Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
By now FFFF readers know that the truth and the Fullerton Observer, run by Kennedy Sisters Skaskia and Sharon, are often at odds. These two dimwits seem to think their editorializing and narrative peddling go hand in hand with reporting news.
Well, they’ve done it again.
Thoughts and prayers…
While alerting their readers of the upcoming “Walk on Wilshire” vote on Tuesday, they lead off with this gem:
The city council is set to determine the fate of Walk On Wilshire on Tuesday, January 21, with a session at 5:30pm at Fullerton City Hall, 303 W. Commonwealth Ave. The recommendation is to accept a proposed motion to permanently close W. Wilshire from Harbor to Malden to vehicular traffic, thereby expanding Walk on Wilshire or to open the entire street to traffic by February 2025.
I seen the light!
This is not only completely backwards, but it omits the most important part of the agenda staff report, to wit: closing the whole block is not recommended; rather opening the street back up in February 2025 is the proposed action. There is a back up option to close the street, among several others should the Council decide not to follow the recommended action.
Giving honesty the middle finger…
This statement is tantamount to a lie, and at best can be considered intentional disinformation, the scrofulitic handmaiden that closely follows the Kennedy Sisters where ever they go. It’s clear they want to drum up support for the stupid boondoggle they have come to cherish, and are willing to mislead their fellow travelers into thinking that staff has actually recommended the street closure for the whole block. No, now that I think about it, this isn’t “tantamount” to a lie. It is a lie.
Hmm. Did we lay an egg recently?
But the standard of objective honesty among Fullerton Observer readers seems to be so consistently low and the casual acceptance of subjective ideology so high, that this sort of bullshit passes as journalism among them.
Yes, Friends, the so-called Walk on Wilshire is coming back to the City Council this Tuesday. For the fourth or fifth time this annoying street closure is being reconsidered. I really don’t know how often this mess has been rehashed. But I do know that City staff has turned this temporary remedy for COVID relief into a stupid, near permanent boondoggle. The bureaucrats in City Hall love them some Walk on Wilshire. It offers an opportunity for them to program things there, to collect what little rent comes in, and hide it all under the nonsensical concept of “business development.”
Of course it has nothing to do with business development. No one in City Hall has ever presented a comprehensive cost or budget analysis on this nonsense, and its adherents in the community who want to claim the street and block off cars don’t care. It’s another liberal gesture in which misplaced feelings are ever so more important than cost/benefit study.
One step ahead?
Last fall Mayor Fred Jung added a caveat to a Shana Charles proposal for another three month extension to do even more studying. Jung proposed to take the street closure all the way from Harbor to Malden – the whole damn block. To anybody with any sort of brains this was a non-starter idea meant to spike the 200ft closure one and for all. Naturally, the dopes Charles and Ahmad Zahra greedily went for it, the love the anti-auto gesture so much.
Tuesday’s staff report includes traffic crap bought from consultants by staff (our money, of course) to make the closure seem plausible, one conclusion being that impacts to traffic would be minimal. This is pure bullshit, of course. The comparison numbers between the 100 W. blocks of Amerige and Wilshire are based on the current Wilshire closure, the analogy being that botched surgery has already so weakened the patient that a little more cutting won’t make much difference anyhow.
Did City Manager Levitt see the light?
Fortunately, the City Manager seems to have brought some commonsense to the project. Citing staff’s inability to guarantee there won’t be a traffic impact, and noting the problem of access to businesses and residences on Wilshire, the recommendation is to drop the whole thing. There is also the potential of legal action lurking in the future, so there’s that, too. Staff recommends reopening the whole street to auto traffic and letting businesses on Wilshire pursue the “parklet” option of outdoor dining, a fairly reasonable approach.
Well, Fullerton BooHoo will be out in force on Tuesday to moan and wail about the absolute criticality of the Walk on Wilshire, despite the fact that except for a few silly events planned in desperation, the place is empty most of the time; and the Downtown Plaza, perfectly suitable for this sort of thing, is only a few hundred feet away.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
But appreciation of facts and deployment of common sense can’t be listed among the skillset of people like the Kennedy Sisters and their ilk. But things aren’t looking good for The Walk. Nick Dunlap will recuse himself again, leaving four councilmembers to provide the three votes necessary to keep the boondoggle on life support.
Well, the answer to that question depends on who you are and what you want.
Last Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council agenda featured an item to modify some of the current roster of committees and commissions. The idea was to schedule fewer meetings for some, get rid of “at-large” members in others and in one case, the Active Transportation Committee, roll it into the Transportation and Circulation Committee. The Planning Commission was to be expanded to seven members by adding two at-large members.
Naturally, the true nature of these committees and what they actually accomplish was not part of the discussion.
