No News Is Bad News Archives - Page 12 of 14 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

August 24, 2011August 24, 2011Dead heads

The Cops As Victims; The OC Register as Useful Idiot

Tony Rackauckas — See that guy over there? He doesn't have a bomb. But he might someday!

Here’s a comical OC Register post from today. I say comical somewhat tongue-in-cheek because almost all Register posts and articles are comical these days.

According to this one, the intrepid journalist Doug Irvine tried to squeeze some information out of the DA – such as the names of the cops who beat on Kelly Thomas’s head like a kettle drum with their taser handles.

The response from our Do-nothing DA? Oooooh! We have so many scary threats these days that we just can’t say anything. Well, there was one, at least!

Of course over at the the beleaguered FPD, spokesbozo Andrew Goodrich supplied his comrades at The Register with a scary bomb threat story (nothing was found, of course). Poor babies.

Jeezus, you wouldn’t think such heavily-armed and highly trained experts would be so easily intimidated, now would you? Apparently they are weak as kittens when the chips are down, even with their McKinley vests, and this justifies the ongoing secrecy. The logic is inescapable, right?

The funny thing is to observe how the Register writer, rather than take the useless DA and FPD to task for their obvious lack of transparency, turns his article into a weepy sob story about the poor, defenseless cops. And of course the fact of the DA spending more time on threats to his office because of his lackluster investigation than on the investigation itself just drips with irony. Could that irony really be lost on Mr. Irving. It would appear so.

Here’s the money quote that references our humble blog:

The District Attorney’s Office also cited as a threat an entry on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, which has dug into the Kelly Thomas case: “Someone should make these officers contact information and addresses public.”

Blogger Travis Kiger said that wasn’t a threat, and said he hasn’t seen any specific threats on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog. He challenged the District Attorney Office’s decision to keep the names secret.

“They release the names of suspected criminals every single day,” he said. “I don’t understand in this case how it would be any different.”

The District Attorney’s Office is “looking into” the one alleged threat that it received, Chief of Staff Susan Kang Schroeder said. Fullerton Police are “taking the threats seriously” but have no active criminal investigations into them, Goodrich said.

“They’ve all been anonymous in nature,” he said. “They would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to track.”

You’ve got to be kidding. Just goes to show you the extent to which the “law enforcement” establishment will go to protect its safety (or pretend to) while blowing off our safety – from them! And when the cops release information about suspects do they give a rat’s ass about their safety? Of course they don’t.

So did the FPD really receive a bomb threat? Who knows? But it’s gotten impossible to believe a single solitary thing that emanates from Andrew Goodrich’s mouth.

May 19, 2011May 20, 2011Big Brother

Botched Raid Now Under Internal Investigation

by Travis21 Comments

A few months ago we told you about a narcotics raid executed on the wrong home, resulting in a pastor and his family being held at gunpoint by the Fullerton police.

Today we bring you an important update from the family: Robyn Nordell says that their persistence has finally led to a formal internal investigation of the Fullerton Police Department.

Lego-Police-Chase — Brother, I've got some questions.

That’s good news I suppose…if we forget for a moment that the cops get to investigate themselves. And it did take about six months of rigorous prodding and a public spectacle from the courageous victims just to get this far. Furthermore, the public has no idea what an internal investigation actually entails, or how well it will be executed. Nor is it likely that the public will ever be privy to the outcome. And finally, the whole process is guaranteed to be about as transparent as a brick wall.

But let’s look at the bright side: some cop somewhere is finally tasked with figuring out how it all went wrong, and why. If that’s the best Fullerton can hope for, I guess we’ll take it.

Meanwhile, we’ll do our best to find out what constitutes an internal investigation.

February 27, 2011February 28, 2011About Us

Dan C and Art of Careful Reporting

by Grover Cleveland28 Comments

Quite recently Dan Chiemlewski of the deadly boring LiberalOC blog put up a post about censorship and civility or something. I noted this pearl from the self-righteous and sanctimonious Dan C., who styles himself a real reporter:

Comments on FFFF are a free for all and so is sock puppetry (thanks guys for that visit to my home by the Anaheim Police Department on the day of my son’s graduation for a comment by a “Dan Chimichanga-Cub Reporter” who threatened to cut Harry Sidhu’s brake lines. I’m sure you found it hysterical),

Well, here’s what the commenter actually said.

