Jan Flory in “don’t drive drunk” demonstration, moral instruction, raucous crowd at a premiere
As some of you may know, I’ve been hanging around Bushala blog Friends for Fullerton’s Future (aka “FFFF” or “4F”) this year, serving as a not so much a fly in the ointment as a daub of penicillin in the petri dish of streptococcus. I actually started my trips there out of respect for the blog’s role in reporting on the Kelly Thomas killing — and secure in the notion that if Vern is friends with Bushala and some others they must not be so bad — with my expectation being that I’d agree with them about half of the time. Indeed, I do agree with them about half of the time. Unfortunately, most all of what they choose to write and comment about is the other half.
What I found is a horror show — nasty, snotty stories about local politics with a commentariat made up of equal parts WWE fan base and the mutants screaming “One of Us!” in the movie Freaks. I like it there. So long as one is impervious to insult, and in that context that comes pretty easy, it’s like engaging in a gigantic Nerf-sword fight with nine-year-olds. All you have to do is have a sense of humor and keep slugging. Watching the various purges is sort of sad — “Et tu, Sebourn?” — but that’s fundamentally not my concern.
One sport I engage in there is a game I call “Spot the Distortion.” A recent round of this began a few weeks ago when they started going after Jan Flory, former Councilperson and current Council candidate who has the temerity to possibly knock an FFFFster candidate or two off of the City Council. While they make a great show of appearing to engage merely in joyous blood sport, clearly she has them worried. Half a dozen times, a dozen times, I’ve lost count by now, they’ve recently posted the same photo of Jan Flory that you see on the left of the upper graphic.
The implication: Jan Flory was drunk in public. (They also accuse her of being a floozy and all sorts of other things, but “drunk” is the main allegation.)
This bothered me, because “drunk” was not clearly evident from the photo and I’ve learned not to trust what I’m told on FFFF. It could have been wild dancing; it could have been her being a good sport and pretending to be drunk, as for a demonstration of field sobriety tests. I put forth hypotheses like this a few times and was assured that no, no, she really was drunk, by various people claiming to have been there who saw it with their own eyes.
I don’t want to take too much time to collect the insults and attacks on Flory, but I’ll leave a space below for inserting updates from FFFF’s recent archives.
[WATCH THIS SPACE!]
Flory published a statement on the photo today in Facebook. It turns out that — yep, she was drunk! But … Spot the Distortion!
TRUTH OR LIE? Jan is a Drunk
For nearly three years now, the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, has repeatedly published a picture of me taking a field sobriety test and nearly tipping over in the process. It’s actually a pretty cool picture, but the inference is not. The 4-Fs want you to believe that I am a drunk.
The picture was taken 12 years ago at a Sunrise Rotary event staged at Coyote Hills Golf Course to demonstrate the ill effects of alcohol. My fellow imbibers were Kathy Hammer and Dr. Bob Dolan. The “testing” was conducted by the Fullerton Police Department.
Kathy, Dr. Dolan and I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to begin the demonstration. By the time our fellow Rotarians arrived at 7:30 a.m., we were a pretty happy group. As the meeting progressed, the police would have us breathe into a Breathalyzer to determine our blood alcohol levels and then conduct a field sobriety test.
These events are often referred to as “wet labs”, and the object is to heighten awareness of the serious effects of drinking and driving. My son, Rob, who works as a Public Defender, participated in a wet lab this past year. The event was sponsored by the North Orange County Bar Association and was held at the Fullerton Elks Lodge.
The 4-F mantra is to “support candidates and causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County.” Reading that, one would think that the 4-F blog would do its level best to publish “intelligent, responsible and accountable” posts. Not true. What the blog does is to poke, bully, insult, ridicule and downright defame and slander some of the best people in our town. Along the way, the 4-F group seems to consider “age” a defect, and repeatedly insults people based on age.As illustration, check out the August 19th post entitled, “A Day at the Races”. The caption for the picture is, “See if you can find the old nag.” In the header for the post, the 4-F writes, “How they got a T shirt on the that old nag is anybody’s guess.” The “old nag” is me. This is a post from Jan Flory’s Dead Dog, obviously an “intelligent, responsible and accountable” source.Now, are you sitting down? Travis Kiger, our newly elected council member, is paid $4,000 a month to work for the 4-F blog. Is he Jan Flory’s Dead Dog? or is he just the handler for her dead dog? Either way, the 4-Fs have had their day and they are going down. The reason is that no intelligent, responsible and accountable reader will ever take this nonsense seriously. It transcends smarmy. It is laughable at best; pathetic at worst.And one other thing,–I haven’t had a dog since 1985. My two cats won’t allow it.
