Okay Friends, fight the gag reflex as you peruse this column written in something called The Washington Examiner under the by line of Hugh Hewitt, sanctimonious repuglican blabbermouth. I say “under the by line” because we recently disclosed how this allegedly literate yakmouth had stuff written for him by Children and Families Commission Scribe/Flack and $200 an hour Toothbrush Distributor, Matthew J. Cunningham, and it would now be risky to assume Hewitt writes anything for himself.
Hugh is a very busy man. He can't write all that stuff himself!
“Enough!” Hewitt loudly admonishes his ignorant readers at the end of his drivel. Ignorant? How so?
If they are reading anything attributed to this hypocrite they are almost certainly unaware that he serves on the biggest Tax and Redistributionist Commission in the history of California – the OC Children and Families Commission; and no doubt unaware that his words may very well be written by someone else – Cunningham, perhaps – his protege, and the fellow whose $200,000-a-year PR contract with the Commission Hewitt annually votes to approve.
Check this out. Here are a few days in the life of supposed conservative pontificator, Matthew J. Cunningham as he dishes out his stellar wordsmithing on behalf of the uber-liberal Prop 10 funded “OC Children and Families Commission.”
I’ll let you tally up the big bucks this hypocrite pulled down doing battle with the forces of…well, forces like the “Flash Report” of which he was a blogger, its editor Jon Fleischman, and of course those insensitive beasts at the OC Register.
And be sure to enjoy that monthly $800 catchall bill for, well, who knows what it’s for? Just stuff. But Hell, when you’re milking the cash cow be sure never to leave anything on the table, right?
Us rock-ribbed Republicans believe in lots of transparency and accountability.
It’s true. Ask anybody. Everybody says they want accountability and transparency in government, especially political candidates; but those in authority have a lot of incentive to keep their doings free from risk – the risk of being exposed as responsible for some screw-up or other; and the risk of fighting the inertia produced by institutional dead weight in a gravity-free environment. And of course the ability to pass along lucrative contracts to their pals.
And all this bring me to the point of this essay: it’s time for the Orange County Board of Supervisors to take charge of semi-autonomous agencies that have been operating under the public radar. Two of these “hidden governments” spring most immediately to mind: the Children and Families Commission – that seems to have been operating as a cash cow for the local repuglican machine, and the OC Cemetary District, ditto.
The Children and Families Commission is a poster child for liberal, under-scrutinized government. You may agree with its goals and method of revenue collection. But even if whole-village child rearing and confiscatory income redistribution are your cup of tea, you have to admit that paying a connected political operative like Matthew J. Cunningham $200 an hour to update Facebook and read blogs and hand out toothbrushes must diminish from the resources available to actually help kids. And what’s with all the lobbying? Hundreds of thousands worth in any given year at the State level, with Anaheim’s mayor-for-hire Curt Pringle being the chief beneficiary.
And then there’s the Cemetery District that paid Pringle to find a new graveyard and paid him another $25,000 as bonus for finding a site in Brea. I’m not even sure if Brea is going to go along with this, but let’s hope Pringle’s fee included guaranteed entitlements from the city. But I digress. The real issue here is why the District hired Pringle at all to do the work of a real estate professional whose compensation would have been a partial commission from the seller, not the taxpayers.
Well, we’ve got some new blood on the 5th Floor of the Hall of Administration, and hopefully these guys will start to attend to these and other agencies that need to be examined, made accountable, taken over, and if appropriate, disbanded. Sure, the ‘pugs will squeal and squawk.
And that’s when you know you’re doing the right thing.
A while back we posted a story about the OC Grand Jury callying for a lobbyist registry. They also attacked the practice of government agencies paying lobbyists to lobby other government agencies. Teri Sforza at the OC Watchdog did a post, here.
Yes, it certainly seems even more disturbing when practiced by opaque agencies like Water Districts and of course, by our old pals at the Children and Families Commission.
God bless America, land of opportunity!
