At the budget workshop of March 9, 2010, each department presented its recommendation to the City Council to balance expenditures with ever shrinking revenues and was asked to come back at the next budget workshop with recommendations to balance the budget.
Back to work on March 23, 2010, a total of $5.5 million was still needed to balance the Fullerton city 2010-11 General Fund budget.
One of staff’s recommendations was to close City Hall every Friday. It never seems to amaze me, when government has to come up with solutions we the public always end up on the short end of the stick and staff gets a four day work week.
Then listen to another solution. Pay people you’re going to lay off anyway and count it a savings!
Well, it’s good to know we have at least one councilman who can see through the double talk and gobbledygook nonsense. Watch this clip and you will know exactly what I mean.
Over at the Red County blog Matthew J. Cunningham has gotten his lavender briefs into a self-righteous snarl over some guy named Tim Whitacre. Whitacre’s ostensible offense? Claiming that the Lewis Consulting Group is on Hide and Seek Sidhu’s payroll. In reality his offense was standing up at the GOP Central Committee meeting last week and reminding everybody that Harry Sidhu is an opportunistic carpetbagger.
You would think that somebody like Cunningham who pretends to be a political and social conservative, but who, in reality, has an annual contract with Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s Children and Families Commission of almost $200,000 a year would just clam up. But no. Silence is not in him. Instead he prefers to keep opining in his usual way: in a crab-wise crawl across the truth.
First you call your opponents insane (or tin-foil hat wearing, delusional, paranoid, etc.) Of course sane people don’t argue with the insane – but that never stopped Cunningham – who will keep jabbering away until the lights are shut off. Then you start carefully parsing out where your opponent is making stuff up, and has no proof, etc.
Philosophical question: is it possible to slander a campaign consultant?
In this case the fake issue is whether Lewis is actually getting paid directly from Sidhu or not. Lewis must have informed The Jerb that he isn’t. So he then is safe in saying Whitacre has no proof that Lewis is. But Lewis is indeed working for Sidhu – one way or another. His payment may come later if he is working on spec – either in deferment or simply in access to Norby’s old office for the inevitable lobbying. As one of our commenters pointed out he may also be working on an IE against Shawn Nelson. In any of these scenarios some kind of disclosure by his partner Matt Holder should have been made at the Central Committee meeting.
So the gist of what Whitacre has to say is very much valid.
Cunningham finishes up by saying Whitacre has no proof that Nelson is the stronger candidate even though, ironically, he has no proof that Whitacre doesn’t. Of course you wouldn’t even need to have poll results to tell that Sidhu is a bumbling assclown who will be lucky to get 9% of the vote. Oh yeah, he’s also a perpetual office seeking carpetbagger. And a casual perjurer.
Coming soon to an elective office in your neighborhood...
Ah the faux outrage! Such a fun spectacle when it fails. And when you’re a hypocrite repuglican whose cover’s been blown, it’s only going to get tougher to pull off.
As I was driving up Harbor Blvd. today, I came across a line of people that seemed about a mile long. They were walking for a cause: raising money to help feed hungry people in Fullerton and abroad. It makes you wonder with all of the billions that our government collects in taxes why we spend so much on bullets, bombs and tanks to take lives and not nourish them.
Wow, an opportunity to do the right thing. How many of those am I gonna get?
Now that Chris Norby’s campaign manager John Lewis has not only come out in support of Harry Sidhu in the 4th Supervisor’s race, but is actually working for his campaign, it’s time for Norby to do the right thing – and fire Lewis.
Hold on Matt, that white van is outside the house again.
Norby has endorsed and supported the candidacy of Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson, and his campaign manager has deliberately placed his own interest ahead of both Norby’s, and the GOP’s, but the entire populace of the 4th Supervisorial District, for that matter.
One fudgecicle per customer, please!
You’ve all seen the facts and the videos. Harry Sidhu is a perjurer, a carpetbagger, and an unintelligible buffoon, who is patently unqualified to be an ice cream truck driver, let alone a County Supervisor. But John Lewis needs a lobbying target and knows that Shawn Nelson isn’t for sale. See, for Lewis it’s all about money and influence, and principle be damned.
So what do say Chris? How long are you going to go with a guy who is working against you? Who’s the boss?
In support of Hugh Nguyen for Orange County Clerk-Recorder, come meet special guest, former congressional candidate, Marine Corps veteran, Friend and Author Quang Pham.
