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 ripoffhere 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!
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.
Oh, it's raining all right.
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.
Heh, heh. When nobody was looking the collection plate went missing.
When you are a moral vacuum like Dick Ackerman, you really don’t stand for much of anything except your own well-being. Public service? Hell, no! It’s all about personal service. Everything else is just platitudes and bull shit.
An indication of Mr. Ackerman’s future career path was clearly established with the creation of a fake charity by his wife that was simply a mechanism to get state legislators (one of whom was Mr. Ackerman) alone on Maui with lobbyists for big corporate interests who actually paid for the whole junket. Ackerman is hilariously quoted as saying how beneficial these get togethers were, as if being lobbied in Sacramento (instead of Hawaii by the same cast of characters) was somehow just so much more darned inefficient. FFFF posted all about the utterly phony Pacific Policy Research Foundation, here.
I don't even know how I got into the room...
That was just the start of Mr. Ackerman exploiting Mrs. Ackerman for family gain. And it wasn’t enough that The Dickster got the missus on the Metropolitan Water Board where she naturally supported huge water rate increases (true, that bar was already set really, really low).
Now people endowed with a normal dose of shame would have simply receded into the background after the man they promoted was busted for moral turpitude. But the Ackermans are not so endowed. Dick’s immediate impulse was to promote the candidacy of the wife, a woman who had, apparently, never even held a job except as a “consultant” raiding her husband’s campaign accounts.
Well, okay. Lot’s of unqualified dimwits run for the Legislature. The real problem was that the Ackermans didn’t even live in the district. The Ackermans live in a top-secret gated community in Irvine! The State Constitution says you have to live in a district a year, but what the Hell, the State Constitution is for losers!
The point of the story is simple: there is no basement so low that Dick Ackerman & Co. won’t crawl into it in order to pull a string or make a buck. And if you don’t recognize Dick as the moral barometer of the anti-recall campaign, you don’t know Dick.
Let’s just say you’re a termed-out California state senator who, through the vagaries of a law that requires a two-thirds majority to pass a budget, became a Playah in the capital. Bocce and cigars with the Celebro-Guv.
Well, if you are of a certain mindset, the thought of returning to good, honest toil as a private citizen is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Instead, you look around to see how you can capitalize off of all those political connections you made cutting deals and grinding the uncomfortable corners off of the truth. You recall fondly when the greasers, lobbyists, and bagmen were kissing your skinny ass and funding your campaigns. Lobbying is a lot more fun than real work. You want to become one!
And so it was when Dick Ackerman left Sacramento; and so it was for anybody willing to put Ackerman on their payroll. After all, who wants to hire a 70-year old, small-time lawyer to draw up wills for grandpa? No one, that’s who. And Nossaman, the big law firm that employed Dick obviously wanted him as a lobbyist, despite the website description that comically claims Ackerman is some sort of legal expert in a wide array of issues.
By nature lobbyists are supposed to remain low-profile, operate in the shadows and behind closed doors. What the partners at Nossaman think about Ackerman’s recent embarrassing high profile behavior is anybody’s guess, but it can’t be too good; and apparently Dick ain’t bringing home much bacon, either, which is the worst offense of all.
But so much for the long preamble. The purpose of Part 2 (and of Part 3) of this squalid tale is to relate some of what Ackerman has been up to lately, and to point out to anybody who cares, the low ethical trajectory of the leader of the anti-recall circus.
Termed out in 2008, Ackerman almost immediately latched on to an opportunity presented by his ethical soul mate, Dave Ellis: the Great OC Fair Swindle of 2009, an attempt to convert select members of the Board of Directors into a non-profit entity that would buy the Orange County Fairgrounds from a cash-strapped State, and run it for their own fun and profit. Ackerman’s role was buried in an obscure land-use contract with a company called LSA, presumably so nobody would know what the hell was going on.
Dave Ellis seen soon after emerging from the Fullerton sewer system. The transition to an oxygen breathing life-form was slow and painful...
Part of the deal involved slipping the necessary whereases into the state budget in the summer of 2009, and part of Ackerman’s job was to make sure legislators got the job done. But wait a minute, Dick! State legislators have to wait a full year before they can lobby their former colleagues! That’s the law.
When the details of Ackerman’s behavior became public in the fall of 2009, he twisted and turned the very meaning of the English language in order to squirm off the hook on which he had impaled himself. And it would have been in vain, too, except that our sleepy DA had clearly given instructions to his staff to whitewash Ackerman’s role. Not looking for evidence is a great way of not finding any.
It worked for a while, in 2010. Then in early 2011 Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC broke the story: he had copies of Ackerman’s billing invoices, and Ackerman’s scope of work – documents the DA thought unnecessary to collect, and they clearly revealed the truth about Ackerman – lobbying legislators was part of the contract, and The Dickster had made calls to several members of the Legislature, including locals Solorio and Correa. No bueno!
