Our old pal Matthew J. Cunningham, the editor of the Mauve County blog and noted Tom Daly fan just can’t get enough of our humble blog. Our mole, deep inside the guts of the John Lewis political machine has informed us that Cunningham has been posting comments at FFFF under a whole slew of fake names. We even have the list.
Last night he chimed in on the Daly campaign finance post calling himself “Grover gets an F” to try his old trick of changing the subject. Of course that didn’t work.
But he has also popped up here recently under the aliases “Peabody the Nobody,” a fake “Lou Correa,” “No Tax Hikes,” and “Strider.”
Naughty, naughty boy, Matthew. Report to the principal’s office immediately! Now that you’ve joined the ranks of the Sidhu and Daly campaign workers blogging anonymously (and frequently for your boys), your much bragged about credibility just took a hit wherever it still exists. Of course we were on to you all along so there’s no harm done here at FFFF. Wonder if you’ll keep criticizing all those mean anonymous bloggers.
Why not just stick to those boring posts you do over at that ghost town of yours and quit cluttering our threads? And try getting a real job while you’re at it.
At the Orange Juice blog Art Pedroza is passing along a missive from OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, here.
Seems Baugh has chosen downtown Fullerton’s Slidebar Cafe as the site of some sort of “Citizen Power Rally” to promote the Paycheck Protection Initiative that also dovetails with his newly-developed manifesto to punish Republicans that take public employee union money. We wrote about that here. The event is planned for February 13th at 10:00 a.m.
The Slidebar is a logical site for Baugh who is clearly trying to exploit the populist anger of the so-called “Tea Party” movement. Last year the Slidebar hosted the John and Ken Tax Revolt/Smash Arnold’s Videos Party, although the Slidebar is also known for its ecumenical tastes when it comes to an event-hosting venue.
Baugh is likening his new mission to the nobility of the Minute Men at Lexington and Concord, but it’s really hard to see him getting involved in something unless there’s a Main Chance angle. He may believe that harnessing the T.P. energy is necessary to keep his party a going concern, but given the number of local GOP electeds who have taken public union money, it’s a safe bet that the ‘Pug gentry will avoid being seen on a dais with Baugh.
And let’s not forget that just a few short months ago Baugh was supporting the totally fraudulent Ackerwoman campaign for State Assembly so it’s pretty hard to take anything this guy says about reform as being serious. Wonder if Baugh can be persuaded now to condemn the fraud of carpetbaggery and fake residence. Hmm. Scott?
Anyway, our ever-vigilant crew will be on hand to chronicle the fun and games.
Last week the OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh addressed his cohorts at the periodic Republican Central Committee meeting.
His speech was much anticipated and much commented about the next day in such venues where anybody gives a damn about what Baugh has to say. I waited a few days to display my disdain for such antics.
It seems Mr. Baugh tried to channel some of the angry energy of the “Tea Party” movement to zap some life into his team.
Baugh unloaded on RINOs; on candidates who get the GOP endorsement and then take public union money; on the “slick consultants” who call the shots. It must have sounded pretty good to the true believers in the audience; but the Repuglican cadre that has turned Orange County into its own little plantation – people like John Lewis and Ackerman, Inc. must have rolled their eyes a bit. Electeds in the audience who gladly took money from police and fire unions were no doubt (quietly) offended and/or frightened, depending on their dispositions, and this includes just about every Republican city councilman and Supervisor in the County.
I’ve got four problems with Mr. Baugh’s manifesto.
First he coughed up a speech very much like it last year in the wake of the epic McCain disaster and a year of Democrat rule. Apparently not much came of that one; so why expect anything else from the ‘Pugs?
Second, he seems to have failed to address the virus of office seeking that infects the party and that has been manifested in the Ackerwoman and now Harry Sidhu strains. In fact, Baugh was a supporter of Linda Ackerwoman and her fraudulent campaign of deceit in the 72nd – which pretty much tells you all you need to know about him.
Third, the idea that a candidate can’t take the money of a public employee union and still represent the public interest is curious. By the same logic these folks would be unable to resist the blandishments of corporate lobbyists who donate to their campaigns. Hmm.
Finally, Baugh ignores the wider problem of Repuglicanism – the malady of being a Republican for fun and especially profit. Calling for ideological purity seems to ring hollow when it’s pretty evident that the game is being played for one’s own pecuniary interest. Will we ever hear Baugh denounce Curt Pringle’s 50 billion dollar high speed idiocy? Probably not. Baugh uses his own political connections to lobby here and there, including a highly lucrative contract awarded by fellow ‘Pugs on the Board of Supervisors to lobby in Sacramento.
