Friends For Fullerton's Future – Page 247 – FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County

October 14, 2010About Us

Harry The House Fly

You all know what happens when you forget to shut the back door. Invariably a fly will buzz in and start landing on places you’d rather he didn’t land. Pretty soon revulsion turns to annoyance as the pest refuses go away. Sometimes the big, fat, lazy ones are easy to smack and the problem is solved. The smaller, more agile ones defy your attempts to swat them and seem to have a positive genius for eluding eradication. You have something he wants.

Somebody left the door to OC’s 4th Supervisorial District open, and in came Harry Sidhu – uninvited, unwanted, unintelligible. And there he landed – right in the middle of the political potato salad. See, we have something he wants: our votes. Above all he seems to have a pathological hunger for the recognition that comes from elective office, and for that he needs us. For that he will even lie on voter registration forms and cook up fake addresses where he doesn’t live.

HarrysFriend — After this I will only run one more time!

As our collective revulsion has blossomed into true annoyance at this home invasion, I have to wonder what Supervisor Shawn Nelson’s campaign is going to do in the next three weeks to obliterate this hapless, yet persistent irritant. Considering that Nelsons’ campaign consultant is the very same guy who worked for Mimi Walters against Sidhu in 2008, and who prompted the now comical Sidhu retreat, I predict it won’t be pretty. But sometimes you have to get tough with pests, once an for all.

October 14, 2010October 15, 2010Don Bankhead

Yep, Chi’s Non-Profit Was Used to Promote His Campaign

by Travis16 Comments

An unmarked compact disc was anonymously placed in our drop box the other day by someone who we presume is close to the Chi campaign. It was loaded with photos taken from Chi’s event last week, confirming earlier suspicions that Chi would be using his tax-exempt non-profit to promote his political campaign, in defiance of IRS tax rules.

Perhaps a more interesting observation: It looks like hardly anybody showed up.

The boring photos reveal a very small audience comprised mostly of political candidates, including Janny Meyer, Bev Berryman, Don Bankhead, and a few of their family members.

The whole event appears to be a lot of wasted effort for an unsuccessful attempt at self-promotion.

Of course, we couldn’t help but notice that the event was catered. For the health and safety of Chi’s guests, let’s hope the food didn’t come from his own supermarket.

Chi-Party-07-crop — Did you try the shrimp?

www.rolandchifullerton.com

October 13, 2010October 14, 2010Behind Closed Doors

BIG SIDHU SUPPORTER IN DEEP FECAL MATTER WITH FEDS?

by admin16 Comments

Last December we posted about a character named Ajit Mithaiwala who had built a heavily subsidized low income housing fustercluck project in Fullerton in the 1990s that epitomized the futility and incompetence of Fullerton Redevelopment Agency.

Remember? His name popped up on a host committee list for a fund raiser thrown by high speed rail impresario and con man Curt Pringle, in honor of his boy, Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu. Since the name appeared to be mispelled we had fun with the notion that it might be somebody else.

In the post we wondered aloud what had become of Mithaiwala, and what he had been up to the past ten years.

It turns out we weren’t alone. Federal government auditors, prosecutors, and the FBI have been wondering too, according to an L.A. Times article forwarded to us by an alert Friend.

All sorts of misbehavin’ have been attributed to this guy and his development company that found a niche building subsidized, low-income housing projects, including fraud, failure to report income, and building shoddy, unsafe buildings. His politcal contributions have been scrutinized, too.

Here are a few choice morsels in the article from the Federal investigator:

“virtually no financial records,” no general ledger, no balance sheet and no bank reconciliations. Working with forensic accountants, he said he had discovered “potential fraud and criminal activity.”

On Tuesday, he told the court he was still trying to gain control of company assets and had identified 400 bank accounts, as well as $600,000 in gold bullion and three cars, including a Bentley.

It transpires that besides Fullerton, Mithaiwala has left a trail of tears behind him in cities across Southern California, including our neighbor to the south, Anaheim, where the Mayor Pro Tem is none other than Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu.

Yikes. You don’t mess with the Treasury Department, boys. Even Al Capone could tell you that.

October 13, 2010October 13, 2010Dead heads

“Job Killer” Nelson Kills Job: Sidhu’s

by Mr. Peabody24 Comments

Old Hide and Seek Sidhu is getting pretty desperate. His squalid excuse for a campaign started putting up signs proclaiming that 4th District Supervisor Supervisor Shawn Nelson is a “job killer.” Of course they ripped off Bushala’s format, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as they say.

Of course nobody is supposed to know that Sidhu can’t name a single job Nelson has ever killed; and that apart from a few chicken flippin’ jobs at his El Pollo Loco in Glen Avon, some campaign prostitutes, and the dude who cleans out his peacock cage, Sidhu has never created any.

