Fullertonstories is reporting here, that the County of Orange wants to build a homeless shelter on south State College in Fullerton. They may be soon buying the Linder Furniture store for $3,000,000.
This may not be good news to the folks who live in the single family neighborhood across the street and who take their kids to the Commonwealth Elementary School which is virtually adjacent to this site. The folks I know over in the Chapman Park area have heard nothing about this venture, which makes me wonder whose big idea this was and why the neighbors have not even been informed.
Amazingly, it would appear from the article that the County’s “search criteria” only included that the shelter be on a bus line and moved away from Downtown Fullerton. Nice.
How much of this “plan” has already been secretly approved by our own City Council goes unmentioned. Has a deal already been work out with the City? It’s hard to believe the County would buy real estate without the approval of the City Council, or at least the City staff.
Apparently the County Board of Supervisors is voting on this purchase Tuesday. I wonder when the government plans on telling anybody about this.
I was struck the other day by a post on the Voice of OC(EA) about Sharon Quirk that started out with Q complaining that there is now a target on her back by the GOP who want their Republican seat back. The rest of the post is the typical mush-drivel we’ve come to expect of the local media so I’ll let that pass.
What intrigued me was the absurdity of making yourself out to be a target by the very sorts of people who got you elected. What am I talking about? Check out this post from OC Political. Quirk got almost $300,000 funneled into her campaign account over the course of 18 days – laundered through various county Democrat Central Committees, including obscure Del Norte County – 800 miles away.
As expected, a lot of it came from public employee unions. But a lot of it also came from giant corporations like AECOM, Blue Shield, AEG, and of course, our good friends at Disney. So it would appear that Quirk was obviously looked favorably upon by these corporate behemoths, despite their subsequent attempts to distance themselves from their odd gifts to distant Democratic County Central Committees.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
The whining lefties are forever complaining that the lavish benefits, pay and massive pensions showered upon public employee unions are somehow a necessary counterbalance to all the misfeasance and excessive compensation of those greedy private business exec bastards. Of course it was always a false choice, but that falsity has never been made clearer by the fact of big corporations bellying up to Quirk’s bar.
The fact of the matter is that big corporations like big government. They are comfortable with it; they profit from it. Whether Republicans or Democrats are at the helm matters not a whit. Think big corporate subsidies, tax loopholes, and onerous regulations that chase small businesses out of business and you will start to get the picture. Big business likes balanced government budgets, and if that takes raising taxes on the rest of us, so be it. The very last thing they want is a small government advocate like Chris Norby. Think OC Business Council and you will understand that these people have no interest in anything other than a smoothly run plantation. You and I are the coolies that make the thing run for the benefit of our overseers.
Or to put it another way, the public employee unions and the big corporations both regard the taxpayer the same way: we are just pigeons to be plucked.
It’s actually rather amusing that Sharon Quirk is trying to gin up sympathy for her re-election against the big, mean Republicans, even before she is sworn in. Her dim-witted supporter may fall for that. She really doesn’t have anything to worry about.
I just picked up these missives from the FFFF in-box this morning. First this:
I know who Iwant to work for, and it isn’t you!
Hey, FFFFsters, I just want to point out the obvious. Jan Flory just got fourteen grand, cash, from the corrupt cop union. She also got ten grand from some land developer named Phelps. The rest of her dough came from “retired” individuals, most of them former public employees.
Cops, developers, massively pensioned government workers. Wow. Talk about special interests!
– Sick of BooHoos
Good point, S.o.B. And then this:
I was driving along Chapman a few days ago and saw Pam Keller on the corner of Harbor. She was holding up a sign promoting the candidacy of Rick Alvarez, a Republican! Here’s what I want to know. Why won’t the establishment Dems in this town support a real good candidate like Jane Rands? Why the Hell not? What is wrong with Keller, and Quirk and Flory and their ilk?
Are they so in bed with the FPOA thugs and baboons that they can’t recognize an authentic progressive? I guess that question answers itself.
– ACLU Mom
Good point, Mom. The Old Guard liberals in Fullerton don’t stand for anything, of course, except for the prerogatives conferred upon the department heads in City Hall (see first letter, above). Please address you questions to Keller herself and see if you can get an intelligible answer. Or you could ask this gentleman:
It seems that Jan Flory is bringing a little bit of charming Chicago politics to Fullerton, i.e. raiding cemeteries for supporters. Now you know why we have a category called “Deadheads.”
