Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Bill Dannemeyer just lost an expensive appeal in an effort to compel you Fullerton taxpayers to pave a dirt alleyway that leads to the back of his property. Why? So that he can park his RV and boat behind his house.
“Who is Bill Dannemeyer?” some of you may well ask. Why, he used to be your esteemed Congresscritter there in F-town before the Little Corporal took over. He was a hard-line conservative who hated queers, and who got his start as – you guessed it – a public employee. A long, long time ago he was a City Attorney in Fullerton. In fact, he spent thirty years on the public dime.
You would think a former congressman, former city attorney and supposed “conservative” would be smart enough to avoid an evident legal morass caused by a selfish grab for public resources, or at least be able to present his case in plausible legalese. Boy would you be 180 wrong!
According to the appeals court that heard the case:
Dannemeyer’s opening brief is confusing and at times completely unintelligible. His brief has 22 separate argument headings, most of which are devoid of legal analysis, citation to relevant supporting legal authority, or cogent explanation as to how he was prejudiced by the claimed error
Well, that didn’t take long. In office as Mayor for a few scant days, Doc Jones issued his first diktat: a new sister city for Fullerton to join the ranks of Fukui and Morelia and Yongin.
The new destination for Fullerton international gladhanders is none other than Pilgur, principal metropolis of Kharakhastan. Of course Friends will recall that Jones’s ties to Kharakhastan run deep, and remember his reference in a diatribe against a former Congressman:
Then there was our subsequent research into this exotic corner of Central Asia.
When reached for comment on his unusual decision, Jones minced no words: “As a Airman Basic in the Air Force I oncet had to bail out over that place. And man, I’m telling ya, them gals was friendly! ‘Sides I ain’t partial to no squids and raw tuna ‘n suchlike, ‘n that cabbage slaw done give me some baaaad gas.”
And so for those of you who believed that Good Ol’ Boy Jones was jes’ gonna run out the clock, well, Hell y’all can guess again.
Friends, we just received this e-mail from one of our readers who calls him/herself “Disillusioned Ex-hippy.” We publish it verbatim, although the images are our contribution.
I have it on excellent authority that Pam Keller and her posse threw a going away party for themselves the other evening in which pity pots on which to sit were handed out at the door. I was invited but chose not to attend.
Well, I’m not sad. Good riddance. Keller accomplished next to nothing in her four year term. That’s why a lot of us are celebrating her departure – even many of us who supported her in 2006. In fact she turned her back on her promises to Fullerton about developers and their undue influence. That’s was just a big lie.
And BTW, Pam the meanie blogs aren’t the the cause of divisiveness in Fullerton. What is the cause of divisiveness is a city council that just ratifies the decisions put in front of it by the staff; a city council too lazy, too stupid, or too supine to think and act for itself – unless a weird, erratic outburst is called for.
It happened. As predicted. At the behest of the repuglican puppetmasters that helped put him on the Fullerton City Council, ex-police Chief and $215,000 a year pension puller-downer Pat McKinley bypassed Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva for Mayor Pro Tem. Instead Fullerton’s former top cop and election winner by 90 votes went with the feeble octogenarian, Don Bankhead. Gotta keep that winning team intact, right?
Well, goddamit, the ‘pugs weren’t the only people who helped put McKinley on the council. They had help. As noted previously, many of the the Yellowing Fullerton Observers went for McKinley, too, including folks like Molly McClanahan, Jan Flory and….wait for it…Sharon Quirk-Silva! It cost Doug Chaffee the election.
Two years ago these same people helped put the cracker back in the cracker barrel.
Say, guys, hows that strategy working out for ya?
One of our Friends observed this banner near the intersection of Harbor and Brea today giving thanks to mercifully soon-to-be former council member, Pam Keller.
How touching. A “job well done.”
But, really? Since we can’t count on the Yellowing Observers and Pam’s Dingbat Posse to give an accurate look back on Keller’s four years in office, I will oblige by helping out a little.
First we’ll give credit where credit is due, and acknowledge her support of Prop 215 and the law of the State while the other four cowards on the council showed their true colors.
And now I’m done reciting Keller’s accomplishments – the wrong end of one 4-1 vote.
And lest you forget, I’ll remind you about some of her dubious activities on the council. How about the lobbyist boat ride and dinner care of slimeball Steve Sheldon and her subsequent support of the completely indefensible “Jeferson Commons” monstrosity? And let’s not forget her support of the equally god-awful Amerige Court, brought to us by contributors to her Colloborative. Both these votes were a total sellout to her supporters and her 2006 campaign promises as she came to realize the challenges of “governing.”
Speaking of the Collaborative, is there really any need to rehash the manifest conflicts of interest, the mobilizing of Collaborative grantees for political purposes, of gad-abouting taking credit for other people’s efforts? There, I just did it.
My favorite Keller self-besoiling was the twelve hundred bucks of public money she wasted going to the 2008 League of Cities meeting in far-off Long Beach, as cavalier a waste of taxpayer dollars as you will ever see.
And only this year Keller crowned her career by supporting the fraudulent, carpetbagging campaign of Harry Sidhu for 4th District Supervisor.
Not much to show for four years work, but of course commenters are welcome to augment the list of any real accomplishment on Keller’s part. Now don’t get me wrong. Keller’s lack of any really achievement is in no way different than any other councilpersons anybody can remember, so at least she’s got that going for her, legacy-wise.
Well, now she can assume her idiotic grin and bat her eyes for the benefit of the Fullerton School District trustees – as they consider renewing her contract and her, ahem, peculiar role as Philanthropist on Our Dime.
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.