Boohooism Archives - Page 26 of 38 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

September 1, 2012September 1, 2012Boohooism

More Flory Hypocrisy; Oh, No! There’s That Damn Record Again!

Here are Jan Flory’s recent musings on the topic of selecting a Fullerton representative for the Metropolitan Water District. Mrs. Flory has herself torqued up into a faux outrage that a council majority may appoint whomever it chooses. It seems she believes that Doug Chaffee should be the Met rep, simply because he wants the job – instead of a “crony.”

Jan Flory for City Council · 114 like this

Yesterday at 1:22pm ·

WATERBOARDED And the victim would be,—-Doug Chaffee! Last Tuesday night, the council took up the appointment to the Metropolitan Water District Board. No small thing as the MWD is the largest municipal water district in the world. That bears repeating,—the WORLD! Doug had asked for the appointment. He stated that he had a degree in economics, he had extensive experience running his own business, and he had dealt with natural resources in his law practice “from way back.” He seemed to know what he was talking about. Bruce Whitaker, on the other hand, wanted to appoint Tom Babcock. My recollection of Tom was that he was a ringleader of the 1994 Recall that successfully removed Molly McClanahan, Don Bankhead and Buck Catlin from office. For months after the recall (and my subsequent election), Babcock would harangue the council for one thing or another. To my lights, it was all so much sour grapes because when it was all said and done, the 1994 Recall was a bust. The Recallers didn’t get anyone elected to the council with the exception of Conrad DeWitte who lasted 6 weeks before he was booted out of office. Ahead of his time, Mr. Babcock was a Tea Bagger before we had Tea Baggers. Whitaker’s sole premise for wanting Mr. Babcock was that Babcock would be a “rate payer advocate”. No other credentials were cited.
The agenda letter was “skinny” with the details in the extreme, and merely mentioned that the “Council is being asked to consider whether to make an appointment from the two persons previously nominated.” If I hadn’t attended the August 7th council meeting, I would have had no idea who the contenders were. So much for “transparency”.
I will have to say that I have never seen a city councilmember denied an appointment by his colleagues. There have been times when two council members wanted the same appointment, but this was always worked out amicably between the two of them. Here, Travis Kiger, ever ready to skewer someone (anyone!), actually moved to reject Doug Chaffee for the position. The motion failed for lack of a second. Kiger did pout out that he could not support Chaffee because Kiger had left a message for Chaffee two months before, and Chaffee had still not returned his call. Oh my!
In the end, our intrepid Tea Baggers (Kiger, Sebourn and Whitaker) appointed Tom Babcock to serve as a representative to the MWD Board until the first meeting in December 2012. Presumably if all goes well for Tony Bushala, Mr. Babcock will keep his appointment. If not, c’set la vie.

Hang in there, Doug!

Too bad Mrs. Flory’s own history turns her indignation into a laughable lie. In 2003 Mrs. Flory, having been kicked off the City Council by the voters tried to represent Fullerton on the Orange County Water District! Back then Flory didn’t care that a duly elected councilman wanted the job. Oh, no. In her delusional state of self-aggrandizement, only she could do it!

FloryBird — I’m not self-aggrandized. Just a little happy.

But of course it gets worse. Much worse. Flory now attacks Thom Babcock as a “rate payer advocate” (Oh! The horror!). What Flory isn’t telling her 113 friends is that when she was on the City Council, from 1994-2002 she rubber stamped the re-appointment of a useless local hack named James Blake with zero professional credentials, to the MWD. Of course Blake was also a Flory campaign contributor, by why worry about details, right? FFFF has written all about Blake on numerous occasions, including here and here when we tuned him up for unnecessary travel and wining/dining on the water rate payers’ dime.

blake_01 — Sure I gave her some money. So what?

Looks like the rate payers could use an advocate, and it looks like Jan Flory has once again waterboarded the truth.

August 31, 2012Boohooism

HATE CRIME WAVE AFFLICTS ORANGE COUNTY

by Mr. Peabody214 Comments

Rusticle — No hate. Kelly was sick and homeless. It’s everybody’s fault.

The OC Human Relations Commission, and it’s Executive Director Rusty Kennedy have announced that last year saw a staggering 14% spike in “hate crimes” perpetrated in Orange County.

Now that sounds pretty awful, until you realize that the crime wave led to a total of 64 incidents in 2011. 64. And that means that the year before, 2010, the total was 56; the increase equals 8.

Now I’m not going to diminish the importance of any crime, however, I note that 64 annual incidents, let alone an annual increase of 8, in a county of 3,500,000, is statistically useless as an indicator of anything. My calculator won’t even do the math.

