On Tuesday our City Council took up the matter of the proposed parking structure on Santa Fe. Since we first reported on this issue City Staff has maintained its ludicrous attachment to the brick veneer panels, and its equally ludicrous position that fake brick somehow satisfies some sort of CEQA requirement – even thoughWE HAVE COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED THE MYTH OF BRICK AND REALITY OF BRICK VENEER IN DOWNTOWN FULLERTON.
Such a lame approach insults not only our aesthetic sensibilities, but it also turns the whole environmental review process into a pantomime that just provides staff cover for what it really wants: fake brick.
CONSIDER THIS: THE MONEY SAVED BY ELIMINATING THE USELESS BRICK COULD GO TO ESTABLISHING SOLAR PANELS ON THE BUILDING AND ENHANCING ITS SUSTAINABILITY QUOTIENT.
Barney Wewak shares FFFF news with family and friends
Editor’s Note: we have received the following e-mail from former Troy High School Exchange student, and Papuan Highlands tribe Headman, B’rni (Barney) Wewak. Our newly reorganized Australo/Oceania Linguistics Department provides the translation from the original Papuan Sepik dialect, below:
Greetings Friends who dwell in the beneficent sunshine and balmy temperatures of my once adopted home; where the luscious flesh of the avocado and the generous disposition of your women make me long for reunion. Tidings have reached me that one of your headmen has been disgraced (it could only have been through extreme cowardice in battle, or failure to meet his taro quota), has been exiled, and is being replaced by your odd and barbaric custom of “election.”
Furthermore, I understand that among the new candidates for headman is a member from a tribe located on the idolatrous shores of Fashion Island who is trying to pass as one of your own! Moreover, that this interloper is bribing tribe members with promises of bright feathers and glass beads!
Glass beads and cockatoo feathers for all. Plus a gift card good at Fashion Island!
Friends, how can this possibly be? Strange and sad news! That the people of my beloved Fullerton could entertain such perverse behavior from an outsider is certainly an omen of terrible times of trouble ahead.
And so I must exhort and plead with all the earnestness at my command to reject this alien influence in your midst before you become enslaved in the strange and perverse ways of these outsiders.
And so, Friends, farewell. May your benevolent deities continue to bless you with ample mangoes and confused enemies; and may the tree bark grubs fall easily into your banana leaves.
A party in honor of me? You shouldn't have. Really. You shouldn't have!
The Ackerman is hosting a reception to night “in honor of” the Ackerwoman, at the Summit House restaurant. Huh? Why?
It’s obviously related to the 72nd Assembly district campaign since the party is being held in Fullerton, instead of Irvine, which is where the Ackermans live. Maybe it’s really a fundraiser. Our invitation didn’t say.
This is an obvious South County political foray into Fullerton, and we don’t like it. So let’s get our act together and protest this carpetbagging Irvine political socialiteand send her and her pals back to South County!
Show up tonight (5:30) at the Summit House Restaurant at the SW corner of Bastanchury Rd. and State College to fight political carpetbagging in North Orange County. We’ll bring the signs! Let’s make this a “reception” she won’t forget!
Our friend Allan Bartlet over at Red County reported that the GOP’s Chairman Scott Baugh gave a “fiery speech” last night indicating “that it is not going to be business as usual anymore for the OC GOP Party………no longer will incumbent Republicans be given safe quarter for their re-election if they have strayed to far off the reservation………..made it clear that he is not looking for ideological purity per se, but Republicans in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain & George W Bush for example are not going to be allowed to ruin the party’s economic and fiscal credibility anymore…..Clearly this is an unsustainable path we are on and our elected GOP leaders in DC and Sacramento have been part of the problem. So tonight he announced a contract with the OC GOP voters. It’s not going to be good enough just to have an “R” by your name if you are a candidate or elected official. The “R” has got to mean something.”
Did I really say that?
Hmm. Let’s reflect on this for a moment. Okay. Baugh throws the Central Committee some red meat. Hooray! But don’t forget that the Central Committee is chock full of Repuglicans led by Ackerman and Ackerwoman; and Baugh is surely the biggest ‘Pug between San Onofre and the 605. When push comes to shove Baugh, Inc. will go with whichever candidate is the best ‘Pug team player, i.e. the one that is most ambitious (but not too ambitious, right, Ed?) and most likely to perform years of kickoff team duty – there’s only one QB, right, Dick?
