The rough surface belied the literary genius lurking beneath...
How else can I explain the weird post put up on the Mauve County blog by a guy called Thomas Anthony Gordon accusing me of “voter intimidation?”
You see I busted Gordo last week for being the guy who was circulating last minute petitions for Harry Sidhu’s carpetbagging effort to get himself elected to the GOP Central Committee for yet another district (69th AD) that he doesn’t live in. Sean Mill over at the OJ Blog has also done a post on the comical doings of Gordo.
Gordon responded by claiming that my publishing the petition forms was a species of intimidation. Imagine that! Sharing a public document – with the public! The horror! Does Gordon really think these worthy folks might be ashamed at promoting the circus carnie campaigns of Hide and Seek Sidhu?
My loyal troops will follow me almost anywhere if the price is right...
And could it really be that the charming Gordon is really just ashamed at being found out to be the lackey of the perjurer Sidhu? Well, that would presuppose a sense of shame, as Joe Sipowicz would say.
Still he didn’t really believe anybody was going to swallow that load, did he?
If somebody were teaching a class of young bureaucrats and politicians on the art of how to really screw something up and get a way with it, he might very well use the County of Orange’s acquisition of the building at 433 Civic Center West as textbook material.
Maybe we can...aw, Hell, tear it down.
As we have detailed here, the building was purchased at the beginning of 2008 for $2.1 million by the Board of Supervisors, at the behest of County Clerk, Tom Daly. The ostensible purpose was to accommodate the overflow of paper in the County’s archives, of which Daly is chief custodian.
The job requires no qualifications except getting the most votes.
Somehow, almost inexplicably, the County staff in the then RDMD building and real estate sections claimed to have checked out the building and found it acceptable; the County CEO Tom Mauk recommended to the Supervisors an “as-is” purchase, another inexplicable decision. As later events revealed, the County staff’s involvement in this acquisition was utterly disastrous and placed the Board in what has become an acutely embarrassing situation.
So why did the so-called professionals make the determinations they did? There aren’t a lot of choices. They were either lobbied by Daly; or they simply did what they thought Daly wanted them to do; or they are completely incompetent and should be immediately terminated for gross negligence.
Who did what, now?What? Why? How?Good thing the Ackermans never found out.
I also note that the Board of Supervisors are endowed with ample budgets to employ able and competent staff. So what happened to these all these gifted people? Chris Norby, John Moorlach, and Janet Nguyen each voted for this. Where were their personal staff members? Was there not one competent person among all these well-paid supervisorial aides who could have raised a red-flag? How come not one of the Supervisor’s aides walked a couple hundred yards to examine a decrepit building that staff was recommending purchase, as-is? And why didn’t an “as-is” purchase raise a serious red flag to the Supervisors themselves, all three of whom purport themselves to be fiscal conservatives? Would any three of these folks buy property with their own money “as-is?”
And how come none of these same Supervisors argued for an examination of alternatives to acquiring real estate to house the paper overflow?
Or was “rubber stamping” simply the modus vivendi of these Superviors and their direct employees? I think we have to assume that the same narrow possibilities that apply to the bureaucrats above, also apply to the Supervisors and their personal staffs.
Sometime in 2009 the County hired Kishimoto Architects to do a space and physical assessment of 433 Civic Center West. We can only speculate at this point what caused this to occur, but since a competent assessment of a property normally occurs before and not after a property is purchased, I really have to wonder. But the building was acquired “as-is.”
Kishimoto’s assessment was grim. The building failed to meet the County Clerk’s space needs; and it was deficient or obsolete in every conceivable way and can’t be used by the public. It will cost additional millions to make it work; but the original investment appears to be a dead loss, given the scope and cost to fix the building.
Off we go, into the Wild Blue Yonder...
And here’s the rub, accountability-wise. So many people have their fingerprints all over this disaster that it becomes virtually impossible to pin effective culpability on anybody, and hence, accountability. Tom Daly is the prime architect of this fiasco, to be sure; but as his adherents are quick to point out, staff recommended this and the Board approved it.
I didn't do it...
So Daly can shrug and point to the incompetent staff. Staff is always protected as the poor, under-compensated civil servants that they are; and after all they were just following direction, they’ll say. Plus, the lax overseer of the RDMD has slinked off to retirement with a massive, inflation-linked pension.