Oops, sorry. Nelson did kill one potential job – Harry Sidhu’s attempt to be a County Supervisor!

October 12, 2010October 13, 2010Behind Closed Doors

CalPERS Delays Scary Pension Reports Until After the Election

by Travis15 Comments

A senior CalPERS attorney just told me that the annual pension liability reports for local agencies, which are normally distributed every October, have now been delayed until after the November elections. The delays are allegedly due to furloughs, but conveniently prevent local pension watchdogs from using the data to promote fiscally conservative candidates and pension reform leading up to the November 2nd.

This year’s reports would be the first to calculate pension liabilities after the disastrous market crash of 2008/2009 which caused CalPERS to loose a large portion of its holdings, which in turn has caused cities’ unfunded liability and annual contributions to skyrocket. But the damage to each city is unknown until the individual reports are released.

How bad will it be? Here’s one example: rough calculations show Fullerton’s “non-smoothed” unfunded liability for itspublic safety plan will soar past $100,000,000 this year, nearly three times the amount presented last year. Throughout the state, the debts shown in these report are likely to be shocking compared to previous filings.

The data would have undoubtedly been used to draw more attention to the dire pension situation in cities throughout California. The reports would have come just in time for local elections, which makes CalPERS’ stated cause for the delay extremely suspect.

The annual “Actuarial Valuation” reports are prepared by CalPERS actuaries for each participating agency to justify annual increases in required contributions. Here is a example of Fullerton’s public safety report for 2008, which is the most recent year available.

October 12, 2010October 12, 2010Fullerton 2010

It’s Time for Shawn Nelson to Rescind His Endorsement of Roland Chi

by The Fullerton Savage10 Comments

We’ve all heard the story….Shawn Nelson endorsed two candidates for Fullerton City Council, Bruce Whitaker and Roland Chi, before both decided to run for the same seat vacated by him when he was elected to the Board of Supervisors earlier this year. Fair enough, Mr. Nelson. There were three seats open on the Fullerton City Council, two four year seats and one two year seat, and you had no way of knowing when you gave your endorsements that Whitaker and Chi would run against one another for the single two year seat. But that was then, and now you have to make a choice about who you are supporting. Will it be Bruce Whitaker or Roland Chi?

Here are your choices…

Roland Chi:

As reported on this blog,

————-

Bruce Whitaker:

Serves on the Fullerton Planning Commission (appointed by Shawn Nelson)
Has lived in Fullerton for 22 years
Founded Fullerton Association for Concerned Taxpayers (FACT) and repealed an unjust utility tax
Statewide Coordinator for Municipal Officials for Redevelopment Reform (MORR), an organization dedicated to reforming out of control Redevelopment in California

Shawn Nelson, you can’t vote for both candidates. Do the right thing for your hometown and put your support behind Bruce Whitaker for City Council today.

October 12, 2010October 12, 2010Behind Closed Doors

With A Little Help From Our Friends

by admin17 Comments

In politics somebody is always presenting explanations for things that may or may not be going on beneath the surface. And so we present to the Friends something to think about:

BaggyPantsExplained1-339x500 — One small step for a man...

BaggyPantsExplained2 — One giant leap for conspiracy theorists...

October 11, 2010October 12, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Rodent Emerges From Hole

by Joe Sipowicz30 Comments

fartboy — Those guys punched a big hole in my credibility!

I was just informed that in a Red County post my old punching bag Matthew J. Cunningham wrote a post about some jackoffs down in Mission Viejo. Why he cares about that is his own business, but in this post he threw out this precious and completely gratuitous nugget:

I realize that sounds juvenile and stupid, but that’s how these types think (kind of like how a Fullerton council candidate disliked by a gadfly faction there had a hole punched in his truck’s gas tank).

Okay, we gotta cut this piece of shit some slack. After all, we were the ones that pulled back the rancid curtain and exposed to OC Republicans the fact that their wordsmith was wordsmithing hard for $200 an hour on behalf of meathead Rob Reiner’s tax-and-redistribute, whole-village rearing Children and Families Commission.

And of course we nailed him for supporting the stillborn supervisorial campaign of Democrat and serial miscreant, Tom Daly.

Still, insinuating that FFFF had something to do with Kevlar Cueball’s gas tank puncture is pure chickenshit. And of course it is couched in all the craven wordsmithing words that will keep you out of court and maybe even avoid serious physical rebuke.

