Here’s a link to a Register article by Tony Saavedra that starts out with the breathtaking news that the OC Cemetery Board voted to hold a meeting to talk about raising it’s stipend 5%. That’s 5% of $100 per meeting, or a whopping five bucks per member. If they meet once a month that would total a mammoth $300 per year. Thanks for that earth-shattering news, Tony.
In the meantime, not a squeak about this opaque public district paying Anaheim mayor and general fixer/influence peddler Curt Pringle $6000 per month to locate a new graveyard site for the boneyard boys that we reported about here; a task that could have been handled by a realtor for the price of a commission paid by the seller. Of course Pringle was also supposed to grease the skids – which seems to be his only marketable job skill. No word yet on whether he accomplished anything at all, although this seems not to be a requirement to get a lucrative contract with one of these little known but apparently well-heeled public agencies.
Pringle's cup runneth over.
But Saavedra seems to think his readers are more interested in the $5 per month scandal that’s he’s trying to brew up into something potable. Sadness.
And by the way, here’s a choice nugget from The Register’s OC Watch Dog, Teri Sforza, inviting whistleblowing news tips that I recently stumbled across. Maybe the Register reporters should (re)read Ms. Sforza’s stirring words. Here’s the kicker: “…we’ll put together a blogroll of local muckrakers like ourselves.”
He didn’t mean to. It just came out. Asked about how long he had lived in the 4th District Harry Sidhu admitted “two-and-a-half months.” That’s ten weeks, folks, and takes us back to February 1st when Sidhu cooked up hissecond4th District address. The one on Lucky Way.
Seems Hide and Seek Sidhu has conveniently chosen to forget his alleged residence at the beautiful Calabria Apartments in the month of January – the one he swore to twice under penalty of perjury. Well, he may pretend to have forgotten have, but we wont!
Be it ever so humble...
And of course we will be sending this video to the District Attorney to further support our case that Mr. Sidhu is a perjurer.
On Tuesday night, the Orange City Council, led by Councilman Denis Bilodeau (left) and Jon Dumitru, took a bold first step supporting Dianne Harkey’s AB2121 bill here that would put a screeching halt on the high speed rail (HSR). The HSR is perhaps the biggest boondoggle in the making in the history of the United States.
On a 2 – 1 – 1 vote the Orange Council supported AB2121 with Mayor Carolyn Cavecche abstaining. Apparently, Cavecche the former Chair of OCTA said she needed more information, sure she does.
The HSR as currently planned would cut a swath through southern California wiping out untold numbers of homes and businesses, and will leave us and our descendants a massive debt. With our state on the verge of bankruptcy we cannot afford the damage or the cost, especially when the promoters of this scheme like Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle don’t even have a business plan.
Well, Pringle has his own private business plan, as usual – income from consulting contracts, no doubt. Just in case you don’t know what Curt Pringle does with his time, then you should read this, this and this post.
When will Fullerton citizens and business owners get our chance to provide input into this HSR boondoggle, when it’s too late? Probably never. Remember this is Fullerton where good manners dictate that you sit down and shut up.
I left the toaster oven at the Elegant Yorba Estate
Wow, that Harry Sidhu sure is a frugal guy. Or a perjurer.
A useful utility bill shows that the Sidhu’s apartment generated a $7.04 electricity bill in January 2010 – the month that he claimed to have lived at the Calabria Apartments on two voter registration forms.
84 kilowatt hours might be enough to run a 100 watt light bulb for a month. Or maybe he sat there in the dark and listened to the radio.
Responding to mounting criticism about taking a bunch of property along the proposed right-of-way for its multibillion dollar boondoggle, the California High Speed Rail Authority took a step back the other day and voted 6-1 to entertain a shared track option previously discarded when they thought nobody was paying attention. Read all about it in the LA Times.
Even lobbyist and fixer Curt Pringle, the termed-out Mayor of Anaheim, joined the majority. Is he perhaps starting to fear a Buena Park, Fullerton, and Anaheim backlash that might spoil all of his crafty electoral machinations for 2010?
Well, it’s a step in the right direction, but it still begs the question of bureaucratic and rolling stock cost vis-a-vis minimal travel time gains to downtown LA.