Almost no city committees are legally necessary according to State law – except, I believe, Library Boards and Planning Commissions. The rest are there, presumably, to give the public a chance to contribute to the charming swindle known as participatory government. This is almost always a fiction, as anybody who has spent any time watching these shows, knows. The committees are little better than rubber stamps.
Never in doubt…
City staff likes committees because it gives them a chance to build momentum behind one of their pet projects – to create an aura of inevitability about this or that. It’s an opportunity to go to the City Council and explain the unanimous support for their item. And if, perchance, a committee shows a little independence then their ideas and their votes are mere suggestions with no legal standing.
Some of the bureaucratic enthusiasm for committees must have waned a bit when Fullerton went to direct Council appointments a few years back. Previously choices were made by review panels made up of council and committee members who could be relied on to pick “sound” people, that is, folks who could be trusted not to rock the proverbial boat.
Application denied…
In the olden days staff liked larger committees. The reasoning seemed to be that the more members you had the more impotent the commission really was.
City Council members like to put friends and allies on committees, and, in the case of the Planning Commission, maybe even someone moving up in Fullerton’s political arena. This is how you build a political machine: you help people, they help you.
It is not uncommon that if there is an annoying member of the public, an irritant at Council meetings, he or she might just be shut up by being put on a committee, becoming part of the team, so to speak. It worked shockingly often. John Henry Habermeyer, Estelle Geddy Professor of Political Science and Economics at RPI for many years, describes the scenario eloquently:
“The answer is to asphyxiate the irritant in a smothering embrace; to draw said miscreant into the circle of government itself by appointing this him to some footling committee or other, thereby causing him to voluntarily silence himself in deference to the grand fraternity to which he has been officially welcomed. He has a name plate; perhaps even a coveted parking space! Many an underdeveloped and agitated ego has been assuaged by such a maneuver and its proprietor thereby silenced.“
Committee members who are not impatient with bureaucratic doubletalk like to be on committees, especially if they can sit up on the dais in the City Council chamber. It makes them feel good about things, an ego boost.
Of course the public is completely unaware or even interested in committee meetings which are almost always held in empty rooms.
Since almost everybody seems to like the current set-up, why the proposed alterations? The staff report referred to economies, efficiencies, and such-like. The verbiage didn’t sound very heart-felt or persuasive and the reader gets the impression of a top down diktat from Mayor Fred Jung to clean things up.
In the end most of the proposed reductions to five directly appointed members of certain commissions was approved, which is basically a smart move. The inconsistent proposal to increase the Planning Commission membership to seven (actually the way it used to be) failed. The motion to keep it the way it is passed 3-2 with Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia voting no.
On a side note, Fullerton Boohoo was at the meeting to display their unhappiness. Why not? The altar of probity, the Fullerton Observer had tried to stir up opposition earlier with one of their editorial/news mishmashes. The funniest part of this effort was to explain that these committees help keep staff “accountable,” an obvious misdirection from the Kennedy Sisters who have never cared about staff accountability before.
Whether or not the changes would have saved anybody time or money is debatable. What is not debatable is that these footling committees are there to look like public participation is going on, when it hardly ever is.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
In the the online edition of their rag, the Fullerton Observer sisters, Sharon and Skaski explain their behavior in intentionally defaming named individuals as purveyors of lies. These were some of the people who contributed to Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, a group that made it its mission to educate the public about the candidate Vivian Jaramillo in the 2024 City Council election.
Skaskia doubles, triples down on her assertion of slander and defamation against poor Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, but claims there was no intent to “harm the reputations of its contributors.” Well, of course there was intent to harm; the inclusion of individual names directly linked to accusations of distributing falsehoods was obviously intentional.
Hmm. Did we lay an egg recently?
It is comical that if you think about it, the Kennedy Sister’s underlying excuse must be that they didn’t know what they were doing. Exculpation through ineptitude! That phrase should be prominent on their Observer header.
Is this a sufficient “full retraction and public apology?”
In an article at their censored Fullerton Observer “blog,” the Kennedy Sisters, Sharon and Skaskia, have posted a story about misleading political advertising in the past election, to wit: political mailers aimed at their darling, Vivian Jaramillo by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform. Tellingly, they didn’t use their names, but rolled out their favorite “staff” byline, when clearly there was an author. Journalism at its best. The theme is “Is there truth behind negative ads?”
Lies, lies, lies. And facts.
This effort is clearly meant to reinforce their position that Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform did indeed engage in “lies” about Jaramillo, and that they, therefore, are not subject to legal rebuke for saying so in print.
Giving honesty the middle finger…
The only problem is that the sisters didn’t address their basic problem. Their assertions that lies were told requires some sort of effort to show it. But they didn’t. Can’t, or didn’t want to. They do want their gullible, low IQ readers to believe that Jaramillo’s “team,” a team that clearly included Jaramillo endorser Diane Vena, was not a participant in creating the fraudulent candidacy of Scott Markowitz, the fake Trumpy, newly minted Republican, dredged up by one or more Jaramillo supporter to draw votes away from presumed threat, Linda Whitaker. And that/those someone(s) wanted Jaramillo to win; and wanted it so badly that they suborned patsy Markowitz’s perjury.
