal 10% utility tax on the water ratepayers of Fullerton, money that has gone to pay his own bloated pension.

Of course Bankhead was propped up every step of the way by his “public safety” union allies for whom he performed such acts of generosity with our money.

What Bankhead doesn’t want anyone to know is that in the course of his political career he has pulled down hundreds of thousands of dollars snoozing through footling meetings of various agencies and commissions about which he knows absolutely nothing – but for which he applied the same rubber stamp he has wielded so disastrously in Fullerton.

Although Bankhead is a Republican, and supposed to be some sort of conservative, the inescapable fact is that he is big-government in a big way. And if big-government could help him or his developer buddies score big, so much the better. After all who was really watching? FFFF, that’s who. Here we busted Bankhead for blowing $1200 staying at a four star Long Beach Hotel, on our dime – a mere 25 miles from his house in Fullerton!

This year, finally, the extent to which Bankhead has aided and abetted an incompetent and criminal police department has finally surfaced, and the extent of the damage this simpleton has caused Fullerton has become crystal clear.

Will Bankhead become the first man in California history to be recalled from the same office? Let’s work for it!

Don Bankhead, this is your life: a sad, belabored death march of cognitive meltdown, incompetence, lackeydom, and buffoonery. Fortunately your quarter century misrule is coming to a merciful conclusion. Fullerton is finally waking up and finally deciding that it wants real leaders – not clownish cartoons – on its city council.

 

Doc Hee Haw, H2O and Hitler?

One of the reasons F. Dick Jones is being recalled is his loyal support of an illegal 10% tax tagged on to Fullerton’s water users. We’ve written about this before. So here’s a fun replay post on the subject just to show you the befuddlement of our illustrious mayor.

– Mr. Peabody

A reasonable person might well be excused for wondering how a balanced individual would connect Adolf Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland with a proposed water rate increase.  Hell, we’ve been watching the cornpone brayings of Doc “Hee Haw” Jones for so long that no idiocy he spouts is surprising. Enjoy this erudition:

Okay forget the Hitler reference that might be more germane to a discussion on government economic policy such as Redevelopment. The real point of sharing this video is to show how Dick Hee Haw casually countenances the 10% in lieu “fee” rip-off because it isn’t “wasted,” i.e. is spent on things like cops. Forget the fact that Jones voted in the deplorable public safety 3 @ 50 that has buried Fullerton in retirement unfunded liability; forget that cops do nothing to provide water to the water rate payer; but, consider this:  THE FRANCHISE FEE IS NOTHING BUT A TAX ON THE WATER USERS OF FULLERTON TO HELP PROP UP CITY HALL’S NON-WATER RELATED BUDGET.

A water rate increase automatically increases the lieu fee that is based on gross revenue, plain and simple. Well, not simple enough for Doc Phogbound to wrap his pea-sized brain around, apparently. Jones is all about funding big government by hook or by crook, and the phonier the scam, the better.

Fullerton Police Department Dysfunction

Out here on Screech Owl Road I’ve been tuning in on the doings in sleepy little Fullerton that is sleepy no more. It’s hard to miss. You’ve made world-wide news – and not in the way anybody wants to become famous.

Anyway, I got to wondering the other day about the Police Department spokeshole, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a bumbling oaf who has made a real hash out of public relations in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas homicide.

I know who I work for and it isn't you!

For a while I tried to make sense of the weird things he was saying, and obviously leaking to selected individuals, individuals who then exercised no intellectual scrutiny over what they were disseminating.

My friends back in Fullerton informed me that Goodrich is a shot-caller in the Fullerton Police Officers Association (FPOA), the local cop union. These are the boys (and girls) in blue who pour tens of thousands of dollars into Fullerton elections to get the most simple minded pro-cop lackeys they can find into office. Over the years they have succeeded marvelously.

Then all of Goodrich’s bullshit started to make sense: Kelly Thomas ran; he was combative; he had “legal documents” that didn’t belong to him; a photograph of a dirty, muscular, mean-looking guy was released purporting to be a two-year old booking picture of Thomas; two cops suffered “broken bones” in the encounter. All this trash was floated out to the public to discredit the victim and divert attention from the horrific bludgeoning death perpetrated by the police.

Of course, later it was revealed that there were no broken bones (the cops were back on the street); the identity of the man in the picture was challenged; the so-called legal documents in Thomas’s possession was trash Kelly had fished out of a dumpster; reports from people who knew him that Thomas was basically a harmless dude.

So who does Goodrich really work for? Fullerton taxpayers pay his salary, but it is crystal clear that he he is working for his brethren in the FPOA and will do anything he can to obfuscate, obscure, misdirect and mislead you – the very people who pay his lavish $130,000 a year salary plus benefits.

This becomes even more troublesome when you consider that he is one of the leaders of the union that has hired a lawyer to defend the six cops that participated in the Thomas beat down.

