I never charge for reading the comics or the sports section.
One of the critical tasks assigned to Matthew Cunningham by the PR fixated and obviously rudderless OC Children and Families Commission is to “review” media, i.e. read newspapers and blogs, which is convenient for Cunningham because that’s what he does anyway – for free. Now he’s a pro at 200 bucks an hour.
Yes, Friends, you read rightly. He’s paid to read blogs.
This is exactly what I had in mind...only they were supposed to be Democrats!
January 25, 2010 was another banner day for Pacific Strategies. $700 for a few hours noodling around on the computer. Plus time for 18 holes in the afternoon after the siesta!
Oh, and look. A phone call to newly minted Assemblyman Chris Norby made from Suite C. Probably to assure Chris that Cunningham really wanted him to win all along and how much he really, really hates carpetbaggers and perjurers.
The High-Speed Rail Authority is bringing the show to our own Fullerton Senior Center on Thursday evening.
Considered by many to be the greatest boondoggle in the history of California, high speed rail will waste billions of dollars, threaten homes and businesses throughout the state while claiming to solve an inter-state transit problem that doesn’t exist.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) will host a public open house in the City of Fullerton to provide the community with a project update, information about the proposed alternative alignments, design options, and station locations being considered, as well as details pertaining to the environmental process. Residents will be able to see which areas might be needed for right-of way acquisition.
Fullerton is being considered for a station, in competition with Norwalk for the only other station between Anaheim and Los Angeles.
CHSRA is planning high-speed train service for travel between major metropolitan areas of California. The high-speed train is proposed to connect Anaheim to San Francisco in less than three hours. The Los Angeles to Anaheim high-speed train section proposes to travel adjacent to the existing Los Angeles to San Diego Rail Corridor from LA Union Station to the future Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), although OCTA and Metro are now proposing a shared-track agreement.
Thursday, April 29, 2010, 5 to 8 p.m., presentation at 6 p.m.
Fullerton Senior Center, 340 W. Commonwealth Ave.
For more information, call (877) 724-5422
UPDATE: as one of our commenters pointed out, you can click on the billing fragment, below to get the picture of what happened for the month of July 2009. Enjoy, but try not to retch.
August 17th, 2009 was a great day to be Matthew Cunningham. See, the Red County Blog editor and pretended conservative pulled down $1680 wordsmith pimping for the liberal welfare state via his lucrative deal with the OC Children and Families Commission.
Why this Commission, that was created to help little children, is dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars each year into opinion swaying of dubious value is exasperating. The fact that this money is going into the coffers of well-connected repuglicans also gives off quite an aroma – influence peddling-wise.
How and why these contracts are awarded is certainly a topic that should be addressed by the Commission and their Executive Director Michael Ruane, as well as by the Board of Supervisors, who appoint Commission members.
One thing is crystal clear. This Commission is more interested in PR and lobbying for their revenue than they are actually accomplishing anything.
Here is the billing statement for that day that put a happy face on all the Cunninghams in Suite C. Who knew that revising vanilla versions of op-eds could be so rewarding?
Maybe Cunningham really does believe in the good works of the Commission, although I’ve got to wonder what other tax and spend schemes he will be promoting next.
After second helpings of aloo tikki and tandoori baked nan, our own beloved blowhard Dick Jones seems to be having trouble staying awake during the Indian Independence day celebration held last summer at Harry Sidhu’s “elegant Yorba Estate.” You remember, his home in the 3rd Districtthat he swore under penalty of perjury that he had abandoned for the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue.
Over at the Red County blog Matthew J. Cunningham has gotten his lavender briefs into a self-righteous snarl over some guy named Tim Whitacre. Whitacre’s ostensible offense? Claiming that the Lewis Consulting Group is on Hide and Seek Sidhu’s payroll. In reality his offense was standing up at the GOP Central Committee meeting last week and reminding everybody that Harry Sidhu is an opportunistic carpetbagger.
You would think that somebody like Cunningham who pretends to be a political and social conservative, but who, in reality, has an annual contract with Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s Children and Families Commission of almost $200,000 a year would just clam up. But no. Silence is not in him. Instead he prefers to keep opining in his usual way: in a crab-wise crawl across the truth.
