Harry Sidhu & His Gang of Supporters

Now that Harry Sidhu mailers are landing in your mailboxes like confetti I thought  it might be a good time to do a recap, just like FFFF did last fall about the cipher Linda Ackerwoman, in order to complete a character profile of the people that have lent their names to his fraudulent 4th District candidacy.

Can't be an empress without the dough-re-mi!

1. Sidhu is a perpetual office seeker. I’ve now given up trying to count the number of elective offices he has run for, or put out feelers for, in the past eight years.

2. Sidhu lives in an “elegant estate” – in the 3rd District.

3. Sidhu faked an address at the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue. Even though he never lived there he claimed he did under penalty of perjury (twice) that he did.

4. Sidhu cooked yet up another address on Lucky Way, in Anaheim, and proceeded to carpetbag the race for GOP Central Committee from that locale.

5. Sidhu is barely intelligible when he speaks; and

6. When Sidhu does speak he demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about County government, including defined benefits, etc. etc.

7. Sidhu has become the darling of the Sheriff Deputy’s Union that have already poured tens of thousands of dollars in mailers telling us the opposite of what we have already seen for ourselves.

8. Sidhu has accomplished zilch during his tenure on the Anaheim City Council.

9. Harry Sidhu is a rich SOB who will spend any amount of money to get himself elected something – anything.

And now Friends, let us contemplate the Harry Sidhu supporter. What self-respecting person would let his or her name be attached to such a rickety bandwagon? Of course that’s a rhetorical question. Here’s a hint: all the political connective tissue that bind these people to Sidhu attach at point #9, above.

I have my reasons. And they're all selfish.

And then there are those who also are willing to a support a non-entity like Sidhu not in spite of the fact that he is ignorant, but because of it.

The less they know the more we like it...

One fellow in particular supports Sidhu as his own personal puppet to promote his vast High Speed Rail boondoggle.

Harry Sidhu is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

And let’s not forget the worst of the bunch. The lobbyist whose former tentacled stranglehold on the 4th District office was lost when his boy Chris Norby left town.

You'd better get to wordsmithing for Sidhu, pronto...

Then there are the ones whose own ethical problems were so embarrassing that they actually were removed from “host committee” lists – proving that even Sidhu’s well had a slimy bottom.

Actually, that whole sports hall of fame thing was a total scam. But I've decided to keep the $48,000 and all my new shoes.
D'oh!

Well, that’s certainly a rogue’s gallery. Sidhu’s campaign looks more like a jail break than a political campaign, and I apologize for having to inflict such tough love on the Friends. Still, in case anybody has any illusions about what Sidhu as a county supervisor means, just let your imaginations have at it.

The Killer Attack of The Black Magic Marker

View the full invoice

A while back I became curious as to what exactly Renee Ramirez did as County Clerk Tom Daly’s #2. I had heard lots of unflattering things about her not really doing any work and I thought would avail myself of the Public Records Request process to take a gander at some of her records, including phone calls made and text messages. We provide a typical sample of her phone records, above.

We were warned ahead of time by the County that personal phone numbers would be redacted. But never did I expect what I got: page after page after page of blacked out phone numbers.

Good God! These people want us to think Ramirez made hardly any business calls during the course of a month? During one period of several days all the numbers are blacked out. And who were these people she was talking to? That must remain speculative for unless Renee tells us we shall never know.

So what gives? Are they trying to hide something?

The Clerk-Recorder brain trust.

P.S. As a point of interest I note that for a brief shining period Ms Ramirez was Tom Daly’s hand-picked successor. Guess who was squiring her around the OC GOP Central Committee, making introductions: our old pal Brett “Hall of Fame” Barbre. Coincidence? I think not.

Water District Appears to Be Stonewalling For Disgraceful Director

Round round get around...

On April 14, I made a public records request of the Municipal Water District of Orange County to get the travel related expenses of Director Brett Barbre. You remember this fine fellow, don’t you? He’s the guy who was paid $48,000 by Tom Daly to “study” the idea of a sports hall of fame. He also kicked back $1000 into Daly’s campaign kitty. Now that doesn’t look very good does it? Especially for a Republican. Or for any honest man, really.

Part of Barbre’s supposed labors for Daly included a trip to Boston to visit some sports museum there (he never even bothered contacting the folks who started the first one right here in OC!). In his ‘report” he documented a side trip to Fenway Park. Barbre’s later plaint to Jennifer Muir that he paid for that Boston trip himself seems to have made an impression on the lassitudinous journalistic curiosity of Ms Muir, but not on mine. I wanted to find out if maybe the Boston junket itself wasn’t some sort of side trip already paid for by the Water District. I’ve just become so darn cynical when it comes to repuglicans.

And so I asked for Barbre’s travel expenses for the district.

