We have a recap of some political stories for you — but first, a graphic image so strange that perhaps not even its creator can fully comprehend how much so.
As Broadwater watches intently, Matt Fertig presents his son to the city he will someday lead. (Let’s not take this analogy too far.)
[1] OC Register Endorses a Democrat in Stanton
Democrat Kevin Carr and his running-mate Bryan Palomares are starting to look like they’re going to pick up a big upset in tiny, beleaguered, poorly-run, and pissed-off Stanton. They just got the endorsement of the similarly beleaguered Orange County Register. We read the Orange Lady so you don’t have to:
Two years ago, Stanton voters wisely rebuked their council’s ballot measure asking for a utility tax increase and expansion. The tax, Measure J, would have raised rates from 5 percent to 7.5 percent – or a 50 percent increase in the rate.
Now the incumbent council appears up for another round, placing Measure GG on the Nov. 4 ballot in an attempt to raise the city’s sales tax to make it the highest in Orange County. This comes at a time when Stanton’s unemployment rate is among the worst in the county, and the city is working hard to bring in new business and increase revenues.
Measure GG would impose a 1 percent additional sales tax on the majority of retail goods purchased in the city. While there are exceptions for some items – grocery and pharmaceuticals, for example – the funds are being allocated for general use, despite the measure being billed largely as a preservation of public safety services.
We believe this to be a seriously misguided attempt by the city to extract more money from taxpayers trying to live and work in a city on the rebound.
For that reason, the Register endorses City Council challengers Kevin Carr and Bryan Palomares.
The editorial then recounts Carr’s anti-tax, pro-transparency, business-friendly, and public-employee-salary-skeptical history, and Palomares’s criticism of the city’s entrenched and detached political establishment. Yes, they’re more conservative than I am, but the incumbents aren’t any better at this agenda — they’re just demonstrably incompetent. Stanton needs a housecleaning; we’ll argue details later.
[2] Bruce Broadwater and Matt Fertal Somehow Manage to Worsen Garden Grove Nepotism Situation
BAO NGUYEN STATEMENT ON BRUCE BROADWATER’S CONTINUED NEPOTISM
Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord. Who is tuning these guys strings to appeal to the public audience? Let’s start with Bao Nguyen’s press release:
The transfer and potential pay raise given to Mayor Bruce Broadwater’s son is an affront to every taxpayer in Garden Grove. The continued employment of the Mayor’s son by our city is an embarrassment and indicative of the level of corruption and nepotism that exists at City Hall. Bruce Broadwater’s silence on this issue is deafening and shameful. I am calling on Mayor Bruce Broadwater to immediately explain the role he played in the hiring and continued employment of his son in the fire department.
As Mayor, I will institute a comprehensive risk management assessment of city government, including a review of all policies pertaining to ethics, to root out fraud, abuse, and misuse of public funds. I will also fight to maintain high standards for all city jobs, and ensure applicants meet or exceed qualifications in order to be hired.
The Orange County Register, Voice of OC, and other news outlets have already reported on the transfer of Mayor Broadwater’s son. Mayor Bruce Broadwater has refused to answer questions from the media or the public.
Garden Grove’s City Manager Matt Fertal, having just appointed himself interim Fire Chief, has some up with a temporary solution to the problem of Broadwater’s son getting hired for a fire-fighting job for which he is apparently woefully unqualified: promote him to a desk job where he will make more money.
This must have seemed absolutely brilliant to whoever came up with the idea and congenial to Mr. Fertal (and both Broadwaters.) “Look, he’ll even make more money at the desk job!” That’s the point where Garden Grovers would be expected to stop listening to any possible explanation their leaders might have and start preparing more extreme responses than OJB hopes they will take. (Just voting them out will be enough for not, citizens; lawsuits can come later.) One can hardly imagine an action short of declaring martial law that would be more out of tune with the City’s political observers — and, we’ll probably soon learn, its electorate as well — than this one. So I guess that that’s sort of an accomplishment.
[3] Quirk-Silva Calls Out Young “Bigoted Buttkicker” Kim on Prop 13, Gas Tax Lies
Young Kim was supposed to be campaigning at this point in the AD-65 race about how Sharon is much too accepting of OC’s small number of suffering adolescent transsexuals and therefore does not belong in Sacramento, which is a place for people who laugh at the stupidity of people who fail to bait despised minorities for political gain. Something has apparently gone wrong with that, because instead Kim seems to have decided, in the tradition of other Dave Gilliard-fueled candidates, to just start making things up.
Dear Friends,
As many of you know, I am running for re-election to the California State Assembly for the 65th District. On this personal page, I try to do my best to not make it all about politics, but I do have a state page and a campaign page if you are interested.
I also know many that follow my page are not political and may or may not agree with me on some issues. I understand this and believe as friends, neighbors, and community members we have much in common. As Americans when we stand together we are strong!
I want to set the record straight on false information that my opponent is putting out. I am opposed to any changes to Prop 13. I have not take any vote to increase your gas tax. There was a vote in 2006, AB32, but I was not elected to the Assembly in 2006. Major races like this are tough, but the truth matters. I am stating this because the many mailers, and now super size signs, that my opponent keep sending are false! Simply tell the truth and run a race, but scaring people with misinformation equals no integrity.