#9 by Dan Chimichanga, Cub Reporter on June 16, 2010

Sidhu better check his brake lines every time he gets into a car between now and November. That’s all I’m saying.

Now the context of the post (and others like it at about the same time) were all about how Dan Cs carpetbagging darling Lorri Galloway had vaulted back into third place in the 2010 4th District Supe’s race. Mr. Cub Reporter got the message and commented: if Hairbag Sidhu were to pull out of the race, then Anaheim Hills’ Precious Princess might assume the second position in the fall run off against Shawn Nelson. Hence the warning about brake linings was a snide shot at Galloway’s vaulting ambition perhaps playing out by disabling one of Hairball’s BMWs. That’s perfectly obvious to anyone who put the comment in context. It was joke.

Okay it wasn’t very funny, but it sure wasn’t a threat. And anybody who tried to make it into one was either disingenuous or a damn fool. And anybody who keeps persisting in this nonsense is deliberately lying. Not the sort of behavior you’d expect from a proud member of the OC journalism corps. Come to think of it I wonder what part Dan C. might have played in reporting that alleged “threat” to the Anaheim PD in the first place.

Sock puppet, out.

December 10, 2010December 10, 201047th Congressional District

Dannemeyer’s Recreational Vehicle Versus The People of Fullerton

by The Desert Rat5 Comments

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.

pirate-rv — 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

View the opinion

November 28, 2010August 21, 2011Dead heads

The Professionals

by Mr. Peabody16 Comments

Yesterday I put up a post on a recent Register article about…well, I still don’t know what it was really about, but it had to do with graffiti in Fullerton. I noted somewhat acerbically that the authors, Townsend & Terrell, cited some cop from LA who worried about Fullerton’s “Art Scene” as somehow being a catalyst for graffiti!

Now let’s consider the rest of the piece. The title asks a question that is meant to be provocative, and it succeeds; but the article only dances around the topic from there on out. Hmm. Asking provocative questions then letting them dangle. Almost sounds like irresponsible bloggery to me.

First we note that only some buildings in the 600 block of Williamson are cited as typical of the sort of graffiti train riders see all the way to LA. And Deputy Thibodeaux is only concerned that Fullerton could become a “mecca” for taggery, thus echoing the tentative nature of the headline.

A city employee is invited to comment on the situation:

Fullerton Maintenance Services Manager Bob Savage said he’s seen the square footage of graffiti the city paints over increase sevenfold in the last 15 years. (A link. To a 2006 article that includes a very interesting Anaheim quotation: Community Preservation Manager Bill Sell said there’s no indication that graffiti is increasing, but the city is tracking it more closely.)

“When I first started 15 or 16 years ago, I was doing about 100,000 square feet (per year),” Savage said. “Now, I’m up to about 700,000.”

That sure sounds impressive. But could it be that Mr. Savage’s four man crew has grown and is now just doing a more thorough job, or is responding to faster response times? It’s possible. Hard to tell.

As to the actual statistics we still don’t really know much since the article only cites County-wide convictions for vandalism, not just graffiti: 85 in 2000, 321, in 2009. In 2010 the numbers seem to be going down. No data for Fullerton, no useful statistics at all to support some existing or impending apocalyptic wave; just a story from a property manager along the train tracks where tagging is likely always high.

Back to Mr. Thibodeaux, who starts talking tough about resolving a problem that has still not been established. Mr. T. breaks out this scary screamer:

“Technically, these crews fall under the Street Terrorism Protection Act,” Thibodeaux said.

Oh boy! Now we have another “War” on our hands!

Of course this is an age-old ploy as the authors try to fool us into thinking some sort of case has been made and now opinions for a solution must be solicited. But then they foul up their own strategy by inviting comment from an old pal of ours, as the story takes an abrupt turn:

Fullerton Police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said that Fullerton isn’t known to have a big problem with graffiti, and most of the tags that maintenance services covers up are black scrawls, often connected with street gangs. The vandal’s purpose is the message, not any artistry in the tag itself, he said.

Now we have one cop talking about tagging crews and another who says the real problem is gang markings and suggests that maybe Fullerton isn’t in any way unique. What a cluster. And Mr. Savage, it turns out, agrees that most of the graffiti is “nuisance stuff,” not “art” although the distinction is probably lost on the property owner who has to pay to get it removed. Parenthetically we note that Savage actually admires “street art”:

“Some of it is just beautiful artistry, that’s all there is to it,” he said.

