Behind Closed Doors Archives - Page 71 of 84 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

December 2, 2010December 3, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pringle Outed; AG Yanks Open Closet Door, Shines Light on Embarrassing Scene

Yesterday the State Attorney General handed out an opinion that, yes, outgoing Anaheim Mayor-for-Hire, Kurt Pringle did indeed hold incompatible offices as the Chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority. For three long years. And that raises all sorts of questions about the ethics of Der Pringle’s votes on both HSR prioritization issues that benefited him and his clients, and City of Anaheim land use issues that benefited – him and his clients. You can read all about it in an LA Times article, here.

Well, we told you so. What will his mom say?

Interestingly the other day the Voice of OCEA did a story on an e-mail exchange between Herr Burgermeister Pringle and his former Director of the HSR, in which he attacks the “core competence”of the Authority’s engineers. The author misses the point, somewhat, in noting Pringle’s critique of the “experts” like so many others in California have done; but the real point is that his anger was based on their unwillingness to defy engineering realities to deliver the HSR line to his already designated ARTIC boondoggle. It certainly wasn’t lost on the recipient of his e-mail who noted dryly that he wasn’t sure if he was communicating with the HSR Chair or the Mayor of Anaheim.

Well, our boy Pringle is days away from being off the OCTA and out of City Hall (except as a lobbyist to his hand selected replacements, of course). But what about his Chairmanship of the CHSRA? Can the new guv keep him? Hard to imagine why Jerry Brown would keep on the HSR a repuglican who has soiled himself and the Authority so badly, if he had a choice.

December 1, 2010December 1, 2010Behind Closed Doors

HeeHaw, It’s The Law!

by admin16 Comments

jones-gone-wild1 — No, no, no! I ain't a' gonna do it!

Well, not the law, exactly. More like City Council Administrative Policy #37, approved last February. Check it out:

Administrative Policy #37

Here’s the deal: the guy with most seniority since last being Mayor shall be appointed, plain and simple. And that means our Crazy Ol’ Doc Heehaw is line to shoulder the burden of the mayoralty, like it or not. Well, he can shirk his duty again, like he did before, and go to the second spot.

Sharon_Quirk_190px — Not time to step up?

That means the next in line to be Mayor is Sharon Quirk-Silva, with Dr. Phogbound as Mayor Pro Tem; and if he declines the second spot, too, that would fall to the highest vote getter in the last election. And that’s our old Friend, Bruce Whitaker.

Now it could very well be that Sharon Quirk-Silva would defer her place until next year to run for re-election in 2012 with the title “Mayor of Fullerton,” in which case our next mayor would be Whitaker.

Whitaker — Could greatness be thrust upon him?

Of course Administrative Policy #37 isn’t worth the TP it was written on or the Sharpie it was written with – despite the fact that it’s the wet-dream of all Fullerton liberals, and ironically could produce the first truly conservative mayor since…well, since anybody could possibly remember.

How will it play out? Who knows? One thing is certain. This is Fullerton and it’s bound to be a confused mess. But the entertainment value should be high.

November 20, 2010November 20, 2010About Us

Fleischman Puts ‘Pug in Repuglican

by Grover Cleveland15 Comments

You remember a fellow named Jon Fleischman, don’t you? Well, of course you do. He starred in the now historic 2007 holiday visit video to Dick Ackerman at the latter’s house inside a “secret, gated community” in Irvine.

tricky dick — I still owe Fleischberg for that. Heh heh.

An alert Friend just forwarded a post that was published on the completely hackish blog-for-sale, The Flash Report, of which Fleischman is proprietor. It’s a rousing condemnation of the practice of bogus non-profit, public benefit corporations staging legislative love-ins at plush resorts on Hawaiian islands. The things are bought and paid for by lobbyists who get to corner state legislators at fraudulent “conferences” that are nothing more than schmooze fests, golf and cocktails on the veranda. The Sac Bee gives more info on the latest scams, here. At the end you’ll read about “The Pacific Policy Research Foundation” that just perpetrated its annual scam on Kauai.

Sound familiar? It should.

We reported about the scam over a year ago, here. And the biggest offender of course was the hideous Linda Ackerwoman, bogus 72 AD candidate, who participated in the sham front known as the Pacific Policy Research Foundation that got her and husband, Dick Ackerman, annual junkets to Hawaii. And of course Ackerwoman was an officer of the bogus “charity.”

And to close the circle we have to recall that Fleischman was a big Ackerwoman cheerleader. Ackerwoman. No record, no accomplishment, no residence, no sale. What a difference a year makes.

November 13, 2010November 13, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pringle Ethics Probe. Break Out The Scanning Electron Microscope!

by admin8 Comments

Uh, oh. More bad news for Anaheim’s outgoing Mayor-for-Hire, Curt Pringle. An FPPC investigation into foreign junkets by the California High Speed Rail crew.

