Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
After second helpings of aloo tikki and tandoori baked nan, our own beloved blowhard Dick Jones seems to be having trouble staying awake during the Indian Independence day celebration held last summer at Harry Sidhu’s “elegant Yorba Estate.” You remember, his home in the 3rd District that he swore under penalty of perjury that he had abandoned for the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue.
Over at the Red County blog Matthew J. Cunningham has gotten his lavender briefs into a self-righteous snarl over some guy named Tim Whitacre. Whitacre’s ostensible offense? Claiming that the Lewis Consulting Group is on Hide and Seek Sidhu’s payroll. In reality his offense was standing up at the GOP Central Committee meeting last week and reminding everybody that Harry Sidhu is an opportunistic carpetbagger.
You would think that somebody like Cunningham who pretends to be a political and social conservative, but who, in reality, has an annual contract with Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s Children and Families Commission of almost $200,000 a year would just clam up. But no. Silence is not in him. Instead he prefers to keep opining in his usual way: in a crab-wise crawl across the truth.
First you call your opponents insane (or tin-foil hat wearing, delusional, paranoid, etc.) Of course sane people don’t argue with the insane – but that never stopped Cunningham – who will keep jabbering away until the lights are shut off. Then you start carefully parsing out where your opponent is making stuff up, and has no proof, etc.
In this case the fake issue is whether Lewis is actually getting paid directly from Sidhu or not. Lewis must have informed The Jerb that he isn’t. So he then is safe in saying Whitacre has no proof that Lewis is. But Lewis is indeed working for Sidhu – one way or another. His payment may come later if he is working on spec – either in deferment or simply in access to Norby’s old office for the inevitable lobbying. As one of our commenters pointed out he may also be working on an IE against Shawn Nelson. In any of these scenarios some kind of disclosure by his partner Matt Holder should have been made at the Central Committee meeting.
So the gist of what Whitacre has to say is very much valid.
Cunningham finishes up by saying Whitacre has no proof that Nelson is the stronger candidate even though, ironically, he has no proof that Whitacre doesn’t. Of course you wouldn’t even need to have poll results to tell that Sidhu is a bumbling assclown who will be lucky to get 9% of the vote. Oh yeah, he’s also a perpetual office seeking carpetbagger. And a casual perjurer.
Ah the faux outrage! Such a fun spectacle when it fails. And when you’re a hypocrite repuglican whose cover’s been blown, it’s only going to get tougher to pull off.
Now that Chris Norby’s campaign manager John Lewis has not only come out in support of Harry Sidhu in the 4th Supervisor’s race, but is actually working for his campaign, it’s time for Norby to do the right thing – and fire Lewis.
Norby has endorsed and supported the candidacy of Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson, and his campaign manager has deliberately placed his own interest ahead of both Norby’s, and the GOP’s, but the entire populace of the 4th Supervisorial District, for that matter.
You’ve all seen the facts and the videos. Harry Sidhu is a perjurer, a carpetbagger, and an unintelligible buffoon, who is patently unqualified to be an ice cream truck driver, let alone a County Supervisor. But John Lewis needs a lobbying target and knows that Shawn Nelson isn’t for sale. See, for Lewis it’s all about money and influence, and principle be damned.
So what do say Chris? How long are you going to go with a guy who is working against you? Who’s the boss?
While many County departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs big spender of our dough Tom Daly seems to be going in the opposite direction. I learned that he has just recently showed off his newly minted Executive Aide – Bruce Matthias, to his staff.
This new hire has to be costing tax payers a bundle. But most disturbing is that Matthias was recently released by the County’s Executive Office from his job as head of the County’s legislative affairs unit – a sort of in-house government lobbyist. Since Daly hired Mr. Matthias as an “at-will-employee,” he didn’t have to go through any sort of competitive hiring process to bring on board someone who was recently cut loose by the County CEO – in other words, pure cronyism. So what does Matthias know about running anything, let alone a Clerk/Recorder’s office? Just looks like typical jobs for the boys featherbedding corruption to me.
