For those who really and truly want added proof of the fiscal irresponsibility of City Councliman Don Bankhead, here he is casting his vote to pay $6,000,000 to move a perfectly good McDonald’s restaurant about 200 feet to the east.
Bankhead’s only arguments? One, that he’s already wasted a bunch of money on this titanic Redevelopment boondoggle; and two, that without the relocation the titanic Redevelopment boondoggle might be harder to build!
Fortunately (somewhat) wiser heads prevailed, although nobody in City Hall ever admitted that the monstrous “Fox Block” was just a plaything for the Redevelopment staff, a source of government handouts to the so-called ‘developer,” and had absolutely nothing to do with the restoration of the historic Fox Theater.
Really and truly, Bankhead has been supporting massive boondoggles, huge corporate subsidies and crony capitalism for the better part of 25 years. High time to hit the road.
When the topic of the Fullerton’s illegal 10% water tax was brought up the other night, Councilmember Bruce Whitaker was right there to propose agendizing the immediate suspension of the tax. And Triassic, soon-to-be recalled Don Bankhead was there to stall, stall, stall.
The funny thing is that Bankhead cited his presence at the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting as some sort of evidence that he knew something the others didn’t. Bad idea, Bonehead.
See, if you’re going to brag about going to a meeting it might be an excellent idea to stay awake during it.
Here is City Councilman Don Bankhead, who wants to propose changes to the recommended City position on High Speed Rail. For a while he seems to think he knows what he’s talking about.
Oops. Now we’ll never know what Bankhead thought was necessary to delete before his screen went dark.
Here’s an irate e-mail we received from a Golden Hills Little League parent explaining that despite his political troubles, Fullerton FPD Culture of Corruption architect Pat McPension just couldn’t be denied his place as a speaker at opening day ceremonies. Strings were pulled, leverage was exerted.
But what’s this?
Something better came along...
Subject: McKinley – Little League Opening Day
I contacted you last week informing you that McKinley had strong armed Golden Hill Little League via Parks & rec’s John Clements to speak at GHLL’s Opening Day this past weekend. Despite the league’s concerns given recent news re: Mr. McKinley and the fact that this is a children’s event, they were informed in no uncertain terms that as Mr. McKinley sat on committe responsible for assigning fields to youth programs, not letting him speak would be a bad idea. With their backs against the wall GHLL, a non-profit youth baseball league, decided to allow McKinley a few words.
And the dude NO-SHOWED…
So after strongarming GHLL and indirectly threatening to look unfavorably on their requests for city fields in the future, McKinley didn’t even show…or have the courtesy to have his people call GHLL to let them know. He was a no call/no show.
Lovely.
Message to Golden Hills Little League organizers: no good deed goes unpunished.
Enjoy the spectacle of the Incredible Disappearing Donkey, as F. “Dick” Jones gits up off’n’ his backside to bug out on a council meeting and git on home to his vittles, incoherently mumblin’ some nonsense. The Mayor even bids him goodnight.
But what’s this? Mumbles reappears just minutes later, perhaps deciding that being a rude jackass isn’t the best way to beat a recall.
Well, the Fullerton Culture of Corruption is in the news again, and, naturally, not in a good way. The star of the show is Fullerton’s own Jim Blake. Here is a CBS undercover report on Metropolitan Water District board members wining and dining themselves on our dime – even as they keep jacking up the commodity cost of water to us, a cost to which our wise City Fathers then tack on an illegal 10% tax!
Jim Blake has been the choice of Fullerton’s establishment to represent our City on the MWD since the Third Day, when God gathered the waters.
Of course this is no news to us here at FFFF. We reported on Blake and Linda Ackerwoman running up huge “travel” tabs a long time ago, here and here. Blake has been reappointed by Bankhead and Jones over and over again. Why?
Well, Blake is supposedly calling it quits at MWD, but not before causing Fullerton more embarrassment.
