The other day the Register’s number two press agent for the Repug Machine, Martin Wisckol wrote what he no doubt hoped would pass as a species of objective reporting, here. Yet somehow it fails the smell test, as might have been predicted.
Notice how Wisckol equates Norby’s pointing out that Ackerwoman is a carpetbagger (true!) with her campaign’s libelous misuse of court transcripts in a case that was dismissed by an appellate court! Martin unhelpfully points out how Ackerwoman did live in the 72nd District for a long time – a long time ago; as if anybody thought that was germane to the fact that SHE LIVES IN IRVINE NOW!
Notice too, how Wisckol passes directly along, without a shred of skepticism that Ackerwoman is some sort of “well versed” authority on water issues (of course he diligently omits reference to her MWD vote last spring to raise commodity costs to local water retailers by 20%). Typical. We remember how he swallowed whole her lie about being a businesswoman, here, and then actually tried to explain away his apparent credulity as some sort of reporter’s strategy.
Wisckol permits a delicious quote from Ackerwoman about all the hordes of ethically upstanding Repuglican electeds who have endorsed her (including her own husband – say, Dick, how’s that Fair thing working out?) without any mention of Norby’s endorsements – by Tom McClintock, for instance – a real conservative who’s worth all of the Ackerwoman’s RINOs put together – and then some.
We could go on and on, but why bother.
Fortunately, we’ve only got one day to go. And hopefully after tomorrow Martin and Frank can go have their Friday drinkies with the head ‘Pugs at Gulfstream without having to worry about writing any more press releases.
Of course if there’s a crashing defeat for Ackerwoman they may not even be invited anymore.
The Fullerton City Council has just released their agenda for November 17, 2009.
Let’s start off with agenda item #8. At a glance it looks like a little book keeping business. Upon closer inspection it appears that the Feds gave the County a grant for the City to purchase 35 tasers. The proposed cost is shown as “None.” I guess training is free?? According to the Chief, each and every patrol officer should have one. I have never seen 35 patrol officers in Fullerton at one time. I think the most patrol officers I have ever seen at one time in Fullerton numbered 7. How about one in each car/bike/motorcycle and a few in the station. Do they need to take the tasers home? And back on the training… According to taser.com, training runs about $395 per person. That doesn’t sound too bad until we remember that we will be paying the patrol officer to sit in a classroom for 6 hours or more rather than patrol the City. Unless there is grant funding to cover the overtime for training, I think the Chief might be mistaken about the proposed costs being “None.” And what about the liability of injury or death which may be less than striking someone with a baton or shooting them with beanbags?
Item #9 is over 100 pages long! From my brief reading it appears to allow the City to take over residential properties to avert abandonment and blight. That sounds a lot like federally subsidized redevelopment without having to declare blight. It’s like a preemptive condemnation. Are we really feeding the machine? This is on the consent calendar as “routine” and is to be lumped together with the tasers and some traffic-related items. The most interesting part is that this agreement will lock us in with Costa Mesa , La Habra , and MHC NSP LLC. Who is MHC NSP LLC? The program cost is shown as $1,369,854. Chump change?
Council is supposed to discuss the appointment process for commissioner. See item #10.
Item #11 is a pay cut for certain personnel. It also pushes the current 2% @ 55 to 2% @ 60. Sounds like a good idea.
Item #12 is the shocker! The City Council is proposing a program whereby they “…may contribute back to the City a portion of their salary.” There is a little more to it than a pay cut. It seems to be voluntary. The Attorney General wrote an opinion on this and noted that State law requires that pay increases begin when an official takes office. The same appears to be true with decreases in pay. So, in an effort to give back a portion of their pay, ±7.5%, they need to pass this resolution. Ok, it gets my vote.
I hope you will take a minute to read the supporting documents which are linked from the posted agenda. If I missed anything, please let us know so we can discuss.
Keep your eyes open for the December 1st meeting. Tentatively scheduled are a few hot-button issues. They include everyone’s favorite, West Coyote Hills, the North Orange County Transportation Partnership MOU, and a public hearing on the landscape ordinance.
An e-mail from our long-time Friend Joe Sipowicz was discovered in this afternoon’s mailbag. Seems Joe is a little put out at being called “gutless” by blogger Matthew J. Cunningham for criticizing the latter “off topic.” Here’s Joe’s letter. I added the graphics!
