When you have a crappy product it’s pretty hard to sell. Think Yugo.
No, thanks.
But really? Won’t anybody help the gerontocracy cling to power in Fullerton? Apparently, almost no one will. It could be that contributors to the cause in the fall were underwhelmed by the bang they got for the bucks they handed over to Tricky Dick Ackerman and The Human Salamander, Dave Ellis.
The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing creature was slow and painful.
Yep, Protect Fullerton-Recall No filed their 460 on Monday for 1/1/12 through 3/17/12. The results? Somewhat less than impressive.
$4,224.00 raised
$9,765.70 spent
$3,841.69 left over
Most of the funds were from early in January – before they sent that last pathetic mailer advertising the recall. The only recent donation was $2,000 from some presumably ancient lady named Mary Ransom.
Holy Smokes! Dave Ellis really took them for a ride. $2,500 to Delta Partners. $500/mo to host that crappy website.
The abode of F. Paul Dudley, possibly designed by Mike Brady
The anti-recall forces keep chanting the mantra that Fullerton is not for sale, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, and that under the Jones, Bankhead and McKinley regime, Fullerton has been very much for sale.
Here’s a picture of an anti-recall sign in the front yard of former Development Services Director, F. Paul Dudley, the man who, for over twenty years, participated in a series of calamitous boondoggles, oversaw the over-development of downtown Fullerton, the cookie-cutter development of Coyote Hills East, and the fake New Urbanism of Amerige Heights. F. Paul Dudley is the man who gave the Florentine family a permanent building on a public sidewalk. Apart from being a dyed-in-the-wool arrogant bureaucrat, Dudley is also a happy member of Fullerton’s $100,000 Pension Club, pulling down a whopping $139,420 for doing nothing.
The original, and the best.
But get this: Dudley now peddles his relationship with the Three Hollow Logs acting as a lobbyist for developers! So you see, for Dudley Fullerton is very much for sale. He and a small handful of people like him need a compliant majority on the council so that they can get massive entitlements and stick the rest of us with the impacts.
Ah, late night music in downtown Fullerton. The louder it gets, the more people show up. And at the Slidebar, the party rocks on every night of the week.
Sure, it’s fun if you’re visiting from the 909 on a Thursday night. But to the rest of the public, nonstop amplified outdoor music is known as something else: a Public Nuisance.
Here’s what the Fullerton Municipal Code’s Limitations on Permitted Uses section has to say about music on outdoor patios:
Accessory Outdoor Dining or Patio.
15.30.040.I.7.c.ii. No amplified music or amplified entertainment is permitted outdoors, except recorded background music for dining establishments wherein normal conversation is not impeded; no music or entertainment shall be permitted on a patio past 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
So whose job it is to police the downtown bars and night clubs that have patios with outdoor amplified music?
Makes ya feel good. Oops, watchit there, just step over the bodies and the civil rights!
Thus spaketh Lou Ponsi who seems to be doing his level best to avoid real news and even to parrot the nonsense peddled by the anti-recall crowd.
Ponsi seems really impressed with banners stating how much folks love Fullerton. Ponsi doesn’t seem interested that the operation is the brainchild of downtown businesses who have profited off of the City Council’s crazy wild west show; nor in the irony that these essentially anti-recall messages are hung on public property. No, that would take independence and intelligence, traits that Ponsi simply doesn’t possess.
Of course Ponsi echoes the notion that the one and only problem is the minor altercation last summer that left Kelly Thomas’ brains in a Transportation Center gutter, and of course he ignores the reality a phone call made by – a downtown business, that may very well have an I Love Fullerton banner in front of it.
Really? I don't know anything about that stuff. Wow!
Lou must have a short or self-serving memory if he can’t remember:
FPD cop Todd Major – convicted of fraud, 2011.
FPD cop Kelly Mejia – plead guilty to grand larceny, 2011
FPD cop Albert Rincon – accused of a dozen sexual batteries while in uniform causing a rebuke from a federal judge and a $350,000 settlement (so far), but actually “separated” for something else (jeez how bad could that have been), 2006-2011.
FPD cop Vincent Mater – “separated” after destroying evidence in a Fullerton jail suicide, identified as an untrustworthy “Brady cop” and suspected of a roll in the false identification in the Emanuel Martinez case. Charged by the District Attorney,2011.