Pringle declared all the gifties large and small from Europe’s socialist governments that are hoping to sell the CHSR good jobs that Americans are too stupid to do.

But the rest of Pringle’s gang at CHSR may not have been so diligent, especially the Golden horde of consultants, yes men, and PR tools Pringle & Co. have brought on board their choo-choo.”Record keeping lapses” unintentional? More hilarity to follow.

From the Register, yesterday.

November 7, 2010November 7, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Chaffee Lead Shrinks to 30. Things Are Looking Grim In Leftyville.

by Joe Sipowicz63 Comments

At close of day 11/07/2010 Pat McKinley’s lead over Chaffee was reduced to 34 from yesterday’s high in the 50s.

At close of day 11/5/2010 Pat McKinley had vaulted his agile self back into the lead – by 36 votes.

As of last night Doug Chaffee’s lead over ex-Po-lice Chief Pat McKinley in the Fullerton City Council race.

With absentee voters generally leaning to the Republican flavor it looks like the desperate hours are about to set in for Chaffee backers, especially considering the anti-Chaffee hits unloaded by the local GOP.

Maybe the repuglican cartel that backed the over-pensioned relic McKinley can put the champagne back on ice, after all!

November 5, 2010November 5, 2010About Us

Another Nail in Pringle’s High Speed Rail Coffin?

by Mr. Peabody10 Comments

PringlePud — Always get your picture taken in front of a flag. They won't notice your hand in their pocket.

The Voice of OC is reporting that the Feds are finally getting tired of Anaheim Soon-to-be-ex-Mayor-for-Hire Curt Pringle’s misdirection of High Speed Rail priorities to feather his own Anaheim nest.

It appears that the Feds have suddenly realized that they require that the initial track be laid in the Central Valley – not in a stretch of territory already covered by existing rail and commuter lines, and where a high speed rail line makes virtually no sense.

Good to see the US Gov’t get one right.

In other news, the HSR hired a former Parsons Brinkerhoff executive to be project manager. Hmm. That’s a tentacle that may need to be lopped off.

traincrashthroughbuilding — Gee, we told it to stop.

And finally, more good news: the new Guv is said to intensely dislike Pringle’s HSR shennanigans.We know he got our letter.

So maybe soon Pringle will be off the HSR board althogether. And that would make for an early Christmas.

November 3, 2010November 3, 2010Behind Closed Doors

The Lights Have Gone Out on Lucky Way

by The Fullerton Harpoon11 Comments

LuckyStrike — Jeez, it almost looked habitable...

Yes, the house is dark at 2215 Lucky Way, Anaheim, CA.

The neighbors will tell you that, yes, someone was living there. Once in awhile they would catch a glimpse of a squat little kid whose infrequent visitors called “Yo, Billy Dude!”

The grass looked green, so somebody was paying the water bill, alright. And there was that one party with loud speed metal blaring. Once in awhile a pale round face peered out from behind the red velvet drapery to surreptitiously survey the neighborhood.

Two cars used to be seen in the driveway. The same two cars. They never moved. But now the cars are gone and the house is dark.

Sunset has descended on Lucky Way.

November 1, 2010November 1, 2010About Us

Pringle Gets Dangling Appendage in Wringer. Again.

by Grover Cleveland3 Comments

The LA Times is after poor Curt Pringle again. It seems he represents all sorts of people up and down the state who have major interest, one way or another, in the California High Speed Rail boondoggle.

Check out the Boy Scout response: Gosh, gee whiz, I didn’t know. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!

PringlePower — You are becoming very sleazy...

For a while now we have shared stories about the manifest sleazes of Anaheim’s Mayor-for-Hire, Pringle, the worst repuglican in the County, who has his dipstick stuck into just about every conceivable honey pot, and a man whose only political principles come with a price tag affixed.

We finally got sick of watching Herr Pay to Play shove his bogus pork and kickback laden High Speed Rail project into California. When our boss discovered a legislative opinion that both HSR Boardmembers Pringle and Richard Katz held “incompatible offices” he reported this fact to the Attorney General.

Only last week tales of unreported foreign trips by Pringle emerged once again. Although we had already shared that story, here, it seems that nobody in the HSR enterprise was keeping track of who was going where. The idea of shipping jobs overseas didn’t seem to bother Der Pringler. Well,what the Hell, France and Germany have unemployment problems, too, right? Even worse, it slipped out that the HSR’s army of consultants and camp followers were getting gifts, too. Lots of them, apparently.

Well, as they say, the fish rots from the head.

