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December 16, 2024December 16, 2024Boohooism

Kitty Cries Bitter Tears, Shares Final Word

The on-line version of the Fullerton Observer is now available to those inclined to be misinformed, or as in my case, to be entertained.

In the lastest version I discovered a lachrymose rewind of the November District 4 campaign by the loser, one Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo.

Poor Kitty thought she had a lock on it, so no wonder her outrage that the plans went askew. She sued the City to make a district for her. She sat on the committee that endorsed her district. She had all the endorsements, a pile of money, the county party, and even a fake, perjuring candidate to help take votes away from her obvious competition: Linda Whitaker. She also had an $85,000 Independent Expenditure Committee mostly funded by out-of-town marijuana lobbyists, laundered through the grocery store workers union.

Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

Jaramillo had the undying love of her pals, the Kennedy Sisters at the Fullerton Observer, who could be counted on to whisk away her problems and drop innuendo on Linda Whitaker, when called upon to do so.

How could she lose?

What Poor Kitty and her Team Jaramillo failed to take into account was the arrival of a new face on the scene who raised lots of money and got the police and fire union support. And she didn’t figure on Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform, a political action committee with the means and issues to beat her.

Yes, I was a phony from Day 1. And it was obvious…

And she didn’t count on the Scott Markowitz scam to backfire badly on her as it became apparent that her own supporters were involved in the fraud.

Jaramillo takes the time to swipe at her old pals in the police and fire unions, and of course her unnamed opponent, a smart professional, who, alas, doesn’t seem to know anything about Fullerton, unlike herself who has spent her whole life, yadda, yadda. Pathetic.

It would never occur to a self-entitled person like Jaramillo that her entire, adipose campaign was something right out of the year 2000 playbook: lots of endorsements, clunky mailers, paid precinct walkers, tons of money wasted on political “consultants,” etc. She had the agility of a canal barge. And the product itself was flawed: elderly, otiose, statist, whiny, self-righteous, “good guys” to the end. And for Miss Kitty, the end has finally come to her political aspirations.

Kitty was undone, she says, by the wave of “lies” about her, but she never says what they are and why they are not true. Neither have her sisterhood at the Fullerton Observer who certainly would have had the journalists’ ethic to enquire, had they been journalists, so of course never did.

In the end, Kitty says she is grateful. And so are a lot of other people in Fullerton. And the Observer “editor” has thoughtfully provided the names of contributors to Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform so we know who to thank.

November 23, 2024November 23, 2024Boohooism

D4 Election Update

by Grover Cleveland26 Comments

As of last night the very close election for Fullerton’s District 4 city council seat got even less close.

Newcomer Jamie Valencia’s lead over Vivian “Cannabis Kitty” Jaramillo has grown to 50. And her lead has been increasing at every count for a week and a half. With the number of outstanding ballots in the 4th ever-dwindling, things are looking grim for Team Jaramillo that includes the dope lobbyists who poured $60,000 into a pro-Jaramillo Independent Expenditure committee. That investment is starting to look like it’s not going to be paying any dividends.

Supposedly there are about 22,000 ballots left to count, county-wide. Prorated that would mean maybe about 130 ballots left to count in D4. Jaramillo would need to get 50 more than Valencia just to pull even. That doesn’t seem very likely.

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024Boohooism

Friday Night Election Update. Valencia Back in Front

by Grover Cleveland21 Comments

After votes were counted today the Fullerton City Council District 4 leader is Jamie Valencia. Again. She gained 15 votes in today’s count and has a skinny six vote lead. Here’s the updated data.

This is good news for those opposing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, darling of the OC Democrat Party officialdom, and the bride-candidate of the Long beach Marijuana cartel who pumped $60,000 into an Independent Expenditure Committee dedicated to getting her elected; and to get themselves an MJ ordinance in Fullerton.

Miss Kitty. The “good guys” were stoned and happy…

Jaramillo had chipped away at Valencia’s Election Night lead over the week succeeding the election until she had a 13 vote lead on Wednesday night. But yesterday, Valencia gained a little ground back – 4 votes, and today 15 votes.

People way smarter than I am might be able to explain the ebb and flow of these things. I suspect last minute ballot bundling on the part of the OCDems/Marijuana League may have accounted for the 150 swing last week. If so is that over? Let’s hope so.

Fake candidate Scott Markowitz may get a 1000 votes. After Pleading guilty to to perjury and falsifying election documents. This is not a ringing endorsement for the intelligence of the 4th District voter. His mission was to help dupe or be the dupe of Democrat nominators, to create a fake election committee with an R next to his name; to get his name on the ballot; and, to submit a Trumpy ballot statement. After that Markowitz disappeared. He attended no election events and raised not a penny.