Although the DAs spokestress Susan Schroeder disingenuously invited anybody to submit new evidence for the DAs lethargic consideration, nobody did. And Ackerman slithered away, probably bragging, like John Mitchell to his cronies, that no one had laid a glove on him.
Stay tuned for Part 3, in which we explore carpetbagging for fun and profit!
Some of our loyal readers have asked us who Dick Ackerman is, and why is he the leader of the opposition to the recall of the Three Shop Worn Stooges on the Fullerton City Council: Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.
Good question. After all, Ackerman is a resident of Irvine, and although he used to live in Fullerton a long, long time ago, it’s not immediately apparent why he should care about defending the Three Burned Out Bulbs on the council.
Well, these three did support Ackerman’s utterly unqualified wife when the Dickster tried to get her into the Legislature by cooking up a fake address in Fullerton.
But there’s more, and as you may have guessed, it’s the cash nexus. You see, ever since Ackerman termed out of the Legislature he’s been looking to grease his skids peddling the influence he accrued on the taxpayer’s dime. He is employed for lobbying purposes by a law firm called Nossaman; but rather than bring in business he’s actually become embroiled in embarrassing ethical and illegal incidents (more on that in Part 2). The word on Easy Street is that he’s got to bring in some do-re-mi to Nossaman and PDQ, or he’s out.
Which circuitously brings us to the latest round of “affordable” housing projects in Fullerton, the kind of housing that costs two or three times as much to build as the regular kind, and the sort that Dick Ackerman vociferously opposed on principal when he was on the Fullerton City Council. Well that was then, before Ackerman discovered he could profit handsomely from them. Now he is a lobbyist for one of the so-called developers, St. Anton’s Partners, who, not surprisingly, received the promise of millions of dollars in City Redevelopment subsidies from Jones, Bankhead and McKinley on a project just a few weeks ago. Jones, Bankhead and McKinley were so eager to pay off Ackerman that they actually tried to rush through their vote before the public hearing was even held!
And that’s why Ackerman needs to keep Fullerton’s Three Blind Bobbleheads in office, no matter what. There is no noble purpose, no moral justification, no principle at stake. There’s just a big potential payday for Ackerman and his employer, Nossaman. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t know Dick.
Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we share a little Dick Ackerman retrospective.
Just in case you missed it (which is entirely understandable since almost nobody goes to this pathetic website) the anti-recallers are suddenly concerned about the rights of the cops that murdered Kelly Thomas. Previously these pustules have been crying crocodile tears over the exploitation of a schizophrenic homeless man. Not any more. Now it seems they are suddenly concerned about the rights of killer cops and are using this to defend their do-nothing Three Blind Mice.
Notice how these degenerates describe the cold-blooded murder as “The Kelly Thomas matter.” To them it’s just a “matter.” Well, to us it’s a murder.
They pretend that they are oh, so concerned about big settlements like the one payed out to the crooked George Jaramillo, but how come they aren’t concerned at all about Pat McKinley hiring murderers, thieves, drug addicts, pick-pockets, perjurers, thugs and perverts in the first place; or by Don Bankhead and Dick Jones looking the other way as a Culture of Corruption took root in the FPD, and allowed McKinley’s personally selected goons to run roughshod over the rights of free citizens?
And how come these hypocritical cankers haven’t said a single word about the $350,000 settlement to victims of Albert Rincon, the sex pervert that Pat McKinley hired, and said he was proud of?
When McKinley said he was proud of the FPD except for “the two” (Ramos and Cicinelli, presumably), he really should have kept his big mouth shut.
On Thursday the Fullerton Police Department released a sketch of a sexual assault suspect, according to the Register, here.
The attack occurred on October 12th, on Berkeley, near FJC, one month earlier. A little late. Still, not bad for Andrew Goodrich, who inexplicably (or perfectly explicable if you believe in the FPD Culture of Corruption) remains the face of Fullerton on police matters.
Here's your man...Oops, sorry. here he is.
Naturally some of the commenters on the ensuing thread wonder aloud when the Goodrich & Co. are going to release the image of former FPD cop Albert Rincon, who sexually assaulted women in the back seat of his patrol car, with the full knowledge of his superiors in the department.
Oh, that’s right. Former police chief, city councilman and current recall target Pat McKinley has explained all: “it’s just touching. Not a good thing, but not a dangerous thing.” So despite a $350,000 settlement (to date) Rincon is not really a danger to anybody.
Lookin' out for the ladies, oh yeah!
But if that sets the bar for behavior then it looks like their suspect falls well withing the bounds of propriety established by McKinley.