First you call your opponents insane (or tin-foil hat wearing, delusional, paranoid, etc.) Of course sane people don’t argue with the insane – but that never stopped Cunningham – who will keep jabbering away until the lights are shut off. Then you start carefully parsing out where your opponent is making stuff up, and has no proof, etc.
Philosophical question: is it possible to slander a campaign consultant?
In this case the fake issue is whether Lewis is actually getting paid directly from Sidhu or not. Lewis must have informed The Jerb that he isn’t. So he then is safe in saying Whitacre has no proof that Lewis is. But Lewis is indeed working for Sidhu – one way or another. His payment may come later if he is working on spec – either in deferment or simply in access to Norby’s old office for the inevitable lobbying. As one of our commenters pointed out he may also be working on an IE against Shawn Nelson. In any of these scenarios some kind of disclosure by his partner Matt Holder should have been made at the Central Committee meeting.
So the gist of what Whitacre has to say is very much valid.
Cunningham finishes up by saying Whitacre has no proof that Nelson is the stronger candidate even though, ironically, he has no proof that Whitacre doesn’t. Of course you wouldn’t even need to have poll results to tell that Sidhu is a bumbling assclown who will be lucky to get 9% of the vote. Oh yeah, he’s also a perpetual office seeking carpetbagger. And a casual perjurer.
Coming soon to an elective office in your neighborhood...
Ah the faux outrage! Such a fun spectacle when it fails. And when you’re a hypocrite repuglican whose cover’s been blown, it’s only going to get tougher to pull off.
Wow, an opportunity to do the right thing. How many of those am I gonna get?
Now that Chris Norby’s campaign manager John Lewis has not only come out in support of Harry Sidhu in the 4th Supervisor’s race, but is actually working for his campaign, it’s time for Norby to do the right thing – and fire Lewis.
Hold on Matt, that white van is outside the house again.
Norby has endorsed and supported the candidacy of Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson, and his campaign manager has deliberately placed his own interest ahead of both Norby’s, and the GOP’s, but the entire populace of the 4th Supervisorial District, for that matter.
One fudgecicle per customer, please!
You’ve all seen the facts and the videos. Harry Sidhu is a perjurer, a carpetbagger, and an unintelligible buffoon, who is patently unqualified to be an ice cream truck driver, let alone a County Supervisor. But John Lewis needs a lobbying target and knows that Shawn Nelson isn’t for sale. See, for Lewis it’s all about money and influence, and principle be damned.
So what do say Chris? How long are you going to go with a guy who is working against you? Who’s the boss?
Yup. The time of the year when this little-known, virtually opaque level of government that was created by Rob Reiner’s tobacco tax hands out its PR and lobbying contracts to well-connected “small government” types like blabbermouth Matthew J. Cunningham and Anaheim’s Mayor for Hire, Curt Pringle.
The hell with the kids. It's our turn at the trough!
I have previously documented the big government gravy being slurped up by Pringle and Cunningham here, and here. Were talking really big bucks here, Friends, and you get the feeling that not only is this Commission in existence to dole out the government largess to local repuglicans, but that its proprietors are a lot more interested in smiley face public relations and protecting their flow of tax revenue from Sacramento than they are in helping any kids. See, it takes a village to raise those children but unfortunately the bureaucracy and its spokesholes don’t come cheap.
Anyway, May and June are the months these contracts seem to come due and also seem to keep getting rolled over with almost no public scrutiny, or really any sort of performance audit for that matter. You can bet the family farm we’ll be reporting on the attempts to renew these contracts in the future.
A creator of jobs. Sidhu, are you paying attention?
While many County departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs big spender of our dough Tom Daly seems to be going in the opposite direction. I learned that he has just recently showed off his newly minted Executive Aide – Bruce Matthias, to his staff.
This new hire has to be costing tax payers a bundle. But most disturbing is that Matthias was recently released by the County’s Executive Office from his job as head of the County’s legislative affairs unit – a sort of in-house government lobbyist. Since Daly hired Mr. Matthias as an “at-will-employee,” he didn’t have to go through any sort of competitive hiring process to bring on board someone who was recently cut loose by the County CEO – in other words, pure cronyism. So what does Matthias know about running anything, let alone a Clerk/Recorder’s office? Just looks like typical jobs for the boys featherbedding corruption to me.
