Category: Watch Your Wallet

Posted onBoohooism

Does Sharon Quirk Want To Raise Taxes? She’s Not Saying.

by 93 Comments on Does Sharon Quirk Want To Raise Taxes? She’s Not Saying.

As a dyed-in-the wool Democrat, Sharon Quirk, the liberal candidate for the 65th State Assembly can be relied upon to do the right thing: the right thing for our Democrat Governor Jerry Brown and the public employee unions that put him in power. And the right thing to do is to pass a budget in June that relies on billions of dollars in new taxes to be voted on by the electorate in November.

Now, Ms. Quirk has a website that is just about the sort of thing you’d expect from a typical say-nothing politician – long on platitudes and lefty endorsements and zero on actual issues. And when I say zero, I mean zero. Scour it. You’ll read vacant nonsense about policies hurting hard-working families, schools and infrastructure, and all about the evils of partisan bickering (code for I am not a total, complete liberal loon), but not a single specific issue or even one useful fact. I have to give her credit for some transparency, though; she doesn’t really even pretend she is saying anything – there isn’t even an issues tab with the fraudulent “coming soon” scam.

Still, it would be nice if she would take a position on perhaps the biggest issue facing the State today. Does she support Governor Brown’s budget and tax proposal? After all, her support of this proposal would certainly be indicative of her own tax and spend propensity on down the road. Most of her endorsers endorse it. If A=B and B=C, then A=C.

So I’d like to know. I’m pretty sure the people of Fullerton would like to know. And all those blue collar, blue dog Dems who live south of the I-5? I bet they would like to know if Quirk is just another one of those incompetent Democrats who long to go to Sacramento where their foolishness and crazy spendthrift ways have buried California under an ossified government and a crushing public employee pension liability.

So how about it Sharon? How about a statement on your website about where you stand on increasing State revenue to feed the unions that have endorsed you?

 

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Posted onA Step in the Right Direction

The Three Empty Pez Dispensers

by 41 Comments on The Three Empty Pez Dispensers
Looking for brains, courage, a heart.

You know, Larry Bennett really could have just left it alone. After dodging a final, humiliating meeting to certify the recall election that drove them out of office, at least one of the Three Bald Tires finally deigned to show up at Fullerton City Hall tomorrow morning to do the deed. It could have been done quietly with as little fanfare as possible. Actually only one of them even needed to show up.

But no.

Bennett seems to think the Three Dead Batteries need a sendoff appropriate to all the wonderful things these men have done for Fullerton. Friday he notified supporters of the Three Tree Stumps that there was to be a special council meeting, and that he hoped everybody would show up to let them know what terrific public servants they have been.

Bennett has likely spent the week-end making phone calls to drum up some folks willing to say kind thing about the Three Pea-less Pods. No doubt some will show up. And others are likely to show up now, too. People who recognize the disastrous misrule of these three characters:

Yes, I was the king.

Don Bankhead: dumb-bell, and self-annointed king of Fullerton, whose somnolent councilmanic career was punctuated with one Redevelopment boondoggle and union give away after another.

Crazy? Check. Rude? Check. Gone? Check.

Dick Jones, the southern fried lunatic and loud-mouthed bully who never came to understand that the authority to give orders doesn’t confer wisdom – or even relevance.

To all appearances it looked a lot like a street gang.

Pat McKinley: protector and apologist for the undeniable Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that he himself had created. Those ladies weren’t like you. Aliens. Don’t rush to judgement.

Well, good bye and good riddance.

The sun had been warm and life was good. But all that changed.

And please take Larry Bennett with you. The tide is rising.

 

 

 

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Posted onA Step in the Right Direction

What to Do With Former Redevelopment Employees? How About Pink Slips?

by 71 Comments on What to Do With Former Redevelopment Employees? How About Pink Slips?

Anybody who reads this blog knows that I have had a running battle with the Fullerton Redevelopments Agency, even going so far as suing the Agency to block its bogus expansion attempt into areas of west and east Fullerton that had no blight. That was just a fraudulent attempt to divert property tax revenue from legitimate recipients.

Now that Redevelopment has been killed off by the Legislature and the Governor, I really have to wonder what has and will become of that small army of government economic planners, boondoggle promoters, bribers, bagmen, design guideline perpetrators, and the rest, whose job it was to gin up sales tax revenue and property tax increment (usually at the expense of somebody else) while dictating land use development in Redevelopment project areas across California.

Lest anybody think I’m just grousing about an abstract problem, consider an article here in the OC Register that points out the exorbitant amount that Fullerton Redevelopment Agency wasted on administration.