Yes, I was a phony from Day 1. And it was obvious…
Comically, the Kennedy Sisters claim that Vivian Jaramillo knows nothing about the Markowitz scam and it must be true because Jaramillo is honest! And that’s funny, too, because some of her supporters were in on it; Diane Vena, also a writer for the Fullerton Observer, signed Markowitz’s nomination papers, she supposedly told Sharon Kennedy, at the behest of a “friend.” A friend Kennedy later described as a “conservative friend.” And we’ve said it before: Diane Vena was either in on the fraud it or is the stupidest person in Fullerton.
There is no doubt that some member(s) in the team Jaramillo circle large or small, created the Scott Markowitz candidacy, and the assertion is therefore true.
The shoe fit…
Then the Kennedy Sisters turn the problem of Jaramillo as a running dog for the marijuana dispensary cartel that has been tryin to get its hooks into Fullerton via Ahmad Zahra for years.
Claims were made by FTFR that Jaramillo supported the short-lived ordinance pushed through at the end of 2020. She did. And she also supported its reinstatement the following year. And that ordinance would have allowed a dispensary 100 feet from a residential zone. The Sisters try to explain that away by reminding us that the ordinance was a whopping 32 pages long, presumably excusing accountability for having supporting all parts of it. Whatever. There’s a reason the dispensary cartel laundered $60,000 through the national grocery store union to pay for an “independent” committee dedicated to electing Jaramillo, a situation the Observer Sisterhood still hasn’t mentioned.
The Kennedy Sistren doesn’t seem to get it. They are still peddling the same dodges, misdirection, and disingenuous (or dumb) arguments they made during the campaign on their stupid blog. If you’re going to call somebody a liar, the burden of proof is on you to show it. Relying on the alleged moral fiber of your friends Vena and Jaramillo doesn’t cut it. You may believe gentle and kind Diane Vena; you may hold up Jaramillo as a pillar of probity. But that doesn’t entitle you to call anybody else a liar, in print. That could well be libelous.
I’m not talking…
Lots of truths can be ferreted out under oath by aggressive lawyers from people like Ajay Mohan, the Democrat operative who helped create the newly MAGA-tized Markowitz. Good Old Ajay knows where lots of bodies are buried.
I don’t know how serious FTFR really is in pursuing its demand for retractions and apologies. Is it just a little inexpensive irritation aimed at the Kennedy’s at this point? Maybe, but If I were the Kennedy sisters I’d be inclined not to say anymore.
FFFF has received the following demand letter to the Kennedy Sisters of the Fullerton Observer from Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, via their lawyer Alexander and Briggs. It seems these good folk don’t take kindly to being called liars from people who daily refuse to acknowledge what everybody else can plainly see.
Thanks to the AI software employed by the Fullerton Observer we have a more or less accurate written account of the statement made by Fullerton resident George Bushala that caused all the fuss at the December 17th Fullerton City Council meeting. Included are the interruptions by Sharon Kennedy and her sister Skaskia in violation of rules of public behavior in the chambers.
Giving free speech the middle finger…
There may be additions or subtraction of which I am unaware, but the whole thing has the ring of truth – meaning minimal Observer opinion masquerading as fact – links to Observer articles should be followed with skepticism. I notice Sharon Kennedy is referred to as the current Editor of the Observer. I have no idea who “Erin” is. And of course the Observer ever accurate, identifies the wrong Bushala.
George Bushala Jr. stated, “Here are eight reasons why I don’t believe Zahra should represent our City Council members as mayor and why he undermines voter rights.
1. In 2018, after being elected to represent District 5, Mr. Zahra voted against allowing the voters of Fullerton to elect a replacement for an at-large seat vacated by Jesus Silva. Despite initially supporting a special election, he later opposed it, citing the cost. This contradicts his support for other questionable expenditures that far exceeded the projected costs of the election, raising concerns about his commitment to democratic processes and fiscal responsibility. (Click here to read the Fullerton Observer article) (Click here to read the Voice of OC article)
2. Mr. Zahra appointed himself to the Orange County Water District (OCWD), playing a key role in the appointment of Jan Flory to the City Council, which subsequently led to his own appointment to the OC WD Board. This raises concerns about a potential quid pro quo arrangement. Mr. Zahra seemed to support Flory’s appointment to the City Council in exchange for her backing his appointment to the OCWD Board. Such actions give the appearance of self-serving political maneuvering and erode public trust. (Click here to read the Daily Titan article) (Click here to read the Fullerton Observer article)
3. Mr. Zahra wasted public funds on a baseless lawsuit, supporting the expenditure of over $1,000,000 of taxpayer money to sue two local bloggers who downloaded a publicly available file from the city’s website. This lawsuit, which sought to suppress free speech and punish journalists for exposing city government missteps, was an unnecessary waste of public funds and a troubling attack on the press. (Click here to read the Fullerton Observer article) (Click here to read the Voice of OC article)
4. Mr. Zahra was involved in plagiarism and deceptive behavior. He falsely claimed authorship of an article in the Fullerton Observer that was actually written by staff at the Orange County Water District. This misrepresentation caused embarrassment for the newspaper.”
