Oh, Brother! Another Wet Tongue Bath

No, it doesn't get weirder.

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.

Hey, those cigars don't pay for themselves...

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.

Here’s A Sore Subject

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.

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?

Another Pringle Undertaking

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.

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!

The Tongue Bath

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?

Hey, Lucy, Where’s the $75,000?

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.

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!

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

Bill Campbell is not a meathead...

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.

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!

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.

Chaffee Surrenders to Chiefee

Glub, glub, glub...

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.

Bankhead Throws Hissy Fit

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.

Dannemeyer’s Recreational Vehicle Versus The People of Fullerton

Hey! You dope-smoking homos get outta my alley!

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.

Dannemeyer's RV, Burning Man 2008

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

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