Setting The Bar Low Archives - Page 98 of 110 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

May 12, 2010May 12, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Water District Appears to Be Stonewalling For Disgraceful Director

On April 14, I made a public records request of the Municipal Water District of Orange County to get the travel related expenses of Director Brett Barbre. You remember this fine fellow, don’t you? He’s the guy who was paid $48,000 by Tom Daly to “study” the idea of a sports hall of fame. He also kicked back $1000 into Daly’s campaign kitty. Now that doesn’t look very good does it? Especially for a Republican. Or for any honest man, really.

Part of Barbre’s supposed labors for Daly included a trip to Boston to visit some sports museum there (he never even bothered contacting the folks who started the first one right here in OC!). In his ‘report” he documented a side trip to Fenway Park. Barbre’s later plaint to Jennifer Muir that he paid for that Boston trip himself seems to have made an impression on the lassitudinous journalistic curiosity of Ms Muir, but not on mine. I wanted to find out if maybe the Boston junket itself wasn’t some sort of side trip already paid for by the Water District. I’ve just become so darn cynical when it comes to repuglicans.

And so I asked for Barbre’s travel expenses for the district.

Two week later on April, 28th (four days late) I got the District’s response from someone called Darcy M. Burke, Director of Public Affairs. I received no documents at all. What I got was an e-mail that attached a simple spreadsheet tallying Barbre’s expenses into periodic totals, presumably assembled by Burke. Not a single bit of specific information did I receive although I did get an unsolicited commercial about how much Director Barbre’s junketeering brings home to the Water District. Hmm.

Okay. So now I was really really curious about why they’re not releasing documents – just regurgitated, masticated, and useless pabulum.

Since April 28th I have left several messages and sent several e-mails following up with a demand for the specifics that should have been provided in the first place. All my efforts to communicate with the Water District’s Director of Public Affairs were met with a stony silence, until yesterday when Burke informed me that these things take time. And that only makes me more curious than ever about why she might be stonewalling.

Think they’re trying to hide something?

May 11, 2010May 11, 2010Dead heads

Nelson is a Defense Lawyer; Sidhu and Galloway Need One

by Joe Sipowicz30 Comments

Well, today today the first “Shawn Nelson is an Evil Defense Lawyer” hit mailboxes, just like we knew it would. This has been the anonymous refrain from the John Lewis & Co. hacks and flacks since day one. We even busted Tom Daly’s supposed “campaign manager” doing it on our blog. The mail piece came from Sidhu, the phony resident of the 4th District.

The funny thing about it is, so what? The obvious conclusion is that people don’t like lawyers, and defense lawyers defend creeps. Sure they do. They also defend innocent people who are being railroaded by ambitious and unscrupulous cops and DAs, and who are accused of all sorts of heinous things. I doubt if there’s a reasonable person who hasn’t contemplated what the police power of the government could do to them if they were falsely accused of something.

Come to think of it, defense attorneys even work for people who commit perjury by signing their name to official documents that they know aren’t true. Let’s see, can anybody think of someone who has recently hired a $400 an hour defense lawyer? Oh, that’s right! Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu just hired Paul Meyer of Costa Mesa to help him try to beat the perjury rap we tagged him with.

And then there’s the Precious Princess, Lorri Galloway whose entire adult life reads like a low-grade takeoff on The Grifters. Wonder how many lawyers the Galloways have employed over the years? It would probably fill up a law school graduating class!

May 11, 2010May 11, 2010About Us

The Liberal OC – Where The Truth Goes to Die

by Joe Sipowicz10 Comments

Dan C-somethingorother, the pompous Priapus who runs the The Liberal OC blog as a front for hapless, incompetent, or crooked Democrat politicians likes to pretend he’s a real reporter. Who can forget his hushed “this is Dan C-somethingorother reporting” sign-off on that ridiculous “exclusive” about how Precious Princess had received “a series” (actually it was one) ” harassing” phone calls (actually the guy just told Galloway what he thought of her). We told that story, plus how this bozo tried to blame us, here.

Yesterday he offered up a polished scat about eagerly awaiting an impending “hit piece” against Shawn Nelson by Hairball Sidhu. Everything’s legit, see, he has his “sources,” but of course we see through that bullshit right away. John Lewis told Matthew J. Cunningham and Cunningham told Dan C. Way to wear out the reportorial shoe leather, Dan!