Of course the fact that the County still pays $300,000 per year to support the Commission in its effort to drum up work for itself is bad enough. But here’s a question I’d like answered, Rusty, if it’s not too much trouble: did you count the murder of Kelly Thomas by members of the Fullerton Police Department as a hate crime? If not, why not.

August 26, 2012August 26, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Jan Flory Talks About Sex and Water

by The Desert Rat111 Comments

Jan Florys Head — Correct. We do not want you to discuss sexy issues.

Okay this post is not about Jan Flory discussing anything remotely “sexy” because the thought of that…well, never mind.

The post is about her latest Facebook scribblings in which she opines on a subject near and dear to the hearts of Fullerton reformers: the illegal 10% tax on your water that the City collected for the past 15 years. $27,000,000 worth.

First I’ll start by stating what you could have already guessed. Jan Flory does not want you to get a refund of the theft. In her world-order the taxpayers are meant to be milked, not refunded.

Her assertion that the collection was “illegal” the past three year is a bad lawyer’s half-truth that amounts to a bald-faced lie, of course. It has been illegal for 15 years, six of them on her watch as a council person. The City has a legal opinion that it is only obligated to refund three-year’s worth of the theft. Not the same thing, is it? Of course Mrs. Flory is desperate to disassociate her name with the tax. Too late. She is on record in the 90s as having known it was wrong and doing it anyway.

Mrs. Flory and her ilk love footling committees, especially when they are selected by ozone brains like Jone, Quirk, McKinley and Bankhead. Even better are the “consultants” selected by staff who give them their marching orders. The “report” cooked up by the water rate consultant was so evidently bogus that it hardly needs to be restated. But I will: their goal was to gin up as much phony cost as possible to keep the bureaucrats greedy little fingers on that 10%. Flory may think this gives her cover, and under the old Culture of Corruption it would have. Not any more.

The 10% was expressly collected to cover specific City staff costs associated with the water utility. However, it turns out that those departments were already charging directly to the Water Fund. Which is why I am happy to refer to the tax as an illegal theft.

And another point: it’s real easy to say that the illegal tax should be refunded to the Water Fund for capital improvements. That’s convenient, but immoral. The tax that was collected had nothing to do with infrastructure. Nothing. True infrastructure costs should be rolled into an effective rate for water transmission, a correction of years of mismanagement by Mrs. Flory and her cohorts that still needs to be done. Confusing these two issues is simply a convenient way for the perpetrators to hide their crime and their dereliction.

Now, let’s address the issue of the reserve funds, a subject that Mrs. Flory wants people to believe she knows something about. There is no need to empty these accounts to pay refunds. No, indeed. I find it remarkably disingenuous for anybody to assert this, especially given just two of City manger Joe Felz’s most recent “cost saving” measures.

First there was the egregious relocation of former Redevelopment personnel into General Fund departments for which they had no apparent expertise. Most recently the City contracted out your graffiti removal services for $120,000. Yay! Big savings, right? Wrong. The city employees were simply reassigned to other jobs in the Engineering Department that were vacant. Net cost savings? -$120,000.

The City just missed an opportunity to shave a million bucks off its payroll costs. Of course, my point is that the General Fund is far from depleted.

Finally, in closing, I would submit that Mrs. Flory knows more about witching hours than any of us. However, if she doesn’t like staying up that late every other Tuesday night, then she has no business on a city council. And it’s really too bad that the Council is scheduling special meetings to attend to the people’s business.

Mrs. Flory’s little rubber stamp has been put away and locked up.

August 24, 2012Boohooism

Jan Flory Living in Wrong Century

by Grover Cleveland186 Comments

Too bad it’s not 1971. Too bad for Jan Flory, that is.

See, her vision of a know-it-all government, whose “expertise” the citizenry is obliged to (shut up and) obey was much more prevalent then. But a decade of suffocating inflation, ever-escalating taxes and ballooning interest rates got people thinking about things.

By the time Mrs. Flory was first elected to the Fullerton City Council in 1994, the world had changed a lot, although she hardly knew it. And by the time she was fired by the voters, in 2002, she was as obsolete as the horse and buggy.

You need only observe her behavior during the past year to witness a mind soaked in a nasty vindictiveness as her “esteemed” idols, the Three Bald Tires, were driven from office themselves for incompetence and dereliction.