Opps. Bob Root is dead. So is Gwen Ferguson; likewise Majorie Pogue!
Did you spot any others?
Also of high amusement value are the names of me and my ex-wife! How I got on the list is anybody’s guess since I have never given Flory authorization to use my name for anything.
I believe this is just a matter of utter incompetence, but it isn’t surprising. When Flory says she is ten years older and 10 years better she is half right.
Since I do not want to be accused of being sexist I shall refrain from a literary reference to Macbeth. I would note however that there is not enough brainpower in this picture to light a match.
Two observations. First “Kitty” Jaramillo seems to think it is “time for a change.” She never seemed to think it was time for a change when the FPD was beating people to death, so that tells you all you need to know about her, even if you didn’t know she was a well-pensioned former City employee.
I ain’t a swallerin’ that!
Somebody better tell Mrs. Flory to quit wearing those rayon muu muu things and those cheap plastic beads. They scream out 1973. Which is probably when she bought them. Meeeeow. Hiss!!!!
P.S. Friends, for an added treat enjoy this picture of FPOA boss and serial prevaricator (or hoplessly incompetent) Andrew Goodrich proclaiming the Jaramillo buffet safe for FPOA consumption.
“Several guest sustained broken bones rushing for the cold taquitos.”
I have always been fascinated by the urge for government employees and their die-hard supporters to cling to the notion of collective bargaining as some sort of birthright. The ability for public employees to unionize is actually not even that old, but is a comparatively recent and curious chapter in the history of organized labor.
Classical Marxist doctrine holds that in the capitalist phase of history there are two elements contributing to economic activity. There are capital and labor; the first representing the bourgeois investment class (and their managerial overseers); the second is the workforce that sells its labor to the former. Naturally, the cost of labor , the investment of the capitalists, and the return the latter is willing to accept determine the supply side cost of goods.
The Marxists believed that capital habitually exploited an oversupply of labor through poor working conditions and long hours of employment. There was certainly evidence to support this contention and the capitalists did their best to outlaw labor “combination” through their control of legislatures.
(For the sake of argument I will happily stipulate the socialist fact in evidence.)
Of course labor did combine.
But the idea of government workers unionizing did not enter the into the equation. Why? For several reasons, one of which is succinctly stated by the most effective liberal in American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt realized that people who work for the government cannot hold the same employer/employee relationship since their employer is the people as a sovereign whole. Clearly the idea of collective bargaining, and particularly militant union tactics used against the citizenry was abhorrent to old FDR himself.
Another related problem is that government employees do not fit into the labor-capital equation, since the “capitalist” investor in their operation is none other than the taxpayers and citizens – and not a natural adversary in an economic system. And public employees were granted civil service protection and security to make up for comparatively modest wages.
Cornering the market…
And then there is the problem of the complete public sector labor monopoly. Producers of goods compete with each other in marketplaces that, among other things, sets a value on product that helps determine the cost of labor. No such balance exists in the public sector where nothing is for sale and there is no competition in the labor market at all.
The ability to unionize and the concomitant ability to engage in collective political action has enabled the public sector labor monopoly to elect its favored candidates at all levels, and subsequently to exact greater and greater salaries and benefits for themselves; and always using the argument that all they seek is parity with the private sector. Yet never have they jettisoned the civil service protections that makes in almost impossible to fire an incompetent public worker.
Most comical are the “management” unions that represent the upper tier employees who oversee the lower, and whose own interests in running the “company” are inexplicably linked with the benefits conferred upon the latter!
We didn’t do it!
And so dear Friends, next time you see a “retired” 50 year old cop who was granted almost 100% of his salary as a pension, and who was given two decades of retroactive benefits, ask him whom he has to thank. I guarantee it won’t be you, or even the other public employees who negotiated his benefits on your behalf; nor even the lackeys on the city council like Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Jan Flory whom his union got elected. Nuh, uh. He will thank an anonymous “system” that has created this mess and that has virtually bankrupt California and threatens almost every municipality in the state.
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.”
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!
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.
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.
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.