Here’s a fun Doc HeeHaw campaign flier from 2004 sent to us from a guy named Baxter. It’s interesting because it shows how little you had to do to get re-elected in Fullerton: send out a couple mailers with a few hollow platitudes and specious claims about how you kept Fullerton safe.
And this document provides lots of exciting bonus material.
Working hard, or hardly working?
Gag. Let’s start with the part about keeping Fullerton safe. We now know that was a crock o’ the BS. But really? Fullerton was safer because it had more six-figure paramedics? Really? And our streets were safer because of money poured into an overpriced police annex and and some stupid, unspecified Homeland Security “Program.” Pathetic. Nothing mentioned about Pat McKinley hiring one-eyed cops rejected by the LAPD. Hmm.
Speaking of McPension, the fact that this toady permitted his picture to be used in a campaign mailer for his boss is really pretty bad and should have caused him to be disciplined by his…oops.
Over on the right it gets even better. Responsible planning, Dick? You mean the proliferation of massive, high density apartment blocks built by your campaign contributors that are choking downtown Fullerton? You mean the Jefferson Commons behemoth? The idiotic Transportation Center Master Plan? And what major transportation projects were you talking about, Dick. The streets of Fullerton were falling into disrepair then, and haven’t gotten any better in the last eight years of your neglect. Also thank you Dick for improving “our” quality of life by revitalizing local parks, although I doubt if you wanted anybody to know about the Poisoned Park that has been virtually useless since the day it opened in 2003.
Oh, and fiscal responsibility? Oops, goofed again. No mention of balancing the budget by imposing a hidden and illegal 10% tax on our water. I would call that raising taxes, each and every year! Now that’s not very good, is it?
And now for Jonesy’s “public safety” gold seal of approval. Jones omits to tell folks what that endorsement cost the citizens of Fullerton: the notorious retroactive pension benefit formula of 3%@50 for cops and firemen that,with the stroke of Dick Jones’ pen, caused an immediate and massive unfunded pension liability that will be dangling over Fullerton taxpayers’ heads for decades, if it ever goes away at all.
A few days ago, OC Register employee Lou Ponsi scribbled an article here quoting Pat McPension “that because the City Council may have to ultimately decide the employment status of the officers, both on unpaid leave, remaining silent was the correct decision.
We remained silent because that is the rule,” McKinley said. “We were told by the (city) attorney, ‘Don’t say anything.’ … A lawyer tells me what to do and I follow his lead.”
Silent? Yeah, right Pat:
Pat was pretty quick to peddle his damage-control and try to downplay Kelly Thomas’ injuries as not life-threatening. His statement that the Coroner couldn’t determine the cause of death was the old flat-foot desperately clinging to the insinuation that there was some medical reason (i.e. maybe drugs) Kelly died – apart from 1400 lbs. of cop meat sitting on his chest after they had bashed his face into his brain.
We’ve also just raised the question as to whether or not Mr. McKinley may have blabbed about the employment status of Fullerton PD officer Kelly Mejia to his pal and anti-recall spokesorifice, Larry Bennett.
Hey, you over there on the left. You can talk now!
By now we are all familiar with the impenetrable shroud in which law enforcement has wrapped itself, with the knowledge and support of supine politicians across the state who have taken its campaign money and endorsements.
In Fullerton this official Code of Silence is used by the Three Dithering Dinosaurs – Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley – to excuse their deplorable failure of leadership in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas killing. They couldn’t say anything, it was all about personnel stuff.
But what do we have here? Listen carefully to anti-recaller Larry Bennett on an October 19, 2011 Inside OC program:
Hey, wait just a minute! That bit about the “iPad woman” doesn’t sound quite right.Here’s a snippet from Lou Ponsi’s article in the Register on the matter, just yesterday, citing FPD spokesdoughnut Andrew Goodrich:
Mejia was placed on paid administrative leave after returning from Florida and has not been a member of the department since Oct. 28, said Sgt. Andrew Goodrich. The city can’t say the reason Mejia is no longer employed with the department, Goodrich said
October 28th, 2011. So why did civilian Larry Bennett say Mejia had already been fired (past tense) nine days before, and how did he come to have any information about that at all?