Bryan Speegle. The door didn't hit him on the way out.
The Supervisors’ aides can shrug it off, too. Daly wanted it, not us; plus, our crack County staff said everything was hunky dory. And besides we were out at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast schmoozing with the locals.
It was Norby's fault. That's why I'm putting all these new people in his office.
And what of the Supervisors themselves, who are responsible to nobody but the voters, and who have so signally failed them? Norby has already moved on, and Moorlach faces no opposition for re-election this fall. Janet Nguyen is the only one who is going to have to answer to the electorate on this issue. She’d better.
Every now and then word filters back to us about some zany corn pone antics by our own beloved municipal treasure, Dick Jones, at the County Vector Control District meetings. See, Jones is supposed to be representing us in this agency whose mission to do battle with the evil forces of rats, ants, and mosquitoes.
Our sources inform us that at the last meeting’s closed session that was addressing the future of the arrogant General Manger, Gerard Goedhart, Jones just lost it, stood up, declared that he was quitting, and left the room. Fellow boardmembers were nonplussed, to say the least.
Good grief. Just last year this same nincompoop popped his cork at a meeting.
Now, apparently, he just quit. He’s still got 21 months to go in his “term” on the Board.
Maybe it’s all for the best. And maybe Jones is actually onto something. If he can’t handle the annoyance without petulant outbursts, he should go. And he really ought to think about resigning from the City Council while he’s at it.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Matthew J. Cunningham started glossing over the fact that his boy Harry Sidhu committed perjury twice when he falsified voter registration documents. After all, his boss John Lewis is now one of the piglets sucking the mama sow dry.
The one on the left...
It didn’t take very long.
He’s up to his old tricks again: diversion, obfuscation, and trying to change the subject. First he says Tony Bushala is Shawn Nelson’s neighbor. Irrelevant to anything, and of course not even true. But let’s not let facts get in the way of defending the indefensible. His point, perfectly predictable coming from this self-appointed paragon of morality, is that the whole thing is only political, as if Sidhu’s signature on an official document means, you know, nothing.
The registration was so brief that it doesn't count. Sidhu gets a re-do.
Apparently, the concept of perjury is a really flexible concept for Cunningham who seems willing to concede that his boy never lived at the beautiful Calabria Apartments. It was only a “brief registration,” you see. Brief registration? Damn, it was only 30 days! But what’s that got to do with anything? The registration was never aligned with any residency. It was a fraud. An outright lie. But are we to accept that the concept of the truth only kicks in when it’s convenient for Sidhu?
Well, good luck selling that bullshit to anybody smarter than Brett Barbre.
My word is my bond. Trust me.
A second post addresses the breathtaking revelation that Bushala’s investigation into the Sidhu scam was conducted by Sheriff candidate Bill Hunt. Wow, now there’s a great discovery, Columbus. Bushala put the guy’s letterhead in his post! Another example of Cunningham dodge ball, having zero to do with the fact that his boy Sidhu falsified public documents. Of course Cunningham proceeds to insinuate that something fishy is going on because one of our bloggers at FFFF has been posting positive stuff for Hunt’s Sheriff campaign.
Um, Chip, I think I have something I need to tell you...
Say what? Influence peddling, and profiting from same, is Cunningham’s line of work, not ours. Nothing to disclose here. I’m not even voting for Hunt.
Pathetic. Sorrowful. Deceitful. Hypocritical. Did I say shameful. No. That would imply a sense of shame.
It looks as if Mr. Cunningham has really decided to plumb the depths of irrelevance and hypocrisy. Let’s wait and count the hours until Cunningham spits out one of his patented “the guy’s not to be trusted” posts against someone who is running against a John Lewis candidate.
Well its a free country. And pretty soon for him, it’s going to be a really lonely one.
Let’s set aside the whole trustworthiness, perjury, incarceration problems of Harry Sidhu for a moment. Well, not the trustworthy thing.
When I learned other day about Sidhu carpetbagging two different districts in the same election I was intrigued. See, he’s carpetbagging the 4th Supervisorial District as we all know. It turns out he is also carpetbagging the 69th Assembly District in order to try to get himself on the GOP Central Committee for that district.
The idea here seems to be to maximize Smilin’ Sidhu’s exposure to the electorate in the 4th District election, and hence get more votes for the universal Mayor Pro Tem.