Two week later on April, 28th (four days late) I got the District’s response from someone called Darcy M. Burke, Director of Public Affairs. I received no documents at all. What I got was an e-mail that attached a simple spreadsheet tallying Barbre’s expenses into periodic totals, presumably assembled by Burke. Not a single bit of specific information did I receive although I did get an unsolicited commercial about how much Director Barbre’s junketeering brings home to the Water District. Hmm.

Okay. So now I was really really curious about why they’re not releasing documents – just regurgitated, masticated, and useless pabulum.

Since April 28th I have left several messages and sent several e-mails following up with a demand for the specifics that should have been provided in the first place. All my efforts to communicate with the Water District’s Director of Public Affairs were met with a stony silence, until yesterday when Burke informed me that these things take time. And that only makes me more curious than ever about why she might be stonewalling.

Think they’re trying to hide something?

Nelson is a Defense Lawyer; Sidhu and Galloway Need One

Well, today today the first “Shawn Nelson is an Evil Defense Lawyer” hit mailboxes, just like we knew it would. This has been the anonymous refrain from the John Lewis & Co. hacks and flacks since day one. We even busted Tom Daly’s supposed “campaign manager” doing it on our blog. The mail piece came from Sidhu, the phony resident of the 4th District.

The funny thing about it is, so what? The obvious conclusion is that people don’t like lawyers, and defense lawyers defend creeps. Sure they do. They also defend innocent people who are being railroaded by ambitious and unscrupulous cops and DAs, and who are accused of all sorts of heinous things. I doubt if there’s a reasonable person who hasn’t contemplated what the police power of the government could do to them if they were falsely accused of something.

Come to think of it, defense attorneys even work for people who commit perjury by signing their name to official documents that they know aren’t true. Let’s see, can anybody think of someone who has recently hired a $400 an hour defense lawyer? Oh, that’s right! Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu just hired Paul Meyer of Costa Mesa to help him try to beat the perjury rap we tagged him with.

And then there’s the Precious Princess, Lorri Galloway whose entire adult life reads like a low-grade takeoff on The Grifters. Wonder how many lawyers the Galloways have employed over the years? It would probably fill up a law school graduating class!

John and Ken, Meet Matthew Cunningham

Last Friday afternoon KFI’s John and Ken got hold of our post on the subject, and shared with their listeners the amusing notion that Matthew J. Cunningham of Red County fame actually got paid $200 an hour to listen to their show one day last year.

Here’s what they had to say.

More publicity for the OC Children and Families Commission. Well done!

MORE MONKEY BUSINESS AT THE CLERK-RECORDER’S OFFICE; TOM DALY AND HIS PAY-TO-PLAY CONTRACTS.

Hey, everyone is good at something!

It looks like we can add another skill to Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly’s public money squandering resume.  As previously reported here, not only does Daly excel at wasting public money and doling out jobs to his contributor’s relatives, it appears that he also hands out no-bid contracts to campaign contributors as well. It turns out that the contracts are more of what we’re used to: highly questionable and unaudited relationships, and of course, ultimate failure.

Get a load of this one.

Between 2002 and 2007, Christopher Townsend, who is the president of Townsend Public Affairs, contributed a total of $2600 to Tom Daly’s campaigns. During this period, Townsend was awarded two $60,000 no-bid contracts for “consulting services.” Townsend was awarded these contracts without bidding because of their supposed know-how in obtaining grants from the California Cultural Historical Endowment. What for, you ask?

In late 2005/2006 the grant application was for $150,000 to go to “planning” the archives expansion in the old Courthouse building in Santa Ana. Apparently the contract and the grant application were approved solely on the authority of Daly himself – that’s right, no Board of Supervisor’s oversight.

The big problem was that the grant application was for a building over which the “Manager of the Year” Daly had no authority. Apparently it is controlled by the Harbors Parks and Beaches Department that lets the Clerk-Recorder use it for some of his functions. And seemingly they had no clue what Daly was up to.

Even though Daly got the grant he wanted, the County had to turn the money back in April, 2006 because of the inability of Daly to communicate what he was doing with the other County bureaucrats. The official excuse was “unanticipated space and stakeholder concerns.” Translated from Bureaucratese into English: Big Daly F-up.

Well, there’s $60,000 down the toilet.

Undaunted by failure, late in 2006 the indefatigable Daly was before the Board of Supervisors asking for another $60,000 no-bid contract with Townsend. The motive was the same, but by now Daly’s covetous eye likely rested on the wretched building at 433 West Civic Center, a $2.1 million liability that he would talk the Board into acquiring in 2007. We shared that mess with you, here. The second grant application ended up with a big goose egg, however the purchase of the money pit on Civic Center Drive proceeded headlong, full speed ahead.

A river of red ink runs through it...

Another $60,000 chunked into the water hazard.

Oh, dear me. Another Tom Daly fiasco; another example of incompetence and cronyism his pals in the media won’t touch; yet another mauve feather in the dismal repuglican headdress of Daly’s admirer, John Lewis (& Co.) who keeps insisting that the egregious Daly is some sort of “fiscal conservative.”

And good grief, we’ve only just scratched the surface. Be sure to stay tuned.

