Weekend Open Thread: With Harkey a Blistering Hot Mess, Our Body Politic Needs the Balm of Shahatit!

.

.

.

Nader Shahatit Octet

At the bottom right you will find what OJB believes to be the ONLY publicly available photo of Nader Shahatit!

Halloween is for playing tricks as well as receiving treats — so for this final pre-election Weekend Open Thread I’m just swiping Nick Gerda’s entire story from the Voice of OC on August 13.  (I think that that’s fair — most of it is swiped from the Register.)

Assemblywoman Likely to See Wages Garnished

Posted: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:15 pm | Updated: 3:52 am, Sun Aug 17, 2014.

By NICK GERDA

State Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point) will likely have part of her state wages garnished due to a court order, after state Controller John Chiang turned down her request to avoid the deduction.

As the Orange County Register reports, Chiang says he is legally required to comply with the court order:

In a letter to Chiang, the Dana Point Republican said she is legally separated from her husband and so shouldn’t be held liable for his debts. The garnishment arises from an unpaid $12.5 million judgment against her husband, Dan Harkey, and is part of his former investors’ strategy to collect money through the couple’s community property.

Diane Harkey, who is running for the state tax board, wrote Chiang on Aug. 5, asking him to suspend her state salary in order to avoid the garnishment.

Chiang’s office responded Monday, saying it could suspend pay to her, but was legally required to surrender the court-ordered garnishment of 25 percent of what remains of her $95,000 annual pay. She leaves office at the end of the year because of term limits.

Questions have arisen over the couple’s marital status. Timothy Aires, attorney for the investors seeking payment of the judgment against Dan Harkey for breach of fiduciary responsibility, said he could find no record of a legal separation in the Orange County or Sacramento courts.

For more details, check out the Register’s story.

There are many more important story lines than this one in the upcoming election.  Shahatit has no budget to speak of — I mean, he literally has not collected or spent any money — and Harkey is bound to win.  But wouldn’t it be great if, at least here in her home county, we voters who know her best just blasted her with the wholesale tsunami of contempt that she deserves?

We will look back at this election in the years to come, as Harkey’s legal problems probably continue to worsen, and ask ourselves how we possibly elected this partner in scamming (if not literally in crime) to an office addressing our state’s fiscal policy.  It’s like a cruel, ghoulish joke.  (Lou Correa, this was your race to win if you had wanted it — and even I would have supported you.)

There’s no risk, even for OC conservatives and libertarians, in applying the Balm of Shahatit on our Board of Equalization: Shahatit’s declared tax policies are well within the Republican mainstream.  And California’s Body Politic NEEDS the Balm of Shahatit to ease the rough and painful and possibly even blistering prospect of having to take Diane Harkey seriously when, in a county with an actual District Attorney, she might well be in prison (if this “I ended my marriage retroactively” story doesn’t hold up) for her part in ripping off good-faith investors.

So, OJB will tell you what: for next week’s Weekend Open Thread, we tentatively plan to report, city by city, on what parts of Orange County rejected Diane Harkey in favor of the soothing Balm of Shahatit.  The winning city will receive something like adequate coverage of its 2016 City Council races.  (Not actual adequate coverage — just “something like” it.)

This is your final pre-election Weekend Open Thread.  What you have to say that doesn’t fit elsewhere, say it here.  Collectively you’ve been reading OJB a lot more than usual in these past few weeks — October has easily been our biggest month since the last Presidential election — and we appreciate being one of the ingredients in your stew-pot of news.  So: talk about Nader Shahatit or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)