The article stumbles toward a blurry finish line by stubbornly clinging to the still unsubstantiated fact that graffiti is on the rise in Fullerton. Evidence that it is seemingly on the decline in Placentia, as well as in cash laid out for graffiti removal by the OCTA is posited as if to somehow indirectly support the thesis that there is a peculiar graffiti problem in Fullerton:

Although graffiti is still a significant problem in nearby Placentia, incidents have dropped over the last five years, with graffiti reports in the city shrinking by more than 40 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to police department records.

Most Orange County cities have started using the Orange County Sheriff Department’s online tracking system to share and track graffiti incidents, helping law enforcement officials in OC and neighboring counties identify and prosecute tagging crews. The collaboration, which includes Fullerton, is helping to reduce graffiti in the county, said Ramin Aminloo, senior developer for the sheriff’s department.

Since the Tracking Automated and Graffiti Reporting System’s implementation three years ago, the amount of cash shelled out by the Orange County Transportation Authority to clean up graffiti has dropped from $283,000 in 2007 to less than $170,000 in 2009, according to the sheriff’s department.

Hmm. If we accept the premise of our authors, we are now inevitably forced to ask: is the anti-graffiti collaboration really failing in Fullerton? But of course local reporters are not taught to mention embarrassing things like failure, and so the possibility is not even addressed in the article – which should really be the most significant part of the story if graffiti actually is on a precipitous rise here.

The piece mercifully ends with the obligatory interview with a vandal and a former vandal to get their perspective, and a posting of the city’s hotline.

At least by the end of this hodge-podge of logic and confusion nobody is blaming Fullerton students and artists for urban social pathology.

October 30, 2010October 30, 2010About Us

Dereliction of Duty. The Case of the Missing Media.

by The Fullerton Harpoon32 Comments

The only reason FFFF sprang into existence was because the people who pretended to be professional reporters stubbornly and steadfastly refused to do their jobs.

Their jobs. The jobs to which they accrete a professional aura, a sanctimony, self-righteousness, and institutional importance that demands as a concomitant an objectivity that is exercised in the public interest.

Of course all that stuff is pure bullshit. Oh, yeah, these people want to be treated as if they actually performed a function that allows them to claim an official title: “Fourth Estate.” But in reality their work is almost never objective, never diligent, and often downright incompetent. And the closer you get to tour own community the worse it gets.

But back to FFFF. We started in the fall of 2008 because F. Richard Jones, the Braying Donkey of Raymond Hills, the man for whom no issue could not be used to spin off, dervish-like, on an insane rant, was getting a free pass. Twelve years of insulting people from the dais, weird, barnyard rantings and raving, backtracking on key issues, and generally insulting the collective intelligence of the City was ignored.

And this being Fullerton very little has changed. Consider 2010.

Roland-and-Mystery-Man — The chicken was ready for plucking.

Does “the press” inquire into how candidate Roland Chi got rung up on criminal charges by the DA for serially ignoring health inspection failures? Or ask why he is using a 501(c)(3) to prmote his political ambitions? Or even ask this miscreant how long he has actually lived in Fullerton?

McKinley2 — Hey, that vest was not designed on company time.

Does “the press” ask Pat McKinley about his $215,000 pension payout – far more than he ever made actually working – and his ability to make rational pension decisions?

Does “the press” ask Aaron Gregg why a guy who skipped out on $75,000 in back taxes and stiffed local creditors though bankruptcy is qualified to manage the city’s $100,000,000+ budget?

Does “the press” inquire into what appears to be Don Bankhead’s increasingly diminished capacity to participate in, let alone conduct, a public hearing?

Of course our local reporters never said boo about the carpetbaggery of Hirsute Sidho or Linda Ackerman, either.

For some reason people who work for the Times and the Register would rather look the other way than admit that the emperors have no clothes on. What are they afraid of?

And so we soldier on…

October 20, 2010October 20, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Another DA Whitewash. Rackauckas A Bit of An Artist.

by Grover Cleveland8 Comments

TRack-225x300 — Lay it on thick, boy. Then add some more.

A cynical person said the other day that when he was born, OC District Attorney Tony Rackauckas’ mom pushed him out along with a can of white paint and a four inch bristle brush.