Where was Flory when an innocent man was murdered by the cops? Where was Flory when the City paid out $350,00 to two victims of Albert Rincon’s sexual batteries? Where was Flory when FPD employees were looting the evidence room and ripping off Explorers; or beating up, arresting and prosecuting innocent bystanders?

I’ll tell you where Flory was. She was snuggling up to the Three Hollow Logs in their secret sound-proof bunker.

If Mrs. Flory thinks posting her mindless musings on a Facebook page means that she is in any way more useful than a lost shoe, she has another think coming.

And we’re not going to give Fullerton back to the decrepit mind-set of Flory, Jones, Bankhead and McPension and their incompetent, arrogant ilk.

As Doc HeeHaw would say: Nuh uh!

August 16, 2012August 16, 2012Boohooism

The Blank is Back!

by Joe Sipowicz103 Comments

Tanned rested and ready, after a 9 week hiatus, Don Bankhead, retired police captain, stumblebum, incompetent, tired, phraser of spoonerisms, and the only man in the 162 year-old history of California to be recalled from the same office twice, is back.

Yes, indeedy, recently ousted Fullerton councilman Don Bankhead filed papers yesterday to run for city council this fall – marking his tenth election to get or hold that esteemed position.

Bankosaurus — Even after the meteorite hit him in the noggin, Blank jumped right back into the game. After all his legacy was at stake. Damn mammals.

You really have to wonder what motivates Bankhead at this point, if anything beyond senile stubbornness. Who he thinks his supporters are is hard to fathom. Perhaps he was encouraged by a room full of cops and cop apologists wearing blue shirts. Blue is Don’s favorite color. Does he believe the FPOA and the fire union will back a clueless octogenarian exhibiting signs of evident cognitive dissonance? Well of course they will!

Still, it will be interesting to see which cruel, thoughtless persons signed his nominating papers.

In a way it’s sort of sad to see a man whom time has so evidently passed by deny the reality: two thirds of the voters in the recent Recall voted to get rid of him.

August 14, 2012August 14, 2012Boohooism

Jan Flory Grieves For The Three Deaf Dinosaurs

by Jan Florys Dog107 Comments

Friends, here’s a repeat post by our esteemed JFD from last November. It is even more trenchant now that his former mistress has declared war on the only two really good councilmen Fullerton has had as long as I can remember – and that’s a long time.

– The Desert Rat

Whenever my former mistress got into a mood or had a couple too many G&Ts, and picked up that broomstick I always made myself as inconspicuous as possible. Looking down from doggie heaven I can see she hasn’t changed much. It’s good to know she still has that metal rod firmly stuck in there.

Here she is at the Fullerton City Council meeting during public comments handing out some cooked-up award to Pat McKinley.

Notice how she grieves for Fullerton because of the incivility to her “esteemed” councilmen, Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc (I gotta tell ya she never grieved after whacking my orbital bone with that broomstick, but that’s a another story altogether, eye blousing-wise).

Obviously she has set a rather low bar for estimation; if Old Doc HeeHaw can haul himself over it, I guess almost anybody can.

Apparently my former mistress doesn’t give much thought to the $350,000 settlement that a hand-picked McKinley cop cost the taxpayers of Fullerton because he sexually assaulted women in the backseat of his patrol car; or that McKinley thinks that it’s okay for a certain kind of woman to be so victimized; and that, according to Big Mac “it’s just touching. Not a good thing, but it ain’t a dangerous thing;” or that her esteemed councilmen turned over Fullerton to the cops to do with it as they liked – theft, beatings, perjury, false arrest, a killing.

Mrs. Flory somehow got an extra seven minutes to ramble on and on about all sorts of bullshit, whereas others get the microphone shut off after three. Looks like there really is a double standard there.

Anyway, there you have a fine representative of what’s left of Fullerton’s Old Guard liberals: stubborn, frightened, clueless, self-righteous, dwindling fast.

August 12, 2012August 12, 2012Behind Closed Doors

CSUF Giving Up on “University Heights” Fiasco?

by admin178 Comments

Poultry — Those birds won’t be coming home to roost. Not if CSUF can help it.

A few years ago Cal State Fullerton decided to get into the housing business for its employees. Why public employees should get any sort of preferential treatment for housing is beyond me, but that’s the society in which we live.

Anyway, the whole thing turned out to be a massive disaster, but not an embarrassment, of course, for such things are not permitted in the lofty ether of educratic circles. FFFF posted about it here, and here.