Some of our loyal readers have asked about the 3 @ 50 pension formula that many, if not most “public safety” employees receive. It’s pretty simple. You get to retire at age 50. The 3 is a multiplier applied to the number of years you have been employed. The guy or gal who works for 30 years would get 90% of his or her highest salary as a pension. For life. Pretty sweet gig, eh?
Go ahead have three. Somebody will pay for them later...
Many public agencies also tack on other benefits as income, boosting pensions even higher. The worst scam of all is foisted on the public by the agencies that consider the taxpayer’s payment of the employees’ share of pension paycheck deductions as income counted toward their pensions. This charming little ripoff is known colloquially as “PERS on PERS,” PERS being an acronym for Public Employee Retirement System.
So, what is the tie in to Fullerton?
Well, let’s start with the Three Dyspeptic Dinosaurs, Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley. Back in 2001, at the behest of Andy Goodrich and his union, these two voted to give the 3 @50 formula for the Fullerton Police and Fire Departments. The decision was voluntary and wittingly done. If that weren’t bad enough, of course the benefit was applied retroactively, meaning that many cops and firemen who had worked for decades under the previous formula were suddenly handed a titanic bonanza of taxpayer confiscated wealth, with the single stroke of Mayor Don Bankhead’s pen. And that single stroke of glaring incompetence has contributed to a massive unfunded pension liability that Fullerton citizens will have to carry indefinitely.
Yep, that's me!
And who is one of the principle beneficiaries of this generosity with the public purse? You guessed it. Former police Chief and current councilman Pat McKinley, who has picked up the moniker “Pat McPension” for his $215,000 a year pension – far more than he ever made working.
They may be dumb but they sure are slow...
Now this profligate behavior with public funds is typically the sort of behavior attributed to liberal Democrats. In Fullerton the heist was perpetrated by allegedly “conservative” Republicans who believe wearing stupid lapel pins is what really matters. Well, they sold us out, folks.
Just give me a year or two. I'll come up with something...
Could be. These things are decided by the City Council behind closed doors in what is called “Closed Session.”
It would be a pretty neat and convenient trick to be able to sweep a whole lot of nasty crap under the carpet that might otherwise be more closely scrutinized during a public trial. And when that nasty crap reflects directly on your own incompetence, ignorance, and misfeasance, so much the better.
So it is with Fullerton City Council recall target and former Chief of Police, Pat McKinley. See, Pat is the guy who personally hired all the FPD goons, thieves, pickpockets, druggies, perjurers and killers who have been in the news lately. He says he is proud of all of them (but two – presumably the “aliens” Cicinelli and Ramos). And he apologizes for nothing
Consider this: as a City Councilman McKinley can get to decide how much money is paid out to the victims of those low-life hires he is so proud of. The conclusion that some of these payouts give off the stink of hush money is inescapable. A $350,000 payout was made just recently in the Albert Rincon sexual assault cases; and new plaintiffs are already forming a considerable conga line. What was McKinley’s role in this settlement? What will his role be in future FPD-caused civil suit settlements?
The most embarrassing issue of all (and potentially the most costly), will be the fact that then Chief McKinley knowingly hired and happily deployed to the streets of Fullerton a one-eyed cop whom the Chief of the LAPD wisely rejected as unfit for duty; and McKinley did it knowingly and happily as a favor to an old crony. Obviously no thought was given to the safety of the very public McKinley had sworn to protect.
This appears to me as a blatant conflict of interest and so, one hopes, it would also appear to McKinley. But unfortunately McKinley’s sense of ethics and sense of self-entitlement are a lot different than mine and yours.
Are you comfortable with McKinley having anything to do with settling a case that would shine a spotlight on his own corrupt misfeasance? The embarrassing details of the sexual predator Albert Rincon will never receive the public scrutiny of a public trial; nor will the fact that this was just another of the many miscreants hired and let loose on the public by McKinley.
Will McKinley recuse himself on the Quinonez and Veth Mam cases? Or the Kelly Thomas case? What about possible employee decisions with regard to Hampton, Wolfe, Blatney, Klein, Mejia, et al? If not, he is putting his lack of ethics on display; if he does it begs the question of how he can serve on the Council at all. See where I’m going with this?
Maybe you would just feel more comfortable if he weren’t in office anymore, at all.
Last Tuesday’s council meeting included a comical orchestration in which numerous recipients of taxpayer subsidies ambled up to the microphone to heap praise upon the Three Blind Mice. They have millions of reasons to do so, as you will see in the accompanying video clip to which I have thoughtfully added text explaining who these people are and how much they have to gain by backing the present corrupt and incompetent regime.
Well we say it’s way past time for a regime change!