So in the end, to quote the Bard, here’s what I see in Baugh’s address: a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.
Yep. The day after former State Senator Joe Dunn addressed the County Board of Supervisors about establishing a mechanism for keeping track of the professional lobbyists who haunt the 5th floor of the Hall of Admin, Matthew Cunningham popped up serially on the “Red County” blog to explain to his readers why the system ain’t broke and why his lobbyist friends have a constitutional right to “petition their government for redress.”
Aha! We called it here. Of course the idea that lobbyists are petitioning their government for anything except a chance to make big bucks for their clients is patently absurd.
We don’t agree with some of the purported details of Dunn’s original idea, but overall the concept of knowing which well-connected middlemen are knocking on your representative’s door in order to swing some deal or other, is basically a good one. Dunn’s timing and presentation to the Board were counterproductive and will be viewed as partisan, in some way. But so what?
Cunningham suggests that the whole thing is just a plan to dissuade privatization, but of course he really can’t say how, except that the OCEA union boss Nick Berardino is involved.But why should a lobbyist who is doing nothing improper or illegal fear a little bit of light illuminating his interaction with public officials?
Actually, an effort to squelch the idea will make people even more suspicious than ever about what is going on behind closed doors.
Cunningham is just doing his job, of course: trying to run interference for his Repuglican lobbyist pals like John Lewis who apparently would really rather not have the public aware of his influence with electeds. But the strategy is poor. In a second post he suggests that Dunn is simply trying to force the supervisors to adopt their own plan to avoid his referendum. Good idea.
Rather than let Dunn produce a likely popular plebiscite, the Supervisors ought to develop a sensible sytem for keeping track of lobbyists themselves, and include the union bosses like Berardino and Wayne Quint who are really nothing but lobbyists themselves – paid with ample union dues.
This issue is about recognizing the influence peddlers in OC – people who use their political and financial contacts to make inroads into public policy and pubic expenditure. Nothing wrong with that.
On his way out the door to yet another government job in Sacramento, 4th District County Supervisor Chris Norby paused just long enough to cast a vote at yesterday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting to support the asinine expenditure of $350,000 on some sort of Viet Nam memorial in a little-known Midway City park.
Forget the fact that there are already two memorials to the war and to the subsequent diaspora in the vicinity; and forget the fact that times are tough and the County is in severe budget cutting mode; but ask: why on the Green Planet Earth should the taxpayers hand over a third of a million bucks to some kind of private “community culture and performing arts society” to design and build what is described as an interactive wall/memorial of some sort. This is the sort of thing that is routinely developed and built with private fund raising.
The whole concoction was the brain-child of Supervisor Janet Nguyen, obviously for political capital. The County Parks Director, some guy named Mark Denny, seems to have gone along without a whimper. We found out that he’s a former staffer to one of the other zeroes that voted for this – Bill Campbell – so no surprise there. The other aye vote on the Board was the clueless septuagenarian Pat Bates who, like Campbell, is not known for adherence to any conservative principles. To his credit, Supervisor John Moorlach voted no.
Which brings us back to Norby, who, at his last Board meeting, could have reminded people what he has always claimed to stand for – and often has. But he didn’t.
10:50 Update: TDR forgot to add this little gem from the Register’s Jennifer Muir about Hutchens sending a helicopter to an LA cop chili “cook-out.” Wonder what Pat thinks about that use of public resources! – Admin
A recent Fullerton Observer article reported on some sort of “Women in Leadership” event and started out describing how Fullerton’s former Chief of Police introduced “surprise guest, ” appointed OC Sheriff Sandra Hutchens in glowing terms and indicated his unreserved support for her election campaign.
Go ahead, punk. Make my day.
We’re not at all surprised by this enthusiasm since McKinley has been reported as having post-retirement political ambitions, and has already demonstrated his connection to the local Reguglican establishment by his endorsement of the fraudulent Ackerwoman campaign.
Apart from political ambition, though, something more sinister flits through the shadows of the McKinley endorsement of Hutchens, and that is McKinley’s apparent ingrained approval of high-handed and unaccountable police behavior. Despite McKinley’s contention that Hutchens has “turned things around” after the departure of the deplorable Mike Carona, there is precious little evidence that any institutional attitudes have changed at all. In fact, quite the contrary. From examples of in-house secrecy and stonewalling, mistreatment of citizens, to even spying on elected County Supervisors, the Sheriff’s Department has shown itself to be the same old operation as ever. The only difference is that now Hutchens is running cover instead of Carona.