Tellingly, this recent addition to Team Daly used to be Chief of Staff to Assemblyman John Lewis during his first three years in office. Hey, wait! Isn’t the John Lewis Machine running Daly’s campaign? Hmm.
Hey, this guy's got a mortgage.
Maybe Daly is returning a favor. Clearly the Matthias family is pals with Daly. Matthias’ wife Sonja Matthias contributed to Daly’s now abandoned campaign for Supervisor 2010. Or maybe Daly’s doing the favor for Lewis. Who knows?
All I know is that it is very depressing although not really surprising to see more and more so-called conservative Republicans finding ways to profit off of County government.
As for Daly, this blatant cronyism in a time of recession is just par for the course. Remember the $48,000 doled out to a political contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame? And the $1700 a month retainer to a Sacramento government consulting business? Or the $2.1 million flushed on the tear-down building on Civic Center?
We could hope that Matthias has been brought on board to end this cycle of Daly disasters, but what particular skill set he brings to solve any of his new bosses managerial shortcomings is unknown.
Wake up Orange County! We need to get rid of this free spending, incompetent career politician and return the Clerk-Recorder’s Office to a professional operation instead of what it has become – an unaccountable sinkhole of waste.
Over at the RedCounty blog, Matthew J. Cunningham’s posts are becoming increasingly dronish and petulant – just like always seems to happen when an election nears.
His latest post about the OCGOP Central Committee endorsement of Shawn Nelson is a case in point. Apparently he wasn’t at this big event (could it be because he’s not yet ready to explain his huge windfall from The Meathead’s Children and Families commission?). So he’s getting his talking points from somebody who was – probably lonely Sidhu supporter and John Lewis partner Matt Holder.
You would think that when your bosses candidate gets wiped out 47-8 you would just keep your mouth shut and say nothing. But not our motormouth buddy – who goes on and on and on about how the thing is unfair and Nelson just won because he did better at the forum, how the questions weren’t good, how it was all due to political whipping and how Sidhu, not Nelson has been fully vetted through the last election cycle (? Nelson’s been through three!).
Not a single word from Cunningham about carpetbagging, perjury and perpetual candidacy! Did it not occur to Cunningham that maybe, just maybe the OCGOP Central Committee members were turned off by Sidhu’s voter registration fraud, and his two bogus addresses on top of his inarticulate, scripted performances.
Well, too bad for Cunningham and Lewis and Sidhu, but that genie is out of the bottle and ain’t going back in. So just accept it and quit yer bitchin’.
Anyhow, congrats from inside the electrified fence of the Desert Rat compound out on beautiful Screech Owl Road to Nelson for an important victory.
Over three weeks a go we made a public records request of the City of Anaheim to produce the phone log, the work product, and e-mails of a woman named Annie Mezzacappa.
Now you may well wonder who this individual is and what this has to do with anything pertinent. Ms. Mezzacappa is the personal assistant to Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu and she is a part-time public employee. It is rumored that it is she, not the virtually unintelligible Sidhu who scripts his performances. Yet, she is also his campaign employee and she is the contact person on all those e-mail blasts Sidhu sends out touting his endorsement by some dude or other from Stanton. See the potential problem? We were kind of curious to see if a public employee might just be doing Sidhu’s campaign business out of the Anaheim City Hall, and even on company time.
I tell you this is nothing but candidate intimidation...
Anyway, our Intrepid Travis just got a letter from the Anaheim Deputy City Attorney. Mezzacappa’s phone log is ready. But after 24 days they are denying the request for 6 months of emails and work product because:
“The request is vague, overboard and uncertain in that it fails to request an “identifiable” record.”
Total BS. They seem to be saying that unless you can tell them exactly the document you want they’ll just say screw you. And they get to determine what is “overboard.” And that really defeats the purpose of requesting public records, doesn’t it?
We’ll be picking up those phone logs and let you know if anything fun pops up. In the meantime, we aren’t giving up on those other records, either.
