We got wind of a press release put out the other day by an organization called “OCTax,” an organization that purports to be an advocate for taxpayers, yet in actuality is little but a vehicle for political endorsements and self-promotion of its president and officers.
So naturally Anaheim’s former Mayor-for-Hire Kurt Pringle would be a great Chairman of this operation. This greatness has been thrust upon him at an annual general membershp meeting. Now he won’t have to pull the strings from behind the curtain.
Another officer includes Pringle Pal Lucy Dunn, who seems to be intent on using any organization for her own self-promotion.
The best part of the press release is the description of the 29 boardmembers of this entity, a group that endorsed the unendorsable Pringle Puppet, Carpetbagging Haibag Sidhu – which not only reveals the moral lassitude of this endorsement-for-pay operation, but its practical incompetence, too, since Hairball went down like the RMS Titanic .
Glub, glub, glub....
Here’s the fun description:
These Board Members represent a wide variety of private companies, public agencies and non-profit organizations throughout the county.
Holy Politburo! “Public entities and non-profit organizations” represented in a tax advocacy group? Well, folks, that tells you just about all you need to know about OCTax. Stay tuned in 2011 for big ARTIC and high speed rail sink hole boosterism, and in 2012 for an endorsement slate that best fits Der Pringle’s vision for his own healthy revenue stream.
In a follow-up post today The Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana describes the (lack of) investigation by our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas into the evident illegal lobbying of fellow repuglican Dick Ackerman. Of course the DA could find no wrondoing. Not looking for evidence is an excellent way of not finding any.
Now that Ackerman’s actual invoices have surfaced, revealing what we have know for over a year, and what was based on the Dickster’s own words, the DA seems to be a little nervous. Here’s what his spokesholess Susan Kang Schroeder had to say:
“The evidence we had supports the findings we made,” she said. “If anyone has further evidence that is contrary to the evidence we have, we’ll be glad to look at it. And it may bring us to a different result.”
Further evidence. Of course she means all that embarrassing stuff that would have actually been part of any sincere investigation in the first place, and that would have freed the DA from having to rely entirely on Ackerman’s say-so for the truth. But the important thing here is that the DA is apparently welcoming new evidence. And since that evidence has already been published on a blog and is in the public domain, may we assume a new and this time an honest investigation is in the offing?
The smile turned to painful grimmace as the appendage was pulled ever farther into the wringer.
Over at the Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana reports that his uncovering of Dick Ackerman’s billing logs from his days as a lobbyist for the rogue Fair Board has spurred a formal investigation by the State Fair Political Practices Commission.
See, former legislators are prohibited from lobbying their former colleagues for one year after their departure. Ackerman left the State Senate at the end of 2008 and started making those embarrassing calls in the summer of 2009 – in order to facilitate the sale of the Orange County Fair to a secret cabal made up of its own Boardmembers. We first wrote about that a-way back here in the fall of 2009 passing along the excellent work of the OC Progressive and Vern Nelson at the Orange Juice blog.
See that guy over there? He didn't do anything wrong. He told me to say that.
Of course the most embarrassing part of this slimy episode was the way one year later our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas tried to whitewash the whole stinking affair in order to protect his ‘puglet pals. See, T-Rack has plenty of time to harass Toyota and Muslim students at UCI, but apprently he has a lot less taste for going after political miscreants of either party.
But the truth will out, as they say. And the Ackerman deal just keeps resurfacing. Of course the FPPPC has no real authority except to levy fines and it looks to me like a real prosecutor is really what’s called for here.
Today the ever-increasingly pathetic OC Register ran an editorial trumpeting the creation of something called the Association of California Cities, a homespun effort to replace the California League of Cities. The Register wants us to believe that anything that replaces the League is a good thing. To which I respond: not so fast.
Here’s a quote from the article, the first couple of paragraphs dutifully and immediately passed along verbatim by Red County repuglican flunky Matthew J. Cunningham:
Orange County cities often have stood for sensible, taxpayer-friendly municipal reform in a state where fiscal sanity is the exception rather than the rule. So, while we applaud the 21 O.C. cities that left the League of California Cities (and its Orange County division) and started their own Association of California Cities Orange County, we also want to ask, “What took you so long?”
We’ve long had a beef with the Sacramento-based League, which is essentially a taxpayer-funded (dues come from city coffers) lobbying organization that tilts toward big government. Currently, the League is battling Gov. Jerry Brown’s sensible plan to close down the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies – those fiscally profligate entities that abuse eminent domain and dole out corporate welfare to companies that build development projects hatched in City Hall.
I can’t remember any OC cities that “stood for sensible, taxpayer friendly municipal reform…” so that’s a load of manure right there. But notice the anti-Redevelopment hook there at the end of the second paragraph. Cunningham obviously did. But he didn’t bother passing along the very next tidbit from the editorial:
Certainly, one finds support for redevelopment among Orange County officials, including some whose cities have fled the League…
Well Jesus H.Crisco, that’s the understatement of the freaking year! Is there a single municipality in OC that isn’t addicted to Redevelopment like a low grade junkie is to black tar heroin?
