Remember the political campaign that got started by a bankruptcy lawyer pretending his vocation was “Fullerton Parent” and who was endorsed by a gaggle of political crooks, liars and bagmen?
Well, it appears the crooked campaign of Andrew Cho got itself in trouble by heisting images from the Friends of Coyote Hills website in order to strike an environmentally friendly posture.
The funny thing about this is the obvious attempt to cover ground lost to Cho’s opponent, Fred Jung, on the open space issue. Cho has been repeatedly hit by Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform as a puppet of overdevelopment lobbyist Jennifer Fitzgerald, our departing Mayor-for-Hire who has her fingerprints all over every apartment prison block built in Fullerton over the past 8 years.
Rudy says thumbs up, way up, to suckers, who are born every minute.
The idiots who run FSD agreed to pay some chucklehead named Rudy Ruetigger $2000 as a motivational speaker at an August management retreat. We reported about that, here.
Ruetigger, a shameless self-promoter actually talked somebody into making a fictional movie account of his pathetic football efforts at Notre Dame.
The luck of the Irish was about to run out...
Despite immediate ridicule, the FSD stuck to their guns.
What sort of lessons were learned by FSD management at this retreat? Maybe Superintendent Mitch Hovey or one of the pathetic Trustees who voted for this will travesty will stop by and enlighten us.
Over the years we’ve learned that boldfaced spin and self-serving regurgitation of misinformation is a regular indulgence for those union mouthpieces over at the Liberal OC. Like most, we quickly grew tired trying to make sense of the noise emerging from the OCEA’s propaganda machine and so we’ve learned to ignore it. But every once in a while someone new comes along and gets sucked right into the blue vortex.
A few weeks ago, Chris Prevatt wrote this blurb supposedly “Busting the Myths” about how public employee pensions don’t cost us hardly anything and the real problem is… well something somewhere else. He backed that up with the audacious claim that public employee compensation only sucks up about 10% of California’s budget, a dubious statement which was then re-quoted by OCEA booster Nick Berardino in this letter to the OC Register.
Well somehow our perplexed new Friends over at UnionWatch.com stumbled upon Prevatt’s steaming pile and decided to break down this mythbuster’s logic. In a lengthy post based on conservative figures and some elementary math, the unnamed blogger discovered that the LiberalOC was off the mark by a factor of six. In fact, conservative calculations pinned public employee compensation at about 67% of California’s budget, far more than Prevatt’s 10%, putting public employees right back at the top of the lineup as a primary suspects in the case of California’s budget woes.
So nobody really knows if it was Prevatt or Berardino who initiated the transmission of this blatant error, but it doesn’t really matter. It served their purposes for a few moments and a couple of union adherents probably sucked it up and will continue to pass the falsehoods along. At least now the rest of us know better.
About a week and a half ago FFFF linked to a story in the venerable Orange Juice Blog, documenting how our Fullerton D5 Councilmember, Ahmad Zahra, a visiting tourist from Syria, headed to Little Rock, Arkansas and got married to a woman.
Those facts alone would be enough to warrant a sideways glance toward a man who says he gave up a career as medical doctor to live in his car in Hollywood while pursuing his dream: a film-making career.
Zahra’s narrative quagmire gets stickier because of his own origin tale in which (according to his own bio) he always knew he was gay.
So why would a gay man, aware of his gayness, marry an Arkansas woman whom he says he “liked?”
The obvious answer, bolstered by subsequent events, is that our young visitor was looking for a foothold for permanent residency in the United States.
In case you think getting this marriage to do the residency trick might be a real hurdle, a frightful bureaucratic undertaking, a rigorous examination conferring validity, consider the following tale told by a young woman named “Amanda” to the Arkansas Traveler about her Arkansan marital experience with a Middle Eastern immigrant. After their marriage, the immigrant needed to get his status as a permanent resident established:
The couple sits in front of a USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) agent and answers a series of intimate questions.
“I heard horror stories about the interviews where people are dragged away from each other,” Amanda said. The penalty for getting caught is five years in prison with a $10,000 fine for the American and permanent deportation for the foreigner.
“I had never been so scared before in my life,” Amanda said. They sat there in a large pale waiting room surrounded by other couples with a pile of paperwork and photo albums on her lap – their entire marriage legitimized.
But instead of the expected – “What are his favorite colored socks? What kind of toothpaste does he use?” – their interview took only five minutes. “OK, you’re both Jewish, good. Are these your names? Good. Your address? OK, thanks.”
And what anniversary might that be, Friends may be asking.