Markowitz’s role was simple: take votes away from the conservative in the election, Linda Whitaker for the benefit of Vivian Jaramillo.

It’s just a few cents a gallon. Suck it up poor people!

Meanwhile, in our State Senate District, Fullerton’s Gas Tax Josh Newman keeps gaining ground on the dopey Steven Choi from Irvine, but still trails by well over 7,000 votes. He’s come from behind before, but this one is starting to look like game over. If it is, Josh can go back to moderating Neighbors United For Fullerton meetings where I’m told he got his start in OC politics.

November 12, 2024November 12, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Marijuana Cartel Invaded Fullerton Election. Big Time

by The Fullerton Harpoon22 Comments

If you check the Independent Expenditure forms on the City Clerk’s website you’ll notice the comically named “Working Families For Kitty Jaramillo, Yadda, Yadda.” This committee was “sponsored” by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324, in beautiful Buena Park. At first glance you might think this was an odd sponsorship given the name of the union and the nature of Jaramillo’s would-be job. A second glance at the committee’s inaugural Form 497 filing is even more astonishing – $60,000, paid through the national HQ in Washington DC.

Hmm. That’s a lot of cabbage from the grocery store and food service workers for this council seat.

The day before the election the OCEA, the union of government paper pushers, chipped in $25,000 more.

At least this OCEA contribution to the PAC makes some sort of sense, since Jaramillo proclaimed to the OC Register that she wanted to represent City Employees in their battle against oppressive management (the taxpayers). The amount is unprecedented for the OCEA, however.

But what about the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 324? Why the involvement, and why the massive donation and the expenditure for campaign workers? Well, let’s go to their website and see.

It turns out that Local 324 represents employees in the cannabis business. Well I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell ya.

Suddenly all sorts of things fall into place. The connection between the Long Beach marijuana cartel and Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, whose previous support of the most liberal dispensary plan was rewarded by the cartel.

I find it really difficult to believe that the workers themselves ponied up this cash, but I don’t find it difficult at all to believe that their employers and their employers’ lobbyists did. As OC saw in the case of Ahmad Zahra’s pal, the now convicted Melahat Rafiei, 60 grand is chump change. So who really kicked in that dark money, laundered through the home office, into the campaign to elect Jaramillo, and what did she promise them?

And did all those paid precinct walkers tell their targets a word about marijuana dispensaries 101 feet from their homes? Bet not.

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Bushala Says Markowitz Scandal Not Over

by Grover Cleveland45 Comments

Poor Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

Phony Fullerton 4th District candidate Scott Markowitz has been arrested by the DA and charged with perjury and falsification of public documents. Somebody other than Markowitz circulated his nominating papers, but he attested that he did.

Normally, in these types of situations that would be the end of the story. Except that in the case of Markowitz – a political unknown – he had help. How much coaching he got, and by whom, remains something of a mystery, but it’s obvious that his perjury was suborned by others.

I’d sell out my own mother for 10 votes, and I have…

We do know that one of his manipulators is the former Executive Director of the OC Democrat Party, one Ajay Mohan who accompanied Markowitz to the City Clerk’s office to pull papers. Was Mohan the circulator? Was it somebody else, somebody that the nominators trusted? Who wrote the carefully crafted and cynical MAGA statement Markowitz got on the ballot? Certainly not Markowitz.

Who else may have benefitted from the scam will give us a clue to the extent of the election rigging. Vivian Jaramillo is the number one suspect since Markowitz’s candidacy was meant to attract non-Latino voters from Linda Whitaker.

I will get what I want, one way or another…

One layer deeper, we can discern the shadowy figure of Ahmad Zahra, Fullerton’s 5th District representative who desperately needs Jaramillo’s support to finally become America’s first gay, Arab, Muslim Mayor; and who also needs Jaramillo to finally bring home the marijuana dispensary bacon.

Then there’s Ada Briceno, the current Chairwoman of the OC Democrat Party, the group that endorsed Jaramillo without even talking to anybody else. There’s a big prestige issue here, the ambitious Briceno has a record – she was certainly aware of the Tony Castro scandal in 2022, when her ED Mohan created the fake Latino candidate in Fullerton’s 5th District to protect the egregious Ahmad Zahra.

