Dead heads Archives - Page 35 of 65 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 4, 2011March 4, 2011Behind Closed Doors

LA to Anaheim HSR on Verge of Derailment

Our friends over at the the Voice of OC(EA) are reporting on yesterday’s California High Speed Rail Authority meeting. And if you’re one of the repuglicans or make-work junkies supporting the unsupportable, the news ain’t good.

Everybody now admits that the LA-Anaheim link is the most impractical and least effective segment of HSR. In fact, if it is ever built, it may not be “high speed” at all! Hiding behind euphemisms like “phase-in” the reality is that this segment has been pushed all the way to the back of the CHSR bus.

Hilariously the HSR-ocrats are paying lip service to the Will O’ The People who voted a multi-billion dollar bond to support this extravagant boondoggle. Oh, that’s right. The People. The ones who were given false information at every step of the way and who were never presented with a business plan as required by the initiative. And the People, these miscreants are quick to remind us, voted for a system that would come all the way to Anaheim! No prize for guessing who got the Anaheim language into the initiative.

And speaking of Der Pringle, he provides the best quote of the article when he cautioned not to use the word “splippage” since it might undermine confidence in the whole gig. Hooboy!

Meanwhile Pringle’s glassy monument to himself, the egregious ARTIC 200 mil bus barn continues to loom in our collective psyche, promising to suck up $100,000,000 of Measure M revenue that is supposed to bring HSR to an expanded Metrolink station. Of course ARTIC does neither, but as we have already noted, that means nothing to the small-town drones on the OCTA board. And this reminds me of a poem:

In Anaheim did a ‘puglican

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Santa Ana, the part-time river, ran

Through suburbs measureless to man

Down to a closed-beach sea,

etc.

February 15, 2011February 15, 2011Dead heads

Oh, Brother! Another Wet Tongue Bath

by admin20 Comments

A while back we shared a classic lackey moment when Matthew J. Cunningham gave former Anaheim Mayor-for-Hire and all-round sleaze Kurt Pringle a vigorous lingual lather up.

Not to be out done by an amateur, The Register’s in-house boot-lick-name-dropper Frank Mickadeit decided to do him one better, and offered up a sloppy tongue-job to the man the State’s Attorney general found be conflicted in his serial roles as lobbyist, mayor, and Boondoggle HSR Chairman.

Now, we all know that Pringle is and always has been in it for Pringle. But good old Frank seems perfectly willing to pass along the nonsense that Pringle is out of elective politics to focus on his business. No. Pringle is out of elective politics because there is no longer any elective office that wouldn’t be a detriment to his business.

Of course we hear from former Anaheim garbage hauler Bill Taormina, supporter of the lamest of the lame Lorri Galloway, who believes that Pringle should be California’s governor or maybe a senator. Taormina has millions of reasons to praise Pringle, but there is no more moral underpinning for his support of Pringle than there was for his giving Galloway three fake addresses in his various rental units so she could run a fraudulent campaign for County supervisor.

Which leads to the conclusion that the sooner the pathetic Register goes under for the third and final time, the better.

February 14, 2011February 14, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Here’s A Sore Subject

by Mr. Peabody21 Comments

It looks like our City Council is all set to discuss the topic of outside dining on Tuesday. Again.

It seems like only yesterday that the council handed over a public sidewalk to the Florentine Mob under the guise of an outdoor dining lease. The ink wasn’t even dry when Florentine started erecting a permanent, enclosed structure on our sidewalk! The Fullerton Shadow wrote all about it, here.

squatters2-330x500 — Sit down and grab some sidewalk, brother...

In 2007 the City gave the whole idea of outdoor dining permits second thought. But now with this gosh darn recession a-lingering the subject is cropping up again.

Well, somebody better go to this meeting to make sure no more public property is given away. After all “Dick” Jones and Don Bankhead chose to look the other way before, just to protect their incompetent staff. And Pat McKinley’s got lots of friends downtown, right?

January 3, 2011January 4, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Another Pringle Undertaking

by admin20 Comments

Cemetery1-300x225 — Der Pringle is dying to get in...

The OC Cemetery District sure seems to have a morbid fascination with failure.

Last year we reported on how the Orange County Cemetery District had employed Anaheim’s mayor-for-hire, Kurt Pringle as a consultant. Pringle was getting 6,000 bucks a month to find a new cemetery site, do PR, and act as a cemetery developer. Which was really pretty funny since Pringle is not a realtor, is not a landscape architect, and all the publicity the Cemetery District has gotten lately has all been bad.

PringlePower-300x225 — We have something really nice for you in mahogany.

Pringle’s been on the Cemetery District’s payroll for two years now, which seems like ample time to have accomplished a lot. Well, something. Anything.

But in these opaque, special districts nothing succeeds like failure, apparently, for tomorrow the Cemetery District Board of Trustees is being asked by their staff to extend Der Pringle’s contract even though so far he has accomplished virtually nothing for them. Part of the problem is that the Cemetery Board is independent of any real oversight; and the average age of the Board is something like 969 years old, so there seems to be zero sales resistance.

Renew!!?? Sweet Jebus! The Board ought to be suing Pringle and his Associates for breach of contract!

December 20, 2010Dead heads

The Tongue Bath

by admin5 Comments

We knew it was coming, of course. The last obsequious tribute of the ultimate repuglican lackey to the ultimate repuglican puppeteer. Still, it’s pretty gross even when you knew it was coming.