Stepped on somebody's weenie.
Was Bennett just lying? Could be. The truth hasn’t tumbled out of his mouth for at least six months. But let’s consider something else, implausible, but not impossible – that he was actually telling the truth of what he knew.
If that’s the case then it’s obvious that the cop personnel Code of Silence was violated by somebody in the FPD itself, as some one who knew what was going on with Mejia (any guesses?), told Bankhead, Jones, or McKinley what was happening, and one of them leaked it to Bennett; and then Bennett shared it with a TV audience! Either that, or somebody in the FDP went directly to Bennett with the news so he could beat the drum for a decisive, pro-active department: No Culture of Corruption here!
Well, selective leaks are nothing new for Andrew Goodrich. Police love to share information about suspects unless those suspects happen to be cops. In this instance it sure looks like the cop curtain of secrecy was opened just a bit in the service of trying to make the department and the Three Tired Tubers look decisive.
So next time you hear about the need for secrecy in all police personnel matters, remember this story of hypocrisy. Some things aren’t as secret as others.
Okay. So I leave a shiny trail. What are you gonna do about it?
Here’s a fascinating excerpt from the No Recall bozos’ website. It seems that some assclown named Larry Bennett finally responded today to a November, 2011 challenge by Chris Thompson for a debate. What a difference three months makes! Last anybody heard from Bennett, he was waiting for Dick Ackerman to return from Thanksgiving vacation to tell him what to do.
When I get back from Hawaii I'm gonna kick ass. Or not.
Now Bennett and Ackerman seem to think they’re in a position to dictate terms to the Recall campaign. No, dimwits, you’re not going to use the Best Blog in OC to peddle your bullshit. Publish it on your own joke of a website. And invite comments, you sad, pathetic puds. I dare you.
In the meantime, Larry, I’ve been told that the challenge from the Recall is still in place: a live debate between Recall Proponent Chris Thompson and you; or better yet, with one of the Three Dead Tree Stumps – if you can pull one of them out of cold storage long enough to defrost. Do you have the huevos? Do gastropods even have huevos? I doubt it. But pretty soon you’ll have no choice.
02/08/2012
Why Is Bushala Rejecting a Debate on his Blog?
TONY, WHY DID YOU REJECT A DEBATE ON YOUR OWN BLOG???
Dear Tony,
It appears that your $170,000 has bought a recall election in June. It is unfortunate that you have rejected my offer for an on-line debate using your favorite blog – Friends for Fullerton’s Future. Chris Thompson tells me that you are unwilling to modify the blog to remove the anonymity of bloggers and commenters because of the sensitive nature of some of your regular bloggers.
In case you would like to reconsider, this is my proposal:
I proposed that you and I engage in an online debate hosted on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future Blog Site. This online debate would be between you and I and available for viewing by the public. We would alternate posts where each of us is free to make our case and to challenge the opposing post. I’m sure you might want to talk about the death of Kelly Thomas, release of the video over the D.A. and Ron Thomas’ objection, pensions, the water tax, police discipline cases and the responsibility of our elected council members. We would want to explore the political involvement of yourself, how redevelopment has benefited your family, Chris Thompson and your political friends.
Our only conditions for the online debate is that the blog change its operations to provide to the Citizens of Fullerton the same level of transparency they demand of the individuals and institutions they attack. Specifically the bloggers who post to your site would post under their actual name. That way the Citizens of Fullerton would know who is making what charge and the responsibility for their comments would rightly be a matter of public record. Secondly, the commenter’s who wish to post to our debate items would do so using a Facebook profile. That would bring some accountability and civility to the debate. This format is used successfully by the Orange County Register, Times Community News publications, and many other political blogs.
I believe this will be a constructive debate that uses the blog you like to tout. I look forward to your reconsideration.