$100/person includes hors d’oeuvres and a personalized signed copy of Quang’s book, “A Sense of Duty”.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
6:15 PM
Zen Vegetarian Restaurant
9329 Bolsa Ave. Westminster, CA 92683
For more information or to RSVP, please contact Hugh at: hieunguyenrun@yahoo.com or 714-357-6207.
Yup. The time of the year when this little-known, virtually opaque level of government that was created by Rob Reiner’s tobacco tax hands out its PR and lobbying contracts to well-connected “small government” types like blabbermouth Matthew J. Cunningham and Anaheim’s Mayor for Hire, Curt Pringle.
The hell with the kids. It's our turn at the trough!
I have previously documented the big government gravy being slurped up by Pringle and Cunningham here, and here. Were talking really big bucks here, Friends, and you get the feeling that not only is this Commission in existence to dole out the government largess to local repuglicans, but that its proprietors are a lot more interested in smiley face public relations and protecting their flow of tax revenue from Sacramento than they are in helping any kids. See, it takes a village to raise those children but unfortunately the bureaucracy and its spokesholes don’t come cheap.
Anyway, May and June are the months these contracts seem to come due and also seem to keep getting rolled over with almost no public scrutiny, or really any sort of performance audit for that matter. You can bet the family farm we’ll be reporting on the attempts to renew these contracts in the future.
A creator of jobs. Sidhu, are you paying attention?
While many County departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs big spender of our dough Tom Daly seems to be going in the opposite direction. I learned that he has just recently showed off his newly minted Executive Aide – Bruce Matthias, to his staff.
This new hire has to be costing tax payers a bundle. But most disturbing is that Matthias was recently released by the County’s Executive Office from his job as head of the County’s legislative affairs unit – a sort of in-house government lobbyist. Since Daly hired Mr. Matthias as an “at-will-employee,” he didn’t have to go through any sort of competitive hiring process to bring on board someone who was recently cut loose by the County CEO – in other words, pure cronyism. So what does Matthias know about running anything, let alone a Clerk/Recorder’s office? Just looks like typical jobs for the boys featherbedding corruption to me.
Tellingly, this recent addition to Team Daly used to be Chief of Staff to Assemblyman John Lewis during his first three years in office. Hey, wait! Isn’t the John Lewis Machine running Daly’s campaign? Hmm.
Hey, this guy's got a mortgage.
Maybe Daly is returning a favor. Clearly the Matthias family is pals with Daly. Matthias’ wife Sonja Matthias contributed to Daly’s now abandoned campaign for Supervisor 2010. Or maybe Daly’s doing the favor for Lewis. Who knows?
All I know is that it is very depressing although not really surprising to see more and more so-called conservative Republicans finding ways to profit off of County government.
As for Daly, this blatant cronyism in a time of recession is just par for the course. Remember the $48,000 doled out to a political contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame? And the $1700 a month retainer to a Sacramento government consulting business? Or the $2.1 million flushed on the tear-down building on Civic Center?
We could hope that Matthias has been brought on board to end this cycle of Daly disasters, but what particular skill set he brings to solve any of his new bosses managerial shortcomings is unknown.
Wake up Orange County! We need to get rid of this free spending, incompetent career politician and return the Clerk-Recorder’s Office to a professional operation instead of what it has become – an unaccountable sinkhole of waste.
It is amazing that Harry Sidhu doesn’t understand what “defined benefits” are… and yet he wants to negotiate with public employee unions as our Supervisor!
It’s always ironic when your supporters begin to unwittingly advertise your failures. Such was the case when the Liberal OC’s Dan C posted about a recent campaign fundraising BBQ held at Lorri Galloway’s Address #3 in the 4th Supervisorial District. Dan added some fun photos that demonstrated how few people actually showed up for the party.
We're gonna have a lot of food left over...
Dan seems to be really concerned about the fact that his Precious Princess is a carpetbagger and that people might think the house is nothing but a front. Claims Dan hopefully:
And there’s no question Lorri lives here. The home is covered with photos and personal items that clearly distinguish a home from a house.
Uh, yeah, right Dan. Anything you say. With the thirty-year old mismatched furniture and the cheap framed prints on the walls (courtesy of Galloway’s Eli Home thrift store) the place doesn’t even look plausible. Maybe Dan rifled the medicine cabinet and found some toothpaste or deodorant conveniently left for his discovery.
The simple, unvarnished fact of the matter is that Lorri Galloway lives in the 3rd Supervisorial District, not ours. If she wants to be on the Board of Supervisors she should have waited until 2012 to run against Harry Sidhu for that seat.
