Pacific Strategies – Won’t Someone Please Think of The Children?

Using kids as a front to support your bureaucratic empire is almost something of a cliche. The educrats and teachers unions have been doing it for years. And so naturally the OC Children and Families Commission sings from the same sheet music.

Check out these billing entries from Matthew Cunningham to the Commission.


Okay, on January 15th, 2010 Mr. Republican is ghost writing an op-ed piece for a Democratic politician – the former State Superintendent of Schools, Delaine Eastin. A dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do do it, right? Besides the money is great.

The inability to write is not a partisan political issue...

Then we notice that about five weeks later the beaver-like Cunningham is hard at work disseminating the “Eastin op-ed” to literally dozens of readers via “social media tools”

A little digging and we uncovered this Sacramento Bee op-ed “by” Delaine Eastin dated 2/24/2010. Delaine is fighting hard for the dough that fuels the kiducrat machine, and that, parenthetically pays Cunningham $200 an hour. Is this the very same piece he wrote for the otherwise mute Eastin? Check it out and see if the style isn’t 100% Cunningham schmaltz – including the obligatory quotation from Abraham Lincoln. Be sure to read the comments as a reminder of Eastin’s troubled regime as Superintendent of Schools.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. The OC Children and Families Commission is paying hundreds of thousands a year in PR and lobbying expenses that are handed out to the politically well connected like Cunningham, who is good buddies with Commissioner Chair Bill Campbell and Hugh Hewitt. What is the procurement process for these contracts, and what quantifiable metrics are applied to judge the success and ultimately the renewal of these contracts?

It’s time to open the window on this Commission and let some fresh air into the room.

Pacific Strategies Critical Task #1 – “Daily Media Review”

I never charge for reading the comics or the sports section.

One of the critical tasks assigned to Matthew Cunningham by the PR fixated and obviously rudderless OC Children and Families Commission is to “review” media, i.e. read newspapers and blogs, which is convenient for Cunningham because that’s what he does anyway – for free. Now he’s a pro at 200 bucks an hour.

Yes, Friends, you read rightly. He’s paid to read blogs.

This is exactly what I had in mind...only they were supposed to be Democrats!

January 25, 2010 was another banner day for Pacific Strategies. $700 for a few hours noodling around on the computer. Plus time for 18 holes in the afternoon after the siesta!

Oh, and look. A phone call to newly minted Assemblyman Chris Norby made from Suite C. Probably to assure Chris that Cunningham really wanted him to win all along and how much he really, really hates carpetbaggers and perjurers.

“Stop The Insanity!” Cries Anguished Red County Hypocrite

The methane made me do it...

Over at the Red County blog Matthew J. Cunningham has gotten his lavender briefs into a self-righteous snarl over some guy named Tim Whitacre. Whitacre’s ostensible offense? Claiming that the Lewis Consulting Group is on Hide and Seek Sidhu’s payroll. In reality his offense was standing up at the GOP Central Committee meeting last week and reminding everybody that Harry Sidhu is an opportunistic carpetbagger.

You would think that somebody like Cunningham who pretends to be a political and social conservative, but who, in reality, has an annual contract with Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s Children and Families Commission of almost $200,000 a year would just clam up. But no. Silence is not in him.  Instead he prefers to keep opining in his usual way: in a crab-wise crawl across the truth.

First you call your opponents insane (or tin-foil hat wearing, delusional, paranoid, etc.) Of course sane people don’t argue with the insane – but that never stopped Cunningham – who will keep jabbering away until the lights are shut off. Then you start carefully parsing out where your opponent is making stuff up, and has no proof, etc.

Philosophical question: is it possible to slander a campaign consultant?

In this case the fake issue is whether Lewis is actually getting paid directly from Sidhu or not. Lewis must have informed The Jerb that he isn’t. So he then is safe in saying Whitacre has no proof that Lewis is. But Lewis is indeed working for Sidhu – one way or another. His payment may come later if he is working on spec – either in deferment or simply in access to Norby’s old office for the inevitable lobbying. As one of our commenters pointed out he may also be working on an IE against Shawn Nelson. In any of these scenarios some kind of disclosure by his partner Matt Holder should have been made at the Central Committee meeting.