And now that the election is upon us and Pringle’s rancid days as an elected official and an OCTA board member are coming to an end, it’s time to do whatever we can to kick this creep off the HSR board and then to kill the greatest boondoggle in the history of California.

October 30, 2010October 30, 2010About Us

Dereliction of Duty. The Case of the Missing Media.

by The Fullerton Harpoon32 Comments

The only reason FFFF sprang into existence was because the people who pretended to be professional reporters stubbornly and steadfastly refused to do their jobs.

Their jobs. The jobs to which they accrete a professional aura, a sanctimony, self-righteousness, and institutional importance that demands as a concomitant an objectivity that is exercised in the public interest.

Of course all that stuff is pure bullshit. Oh, yeah, these people want to be treated as if they actually performed a function that allows them to claim an official title: “Fourth Estate.” But in reality their work is almost never objective, never diligent, and often downright incompetent. And the closer you get to tour own community the worse it gets.

But back to FFFF. We started in the fall of 2008 because F. Richard Jones, the Braying Donkey of Raymond Hills, the man for whom no issue could not be used to spin off, dervish-like, on an insane rant, was getting a free pass. Twelve years of insulting people from the dais, weird, barnyard rantings and raving, backtracking on key issues, and generally insulting the collective intelligence of the City was ignored.

And this being Fullerton very little has changed. Consider 2010.

Roland-and-Mystery-Man — The chicken was ready for plucking.

Does “the press” inquire into how candidate Roland Chi got rung up on criminal charges by the DA for serially ignoring health inspection failures? Or ask why he is using a 501(c)(3) to prmote his political ambitions? Or even ask this miscreant how long he has actually lived in Fullerton?

McKinley2 — Hey, that vest was not designed on company time.

Does “the press” ask Pat McKinley about his $215,000 pension payout – far more than he ever made actually working – and his ability to make rational pension decisions?

Does “the press” ask Aaron Gregg why a guy who skipped out on $75,000 in back taxes and stiffed local creditors though bankruptcy is qualified to manage the city’s $100,000,000+ budget?

Does “the press” inquire into what appears to be Don Bankhead’s increasingly diminished capacity to participate in, let alone conduct, a public hearing?

Of course our local reporters never said boo about the carpetbaggery of Hirsute Sidho or Linda Ackerman, either.

For some reason people who work for the Times and the Register would rather look the other way than admit that the emperors have no clothes on. What are they afraid of?

And so we soldier on…

October 28, 2010October 28, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Mickadeit Already Running Cover For Lame-O DA By Floating Trial Balloons?

by Joe Sipowicz16 Comments

Yesterday, OC Register homunculus and repuglican lackey-chronicler Frank Mickadeit wrote up a story about possible contenders to a Todd Spitzer 3rd District Supervisorial run in 2012 – as a prelude to a Spitzer DA run in 2014.

The big names – outgoing assemblyman Chuck DeVore and Dick Ackerman deserve special attention, and we’ll get back to that in a bit.

But first let’s relish Mickadeit’s effort to stir up anti-Spitzer sentiment for the benefit of our Do Nothing DA who is actually endorsing serial law breaker Roland Chi in Fullerton’s city council race. As is well known, Mickadeit dances to the tunes fifed out by GOP bigwig Michael Schroeder and his wife, DAs spokeshole Susan Kang. In return for providing this entertainment Frank gets to smoke cigars and sip brandy with the Schroeders.

It seems not unlikely that besides the congenital name-dropping instinct, Frank is throwing out these big names as a counter to Spitzer’s own vaulting ambition, as in: not so fast Todd, boy.

chuck-devore — Will nail down the Eagle Scout vote.

DeVore wouldn’t be a bad supervisor and might actually bring some refreshing relief to a County operation dedicated to doling out medical and social services compliments of the federal government. But he needs a job. Now.

Dick Ackerman? Well he does live in a “top secret, gated community” in the 3rd District which s a far cry from his claim to have moved to Fullerton last year so his old lady could run for the State Assembly. Apart from that he’s got some explaining to do. Such as the Pacific Policy Research Foundation scam we reported about here, years of RINO accommodating votes, his dubious behavior vis-a-vis the OC Fair sale. He’s also 70 and we sure have seen enough geriatric retirees at the County over the years.

Worst of all, is Ackerman’s perpetual backing of the worst kind of liberal, staff-stooge candidates here in Fullerton.Pro-Redevelopment, big government chuckleheads like Don Bankhead, Doc HeeHaw Jones, Pat McKinley, Aaron Gregg, and a long list of similar tools, simply selected to keep the scary Dems out – Democrats whose political philosophy is practically indistinguishable from Ackerman’s RINO herd.

The fun part of this is that either one of these worthies running would put a serious crimp in Der Pringle’s master plan of putting Orange’s dreary RINO Carolyn Cavecche into that seat.