It would be awfully strange for an organization made up of so many very selfish and self-interested politicos to all of a sudden change its stripes. Good grief, look at Fullerton: Sa, Godfrey, Jones, Clesceri, Munson (the one that didn’t win) Wison – RINOs all; and all backed by the GOP establishment – again, and again.
So for now we are well justified in assuming that Baugh is just blowing smoke up the Central Committee’s nether portal. And you what? A lot of them appear to like it.
Maybe the Register’s Martin Wisckol is worried about the impending collapse of his employer and is thinking about future work writing press releases for Dick and Linda Ackerman. Looks like he has already started.
Last Wednesday Wisckol tossed up this powder puff blog post addressing the issue of Linda Ackerman’s “experienced businesswoman” self-applied label. Exercising all the journalistic curiosity of a sea cucumber he coughed up this pearl:
God, I can't believe he bought that. Dick we gotta put that nice boy on the payroll...
Sorry Martin, but it’s not “good enough” just because she said so. To pass along this tripe suggests that you are either stupid, lazy, or are shilling for Ackerman, Inc. Since we assume the Register doesn’t knowingly employ overtly stupid people, the options are narrowed.
We’ll help out by citing our post that pretty effectively dispatches the Ackerman “experienced businesswoman” fable.
Let’s recap. Linda’s on the board of a collection agency, USCB; a job she got by virtue of her husband’s influence and that meets three or four times a year? That may provide a little extra pocket money, but it hardly constitutes what a reasonable person would call business experience.
She’s on the executive committee of the Marian Bergeson blah blah blah. A training ground for female GOP politicians. Another part-time gig base on her political connections. In any case her self proclaimed responsibility (from her own website) is “finance development” not “finance director”, ya chowder head. Development means calling up lobbyists and asking them for money. You know, Martin. The same lobbyists who lobbied her husband.
Likewise she got an appointment to the Board of the MWD – a political, not a professional appointment, Marty. Do you really think she would have gotten that without her husband’s name. So she goes to a government agency meeting once a month to be told how to vote. No business experience there, either.
A committee to restore the historic working spaces of the Capitol. WTF? Are you kidding, Martin? That sounds like business to you? To us that sounds like the bored wife of a legislator or a socialite, or both. There’s probably a real good reason there’s no website.
Well, Martin, we have just covered the sum and substance of Linda Ackerman’s “business” experience over her 45 years of adulthood. And here it is, again:
No real experience in the private sector
Never owned or operated a business
Never employed anybody
Never signed the front of a paycheck.
In fact, Linda Ackerman’s only real experience is raising money from lobbyists, for this or that personal Ackerman benefit, mostly her husband’s campaigns. And for that she was amply recompensed for her part time work. Come to think of it, we’re now pretty sure the woman has never even held a real job of any kind.
So come on Martin, how about a little real work yourself. Quit passing along Ackerman campaign mush gussied up as the truth. Why not try to do something honorable before you get the axe?
If it isn't illegal, it can't be wrong...Dick told me to say that.
Over at his Repuglican PR firm, er, Red County blog, our old playmate Matthew Cunningham has taken great offense at the good post “Rogue Elephant” wrote on the Orange Juice blog the other day, and that we generously shared with the Friends, here.
Why is he offended by Rogue Elephant’s post and our take on it? Because the post pointed out that former State Senator Jim Brulte gave Linda Ackerman $3900 out of his bogus BoE in 2014(!) campaign committee. We pointed out that her husband’s equally bogus BoE 2010 (created in 2006!) committee also gave her the same amount. We noted that these committees were basically money pots that politicians could use to finance their maintenance of power and influence. In other words a scam – create a committee for a fake political campaign and then use it as an influence buying cash cow.
Cunningham got his knickers in a real wad and noted that FFFF is a political committee, too, and that there is no difference between us and the donors to Ackerman. See, it’s all about free speech. Shame on us.
What a howler.
Just say something. Anything. And keep saying it.
It seems to have escaped Cunningham’s notice that we are not politicians; we don’t raise funds under the guise of a phony run for office. We aren’t pretending to run for anything as a way to hang on to money raised for other offices. We don’t redistribute money as a way to influence elections and buy friends. Our purpose is to to promote causes and candidates we feel are worthy, but we’re not in it to amass wealth, or to keep control of wealth courtesy of people who contributed for other purposes. Too bad none of that can be said about Brulte or Ackerman.