So the gist of what Whitacre has to say is very much valid.

Cunningham finishes up by saying Whitacre has no proof that Nelson is the stronger candidate even though, ironically, he has no proof that Whitacre doesn’t. Of course you wouldn’t even need to have poll results to tell that Sidhu is a bumbling assclown who will be lucky to get 9% of the vote. Oh yeah, he’s also a perpetual office seeking carpetbagger. And a casual perjurer.

Coming soon to an elective office in your neighborhood...

Ah the faux outrage! Such a fun spectacle when it fails. And when you’re a hypocrite repuglican whose cover’s been blown, it’s only going to get tougher to pull off.

Sucking Hard at the Teat of the Welfare State

Move over Pringle...

The other day I described how Republican Mayor Curt Pringle made some big bucks as a lobbyist for the so-called Children and Families Commission, a by-product of the 1998 liberal feel-good Proposition 10 that placed a new tax on tobacco and redistributed the dough to the Government Kiddie Bureaucracy. I promised to shake the branches of this tree to see what other strange fruits might tumble out. Well, Lo and Behold.

Matthew "it takes a village to raise a child" Cunningham

It turns out that Matthew J. Cunningham who masquerades as a local “conservative” blogger may be the biggest big government gravy slurpers at the Children and Families Commission trough.

As he pontificates about the joys of small government on his blog, Cunningham is making a killing as a PR flack for the ultra-liberal Commission and it’s professional do-gooders. And why not? His buddies Bill Campbell and Hugh Hewitt are/were on the Commission when he started his lucrative shill-meistering and wordsmithery for a government bureaucracy, and it’s hard to conceive that his uberboss, John Lewis wasn’t somehow responsible for directing this huge windfall to its rather unlikely recipient.

Here are the fun facts of the Cunningham contracts with the Commission:

Contract 230   July 6, 2005  $ 25,000

Contract 227   May 2 2007   $100,000

Contract 227A May 7, 2008 $195,000

Contract 264   June 3, 2009  $185,000


Hey you poor hungry kids out there: that’s almost half a million bucks in just three years to a guy who couldn’t even proof read his own website! And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars dished out to Pringle and the White House Writers Group.

And if you look at the Exibit B scope of work attachments you’ll come away hard pressed to see how the scope of work amounts to more than a handful of hours a week, flack-wise. No wonder Intrepid Boy Journalist has so much spare time for his blogging and political punditry.

The biggest challenge for Cunningham appears to be to get conservatives to buy the spin on all this hogwash. And naturally a lot of his “scope”  is the usual nebulous “assist the staff” bullshit. Of course we can only wonder at the selection and bidding process at work here.

It’s perfectly clear to me that this opaque and over-funded commission needs complete outside scrutiny with fiscal and performance audits. Maybe Cunningham’s pals at the Grand Jury might want to delve into the doings of this public agency.

And the next time Matthew Cunningham preaches at you that you must believe in the joys of small government and lower taxes, or when he suggests whole village child rearing is Obama socialism, just give him a wink and a nod and try not to stare too hard at the giant scarlet H on his forehead.

The Sad Reality of Matthew Cunningham, Where Felonies Are Whitewashed

Perjury is such a fuzzy concept...

I knew it wouldn’t be long before Matthew J. Cunningham started glossing over the fact that his boy Harry Sidhu committed perjury twice when he falsified voter registration documents. After all, his boss John Lewis is now one of the piglets sucking the mama sow dry.

The one on the left...

It didn’t take very long.

He’s up to his old tricks again: diversion, obfuscation, and trying to change the subject. First he says Tony Bushala is Shawn Nelson’s neighbor. Irrelevant to anything, and of course not even true. But let’s not let facts get in the way of defending the indefensible. His point, perfectly predictable coming from this self-appointed paragon of morality, is that the whole thing is only political, as if Sidhu’s signature on an official document means, you know, nothing.

The registration was so brief that it doesn't count. Sidhu gets a re-do.