The lone “no” vote came from Quintin L. Kopp, the former Bay Area politician who also advocated for the controversial BART extension to the San Francisco Airport. Apparently Kopp thinks it’s too late to be smart – always a bad sign.
The other day I described how Republican Mayor Curt Pringle made some big bucks as a lobbyist for the so-called Children and Families Commission, a by-product of the 1998 liberal feel-good Proposition 10 that placed a new tax on tobacco and redistributed the dough to the Government Kiddie Bureaucracy. I promised to shake the branches of this tree to see what other strange fruits might tumble out. Well, Lo and Behold.
Matthew "it takes a village to raise a child" Cunningham
It turns out that Matthew J. Cunningham who masquerades as a local “conservative” blogger may be the biggest big government gravy slurpers at the Children and Families Commission trough.
As he pontificates about the joys of small government on his blog, Cunningham is making a killing as a PR flack for the ultra-liberal Commission and it’s professional do-gooders. And why not? His buddies Bill Campbell and Hugh Hewitt are/were on the Commission when he started his lucrative shill-meistering and wordsmithery for a government bureaucracy, and it’s hard to conceive that his uberboss, John Lewis wasn’t somehow responsible for directing this huge windfall to its rather unlikely recipient.
Here are the fun facts of the Cunningham contracts with the Commission:
Contract 230 July 6, 2005 $ 25,000
Contract 227 May 2 2007 $100,000
Contract 227A May 7, 2008 $195,000
Contract 264 June 3, 2009 $185,000
Hey you poor hungry kids out there: that’s almost half a million bucks in just three years to a guy who couldn’t even proof read his own website! And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars dished out to Pringle and the White House Writers Group.
And if you look at the Exibit B scope of work attachments you’ll come away hard pressed to see how the scope of work amounts to more than a handful of hours a week, flack-wise. No wonder Intrepid Boy Journalist has so much spare time for his blogging and political punditry.
The biggest challenge for Cunningham appears to be to get conservatives to buy the spin on all this hogwash. And naturally a lot of his “scope” is the usual nebulous “assist the staff” bullshit. Of course we can only wonder at the selection and bidding process at work here.
It’s perfectly clear to me that this opaque and over-funded commission needs complete outside scrutiny with fiscal and performance audits. Maybe Cunningham’s pals at the Grand Jury might want to delve into the doings of this public agency.
And the next time Matthew Cunningham preaches at you that you must believe in the joys of small government and lower taxes, or when he suggests whole village child rearing is Obama socialism, just give him a wink and a nod and try not to stare too hard at the giant scarlet H on his forehead.
Your friendly and well-paid guide to the next life.
Okay. We know there’s a lot of money in lobbying. That’s why lobbyists contribute so much to political campaigns – to influence legislation and win government contracts for their clients.
But who knew there was so much taxpayer gravy to be slurped up in and around opaque local government districts? The other day we looked at Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle’s massive windfall lobbying for the little-known OC Children and Families Commission, here. But Pringle has not only scored big bucks lobbying for the Heathy Kids Bureaucracy, he’s also made some serious green lobbying for the dead!
Yep. That’s right. In 2008 Pringle was awarded a $6000 per month annual contract to find new burial grounds for something called “The OC Cemetery District” and to do some sort of educational outreach to the community. He was also supposed to be some sort of “consultant” on developing the existing Lake Forest bone yard. You read right. $6000 per month is $72,000 per year. With a $25,000 bonus if he actually managed to accomplish something.
According to the General Manager of the Cemetery District, Tim Deutsch, the contract was extended to cover the balance of fiscal year 2009-2010, so presumably Pringle failed to deliver in year one, and was naturally rewarded with a contract extension.
The lobbyists are dying to get in...
So we have several problems as far as I can see: one is a pretty vague contract with completely disparate elements, awarded without any sort of competition; and then there’s the amount – what seems to be an exorbitant sum of money with no guarantees of actually accomplishing anything; and finally, there seems to be a lack of any sort of quality control or financial oversight in the management of this District.
Pringle got $6000 a month and all I got was this lousy mug...