Maybe I can do facebook for the Association @ $200 buck an hour!
The Rag pathetically goes on to cite as some sort of local OC accomplishment the totally discredited Anaheim “Freedom Friendly” policy of “upzoning” property, a conspiracy that put dozens of businesses out of business, hundreds of workers out of work, that was engineered to produce vast profits for Kurt Pringle’s clients, and that has left the Anaheim city scape cratered, dark and dismal. The editorialists who are employed by The Register may think we can’t tell the difference, but boy are they wrong.
I am somebody! At last.
Of course you can check out the leadership of the new Association. It doesn’t inspire any sort of confidence. In the roster we find a sad collection of small town political hacks, bag men (and women), and poseurs whose only true resentment of the League is likely based on the fact that it precludes them from cashing in on anything. Oh, yeah we know the sort: the brain dead, yet greedy city council members who make up the boards of things like the OCTA, the Vector Control District, and the Sanitation District: just the perfect sort of drones who can be manipulated to direct “policy” in the direction of the Pringles, Dick Ackermans and John Lewises of the oh, so conservative Orange County.
Cunningham claims the inaugural dinner was the scene of near euphoria. Eu-effing-phoria. For him and people like him who cash in on government largess there was probably every reason to feel giddy.
The real question is why should we poor plantation hands substitute one collection of overseers for another?
A while back we shared a classic lackey moment when Matthew J. Cunningham gave former Anaheim Mayor-for-Hire and all-round sleaze Kurt Pringle a vigorous lingual lather up.
Hey, those cigars don't pay for themselves...
Not to be out done by an amateur, The Register’s in-house boot-lick-name-dropper Frank Mickadeit decided to do him one better, and offered up a sloppy tongue-job to the man the State’s Attorney general found be conflicted in his serial roles as lobbyist, mayor, and Boondoggle HSR Chairman.
Now, we all know that Pringle is and always has been in it for Pringle. But good old Frank seems perfectly willing to pass along the nonsense that Pringle is out of elective politics to focus on his business. No. Pringle is out of elective politics because there is no longer any elective office that wouldn’t be a detriment to his business.
Of course we hear from former Anaheim garbage hauler Bill Taormina, supporter of the lamest of the lame Lorri Galloway, who believes that Pringle should be California’s governor or maybe a senator. Taormina has millions of reasons to praise Pringle, but there is no more moral underpinning for his support of Pringle than there was for his giving Galloway three fake addresses in his various rental units so she could run a fraudulent campaign for County supervisor.
Which leads to the conclusion that the sooner the pathetic Register goes under for the third and final time, the better.
Good news for OC Republicans who frequent blogs: looks like my buddy Chip Hanlon let my other buddy Allan Bartlett post again. Sha-zam!
Bartlett’s near re-inaugural post makes for entertaining reading. It’s all about some dust up between Mike and Mary and a conservative drinkies hour with Chuck Devore as the featured attraction. Now I personally can’t imagine anything more dreary than drinks and Chuck Devore droning on (except maybe no drinks and Chuck Devore droning on), but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.
What’s really fun is the comments thread where the insiders have at it.
Damn, do we finally have a fun Republican blog in town?
It looks like our City Council is all set to discuss the topic of outside dining on Tuesday. Again.
It seems like only yesterday that the council handed over a public sidewalk to the Florentine Mob under the guise of an outdoor dining lease. The ink wasn’t even dry when Florentine started erecting a permanent, enclosed structure on our sidewalk! The Fullerton Shadow wrote all about it, here.
Sit down and grab some sidewalk, brother...
In 2007 the City gave the whole idea of outdoor dining permits second thought. But now with this gosh darn recession a-lingering the subject is cropping up again.
Well, somebody better go to this meeting to make sure no more public property is given away. After all “Dick” Jones and Don Bankhead chose to look the other way before, just to protect their incompetent staff. And Pat McKinley’s got lots of friends downtown, right?
Yesterday Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC (EA) did a post on a report by a group called OCCORD that accused the cities of Santa Ana and Anaheim of “rubber stamp” planning. Among other things the planning commissions in these towns were identified as living preponderantly in small enclaves and it notes the undue influence of out-of-town developers.
I’m having a little trouble separating the message from the messenger. See, the troubles are real all right. We’ve seen the same operation in Fullerton, as with the creeps who are trying to ram Amerige Court and the hideous Jefferson Commons down our throats. Our electeds got their drinkies, and their boat rides and their thirty pieces of silver from slimers like Steve Sheldon; and we got the shaft. Yet while I can’t disagree with thing the obvious OCCORD conclusion that development in Anaheim and Santa Ana is all tied up by goons with financial ties to people like Kurt Pringle and Miguel Pulido, I have to wonder what it is OCCORD is really promoting.
