I was driving through a blue-collar type neighborhood in the flatlands of Anaheim this morning, not all that far from Hide-N-Seek Sidhu’s fraudulent voting address at the Calabria Apartments, and look what I came across.
The other day I noted how some guy named Dan C-somethingorother at the Liberal OC blog was trying to blame FFFF because some anonymous guy left “harassing” phone calls at Lorri Galloway’s house. We don’t know which house that would be since she actually lives in Anaheim Hills – but that’s a bit beside the point for now. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if the call was made to anybody’s house. Still, Dan says so and Dan is an honorable…oops. Actually the guy’s a self-important prick. But I digress.
I thought it was pretty bad for Dan C-somethingorother to blame FFFF for the actions of someone not connected to our blog – as if ridiculing the vapid, carpetbagging airhead that is Lorri Galloway would make us responsible for anybody calling her. Dan and his pal Chris Prevatt (no, I will not inflict that image on the Friends anymore) love making fun of people they don’t like – such as Chris Norby – whose marital status has been a point of humor for Dan. Would he accept responsibility for calls to the people he ridicules? Of course not.
Anyway Dan C-somethingorother has helpfully posted a youtube clip of the horrible harassment so that we can all share the horror.
Actually it turns out there was one phone call. On February 16th. The second message of March 2nd is obviously a call back to a number left on the dude’s phone – Galloway must have dialed the guy’s original number and left a message! He says he recognizes her voice. Good for her. Dialog! Now maybe she can use that interpersonal skill in her lame videos.
Comically, Dan C-somethingorother tries portentously to amp up this episode ’til the end – referring to the “series” of phone calls when really there was initially only one. And then subsequent return of a Galloway call by the mystery man two weeks later. And at the end of the video be sure to enjoy the pompous and self-righteous Dan’s “reporting” sign off. Too funny! Gosh. Are we in the presence of a real reporter?
Now lest it be said by our Muave and Blue pals that we here at FFFF condone rude phone calls to politicians, we do not. However, that doesn’t mean we’ll let the lazy and biased posts by Dan C-somethingorother get a pass, either. At least not when he is accusing us of some wrong doing.
And maybe Precious Princess better not call the cops in just yet.
Earlier FFFF noted the story of an Anaheim activist who says he was wrongfully arrested after speaking out against OC Sheriff candidate Craig Hunter at Anaheim city council meetings. James Robert Reade claims that several officers questioned him about his anti-Craig Hunter speeches shortly before arresting him on false premise that he was under the influence of narcotics.
Yesterday Reade took his accusations a step further and filed an $85,000 claim against the city of Anaheim, saying he was “attacked and brutalized by two Anaheim officers under color of authority.”
In the claim Reade presents drug tests from both the OC Crime Lab and St. Jude hospital that show there weren’t any narcotics in his system on the day of his arrest. Reade further asserts that he has never used drugs in his life and should never have been detained.
The city dropped all charges against Reade after determining that the officers made a misdiagnosis of Reade’s behavior. Officers were disciplined and sent to additional training for mishandling the incident.
At best, we could consider this another example of the culture of abuse coddled by decades of poor leadership at Anaheim PD under the control of Craig Hunter. That certainly lines up with what courts and civil rights activists have said over the years.
On the other hand, the officers’ prior references to Reade’s political activities suggest something far more malicious may have happened. If the department intended to silence an outspoken activist as Hunter was about to begin his campaign for Sheriff, that would be an inexcusable abuse of authority.
Obviously Mr. Reade is very serious about pursuing this case against the department. We’ll see what happens.
Well, no that’s not quite right. Headache would imply that County Clerk Tom Daly cares he blew $2,100,000 of public money on a real estate venture and that it could cost another $7,600,000 to fix the problem; or that he is in any way worried about it. And why should he be? When there’s no accountability you never even have to say you’re sorry.
Here’s the background. In 2007 Daly urged the purchase of the small office building at 433 West Civic Center Drive, in Santa Ana. The ostensible purpose of this acquisition was the expansion of the County Archives. Negotiations were approved by the Board of Supervisors in September, 2007. After several months of dickering and alleged property inspections, the County CEO and RDMD staff recommended that the Board of Supervisors approve the purchase for $2.1 million. Staff recommended an “as-is purchase” with the caveat that the County Clerk would be paying for “minor repairs” and interior improvements; they noted blithely that the purchase price was below their appraised value for the building. Nothing was mentioned about inadequate space or building deficiencies. In fact the staff report claimed the building had been well-maintained.
An almost comical selling point was an alleged annual savings of $26,000 for parking paid by the County to private parking vendors. No one seemed to calculate the lost opportunity costs or even the interest value of $2,100,000.
The Board voted 3-0 to approve the purchase in January, 2008. Norby, Moorlach and Nguyen put their fingerprints on the deal.
Two years later the building still sits empty across the street from Daly’s office. And the archives still sit where ever it is they sit, presumably more crowded than ever.
What happened? Could it be that the County Clerk is now wrestling with the embarrassment of how to deal with a massive boondoggle?
It turns out that the building in question was not fit for public occupancy. Apart from ADA issues, the structure is deficient, the basement is going to leak, and all of the building systems are all obsolete. It also turns out that the building is too small to do what it was bought to do.
In other words, the building is practically worthless; and plus demolition and paving costs, the County is now the proud owner of a $2,100,000 parking lot for a few dozen cars.
