Awhile back Grover Cleveland posted on how the Fullerton City Council’s creation of a mess downtown led to the rise of an FPD goon squad to quell the crime wave. The only problem was that the FPD goon squad added to the crime wave. Here’s a reminder. An innocent bystander is beat up and arrested. Later he is tried for assaulting a cop to which Fullerton cops Kenton Hampton and Framk Nguyen swear in a court of law. Only problem is it didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop the FPD and the DA from trying to put an innocent man in prison.
Okay, Friends this one is a bit convoluted so stick with me.
The latest State budget deal takes about $50 million away from Orange County. How come? Best I can figure it out is this: after the bankruptcy of 1995 the County sold recovery bonds and the State sequestered about $50,000,000 annually to pay off the bond holders from part of the Vehicle License Fee that was distributed to the County. Later when the VLF was swapped out for property tax income the payoff to bondholders still came from the VLF. When OC refinanced it’s debt in 2006 it started taking the VLF money directly from the State even though no other county got any of it.
Confused? In 2006 County Supervisor Bill Campbell said he wasn’t, but he failed to do anything about the money hanging out there according to Voice of OC (EA)’s Norberto Santana, here. It seems he didn’t want to address the issue and hoped everybody would forget about it. That lame strategy worked for about 5 years. Now the State is laying claim to the dough.
The worst malefactor here is County CEO Tom Mauk who has yet another catastrophe to lay claim to. Following swiftly on the heels of the disastrous Human Resource Department audit in which Mauk was busted giving his cronies huge raises and promotions, this latest calamity may prove to be the final nail in Mauk’s coffin.
Will three supervisors finally perform self cranial-rectal extraction and get rid of this bozo? They aren’t very bright but sooner or later…
Stay tuned.
The other day FFFF received this rather odd comment on the blog:
“Thanks for risking your lives so that my family and I can enjoy OURS!”
– Joel Swintowski
There were links to a website here that sported an official-looking letter from Fullerton’s police officer’s union president, Barry Coffman asking for money. There was the quote from Mr. Swintowski, clearly implying that he supports the Fullerton police union.
I got to wondering who this Joel Swintowski person might be. I never heard of him. So last night I contacted our FFFF investigative team of people-finders and guess what they came up with? There’s no such registered voter in Fullerton or in all of Orange County with any such name.
But, as they say on TV infomercials: Wait! There’s more! I also found a host of identical websites for police unions across California with the same quote from this “Joel Swintowski” guy. Clearly this operation is a money gathering scheme organized by some entity and then sold to police unions throughout the state like this one in Menlo Park, probably with a hefty cut taken from proceeds collected from unsuspecting suckers.
Now back to Fullerton. Coffman says it’s a “donation” that he’s begging. The request for money states: “Your contribution to us today will help provide outreach and strengthen relations by and between the FPOA and several local worthy groups and charities.”
Now we know the FPOA spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to get right-thinking people elected to the Fullerton City Council. And by right-thinking, I mean “public safety” union stooges who will raise their pensions and lower their retirement age. Do any of these “contributions” find their way into political activity? Could be. They are not tax deductible – the kind of deduction you get making a contribution directly to a real charity, eliminating the pistol-packin’ middleman.
So who might some of these “worthy” recipients be? Any guesses?
Could they include the campaigns of the same two guys, Bankhead and McKinley, who are getting prepared to raise your water rates 91% so they can use a portion of that money to support their own plush $McMillion retirement plans?
Maybe it’s time for an IRS audit of this solicitation for alms. Maybe the State AG needs to be called in, again. You know, just to make sure it’s legit.
And in the meantime maybe it’s time for FPOA to find a real Fullerton resident for its self-promotional testimonials.
Word has it that Diamond Bar’s Gary Miller wants to run for Congress in our newly minted 40th Congressional District. Remember Gary? He’s the same guy who endorsed Harry Sidhu the Carpetbagging Crash Test Dummy last year. Here’s Gary:
It’s funny how true the old saying, “birds of a feather flock together” really is. I just received this video clip from a Friend who remembered that Harry Sidhu was recently crowing how he had received the endorsement of Congressman Gary Miller. Watch this video and decide for yourself if you believe Gary Miller is as corrupt as CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) believes he is.
