Orange Juice: Year in Review

What a year it has been for the Orange Juice! In this post we will enter the way-back machine and have a look at our top stories this year. Buckle up, it might be a wild ride…

• The year began in disappointment in Santa Ana, as Councilman Sal Tinjero turned against the revolution and became part of Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido’s cabal. He never voted against any of Pulido’s schemes and ended up attacking the only true progressive on the Council, Michele Martinez.
• Is there Vietnamese-Latino angst in Orange County? I think so and I wrote about it in early January. And Trung Nguyen proved my point about a week later.
• Sean Mill wrote a post entitled “The times they are changin’: 4 O Juice bloggers sworn in.” A year later, nothing has changed on the Santa Ana City Council, and most of the bloggers are gone from their city commissions.
• Janet Nguyen won the First District Supervisorsorial election! She became the first Vietnamese American Supervisor…and she ruined Carlos “Space Commander” Bustamante’s and Tom Umberg’s political careers. But Luis Rodriguez wanted to know more about her mailers.
• In February I quit the Republican Party and became a decline to state voter. Our readers responded with quite a few comments.
• Luis wrote about a school closure by the SAUSD. And the cuts were just beginning.
• Claudio Gallegos got almost one hundred comments when he wrote about Catholic Taliban leader Bill Donohue.
• Sean wrote about how the Santa Ana Housing & Redevelopment Commission was signaling change. Well, we rewrote the bylaws and moved the meetings to 6 p.m., to accommodate the public, but we also found out that it is hard to foster any change when City Manager Dave Ream’s goons have stacked the deck.
• I compared Santa Ana to Costa Mesa. Readers responded with over 70 comments.
• Ryan Trabuco wrote about a “blog war” in Orange County when Red County/OC Blog dropped the Orange Juice from their blog links. Those machine Reeps are so petulant!
• Thomas Gordon got 45 comments when he wrote “SAUSD = Fraud,” and 34 more with “SAUSD fraud continues.”
• Claudio asked “Nativo recall activists: Where are you?“
• And Ryan caught the SAUSD spying on the bloggers. While Thomas took a picture that became infamous…and may have cost one of the SAUSD administrators his career.
• And then the SAUSD blew $2 million dollars on fraud and ineptitude. And Thomas blew the whistle on the SAUSD substitute teacher shortage.
• Miguel Pulido finally showed up to an immigrant protest.
• I wrote quite a few “O.C. Political Chisme” columns, but this one really riled up our readers as we found out about the greedy nature of Councilman Sal Tinajero.
• Pulido and the Santa Ana City Council said “no” to massage parlors.
• We wrote about how the Santa Ana city manager and his administrators wanted more money, since they are doing such a great job…
• Supervisor Janet Nguyen and Santa Ana Councilwoman Michele Martinez walked for peace!
• And Santa Ana Councilman “Crazy” Claudia Alvarez melted down again, while Pulido stuck with Minuteman Lupe Moreno.
• The OCTA bus drivers went on strike. And OCTA board member Miguel Pulido was utterly useless, as usual.
• “Crazy” Claudia struck again as she dissed immigrants seeking sanctuary. And Larry Gilbert then wrote about “Birthright Citizenship.”
• Mexican hater Harald Martin was appointed to the AUHSD Board of Trustees.
• And Sean dissed the N.I.C.E. Committee, while I wrote about the Santa Ana City Council’s attempt to ban handbill delivery.
• Then we pondered, what did King Pulido promise Sal Tinajero? Then Tinajero joined Pulido in voting for a mag lev train that will never be built. Then we revealed the truth
  about Pulido.
• Sean reveled as Mike Metzler, the lame director of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, got punked.
• I said goodbye to a county commission appointment.
• Claudio and I hung out with a few hunger strikers. And yes we did eat lunch in front of them. The worst part was I had a chicken sandwich while one of the strikers held a live chicken! It was a bizarre day at Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez’ office.
• Assemblyman Van Tran took a wild copter ride.
• The City of Santa Ana bought a bunch of T.V.’s for a quarter million dollars.
• Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee John Hanna defended the overspending on the Carona Sheriff Training Facility.
• I asked “Who is Al Amezcua?” Readers responded.
• Sean blasted Don Cribb and his posse. And I asked “Who is Don Cribb?” And eventually Cribb spoke out.
• Then I asked “Who is Mike Metzler?” But no one cared about “Who is Carlos Bustamante?” But our readers did care about “Who is David Benavides?“
• We found out the Santa Ana City Council was trying to silence the OJ bloggers. And the scandal blew up!
• Sean thanked Michele Martinez.
• The Urell Amigos scandal blew up.
• Sean wrote about vendor trucks.
• We welcomed the “Little Saigon Insider”
• Tim Whitacre spoke out regarding Carona’s indictment.
• The Santa Ana City Council said “no” to mayoral term limits.
• Joe Dunn thought about running for the Santa Ana City Council. But he still hasn’t announced his plans for next year!
• Sean took on Ware Disposal
• We learned not to trust acting Sheriff Jo Ann Galisky.
• We said “adios” to Harald Martin.
• We found out there are gangs in south O.C.
• Heads never rolled when student reporters found out that the fire alarms at Santa Ana College were not working.
• We found out Mission Viejo is a lot safer than Santa Ana. But Larry Gilbert revealed that perhaps Mission Viejo is not so safe after all.
• The Renaissance Plan reared its ugly head.
• The Santa Ana City Council removed our blogger, Thomas Gordon, from the EPIC/Gang Commission, at the request of Sal Tinajero. The resulting media storm was a surprise for Pulido and company, especially when I quit my commission appointment in protest.
• We asked if Pulido and Avila were right about Tinajero?
• In Sean’s last post for us he said he is “not a quitter.” Then he jumped on the crazy train.
• The Red and Blue County blogs jumped on Supervisor Janet Nguyen again.
• The O.C. Register slammed the Santa Ana Renaissance Plan. So did Gustavo Arellano.
• And Claudio quit but then returned to the Orange Juice.

Whew! What a year! Stick around…things are bound to be interesting next year too! Have a Happy New Year and thanks for reading the Orange Juice!

Thanks also to our writers. Each of them brings something different to our table. Together we are the most diverse set of bloggers in the O.C. Keep up the good work!