Colonic extraction was deemed necessary to save the patient
Several OC blogs (including this one) have raised this issue of the role played by former State Senator Dick Ackerman in the possible sale of the OC Fairgrounds. Last summer he was hired by a group of Fair Board members meeting on the sly to get the necessary language into the State budget bill that would enable the sale to go through.
That activity was illegal. State law prohibits ex-legislators from lobbying for a full year before they can start their lucrative lobbying revenue stream; and Ackerman only checked out of the legislature last November. And the Board members in question seem to have put this deal together secretly – an intentional violation of the Brown Act.
Now to the point of this little essay. Let’s review how many references to the Ackerman activity and the possible Fair Board violation of open meeting laws have been made on the Red County blog. In round numbers. The roundest of all: 0. That’s right. None. Zero.
Why is this interesting? Because the editor at that site, Matt Cunningham loves to visit this site to call people “gutless” and “cowardly,” and has repeatedly criticized this blog for not holding Norby to the same standards it uses to attack the comical Linda Ackerman, and meanwhile basks in his own self-assigned integrity, courage, and honor. He has at least twice accused the FFFF administrator Tony Bushala of breaking the law, without a shred of evidence; just the sort of thing he loves to attack his opponents for doing, and would in fact, ban them from his blog if they pulled the same stunt.
And yet when Dick Ackerman himself has already admitted to a newspaper that he worked on the Fair deal, Red County’s own Cunningham remains silent, even as he advertises the motives of a current concessionaire who is questioning the whole slimy insider deal in a lengthy post.
If he knows what's good for him, he'll keep his mouth shut. And next time he'd better get the tires...
Okay, fine. You don’t attack the head of your gang if you want to stay in it, and clearly he does. And Cunningham has made looking the other way into a full time profession, whether it be defending the Pedo-priest protectors, ex-Sheriff Mike Carona, or any of the other ethically challenged institutional shot-callers he looks up to.
But is it asking too much for this individual to just keep his self-righteousness to himself?
Here’s an e-mail we just received from a Friend that raises all sorts of questions, enjoy!
Eastside Church in Fullerton is conducting a large scale service day today. Not all, but most of the projects were at public school campuses. I am very appreciative of the service to the needy which is taking place with this initiative. Sending out hundreds of people to clean, make repairs and generally assist public schools in doing what they are paid to do already is further propagating what I believe to be that most tragic of notions, that PUBLIC EDUCATION IS UNDERFUNDED…HARDLY. Before reading on, understand that many Fullerton teachers have already expressed concern that this endeavor is “taking jobs.” Believe me, that’s the only part of this that makes me smile.
I understand that Eastside’s mission is to be ‘out in the community’ and not locked behind the confines of their church. I applaud that. However, I count on (increasingly foolishly it seems) traditional community church’s like Eastside to be populated by wiser-than-typical parishioners who understand many of the most obvious problems in our state and country.
As I write this as one who works to remain informed of local school government, I know that several of the current Fullerton School District Trustees are hopeful that a new parcel tax can be passed so that we can pay an even larger percentage of our incomes to an educational system which has allowed unions to lobby any possibility for significant fiscal or moral change for that matter, out of existence.
As public education has become a jobs program and reward for liberal public employees and voters, we cannot:
Volunteer teach without union approval.
Terminate incompetent teachers within a timeframe that does not waste tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. My daughter and her classmates are currently enduring this teacher union supported injustice and waste of taxpayer dollars.
Break the back of the cancerous philosophy of compensation within a matrix of TIME SERVED and EDUCATION ACHIEVED which utterly ignores competence or performance.
Liberally outsource functions which could drastically reduce cost and improve performance.
Those are just a small sampling of the changes which could literally solve the problems of public education but for the insane axiom dejour that teachers are heroes simply because they are teachers. Today, Eastside unwittingly (well…not so unwittingly) bolsters the notion that teachers are underpaid even though the turnover is nil for a job that thousands apply for and few ever leave before retirement. Public teaching is a job which offers a fixed pension, summers off and nearly ironclad job security for the tenured.
The votes and common sense rationale of Christian church communities in America is one of our only remaining hopes for a continuing America which is of, by and for the people. If they too drink from the Kool-Aid of mistaking subordinating taxes with our labor as being a form of service and not a form of foolishness, then our problems were greater than I previously thought.
Most depressing have been the arguments which I have heard defending Eastside’s service to government.
This will somehow lead to a diminishing of today’s false understanding of the separation of church and state (which I certainly agree that this has become a misguided tirade of the left).I believe the reverse to be true. This foolish service will give fuel to the fire of those who ridiculously opine that any mention of God in a Public venue is a violation of the First Amendment.