Apparently, the concept of perjury is a really flexible concept for Cunningham who seems willing to concede that his boy never lived at the beautiful Calabria Apartments. It was only a “brief registration,” you see. Brief registration? Damn, it was only 30 days! But what’s that got to do with anything? The registration was never aligned with any residency. It was a fraud. An outright lie. But are we to accept that the concept of the truth only kicks in when it’s convenient for Sidhu?

Well, good luck selling that bullshit to anybody smarter than Brett Barbre.

My word is my bond. Trust me.

A second post addresses the breathtaking revelation that Bushala’s investigation into the Sidhu scam was conducted by Sheriff candidate Bill Hunt. Wow, now there’s a great discovery, Columbus. Bushala put the guy’s letterhead in his post!  Another example of Cunningham dodge ball, having zero to do with the fact that his boy Sidhu falsified public documents. Of course Cunningham proceeds to insinuate that something fishy is going on because one of our bloggers  at FFFF has been posting positive stuff for Hunt’s Sheriff campaign.

Um, Chip, I think I have something I need to tell you...

Say what? Influence peddling, and profiting from same, is Cunningham’s line of work, not ours. Nothing to disclose here. I’m not even voting for Hunt.

Pathetic. Sorrowful. Deceitful. Hypocritical. Did I say shameful. No. That would imply a sense of shame.

It looks as if Mr. Cunningham has really decided to plumb the depths of irrelevance and hypocrisy. Let’s wait and count the hours until Cunningham spits out one of his patented “the guy’s not to be trusted” posts against someone who is running against a John Lewis candidate.

Well its a free country. And pretty soon for him, it’s going to be a really lonely one.

Why It Sucks To Be Matthew J. Cunningham

John Lewis is my moral compass.

I can only wonder what’s it’s like to have virtually no moral bearing – to be at the whim of whichever authority figure is pushing you at a given moment. Like a leaf blown in the wind.

Today a supporter of Hugh Nguyen’s campaign to unseat the deplorably incompetent Democrat County Clerk Tom Daly passed along the news that Matthew J. Cunningham of Mauve County fame had a devoted an entire post to the untrustworthiness of Nguyen. His running buddies? The lefties at the LiberalOC blog!

First it seems that he, like his candidate Tom Daly, takes exception to Nguyen’s ballot designation.

He also makes a big harrumph about Nguyen changing the story he told some of Cunningham’s Blue County boyfriends a couple of months ago about the unsolicited ad Art Pedroza is running for him on the OJ blog.  You’re joking, right?

But here’s the kicker. Hugh Nguyen is mostly shifty and not to be trusted because when he was soliciting endorsements last summer for the Clerk-recorder job he didn’t inform those folks of the presence of his wife Laura Cunningham in the race, thereby precluding them from endorsing her!

Of course the idea that Nguyen was under any moral or legal obligation to advertise the hapless and long-defunct Mrs. Jerbal campaign is so preposterously comical that no more need be said about it.

Cunningham likes his style...

Meanwhile from the vantage of his lofty moral authority Cunningham seems unable to discern the manifest failures of his boy Tom Daly. You know, like the $48,000 Daly passed along to a campaign consultant for “studying” a sports hall of fame; like the $100,000+ he has wasted (and is still wasting) on monthly retainers for a do-nothing Sacramento “consultant;” oh yeah, and let’s not forget the $2,100,000 chunked into the toilet on the acquisition of the uninhabitable building at 433 Civic Center West. What was the issue again? Oh, yeah – trustworthiness!

On top of all that, Daly is a Democrat and Cunningham is supposed to be a conservative Republican! No bueno!

No, sir. I do not need a wordsmith.

Come to think of it, Cunningham has never said a word about the two fraudulent voting registrations of one Harry C. Sidhu, the 4th District carpetbagger who lied about living at the Calabria Apartments on two separate public documents. Which sounds a lot like voter fraud and perjury if you ask me.

And speaking of shifty, how about Sidhu’s campaign signs that advertise the carpetbagger simply as “Mayor Pro Tem” despite the fact that they are posted in cities where Sidhu is not on the city council? Hows that for shifty?

