Setting The Bar Low – Page 66 – Friends For Fullerton's Future

December 8, 2011Dead heads

FPD Alerts Public On Sex Offender

Well, here’s the information provided by Andrew Goodrich & Co. about some dude who needs to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Everybody’s supposed to be scared. At least this loser did his time.

Too bad Pat KcKinley’s boys never bothered to alert the women of Fullerton that a serial molester of women, Albert Rincon was prowling the streets of Fullerton preying upon precisely those women McKinley would characterize as not credible. See, Rincon was one of Fullerton’e Finest. Really.

And he was actually put back on the streets after a little sensitivity training.

December 4, 2011December 4, 2011Behind Closed Doors

You Said What You Said

by Mr. Peabody147 Comments

Politicians are forever saying asinine things and then denying they said them. Small time politicians like our own mutton head Don Bankhead have been getting away with this sort of thing for years. Televised council meetings have helped expose the intra-noggin confusion that exists in minds like Bankhead’s, but youtube has really been invaluable.

A while back we ran a post that highlighted Bruce Whitaker rightfully taking Bankhead to task for sharing his opinion that Fullerton would be ghost town without Redevelopment. No, no said Bankhead, testy-like. He really said “downtown Fullerton.” Forget that neither would be a ghost town without Redevelopment – that’s just Big Gummint Bankhead passing along all the lies he’s swallowed over the years, and of course his own campaign literature year after dreary year – taking credit for “revitalizing” DTF over and over and over and over and over again.

Here’s what Bankhead really said, verbatim, an insult to the hundreds of businesses in DTF and in the rest of the city that never took a nickel of Bankhead’s largess:

Or, to put it another way:

December 2, 2011December 2, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

For The Next Council Meeting – A Public Reading

by The Fullerton Shadow63 Comments

FPD — The City's eyes were badly "bloused." Again.

I strongly urge each and every Friend of Freedom in Fullerton to take with them a copy the most recent OC Weekly to the next Fullerton City Council meeting, on December 6th.

Why? To read!

A speaker should begin reading aloud and into the record Marisa Gerber’s excellent exposition of the Fullerton Police Department’s Culture of Corruption. Pick up where your predecessor left off when his three minutes are up and the mike gets shut off. Keep going until you have made the Three Blind Brontosauruses and their Rotarian claque listen to the whole damned article.

At the end I would challenge any sane, honest person not to acknowledge the undeniable evidence that Pat McKinley’s police force degenerated into a sinkhole of corruption; and that that Bankhead and Jones are guilty of letting it happen as they abandoned their sworn responsibility to the citizens of Fullerton.

It’s very clear. They sold us out to their pals in the police union. Let’s be sure to remind them why they are being recalled!

November 27, 2011November 27, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

We Get Mail

by Mr. Peabody274 Comments

Here’s a little message we got at FFFF Central Ops today. This seems to be the talking point of law enforcement trolls in the Kelly Thomas matter. Blame dear old Dad for neglect, and now for wanting to cash in. This writer actually tries (without success) to redeem his/her ignorance and appalling spelling and grammar by admitting that the cops who murdered Kelly should be punished (well Hell, that’s mighty big of ya).

Name:
Email:
Privacy: You may publish this, but protect my identity

Subject: mr thomas’s alterior motives

so kelly thomas’s father threw kelly out of the house, put him on the street, and put him in an arm bar to force him onto a psych unit. hiis son was starving and homeless for years, but now all of a sudden mr thomas cares about him? he just wants millions out of this..yes the officiers should go to jail but mr thomas put his son out there in those volatiile condiitons simply because hiis son did not want to take his meds…if mr thomas cared about kelly’s wellbeing so much he would not put him on the streets you would think that that would be more dangerous for someone’s health than being off a drug

Of course we have been all over this ground before and if you believe that Kelly’s parents had the legal or practical ability to restrain their boy and force him to take medication you are a damned fool. In any case this simple, inescapable, unavoidable truth remains: if Ramos, Wolfe, Cicinelli, Blatney and Klein had not killed him, Kelly Thomas would be be alive today.

As far as a big payout is concerned, I’m wondering if advertising Ron Thomas’ greed is going to be the tact taken by the Three Recalled RINOs and their misbegotten backers, in an attempt to deflect criticism for their own dismal failures, before and after the murder.

So far the Three Tree Trunks have adamantly refused to even admit that there is a Culture of Corruption that runs through the police department – a culture created by McKinley’s incompetence (or worse) and nurtured by Jones and Bankhead’s sleepy and grumpy indifference. So why not cast about for a somebody else to blame?