It’s pretty obvious that the District has more money than it knows what to do with. But the real question is: why didn’t they simply engage a commercial realtor to find them more land – at zero cost? And while we’re contemplating embarrassing questions, what qualifies Pringle’s PR shop as a cemetery planner or a cemetery entitlements developer? Isn’t that what the District pays it’s general manager to do?
And finally, why on Earth does the Cemetery District need anybody to do community outreach? Isn’t that why the phone book has the Yellow Pages?
First wrap yourself in the flag. The rest is easy.
Away back in 1998, the people of California in their infinite wisdom passed Proposition 10, a tax on cigarettes and tobacco products the revenue of which was to go to the creation of a vast new state and local early child development bureaucracy. At the time, and even subsequently Republicans have assailed the tax and its main advocate, Rob “Meathead” Reiner for this statist approach to whole village child-rearing.
What many people don’t realize is how many supposedly conservative Republicans have made small fortunes participating in skimming lucrative contracts of questionable value off of the tax proceeds.
Let’s take a look at how this works in Orange County.
Proposition 10 created Children and Family Commissions in California’s counties, including Orange County. The very name suggests typical liberal social engineering. Replete with staff, lawyers and appointed commissioners the thing is virtually opaque public-wise, and yet it starts the process of allocating millions of dollars of Prop 10 monies as it adopts programs, and more problematically, hires a plethora of consulting services. And what consulting services they are!
Let’s take a look at the OC Child and Family Commission agenda for the June 4, 2008 meeting. One item really jumps out.
$150,000 to Curt Pringle (up from $100,000 the year before) to be a lobbyist! And another $150,00 to “The White House Writers Group,” a collection of former Reagan script writers, to promote the County’s ever-so special programs and projects nationwide!
Say what? Why is a government agency that is supposed to be helping unhealthy poor kids making healthy, rich Republican adults even richer? Why do they need a lobbyist? They say it’s to protect their bureaucracy from budget raids. Really? $150,000 to lobby the legislature for a mere twelve months? Yep, that’s $12,500 per month; or, over $600 per working day! And, say, how did that Pringle deal work out for them?
And why do they need to promote themselves and their programs anywhere except inside the County? Good questions. Anyhow, $300,000 per annum could feed a lot of hungry kids; or a mere handful of grownup Repuglicans.
If anybody was wondering what Pringle’s “expertise” is, and how it will be applied to his Main Chance Choo Choo, now you know – lobbying for ever greater tax revenue in Sacramento! What a racket!
I like to help spread the wealth around...
I notice that in 2008 Commission members include the John Lewis-sawdust-brained-marionette Bill Campbell, and ‘Pug talking pin-head Hugh Hewitt – both chums of our old acquaintance, Matthew J. Cunningham – another supposed big government hater.
News flash! Repuglican “consultants” like Curt Pringle not only make their livings helping us regular citizens “navigate” the treacherous waters of the big government they helped create, they also make big incomes for themselves and their underlings by reaping government windfalls – like Prop 10 revenue redistribution.
Well, the original critics of Proposition 10 were right on the money. But now it looks like some of them are in it – but good.
I’m going to be giving the branches of the Children and Families Commission tree a real good shake, and it will be interesting to see what other strange fruits fall out of it.
I recently visited the Craig Hunter for Sheriff website and found this picture.
Yeah, a picture of Hunter with Il Duce himself. The guy who became an American hero and terrorism expert by accomplishing – absolutely nothing. That’s right kids. Apparently this noble nation is so starved for real heroes that you can become one by being a mayor in a town where terrorists fly airplanes into your biggest buildings.
But this post isn’t about Rudy Giuliani – not directly, anyway. It’s about authoritarianism masked as conservatism; about using the police power of the government to keep us safe from – ourselves. And that’s the vibe I’ve gotten from this Hunter guy, from his statements about marijuana and the hapless “drug war” and about the rights “that have been given to us” – presumably he believes by the government. It doesn’t help that most of his pictures seem to reveal a guy with a really bad case of constipation.
More fiber, dude.
I really can’t wait for the day that wannabe politicians quit sharing their photos ops with Bush-era police staters.
When this campaign started I really was planning on just boycotting the whole thing. But the more I see of Hunter the less I like him.