The beautiful Calabria Apartments. No furniture was ever moved in. Did Sidhu sleep on the floor?

But oh yeah, his boss John Lewis is working for Sidhu now, too; so that means that the regular rules don’t apply, see?

Jesus H., it must suck to be Cunningham.

The Truth About Matthew Cunningham

A Friend pointed out something that bears mentioning for those of us that have some sense of ethics but may be naïve when it comes to blogs and how some operate.

Did you know that Matthew Cunningham has another website besides the oh-so Mauve County?  It’s Pacific-Strategies where he brags about “employing innovative social media strategies to advance your message and create community” and “influencing opinion leaders through via both new and tradional media”.  Nice typo’s Matt.  Clearly he is the superior communicator!  I’m not too sure what this clown is trying to say with this: “successfully guiding your projecting throuygh the government approval process” and “providing seasoned counsel to ensure your message is taken seriously by opinion leaders ad key decision-makers”.  It is hard to take anyone seriously that brags about communication and swaying public opinion when the author can’t even complete a sentence.  A wordsmith he is not but maybe a word-butcher.  Just imagine a game of scrabble with him.

Ah, but now Matt’s “strategies” at Mauve County are clear!  He gets to be a paid consultant (I find it hard to believe that anyone would actually give him a dime) via one company, Pacific-Strategies, while he attempts in vain to sway public opinion on his Mauve site by “employing” those innovative social media strategies.  I speculate that those strategies include but are not limited to the hiring of extra bloggers to post pro threads for Cunningham’s paid cause and then the twerp has these same extras jump in and lob personal attacks to discredit any opposition or support for their paid cause. “We’re experienced with effective strategies for favorably influencing elected leaders, government officials, and community and opinion leaders—building coalitions and mobilizing opinion in support of your goals, and neutralizing critics.”(http://www.pacific-strategies.com/collaboration/)  So his job is to NEUTRALIZE CRITICS!  If you pay him some money or do him a favor, he will NEUTRALIZE critics.  Is he talking about offing someone?  Bumping someone off?  Or just a shotgun approach for attacking anyone with a different opinion, especially one supported by facts?

After reading these carefully crafted words from Matthew Cunningham own website, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind just how Red County operates under his direction and the truth behind Matthew Cunningham slanderous lies.  He is completely void of any moral or ethical foundation which a normal person might be grounded in.  In his own words, Cunningham says “More and more people get more and more of their information from new media such as blogs, Twitter and FaceBook, and your organization needs to engage them in those arenas. Properly used, new media tools powerfully enhance your organization’s ability to not only communicate with your target audience, but build trust and community.”  Building trust through outright lies and deception is usually called FRAUD. That is particularly bad when your own mission statement reads: “Red County strives to provide intelligent, well-informed insights into local political issues affecting the lives of readers in each market we serve. In striving to support the ideals of limited government and individual liberty, Red County will hold the mirror up to Republicans and Democrats alike.”  Clearly, there is no mirror in the arsenal at Fraud County.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough!  Anyone with their own website, including FFFF, can determine visitor’s internet provider address much the same way we use caller ID.  If you are a genuine visitor and you leave genuine comments, no problem…unless of course you are on Cunningham’s web site.  Bloggers on Blogspot.com don’t normally have that level of access, so no need to worry about posting on those sites.  The real concern should come when a commentator dishes out insider information on a government agency and the head of that agency has the blogger in his back pocket.  Then the blogger gets to out the commentator.  It is not ethical to throw a genuine whistle-blower under the bus but we are not talking about an ethical person, now are we.   It is reminiscent of the reports of Cunningham outing of sex abuse victims.  I don’t know if Cunningham was actually paid to out anyone, but the content of his other website begs the question.

There are a lot of talented people reading this who are much smarter than me and I encourage you to do some digging yourself.  After I did my own digging into this, I realized just how biased I have become against Red County and several of their resident (generally newer) bloggers.  Therefore, it is imperative that you check for yourself.  I’m no great sleuth like the other FFFF’ers but if we can shed a little light up this dark hole, all the better.

