Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
This time it’s a story by the LA Times featuring former OCTA boss Art Leahy and others questioning the dedicated tracks, the impacts, and of course some of the basic operating assumptions of the California HSR.
Meantime we’re not holding our collective breath for the release of Curt Pringle’s “business plan” that seems to be at least 5 years late.
Trying to keep up with the FFFF juggernaut isn’t easy, but Repuglican hackling Matthew J. Cunningham seems to want to give it a go.
Maybe he took umbrage at us last week for posting the fact that he tried to do a public records strip-search of Republican County Clerk candidate Hugh Nguyen. After all, Cunningham is still trying to pitch the concept that he represents some sort of conservative ideals. Working as a flack for Democrat Tom Daly isn’t going to help sell that fable.
Today we learned that our old friend has made a request at the County to see our public document requests! It seems Cunningham has requested a County-wide search for any document requests made by our own fearless Travis Kiger. Well, turn about is fair play, of course, and we always play fair.
And because we’re so helpful, we’ll make it easy on him. We’ve requested Tom Daly’s and Rene Ramirez’ County issued blackberry and credit card records for the past couple of years. Why? After the discovery of the $48,000 sports hall of fame fiasco, the $1700 per month do-nothing retainer, and the $2.1 million building purchase disaster, we’ve been wondering what other fiscal misadventures have been swept under the County Clerk’s rug during Tom’s tenure.
Of course one has to wonder why The Jerb is so interested in finding out what we are looking for, and the curious wouldn’t have to waste a lot of time guessing. He’s obviously working for Tom Daly’s campaign, no doubt through the direction of his boss and political soul mate John Lewis. Still, a County-wide search?
Those guys seem to be terrified that more crooked skeletons will soon be a tumblin’ out of Tom Daly’s closet, and it looks like maybe it’s Cunningham’s job to run interference and perhaps preemptively wordsmith them away.
And it may also be that Cunningham just wants to see what we’re up to so he can find out if he has any other buddies under our scrutiny. Or maybe he just wants to learn what real, disinterested citizen bloggers do.
In any case we’re flattered to have somebody check out and even publicize what we’re doing. See, unlike Cunningham, we aren’t front men for crooks, influence peddlers, and perjurers. We’re just funny that way.
And now, a year and a half after Fullerton Councilman Dick Jones was re-elected to a fourth dreadful term it only gets worse.
During the fall of 2008 FFFF shared Joneses’ mastery of the rude, ignorant, nutsy outburst. We even got creative. Last year we chronicled Jones’ comical misunderstanding of Redevelopment, as well as his crazy melt down at a Vector Control meeting. And just last week we related the story of Jones standing up during a meeting, walking out, and quitting the Vector Control Board.
Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on the female cop derriere incident, I wonder how long the people who have propped up this asinine buffoon can continue to look the other way.
Well, enough is enough, already. This guy has spent 14 years making himself a laughingstock, and it seems he won’t be satisfied until he does the same thing for Fullerton.
Down in Anaheim Cynthia Ward (aka Colony Rabble) has been trying to raise the profile of the California High Speed Rail (CHSR) project that will inevitably cut a swath out of neighborhoods as it makes its way to Curt Pringle’s Platinum Triangle Ghost Town.
In Fullerton (except for us) I’ve heard nary a word.
It’s pretty evident that this massive boondoggle was promoted to bamboozle the State’s electorate into floating another 10 billion dollars of indebtedness and to divert it into the pockets of huge engineering and public works contractors. Conservatives used to call this income redistribution. Now some of them call it jobs, jobs, jobs.
It is telling that Repuglicans Curt Pringle and Harry Sidhu both back this massive waste, plus the unconscionable OCTA uber-subsidy for their ARTIC choo-choo stop, as does Anaheim’s own Precious Princess Lorri Galloway, a union puppet who can be expected to do anything necessary to promote expanded union membership.
But I digress, yet again. Damn. Sorry.
How come there has been almost no discussion about this monster project and its potential right-of-way through Fullerton? Buena Park has recently learned to its dismay that the HSR will either take out part of their station or dozens of newly built houses built as part of a TOD scheme. Does our City Council know something they’re not telling us?