Not gone, but almost forgotten…
This Wednesday, March 27th, marks the one-year anniversary of a deadline date agreed to by the City of Fullerton and one Mario Marovic, a downtown bar owner. Not much of a deadline, huh?
Hey, that’s not yours!
By March 27th, 2023, Mr. Marovic was required to have started demolition of the so-called “bump out,” an illegally constructed room addition built by the Florentine Mob two decades ago on City property. Marovic had gotten rid of the Florentines, finally, but decided that the leasehold on the room addition was somehow ripe for the encroaching. So he began remodel work on the leasehold right along with the rest of the building that he does own.
Busted.
Meet the new proprietor, same as the old proprietor…
Well, the Earth has made an entire revolution of the Sun.
The City Council may occasionally talk about this in their hush-hush, top secret “Closed Session” meetings, but the public is not to know what is happening, even as our money and property are being frittered away. We do know that Marovic has threatened a claim against the City, but so what? Why would that be cause for the City to ignore Marovic’s breech of contract and seize the public property that Marovic encroached on illegally?
Staying awake long enough to break the law…
The reason could be that our esteemed lawyer, Dick Jones of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm, believes upholding agreements is not a winning strategy. Of course this third rate pettifogger has won so few cases for us, and has lost so many that we may feel confident questioning his judgment.
Or, it could be that the feckless and spineless City Council has been individually persuaded by Marovic that it’s in their best interest to ignore the deal, and that they should just let Marovic keep raking in the bucks thanks to a Conditional Use Permit that was contingent upon the removal of the room addition.
Yes, Friends, it’s that time of year again, when Fullerton’s City Council chooses one of its number to act as Mayor for the upcoming year.
Time to come clean…..
And as predictable as the summer monsoon in Bangladesh, the Fullerton Observer has begun laying the foundation for another wailing session, decrying the mean council trio of Jung, Dunlap and Whitaker for passing over Observer inamorata, Ahmad Zahra, the preening, deceitful, egomaniac councilman from District 5, who has gone well out of his way to alienate the three, any one of whom could get him chosen Mayor.
Here’s the doleful headline:
Will District 5 Get Mayoral Representation at the City Council Meeting on December 5?
It’s sort of fun to read the litany of complaints and grievances that follow, written by somebody called Jack Hutt, whose angry essay is just another attack on Fullerton’s three more or less sensible representatives.
Mr. Hutt starts decrying the fact that a mayoral rotation policy is not being followed. Well, what a shame that is. A council not feeling bound to adhere to a policy it evidently disagrees with.
Hutt does ponder the question of the motives of Jung, Dunlap, and Whitaker, a little:
“One has to wonder what happened in closed sessions that made council members Jung, Whitaker, and Dunlap publicly disrespect Zahra. Will the council members ever tell the public the reasons?”
Good question. And yet poor Hutt doesn’t seem to realize Closed Session deliberations are cloaked in secrecy by law. It doesn’t really matter to Hutt anyhow, because in his very next sentence he telegraphs his intent:
“Or is it so petty or phobic that it can not be uttered?”
Now our offended writer has rolled three insults into one conclusion. The three are either so petty, or gay-hating, that they must cower in fear, terrified to let the public know how low they are.
Later, Hutt rolls out his big gun:
“He also survived a vicious negative campaign funded by Tony Bushala.” Whenever the Observer crowd gets agitated enough they relentlessly name the object of their greatest fear and loathing: Tony Bushala. Hutt follows suit, of course, but as usual omits the fact that Zahra’s 2020 campaign was diligently manicured by him and his sycophants to omit facts like his real biography, his servitude to the marijuana dispensary cartel, his constant self promotion, and his arrest record; that the campaign against Zahra was aggressive, but honest every step of the way; that Zahra dished out over $100,000 to keep a Latino candidate from representing a Latino district. Oh, and Zahra was party to the creation of a fake Latino candidate, Tony Castro, to siphon votes away from Oscar Valadez
Comically, Hutt wraps up his essay with a shot at Nick Dunlap’s lack of interest in his job and makes a hopeful pitch for none other than…Jesus Quirk-Silva:
“...Jesus Silva, who was Gerrymandered out of District 3, now lives in District 2, and although this district is marginally Republican, it is competitive, and he would be a formidable candidate.”
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
Now, it wouldn’t be an Observer article without repeating an old lie heard over and over and over again. Quirk-Silva was, as we all know, gerrymandered into District 3 which gave him the opportunity for a free run at Greg Sebourn’s job in 2018 when he was still a city-wide councilman. The redistricting map done in 2022 cleaned up the previous nonsense with rational district boundaries that left Quirk-Silva with no district to run in since he was now in District 2 – and we’re all better off for that.