The name Aaruni Thakur has also been mentioned, in the comments section below. He deserves special attention. Apparently his family lives and owns property on Wooodcrest, not far from the abode of Scott Markowitz. He and his family have given a lot of money to Jaramillo, and his previous fake carpetbaggery in the 4th District in 2020 gives a fine example of his moral compass.

Above the lowly riffraff are politicians who have invested their political prestige in Jaramillo’s candidacy and who may want to protect that investment while also creating office holders beholden to them. These include Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk, State Senator Josh Newman, and Congressman Lou Correa. How shallow or how deep are the roots of the Markowitz Conspiracy?

All of these issues are presented as a prelude to the topic of this post, which is a letter from Fullerton activist, Tony Bushala to the District Attorney Todd Spitzer asking that the investigation into the situation be continued to find out who got Markowitz to lie.

It’s very clear that at least one other person was involved in suborning perjury. One would have to be relentlessly stupid, a Kennedy Observer, in fact, to believe that Markowitz the political novice, himself was the sole director of this play; that he cooked up the plan; that he decided to create a campaign committee for appearances; that he decided to change his party affiliation; that he that he made sure his new affiliation was on his FPCC documents when it wasn’t required; that he, for some reason, needed and recruited a surrogate to circulate his petition; that he conceived and wrote his ballot statement; that he knew nothing else was required and quietly disappeared, his apologists at the Observer saying he was somehow “threatened” into hiding.

There is an old Latin apothegm: qui bono? Roughly translated the question asks “who benefits” from a given situation whose origins may not be completely clear. Well, let’s find out.

October 11, 2024October 11, 2024Behind Closed Doors

More Hypocrisy from Fullerton BooHoo

by Grover Cleveland8 Comments

If you were paying attention in 2022 you may recall that the City of Fullerton went through a redistricting process based on the results of the 2020 Census.

The legacy of Jan Flory’s “Bar Owner’s Map,” ostensibly created by Douchebag Supreme, Jeremy Popoff in 2016, was fresh in everybody’s mind. Three districts had been gerrymandered with tentacles to reach into downtown Fullerton – in violation of one of the basic tenets of district map making – compaction.

The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…

One consequence of the 2016 map was to give recently elected at-large Jesus Quirk-Silva a shot a running early for the first District 3 race in 2018 against Greg Sebourn, a race that Quirk-Silva won.

When 2022 rolled around and the Council created a redistricting committee Fullerton’s lefties squealed in displeasure that Sebourn was appointed to it. He’s going to make a district that he can run in, cutting out Quirk-Silva, so they said. How dastardly. Members of the committee must forswear not to run in a district they created, so they said.

Well, the districts were cleaned up, Quirk-Silva who had been gerrymandered into D3 was removed from it, and Sebourn didn’t run again.

But one fact seems to have gone unnoticed by all the self-righteous libs clamoring against the Council, the new map and against Sebourn. And that fact is that current Council candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, the person who sued the City to make a district she could run in, was also on the Redistricting Committee.

Not only did she support new gerrymandered maps that would protect Quirk-Silva, she supported the district she is now running in. How’s that for ironic hypocrisy?

But it’s not surprising. In their sanctimonious world, the boohoos of Fullerton’s left can’t accept the possibility that their own interests and beliefs might be effected by any sort self-serving or let alone bad behavior, which is why no one mentions the unethical and possibly illegal effort by Team Jaramillo to work a phony candidate on the ballot, a sham candidate whose only job is to divert votes from candidate Linda Whitaker.

September 17, 2024September 17, 2024Behind Closed Doors

Another Sign of Things to Come

by Mr. Peabody10 Comments

FFFF has related how our Elementary and High School Districts are both putting new bond measures on the November ballot. The insatiable maw must be fed. The districts employ battalions of overpaid educrats with ridiculous doctorate degrees in education, pretending to be experts in this or that. But we are not permitted to delve into mystery of school budgets for waste and stupidity. The districts tried this last in March, 2020 with Measures J and K – and were soundly defeated.

School bonds are increases on your property tax bill, pure and simple. The debt and the interest incurred are paid off over decades, with everybody’s property as a form of collateral. We are still paying off previous bonds, of course.

It’s not just property owners who feel the bite. Landlords pass on the tax increases in the form of higher rents; retailers pass on the the cost of higher rents in the form of higher prices, a contributor to inflation.

Once again an organization called Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform has donned the mantle of opposition to these latest efforts to get into our pockets, and should be roundly applauded.

As usual, the advocates for these bonds – many out-of-towners – will plead that it’s all for the kids who need “state-of-the-art” this, or “world class” that.