Tellingly, this recent addition to Team Daly used to be Chief of Staff to Assemblyman John Lewis during his first three years in office. Hey, wait! Isn’t the John Lewis Machine running Daly’s campaign? Hmm.
Maybe Daly is returning a favor. Clearly the Matthias family is pals with Daly. Matthias’ wife Sonja Matthias contributed to Daly’s now abandoned campaign for Supervisor 2010. Or maybe Daly’s doing the favor for Lewis. Who knows?
All I know is that it is very depressing although not really surprising to see more and more so-called conservative Republicans finding ways to profit off of County government.
As for Daly, this blatant cronyism in a time of recession is just par for the course. Remember the $48,000 doled out to a political contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame? And the $1700 a month retainer to a Sacramento government consulting business? Or the $2.1 million flushed on the tear-down building on Civic Center?
We could hope that Matthias has been brought on board to end this cycle of Daly disasters, but what particular skill set he brings to solve any of his new bosses managerial shortcomings is unknown.
Wake up Orange County! We need to get rid of this free spending, incompetent career politician and return the Clerk-Recorder’s Office to a professional operation instead of what it has become – an unaccountable sinkhole of waste.
It’s always ironic when your supporters begin to unwittingly advertise your failures. Such was the case when the Liberal OC’s Dan C posted about a recent campaign fundraising BBQ held at Lorri Galloway’s Address #3 in the 4th Supervisorial District. Dan added some fun photos that demonstrated how few people actually showed up for the party.
Dan seems to be really concerned about the fact that his Precious Princess is a carpetbagger and that people might think the house is nothing but a front. Claims Dan hopefully:
And there’s no question Lorri lives here. The home is covered with photos and personal items that clearly distinguish a home from a house.
Uh, yeah, right Dan. Anything you say. With the thirty-year old mismatched furniture and the cheap framed prints on the walls (courtesy of Galloway’s Eli Home thrift store) the place doesn’t even look plausible. Maybe Dan rifled the medicine cabinet and found some toothpaste or deodorant conveniently left for his discovery.
Well Dan C. has good cause to worried about the carpetbagging issue. Galloway started her campaign cooking up a fake residency in an Office/Professional zone – which is illegal in Anaheim. After an abortive phony “stay” in a loft over a business Galloway had to “move” yet again to yet another cooked up address. That’s three bogus addresses since January, Dan. What tenacity!
The simple, unvarnished fact of the matter is that Lorri Galloway lives in the 3rd Supervisorial District, not ours. If she wants to be on the Board of Supervisors she should have waited until 2012 to run against Harry Sidhu for that seat.
A Friend just passed along the minutes from a California High Speed Rail meeting back in May 2008. The city of Fullerton “strongly supports the HSR project” per Councilman Don Bankhead. Hey, wait a minute. Did the City Council of Fullerton adopt a formal position on the HSR , and did they appoint Bankhead to be it’s official spokesman on the subject?
And if the Council really and truly already decided that we’re on board the HSR, then why bother with one of those idiotic “work shops” at tonight’s council meeting, and why have another one on April 26th at the Senior Center?
Anyway check this out:
CALIFORNIA HIGH-SPEED RAIL AUTHORITY/ MEETING MINUTES / MAY 14, 2008
The meeting of the California High-Speed Rail Authority was called to order on May 14, 2008 at 9:30AM at Anaheim City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd in Anaheim, CA.
Mr. Bankhead stated the City of Fullerton strongly supports the HSR Project. To date the City, CalTrans and OCTA has invested millions of dollars in public transit services at the Fullerton Transportation Center. Mr. Bankhead stated Fullerton has the busiest rail station between Los Angeles and San Diego along the LOSSAN corridor. In addition, the City of Fullerton is working with CalTrans and OCTA to construct a new parking structure to accommodate up to 1000 rail passengers. There would be a platform adjacent to the parking structure that could accommodate high-speed rail. Mr. Bankhead stated the City of Fullerton supports the Authority’s budget request for $103M towards the development of high-speed rail. Mr. Bankhead stated on behalf of the City of Fullerton that the Authority consider a stop in Fullerton which would serve the region and build upon a previous transportation investment.