Pacific Strategies – Propagandist for Suffocating Statism

I would humbly like to thank the Academy for this recognition...

The other day Orange County’s Most Hypocritical Repuglican (yes, that is one Hell of an achievement) Matthew J. Cunningham coughed up this Red County hairball in criticism of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez:

How very congressional. And also ironic to listen to Loretta Sanchez speaking to a crowd of immigrants who came here seeking the American Dream,, even as she has been voting to make American more suffocatingly statist like the countries they left.

Is he really that breathtakingly unaware of the irony of the mouthpiece for the OC Children and Families Commission dumping on “statism.” Or could it be that he figures that whoever reads his post won’t know about his real day job; and if they do any comments revealing that fact will be deleted.

Aw c’mon Mr. C from Suite C, ‘fess up. You really, really dig suffocating statism; you profit from it and you shill for it. In fact, it’s just about your only real source of income.

Own it.

P.S. Wordsmiths “at the top of their profession” proofread their copy for embarrassing typos.

Nick Berardino is Dishonest. And Really Stupid.

Over at the Red County blog yesterday Cynthia Ward properly went after the idiotic mailer the OCEA put out against Shawn Nelson for voting to preserve the Fox Theater.

Naturally, Matthew Cunningham, who is doing his usual shuck and jive for John Lewis to torpedo Nelson, decided to let Chief Union Goon Nick Berardino defend the flier in detail, and of course did his usual look-the-other-way routine as Berardino just made shit up.

How can you tell when he's lying? When his lips are moving.

Berardino defended his fraudulent mailer by claiming that Nelson received campaign contributions from The Morgan Group who was in negotiations to buy the Fox Theater. Then Berardino points out that (some years later) Nelson voted to approve a matching grant to the Fox Foundation for restoration, like there was some sort of connection.

If Cunningham weren’t working for the Lewis cabal to sink a real conservative Republican (Nelson) in order to promote a district-hopping, ignorant  assclown (Sidhu) he would have pointed out that the two things had absolutely nothing to do with one another; that the Morgan Group never had a stake in the Fox grant decisions and that the Fox Foundation that got the grant is a non-profit corporation that doesn’t give out political contributions.

Nick says he did his homework. Nick is a liar and a sack of Nigerian pygmy goat shit.

Oh, and by the way Nick, your flier included a big picture of the old Bank of Italy on it that has nothing to do with the Fullerton Fox.

If Nick weren’t so stupid he might soon come to discover that helping preserve the Fox Theater will win  a lot more votes than it will cost him. So keep it up, dummy. Just love the way you waste your members dues!

Pacific Strategies – Monitoring John & Ken for Fun and Profit

 

Those guys don't scare me. I'm in this for the kids..

In our series documenting the PR/lobbyist hungry OC Children and Families Commission we have shown how they have employed local political operative and Red County blog bloviator Matthew Cunningham to propagandize their myriad big-government good works.

We have seen how the preachy Mr. Conservative Republican was paid $200 an hour to do such things as update facebook pages, ghost write articles for liberal Democrats, and perhaps, funniest of all (in a sick sort of way) – coordinate toothbrush distribution to the Diocese. While he was at it, he amassed some mammoth paydays for his “Pacific Strategies” wordsmithing operation.

 

The toughest part of the job is thinking up new ways to spend all that gummint dough.

Of course you can’t really propagandize effectively unless you know what the opposition is saying. So enjoy this.

In January, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger called for First 5 California to be eliminated in his 2009-10 budget. Regional commissions would have taken a 60% cut in funding.

KFI radio broadcasters John and Ken went on the offensive, and Cunningham was right there listening in at $200 an hour to formulate his defense of the Welfare State. Here’s the invoice entry:

Full invoice – January 2009

As I said yesterday, it’s way past time to put this Commission under the control of the Board of Supervisors so that at least contracts and policy can be authorized by elected officials in a much more public forum. And maybe instead of fixating on PR the kiducrats can concentrate more resources on actually helping poor children instead of well-off, hypocritical Republicans.

FFFF Quadruple Repeat: Sad. Pathetic. Embarrassing.

Aw, what a cutie pie. Picked out your prom dress yet?

You know, this post is just too good not to keep sharing with the Friends.

It appears that carpetbagging Precious Princess stopped making her ludicrous “Lorri in 4th gear” videos after the first one bombed so spectacularly.

Too bad. The spectacle of a 57 year-old woman doing her little dress-up teenybopper routine really is priceless.

The Desert Rat

Hardly anymore introduction is necessary. This clueless airhead wants to be a County Supervisor. True, the bar has been set pretty low in the past. But this is ridiculous. I’d rather vote for her little dog “Bella.” Too bad Bella is a carpetbagger, also.

Last summer we thought her “cute shoes” comment was indicative of a frivolous, unlikely candidacy. Now we know better. Oh, and by the way – shame on Anaheim for electing this idiot to their city council.

Enjoy, if you can keep your last meal down.