Who in God’s name permits a union officer be the official spokesman for a city department? The egregious Chief Mike Sellers, for one. And, naturally, the ex-cops on the city council Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead, as well as the buffoonish Dick Jones, of course – another individual embraced by the cop union.

Well this crap has got to stop. Sellers should be fired of course, and he should take his union spokesman with him when he goes.

CONSUMER WARNING: It’s The New West

For all you folks out there that are thinking about dining and drinking, or drinking, or even art walking in downtown Fullerton, think twice before you venture into the battle zone. A few years back, your esteemed Mayor, Dr. Dick Jones, declared the downtown “unsafe,” and called it the “Wild West;” he said that “there are people down there that don’t look like me,” and called them “last week’s prison felons.” Here is Jones in all his befuddled glory:

So what did the city do? It looks like they spent one and a half million dollars  per year to employ a collection of goons to work the downtown beat who, with exception of a uniform, may be hard to distinguish from the folks they go after – last week’s prison felons.

The original problem, created by Jones & Co. persists. And now I invite you to consider whether the remedy isn’t worse than the disease.

A New Repuglican Scam

Today the ever-increasingly pathetic OC Register ran an editorial trumpeting the creation of something called the  Association of California Cities, a homespun effort to replace the California League of Cities. The Register wants us to believe that anything that replaces the League is a good thing. To which I respond: not so fast.

Here’s a quote from the article, the first couple of paragraphs dutifully and immediately passed along verbatim by Red County repuglican flunky Matthew J. Cunningham:

Orange County cities often have stood for sensible, taxpayer-friendly municipal reform in a state where fiscal sanity is the exception rather than the rule. So, while we applaud the 21 O.C. cities that left the League of California Cities (and its Orange County division) and started their own Association of California Cities Orange County, we also want to ask, “What took you so long?”

We’ve long had a beef with the Sacramento-based League, which is essentially a taxpayer-funded (dues come from city coffers) lobbying organization that tilts toward big government. Currently, the League is battling Gov. Jerry Brown’s sensible plan to close down the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies – those fiscally profligate entities that abuse eminent domain and dole out corporate welfare to companies that build development projects hatched in City Hall.

I can’t remember any OC cities that “stood for sensible, taxpayer friendly municipal reform…” so that’s a load of manure right there. But notice the anti-Redevelopment hook there at the end of the second paragraph. Cunningham obviously did. But he didn’t bother passing along the very next tidbit from the editorial:

Certainly, one finds support for redevelopment among Orange County officials, including some whose cities have fled the League…

Well Jesus H.Crisco, that’s the understatement of the freaking year! Is there a single municipality in OC that isn’t addicted to Redevelopment like a low grade junkie is to black tar heroin?

Maybe I can do facebook for the Association @ $200 buck an hour!

The Rag pathetically goes on to cite as some sort of local OC accomplishment the totally discredited Anaheim “Freedom Friendly” policy of “upzoning” property, a conspiracy that put dozens of businesses out of business, hundreds of workers out of work, that was engineered to produce vast profits for Kurt Pringle’s clients, and that has left the Anaheim city scape cratered, dark and dismal. The editorialists who are employed by The Register may think we can’t tell the difference, but boy are they wrong.

I am somebody! At last.

Of course you can check out the leadership of the new Association. It doesn’t inspire any sort of confidence. In the roster we find a sad collection of small town political hacks, bag men (and women), and poseurs whose only true resentment of the League is likely based on the fact that it precludes them from cashing in on anything.  Oh, yeah we know the sort: the brain dead, yet greedy city council members who make up the boards of things like the OCTA, the Vector Control District, and the Sanitation District: just the perfect sort of drones who can be manipulated to direct “policy” in the direction of the Pringles, Dick Ackermans and John Lewises of the oh, so conservative Orange County.

Cunningham claims the inaugural dinner was the scene of near euphoria. Eu-effing-phoria. For him and people like him who cash in on government largess there was probably every reason to feel giddy.

The real question is why should we poor plantation hands substitute one collection of overseers for another?

A Plaintive Wail

And now, back to the letter.

Read 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?

The Sudden Relevance of Chris Norby?

Mr. Speaker! Let's kill Redevelopment once and for all!

Way out here at the end of Screech Owl Road the silence is almost absolute – only occasionally ruptured by the stray thump of Marine helicopters in the distance. It gives a man time to think in peace and quiet, and I’ve been thinking about Chris Norby ever since his post the other day about the possibility of a stake in the heart of Redevelopment.

I started watching Norby’s political career in Fullerton back in the early 80s. During his days on the City Council he was effectively marginalized by the various majorities who saw Norby as an annoyance and an irritant. His 18 years saw almost no accomplishment at all; ditto his seven years as a County Supervisor, years in which his colleagues saddled you Orange Countians with a massive unfunded pension liability.