Ba da bing! (wacky graphic swiped from Orange Juice Blog)
The latest example is provided by the OC Weekly’s Scott Moxley, here. It seems a couple of deputies were caught fabricating testimony about threatening a suspect during a Disneyland area drug bust at a preliminary hearing. The DA later dropped most of the charges against the guy who had been arrested; correspondence from the DAs office to the Sheriff about the problem were simply ignored. The deputies involved not only seem to have escaped disciplinary action, but have been awarded medals for valor for a Costa Mesa drug bust that supposedly occurred on the same day as the other arrest!
Here’s Moxley’s curt summaton:
The sheriff, who has promised to restore deputy accountability in the wake of the Mike Carona corruption scandals, refused to be interviewed for this story. Her command staff and media-affairs team repeatedly blocked my attempts to reach Catalano for comment.
Anyhow, in case we needed any other evidence, we now know exactly what kind of police management our former Chief admires, and we ought to remember that when and if he decides to run for office.
Former State Senator Joe Dunn has submitted a proposal to the OC Board of Supervisors that would register and track the activities of lobbyists at the County, as reported in the OC Reg by Jennifer Muir.
In the article Dunn is careful to point out that his mission is to restore faith in government rather than to stem any specific corruption. Well we don’t have to be so polite: for months we have been complaining about the circles of influence and money that run things in the County. There’s nothing wrong about knowing who is paid to peddle influence and whom they are peddling it to. The only people who will try to make this look troublesome are the ones who don’t want a light shined on their activities.
Some of the items that Muir describes in the Dunn proposal are not necessary – such as a registry fee, and some of the information – like the amount a lobbyist is paid is irrelevant. The piddling stuff can be worked out. And let’s not forget that people like Nick Berardino and Wayne Quint of the OCEA and OCSD unions are paid lobbyists, too – paid by their members to get as many concessions for themselves that they can. They should be included in any program that monitors lobbyists.
The Repugz and their blowholes will probably be decrying their loss of free speech and will forecast a tsunami of paperwork and bureaucracy – which is pure malarkey. An on-line registry could be created and maintained for next to nothing, and could be accessible by the public all the time. The Supervisors have paid staff with hardly anything better to do who can keep their bosses activities updated.
For some reason Dunn is trying to get this on the Supervisor’s January 12th agenda at the last moment which seems sort of odd. If he gets no help from the BoS he says he’ll get it on the November ballot via petition.
One of our eagle-eyed Friends has noted that for the past two weeks The Fullerton News Tribune’s Barbara Giasone has written articles about a fellow named Marty Burbank doing good deeds, here and here.
Well good deed doing is fine, and we applaud good deed doers, but really, were either of these newsworthy in any real sense?
See, the problem we’re having is that Marty Burbank has shown himself to be a big City Hall cheerleader in the past year, here. And on top of that he’s running for Fullerton City Council in 2010. So is it more than just the coincidence of a local minor philanthropist getting his name in the paper? Hmm. Since we had never even heard of the guy (or any previous good deeds) until last summer may we be forgiven a little cynicism? But really, wouldn’t the same thing have occurred to Giasone? Maybe it did. And maybe she’s just passing along stuff from a campaign PR guy.
One of our Friends just returned from a mind-dumbing tour of the red county blog where she came across these comments on a post about another life-like Sheriff candidate or other:
ANON
Says the same guy calling people Mullahs LOL…
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 12/23/09 – 12:31 PM »
…my comment is on-target, while Ltpar’s accusation is a straw man.
You FFFFers DO behave like Taliban mullahs. The reaction to any dissent from your blog’s fluid Koran — whatever it happens to be that particular day — is a hail of ad hominem attacks and personal denunciations.
It’s no wonder you’re all afraid to attach your names to your blog.
Let’s see if we’ve got this right. Some unknown commenter says something to annoy Cunningham and suddenly he claims it’s one of us! Too funny. What’s even funnier is that he claims we have a fluid “Koran” as the basis of our blog. Poor, dumb Jerb still doesn’t get it. We are not a partisan political blog. We want our electeds to act responsibly and with accountability. It’s only in the sad, slimy precincts of Red County where political party principles are supposed to hold sway. But of course they don’t.