A quick trip to OCCORD’s website rewards visitors with a list of boardmembers and contributors that reads like a veritable who’s who of leftist, labor, and low-income housing advocates. Here’s what they say they are about:
In Orange County, California, top-down economic development policy and institutionalized anti-immigrant sentiment have served to exclude low income, immigrant communities from government decisionmaking processes, and in many cities, rapid demographic changes have created a political environment in which people are increasingly disconnected from their elected representatives. As a result, income inequality is growing faster in our region than in the nation as a whole, and our sense of community is declining.
I notice with satisfaction the name of Lorri Galloway who not only has approved just about every developer-wet-dream megaplex put in front of her in Anaheim, but also supported SunCal’s mammoth project on Anaheim Boulevard with its sham veneer of “affordable housing.” And that may be a telling.
What else will she pull out of her cookie?
So what’s the real deal? OCCORD seems to be promoting authentic, popular participation in land use decision, of the sort promised by Pam Keller when she first ran for Fullerton City Council in 2006. Pam ended up voting for a bunch of megaprojects, herself, so maybe the whole thing is just some sort of make-people- feel-good-about-looking-like-they’re-trying-to-do-something-anything, scam. Or maybe they actually want “immigrant communities” to have input into decision making land use processes – especially the development of subsidized housing projects.
I think the mistake of swapping “top-down” development policy driven by developers, and that driven by the professional houseacrats and do-gooders, and social conscience hand wringers is a distinction without much of a difference. Overbuilt, overbearing, subsidized, architectural monstrosities built on public debt are bound to follow either way. Will OCCORD ever come out against the idiotic Redevelopment housing policies and ethnic cleansing pogroms? Not likely if there’s a jaw-droppingly expensive “affordable” project of some kind, any kind, at the end of the bureaucratic rainbow.
Okay, we’ve had some harsh criticism of the Voice of OC in the past, but today Norberto Santana came out with a great expose about OC Fair-employed lobbyist Dick Ackerman, husband of former carpetbaggress Linda, both of whom are residents of Irvine.
I told the DA everything was on the up and up. And that's what he went with!
Last year our do-nothing DA whitewashed Ackerman’s role in the ’09 OC Fair sale matter, saying he didn’t lobby the Legislature in violation of State law. How did the DA reach this conclusion? It wasn’t through investigative work, that’s for damn sure. Naturally, Amen Corner repuglicans like Matthew J. Cunningham crowed when the whitewash came out, but they’ll be eating crow soon enough. See, Santana got hold of Ackerman’s Nossaman Law Firm’s original billing records. And even though those records were laundered through some “environmental” consulting firm called LSA, the details prove what we here at FFFF have known since the fall of 2009: Ackerman was acting as a lobbyist and that in 2010 the DA was covering it up. The Nossaman billing records show phone calls to members of the State Legislature at $500 an hour. And that was illegal.
I gotta eat the feathers, too?
We didn’t have the billing, of course. We just had Dicky-boy’s own words:
“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.”
Preliminary work? Well, that’s one way of describing it; and that pesky budget language sure wasn’t going to jump into the bill all by itself, now was it?
Well, Friends, don’t expect any legal remedies anytime soon. Just remember the name: Ackerman. When you hear it, or read it, or smell it, you can bet some monkey business is afoot.
Last week the Register’s Watchdog Teri Sforza did a piece on members of the opaque Metropolitan Water District Board who had racked up huge travel expenses soldiering onward for you and me in the great water wars.
She's baaaaack!
Who’s well up on the list? Fullerton’s representative, Jim Blake, for one. Another is Fullerton resident wannabe Linda Ackerwoman who lives in Irvine but tried to carpetbag her way to fame and forune as our Assembly representative. This egregious pair racked up bills of $18,302 and $13,356 respectively, in 2009-2010. The biggest line item was lodging in for both.
Motel 6 was all full up.
It seems that Mrs. Ackerwoman got up on her offended hinders to defend the indefensible – with the usual blather about how hard she works for us, and the rigors of travel to engage herself in all these hyper-complicated issues. Of course the real truth is that if this job were so damn complicated she couldn’t do it in the first place. More truth: these trustees are hand-held and led along by their staff upon whom they are completely reliant. Which is no doubt why Madame Ackerwoman voted to jack up by 20% the rates requested by the aquacrats in the spring of 2009. See, the relationship is pretty symbiotic.
The fun Ackerwoman quote from the Sforza piece? Here it is: “the whole world of water is ballet.”
Wow! Thanks for that, Linda. Now go slip into your swimsuit!
And lest we forget Jim Blake, who has been on the Board since before water was even created, isn’t it time to switch to a more reliable, less expensive model?