They will follow up that with the myth of the “citizen’s oversight committee,” hand-picked gaggle of liberals who don’t know a shovel from a shitake mushroom, and have never held anybody accountable for anything.

Then they will argue that the cost is dinky – a Big Mac or a Starbuck’s latte a week. But in reality the cost of both bonds combined, will be many hundreds of dollars per year, or even more, depending on the assessed value of your property.

We may also be sure that the school districts will use our resources in their political campaign just like they did last time. That’s illegal, right? But hey won’t someone please think of the children?

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024"Dick" Ackerman

Defender of the Faith, Part 2

by The Fullerton Harpoon7 Comments

The other day our Friend, Fullerton Old Timer introduced us to man named John Phelps, a big donor to Vivian Jaramillo, Jan Flory, and in 2022 to Ahmad Zahra. He also was a big contributor to the failed City Hall sales tax proposal in 2020.

Fullerton Old Timer checked in with me:

You shouldn’t think Mr. Phelps is only a recent player in propping up Fullerton’s unaccountable Democrat councilcreatures, Be sure to check out his financial political activity to keep three useless Republicans in office in 2012; namely Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley. The Form 460s will tell you a lot about his dedication to protecting the people in City Hall.

Well, okay. I guess I can do that. FOT is referring to the Fullerton Recall in 2012 in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas Murder by the FPD, an event that went global after FFFF published a photo of the “after FPD Intervention” picture.

The recall began in the summer of 2011 and finally occurred in June, 2012. The anti-recall campaign created by the loathsome Dick Ackerman, now a Fullerton lobbyist, was called “Protect Fullerton – Recall No”. Let’s see what Phelps was up to.

Hardly out of the gate, Protect Fullerton got a 1000 bucks from Phelps. And he was far from done.

In October, 2011 he kicked in a measly hundred dollars. Then he really got going.

In April 2012 he gave another $1000 to help protect the Three Tree Fungi and their Praetorian Guard.

Finally, he gave the anti-recall committee a whopping $5,000 in mid May, 2012. Overall, that’s $7100 to fight the recall that succeeded in June, despite Phelpses largesse.

But, wait. Phelps didn’t only cast his bread upon anti-recall waters – at least not directly.

He also contributed to the individual campaign accounts of the recalled. While the recall campaign was in full swing he gave Don Bankhead’s 2012 campaign committee, not Protect Fullerton, another $1000.

A few days earlier he gave $1000 to Pat McKinley’s campaign committee. Of course both Bankhead and McKinley kicked in those exact amounts to Protect Fullerton. I don’t know what he may given Dr. Dick Jones, because those records don’t seem to be available in the City Clerk’s webpages.

When the recall was won, Mr. Phelps directed his well-funded attention to the upcoming November 2012 election. Guess what?

In September, in a move full of pathos, he gave poor Bankhead another $1000 as the latter was trying, and failing, to get re-elected again. Another candidate, Jan Flory, who going for another lap around the race track hit the Phelpsian jackpot.

You read that right. 10 Big Ones to Jan Flory, who once proclaimed that “in her lights” the department heads were “the heart of the City.”

Flory, was almost through. In the summer of 2013 she started hitting up contributors again. Why? To pay off the $8,000 she loaned to herself in 2012. And Phelps was there to help relieve Ms. Flory of her burden.

Now, if you’re not counting, the total anti-recall and pro statist candidate contributions by Phelps in 2011-2013 is a staggering $18,350. Whether he was really investing in his warped concept of good government, or rather because he still had, or hoped to have business before the council, we shall never know.

What we do know is that the election of Jan Flory, after the promising months after the recall, has been a disaster for Fullerton. What happened in the subsequent years of mismanagement are with us still: no reform of an incompetent and corrupt police department and more cop killings; increased employee pension liability, more neglect of infrastructure, continuation of the Water in Lieu Fee theft, cover-up of City Manager drunken wild ride, more nonsense like Trails to Nowhere, Fish Farm Wedding Venues, Walks on Wilshire, more cop killings. And of course a massive deficit cliff threatening our solvency.

Mr. Phelps is a friend of the establishment, the bureaucracy, and whatever liberal causes he adores. He’s probably a member of the right clubs and contributes handsomely to charity.

But he’s no friend to the taxpayers of Fullerton.