As we have amply documented, this commission has paid Curt Pringle to lobby on its behalf and it has also employed the services of former State legistalor Phil Isenberg. Just yesterday we did a post about wordsmith Matthew J. Cunningham raking in some big bucks getting ready and attending a lunch for legislative staffers. Presumably the whole thing was a lobbying sales job.
The worst part of this of course, is that the OC commission is not lobbying for itself. No point in that – unless there’s a call to change the money distribution formula to benefit OC. No, all these hundreds of thousands of lobbying dollars are going to defend Prop 10 revenue in general. In other words, the OC Children and Families Commissions is spending all this dough lobbying for the other 57 counties’ First Five Commissions.
Yeah, but those other counties don't have a wordsmith of my caliber!
Are these other counties lobbying themselves? Who knows. Not unlikely. But this just emphasizes the point that the whole thing is out of control – no matter how many times Cunningham ghost writes blather about how well run they are.
And while we’re at it, let’s remember The White House Writers Group and their six-figure contract to promote the commission outside around the country!
If you think about it the whole thing really stinks. Time to pick off the scab on the commission and see what’s supperating underneath.
Well, they’re at it again. The Voice of OC which is funded by (drum roll) the OCEA and the OCEA PAC Treasurer Chris Prevatt have coughed up yet another load of happy horse shit about Shawn Nelson.
Here is Tracy Wood of the Voice of OCEA; and here is Prevatt, picking up the ball and running even farther out of bounds. Of course Matthew Cunningham passes along the story as a “top story”, too, just as if the Voice of OCEA were a real news source.
They are deliberately mischaracterizing Nelson’s statements about a possible new Coyote Hills meeting, trying to make it look like Nelson was trying to lobby for a new meeting so he could change his vote.
At the Council meeting last Tuesday at a “second reading” of the Council denial (BTW, that’s a new one on us!) discussion arose about additional information that the Council had not heard. Whether there was any real merit to that claim remains to be seen. Nelson was dubious, but basically volunteered to attend one last special meeting before swearing in as Supervisor if his colleagues felt inclined to do so.
Quirk and Keller declined, and on a vote of 3-2 the original denial was confirmed. Story over.
What’s funny is that Prevatt is spinning this as some sort of issue that Hairball Sidhu can use in the fall against Nelson. Did he let slip the official union position on the fall election? Hmm.
I was just too doggone busy to be bothered with it.
UPDATE: Gustavo Arellano has weighed in over at the OC Weekly.
Here’s a compilation of invoiced time Matthew J. Cunningham spent ghost writing for the supposed conservative Hugh Hewitt,who is a proud member of Rob Reiner’s Children and Families Commission.
Hewitt is Cunningham’s blog mentor who encouraged him to start what is today called “Red County”.
As noted above Hewitt is also a commissioner on the CFCOC, and thus Cunningham’s boss.
It’s odd that the presumably literate Hewitt can’t write his own letters and “op-ed” pieces if he believes so strongly in the Commission. He needs his buddy Cunningham to do it at a cool $200 an hour; and he’ll do it too, dammit, no matter how many hours it takes.
Hugh believes in the Commission almost as much as I do! I know because I wrote it.
Of course it’s also odd that Hewitt is on this ridiculous commission in the first place, unless one recognizes it as a platform to dispense patronage to old pals.
Now that the rodents are leaping off the sinking SS Sidhu, word is starting to leak out from former crew members that the non-paid “volunteer” John Lewis, was neck deep in the Sidhu scampaign for county supervisor in a district in which he doesn’t live.
In fact, that way we hear it, The Lewis Group, which consists of John Lewis and his partner Matt Holder, basically took over the campaign. Of course they won’t be bragging about it after what happened.
This news explains a lot. Such as why Matthew Cunningham was doing his level best to promote the hapless and helpless Sidhu while pretending to be objective – as usual.
No, I tell you. I have never even met the man.
But this situation also raises other questions. Such as: will Sidhu be reporting the Lewis Group’s unpaid professional services on his behalf as an in-kind campaign contribution? Hmm.