Now for the really inaccurate part:

“while Nelson enjoys the advantage of IEs from the Fullerton Friends blog…”

FYI, Intrepid Boy Reporter #1: FFFF is not an IE, has not and will not be one in this election. Get it? Please to be removing cranium from lower colonic cavity. Didn’t they teach you anything in journalism school about facts?

By the way, Dan, since you are a reporter, when are you going to report to your readers Lorraine Galloway’s adventures in Monterey, her multiple bankruptcies, her tax liens, and all those embarrassing judgments that make her patently unfit to run a dog walking business, let alone a county? Don’t worry. We can be your “source.”

May 11, 2010May 10, 2011About Us

John and Ken, Meet Matthew Cunningham

by admin13 Comments

Last Friday afternoon KFI’s John and Ken got hold of our post on the subject, and shared with their listeners the amusing notion that Matthew J. Cunningham of Red County fame actually got paid $200 an hour to listen to their show one day last year.

Here’s what they had to say.

More publicity for the OC Children and Families Commission. Well done!

May 10, 2010May 10, 2010Behind Closed Doors

MORE MONKEY BUSINESS AT THE CLERK-RECORDER’S OFFICE; TOM DALY AND HIS PAY-TO-PLAY CONTRACTS.

by Grover Cleveland7 Comments

Daly Really2 — Hey, everyone is good at something!

It looks like we can add another skill to Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly’s public money squandering resume. As previously reported here, not only does Daly excel at wasting public money and doling out jobs to his contributor’s relatives, it appears that he also hands out no-bid contracts to campaign contributors as well. It turns out that the contracts are more of what we’re used to: highly questionable and unaudited relationships, and of course, ultimate failure.

Get a load of this one.

Between 2002 and 2007, Christopher Townsend, who is the president of Townsend Public Affairs, contributed a total of $2600 to Tom Daly’s campaigns. During this period, Townsend was awarded two $60,000 no-bid contracts for “consulting services.” Townsend was awarded these contracts without bidding because of their supposed know-how in obtaining grants from the California Cultural Historical Endowment. What for, you ask?

In late 2005/2006 the grant application was for $150,000 to go to “planning” the archives expansion in the old Courthouse building in Santa Ana. Apparently the contract and the grant application were approved solely on the authority of Daly himself – that’s right, no Board of Supervisor’s oversight.

The big problem was that the grant application was for a building over which the “Manager of the Year” Daly had no authority. Apparently it is controlled by the Harbors Parks and Beaches Department that lets the Clerk-Recorder use it for some of his functions. And seemingly they had no clue what Daly was up to.

Even though Daly got the grant he wanted, the County had to turn the money back in April, 2006 because of the inability of Daly to communicate what he was doing with the other County bureaucrats. The official excuse was “unanticipated space and stakeholder concerns.” Translated from Bureaucratese into English: Big Daly F-up.

Well, there’s $60,000 down the toilet.

Undaunted by failure, late in 2006 the indefatigable Daly was before the Board of Supervisors asking for another $60,000 no-bid contract with Townsend. The motive was the same, but by now Daly’s covetous eye likely rested on the wretched building at 433 West Civic Center, a $2.1 million liability that he would talk the Board into acquiring in 2007. We shared that mess with you, here. The second grant application ended up with a big goose egg, however the purchase of the money pit on Civic Center Drive proceeded headlong, full speed ahead.

Dark-Clouds-looming-500x375 — A river of red ink runs through it...

Another $60,000 chunked into the water hazard.

Oh, dear me. Another Tom Daly fiasco; another example of incompetence and cronyism his pals in the media won’t touch; yet another mauve feather in the dismal repuglican headdress of Daly’s admirer, John Lewis (& Co.) who keeps insisting that the egregious Daly is some sort of “fiscal conservative.”

And good grief, we’ve only just scratched the surface. Be sure to stay tuned.

May 10, 2010May 10, 2010About Us

Another “Grover Cleveland?”

by Grover Cleveland5 Comments

Apparently some Sidhu-supporting John Lewis tool calling himself “Grover Cleveland” has misappropriated my name and is making anti-Nelson squawkings over at the Mauve County blog that seems to have become a haven for the semi-literate backers and hackers of Hide and Seek Sidhu.

This is an imposter, make no mistake about it. Grover Cleveland was tough, smart, and honest – three adjectives that will never be applied to either Harry Sidhu or his leech-like campaign handlers who are only in it ’til Mother’s Milk runs dry.

Piglets — Better score some while you can...

Lying, carpetbagging, union stoogery? Guess again! Not Grover Cleveland. Plus, he would never support an assclown.