November 27, 2011December 8, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Fullerton? (Improved with Fun Pictures!)

by Joe Sipowicz53 Comments

Friends, it’s that time of year when the Fullerton City Council selects one of its number to be the voice and face of Fullerton to the community, and beyond.

Some folks say the title of Mayor is really only just a name for another voting member of the council; the person who just manages (or mismanages, as the case may be) the meetings, and signs documents approved by a council majority.

JonesMouthOpenFor Business — Ah resemble that remark, bah golly!

But consider this: how might the world, the nation, the State and the County have perceived Fullerton, if, as the Kelly Thomas police murder saga unfolded, Fullerton’s mayor had been other than the cantankerous southern-fried buffoon who, by all appearances treated the whole event as an annoying inconvenience on his way to a ribbon-cutting.

Which brings us to the December 6th vote. Last year Pat McKinley weaseled out on supporting Sharon Quirk-Silva for the number two spot, as he, at the behest of the repuglican establishment, joined Bankhead and Jones in keeping the Democrat Quirk-Silva out of the rotation.

Three-Councilmen — What happens when age overtakes IQ.

Well, as they say, that was then. Under normal circumstances the Ed Royce/Dick Ackerman crowd would love to cut her out again. But this year is different all right, and the Slush Fund Gang can’t afford to alienate any more voters, especially a significant liberal-leaning crowd who may very well relish yet another reason to sign a petition, and then vote to recall the Three Blind Brontosaurii.

The fact that many of these folks also qualified a referendum on the Coyote Hills development issue will cause The Three Silent Sloths’ handlers cause to pause: when the Recall signatures qualify the Fullerton lefties will have two swings to reverse the Chevron entitlements approved by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.

tricky dick — Heh heh, I'm pretty savvy. If you don't count that Ackerwoman campaign.

Ackerman isn’t stupid (although he has recently made some horrendous underestimations of the electorate). The anti-recall campaign has made a deliberate attempt to woo Fullerton’s liberal/schools/feel-good cadre by attacking a real conservative, FSD Trustee Chris Thompson. Well, okay, maybe Ackerman isn’t smart at all: Thompson out-polled every other candidate in every Fullerton ballot in 2010, so let’s see how that works out for The Dickster.

Still, wait and observe how Quirk-Silva is quietly selected as Mayor by the same bastards that refused her the Mayor Pro Tem job just a year ago.We may even hear lame explanations about last year’s vote

How would that be for cynicism of the lowest kind?

Upon further consideration, I believe this post should address the solitary figure of Bruce Whitaker, a principled conservative who is worth ten armies of Jonses, Bankheads, and McPensions. By virtue of his intelligence, stability, and ethics, Whitaker should be the next Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor in 2013. If that happens I’ll unscrew my right arm and throw it across the room. The Three Silent Slugs will never let that happen. And one more great reason to Recall them.

November 23, 2011February 7, 2012Arts & Architecture

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

by admin49 Comments

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride. When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet. The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006, the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige. At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment. Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage. The bonds were to be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development. That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project. Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes. If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project. However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican. The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language: The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property. The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown. (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

November 19, 2011November 20, 2011Orange County Government

Jerbal’s Back in the News!

by admin213 Comments

After we outed him as one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of OC repuglicanism (and that’s saying a lot), it looks like my old punching bag Matthew J. Cunningham is in the news again.

According to the New Santa Ana blog, Supervisor Bill Campbell looks to be hiring Cunningham’s wife as chief of staff in a new make-work project for which the RINO 3rd District Supervisor is becoming notorious.

Campbell is mercifully (for the taxpayers) termed out at the end of next year and so a rat is apparently leaving the sinking ship. Mrs. Cunningham must need a job, and what better way to misdirect a six-figure income to one of your loyal co-parishioners than give them the job running your office? Mrs. Jerbal, like her husband has close ties to the lobbyist/political handler John Lewis, so they’ve got that going for them, too.

The fact that Mrs. Cunningham ran the Latino outreach for the bigoted and unconstitutional Proposition 8 campaign seems not to be an issue for Campbell who is known as rabidly Catholic: he is the guy who also appointed the pedophile-priest protector Monseignor John Urell to some dopey County commission. Oh yeah, this was the same guy who Cunningham created a support group for after he bugged out of his sex-abuse case deposition and fled to Canada.

Nice folks.

November 19, 2011December 8, 2011Dead heads

Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.

by Joe Sipowicz70 Comments

3 Blind Dinosaurs — Yes, it's man-dated. Someone told me so.

You would think that politicians who have been around as long as the Three Deaf Dinosaurs would at least have enough savvy not to advertise their own misfeasance in office. If you thought that, boy, would you be wrong.