The gods were certainly kind to Norby when they presented him with an unforseen chance to extend his professional political career in the form of an open mike and an open Mike’s mouth. Still, what the gods giveth with one hand… 2010 saw a big Democratic majority and an opportunity to pass a budget with a mere 50%+1 of the Legislature. Total irrelevance for an OC Republican, right?

Well, maybe not. For those sly gods also finally presented Norby with an opportunity to be a Capitol player via a monstrous budget deficit and a Democratic governor who actually seems sincere in willing to dismantle Redevelopment – as well as to divert special taxes away from make-work, feel-good programs like the First Five scam.

Chris who?

Governor Brown will have to fight the entrenched Redevelopment lobby that has tentacles wrapped around members of both parties, and a budget proposal that goes after it may well need to be supported by Republicans, too. And when it comes to pulling the plug on Redevelopment nobody has a better record than Norby. A Brown-Norby alliance? Relevance at last? Who knows?

Better late than never.

Things to Look For in 2011

They were large and slow with a mean streak.

The Fullerton new year brings with it a strange atavistic political regime: an elderly, under-informed, pro-staff, pro-Redevelopment, pro big government RINO majority. It sort of reminds me of the Ackerman-LeQuire-Catlin axis of ignorance that held sway in Fullerton in the 1980s. Things only got worse when Don Bankhead added his own special brand of undernourished intelligence to the equation in 1988.

So what does the new year portend? One thing to look for is the return to the old method of selection of city commissioners by committee – a committee made up of retired public employees who have the time and desire to weed out the intelligent, the skeptical, the individualistic sorts who might actually make a city commission do something besides rubber stamp whatever nonsense were being peddled by staff.

In recent years the process has been made much more accountable by having personal recommendations made by council members. And folks like Keller and Quirk-Silva who in the old days would never be able make important appointments finally had some real influence in the municipal sausage factory.

Of course this sort of accountability is anathema to the old-timers who understand the value of Fullertonion group-think, fear informed opinion, promote government “stability” and who above all else want responsibility as diffuse and elusive as possible, so that when the inevitable “mistakes were made” mantra is chanted it will be as hard as possible to assign a name to the screw-up.

Will the dinosaurs work hard to keep Bruce Whitaker and Sharon Quirk-Silva from making key appointments? Just wait and see. And just wait for the Jan Flory good-government types to come out of the woodwork to promote the Old Boy Network.

Ah! Just like the good old days!

Dannemeyer’s Recreational Vehicle Versus The People of Fullerton

Hey! You dope-smoking homos get outta my alley!

Bill Dannemeyer just lost an expensive appeal in an effort to compel you Fullerton taxpayers to pave a dirt alleyway that leads to the back of his property. Why? So that he can park his RV and boat behind his house.

“Who is Bill Dannemeyer?” some of you may well ask. Why, he used to be your esteemed Congresscritter there in F-town before the Little Corporal took over. He was a hard-line conservative who hated queers, and who got his start as – you guessed it – a public employee. A long, long time ago he was a City Attorney in Fullerton. In fact, he spent thirty years on the public dime.

Dannemeyer's RV, Burning Man 2008

You would think a former congressman, former city attorney and supposed “conservative” would be smart enough to avoid an evident legal morass caused by a selfish grab for public resources, or at least be able to present his case in plausible legalese. Boy would you be 180 wrong!

According to the appeals court that heard the case:

Dannemeyer’s opening brief is confusing and at times completely unintelligible. His brief has 22 separate argument headings, most of which are devoid of legal analysis, citation to relevant supporting legal authority, or cogent explanation as to how he was prejudiced by the claimed error

View the opinion

Local Boy Gets Name in Paper

The son.

And not in a way you want it to appear.

In an article yesterday, the OC Register lit up Deputy DA Mike Flory for six instances of courtroom misbehavin’ between 2001 and 2005 – more than any other prosecutor in the entire state o’ Californy.

Flory? Why does that name sound familiar? Maybe because this guy is the offspring of former Fullerton Councilmember, Jan Flory.

A study emanating from Santa Clara Law School tracked 707 cases in which Courts of Appeal cited misconduct; then they laboriously tracked down the names.

Apparently the 4th District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana has not been happy with Mr. Flory’s behavior, including his apparent dislike of artists, philosophers, and “Hispanics.”

What has been going on since 2005 is anybody’s guess. We do know that Flory tried to get himself elected judge a couple years ago with disastrous results. As the article acidly notes:

Flory once aspired to be a Superior Court judge, but received criticism during his 2008 run for a judicial seat. Presidents of both the Orange County deputy sheriff’s union and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association accused Flory of lying in an attempt to secure their endorsement. The Orange County Bar Association rated Flory as “not qualified” to be a judge.

Yikers!

And to cap it off the Assistant DA. Bill Feccia (which I am told is Italian for bullshit) claims the study is somehow biased. Well, let’s have Bill’s own words take us home:

“Mistakes are sometimes made in the heat of battle, and sometimes tempers get frayed,” he added. “But this is the finest class of people you’ll find anywhere.”