At the WAND candidate forum the other day Lorri Galloway asserted that she has lived in our district for seven months.
Not quite right. According to her voter registration she only started carpetbaggin’ the 4th District a mere 5 months ago. So who cares? She’s a politician and they just love to fuzz up the facts.
But wait. The really fun fact is that she began her so called 4th District residency by “living” in Anaheim’s O-P zone – on the corner of Lincoln Avenue And East Street. And even if she did actually reside there, which is extremely doubtful, that residency was illegal per Anaheim’s zone code; she was busted (by us) in January and she had to “move.” So even if the most credulous person believes that she is now actually living in the “5 Points” area, she’s only been a legal resident of the 4th District for a couple of months.
Over three weeks a go we made a public records request of the City of Anaheim to produce the phone log, the work product, and e-mails of a woman named Annie Mezzacappa.
Now you may well wonder who this individual is and what this has to do with anything pertinent. Ms. Mezzacappa is the personal assistant to Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu and she is a part-time public employee. It is rumored that it is she, not the virtually unintelligible Sidhu who scripts his performances. Yet, she is also his campaign employee and she is the contact person on all those e-mail blasts Sidhu sends out touting his endorsement by some dude or other from Stanton. See the potential problem? We were kind of curious to see if a public employee might just be doing Sidhu’s campaign business out of the Anaheim City Hall, and even on company time.
Anyway, our Intrepid Travis just got a letter from the Anaheim Deputy City Attorney. Mezzacappa’s phone log is ready. But after 24 days they are denying the request for 6 months of emails and work product because:
“The request is vague, overboard and uncertain in that it fails to request an “identifiable” record.”
Total BS. They seem to be saying that unless you can tell them exactly the document you want they’ll just say screw you. And they get to determine what is “overboard.” And that really defeats the purpose of requesting public records, doesn’t it?
We’ll be picking up those phone logs and let you know if anything fun pops up. In the meantime, we aren’t giving up on those other records, either.
Here’s a link to a Register article by Tony Saavedra that starts out with the breathtaking news that the OC Cemetery Board voted to hold a meeting to talk about raising it’s stipend 5%. That’s 5% of $100 per meeting, or a whopping five bucks per member. If they meet once a month that would total a mammoth $300 per year. Thanks for that earth-shattering news, Tony.
In the meantime, not a squeak about this opaque public district paying Anaheim mayor and general fixer/influence peddler Curt Pringle $6000 per month to locate a new graveyard site for the boneyard boys that we reported about here; a task that could have been handled by a realtor for the price of a commission paid by the seller. Of course Pringle was also supposed to grease the skids – which seems to be his only marketable job skill. No word yet on whether he accomplished anything at all, although this seems not to be a requirement to get a lucrative contract with one of these little known but apparently well-heeled public agencies.
But Saavedra seems to think his readers are more interested in the $5 per month scandal that’s he’s trying to brew up into something potable. Sadness.
And by the way, here’s a choice nugget from The Register’s OC Watch Dog, Teri Sforza, inviting whistleblowing news tips that I recently stumbled across. Maybe the Register reporters should (re)read Ms. Sforza’s stirring words. Here’s the kicker: “…we’ll put together a blogroll of local muckrakers like ourselves.”
Yeah. Right. Anything you say, Teri.
He didn’t mean to. It just came out. Asked about how long he had lived in the 4th District Harry Sidhu admitted “two-and-a-half months.” That’s ten weeks, folks, and takes us back to February 1st when Sidhu cooked up his second 4th District address. The one on Lucky Way.
Seems Hide and Seek Sidhu has conveniently chosen to forget his alleged residence at the beautiful Calabria Apartments in the month of January – the one he swore to twice under penalty of perjury. Well, he may pretend to have forgotten have, but we wont!
And of course we will be sending this video to the District Attorney to further support our case that Mr. Sidhu is a perjurer.
