Friends For Fullerton's Future – Page 288 – FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County

March 19, 2010March 19, 2010Dick Jones

Fullerton’s Fiber Failure Forms into Far-Fetched Google Gamble

Last year we laughed at Dick Jones’ plan to dig trenches all over Fullerton and form his own fiber optic Internet service. As predicted, the appointed Technology Working Group failed to pull in the magical Federal stimulus dollars to launch this terribly unnecessary project. Lobbyists were consulted, fits were thrown, but in the end we were saved from yet another boondoggle thanks to a faltering economy.

With that loss behind them, we had hoped that the TWG would rest on it’s laurels of creating the nearly useless and unused downtown wireless network, which they had finished building just moments before every single coffee shop, restaurant and bar offered their own wireless for free.

laptop-monkeys — What's a gigabit? Sounds neat.

But then Google gave these gullible go-getters a new glimmer of hope. Last month the Mountain View technology behemoth announced a “contest” of sorts – the winning city will get to have Google come out and rewire a portion of the city for free as some sort of yet-to-be-explained telecom experiment.

Within a month, at least a hundred cities across the country (each presumably guided by its’ own version of a clueless technology commission) had announced interest in submitting an RFP for the contest. And so the corporate boot-licking stunts begin; Topeka, Kansas renamed their city “Google” for a month, Baltimore has appointed a “Google Czar” and Peoria has had its’ “Google Day“.

I suppose it’s fine if a couple of starry-eyed “technology fixes everything” types want to go against the odds, coddle Google and fill out a long RFP. In fact, knock yourselves out if you have nothing better to do.

But at best, Fullerton faces 100-to-1 odds and has no idea what Google is actually giving to the winning city. Please, please do not let Dick Jones waste a dime of our tax dollars on consultants or staff time for this high-tech Hail Mary.

Ooops, too late. The Redevelopment and Community Development departments are already working it. Perhaps they just need something to do.

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010Dead heads

‘Tamnation. OC Register/News Tribune Really And Truly Hits Rock Bottom

by Jan Florys Dog3 Comments

I really thought the OC Register/Fullerton News Tribune had gone about as far south as was humanly possible. I was wrong. Yesterday they produced an on-line “piece” by a “columnist” named Dennis Bode.

It was dressed up to look like an article about remodeling your house – which is about as newsworthy as tulips in the front yard. Pretty soon the article started talking about house prices and foreclosures and REO’s, etc. Upon closer inspection it turns out the thing is nothing but a real estate come-on by Bode who, it turns out, is a real estate agent.

Sweet Emancipator, are they joking? Was this an infomercial that somehow missed the “advertisement” label and got put in the news tab, instead? Or has the Register/News Tribune descended to printing ads under the guise of news? Other ads on the page are clearly labeled “advertisement.”

Did Mr. Bode pay for that ad? I have to wonder.

This is beyond incompetent and lazy. This is unethical. But what do I know? I’m just a dead dog with a bust-up eye socket and a bad under bite. Arf.

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010Orange County Government

Friday: Join FFFF at Operation Overpass for Bill Hunt

by Travis5 Comments

Fans of Bill Hunt for Sheriff are invited to participate in Operation Overpass on Friday afternoon from 3:30 to 6:00 pm. Freeway overpasses all across Orange County will swarm with supporters holding up signs for Bill Hunt during rush hour. The Friends at FFFF have chosen the overpass of the 57 freeway at Yorba Linda Blvd to show our support.

Park in the Target parking lot on Yorba Linda Boulevard and head up the sidewalk to the overpass. We will have signs ready to go.

And while we’re talking about Bill Hunt, here is a new video that describes Hunt’s challenge to the Sheriff-turned-convicted-felon Michael Carona in 2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVCYGF4888s

See you at the overpass!

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010OC's Fourth District

John Moorlach Endorses Shawn Nelson

by admin10 Comments

2nd District County Supervisor and former County Treasure, John Moorlach, has endorsed Shawn Nelson’s campaign for 4th District Supervisor. Here’s the press release:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	CONTACT: Dave Gilliard
March 18, 2010	(916) 626-6804
Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach Endorses Shawn Nelson for Supervisor FULERTON, CA — The Shawn Nelson for Supervisor campaign announced today that Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach has endorsed Shawn Nelson in the 4th district. “Shawn Nelson is a proven watchdog for taxpayers in Fullerton. I am confident he will be a tremendous asset to the Board of Supervisors as we continue to lead the state in our fiscal pursuits, including downsizing, balanced budgets and public employee pension reform. Shawn will bring the financial acumen needed to deal with the annually increasing pension costs that Orange County is facing,” said Supervisor Moorlach. Nelson now enjoys the support of two prominent Supervisors, Pat Bates and John Moorlach, as well as former Supervisor and current Assemblyman Chris Norby. In addition, Nelson is endorsed by U.S. Representative Ed Royce and the Lincoln Club of Orange County. Shawn Nelson is a Fullerton City Councilman and the leading candidate for Supervisor in the 4th district, which is currently open due to the election of Chris Norby to the Assembly.
# # # Nelson for Supervisor 2010 • FPPC ID# 1316599

