A hot wind blasts forth
Dust clouds swirl through the dull sky
A blue rivulet
You know it’s funny, but when you get away from the big city and get out into real America you really get a great perspective on politics in places like Orange County. And what I mean by perspective is a much better sense of the stupid ambition of no-talent assclowns and fence hoppers like our good friend Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu.
Aw, c’mon, Joe, you’ll be saying, Sidhu’s just like the rest of them, and anyway, by June 8th he’s just going to be a rancid memory. Well, that’s not altogether true. Creeps like Sidhu never go away. They’re always there waiting for the next opening to worm their way into. And that really stinks; almost as much as the existence of weasels and varmints like Bill Campbell, and Janet Nguyen and all the other slug-suckers who want to grease their way into some trough or other and think they can do it by following the money. Well, I guess nobody has taught them yet that they can’t. Oops. Don’t want to forget the other repuglican slimers like John Lewis and his boy Matthew Cunningham who likewise follow their own interests and principle be damned.
Then there’s the lazy local media that wouldn’t recognize a real story if it bit ’em in the ass.
There are lots of places in this great land where Sidhu’s carpetbagging, perjuring, ignorant boobery would be an absolute non-starter politically. We’ve seen it all: the fake addresses, the incoherent statements, the lame and never-ending attacks on a candidate of real ability by Sidhu’s stooges and paid lackeys.
Well, too bad for us that apparently Orange County isn’t one of the places that an ignoramus and no-talent clown like Sidhu can make a plausible candidate out of himself.
But no matter how high you stack it it’s still bullshit.
The other day Red County blogger and First 5 fat-skimmer Matthew Cunningham eagerly scampered up to Fullerton to film a press event in front of the police department by a group called “Crime Victims United.” The group was making a laughable attempt to associate Shawn Nelson’s website with victims of crime.
With the help of my Friend and Red County blogger Chip Hanlon, FFFF did a little digging into the background of Crime Victims United to see what they were all about. When the curtain was pulled back, Chip discovered that several union lobbyists are also high-level staffers of this organization.
You see, Wayne Ordos is a political adviser who is listed as a staffer and attorney for Crime Victims United.
But Wayne is also the organizer for the OCEA political action committee.
Wayne’s claim to fame includes other union PAC’s such as “Minorities in Law Enforcement Independent Expenditure Committee” and “CAUSE Law Enforcement Independent Expenditure Committee.” Those PACs bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight for enormous union benefits to the detriment of taxpayers.
We don’t have time to go through the rest of the extensive list of staffers and board members at Crime Victims United, but I’ll bet that more union connections float to the top.
Here’s what matters in the end — the unions will stop at nothing to deceive voters into voting for a pro-union candidate like Harry Sidhu. But we’ll keep shining a light on the lies and deception until the unions are defeated and good leaders are elected.
Perhaps we can look forward to more combined efforts with Chip Hanlon’s Red County blog to fight perpetual government growth. With the awareness of the electorate, we can take the wind out of the unions’ sail and their candidate Harry “Carpetbagger” Sidhu for a Nelson victory.
Last week, before all of the excitement about Coyote Hills and the one term history of Pam Keller, the Fullerton City Council approved the conceptual plan for a new community center. This eighth wonder of the world is to be built right across the street from city hall and the main library. The existing Boys and Girls Club and the Senior Center will be demolished to make room for it.
This $23 million mostly redevelopment funded project is supposed to be necessary because half of the city’s Parks and Rec programs are farmed out to other cities, and it would be so much nicer to have them under one new roof right downtown, near the new lingerie shop. The fifty plus year old B & G Club is considered to be beyond repair and the senior center, which isn’t really that old in the grand scheme of things is somehow inadequate. OK, so neither is an architectural masterpiece, but is it really necessary to tear them both down for this new combined community center?
The idea seems to have been to somehow “activate” the corner of Commonwealth and Highland, making it more a part of the library/city hall/police station/baseball field district. To that end, the architect has included one of those pretty, and pretty useless medians down the center of Commonwealth, and a little welcoming plaza on the north side. Placing the huge double gymnasium right up against Commonwealth doesn’t do much to activate the corner, however.
The kids, seniors and everyone in between can all interact as part of one big happy community, except that they still have their own buildings, just closer together than the current ones are, for more togetherness, I guess. There is a third building they do get to share, just to teach them all a lesson. You see, it’s a “multigenerational facility”, except that not everyone wants to be so together.
Several seniors have expressed concerns about having to be so close to boisterous young people while they are busy trying to relax with people of their own age group. As far as I know, no youngsters have yet complained about having to be close to old people, but who knows if anyone asked them during the long, long planning process.
Kids enter from the Commonwealth entrance while seniors use an entrance from the larger, southern parking lot adjacent to the senior center. This arrangement makes sense if no old people have to ride the bus to get there. You see, the bus stop is way out on Commonwealth, so seniors would have to walk through crowds of kids all the way down the central axis of the project, to get to the safety of the senior center, which is closest to the railroad tracks.
A seventy-five year old man at the hearing asked why the noisy gym and swimming pool weren’t placed nearest the railroad tracks instead of a facility used by the aged. The ever helpful and certainly senior Dr. Dick Jones suggested that seniors were hard of hearing anyway before voting to approve the plan. Not to be outdone, even more senior Don Bankhead addressed a concern about the new Commonwealth median restricting bicycle traffic by asserting that it is perfectly legal to ride on the sidewalk in Fullerton —presumably right through seniors exiting a bus.