My first thought was, gee, how much overlap is there between those two districts? How many Republican votes are there in that overlap, anyhow? Very many? But most importantly, if he gets elected to the Central Committee, what kind of living and lifestyle opportunities is that going to leave the rich dude and his family who really live in an “elegant estate” in the Anaheim Hills?
Swimmin' pools, movie stars...
The answer is not many. The only overlap is a strip of territory that extends north from where Sudhu is pretending to live now, through central Anaheim between Harbor Boulevard and East Street. It gets as far north as Sycamore. Much of this turf is commercial and industrial, and much of it, well, barrio. And all of it is pretty marginal for a guy who currently owns his own tennis court, swimming pool, aviary, and a boat called the The Taj Mahal. The shopping carts won’t impress visitors, that’s for sure.
Of course Sidhu could move into our friend Colony Rabble’s neighborhood and remodel a vintage home. But how likely is that? Harry better hope the pit bulls don’t get the peacocks.
A gift subscription?
If Sidhu wins a place on the GOP Central Committee, will he just stay put as a renter on Lucky Way (that so far hasn’t been very lucky for him)? Or, what seems a lot more likely, will he just immediately quit and head back to the hills?
Any way you slice it, it’s a pretty reasonable conclusion that his GOP Central Committee bid is just another Sidhu scam – a petty vote grubbing scheme in which the utterly arrogant Sidhu thumbs his nose at Republicans in the 69th Assembly District whom he has zero intention of representing.
If they really wanted to punish Sidhu, the Republicans in this District should elect him to the Central Committee – and roll out the welcome mat.
Every week they insult my intelligence all over again. Why do they do that?
I really thought the OC Register/Fullerton News Tribune had gone about as far south as was humanly possible. I was wrong. Yesterday they produced an on-line “piece” by a “columnist” named Dennis Bode.
It was dressed up to look like an article about remodeling your house – which is about as newsworthy as tulips in the front yard. Pretty soon the article started talking about house prices and foreclosures and REO’s, etc. Upon closer inspection it turns out the thing is nothing but a real estate come-on by Bode who, it turns out, is a real estate agent.
Sweet Emancipator, are they joking? Was this an infomercial that somehow missed the “advertisement” label and got put in the news tab, instead? Or has the Register/News Tribune descended to printing ads under the guise of news? Other ads on the page are clearly labeled “advertisement.”
Did Mr. Bode pay for that ad? I have to wonder.
This is beyond incompetent and lazy. This is unethical. But what do I know? I’m just a dead dog with a bust-up eye socket and a bad under bite. Arf.
Everybody knows that traditional print journalism is on the way out. Why? Lazy citizens? Sensory overload? More convenient access? All of the above?
Dying papers like the Orange County Register are fighting a rear-guard action by turning their print edition into a dumbed-down website-looking format with lots of pictures and human interest stories for us idiots. And of course they have gone on-line with stuff like their political gossip column “Total Buzz.” Which might be better termed “Total Schmooze.”
Rather than actually dedicate itself to reporting real, relevant news, the Register has decided to dedicate its employees’ talents toward the inane, and to the political flackery of Martin Wisckol and Frank Mickadeit. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the worthies than run the Register that Orange County is a market that is starved for local news and, coincidentally, that it is run by a group of political overseers who operate the place like their own private plantation. Seems like an opportunity to do real reporting, right?
But yesterday the Register hit a new low, even for them.
I just can't help myself.
Consider this, um, monument to cutting edge journalism as Jennifer Muir shares the embarrassing shoe fetish of Brett Barbre with her breathlessly waiting readers.
Huh? FFFF has recently disclosed a series of embarrassing expenditures by the County Clerk, Tom Daly, including a $48,000 contract to the very same Brett Barbre to “study” an athletic hall of fame, and who then turned around and kicked back $1000 into Daly’s political campaign.
And what about the $1700 as month retainer that has been paid out by Daly for over five years to a Sacramento “consultant” to do – nothing. And how about the County spending $2,100,000 two years ago at Daly’s behest on a tear-down building that was supposed to house County’s archives? Of any interest to the intrepid journalists at the Register? Naw.
It's not just a girl thing...
Instead we get pictures of what shoes the political hacks are wearing at the Registrar of Voters Office. They think we want to look at pictures of people’s feet. Meanwhile a lowly blog is forced to actually do a newspaper’s job.