Sound familiar? It should. Harry Sidhu also used to list Municipal Water District Director Brett Barbre and County Treasurer Chriss Street as his proud endorsers. We busted Barbre getting a $48,000 do-nothing payoff from Tom Daly, and then kicking back $1000 to Daly’s campaign; and Street recently got busted by a judge for misusing a bankruptcy trust fund. See a trend?
Both Barbre’s and Street’s names have mysteriously disappeared from Sidhu’s list of “honorable” supporters. How long will it take for Gary Miller’s named to be scratched? And will we soon discover that Sidhu has no ethical followers, at all?
With a little digging I have discovered that our old small government pal Matthew J. Cunningham, who raked in hundreds of thousands of bucks doing $200 an hour make-work for Rob Reiner’s tax-and-redistribute Children and Families Commission has found a new gig. Or, as is more likely the case, has had a gig given to him by his repuglican overlords.
A year ago FFFF exposed the hypocrisy of this guy making a small fortune off of the nanny statists and social engineers at the Children & Family scam. After that sweet run was terminated due to uncomfortable exposure, Cunningham landed a contract with the social engineers at the Orange County Transportation Authority to do…well, I’m not real sure.
It might be instructive to remember that two targets of Cunningham’s tiresome tongue treacle, Bill Campbell and Kurt Pringle, were OCTA Board members when he got this new arrangement last November. I wonder if this contract was result of an honest RFP or if was just laddled out to Mr. C. behind closed doors.
Here’s the agreement, noting Mrs. Cunningham as the “Principal” of the operation and the Mr. as “Project Manager.”
Hmmm. $30K a year with a scope of work that seems ridiculously inconsequential. Basically it entails reading city agendas for transportation issues and telling the OCTA who’s on city councils and going to some meetings. Tellingly, there is no listed OCTA project manager named to ride heard on the egregious wordsmith suggesting that OCTA contract quality control may well be no better than that exercised by the C & F Commissariat.
Well, I guess this means we’ll be doing a public records request for work product and billing records.
P.S. Please note that Pacific Strategies is still using the phony “Suite C” address – hilarious given that the Cunninghams operate their business, whatever it does, out of their house.
We found out today that Wayne Quint, the head boss of the Deputy Sheriff’s union is quitting – supposedly to take a job at the State. Well the State is so effed-up it’s hard to imagine anybody making it any worse, even somebody with no identifiable job skills.
Or judgment. Consider Quint’s ill-conceived plan to spent hundreds of thousands of bucks to support the carpetbagging assclown, Harry Sidhu. Apparently Quint was so scared of Shawn Nelson that he was willing to squander a fortune of his member’s dues on the boob Sidhu.
Come to think of it, maybe his members will be glad to see him go, too.
Over at the Red County blog some dude named Walter Myers has been downplaying the egregious e-mail by Fullerton’s Marilyn Davenport that has made so much news recently. Today he did a post outlining the party’s real problem; and it’s not racism, really, but poor educational outreach to Latinos (he calls them Hispanics) and Asians. Apart from some completely specious demographic reasoning, he indicates that the problem is evinced by the fact that no Latinos or Asians stood up to defend Mrs. Davenport. Huh?!
This guy also has gone out of his way to defend the watermelon patch on the White House lawn e-mail that got Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose into so much hot water a couple of years ago. Surprisingly, no Latinos or Asians stood up to defend that cretin.
Well, okay Walter, de gustibus non es disputandum.
And here’s some fun commentary at the end of today’s post , starting with an intro by Fullerton religious zealot and anti-Islamic crusader, Zonya Townsend:
Marilyn Davenport and the OC GOP
Submitted by Zonya Townsend (not verified) on Mon, 2011-05-02 05:37.