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Love For Sale.Tender Young Love For Sale

by admin20 Comments

A few weeks ago I did a pretty tongue-in-cheek post about some guy named Thomas Anthony Gordon, a goon from Santa Ana who popped up out of nowhere with a gratuitous anti-Shawn Nelson post on the Mauve County blog. He criticized Nelson for being soft on criminals because he is a defense lawyer. I pointed out the bad luck since there was a guy in OC with the exact same name and body type as Gordon who had been busted a couple of times for driving on a suspended license – and opined about how that guy was probably in need of a defense lawyer himself.

At the time I believed Gordon was just prostituting himself for Lewis/Cunningham and hence, Tom Daly. I may have been wrong. That was before I understood the deep, moist crevices into which Harry Sidhu’s pocket change had fallen. Of course the common denominator, John Lewis, is still in the picture, although Daly quit the supervisors race to play catch with his kid.

Well check this out. Harry Sidhu, the perpetual office seeker has decided to run for the GOP Central Committee for the 69th Assembly district (which must surely be a record – carpetbagging two districts at the same time, what a hustler). Now for the fun part. Take a look at who was out circulating petitions on the very last day so Hide and Seek Sidhu could “qualify” for the ballot. None other than our old friend Thomas Anthony Gordon. Click on the pdf and take a look.

Gordo! And now we really have to wonder. Is Gordon actually on Sidhu’s payroll? If not, why not? Everybody else is!

Of course, if he is let’s hope he informed his bosses over at the Mauve County where they say they will fire you if you don’t disclose that fact that you are blogging for dollars!

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010Dead heads

Total Buzz Fail: The Shoe Fetish

by Grover Cleveland8 Comments

BarbresLittleSecret — Um, too much information?

Everybody knows that traditional print journalism is on the way out. Why? Lazy citizens? Sensory overload? More convenient access? All of the above?

Dying papers like the Orange County Register are fighting a rear-guard action by turning their print edition into a dumbed-down website-looking format with lots of pictures and human interest stories for us idiots. And of course they have gone on-line with stuff like their political gossip column “Total Buzz.” Which might be better termed “Total Schmooze.”

Rather than actually dedicate itself to reporting real, relevant news, the Register has decided to dedicate its employees’ talents toward the inane, and to the political flackery of Martin Wisckol and Frank Mickadeit. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the worthies than run the Register that Orange County is a market that is starved for local news and, coincidentally, that it is run by a group of political overseers who operate the place like their own private plantation. Seems like an opportunity to do real reporting, right?

But yesterday the Register hit a new low, even for them.

Consider this, um, monument to cutting edge journalism as Jennifer Muir shares the embarrassing shoe fetish of Brett Barbre with her breathlessly waiting readers.

Brett Barbre’s Shoe Fetish

Huh? FFFF has recently disclosed a series of embarrassing expenditures by the County Clerk, Tom Daly, including a $48,000 contract to the very same Brett Barbre to “study” an athletic hall of fame, and who then turned around and kicked back $1000 into Daly’s political campaign.

And what about the $1700 as month retainer that has been paid out by Daly for over five years to a Sacramento “consultant” to do – nothing. And how about the County spending $2,100,000 two years ago at Daly’s behest on a tear-down building that was supposed to house County’s archives? Of any interest to the intrepid journalists at the Register? Naw.

It's not just a girl thing...

Instead we get pictures of what shoes the political hacks are wearing at the Registrar of Voters Office. They think we want to look at pictures of people’s feet. Meanwhile a lowly blog is forced to actually do a newspaper’s job.

Well, we can take a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that the Register’s days are numbered and that soon its employees will be doing (paid) PR work, or will be blogging for food.

Still, it does seem shame that nobody in the business is willing to try to fill the void where local news used to be.

March 18, 2010Local Media

Monday: NUFF Blog Forum

by Travis10 Comments

Neighbors United for Fullerton is bringing together some of OC’s most popular bloggers to talk about how blogs influence our city. Join FFFF, the Orange Juice Blog and a few others at the Fullerton Public Library on Monday at 6:45 pm for an event that promises to be at least interesting, and quite possibly explosive.

RSVP on Facebook if you can.

March 17, 2010March 17, 2010Dead heads

Why It Sucks To Be Matthew J. Cunningham

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

fartboy — John Lewis is my moral compass.