Sharon Kennedy, the current editor of the Fullerton Observer, shouted that the information being discussed was misinformation and lies as she stormed out Erin yelled at Saskia, calling her a loudmouth and telling her to be quiet.
Mayor Dunlap intervened from the dais, urging the audience to be quiet. “Let the man speak. Excuse me? Okay, you’regoing to take a recess in a minute. If you’re going to keep this up, knock it off,” he said. He then asked the police chief to help control the situation.
Bushala continued, stating, “This misrepresentation has caused Zahra embarrassment for the newspaper and raises doubts about Mr. Zahra’s honesty and transparency. His actions suggest a willingness to mislead the public for political gain.”
Saskia Kennedy shouted that Bushala was lying.
Mayor Dunlap raised concern again from the dais, insisting, “Let the man speak. You know what? We’re going to call a recess. Everyone has the right to talk. Knock it off. Can we behave like adults? If not, I’m trying to figure out if we can conduct ourselves like adults. Can you refrain from heckling? Okay, let’s get back on track.”
Bushala continued, “I’ll skip to point six: manipulating the 2022 election. During his reelection campaign, Mr. Zahra was accused of recruiting a fake candidate, Tony Castro, to split the vote with Oscar Valdez, the leading candidate in District 5. This manipulation of the electoral process undermines the integrity of our democratic system and puts Mr. Zahra’s commitment to fair elections into question. I was interrupted earlier, but I have two more quick points.
Point #7 addresses deceptive actions to gain U.S. citizenship. Mr. Zahra, a self-identified gay man, married a woman from Arkansas shortly after arriving in the United States, presumably to obtain citizenship. This action raises concerns about his ethics and integrity, particularly regarding the use of marriage for immigration benefits. While his sexual orientation is a personal matter, this maneuver to secure citizenship raises serious ethical questions about his character.”
Ahmad Zahra attempted to defend himself against slander and personal attacks but was shouted down by Mayor Dunlap.
Bushala then addressed point #8: the allegation of filing a false police report against Vice Mayor Jung. In 2021, Mr. Zahra was involved in filing a false police report against Vice Mayor Jung. Such actions not only undermine trust in public City Council members but also threaten to damage the public’s confidence in their elected officials. Fabricating accusations against colleagues sets a dangerous precedent and raises significant ethical concerns.
Mayor Dunlap stated, “We’re not going to allow disruptions during meetings, and we won’t tolerate cheering from the audience. If you wish to speak, you have the same right as everyone else to express your view within our democratic process. You can do this her in the chambers or on Zoom. However, we will not accept heckling from the audience. Whether you like me or dislike me, or if you agree or disagree with my views, it’s all in the process. But you veto, do it from the proper venue, which is to come forward to the microphone and allow others their opportunity to speak.”
George Bushala, the public speaker at the December 17th City Council meeting who was verbally assaulted by the Fullerton Observer’s Sharon Kennedy is documenting the harassment he suffered with the Fullerton Police Department . FFFF has received a copy of his communication to Fullerton Chief of Police Jon Radus. Incidentally, it now seems that the second person involved in this abusive incident (as reported by Jack Hutt) was none other than Sharon’s younger sister, Skaskia. Kennedy.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
Here is Mr. Bushala’s communication to Chief Radus:
Dear Chief Radus,
As you may recall, I was a public speaker at the City Council meeting on December 17, 2024.
During my comments I was subjected to several violent verbal interjections by Fullerton resident Sharon Kennedy and her sister, Saskia Kennedy.
It is my intent with this communication to convey to the Fullerton Police Department my concern that the violent verbal attacks were damaging to me and have caused me significant subsequent anxiety.
Prior to seeking legal recourse, I would like to file a report with the FPD documenting this incident and I ask for your assistance with this matter. I would also ask that you use your office to help in forestalling any more threatening behavior directed at me from the Kennedys, and any others who participated in this public verbal assault on me.
Thank you for your help in this matter.
Sincerely,
George A. Bushala 409 E. Amerige Ave. Fullerton, CA 92832
Well, I think this is a very good idea. We can’t have public speakers intimidated at meetings – that would be a serious breach of the right to free speech that people like the Kennedys pretend to care about. I hope Mr. Bushala seeks redress for this attack on his honesty and his right to be heard.