How and when did this painful realization occur? We’re not real sure about the chronology, but sometime in 2008 Daly hired a firm called Kishimoto Architects to look at the building and produce a feasibility report, after the building was purchased, with cost estimates for various alternatives. The report, dated January 12,2009, proposed 3 approaches:
1. 2.8 million to remodel the building to make it usable; ADA, structural, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, replacement, etc.
2. 5.7 million to remodel as above, and expand the building to accommodate the proposed use.
3. 7.6 million to demolish the building and start over again.
Say what? $2.8 million to remodel a $2.1 million dollar building?! Option two – that included a remodel and expansion – seems highly unlikely given the price tag, the schedule delays and the embarrassing admission that nobody ever bothered to do a space/needs assessment in the first place. And of course #3 was even worse: starting over would jack the price up to nearly $10,000,000, and add years onto any occupancy schedule.
So there the building sits.
Is any of this really Daly’s fault? His few remaining adherents will argue that poor Tom was just the victim of staff incompetence. Blaming the staff that recommended that this turkey proceed is easy because they were obviously derelict in their appraisal and physical assessment of the property. And the two remaining supervisors who voted for this (Moorlach and Nguyen) have a responsibility to the taxpayers to answer for their employees and the waste of over $2,000,000; after all, they are “Supervisors.”
But ultimately Tom Daly is the chief architect of this fiasco, and to those who know how elected politicians apply pressure to the staff to get the recommendations they want, there can be little doubt that the County Clerk was likely pressing and probably pressing hard for his imperial expansion. The money had been budgeted and needed to be spent. So the staff either intentionally looked the other way or didn’t bother looking at all. In the final analysis Daly is an elected official and answerable to the voters.
It’s hard to say what will happen to this real estate jewel. It’s too expensive to knock down and too deficient to use. The site is too small to do much of anything with. In other words it’s a real headache. And it’s all ours.
Some dude named Chris Prevatt at a blog called “the Liberal OC” has decided to pass along that ludicrous piece of spam mail “hit-piece” we posted about yesterday – sent all the way from India!
It seems Prevatt is taken with the fact that Sidhu’s Mumbai Marauders have discovered the horrible truth about Nelson: he’s gotten three traffic tickets since (gasp) 2003! Prevatt seems to think he deserves his own wing at Corcoran State Prison.
A little digging uncovers what’s going on here. Prevatt is a County worker who once had his computer taken away for blogging on company time. He is also what is known as a “Jannie,” one of the pathetic creatures that Janet Nguyen discovered under some rock or other and put to work in her PR salt mine.
Here’s the connection: Nguyen has recently endorsed the completely unethical carpetbagging scampaign of Harry Sidhu, fake addresses and all; and we’ve been questioning why Nguyen is putting on additional staff in Norby’s former office where there is no supervisor. The Register’s Jennifer Muir picked up on this and started asking questions. Nguyen is no doubt pissed off at being outed.
Prevatt leaps into the breach by passing along Sidhu’s comically pathetic attempt to attack Nelson for traffic tickets! Hoo boy! Petty and silly? Stupid and ineffectual? Of course. What do you expect?
Say, what is the Democrat equivalent of a “repuglican?”
Over at the Liberal OC blog, best known for it’s silence when it comes to issues involving corruption and incompetence in Democrat-run organizations, a guy named Dan C-somethingorother is all het up because some guy from Placentia who is not connected with our blog is making mean phone calls to Lorri Galloway.
According to Dan C-somethingorother it is all our fault because we had the temerity to attack his Precious Little Princess for what she is – a carpetbagger. He even goes so far as to suggest we will defend some anonymous phone caller as being a “reporter.”
Funny how Dan C-somethingorother fails to mention that one of his soulmate Matthew J. Cunningham’s bloggers (Cynthia Ward) has been a lot more scathing of Precious than we have; or that one of his own bloggers – Steve Perez – was equally harsh. Oh no! Let’s pin it on FFFF!
Is it just a coincidence that this post occurred at the same time we’ve been going after Democrat Tom Daly’s incompetent misrule of the County Clerk’s department? Want odds?
Anyhow, while we’re talking about Precious, let’s recap: Galloway is an airheaded, opportunistic carpetbagger from Anaheim Hills, whose videos are unintentional jokes, whose candidacy can only be described as an embarrassment, and who is a basically just a union lackey all dressed up for slumming.
Electing her anything at the County level would be a disaster.
And If Galloway is being harassed she should call the cops.
We keep hearing from his supporter that Harry Sidhu is all about jobs. Fast food jobs, we reckon, but hell, a job is a job.
So weren’t we shocked to learn that Sidhu is shipping work right out of the county! How so, you ask? Well we received a blast-spam e-mail attacking Shawn Nelson for having three traffic tickets in seven years (the horror!). The English in the e-mail was mangled and the time stamp indicated that it was sent from India!
Bad boy, Harry! Bad Boy! Outsourcing your opponent research and hit pieces to India?
How about keeping jobs right here in Orange County, Harry?
Yesterday we related how Board of Supervisor Chair, Janet Nguyen, Supervisor for the 1st District, has taken into her noodle to employ two new folks in Chris Norby’s former 4th District office – even though there is no supervisor there.
Now we are informed that the OC Register’s Jennifer Muir was calling around the Hall of Admin later in the day and asking about the new staffing arrangements.
Geez, pretty soon the Register may just have to give FFFF its own column.
Our Friends over at the Orange Juice Blog just pointed out that Assemblyman Chris Norby has selected Freydel Bushala as his 2010 “Woman of the Year.” Bushala received the award from Mr. Norby yesterday at the Capitol in Sacramento. Norby said that Freydel was chosen because of her drive and ambition as a business owner, mother and involved community member.