Mr. Cunningham clearly needs professional help. And being the generous and big-hearted folks that we are at FFFF, we have once again retained the services of the renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Reinhold Ott, of the Schwabian Institut fur Psychologie in Tubingen, Germany, (at our own expense) to analyze Mr. Cunningham’s problem.
The penetrating gaze of Dr. Reinhold Ott
Says Herr Doktor Ott:
Although the information provided about this case is necessarily sparse, there is enough background material one may discover searching your blog to reach some conclusions, albeit tentative ones.
The subject has fairly obviously attained a mid-level of paranoia that is likely the result of unresolved id/superego issues that possibly extend back into childhood.
Being involved in politics as a fringe character has no doubt heightened a sense of impotence that exacerbates an underlying suspicion that the subject is a minor functionary, a mere tool if you will, in a large machine whose operators control him and many others like him.
Clinical exhibit A
The guilt/anger tension of suspecting to be manipulated will intensify the paranoiac delusion, as will the destructive underlying emotional attachment to the manipulators – yet another issue that likely reaches back into early stages of personality development.
In this case the subject lashes out at evidently disconnected or irrelevant targets while the principal cause of torment goes unaddressed. Such behavior is likely to continue until the underlying issues are resolved in a satisfactory manner.
Geez, thanks, Doc, I guess. Looks like this problem’s not going to be fixed anytime soon.
I don't mind being led around just as long as I don't know where they're taking me!
A few items in 2009 have caused me to reflect on the way things go in Fullerton, the way things have always gone, in fact. My poodle friends have a saying: la plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose. Man, that’s Fullerton all over!
In Fullerton, no screw-up, no cluster f, no civic disaster ever goes away if the city staff doesn’t want it to. They’ll dig in their heels and start the ol’ push-back as soon as it looks like something they really want is about to get torpedoed.
Consider the absolutely horrible decision to relocate the McDonald’s outlet at a jaw-dropping cost of six million bucks. Not even the most compliant council could swallow that one, and ours pulled the plug on it (so we thought, foolish us!) last summer. But within a a few weeks, the Redevelopment staff cooked up a “new” plan for the brainless “Fox Block” scheme. And guess what? It too, involved relocating McDonald’s – just not all the way to the corner. Geez, wasn’t anybody paying attention? That episode was so bad that it really crossed the line of insubordination. But did anybody on the council say a word? ‘Course not. This is Fullerton!
Of course the real problem is is the sort of people that we keep electing to the City Council. The mentally lame, the incompetent, the inert; people who by political and personal inclination identify with the bureaucracy instead of the citizens and taxpayers of Fullerton; people who dodge responsibility. Of the current crop, only Shawn Nelson really seems to take offense at being lied to and led around by the nose like a prize bull. And speaking of bull, Sharon Quirk seems to have finally realized that her advisors have their own agendas that more likely than not are incongruous with the interests of the rest of us. Well, that’s some progress, anyway.
What will 2010 bring? More of the same, no doubt. This is Fullerton. If there’s any hope for us the brain-dead gerontocracy must go. And by gerontocracy I mean the ossified geriatric thinking displayed by councilmembers of all ages, and the interests they represent. Of course Bankhead must go. Jones, too. And Keller. But if they’re replaced with stooges like Marty Burbank or Pat McKinley what the hell’s the difference?
Well let’s throw out a few issues to track to see how bad, or good, things will be in 2010 as far as accountability goes:
Will the council finally once and for all end the Fox Block scam?
Will Keller, Quirk, and Nelson stick to their promise to put the issue of term limits on the June ballot?
Will the council quit wasting time and energy on the idiotic Transportation Center master plan?
Will the council give up on the bogus Redevelopment expansion?
Will the council ditch the moronic “at-large” members of commissions altogether?
Will the council demand accountability on the UP park scandal before they sink another dime into more Redevelopment of it? Will they tell the city manager to quit making unilateral policy decisions?
Will the council have the courage (very little required really) to forget the useless UP ROW “trail”?
Will the council quit subsidizing and encouraging illegal behavior by downtown bars and dance halls?
Well, really, the list is endless and the Friends could no doubt supply their own favorites. Bon chance!
You FFFFers DO behave like Taliban mullahs. The reaction to any dissent from your blog’s fluid Koran — whatever it happens to be that particular day — is a hail of ad hominem attacks and personal denunciations.
It’s no wonder you’re all afraid to attach your names to your blog.