Anyway, these folks were in the business of playing developer without taking any of the risks, and with a compliant city council there was never any fear of them being held accountable for their manifest failures.

Some of the former Redevelopment employees will be kept around to close things out. The rest? Who knows? In Fullerton, some of them have already been absorbed into the regular bureaucracy, to be supported by the General Fund – as if these people were simply interchangeable and indispensable parts. The message that move sent to the citizens of Fullerton is a really bad one – that the government has no appetite to shrink, even though a specific purpose has been ended.

 

 

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Posted onBoohooism

The Shame of The Human Relations Commission

by 55 Comments on The Shame of The Human Relations Commission
Three minutes elapsed. Nothing was said.

There has been a lot of boohooing lately about the future of the County’s Human Relations Commission. As usual, it seems that those doing the biggest drum beating for the continued taxpayer funding of this love fest are the folks who don’t want to chip in for the cost.

Right now the County pays $302,000 a year to the Human Relation Council (a 501(c)(3)) to provide “staff” for its Human Relations Commission. The reason why these folks think we need a Commission at all is that they believe having the County seal on their letterhead confers some sort of governmental prestige and gravitas. That’s how these folks think about government.

The Council employs a fellow by the name of Rusty Kennedy about a hundred grand to be the Commission’s Executive Director, a job he used to hold as a public employee of the County, and a job for which he now pulls down an annual pension of over $120,000 per year. Yowza! $220,000 a year!

Ironically, the very failures of Kennedy and his commission are being touted by him as success stories. The most egregious of these alleged successes are the race tagging of Santa Ana Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez after she made a boneheaded comment about Adolf Hitler; and of course even worse, the diversionary scam known as the Homeless Task Force, at the behest of the cover-up artists on the Fullerton City Council. In the first case, after he played the irrelevant race card, Rusty had a neat interracial controversy to address. Nice. In the second case, a genuine hate crime, perpetrated by his pals  in the Fullerton Police Department against Kelly Thomas, was glossed over.

By focusing on the fact that Thomas was mentally ill, and homeless, and that many others are too, the Task Force conveniently ignored the fact that neither his homelessness nor his mental illness were the proximate causes of Thomas’ death. That responsibility lay with the City and its goons, it was a murder – a fact that would necessarily be awkward for Kennedy and his Task Force to address given his cozy relationship with the Establishment and with the police chiefs of Orange County.

Fortunately, the City’s attempted sleight of hand failed; the recall and subsequent legal actions will demonstrate who did what, and when. But this failure should not cause us to forget the craven role of Mr. Kennedy in this shameful episode.

The time has come to defund this useless operation. Let the non-profit Council peddle its race relations mission. It collects charitable contributions from people who believe in its mission and its behavior. Time to get the rest of us off the hook.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Pam Keller Speaks! Apologizes For Not Stopping Our Bad Behavior.

by 196 Comments on Pam Keller Speaks! Apologizes For Not Stopping Our Bad Behavior.
Don’t let the silly hat fool you. There’s nothing underneath.

Yes, ever sanctimonious, ever self-righteous, Fullerton’s Queen Collaboratrix, Pam Keller issued a statement at the June 5th Swan Song of the the Three Bald Tires in which she really outdid herself.

I like the part where Pam declares herself up for a good sidewalk protest. We know all about that. She doesn’t mind screaming at people when her own self-interest is involved. Did Keller even show up at a sidewalk protest in front of the police station to protest the bludgeoning death of an innocent man at the hands of the FPD? Of course not. When there’s nothing in it for her it’s a lynch type mob.

But really, suggesting that Kelly Thomas was even remotely a factor for divisiveness in Fullerton  is stupid even for a dope like Keller.  No Pam, any divisiveness you perceive in Fullerton was caused by rogue, murderous cops and a sclerotic, incompetent regime bent on covering it up; a regime that ripped off its citizenry to pay for it’s own exorbitant salaries and benefits; a regime that handed out free land worth millions to campaign (and Fullerton Collaborative) contributors.

But in reality Keller is as wrong as she can be. We now know that the community is, and was not divided. The people of Fullerton demonstrated solidarity spectacularly on June 5th 2012, the very day Keller delivered herself of her idiotic diatribe. Two thirds of the voters delivered a very different sort of message, a message of unity, hope and reform.

The Recall of Jones, Bankhead and McPension succeeded in every precinct in Fullerton, rich and poor, Anglo, Latino, and Asian-American.

Say goodnight Pam, your party’s over.