So, yes, she was drunk in public — at an event presented by the Police and the Orange County Bar Association to teach the public about the evils of drunk driving (and, I’m guessing, of the difficulty of estimating one’s own degree of intoxication while intoxicated.) In other words, she was being a good sport and taking part in a useful educational event. What a scandal!
It’s things like that — being able to solve the mystery of the distortion — that keep me coming back to FFFF. It’s sort of like talking to them about how whether all of Fullerton’s “Illegal Water Tax” is actually illegal — and what court said so. (I’ve more recently raised the question of whether it made sense to reimburse landlords for water tax money that was passed onto their tenants, wondering if this presents a windfall, but I’m going to have to say that a lot more times before getting a reply. )
I don’t object to FFFF having their own cultish echo chamber, but it becomes a problem when it starts intruding on public affairs. The notion that other people read the FFFF site and believe the distortions (or lies, or misleading statements, let’s not quibble) is disturbing. Part of the “power” of the group comes from almost all of its commenters and authors (Greg Sebourn, Travis Kiger, and Stanley Fiala being honorable exceptions) its wearing the equivalent of the Guy Fawkes masks that some people in Occupy put on — which I don’t especially like there either. So when Flory asks whether Travis Kiger is the person who poses and posts as “Jan Flory’s Dog,” writing stories attacking her, I think that’s the wrong question. My question, to the uncostumed Travis Kiger, is instead: do you think that these sorts of anonymous attacks on her are OK? Do you at least see any downside to them, like their potential tendency to encourage people to “bear false witness”?
Speaking of which, I do want to call attention to one thing because it looks like a potential misstep (and of course the FFFFwads, quickly forgiving themselves their own sins, are all over it. If there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s to go after the scent of blood.) Flory asserts that Travis Kiger, the own site’s webmaster as well as FFFF’s, makes $4000/month from his work with FFFF. Judging by the amount that I understand Vern pays him, I find Flory’s allegation doubtful. If she can substantiate it, fine; if not, I hope that she’ll retract it (and perhaps burn her source, or her source’s source.)
Now it may be that there are other ways that money makes its way from the Bushala vault to Kiger; this I do not know. I don’t know from where Travis makes his money at all, actually. But if it’s from a slightly different way, that should be clarified. After all, responsible people in politics don’t want to benefit from distortions! Right?
Greg–
Thank you for calling out the FFFF for what it is. Since tonight’s Council meeting concerns two of the FFFF’s favorite whipping boys, the police department and the water “tax”, your post is well-timed and timely. It got me thinking about the various items in the FFFF platform during the recall, and how the current three FFFF-backed Council members stack up against that platform.
1. Police abuse. This, of course, was the initial impetus for the recall, (although it was soon eclipsed by other unrelated issues). The FFFF members railed against a “culture of corruption” and promised to clean up the department. To date, their action has consisted of passing a meaningless ordinance making the new chief a direct Council hire. All this does is run the risk of making the Chief’s position politically beholden to the latest Council majority, and it will do nothing but confuse the lines of authority in the City’s daily operations. When the conversation turned to farming out the department to OCSD, the talk suddenly centered around cost rather than proper policy. When that idea met with string public opposition, the new members got a taste of their own FFFF medicine from the speakers at the podium. Many speakers supported acting chief Dan Hughes, who has already implemented many of the reforms the public rightfully demanded.
2. Special interests During the recall campaign, much hoopla was made about the old Council being too close to developers and public unions, especially police and fire. That seemed a little off coming from candidates whose campaigns were nearly 100% funded by one man, who is himself a developer. And I suppose if I had to, I could probably find an old poster from Shawn Nelson’s first run for Council, (another Friend of Tony, or FOT), who proudly joined his name with Bankhead on flyers that shouted “Police and Fire Support…”
3. Transparency/Cronyism/Nepotism: This was another major issue. Too many employees are related to each other. Too many deals are cut out of public view, etc. etc. So, what happens? When the new members get their first shot at appointing members to commissions and committees, one of the them appoints his wife to the Library Board and his brother in law to another commission?!? Did the other two FOT’s rise up in righteous indignation? Heck no—one of them even supported appointing the brother in law! And when it comes to transparency, what’s the point of holding Council meetings when new policies are dictated on a blog well before the meeting. Greg Sebourn’s vote against the OCSD contract may have generated some mock outrage on the site, but it has little meaning since no action can be taken for at least two more years.