I can’t write too much right now because I must to get ready to leave for work but must say this much. Marilyn Davenport is the woman that reached out and encouraged me, Zonya Townsend to run for OC CC several years ago. Her activism and concern for our nation fueled my interest in leadership positions in various organizations, including but not limited to the California Republican Party and the Women’s Federated. This whole email situation is a tragedy and misunderstanding that did not need to happen.
To Zonya
Submitted by waltermy on Mon, 2011-05-02 14:22.
Thanks for sharing that, Zonya, which is excellent information and insight for those who don’t know Marilyn. I wasn’t aware of that myself. This is a very unfortunate situation, and as I have always maintained, we need to provide grace towards Marilyn, who made a mistake that she apologized for, and determine how to best move forward as a party. The question now that this has gotten out is how we will respond as a party because we know what the perception of the party is now. We clearly have some work to do. My hope is that this entire situation motivates the party leadership to take our brand seriously and does the outreach that we so need to do in order to grow the party and truly be the party of Lincoln and Douglass.
Thanks for sharing that, Zonya, which is excellent information and insight for those who don’t know Marilyn. I wasn’t aware of that myself. This is a very unfortunate situation, and as I have always maintained, we need to provide grace towards Marilyn, who made a mistake that she apologized for, and determine how to best move forward as a party. The question now that this has gotten out is how we will respond as a party because we know what the perception of the party is now. We clearly have some work to do. My hope is that this entire situation motivates the party leadership to take our brand seriously and does the outreach that we so need to do in order to grow the party and truly be the party of Lincoln and Douglass.
Tragedy. Misunderstanding. Um, yeah, right, Zonya.
Walter’s wrong about the shape-shifting “apology,” but he is right that the GOP needs to be motivated and has work to do. But get this: he thinks the GOP is the party of Lincoln and Douglass. Forget the fact that Lincoln stood for almost NOTHING allegedly promoted by the modern GOP (except for neocon war and big government), Stephen Douglass was a freakin’ Democrat!
* As a reader points out, the Douglass referred to might have been the abolitionist Frederick Douglass! If so, my apologies to Mr. Myers for insulting his knowledge of American history, although I’m pretty sure FD would not recognize today’s GOP as “his” party.
Matthew J. Cunningham is scurrying around the internet trying to plug the holes in his sinking conservative reputation. Amongst other things, he has accused the Friends of posting portions of his invoices “out of context,” whatever that means. Of course he refuses to explain the details of his activities and continues to do the old “look over there” routine.
You want context? Fine. Here are all of the Pacific Strategies invoices that we scanned. Enjoy.
![[ ]](http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/icons/layout.gif){kind=icon} Invoice-2007-10.pdf 73K
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Invoice-2009-03.pdf 232K
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And if you don’t have time to go through all those invoices, just listen to this ‘ol clip from the John and Ken show:
Every now and then we like to remind our Friends about Fullerton’s recent history. We did it here, in a post on the arrogant mismanagement of Fullerton by former City Manager, James L. Armstrong. We noted that in 2001, after seven years’ worth of failure in Fullerton, he failed all the way to the top job in tony Santa Barbara.
But, alas, Poor Jim has run afoul of the cops up there, and, recently was taken to task by a blog for his efforts to stall the release of information about a city program that subsidized houses for – city employees! Too bad Armstrong mistakenly cc’d his sentiments to the very people who were making the public records request!
Still the same. Incompetent and arrogant.
Here’s an article from Tim Cavanaugh at Reason, having some fun with Rob Reiner’s big government First Five Program.
The best part is the reference to our old friend Matthew J. Cunningham. Follow the links all the way back to a 2006 Flash Report blog post Cunningham did on the program – before he got hooked up with all that Children and Families green!
And here is a tale in The Voice of OC(EA) about how our local branch is suing the State to keep their stash from going to help support MediCal! It seems these people are really, really desperate to keep their gravy train rolling along. After all, the Executive Director of the OC branch makes $327,000 a year in salary and benefits. His job? Handing out cash. Nice work if you can get it.
Right now the First Five superstructure is tottering and about to collapse. Let’s help give it a push.