That end times are near anyway, so what difference does it make?I’m not sure how to respond to this. I guess then that we should just ignore any fight to preserve our constitutional government and just go pick flowers?
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…Ironically, this is the best argument of all to think this stuff through. From the Christian perspective, I would certainly think that America and her accompanying freedom would be considered to be an amazing gift from God. I have news for Christians who use this as an excuse to remain blind (frequently mistaking this for politeness) to political issues. You are squandering what is one of the greatest gifts from God in our time. A free America.
I believe Eastside Church to be a great place both run by and attended by terrific people. However, it would be unsupportive to stand by silently as they contribute to the very problems which most threaten government’s subordinate position to the people and in so doing, weakening the very principles which protect freedom of religion in our country.
Lest anybody think that I am over the top, understand that I am a believer in local change. There is little hope for wisdom on a grand scale if there is none on a local scale.
A few days ago a visitor named Greg made derogatory remarks on our blog about some Fullerton neighborhoods south of Commonwealth. Admin asked Greg to take a walk through the area with him, hoping that a closer look would challenge old stereotypes and misconceptions about the area.
Following the meeting, Greg sent us this:
—————-
Ok, I admit it: I was wrong. As it turns out, the “bad part of town” is actually not as bad as I remembered it. A while back, I made some comments about the area south of the railroad tracks between Lemon and Harbor. Growing up it was known as the “Fullerton barrio”. It wasn’t a derogatory name; it’s just what it was. I had some personal experiences in the area back in the 80’s and 90’s that left a substantial impression on me. Since then, I avoided that part of town. After making my comments last week, Admin challenged me to walk the hood. I took him up on the challenge and we met last night near the train station.
On my way over to meet Admin, I drove down a few of the streets so that I could get a better idea of the area. I wanted to see the trash, graffiti, gang bangers, troublemakers, etc. while there was still some good light. I started out on Lemon and headed south to Valencia . I headed east and took it to the end and turned down what I thought was an ally but turns out it’s a street. Anyway, I looked high and low for what I knew would be there. As it turns out, Admin paid them all off to go hide while I was in the area. Ok, maybe not. The truth is, there was little graffiti. There were a few houses that needed some serious TLC but we have those everywhere. One liquor store had what I would categorize as a few gang bangers in front of it sipping there Budweiser on bikes. But by the time we walked by the store they were gone. Maybe Admin is their secret leader…? Maybe not. The reality is that the barrio has come a long way in the last 20+ years. I would even consider saying that it isn’t really the barrio anymore. Maybe it moved or just faded away, but there is very little of it like I remembered it.
It's never too late to be smart.
So I met Admin right at 5PM. We talked and walked and I got to see the good and the bad that were present. One thing I noticed quickly was that the sidewalks in the SOCO complex were not user friendly. There were fire gates all over that made the pedestrian have to limbo or walk around it through the landscaping. Poor design. The lighting was good and there were lots of kids on skateboards and bikes. The complex was free from the used condoms, trash, and tagging that I saw when the project was wrapping up. I suppose the new residents deter that sort of criminal mischief. We walked down Truslow and Valencia , eventually making a big loop. Veneer was spotted on some buildings. It wasn’t the cheap stuff that gets glued on but it was clearly a veneer cap. I thought it looked ok but until a couple of weeks ago, I would never have noticed nor cared. Now, at least I am a little more cognizant of its use and misuse. We saw some more tagging on the veneer and a window. Admin stopped to talk to a resident.
Ok, I have to back up a bit. Before meeting Admin, I thought I should do a little investigative work. Using top secret classified resources, I looked up properties held by people with Admin’s last name. There were several dozen such properties in Orange County with all but maybe two in Fullerton . The majority of the properties were in the SOCO area. A lot of different ideas crossed my mind as I reviewed the records. These holdings could mean that Admin was trying to monopolize the area. It could mean a lot of things. Not knowing what it all meant, I decided to go along for the ride and see what happened. As it turns out, Admin was very upfront with the properties he had; there were no secrets, no shades of grey. I had to conclude that his significant investment in the success of the area was directly related to how much the area had improved in the last 20 years. He had taken run down lots and built new homes. He had taken an area that actually had blight and turned it into a quiet and peaceful place. I credit Admin with the amazing transition of this area. And to top it off, NO TAX-PAYER DOLLARS WERE EVER USED. (ok one minor exception back in the 80’s but it didn’t make a difference in and of itself)
In the end, I must thank Admin for opening my eyes to what has been slowly taking shape for many years and giving me the opportunity to be proven wrong!