So what is happening in Fullerton? There is only one available route from BP to Anaheim, of course, and it will have to follow the BNSF/old UP rights-of-way. What will this mean to property owners and businesses in the way? What sort of traffic disruptions will this cause over the major north-south streets over the years? Aren’t we entitled to know?
At the January NUFF forum Shawn Nelson came out against the HSR; but what of the other councilmembers? Isn’t it time for a public hearing on this topic if, indeed anybody in City Hall is serious about transparency?
Shawn? Sharon? Pam? Dick? Don? Is there something you’d like to share with us? Why not agendize this issue. Now. Let’s have at it out in the open.
And maybe this should be a campaign issue for the fall. And maybe we need somebody on the OCTA like Nelson who is not going to just go along with Pringle.
P.S. For some fun watch this CNN video that is really little more than an infomercial for HSR: what a sweet deal for the tiny percentage of California’s 40 million people who just have to get between LA and SF in a hurry (they won’t, of course).
Try not to giggle at Pringle’s performance, if you can.
How else can I explain the weird post put up on the Mauve County blog by a guy called Thomas Anthony Gordon accusing me of “voter intimidation?”
You see I busted Gordo last week for being the guy who was circulating last minute petitions for Harry Sidhu’s carpetbagging effort to get himself elected to the GOP Central Committee for yet another district (69th AD) that he doesn’t live in. Sean Mill over at the OJ Blog has also done a post on the comical doings of Gordo.
Gordon responded by claiming that my publishing the petition forms was a species of intimidation. Imagine that! Sharing a public document – with the public! The horror! Does Gordon really think these worthy folks might be ashamed at promoting the circus carnie campaigns of Hide and Seek Sidhu?
And could it really be that the charming Gordon is really just ashamed at being found out to be the lackey of the perjurer Sidhu? Well, that would presuppose a sense of shame, as Joe Sipowicz would say.
Still he didn’t really believe anybody was going to swallow that load, did he?
Every now and then word filters back to us about some zany corn pone antics by our own beloved municipal treasure, Dick Jones, at the County Vector Control District meetings. See, Jones is supposed to be representing us in this agency whose mission to do battle with the evil forces of rats, ants, and mosquitoes.
Our sources inform us that at the last meeting’s closed session that was addressing the future of the arrogant General Manger, Gerard Goedhart, Jones just lost it, stood up, declared that he was quitting, and left the room. Fellow boardmembers were nonplussed, to say the least.
Good grief. Just last year this same nincompoop popped his cork at a meeting.
Now, apparently, he just quit. He’s still got 21 months to go in his “term” on the Board.
Maybe it’s all for the best. And maybe Jones is actually onto something. If he can’t handle the annoyance without petulant outbursts, he should go. And he really ought to think about resigning from the City Council while he’s at it.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Matthew J. Cunningham started glossing over the fact that his boy Harry Sidhu committed perjury twice when he falsified voter registration documents. After all, his boss John Lewis is now one of the piglets sucking the mama sow dry.
It didn’t take very long.
He’s up to his old tricks again: diversion, obfuscation, and trying to change the subject. First he says Tony Bushala is Shawn Nelson’s neighbor. Irrelevant to anything, and of course not even true. But let’s not let facts get in the way of defending the indefensible. His point, perfectly predictable coming from this self-appointed paragon of morality, is that the whole thing is only political, as if Sidhu’s signature on an official document means, you know, nothing.
Apparently, the concept of perjury is a really flexible concept for Cunningham who seems willing to concede that his boy never lived at the beautiful Calabria Apartments. It was only a “brief registration,” you see. Brief registration? Damn, it was only 30 days! But what’s that got to do with anything? The registration was never aligned with any residency. It was a fraud. An outright lie. But are we to accept that the concept of the truth only kicks in when it’s convenient for Sidhu?
Well, good luck selling that bullshit to anybody smarter than Brett Barbre.