Recap: the university made a deal with the Elks for land up on Elk Hill and sold a bond to build a bunch of cookie-cutter tract duplexes that were to be sold to professors and administrators, and such like, and subsidized by you and me. The only problem was that an underlying deed restriction required sale to others in the same category, an encumbrance that turned out to be a lot more than a mere nuisance, especially when real estate prices were plummeting all over the place.

The university also had the responsibility to make monthly payments to the Elks for their land, which were to passed on to lucky buyers: a sort of Mello-Roos arrangement, if you will.

CSUF Failure — The eggheads never made it to Egghead Hill

But nobody was buying. So the university opened up residence to any government workers. Still no sales. Finally they just started renting them out to anybody with a cleaning deposit and first month’s rent. Could it get worse?

Looks like it could. Persistent rumors suggest that CSUF wants out of the University heights disaster altogether by completely removing the deed restriction and just selling them off – individually or as a group – no doubt at fire sale prices. They obviously need the cash.

The losses on the original deal would be quietly swept under the rug – no doubt with diminishing fund balances bailing out the catastrophe.

And what for? According to an acquaintance at Western Law School, CSUF wants to buy their facility for $20,000,000, give or take, and metastasize across State College.

It’s pretty clear to me that the CSUF appetite for real-estate wheeling and dealing is insatiable, even as the CSU system teeters on the financial brink. It’s also clear that nobody is going to be held accountable for the University Heights quagmire. F. “Dick” Jones, the City mastermind, is recalled; his buddy, former City manager Chris is fatly pensioned off; Bill Dickerson, the CSUF architect of the fiasco is retired, too. CSUF President, the dopey Milton Gordon? You guessed it. Gone, as well.

Would it be asking too much for our State Assemblyman Chris Norby to demand an inquiry on what unfolded up on Elk Hill?

August 9, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Sharon Quirk’s Problem With The Ladies

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy100 Comments

The Voice of OC(EA) is reporting here about the protest held in front of the Old Courthouse by NOW, the OCEA and others demanding that the State’s Attorney General look into the sexual mistreatment of female County workers at the hands of Carlos Bustamante and his superiors.

You’ll notice that one of the “others” was our own Mayor Sharon Quirk. Well, okay.

AlRincon2-163x300 — GOD MODE ACTIVATED. Lookin’ out for the ladies, oh yeah!

But wait! Almost immediately the name Albert Rincon sprung to mind. Who is Albert Rincon? He is the stand-up Fullerton cop that none of the FPD apologists ever want to talk about; the creep who was accused of serially molesting women in the backseat of his patrol car and who cost the taxpayers of Fullerton $350,000 to settle two of the cases.

Remember that these assaults took place during Quirk’s tenure on the council; and that Rincon, in response to numerous complaints from abused women, was merely required by his superiors to take patdown training classes; and that after the settlement was announced, Rincon was quietly permitted to walk away from the FPD – for entirely different reasons.

And what did the outraged Quirk do to investigate an institution that not only permitted, but virtually encouraged this predator? What did she do to bring justice to all the victims?

What’s that Sharon? We can’t hear you?

Next time she goes looking for female victims to stand up for, I humbly submit Quirk doesn’t have to look quite so far afield.

August 7, 2012Boohooism

Flightless Bird Attempts Take Off

by admin50 Comments

Well, here ya go: the last gasp of Fullerton’s Yellowing Observers? Could be. As my old friend Don Carlos Marx once said: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

July 26, 2012July 26, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Well, That Figures

by Mr. Peabody200 Comments

Once and a while I do a Public Record Act request search, ya know, just to see who’s been digging into Fullerton’s records.

And look what I found:

Some person named Greg Diamond, who lives in Brea, is interested in a report about a domestic dispute incident involving State Assemblyman Chris Norby. This issue is not new and quite some time ago FFFF tagged former police spokeshole and union boss Andrew Goodrich as the most likely leaker of the now discredited insinuation of spousal abuse that was helpfully passed along to the public by a union-sponsored blog.

Good news. Hopefully the City will hand over any internal documents on the topic, and especially the possible external communications sent by a helpful PIO to the Voice of OC(EA). Perhaps our new council will make sure that happens.

I am informed that this drone is working for Sharon Quirk in her cardboard cut-out bid to beat out Norby for the new 65th Assembly District seat in the Assembly.

If she thinks this sort of dumpster diving is going to help her campaign, she’s got another think coming. Instead, I hope in the coming months Quirk will expend her energy articulating her positions on increasing taxes in California, explain why the schools are so screwed up, how JCs and state universities squander billions every year with ridiculous bureaucracies and opine on the idiotic environmental master planning embodied in AB32 and SB 375.

Do I hope in vain?