Our very close pals at Friends For North Orange County are planning a farewell card for Linda Ackerwoman. Because you Friends are just so darn friendly we offer you a sneak preview of a mailer that’s landing in 10,000 non-absentee Republican and DTS mailboxes manana.
Here's the front. Fake charity to benfit Linda's friends.And the back. You mean she really lives in irvine? Shocking!
Over at the Orange Juice blog, the ever-ebullient Vern Nelson has posted an overview of the big pow-wow held the other day in Costa Mesa that was organized to clarify the whole proposed sale deal. Apparently the two masterminds of the meeting – Assemblymen Van Tran and Jose Solorio – have as much grasp of the issue as a pair of two-week old jack o’ lanterns.
Tran and Solorio know the score
Vern, to his credit, keeps the issue of Dick Ackerman’s lobbying for the secret Fair Board cabal in front of the public. Ex-legislators are supposed to refrain from lobbying for a full year after their departure from office, but apparently Dick was up in Sacto this summer pushing to get the necessary enabling language in the budget bill.
What is that obnoxious odor?
Now the Fair Board members involved in the deal are trying to nicely characterize his efforts as “consulting,” even as they pretend not to know how much money was spent on Ackerman’s questionable services. Well, the distinction between a consultant glad-handing votes and a lobbyist is lost on us. It’s probably a moot point since nobody in law enforcement seems to want to enforce it. Ah! Another one of those unenforceable laws dispensed with! God it’s great being a Repuglican!
We considered ourselves pretty much hopelessly cynical. Most local elections don’t seem to matter much, at least here in OC. The choices are determined in Repuglican primaries between various assorted mixed nuts with more ambition than brains; people whom you wouldn’t hire to walk your dog. People of no real ability but a crafty sort of skill at ferreting out the main chance – for themselves. Remember Duvall? Bulldozer Daucher? Every council election gives birth to a new litter.
But this time it really is different.
Chris Norby is not perfect. A long way from perfection – like most of us. But his political attributes far outweigh his liabilities. He is a rock-solid conservative who has fought for property rights against the incursion of government depredations for decades. At the County he has opposed pension spikes, PLAs, and other policies that unreasonably raise the cost of government to the people who pay for it – us.
As a city councilman in Fullerton Norby time and time again had to stand alone in a lonely fight against the boondogglery of the Redevelopment Agency and completely incompetent affordable housing schemes – foisted on us by his colleagues. You see, Chris put the welfare of the City ahead of foolish collegiality with the rest of the council and with staff. He never forgot that it is the city manger who works for the council – not the other way around. Unlike his fellows on the council he never came to identify himself with the bureaucracy at the expense of his constituents. Remember the Utility Tax?
There is a reason a billionaire like Ed Roski Jr. dislikes Norby so much and is willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to attack him. It’s because Norby is one of the few elected officials in California who has stood up to fight the redevelopment abuses that create sham cities like “Industry” where Roski rules over his supposedly democratic realm in effective majesty.
So what can Norby do in Sacramento? He can fight the California Redevelopment Association by forging a coalition of Democrats and republicans who are tired of seeing the little guys get pushed around by auto dealers and big box corporate welfare artists. He can fight for equitable sales tax distribution to eliminate internecine tax wars between neighboring cities. As a former teacher he can bring his own experience to bear on education problems instead of relying on party cliches. And as a true fiscal conservative he can fight for the interests of the taxpayers.
His Republican opponent? An empty suit of clothes wheeled around one afternoon in front of a cameraman in poses hardly any more credible that her claimed business experience. A sham candidate imported from another district by forces of pecuniary interest who think nothing is wrong in creating a tax-free, charitable organization whose only mission is to arrange free Hawaiian vacations for legislators.
The Republican Party of Orange County has been run by a relatively small gang of manipulators and political profiteers. Almost all of them have come out in support of a woman who doesn’t even live in the district, and whose entire campaign is a fraud; and lots of small fry local electeds have followed suit, believing as they do that their main chance belongs with the Gang. Maybe they are right. But Tuesday, a message of bad news may be delivered. The Gang has never trusted or accepted Norby. Maybe a Norby victory against their hollow candidate will send the message that their days are numbered. Let’s hope they are.