I can only wonder what’s it’s like to have virtually no moral bearing – to be at the whim of whichever authority figure is pushing you at a given moment. Like a leaf blown in the wind.

Today a supporter of Hugh Nguyen’s campaign to unseat the deplorably incompetent Democrat County Clerk Tom Daly passed along the news that Matthew J. Cunningham of Mauve County fame had a devoted an entire post to the untrustworthiness of Nguyen. His running buddies? The lefties at the LiberalOC blog!

First it seems that he, like his candidate Tom Daly, takes exception to Nguyen’s ballot designation.

He also makes a big harrumph about Nguyen changing the story he told some of Cunningham’s Blue County boyfriends a couple of months ago about the unsolicited ad Art Pedroza is running for him on the OJ blog. You’re joking, right?

But here’s the kicker. Hugh Nguyen is mostly shifty and not to be trusted because when he was soliciting endorsements last summer for the Clerk-recorder job he didn’t inform those folks of the presence of his wife Laura Cunningham in the race, thereby precluding them from endorsing her!

Of course the idea that Nguyen was under any moral or legal obligation to advertise the hapless and long-defunct Mrs. Jerbal campaign is so preposterously comical that no more need be said about it.

Daly Really2 — Cunningham likes his style...

Meanwhile from the vantage of his lofty moral authority Cunningham seems unable to discern the manifest failures of his boy Tom Daly. You know, like the $48,000 Daly passed along to a campaign consultant for “studying” a sports hall of fame; like the $100,000+ he has wasted (and is still wasting) on monthly retainers for a do-nothing Sacramento “consultant;” oh yeah, and let’s not forget the $2,100,000 chunked into the toilet on the acquisition of the uninhabitable building at 433 Civic Center West. What was the issue again? Oh, yeah – trustworthiness!

On top of all that, Daly is a Democrat and Cunningham is supposed to be a conservative Republican! No bueno!

Harry'sFriend — No, sir. I do not need a wordsmith.

Come to think of it, Cunningham has never said a word about the two fraudulent voting registrations of one Harry C. Sidhu, the 4th District carpetbagger who lied about living at the Calabria Apartments on two separate public documents. Which sounds a lot like voter fraud and perjury if you ask me.

And speaking of shifty, how about Sidhu’s campaign signs that advertise the carpetbagger simply as “Mayor Pro Tem” despite the fact that they are posted in cities where Sidhu is not on the city council? Hows that for shifty?

HarrysHome — The beautiful Calabria Apartments. No furniture was ever moved in. Did Sidhu sleep on the floor?

But oh yeah, his boss John Lewis is working for Sidhu now, too; so that means that the regular rules don’t apply, see?

Jesus H., it must suck to be Cunningham.

March 17, 2010March 17, 2010Dead heads

Well, You Go With What You Know

by Mr. Peabody2 Comments

I was describing the Sidhu for Supervisor campaign to my neighbor yesterday and she asked me why anybody with any self-respect would be associated with a carpetbagging campaign that started out with a completely phony address behind a bowling alley.

I explained that there really is no lower class of organism than the professional political campaign parasite – a rather shocking combination of character traits that most of us can’t even begin to fathom. And I felt constrained to point out that sadly, many politicians are in the same class of humanoid.

In the case of Sidhu I pointed out that although his own campaign people laugh at his carpetbagging and evident buffooneries they are there because Sidhu has a lot of cash he is willing to waste in order to satisfy his desperate hunger for political recognition, and they will be there until it is all gone – no matter how many offices he runs for.

March 17, 2010April 28, 2010Harry Sidhu

Diane Harkey Tries To Drive Spike Through Heart of High Speed Rail Boondoggle

by The Desert Rat9 Comments

I’ve never heard much good about Diane Harkey, the State Assemblywoman from, um, down there somewhere.

But that changed dramatically when a Friend of mine and a devout High Speed Rail opponent sent me a link to a San Mateo County Times story that talks about Harkey’s attempt to kill the bond sale to raise $9.5 billion dollars and start putting it into the greasy palms of Curt Pringle and Harry Sidhu’s backroom buddies.

It seems Ms. Harkey thinks it’s a poor idea for the State to take on more debt given its current catatonic fiscal condition. And maybe she’s come to the realization that “jobs, jobs, jobs” at the cost of billions more indebtedness is not a conservative recipe for success. So she’s introducing legislation to stop the the floating o’ the bond (ambiguous St. Pat’s Day reference).

And I say good for her!

And I also say it’s time for Fullerton politicians and residents to figure out what the alignment impacts will have on Fullerton and how much that’ll cost us.

Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach Endorses Shawn Nelson for Supervisor

Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach
Endorses Shawn Nelson for Supervisor