Well, we can take a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that the Register’s days are numbered and that soon its employees will be doing (paid) PR work, or will be blogging for food.
Still, it does seem shame that nobody in the business is willing to try to fill the void where local news used to be.
I can only wonder what’s it’s like to have virtually no moral bearing – to be at the whim of whichever authority figure is pushing you at a given moment. Like a leaf blown in the wind.
Today a supporter of Hugh Nguyen’s campaign to unseat the deplorably incompetent Democrat County Clerk Tom Daly passed along the news that Matthew J. Cunningham of Mauve County fame had a devoted an entire post to the untrustworthiness of Nguyen. His running buddies? The lefties at the LiberalOC blog!
First it seems that he, like his candidate Tom Daly, takes exception to Nguyen’s ballot designation.
He also makes a big harrumph about Nguyen changing the story he told some of Cunningham’s Blue County boyfriends a couple of months ago about the unsolicited ad Art Pedroza is running for him on the OJ blog. You’re joking, right?
But here’s the kicker. Hugh Nguyen is mostly shifty and not to be trusted because when he was soliciting endorsements last summer for the Clerk-recorder job he didn’t inform those folks of the presence of his wife Laura Cunningham in the race, thereby precluding them from endorsing her!
Of course the idea that Nguyen was under any moral or legal obligation to advertise the hapless and long-defunct Mrs. Jerbal campaign is so preposterously comical that no more need be said about it.
Cunningham likes his style...
Meanwhile from the vantage of his lofty moral authority Cunningham seems unable to discern the manifest failures of his boy Tom Daly. You know, like the $48,000 Daly passed along to a campaign consultant for “studying” a sports hall of fame; like the $100,000+ he has wasted (and is still wasting) on monthly retainers for a do-nothing Sacramento “consultant;” oh yeah, and let’s not forget the $2,100,000 chunked into the toilet on the acquisition of the uninhabitable building at 433 Civic Center West. What was the issue again? Oh, yeah – trustworthiness!
On top of all that, Daly is a Democrat and Cunningham is supposed to be a conservative Republican! No bueno!
No, sir. I do not need a wordsmith.
Come to think of it, Cunningham has never said a word about the two fraudulent voting registrations of one Harry C. Sidhu, the 4th District carpetbagger who lied about living at the Calabria Apartments on two separate public documents. Which sounds a lot like voter fraud and perjury if you ask me.
And speaking of shifty, how about Sidhu’s campaign signs that advertise the carpetbagger simply as “Mayor Pro Tem” despite the fact that they are posted in cities where Sidhu is not on the city council? Hows that for shifty?
The beautiful Calabria Apartments. No furniture was ever moved in. Did Sidhu sleep on the floor?
But oh yeah, his boss John Lewis is working for Sidhu now, too; so that means that the regular rules don’t apply, see?
I explained that there really is no lower class of organism than the professional political campaign parasite – a rather shocking combination of character traits that most of us can’t even begin to fathom. And I felt constrained to point out that sadly, many politicians are in the same class of humanoid.
No crowding, please. There is plenty to go around, I assure you.
In the case of Sidhu I pointed out that although his own campaign people laugh at his carpetbagging and evident buffooneries they are there because Sidhu has a lot of cash he is willing to waste in order to satisfy his desperate hunger for political recognition, and they will be there until it is all gone – no matter how many offices he runs for.
I’ve never heard much good about Diane Harkey, the State Assemblywoman from, um, down there somewhere.
But that changed dramatically when a Friend of mine and a devout High Speed Rail opponent sent me a link to a San Mateo County Times story that talks about Harkey’s attempt to kill the bond sale to raise $9.5 billion dollars and start putting it into the greasy palms of Curt Pringle and Harry Sidhu’s backroom buddies.
It seems Ms. Harkey thinks it’s a poor idea for the State to take on more debt given its current catatonic fiscal condition. And maybe she’s come to the realization that “jobs, jobs, jobs” at the cost of billions more indebtedness is not a conservative recipe for success. So she’s introducing legislation to stop the the floating o’ the bond (ambiguous St. Pat’s Day reference).
And I say good for her!
And I also say it’s time for Fullerton politicians and residents to figure out what the alignment impacts will have on Fullerton and how much that’ll cost us.