It’s common knowledge around town that T-Rack, as he is fondly known, rarely, if ever, pursues political miscreants, but in the case of the OC Fair Board and its odd behavior in the summer of 2009 he had no choice. See, the State AG refused to handle the issue due to a conflict of interest and dumped the investigation back to OC, where Rackauckas was waiting with paint and brush to work on his next masterpiece.

Tony-Rackauckas-300x225 — Don't look at that guy over there. He says he didn't do anything wrong.

After almost a year the DA coughed up a 50 page recitation of the facts. Or to be more precise he regurgitated what was told to him by the individuals involved and subsequently passed it along as Gospel. Of course there were no depositions, no testimony under oath, or any other annoying and time consuming probative truth-getting-at devices.

According to OC’s own Picasso, the Create-Your-Own Board crew exercised poor judgment, but, since they obviously had nothing to gain from the sale except for a few miserable tix, no harm done, get it? After all, the fact that the real estate could be worth nobody-knows-how-many millions to people behind the scenes was not an issue to the DA because the new Board was to have served without compensation. And after all the DA isn’t a mind-reader, right?

So nobody did anything wrong – even though the Fair Board members clandestinely created their own non-profit to buy the Fair with the help of former State Senator Dick Ackerman, paid for The Flack with public money (later reimbursed after the fact) and also hired Ackerman, not to lobby the Legislature, oh, no for that would be illegal, but rather as a mere “consultant” to go up to Sacramento to feel out the Governor on his seriousness to sell the OC Fair property. Just talking to the Guv’s crew ain’t lobbying per the Government Code, and the Dickster is home and dry, right?

Here is the DA’s report, on page 15, quoting The Dickster:

Mr. Ackerman stated that he and the OCFEC “had absolutely no input into the language [of the bill] whatsoever.”

Um, yeah, right, T-Rack. But then there’s the problem of some acutely embarrassing words right out of Ackerman’s own mouth. Here he is in an October 23, 2009 article in the Daily Pilot in which Mr. Consultant tries to explain away his activities:

“In order for the fair to be sold, it would require budget language to authorize the state to sell it,” he said. “I did some preliminary work to get the language in the budget.”

Well that’s just swell, Dick. That language sure wasn’t going to write itself and then jump into the bill on its own, now was it? Working to get language into legislation is exactly what lobbyists do. In fact, that behavior may well serve as the very definition of lobbying. And it certainly doesn’t square with what the DA says Ackerman later claimed was his job.

And finally, note that in the report Ackerman says he had “no input.” Strike as non-responsive, Dickie-boy.

The issue isn’t whether you are a failed lobbyist, but rather that you were doing it in the first place!

tricky-dick — I love it. Everybody keeps calling me "Honorable."

I also wonder if the DA’s investigators even bothered to ask OC legislators like Assemblyman Jim Silva, just who it was was lobbying him heavily, as he indicated to OJ Blogger Vern Nelson, last year. Did he talk to Mike Duvall, who also opposed the sale? Naw, why bother.

Aw, Hell, who really cares anymore? It’s not like anybody expected Rackauckas to actually look into a case where the principals didn’t sport gang tats.

Personally, I think you have admire the certain peculiar of skill set required to be able to define something by describing all the negative space around it, and coming to the conclusion that there was really never anything there in the first place.

September 26, 2010September 26, 2010About Us

And Now For Some Good News! A Sunday Morning Essay

by English Major10 Comments

After reading the Desert Rat’s pithy and mordant post about the likelihood of having three antiquated and liberal repuglican geezers on the Fullerton City Council, I felt compelled to respond with my own message – a message of hope and good will to those who can only contemplate Ed Royce’s RINO triad with a sense of gorge-rising horror.

No, I will not dwell upon the morbid actuarial statistics for the American male. Rather I invite the Friends to contemplate, along with me, the New Reality. My grandfather Frank always admonished us to seek out the proverbial silver lining in bad news; and so we shall. The Economic Recession that has hit so many in the private sector, and that so far has barely affected the public sector at all, will, in 2011, deliver its overdue bill to government employees.

Can Obama keep cranking out money fast enough to preserve all the government jobs it has protected so far through the comically named American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? The answer to that is likely no. Not after the November election. And even if he could, California had received barely 10 billion through the end of the last fiscal year – not nearly enough to grease all the bureaucratic skids in our dysfunctional state at the various levels. The presses just can’t print that fast.