I would love to know the names of anyone who has ever contributed a penny to Pacific-Strategies and follow that paper trail.

Come join the Revolution, Matt

After my piece here last week defending Shawn Nelson and the noble profession of defense attorney, I was criticized on Red County by Matt Cunningham, who runs that Web site. I could respond point by point, but there’s no use in doing that.

Instead, I’ve just been thinking how sorry I am that he, and so many over at Red County, are not joining what I call the Third Conservative Revolution. There’s still time, boys, to jump on board.

The First Conservative Revolution was, of course, Barry Goldwater’s run in 1964 against the ogre LBJ. Barry campaigned for sharply cutting government and restoring the Constitution.

I still remembering voting for Barry in my 4th grade class when I was nine, in those mock elections schools have. I was reflecting my parents’ views, of course. My late mother once told me how much her father, my grandfather, loathed FDR and his socialist New Deal. So I guess conservatism is in my blood.

The Second Conservative Revolution was the Reagan Revolution. I was in the U.S. Army for the first part, but by 1982 I had been honorably discharged and was in Washington, D.C. First I was assistant editor of “Conservative Digest,” then editor of “The American Sentinal,” then editorial page editor at “The Washinton Times” – all conservative publications. We worked to win the Cold War, sharply cut government and restore the Constitution.

To quote Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!”

I’ll bet that’s the feeling the youngsters are getting nowadays as they back Ron Paul.

Alas, both previous revolutions were hampered by conservatives, including me, supporting a strong military during the Cold War. It was hard to cut budgets and deficits with defense spending so high.

But then the Berlin Wall fell and there was no reason for any conservative to oppose large defense cuts. During the Cold War, tradeoffs were made: “Back a strong military and we’ll fund your favorite domestic programs.” That no longer was needed.

Unfortunately, Reagan didn’t have a third term. Instead, we got George H.W. Bush, who promised, “Read my lips! No new Taxes!” – then, once in office, raised taxes. The economy crashed and we got Clinton.

In 1996, Republicans nominated Bob Dole, whom conservatives long had dubbed “the tax collector for the welfare state” for his obsession with raising taxes, such as the the “waitress tax” that took money from the gals’ tips. What a cad. Clinton won again.

In both 1992 and 1996, Pat Buchanan raised a stir in the GOP primaries, even winning the New Hampshire primary in 1996 with his calls for large cuts in spending and taxing, and for bring American troops home. It was a kind of proto-Ron Paul Revolution.

In 2000, Republicans nominated George W. Bush, with his promise of a “humble” foreign policy and limited government. Well, like his father, he gave us the opposite of what he solemnly pledged. Enough said on that.

Obama promised “Change you can believe in,” but we got no change from Bush.

So no wonder people are upset, especially young folks who are doing the dying in the pointless Bush-Obama wars and will spend the rest of their lives paying off the Bush-Obama war debts, domestic debts, and bailout debts.

Enter the Third Conservative Revolution. It’s a combination of the Ron Paul Revolution of recent years and the recent Tea Party excitement.

There’s always an affection between the very young and the very old. That’s why the avuncular Ron Paul, at 75, is a hit with the kids. He’s also authentic, as the existentialists used to say. There’s no guile in him. WYSYWIG – what you see is what you get. Unlike most Republican supporters of the Bush-Obama wars, who never served in the military — such as Dick “Five Deferments” Cheney — Ron Paul was a flight surgeon in U.S. Air Force.

So, it’s not surprising that, at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Ron Paul won a straw poll, with 31% of the vote. In second place, at 22%, was the socialist Mitt Romney, whose Mittcare has proved a complete disaster in Massachusetts, but is the model for the Obamacare that Republicans now oppose (rightly).

Ron Paul is the future of the Republican Party — if it wants a future. More important, his ideas are surging just when we need them to saved America from Bush-Obama socialism.

Which brings me to Shawn Nelson’s candidacy for O.C. Supervisor. It’s also part of this Third Conservative Revolution. He’s an authentic, tested conservative who has voted against waste and dumb programs while on the city council in Fullerton. He’s endorsed by the man he wants to succeed, former supervisor and new Assemblyman Chris Norby, who also has a strong record of voting against waste and protecting taxpayers.