Just wanted you to hear this from me directly. Win or lose, I tell the truth.
Can we get real about Sharon for a moment? Maybe once or twice a year, she will be willing to get out ahead of her district on an issue that could cost her an election. My sense of her is that, like various moderates and conservatives during heyday of the Civil Rights movement, it will probably be on issues — like, yes, the transgender bill — where she knows that in five or ten years he failure to stand with people who sought and received their civil rights would be a huge regret. Until her district is willing to let her get away with supporting a plastic bag ban, or reducing penalties for marijuana use, or anything else that has a kernel of fact that the Dave Gilliards and Dave Ellises of the world can use to twist into a vicious attack ad just before an election, she’s just not going to do it. But she’ll give us most of what we actually want and need — competent governance that keeps the interests of Orange County in mind, when the rest of the state would otherwise enjoy taking potshots at us.
Here’s what really distinguishes her from Young Kim: when her district really is ready to let her go unpunished for taking these progressive votes — and I don’t just mean “a poll shows that people favor it,” but “we showed focus groups what Dave Gilliard would try to do with the issue to make her look like Angela Davis, and they just shrugged” — then she will vote the right way. She may be temperamentally cautious, but she’s not ideologically beyond hope. Young Kim is an attractive crazed ideologue who will not accomplish a thing — not one thing — in Sacramento, and she will not cast a good vote on these big contentious issues even if her district was literally begging her to do so, because she’s a true believer who has God and Ed Royce behind her.
So let me ask you: DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT SHARON QUIRK-SILVA VOTED TO WEAKEN PROP 13 AND RAISE THE GAS TAX? Because everything I know about her tells me that that’s pretty much impossible. I wish she would take more bolder positions, but her focus is on being the best representative for her district … who can get reelected. Ergo, Young Kim is lying again.
[4] Dave Jones Refutes the Lying Liars on Prop 45
If there is one thing that should get you registered and out to the polls this year, it’s the opportunity to support Proposition 45, which will give the Insurance Commissioner the same right to veto unreasonble increases in health insurance premiums that he already has with auto and life insurance. The insurers have been playing nice hoping that this won’t pass; once it passes, they are going to hammer us with rate hikes. It’s not like they don’t have a track record on this sort of thing! And this ballot measure, coupled with a strong, good, and smart Insurance Commissioner like Prop 45’s author Dave Jones, can stop that sort of thing dead.
And Prop 45 seems to be behind in the polls right now. So Jones sent out a letter talking about why:
No doubt you’ve seen a television ad, heard a radio spot, or received a mailer from the health insurers’ campaign against Proposition 45.
Don’t believe the health insurers’ $37 million in false advertising. Their ads are simply not true.
We need your help right now to overcome the health insurers’ $37 million.
Join the YES on Proposition 45 Week of Action by sending an email to your contacts and sharing our YES on 45 videos and logo on social media. Download the Yes on 45 toolkit. Help California join the 35 other states who have the authority to reject excessive health insurance rate hikes.
Like Bonnie Lane, a Proposition 45 supporter who lives in Los Angeles, use the YES on 45 Toolkit to ask each and every person you know to vote YES on 45. Bonnie shared with us that she is also using the Toolkit to go door to door in her neighborhood.
Our grassroots campaign can overcome the health insurers’ millions with the support of Californians, like you, who contact their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues and urge them to vote YES on Prop 45.
Please join Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the California Democratic Party, California Nurses Association, and consumer advocates in supporting Proposition 45. Thank you.
Sincerely,
DAVE JONES
Insurance Commissioner
P.S. The most important thing you can do is email everyone you know in California to support Prop 45, but if you can also help with a contribution, no matter how small, that would help too!
You know when people look back on the past and ask “why didn’t people do something?” Prop 45 is the sort of thing that they will be unable to comprehend why we didn’t do. Don’t act in a way that makes history made at you, right?
[5] Pulido Perdido
Martin Wisckol did something a bit classy today: crediting Adam Elmahrek and Voice of OC for the great work that they’ve been doing on the Miguel Pulido conflict of interest beat — with which he says the Register has now had to catch up. The story yesterday, following the Voice’s publication of the investigative report (which, in a ill omen for the future, has apparently pissed off Sal Tinajero), is that Pulido’s rebuttal includes news of a new property appraisal which he says clears him.
Maybe it will be the case that they only thing that will pry Pulido out of office will be Mayoral term limits — which, by the way, it would be nice to hear Tinajero say that he still supports, despite his growing contempt for David Benavides) — but Pulido seems intent on dragging as many people down with him as he can. One of them, I fear, is whichever appraiser just accepted his business — because I have real doubts about this one.
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We’ll add more stories as they occur!
The best solution for GG is for us to vote out Bruce Broadwater, and than our new and improved city council can terminate city manager Matt Fertal. (who among other things kept the fire dept. report from us in spite of the publics right to see it…this guy believes their are laws and morals for us..but not for him)
Why does the city manager keep getting away with deciding who gets appointed to the city council? …as in Kris Beard. Mr. Fertal has been laughing at us all for years. The 3 jobs his sons took away from probably more qualified candidates. How does this guy keep getting away with all this?