A second post addresses the breathtaking revelation that Bushala’s investigation into the Sidhu scam was conducted by Sheriff candidate Bill Hunt. Wow, now there’s a great discovery, Columbus. Bushala put the guy’s letterhead in his post! Another example of Cunningham dodge ball, having zero to do with the fact that his boy Sidhu falsified public documents. Of course Cunningham proceeds to insinuate that something fishy is going on because one of our bloggers at FFFF has been posting positive stuff for Hunt’s Sheriff campaign.
Say what? Influence peddling, and profiting from same, is Cunningham’s line of work, not ours. Nothing to disclose here. I’m not even voting for Hunt.
Pathetic. Sorrowful. Deceitful. Hypocritical. Did I say shameful. No. That would imply a sense of shame.
It looks as if Mr. Cunningham has really decided to plumb the depths of irrelevance and hypocrisy. Let’s wait and count the hours until Cunningham spits out one of his patented “the guy’s not to be trusted” posts against someone who is running against a John Lewis candidate.
Well its a free country. And pretty soon for him, it’s going to be a really lonely one.
A few weeks ago I did a pretty tongue-in-cheek post about some guy named Thomas Anthony Gordon, a goon from Santa Ana who popped up out of nowhere with a gratuitous anti-Shawn Nelson post on the Mauve County blog. He criticized Nelson for being soft on criminals because he is a defense lawyer. I pointed out the bad luck since there was a guy in OC with the exact same name and body type as Gordon who had been busted a couple of times for driving on a suspended license – and opined about how that guy was probably in need of a defense lawyer himself.
At the time I believed Gordon was just prostituting himself for Lewis/Cunningham and hence, Tom Daly. I may have been wrong. That was before I understood the deep, moist crevices into which Harry Sidhu’s pocket change had fallen. Of course the common denominator, John Lewis, is still in the picture, although Daly quit the supervisors race to play catch with his kid.
Well check this out. Harry Sidhu, the perpetual office seeker has decided to run for the GOP Central Committee for the 69th Assembly district (which must surely be a record – carpetbagging two districts at the same time, what a hustler). Now for the fun part. Take a look at who was out circulating petitions on the very last day so Hide and Seek Sidhu could “qualify” for the ballot. None other than our old friend Thomas Anthony Gordon. Click on the pdf and take a look.
Gordo! And now we really have to wonder. Is Gordon actually on Sidhu’s payroll? If not, why not? Everybody else is!
Of course, if he is let’s hope he informed his bosses over at the Mauve County where they say they will fire you if you don’t disclose that fact that you are blogging for dollars!
Apparently my ongoing exploration into the encroachment of County 1st District Supervisor Janet Nguyen into the management of the 4th District office has created some angst on the Hall of Admin 5th Floor. Apparently Her Highness is displeased with the revelation that she has hired 3 new people to occupy that office even though there is no supervisor there. She has been snooping around to find out where the “leak” is.
Leak? Why is Empress Nguyen concerned about news of her doings leaking out? Is she trying to hide something?
After all, the Imperial story has been that these additional people are needed to help inform all us poor, ignorant denizens of the 4th District learn all about the wonderful County programs available to make our lives ever so much better. Ferchrissakes you’d think she’d issue a press release, right? But no! Maybe she’s worried about being perceived as a manipulative, scheming empire builder.
She has reason to be worried about that.
A few days ago I related how Board of Supervisors Chair Janet Ngyuen had hired a couple of people to occupy Chris Norby’s former 4th District office. I opined that it seemed like a real extravagance given the fact that there was no supervisor to support, and likely diminishing “constituency work” since there was no supervisor to direct and approve it. Also the replacement election is just a short 10 weeks away.
I also speculated that perhaps Nguyen was just placing her people inside the office to report back directly to her; and perhaps that she was embedding her personnel in the office in the unlikely event of A Sidhu victory in June. Did Nguyen make a deal with Sidhu to keep these people employed later? Just wondering.
The latest word from several sources is that Nguyen has hired yet another person to work in the 4th District office and that this person started today. Good grief, this is ridiculous. One of those sources informs us that Nguyen’s explanation for this idiocy is that “her” people are there to help make sure folks in the 4th District are aware of all the programs the County offers them. Oh, really?
Frankly, none of the explanations make Nguyen look like anything other than a devious empire-builder.
She should keep her hands off the 4th District. She has enough trouble in her own.