Yesterday Orange County’s version of Punxsutawney Phil, Matthew J. Cunningham, emerged from his hole, blinking painfully in the morning sunlight, to survey the OC political landscape.
Who turned on all those lights?
After spending over a year back door pushing the supervisorial candidacies of incompetent Democrat spendthrift Tom Daly, and then carpetbagging perjurer Harry Sidhu, alleged conservative Mr. C. from Suite C. had a bad case of the political bends. Had he been sufficiently indirect in his shilling for Sidhu? Would it be held against him? Would anybody remember things like posting on the phony victims group? Was his 8:01 exit from the Sidhu Victory 2010 party soon enough?
Most importantly, would his gravy train job writing blog posts for Rob Reiner’s Children and Families Commission be in jeopardy? Ah! So many questions, so many calculations.
Perhaps it was the bright light of scrutiny; maybe it was the clear, clean air wafting past. In any case our pal immediately retreated to the shelter of his burrow to ponder the consequences of blind and slavish adherence to his mentor – chief repuglican John Lewis. Have we seen the last of him? As they say, time will tell.
The Voice of OCEA, Norberto Santa penned this gem yesterday about a gathering of useless RINOs, government parasites and supposed “insiders.” The thrust of the story is that these creeps predicted a Sidhu victory. Why?
Just check out this image borrowed from The Voice of OCEA site:
The Tool Bank is now open...
Yep, there’s the useless pension spiker Bill Campbell on the left standing next to another useless pension spiker who actually did it twice, the pathetic Tom Wilson, former Supervisor of the 5th District.
Good God! What a collection of RINOs and repuglicans of the worst kind: the ones who champion Redevelopment, and who use other tools like Matthew J. Cunningham to pitch the delusion that discretionary land use entitlements are some sort of “property right.” Hey there’s Lucy Dunn who backed the Hairball, too.
Of course Campbell supported Sidhu as part of his and John Lewis’s master plan to get rid of both Nelson and Hairball.
Everything is for sale!
Apparently Curt Pringle, Anaheim’s sleazy Mayor for Sale was hand to prop up his tottering boy Sidhu; but talk about too little, too late! Pringle sure took it on the chops yesterday, and making fun of the party chairman Scott baugh ain’t gonna win him any Brownie points for that High Speed Rail merit badge he’s been working on for so many years.
Of course for Santana, a last minute, pro-Sidhu piece tinged with a little gratuitous anti-Nelson shit is par for the course. Poor little Norberto! He wants people to think he’s a real journalist instead of what he really is: a toady to a union boss with no reportorial integrity or scruples.
You know it’s funny, but when you get away from the big city and get out into real America you really get a great perspective on politics in places like Orange County. And what I mean by perspective is a much better sense of the stupid ambition of no-talent assclowns and fence hoppers like our good friend Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu.
Aw, c’mon, Joe, you’ll be saying, Sidhu’s just like the rest of them, and anyway, by June 8th he’s just going to be a rancid memory. Well, that’s not altogether true. Creeps like Sidhu never go away. They’re always there waiting for the next opening to worm their way into. And that really stinks; almost as much as the existence of weasels and varmints like Bill Campbell, and Janet Nguyen and all the other slug-suckers who want to grease their way into some trough or other and think they can do it by following the money. Well, I guess nobody has taught them yet that they can’t. Oops. Don’t want to forget the other repuglican slimers like John Lewis and his boy Matthew Cunningham who likewise follow their own interests and principle be damned.
Then there’s the lazy local media that wouldn’t recognize a real story if it bit ’em in the ass.
There are lots of places in this great land where Sidhu’s carpetbagging, perjuring, ignorant boobery would be an absolute non-starter politically. We’ve seen it all: the fake addresses, the incoherent statements, the lame and never-ending attacks on a candidate of real ability by Sidhu’s stooges and paid lackeys.
Well, too bad for us that apparently Orange County isn’t one of the places that an ignoramus and no-talent clown like Sidhu can make a plausible candidate out of himself.
But no matter how high you stack it it’s still bullshit.