 

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Posted onAbout Us

Larry Bennett’s Last Gasp

by 249 Comments on Larry Bennett’s Last Gasp

Here is a clip from Rick Reiff’s program featuring our own admin, and the sorry sack of guano known as Larry Bennett. He’s the clown who blew a hundred grand defending the Three Bald Tires from a much deserved recall.

Observe that Bennett is not only a bad loser he is still a liar, which seems to come so naturally. He is still dodging the easiest question of all: if Tony Bushala wanted to control the City Council to further his own mythical development schemes, how much easier would it have been to simply donate to the Three Dead Batteries’ campaigns? The answer of course is a lot. A lot cheaper too.

Did you enjoy how Bennett glossed over the illegal water tax? He still likes it!

Bennett is also still going by the title Planning Commissioner. I wonder how much longer he’ll keep that job.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

SlideBro Denies Complicity in Fake Phone Call. Again.

by 234 Comments on SlideBro Denies Complicity in Fake Phone Call. Again.

According to CBS local news, Jeremy Popoff, proprietor the the Slidebar Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen, categorically denies being involved in a phony call that described Kelly Thomas as breaking into or trying to open car doors.

However if you read the article, you will notice that there is no assertion from Popoff’s lawyer that no call was made from the Slidebar. And that’s interesting because in a report earlier toady the Slidebar lawyer, Eric Durbin, is quoted saying this:

Dubin said Reeves was not within earshot of the Slidebar employee who called police that night…

Meaning that there was some sort of phone call made by a Slidebar employee to the cops that night. Hmm.
In any case we are meant to be reassured that by his lawyer that Popoff is “heartbroken.”

According to Popoff he cares deeply for the local homeless population.

The Slidebar attorney is right about one thing: everything will come out at trial. But not the trial he is thinking of.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Quirk Endorsed by PORAC

by 108 Comments on Quirk Endorsed by PORAC

What is PORAC? The Peace Officers Research Associaion of California is a statewide cop lobby whose contributions go to provide legal aid and comfort to cops, good and bad. We learned about this “research association” last winter as it made a $19,000 contribution to the anti-recall campaign, a failed effort to protect the political hides of the three cop union puppets on the Fullerton City Council. PORAC is also paying the legal bills for the two Fullerton cops, Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, who have been charged with the killing of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas.

Now PORAC has a new project: promoting the dubious political fortunes of Sharon Quirk-Silva. Check out the list of supporters on her website.

Now that’s a fine collection of educrats, far left leaning politicos that have helped tank California, and of course, unions that greased their skids. But really, Sharon, PORAC? Can you really be that clueless? Or is it just desperation?

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Posted onA Step in the Right Direction

Slidebar Slides Into Litigation

by 242 Comments on Slidebar Slides Into Litigation
Hmm.

For almost a year now rumors have been swirling around the role of Fullerton’s Slidebar in the death of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas, last July. Specifically, did a Slidebar employee at the behest of his or her boss, owner Jeremy Popoff, make a phony call to the cops to give them a pretext to roust Thomas.

Staring into an uncertain future...

Despite all of his protestations of innocence and donations of canned food to the homeless, Popoff’s story never quite rang true.

A couple days ago the other shoe finally dropped: a lawsuit for wrongful termination by a former employee named Michael Reeves that goes into elaborate detail about what happened on the night of July 5, 2011, and the cover up that followed.

The guy claims the fateful and false call to the FPD that triggered the events leading to the murder of Thomas  was made by Slidebar manager Jeanette DiMarco at the behest of owner Jeremy Popoff.

Later, when he wouldn’t play ball, Reeves claims he was demoted, then fired. The guy is suing for $4,000,000, a tidy sum, to be sure.

 

Read the complaint

Well, there you have it. Is any part of this tale true? I don’t know. But I do know that the other, even more sinister part of the story is still looming on the horizon like a nasty weather front; and that’s the disturbing possibility that the bar was in cahoots with one or more of the police before hand, complicit in a criminal conspiracy to deprive Kelly Thomas of his Constitutional rights and even his physical well-being.

We now know that the DA has decided to look the other way in his haste to kiss and make up with the Fullerton cops, but the possibility that the attack on Thomas was per-arranged does indeed explain the antagonistic behavior of Wolfe and Ramos, and perhaps even the seemingly inexplicable violence of Cicinelli.

All this is now bound to come out in the civil proceedings against the City by Ron Thomas and Garo Mardirossian. The latter may be pressured to cut a deal to avoid embarrassing the City too much in a public trial, but the new council needs a vehicle to get all the facts on the table once and for all. A trial is just the thing.

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