Here’s the truth: it takes three votes to get elected Mayor. End of story. The facts of precisely why the three councilmen don’t trust, don’t like, don’t want to choose Zahra as Mayor are evidently real. And Zahra is probably better off if the real reasons of antipathy toward him don’t come out; and if they were to emerge, I suspect Zahra is counting on the head-in-the-sand obliviousness of his fife and drum corps to ignore any cogent reasons that might be forthcoming. It’s victimhood uber alles.
Way back in 2010 a bumbling, incoherent Anaheim councilmember named Harry Sidhu was running for County Supervisor in our district – a district in which he didn’t live.
The beautiful Calabria Apartments. Insecticide optional.
Sidhu’s first fake address was in dubious-looking apartment on Lincoln Avenue in west Anaheim. He was busted and a complaint was filed with District Attorney Tony Rackaukas; after all, lying on a voter registration is perjury.
The DA could have ended Sidhu’s rancid career as a politician then and there, but decided to whitewash the affair even as Sidhu had by then moved to a second phony address in the district.
Flash forward to 2022 and Sidhu, by now puppet Mayor of Anaheim thanks to Disney & Co. was tuned up by the FBI and the Department of Justice, even as he and his cronies tried mightily to give Arte Moreno, owner of the LA Angels land around the stadium for a fraction of its worth. His payoff, as recorded in conversation with a local fixer was a $1,000,000 re-election campaign contribution by the Angels.
Oops.
Well, Sidhu, the perennial assclown, has now pleaded guilty to several crimes and his sentencing is upcoming.
And so we bid a fond farewell to one of our favorite public servants and hope that his fate provides an object lesson to ambitious politicians – especially in Fullerton -whose greed and warped sense of self-importance causes them to ignore their responsibility to the public trust.
During a recent City Council meeting on August 2, the video footage shows Mayor Jung calling the Closed Session portion of the meeting to order with Jung, Dunlap, Silva, and Zahra present.
The video footage in its entirety is shown here:
At the 2 minute mark on the video, the City Council returns and Jung is seen calling the regular meeting to order with Jung, Dunlap, Silva, and Whitaker present.
What happened to Ahmad?
The City Clerk remarks, “Councilmember Zahra is around here somewhere”.
Where is somewhere? Was he using the restroom to drop a deuce?
Over 20 minutes later (see 23:00 on the video), Zahra triumphantly returns and announces, “Just apologies for coming a little late”.
A little late? Where’d you go?
It doesn’t take 20 minutes to take the Browns to the Super Bowl.
August 2 just so happened to be National Night Out. National Night Out is described as an evening to “enhance the relationship between neighbors and law enforcement while bringing back a true sense of community. Furthermore, it provides a great opportunity to bring police and neighbors together under positive circumstances”. What a crock! One easy way to bring back a true sense of community: Stop murdering Kelly Thomas and Hector Hernandez FPD!
Stop animal cruelty!
The answer always lies in Zahra’s social media because the criminal cannot help himself from posting badly aimed selfies with random photo victims of his narcissism. “Our council meeting was short so I got a chance to join the annual National Night Out event hosted by our Fullerton Police Department,” his post reads.
Twenty minutes is about the time it takes for a not so in shape Councilman to gingerly walk across Highland Avenue and down Amerige Avenue to the plaza downtown, take a handful of poor photos of poor victims of his unlimited vanity, and walk back to City Hall.
For Ahmad Campaigning for the next job > Doing the job he was elected to do.
Voters will remember his betrayal of his oath of office to faithfully discharge the duties of his office.
Time to take out the trash Fullerton.
A-B-Z. Anyone but Zahra!
Fullerton voters have many choices in life.
But in 2022, they are given the opportunity to choose between a man who was charged by the OCDA for battering a woman and so busy trying to keep his job, he fails to do it, a deadbeat political hanger-on and a long time Fullerton Resident, Oscar Valadez, a family man, a businessman, a father of two young children.
Fullerton voters will neve be given a clearer choice.
Word from a well-placed source suggests that back in 2020 after being arrested and charged with battery and vandalism perpetrated against a woman named Monica F., Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra, through his Irvine attorney, hired a P.I. to investigate his “alleged” victim.
Now why would anybody do that?
I leave it to readers to draw their own inferences from this.
The issue of whether Zahra was “exonerated” as he exclaimed publicly, and that he and mom were the real victims; or whether he pled guilty to get his dirty slate wiped clean remains in doubt. He has never provided any evidence from the District Attorney Todd Spitzer that charges against him were dropped.
Whatever the case, the broader story is not going to go away, and in fact is likely going to become a focus of opponents in this fall’s City Council election.