October 11, 2010August 27, 2012Food and Drink

That’s Not Funny, Roland. That’s Sick.

by Travis43 Comments

Anyone who’s ever suffered from severe food poisoning understands how painful and dangerous it can be. It’s typically twelve to eighteen hours of intense vomiting with excruciating pain that can only be relieved by a morphine drip at the E.R. The symptoms are so intense that food borne illness causes an estimated 5,000 deaths per year in the United States.

Last year Fullerton City Council candidate Roland Chi was charged with multiple misdemeanor health code violations when eleven people got sick (source) after allegedly eating food prepared at the Arirang Supermarket in Garden Grove. The DA wrote that Roland holds the position of Director for the troubled Korean market.

Chi_Roland — Me? I don’t eat there anymore.

When county health inspectors showed up at the market to investigate the reported illnesses, they described conditions there as “filthy” and “contaminated”. The violations they listed include no hot water for hand washing in the restrooms, unacceptable sanitation practices, raw beef and seafood sitting at room temperature, filthy utensils being washed too close to meat, raw beef being washed with a garden hose, and raw beef water splashing all over the kitchen. And that’s only part of the first report, which also included these graphic photos:

The incident led to a meeting with the District Attorney and a few more health inspectors. The meeting minutes show that while interviewing with the DA, Roland Chi admitted to understanding all of the violations and promised that they would be corrected. Chi was warned with an exact date and time for another inspection one week later.

the-shrimps — Make sure you try the shrimp

When the health inspectors arrived for the follow-up, they found major uncorrected violations and a few brand new ones. And so after promising the DA that he would clean up his act, the market failed inspection for a second time.

wash-bucket — The hose water marinade adds something special.

That second report described an employee cutting squid while raw seafood juices were splashing on the nearby sesame oil and spices, along with a bunch of meat and seafood sitting out at room temperature.

But it gets worse. Two weeks later the inspectors came back and found even more violations, listed in a third report.

Just in case you think we are exaggerating, here are some of the health inspector’s own words:

Observed an employee scooping salt with a metal bowl (without handles) from the large pull-up container. The salt and the bowl were observed contaminated with a crusted build-up of meat blood. The sugar in the pull-up container was also observed contaminated with blood.
Observed a meat handling employee with a meat label in his mouth, then picking it up with his gloves and putting it on the meat packaging then resumes to meat serving/packaging process.
Observed an electrical fly catcher stored above uncovered rice bags in the produce department. Discontinue storing food beneath the fly catcher.
Observed an open sewer line between two walk-in coolers in the warehouse.

Workers — Table. Floor. Would you like some more?

If you’ve been counting, that’s three consecutive sets of violations, 11 sick customers and one smarmy owner. The DA decided to charge Roland and his business partner with five health code violations.

leakage — A seepage of unknown origin. Care to look closer?

Six months later the DA dropped the charges against Roland, presumably in exchange for his business partner’s guilty plea. Still, the damage to the victims had already been done. The DA’s charges against Roland Chi for persistent neglect for the health and safety of his customers would be quite disturbing even if he wasn’t running for city council. But since he is, we have to ask: Should someone this irresponsible be elected to run our city?

October 11, 2010October 11, 2010Harry Sidhu

Comic Genius – Another Priceless Sidhu Moment

by Mr. Peabody23 Comments

DOUBLE UPDATE: While searching the dark corners of our FFFF blog-vault, deep in the basement of the Fox Fullerton, I just came across this gem: a video moment so pure and wonderful that it must be shared again. And again. Until we can safely say that Hairball Sidhu’s political “career” is over, once and for all.

UPDATE: I came across this earlier post today as I was thinking about “The Joke’s on You” post. This really is too good not to show yet again. Will we see a repeat performance by the Sidhu clan in the waning days of this year’s campaign? Don’t bet against it. Sidhu has an almost limitless capacity for clownish behavior.

Although we don’t get many glimpses of Hide and Seek Sidhu these days, video clips of his performances do exist. And some, like the one I share here, reveal a man who has seemingly missed his calling in life. Instead of a fast food operator and a political aspirant, Sidhu really belongs on a vaudeville stage someplace.

Here’s a priceless youtube clip starring Sidhu at that golden moment two years ago when Sidhu lost his nerve and started shredding his mailers in his campaign against Mimi Walters for State Senate. It’s brilliant comic performance art, and as usual he drags in his family to perform as extras in his hilarious political theater. Watch them dutifully shred his hit pieces against Walters as he introduces his rag tag collection of political allies – just about the only people who showed up (oh yes, I see you Bill Taormina!).

By the way, this clownishly hypocritical gesture didn’t help Sidhu at all. He was thoroughly pummeled and lost every precinct in Anaheim.

Video courtesy of our pals at Red County.