The next four years on the Board of Supervisors are going to be the most trying since the bankruptcy 15 years ago. It could even be worse, as back then the state and national economies were in a strong recovery and could pull O.C. out of its problems. Today, the federal and state economies are not recovering, precisely because Ron Paul’s policies – sound money, tax cuts, spending cuts, restoring the Constitution – are not being heeded.

I’ll leave the last words to The Bard, in this YouTube of “The Times They Are A’Changin’.” It’s good advice for anybody not yet ready to “lend your hand” to the Ron Paul Revolution and the Shawn Nelson campaign:

There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUSwcuY29I&feature=player_embedded

John Seiler, an editorial writer with The Orange County Register for 19 years, is a reporter and analyst for CalWatchDog.com. His email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com.

Mauve County Mauve For Good?

What a nice color...

It seems that Matthew J. Cunningham, editor of the dismal Mauve County forgot the lesson he once learned when his wife left him in charge of the laundry and he threw his white bikini briefs in with the old lady’s red blouse.

For the past year Cunningham, has been studiously avoiding discussing the subject of why his mentor, boss Repuglican  John Lewis was supporting Democrat Tom Daly’s campaign for County Supervisor; and even, some said, running it through a surrogate.

Color me mauve.

Only recently Cunningham brought on a contributor named Cynthia Ward to post pro-Daly junk and attack the other candidates. That backfired last Friday afternoon when Daly quit, and now the blog is stuck with a sanctimonious NIMBY liberal – one of those types who are Republicans only because dear old dad was.

Cunningham claimed from the get go that Mrs. Ward, who calls herself Colony Rabble, was brought on board to give an “Anaheim perspective;” better still he also claimed that his blog was a big tent “right-of-center” operation, presumably big enough to include a person who is about as conservative as Eleanor Roosevelt. Nobody was buying that load of horse shit.

So Daly is gone, but Ward is still around. Will anyone even notice? Consider the transparently orchestrated attack on Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson by some semi-literate goon named Thomas Anthony Gordon that came out of left field last week in mauve land. What was that all about? Pretty bad for a self-purported conservative blog.

A regular Noel Coward.

Will the former “Red County” operators now do the right thing by getting behind the race’s only real conservative, Shawn Nelson, a man who actually lives in the 4th District? Don’t bet on it. The Mauve gang have already demonstrated their attachment to self-interest and revenue uber alles.

It looks like the mauve are mauve for good, and no bleach is gonna fix that load of laundry.

Just Like We Thought

Oh no, not again.

One of our Friends has alerted us that over at the Mauve County, blog where the atmosphere is getting bluer every day, Matthew J. Cunningham has scribbled out one of his tedious Excedrin-not-included posts, this time attacking an excellent post written on our blog by John Seiler, right here.

This was Seiler’s post that described the attempted smear on Shawn Nelson by somebody called Thomas Anthony Gordon – a semi-literate goon from Santa Ana, on the Mauve blog. We previously had some fun with goof-ball Gordo and his Mauve County playmates, here, and here.

Too many big words...

What’s really funny is that Gordon is apparently incapable of addressing Seiler’s post himself – too much subtlety of thought going on, no doubt – so into the breach leaps Mr. Wordsmith to counterattack – a pretty good indicator that that Cunningham was the one who helped set up Gordon for all this nonsense in the first place, just like we thought.

What’s really funny, or pathetic, depending on your point of view, is that John Seiler is a strong libertarian conservative – the very traits that should be applauded on a “right-of-center” blog. But no. According to Cunningham, Seiler, whose keyboard Jerb couldn’t carry, is just another Ron Paul nut. Apparently Seiler’s concept of limited government is way out of fashion at Mauve Central where self-interest has always trumped principle.

Well, Jerb has one thing going for him. We know he reads our blog regularly. And even though he has stopped posting comments here under multiple aliases, we’re pretty sure that his ongoing contact with a citizen’s blog that promotes responsible government will do him some good.