4. Public employee compensation: The Council recently approved a consultant contract to look at unfunded pension liabilities, which is a hot-button topic these days. There is a lot of misinformation about how the liabilities are calculated and how much they cost, both now and into the future. Hiring a consultant isn’t a bad idea per se, unless its the Council’s intention to use the consultant’s findings not as information, but as ammunition in Tony’s war on public employees. I’ve heard no mention of the fact employees haven’t had a cost of living adjustment in five years and are now paying 7% of their salaries for their PERS retirement (higher for public safety). And while we’re on the subject of employee compensation and transparency, isn’t Bruce Whitaker a public employee, being District Director for fellow FOT Chris Norby? Where can we find his compensation? I’ve looked high and low on Norby’s website, as well as the City’s, but darned if I can find it. What is Bruce’s unfunded pension liability? And that of his boss, Norby, who was a teacher (or union thug as FOT and School Board Chris Thompson calls them) before becoming a County Supervisor and Assembly member. Shoot, Chris probably has more years in PERS than most of the city’s employees!
5. The “water tax”. This was a big thorn in Tony’s side. 25+ years of an illegal tax! Millions bilked from citizens and businesses! Only it wasn’t a tax and it wasn’t illegal. It was a 10% surcharge on water bills meant to reimburse the City’s general fund for support of the water utility for administrative and support services. It was created back in the dark days before propositions 13, 9 and 218, so it was technically grandfathered in. But the way the 10% was calculated has been lost to the sands of time. Given the time it was created, I’d bet some bean counter with a green eye-shade sat down with a pencil and an adding machine and figured it out. The problem was never with the charge itself, but how it was calculated and how it was used. Since it merely went back into the general fund, there was no way to really tell exactly what it was used for. The FFFF likes to tell people it went for the fat pensions of police and fire personnel, and part of it may well have gone to legitimate staff costs. But it also offset some administrative costs, freeing up funds for the Library, maintenance, and a host of other programs., When faced with a potential suit from the Howard Jarvis people (not FFFF), the City did the right thing, and hired an independent consultant to reassess the fee, which is more in the 6% to 7% range. Of course, this wasn’t good enough for Tony and the FFFF. They called the consultant’s report bogus and want a full refund, which amounts to a few bucks per customer.
Fullerton, like most cities, is facing some real long-term problems that need realistic and practical solutions. A citizen’s oversight board is a good start for the police; an independent review of pensions and funding options, in which employee associations, who have already shown their willingness to work with the city, are allowed to work on a solution, along with the public and Council, would be the best way to address the long term issue of pension and retirement liabilities.
Fullerton is facing real problems that require mature and reasonable thinking to solve. The FFFF’s game of blaming or bullying whichever person or group happens to cross their sights does nothing towards finding those solutions. And eventually, they’re going to run out of people to blame or excoriate.
You almost had me until the end, but I disagree with your last sentence.
GD – Forget those FFFF-tards.
Oh, come on — go and read my interactions with them. Yes, I’m outnumbered 50 to 1, but who’s having more fun?
Yes you “are serving as a not so much a fly in the ointment as a daub of penicillin in the petri dish of streptococcus.”. Tony should be grateful although I’m sure he is not since he prefers to keep his blog a “cultish echo chamber”. Could not have said it better myself.
4F is a hate site, plain and simple. They are against everything, and for nothing. They blame the world around them for all their problems. They hate the police, the fire fighters, teachers, and anyone that doesn’t think their way (whatever way that is). They are the very definition of hypocrites. Where are their cries against Norby and Nelson for sitting on Council during the “illegal water tax debacle”? Where are their cries against Norby and Nelson for accepting money from Public Employees Unions?
And they have NO credibility whatesoever. How many pseudo names does Travis or Bruce or others have? They create pity little screen names, and hide behind them, hurling insults, slander, and hate speech at everyone that crosses their path.
When one man spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to control a council, that’s not a special interest? Just wait for the Fireworks Vote, and wait for the Marijuana Dispensaries to come to Fullerton and see what happens.
One quibble about the last line: marijuana dispensaries coming to Fullerton could be good or bad, depending on how it was done. I favor Fullerton becoming “Dispensary City,” a travel destination for those in LA who want safe and sane sale of medicinal cannabis, but I hope that if it happens it is not done with a laissez-faire lack of concern. Fullerton should strive to respect and implement the requirements of Prop 215 regarding how such dispensaries ought to work. It could and should be a model city in this respect, if such a proposal goes forward.
As for FFFF, I’ll refrain from further comment (for now.)