On their website the other day they were blaming the Recall campaign for making an issue of their illegal utility tax that’s been hidden in our water bills. Of course they have to explain that it’s been around for a long, long time; which doesn’t make it any more legal – or ethical. See, the City has been raising $2,500,000 a year by tacking a 10% increase to the amount of your water bill even though there has never been any justification for what is supposed to pay for some sort of “overhead” provided by the City to the water utility.

This big pile of money has been siphoned directly into the General Fund where it has contributed to the salaries, stipends and pensions of Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley and all of McKinley’s boys and girls currently on “administrative leave.” Last spring Mayor Jones defended the ripoff here because it would pay for police – obviously people who have absolutely nothing to do with getting that water into your bath tub. And that’s illegal.

The funniest part of the attack on the Recall is some idiot named Larry Bennett’s ridiculous challenge to water rate payers to find any evidence of the this tax on their water bill. Larry even promises to pay your bill if you can find it.

Which begs the question: how stupid can these assclowns get?

Of course the 10% utility tax can’t be found on our water bills. It never has been shown on them. And that’s another one of the reasons it’s been illegal!

November 18, 2011November 18, 2011Bruce Whitaker

Pat McPension Gets Leash Yanked

by The Desert Rat125 Comments

McPensiononshortleash — Releasing his inner She Bear may be problematic.

Yesterday, on another thread folks were asking about the upcoming vote for next year’s mayor. I’ll be doing a post on that, real soon. In the meantime enjoy this post by the Desert Rat that was originally published on December 13, 2010. It includes some valuable video in which you may watch the Three Deaf Dinosaurs in action.

– Joe Sipowicz

Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. Pat McPension, he of the $215,000 a year pension (yes, you read that right), exercised his second vote in office denying the Mayor Pro Tem job (if you believe in things like fair rotation) to Sharon Quirk-Silva. SQS’s problem is that she is a Democrat, and hence, in some people’s eyes, the embodiment of all evil.

Now why would Pat McPension stick it to a woman who actually endorsed him in his recent election bid? Well, if you don’t know that answer you haven’t been paying attention to Fullerton politics for the past 30 years.

Check out McPension’s opening statement for clues. Then watch the painful yank on his choke chain.

Aha! Lois Godfrey. Queen Bee of the Raymond Hills Repuglican Women, an organization dedicated to promoting RINO candidates just like Pat McPension. In fact her husband was the worst one of the bunch. These idiots actually think Doc Jones is a real conservative!

Now Lois and her electric blue-haired gaggle have been backing these zeroes since the 1980s when their patron saints were Dick Ackerman, Buck Catlin, and the hideous gargoyle, Linda LeQuire.

And of course let us not forget the role of Little Corporal, Ed Royce, for whom no candidate is too old or stupid to be foist upon Fullerton for his own purposes.

So McPension owes his dubious political accomplishment to these worthy repuglicans; and at the first opportunity they must have made it very clear to their new boy what was expected of him from those who got him elected.

Just for the Hell of it I added Sharon Quirk-Silva’s pretty dignified admonition to her colleagues after the vote. While I don’t agree with a lot of her politics, I will note for the benefit of the brain dead repuglicans whom I know read this blog:

Quirk voted against the illegal Redevelopment expansion. She voted against the worthless Richman housing project. She voted against the idiotic Transportation Center Master Boondoggle. Your repuglican heroes voted for all three!

So go stick that in your blue wigs and smoke it!

November 17, 2011Behind Closed Doors

How To Blow $17,000

by Mr. Peabody237 Comments

The Good Old Days — The good old days...

Item #3 on yesterday’s agenda was a request by Acting Chief-Until-Mike-Sellers-Pulls-His-Head-Out-and-Comes-Back-to-Work Hamilton to buy some spiffy raincoats for his lads. 200 to be precise, at a cost of $17,000. That’s $85 bucks a pop, and presumably Hamilton got a great discount for quantity.

These uber-raincoats meet some sort of Federal guideline for work in “federal-aid” highways right-of-ways (weren’t you losing sleep worrying about that?). And naturally the current coats are old and only “water resistant.” Typical. in government resource mismanagement is always used as an excuse for big, new, outlays.

But consider this: right now Fullerton’s entire police force numbers about 140 (give or take, depending on how many are on paid or unpaid administrative leave and can’t work on any highway, federal-aid or otherwise. Then there’s the fact that not all 140 are on duty at any one time. Then there’s the fact that only a fraction of the force will actually be on patrol when it’s actually raining and might be needed to stand around after a car crash. Finally there’s the obvious fact that these people really ought to be able to share a few dozen of the same infrequently used garments.

Please note that because the money is from asset seizure and not General Fund, the requestor is unashamed to make such a profligate request.

So how did our esteemed city council vote? Apparently it passed on the Consent Calendar nod 5-0.