A while back Congressman and purveyor of lousy RINO city council candidates, Ed Royce, was overheard bragging about the 800 pound gorilla he was going to be unleashing on Fullerton political scene. Who was this electoral juggernaut? None other than now former Police Chief Pat McKinley.
He's big. He's bad. He's baaaaack!
With McKinley’s endorsement of Mrs. Ackerman to replace her disgraced pal Mike Duvall, the pieces all seem to fit. It looks like McKinley has indeed decided to run for City Council next year and has worked out an endorsement swap with the Repuglican elite.
The choice of McKinley on the part of the Repugs would in no way be surprising. As an ex-cop he could be counted on to secure the law ‘n order vote as well as charm the bluehairs. He’s getting up there age-wise, and in poses zero political threat to the Repug machine. Who cares if he is an ex-city government employee and likely to go along with every staff proposal and boondoggle? He would be following in the proud footsteps of Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, Leland Wilson, Mike Clesceri, Julie Sa, Peter Godfrey, Buck Catlin, and even Dick Ackerman himself. Who knows? Maybe even the Yellowing Observers might go along for the ride. After all they went with Dick Jones, right?
Best of all, he’s not a female Democrat, the hideous monster that inhabits Ed Royce’s closet at night.
Friends, we just received this entertaining e-mail from a devoted reader:
So there I am in my kitchen, washing dishes on a quiet Sunday night when my phone rings. Who is is? The last person on Earth I would ever expect. Fullerton’s former Chief of Police, Pat McKinley. The guy who wasted untold hours “designing” a dumb police “vest” that, upon retirement he could sell back to the people of Fullerton. The zombie who let all his pals in downtown Fullerton create havoc and stick US with the bill. Oh yeah, that wonderful public servant.
How'd you like to buy my vest? Again.
Well, actually, it’s a robocall, and this slacker starts peddling Linda Ackerman for Assembly! Well I guess they all have it wired the same way.
If I needed any more encouragement to oppose the carpetbagging woman from Irvine, this was it: a guy who milked his job in Fullerton for over 15 years as the City went to the dogs as he worked on his lame-ass vest that the City bought with their Obama stimulus dollars!
Thanks for the e-mail, Friend. This is really sad news for Fullerton. What it means is that McKinley has cut a deal to peddle his backside with Ackerman and Royce to run for our City Council himself next year – with the support of the Usual Suspects. Well, that cat’s out of the bag!
Just what we need. Another ex-public employee negotiating with the public employees! Some Republican!
Just in time for his retirement, our beloved police chief Pat McKinley brought home a $100,000 federal earmark for his new body armor which he designed in a partnership with seasoned police contractor Safariland, a subsidiary of Europe’s largest military contractor. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez congratulated herself for rooting up the money for the high-priced vests as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act.
What could be wrong with this earmark? It’s nothing but free money for the City of Fullerton – an unconditional gift from the federal government, right?
But the earmark qualifies as official government pork according to government watchdogs.
Citizens Against Government Waste have identified 10,160 projects at a cost of $19.6 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2009 that symbolize the most egregious and blatant examples of pork. All of the items in the Congressional Pig Book Summary meet at least one of these criteria, but most satisfy at least two:
Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
Not specifically authorized;
Not competitively awarded;
Not requested by the President;
Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
Serves only a local or special interest.
Officer Rubio shows off his new vest while demonstrating a choke hold for our unsuspecting photographer.
There are two sides to every slab of government pork: on one hand, earmarks return a portion of Fullerton citizens’ federal tax dollars back to the city itself. If Fullerton doesn’t grab it’s share of the pie, the money will merely be assigned to some other bloated project in some other needy town far, far away.
On the flip side, earmarks represent the very worst in fiscal responsibility and big government. Appropriations Committee members arbitrarily pick winners and losers by earmarking funds for specific recipients. Lobbyists and their congressmen bypass authorizing committees directly for pet projects, creating a giant fiscal free-for-all that undermines the Constitution and makes states and localities increasingly beholden to the federal government. Finally, the federal deficit grows unchecked and our taxes increase via the debasement of our currency.
Pork projects have haunted this nation since our early years, but they have always been reviled by fiscally responsible citizens. Thomas Jefferson considered earmarks “a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money”. If Jefferson knew about the exponential increase in federal earmarks over the last decade, he would likely rise from his grave to scribe a brand new Declaration of Independence.
In the end, the chiefs’ friends at Safariland are $100,000 richer, our police have new vests that cost twice as much as the old, and most importantly, the fruits of our labor have been lost in a sea of unaccountability.