Repuglicans have gotten into the nasty habit of using the “free speech” complaint as an argument to support any kind of deceit practiced in the pursuit of power. But at the core the issue isn’t about free speech – it’s about a fundamentally dishonest way of maintaining influence in Sacramento. Of course the crooks and their hangers-on can’t admit it. If it ain’t illegal it ain’t wrong. Plus the Democrats do it too!
If you don't watch out, I may take your wallet, too!
In case any of you Friends happened to come across this 10/12/09 blog post in The Register, by Teri Sforza, you might have come away with the idea that Fullerton City Manager Chris Meyer was the white knight who came to Fullerton taxpayer’s rescue last year when the unions proposed to increase their retirement formula.
The usually healthy skepticism of Ms. Sforza seems to have been suspended in her conversations with Chris Meyer. He fooled her into thinking that he was the fiscally responsible official who put a stop to the craziness.
Wrong! That person was Councilman Shawn Nelson – who the blew the whistle on Meyer & Co., who had been trying for months to push the deal through quietly, behind closed doors. The poor public suckers who are ultimately on the hook weren’t supposed to know what was going on, so the agenda items were not described. It was only after Nelson went public with the news that a pension spike was on the way, and Steve Greenhut of the Register brought wider scrutiny to the secret plan, that it was ultimately dropped. The fact that the market had really tanked by then helped.
For Meyer to try to grab the credit a year later is pretty low. Especially when he was one of the prime architects of the plan. He must think we have real short memories. Here’s your real hero:
Shawn Nelson
Ultimately the credit goes to Nelson for the fortunate turn of events. For Meyer to take credit for any of this is just laughable.
Yesterday Rogue Elephant posted this over at the Orange Juice blog. The gist of the post is that a loophole in state campaign finance laws permits politicos like Repuglicans Jim Brulte and Dick Ackerman to cook up “putative” campaign committees for future office in order to transfer existing campaign balances, raise tons of money from lobbyists for these supposed campaigns, and then distribute the proceeds to exert influence in other elections across the State.
Rogue Elephant notes that Loophole Linda’s 72nd Assembly power grab has received $3900 from Brulte’s 2014(!) Board of Equalization Committee. What he doesn’t mention is that she also received the same amount (the limit) from her husband Dick’s similar committee, also for the BoE. Ackerman set up his “2010” BoE committee in as far back as 2006 according an article in the Oakland Tribune that describes the practice.
You should see me in my swim trunks...
Why the BoE? Because these useless barnacles have been scraped off the legislature – termed out, but haven’t finished working the system, not by a long shot. They need a plausible office to “run” for, even if they have no intention of actually running. In the meantimeBrulte actually works as a lobbyist for an outfit called California Strategies – a collection of former electeds and appointeds working their contacts.So when he gives Mrs. Ackerman money, he can kill two birds with one stone!
Rogue Elephant sums up his take on this pungent mess:
While Linda Ackerman’s campaign funding smells of Sacramento’s bipartisan Culture of Corruption, it also reeks of a Culture of Creepiness. Voters and taxpayers should find it creepy to see former politicians and lobbyists using political slush funds to pull the strings of candidates like Linda Ackerman.
Just as we reported earlier today about Orange, the Linda Ackerman campaign coughed up some more local endorsements, this time in Redevelopment-friendly Brea – where nobody’s property is safe from the City – if they want it.
Here are the two money “quotes”:
“For over 30 years, Linda has served the people of this community,” said Brea Mayor John Beauman. “I support Linda because she is for people, not politics.”
“I know that Linda will bring a fair, business-minded approach to the state’s budget debacle. The taxpayers of Brea need her in Sacramento to fight for fiscal responsibility and limited government,” said former Mayor of Brea Bev Perry.
More hilarity! We’ve already discounted Ackerman’s so-called business experience so we can dismiss that; what other tools she has in her shed to tackle the state’s “budget debacle” goes unstated by Perry. We’re pretty sure by now that Ackerman will be fair – and give all those Sacramento lobbyists their day at the trough. As far as responsibility and limited government go, we can only say that putting those words in Bev Perry’s mouth attains a new level of political cynicism – even for the Ackermans. Bev Perry was part of the Brea Redevelopment eminent domain machine that ran roughshod all over property owners in what used to be their downtown. Who’s next Lynn “Bulldozer” Daucher?
CONSIDER THIS: THE MONEY SAVED BY ELIMINATING THE USELESS BRICK COULD GO TO ESTABLISHING SOLAR PANELS ON THE BUILDING AND ENHANCING ITS SUSTAINABILITY QUOTIENT.