August 28, 2024August 28, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Ad Hoc Tuah – Part Four-ah

by The Fullerton Harpoon26 Comments

Now that Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra’s critical “Fiscal Sustainability (or something like that)” ad hoc committee has been created, and a quorum of that committee has been appointed by the City Council, I don’t see any reason why the three appointees can’t meet, appoint a chairman, and start on the all-important task at which our well-paid staff has dismally failed; to wit: figuring out how to stanch the red ink flow that our leaders and their professionals have created over the past decade or so.

Zahra and Charles couldn’t be bothered to find their own appointees. I guess it was too hard for them.

In my last post we already received some helpful comments about how to close the budget gap between revenue and expenses. In this in post I invite any other ideas that seem worth discussing, but that probably would never see the light of day in a city staff report. Here’s an outline of what we have so far.

Convert the paramedic function performed by the fire department into a privatized EMS job. Reorganize the “fire fighters” accordingly. Placentia has done this.
Levy a use fee on all downtown bars/clubs that serve booze after 10pm. The fee accompanies all CUPs. Those who create the mess pay to clean it up. No more subsidies for club owners. $5000 a month would generate almost a million bucks a year.
Alternatively, close all the downtown bars at midnight, and;
Get rid of the special downtown police force.
Eliminate the “economic development” division of the Community Development Department. No one knows what this function actually costs or what revenue it produces, but as one commenter put it, it doesn’t even pay for itself.
Start preserving commercial and industrial zones to generate business; stop handing out zone and General Plan changes in these zones for massive residential apartments blocks.
Get rid of the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones and Meyer that inevitably makes more when they fuck something up, which is most of the time. To this day no one knows how much they billed the taxpayers of Fullerton by suing FFFF, Joshua Ferguson, David Curlee, on top of what the hundreds of thousands the City paid out in damages and attorney fees. Who knows how much the legal “advice” of this clown show has cost the City over the past 25 years.

dick-jones — Staying awake long enough to break the law…

Well, that’s just to get started. I hope the new committee will be open to these and other ideas. City staff has no incentive to propose anything except a new sales tax increase. I guess we need to help them.

August 26, 2024August 28, 2024Boohooism

Ad Hoc Tuah Part Three-ah.

by The Fullerton Harpoon19 Comments

A little late reporting this, but it appears that last week the Fullerton City Council appointed three members to the newly created Let’s Have A Sales Tax Committee, the brain child of Shana Charles and Fred Jung and Ahmad Zahra.

The item started out with a fizzle but got better as the hearing progressed. It appears that only three people applied. Charles and fellow committee-creator Ahmad Zahra couldn’t even find anybody to appoint. Charles who was in a big hurry to get this going only spoke to one person, who wisely declined. Zahra likewise failed find anybody and suggested the whole thing be re-advertised. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to these two worthies that 1) nobody applied because nobody cares; or, 2) people realize what a footling exercise this is.

But wait a minute. Maybe Charles’ genie is better off out of the bottle

Nick Dunlap said he was ready to go and appointed Jack Dean, a long-time anti-tax crusader who’s been around the Fullerton scene for a long time and knows the city. Apparently, he was active in the Great Recall of 1994. This makes sense since Dunlap correctly identified the whole process as a slow roll toward an inevitable tax proposal conclusion. Bruce Whitaker nominated a guy named Bill Brown who I don’t know anything about, but who I presume is another fiscal conservative.

Then came the real fun. Fred Jung, who was in zoom mode, nominated Tony Bushala, the founder of this blog in 2008, and who is well known for his huge roll in killing the last sales tax proposal, Measure S, in 2020, as well as the school bond attempts in the same year. It’s now pretty obvious that Jung’s role in this affair is to pull the plug out of the socket.

When the vote came, Zahra petulantly voted no to the three members appointment. He didn’t bother to say why. Charles simply said she’d be appointing her member later. The approval was 4-1 and we have three members to Ad Hoc Whatever It’s Called Committee.

So now the Committee exists and has a quorum. I wonder if they can’t start holding meetings as soon as they like. They can also start talking about ways to save money that the staff won’t touch, like a levy on all downtown bars/clubs open after ten P.M. to recoup something from the horrible 1.5 million annual red ink sink hole known as downtown Fullerton. Or they could discuss the elimination of the so-called downtown police Echo Unit that has caused as much trouble as it has prevented.

They might also discuss salary freezes, something all businesses do when times get tough.

Both Charles and Zahra know that if their chosen candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, is elected they can replace Whitaker’s appointment in December and get the tax train back on its predetermined rails. But if that doesn’t happen, this committee could surprise the employees in City Hall by coming up with some really inventive ideas.