We just got this press release from FACT:
The Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers (FACT) has announced its endorsement of Bill Hunt for Orange County Sheriff.
“FACT’s endorsement is based primarily on Bill Hunt’s solid position on the Second Amendment and his sound fiscal agenda for the Sheriff’s Department,” said Jack Dean, president of FACT.
FACT is an alliance of business people and citizen activists who advocate for legislative fiscal restraint, constitutional integrity and property rights.
Today the city of Anaheim is taking heavy criticism for its failure to providing open public records. Today’s story from the Voice of OC reinforces my own experience in the lack of transparency, accountability and compliance with state public records laws within Anaheim city hall.
A little while back the city of Anaheim was asked for copies of six months of telephone logs for Harry Sidhu’s campaign manager, Annie Mezzacappa, who also happens to be a city employee. There was reason to believe that Mezzacappa was doing campaign work for Sidhu while on the clock for the city. That’s a big no-no.
After 24 days of stalling by City Clerk Linda Andal, the city sent back a list of three phone calls made on the same day back in January.
Three phone calls in 6 months. We can either conclude that either Annie Mezzacappa doesn’t know how to use her telephone or the city of Anaheim is covering for her by violating the public records act. So which is it?
When questioned about the missing records, Deputy City Attorney Bryn Morley did not seem to think there was anything unusual about an employee who only makes three phone calls in six months. The city attorney had no excuse for the missing records and declined to give any further explanation.
Delaying, denying and obstructing public records requests is a hallmark of a government with something to hide. Apparently that’s the way it goes in Anaheim.
If you’ve been reading our blog, during the past few months, you will have encountered many posts detailing all sorts of misfeasance.
In the government of Orange County, we have shared stories about cronyism, waste and mismanagement at the County Clerk Recorder’s department; about Rob Reiner’s Children and Families Commission that diverts hundreds of thousands each year to dubious PR and lobbying services provided by well connected political operatives; about a Cemetery District that paid out $60,000 a year just to find a new graveyard site; and of course these tales of waste are accompanied by the day to day operations of various county agencies, including the sheriff’s department that are propelled along by their own inertia, year after dismal year; no matter how many times they change its name the County Planning Department remains a model of inefficiency, complacency and incompetence.
All this is just a prelude to the point of this post, which is that we need, finally a county supervisor who is able and willing to actually supervise something and that person is Shawn Nelson.
Nelson’s record on the Fullerton City Council, while not perfect, has demonstrated his recognition that elected office holders are there to represent the constituents, not the bureaucracy, and that governments must be held accountable for what they do and how they do it.
The county government is a contraption glued together by patronage and by its own dead weight. It’s a 19th century edifice in a 21st century reality. Nelson realizes this and he realizes the need for not only an overhaul but for a complete re-evaluation of the structure.
On June 8th, you have a chance to actually affect real change at the county; make the most of it because you won’t get too many chances.
Shawn Nelson for 4th District County Supervisor.
It looks like the Sheriff’s union has been watching the same video clips that we have. You know… the ones where Sidhu stammers incoherently and fails to answer simple questions about union pensions.
That must be why they sent out this mailer with a photo of Harry sifting through a dictionary, as if to tell voters “Harry knows pensions. See, he looked it up!”
What a bumbling buffoon! It’s no wonder county unions can’t wait to sit at table with Harry Sidhu and negotiate their next pension spike.
short version above, long version below, we’d love to hear your comments.
Shawn Nelson voted to kill Chevron’s West Coyote Hills development – but not for the same reasons that Keller and Quirk-Silva noted. At Tuesday’s City Council Meeting Shawn Nelson said of staff, “It’s like everybody got their Christmas list out.”
Nelson was referring to the extraordinary list of demands that the City of Fullerton has placed on the developer that include all-terrain vehicles, trailers, an interpretive center, school fees of more than $10 million, a $5 million endowment, and park fees. Nelson said “There’s only 760 units planned in this development and that would be $265,000 per unit. And they haven’t graded one spec of dirt, haven’t put in a street, a sewer, a street light. I’m embarrassed. I mean that’s shameful. Whether you approve it or not, that’s a problem.” He went on to ask, “How is that [list of demands] their [Pacific Coast Homes] or anybody’s responsibility that comes to town?”
Nelson made it clear that he supports the rights of developers. He said, “Chevron has a right to build.” But he was not happy that the development agreement showed up on his desk at noon, not leaving sufficient time to scrutinize the details. One major concern was over water rights. When he first took office, Nelson said he had inquired about other issues that have yet to be adequately addressed by Pacific Coast Homes, such as parking.
The councilman appeared to be most irritated that, “These people have been run through the ringer”, referring to the developer, Pacific Coast Homes – a subsidiary of Chevron and the list of unreasonable demands by city staff.
Shawn Nelson is running for the Orange County board of Supervisor’s 4th District seat vacated by Chris Norby after Norby’s election to the California State Assembly. To no one’s surprise, Shawn Nelson is endorsed by Congressman Ed Royce and Assemblyman Chris Norby, among others.
Before the meeting was adjourned, Councilwomen Pam Keller made a lengthy statement that she would not be seeking reelection.