No mention of incompatible offices, or of directing hundreds of millions to pet projects, or of do-nothing contracts with opaque organizations like the Children and Families Commission and the Cemetery District; no mention of a financial interest Form 700 that’s over 60 pages long; and no mention of “freedom-friendly” up-zoning that cleared out huge swaths of light industrial employers and employees to make way for high-density condos built by buddies.

Well, what did you expect?

December 19, 2010December 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Hey, Lucy, Where’s the $75,000?

by admin29 Comments

Back in September, the OC Board of Supervisors approved yet another feel-good layer of government – something called the End Homelessness by 2020 Commission. They even allocated $75,000 towards one (1) executive director; another $75,000 was supposed to come from the “private sector.” The thing was trumpeted as a “public/private partnership” and all the do-gooders were feeling pretty good. Lucy Dunn, head of something called the OC Business Council was there to make sure everybody knew that the business community was on board and meant business.

Lucy-Dunn-300x280 — We were this close to raising a nickle!

Flash forward to December14. On their agenda, the BOS had a agreement with the Children and Families Commission to front the other $75,000, and not only that, but to “recruit, hire and house” the executive director. What was sold a s a public/private deal was now wholly public; and the supes were asked to let another agency recruit and hire a contractor who is supposed to report to them!

Of course Ms. Dunn was there again to shamelessly blather on about her “time and treasure” even though there was none of her treasure, or that of her members, in evidence.

Supervisor Shawn Nelson would have none of it. He had the strange idea that words in a staff report should actually mean something; “show me the money” was what he had to say, indicating his acknowledgment that in almost a year the private sector hadn’t coughed up so much as a nickle and everybody on the inside knew it.

Led by John Moorlach, the crew approved this arrangement 4-1, and provided yet another example of how supposed conservatives in OC can’t throw away your money fast enough. And the Children and Families Commission has new roles – employment agency and homelessness advocates.Wanna bet to whom the executive director will answer? That’s right, Mr. $327K a year Mike Ruane, who runs the OCC&FC “do tank” and who will probably ask for a raise.

And what will happen in 1n 2020 when homelessness is not ended and the Commission has a staff of 23? Well, Hell, that’s easy! Just rename the commission. 2030 will be right around the corner!

December 17, 2010December 17, 2010Dead heads

Jingle Bells

by admin5 Comments

It’s that time of year again. The Fullerton police officers are having their annual get together tonight at the Summit House restaurant. You may remember the controversy surrounding last year’s Christmas party, here. I wonder if anybody ever got to the bottom of that.

December 17, 2010December 18, 2010Dead heads

Scab Pulled off OC Rob Reiner Commission Compensation. Ouch. That Hurt.

by admin13 Comments

The OC Register’s Tony Saavedra penned a nice little piece today exposing the Orange County Children and Families Commission Executive Director’s fabulous salary. Mike Ruane, the guy in question, pulls down a nifty $327K by the time everything is said and done. He has a grand total of 23 employees.

fartboy — If you give me two hundred bucks an hour I'll defend this happy horse shit.

In the past we have explored the huge sums of money this tax-and-redistribute operation has paid out to political PR operations like Kurt Pringle; and we have detailed the idiotic $200 an hour payments to one Matthew J. Cunningham for doing thngs like listen to the radio and publicize toothbrush handouts.

It turns out that Ruane and his well-connected repuglican pals are not the only folks doing well by doing good. According to Saavedra over half of Ruane’s small posse pulls in over a hundred Gs per annum!

billcampbell-240x300 — The bishop made me do it.

So who’s in charge? Well, nobody, of course. This is the worst kind of unaccountable government. The Board members are all appointed, but don’t answer to anybody. They can basically do any damn thing they want so long as the word “child” is mentioned somewhere. Atop the pyramid of power sits Supervisor Bill Campbell. You remember him. The one who actually wept here on the dais contemplating the good works of the Human Relations Commission. The Kids Commission is his pet project and damned if he isn’t going to do his God-ordained good works with your tax dollars.

Campbell’s respone to Saavedra is just comical and suggests that this idiot is probably just as profligate with County resources as he is handing out tobacco tax dough to kiducrats.

December 15, 2010December 15, 2010About Us

Chaffee Surrenders to Chiefee

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

Word from the OC ROV is that recent council election show horse Doug Chaffee has given up the ghost in his recount against place horse Pat McPension.

It was a forlorn hope to begin with but Chaffee wanted to give it that one last shot. He’ll be trying out for the Dodgers in the spring.

Of course OCs RINO elite is pleased as punch and God bless ’em. It’s been a tough 14 months.

December 13, 2010Dead heads

Bankhead Throws Hissy Fit

by Joe Sipowicz10 Comments

Enjoy this clumsy rhetorical diarrhoea on the part of our newly installed Mayor Pro Tem, Don Bankhead as he rationalizes excluding Sharon Quirk-Silva from the officer rotation. If you can figure out his weird justification for doing the wrong thing, and that we ought to return to a rotation (but not by him and not now), then God bless you.

Bankhead says he is tired of blah, blah, blah.

Newsflash, Blanky – we’re tired of crochety, semi-lucid ignoramuses representing the City of Fullerton. You got a pass this election but rest assured every idiocy that comes tumbling out of your mouth will be documented here.