FPD cop “Sonny” Saliceo who through laziness or malice, permitted or encouraged the mis-identification of Emanuel Martinez who subsequently spent five months in jail.
FPD employee April Baughman who was recently arrested on charges of theft from the FPD property room over a period of two years. 2012.
A lawsuit by Veth Mam against the police department and FPD cop Kenton Hampton for a laundry list of civil rights violations and false prosecution. 2011.
A lawsuit by Andrew Trevor Clarke against FPD cop Cary Tong and half the FPD for a laundry list of civil rights violations. 2012.
A lawsuit by Edward Miguel Quinonez against the FPD and Kenton Hampton for even more civil rights violations. 2011
And let’s not forget the eventual civil and civil rights suits against the balance of the FPD Six (including our old friends Kenton Hampton and Joe Wolfe). 2011.
Then in non-police matters there’s the little problem of the City Council giving away land worth millions for free to campaign contributors; and giving away huge subsidies to the bag man who runs the anti-recall campaign. 1996-2012.
And finally let us recall the biggest scam of all – the perpetuation of the illegal water tax for fifteen long years that went, in part, to pay the salaries and pensions of the very city council that looked the other way year after year. 1996-2012.
I know I said that. But that was way back yesterday!
Tuesday was a big day for Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk Silva. Only the day before Quirk-Silva had issued a bold press release to her pals in the liberal blogosphere stating that she was going to request that her colleagues on the city council suspend the illegal 10% water tax. She even helpfully explained why the new 6.7% number was a load of manure.
Here’s what she said, quoted verbatim from a press release sent to an admiring Liberal OC: “I will also call upon members of the city council to join me in a motion to stop any further diversions of water revenues to the general fund until these questions are answered,” Mayor Quirk-Silva asserted.
Naturally, when the chips were down, SQS chickened out. Don’t believe me? Here she is, right after Councilman Bruce Whitaker made the motion she herself had said she was going to make, that is, agendize the suspension of the illegal 10% tax on our water.
Oops.
Well, there you have it. Quirk decided to side with the blowhard who attended (and fell asleep at) the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting, and put off the decision to do the right thing for some other day.
The courage of Monday morning evaporated by the next afternoon.
Nearly a year ago FFFF started what would turn into a long string of investigations into the FPD Culture of Corruption by telling the tale of a young man who claimed that he was beaten and abused by Fullerton cops during a downtown arrest.
There were plenty of skeptics here, and there was a barrage of personal abuse leveled against the man by anonymous FPD goons. At least there was until we published the results of an internal investigation, here, in which at least part of the victim’s assertions were confirmed.
Well last week another of Pat McKinley’s chickens emerged on the horizon, coming home to roost. Andrew Trevor Clarke filed a federal civil suit against Fullerton PD employees Tong, Contino, Hampton, Bolden, Salazar and Sellers.
Sellers? Good call, but I wonder why Clarke didn’t include former Chief, present councilman Pat McKinley. After all, he will proudly tell us he hired all of ’em.
All I can say is the lawsuits are piling up so fast we’re going to need wings to stay above the legal paperwork. And I wonder how much this one is gonna cost us.
The CSUF Daily Titan ran a piece on Wednesday about the Fullerton Recall, spotlighting the candidacies of Travis Kiger and Jane Rands, running to replace F’ “Dick” Jones and Don Bankhead on the city council.
It’s good coverage for both, and captures the feelings of disgust felt by the tens of thousands of people who signed the Recall petitions because of the complete leadership failure of the Three Hollow Logs.
The irony, astonishing. The coincidence, unnerving. The big picture, never clearer.
If you could choose a place to break a water line, would this be at the top or bottom of the list? It’s in front of my house this morning…again!
This is just around the corner from the house that exploded yesterday and has many questioning the water systems integrity and capability when taxed with fire services. Did the sudden demand on the system place too much stress on the water lines? One would think so but I have not been able to speak with the Water System Manager, Dave Schickling, or the City Engineer, Don Hoppe, to ask.
After you and I have contributed $27-million through the water tax since 1996 to the City’s General Fund, you would think the City would have this under control.
A City of Fullerton representative contacted my wife to tell her that, because the leak is slow, they’ll be out TOMORROW, on a Saturday, to fix the line. Can you say OVERTIME? Seriously.
If the City was ever going to try to demonstrate water efficiency and commonsense responsible water management, you would think they might want to expedite a water main break. I wonder how many other breaks occurred since yesterday…
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.