Geez, these dunces are too dumb and lazy to come up with their own blog handles.

May 9, 2010May 19, 2010Dead heads

Pacific Strategies – Propagandist for Suffocating Statism

by Grover Cleveland10 Comments

fartboy — I would humbly like to thank the Academy for this recognition...

The other day Orange County’s Most Hypocritical Repuglican (yes, that is one Hell of an achievement) Matthew J. Cunningham coughed up this Red County hairball in criticism of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez:

How very congressional. And also ironic to listen to Loretta Sanchez speaking to a crowd of immigrants who came here seeking the American Dream,, even as she has been voting to make American more suffocatingly statist like the countries they left.

Is he really that breathtakingly unaware of the irony of the mouthpiece for the OC Children and Families Commission dumping on “statism.” Or could it be that he figures that whoever reads his post won’t know about his real day job; and if they do any comments revealing that fact will be deleted.

Aw c’mon Mr. C from Suite C, ‘fess up. You really, really dig suffocating statism; you profit from it and you shill for it. In fact, it’s just about your only real source of income.

Own it.

P.S. Wordsmiths “at the top of their profession” proofread their copy for embarrassing typos.

May 8, 2010May 9, 2010Boohooism

Poor Bella

by Jan Florys Dog6 Comments

As a former abused doggie myself, I know what it’s like to be mistreated. Here is poor “Bella” yanked around as a stage prop by her owner, the infantile 57 year-old airhead Lorri Galloway – who insists on acting like a scatterbrained teenager.

Viewers were shocked when Galloway hoisted this poor girl into the air, putting all her goods on display (not my type, even when I was alive).

We all sort of got the impression that Ms. Galloway would soon be wandering off to her bedroom to have a tea party with her dollies; or maybe play house with the stuffed animals on her bed – Mr. Bonkers and Glenda the Giraffe.

Real nice manicure and coif, though (on Galloway and Bella). Now there’s a couple of high maintenance females.

May 7, 2010May 10, 2011Dead heads

Pacific Strategies – Monitoring John & Ken for Fun and Profit

by Grover Cleveland25 Comments

In our series documenting the PR/lobbyist hungry OC Children and Families Commission we have shown how they have employed local political operative and Red County blog bloviator Matthew Cunningham to propagandize their myriad big-government good works.

We have seen how the preachy Mr. Conservative Republican was paid $200 an hour to do such things as update facebook pages, ghost write articles for liberal Democrats, and perhaps, funniest of all (in a sick sort of way) – coordinate toothbrush distribution to the Diocese. While he was at it, he amassed some mammoth paydays for his “Pacific Strategies” wordsmithing operation.

Jerb2 — The toughest part of the job is thinking up new ways to spend all that gummint dough.

Of course you can’t really propagandize effectively unless you know what the opposition is saying. So enjoy this.

In January, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger called for First 5 California to be eliminated in his 2009-10 budget. Regional commissions would have taken a 60% cut in funding.

KFI radio broadcasters John and Ken went on the offensive, and Cunningham was right there listening in at $200 an hour to formulate his defense of the Welfare State. Here’s the invoice entry:

Full invoice – January 2009

As I said yesterday, it’s way past time to put this Commission under the control of the Board of Supervisors so that at least contracts and policy can be authorized by elected officials in a much more public forum. And maybe instead of fixating on PR the kiducrats can concentrate more resources on actually helping poor children instead of well-off, hypocritical Republicans.

May 7, 2010May 7, 2010Dead heads

FFFF Quadruple Repeat: Sad. Pathetic. Embarrassing.

by The Fullerton Shadow45 Comments

lorripic5_sm — Aw, what a cutie pie. Picked out your prom dress yet?

You know, this post is just too good not to keep sharing with the Friends.

It appears that carpetbagging Precious Princess stopped making her ludicrous “Lorri in 4th gear” videos after the first one bombed so spectacularly.

Too bad. The spectacle of a 57 year-old woman doing her little dress-up teenybopper routine really is priceless.

The Desert Rat

Hardly anymore introduction is necessary. This clueless airhead wants to be a County Supervisor. True, the bar has been set pretty low in the past. But this is ridiculous. I’d rather vote for her little dog “Bella.” Too bad Bella is a carpetbagger, also.

Last summer we thought her “cute shoes” comment was indicative of a frivolous, unlikely candidacy. Now we know better. Oh, and by the way – shame on Anaheim for electing this idiot to their city council.

Enjoy, if you can keep your last meal down.