The chances of raising local taxes, like Don Bankhead did (and McKinley and Jones would have likely joined him) in 1993 seems dim. Nobody’s going to stand for it. Not even the ignoramuses who voted them in.

And this leaves us with the spectacle of the public employees fighting among themselves for their share of the diminishing fiscal pie. And to that I say: Amen! Competition is good. It causes us constantly to assess our priorities. It’s true that the cops and emergency service providers will have the advantage, standing, as they already do, at the head of the line. But will the public stand for library or park closures in order to fund these people? The RINO mantra of “public safety” can only take its chanters so far. Sooner or later reality demands a check.

And hovering in the back of the room, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy is the specter of municipal bankruptcy, Vallejo-style – the game changing possibility that all public administrators and employees should want to avoid like a plague. But the public may have reason to be more ambivalent about that prospect.

So cheer up!

September 25, 2010September 25, 2010Boohooism

Fullerton Is Doomed!

by The Desert Rat9 Comments

Out here on Screech Owl Road, east of Twentynine Palms you can see things pretty clearly. Sometimes the heat causes shimmer mirages; sometimes the wind kicks up some devilish sand storms – the kind that can strip the chrome off your Hummer. But most of the time you get used to seeing a long way. Even as far away as my former home, Fullerton.

The City Council race of 2010 is already over. You will re-elect the brain dead sea cucumber known as Don Bankhead – pension spiker, staff stooge, abysmal decision maker. And you will also elect Pat McKinley – poster boy for pension abuse, supporter of the hideous Ackerwoman, repuglican de-jour, and yet another retired cop. And it won’t even be close.

Bankhead, Dick Jones, McKinley; please contemplate that triumverate of septuagenarian, lint-headed, RINO back washers and tell me why you aren’t in deep shit. Can anyone say gerontocracy?

In the two-year seat Bruce Whitaker has a chance, but let’s face it: he’s up against a bankrupt and a carpetbagging food poisoner. Really, I don’t see how he can pull it off.

roland-chi-079-200x300 — Aw, none of those folks died...

Fullerton, the Education Community, has a special knack for electing the weak, the feeble-minded, the incomprehensible. Jeez, do I have to draw you a diagram? Molly McClanahan, Buck Catlin, Julie Sa, Peter Godfrey, HeeHaw Jones, Mike Clesceri, Leland Wilson, Pam Keller. This rougues gallery of incompetence even starts to make Jan Flory look good. Well, no, cancel that.

Yes, I believe you are doomed.

September 17, 2010September 17, 2010Arts & Architecture

And Now for Nothing Really Different: Yellowing Observer Bemoans Loss of Fox Block Boondoggle

by Mr. Peabody25 Comments

The folks who write stuff for the Fullerton Observer are either really dumb, or really….

Aw, Hell I can stop right there.

Here’s a bit from page 5 of the recent edition of the bird cage liner noting the reconstruction of the McDonald’s outlet on Chapman and noting that the Council’s failure to blow six million bucks to move it a couple hundred feet has caused the Fox Block project to go belly up and implies that somehow this put the renovation of the Fox Theater in jeopardy.

Wrong! The council finally acted responsibly last summer when they pulled the plug on an emergent disaster of their own creation. And wrong about the “renovation” bullshit, too. Notice how the Observer casually insinuates the idea of “renovation” into the “Fox Block.” Apart from the theater there is nothing to renovate, of course. But the two things were never tied together – except to manipulate the under intelligent.

The whole monstrosity was tied to the Fox Theater restoration to tap into the emotional support for that and gin up support for another downtown monstrosity of corporate welfare. Of course the crew of the S.S. Observer is devoted to the idea that keeping Redevelopment bureaucrats and parasites employed is job one, and common sense be damned.

the-observer-ostrich4-300x225 — What? I can't hear you.

Added to the unintentional high-larity is the writer’s assertion that the developer “spent hours” designing a new Mickey D’s that matched the FHS architecture. Well, he may very well have spent a few hours. The product looked like it.

Instead of bewailing the loss of a sure-fire failure, the Observer should be asking what sort of accountability is going to be demanded of the idiots who cooked up the Fox Block mess in the first place – bureaucrats and electeds, alike.