Fitzgerald Saves Democracy! And also: HOUSTON, we gotta problem.

By
Anaheim Insider
– October 5, 2014Posted in: "The OC", anaheim, district elections, Fresh Juice, Gail Eastman, Kris Murray, Lucille Kring, police brutality, Political Repression, Tom Tait

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Anaheim Insider here.  (Not the sycophantic one, and not the satirical one.)

Although he’s best known as the “GADFLY” who uses offensive incendiary rhetoric to draw attention to his sometimes-invaluable, sometimes-paranoid Council comments, Denis Fitzgerald has a long history of providing the ballot statements for and against various Anaheim measures.

This year, besides his emphatic argument against the tax Measure N, Fitzy also wrote the argument against Measure M for expanding the council.  This post begins as a public service, and as a favor to Fitzgerald:  He wants you to ignore his argument against Measure M.  It is wrong.  He agrees with this blog that you should vote YES on both L and M.  Here’s what happened:

As hopefully you know by now, Measure L will create elections-by-district in Anaheim, and Measure M will expand the council from four-plus-mayor to six-plus-mayor.  They complement each other nicely, but there is a lot of opposition from the powers-that-be to Measure L, while Measure M has very little opposition.  Looking through the fine print, Fitzgerald found “either-or” language, so that only ONE of those two measures would pass, whichever got the most votes.  And since nearly everyone will vote yes on M, that would be an easy, sneaky way to kill Measure L even if it gets over 50% of the vote.  So he wrote the argument urging a NO vote on M, believing that voting-by-district is more important than how many districts there are.

Well … that either-or language WAS there; he showed it to me.  In subsequent drafts it disappeared.  Did Fitzgerald stymie a nefarious trick?  Did Fitzgerald correct a clumsy accident?  Or did the change have nothing to do with Fitzgerald?  In any case, the change came out too late for him to withdraw his anti-M argument, so he just wants you to ignore it now.  “They’re trying to make people think I’m crazy,” he concludes.  Maybe, maybe.

DO read and consider his argument against Measure N, however – a 4% utility tax that was sneaked in decades ago, and now has to be voter-approved in order to legally continue, but which authoritarian Lucille Kring is framing, typically, as “Do you want more cops on the street?  Then vote yes on N!”  Fuck that manipulative shit.

More fascinating stuff we’ve learned recently…

Did you know?  EVERY CITY in Orange County delegates the criminal charges and prosecution of misdemeanors against individuals to the District Attorney, who charges NOTHING for the service.  Every city, that is, except one – ANAHEIM.

Anaheim alone has opted to spend millions of dollars a year (between 2 and 5 million, we can’t be sure) hiring its own deputy city attorneys to charge and prosecute, in North Court, misdemeanors committed in Anaheim.  Right THERE is a huge unnecessary cost a new, non-corrupt council might look at for savings.

And you may or may not be surprised to learn that over the years, the City of Anaheim has frequently abused this power to charge and prosecute crimes FOR POLITICAL REASONS.

Segueing Right Along…

Yesenia discussing matters with a Mayor Who Listens.

Now, remember what happened to beloved Anna Drive neighborhood activist Yesenia Rojas last month?  The Weekly‘s Gabriel told the story as only he and others can.  Long short, the 37th-birthday party her kids and family had put on for her on Sept 6 was interrupted by a gang-unit raid, as the cops came in to drag out two young men, one for “violating the gang injunction” (which just means being there with friends) and the other for “drug possession and resisting arrest” (which could mean having a joint on him and trying to get away.)  Yesenia, as is her habit, responding to the kids’ mothers’ cries for help, approached the cops with her hands in the air, asking what they were being arrested for and for their names and badge numbers, answers they never gave.

Nearly three weeks later, on the 25th, she made a friendly call to Deputy Chief Julian Harvey to invite him to some community events (as she also regularly does) and he informed her that there was a warrant out for her arrest, and that she should go to the station to straighten it out.  She did not expect to be arrested when she arrived at the station, for “interfering with police,” jailed for several hours till near midnight, and released on $10,000 bail.

It’s rare to be arrested even on the spot for “interfering with police;” at most it’s a ticketing offense.  It’s unheard of to be arrested for the charge weeks after the fact.  Inquiring minds began to wonder why the police were gratuitously harassing such a well-respected and law-abiding community leader, and her community, shortly before election time.  What were they hoping to accomplish?  Or provoke?

Looks Like We Have a HOUSTON Problem, Anaheim.

Now we’ve been told by more than one trusted police source (who understandably won’t go on the record) that both the raid of Yesenia’s party and her arrest weeks later were ordered by reptilian Anaheim City Attorney Michael Houston, over the strenuous objections of both Chief Raul Quezada and DC Harvey, who argued that these actions would break down the trust the APD had been trying to establish with the Latino communities.  These accounts jibe with our experience of Harvey’s obvious exasperation.

Our thinking is that the very political City Attorney, joined at the hip as he is to the kleptocrat-authoritarian candidates Kring, Murray and Eastman, was (is?) hoping to provoke a repeat of the 2012 riots, gambling that that will drive scared white voters to the polls and to their side.   If this is so, ONE MORE of many good reasons that, if a sane, honest and humane council gets elected next month, one of their first orders of business should be replacing this toad.

He blew $2.4 million fighting the ACLU, unsuccessfully, the ACLU who was only trying to get the city to follow the Voters Rights Act and put districting on the ballot.  He’s been blowing, allegedly, tens or hundreds of thousands fighting CATER, who similarly is only trying to get the city to follow various laws.  Add to that throwing fire bombs into the tinder of troubled neglected neighborhoods in the apparent hopes that it will redound to his political side?

His predecessor Cristina Talley was summarily fired for much less.  In fact, as far as we can tell, it was for doing the right thing – for giving this klepto majority good advice that they didn’t like – a mistake that Houston will never make.  Where were these klepto-authoritarians during the recent Candidates Forum on Anna Drive which an undeterred Yesenia organized right after her arrest?  At the Angels Stadium, worshiping the Graven Image Of Bruno the K-9.

Kring, Eastman, Murray, Houston.  Anaheim needs a clean sweep of ’em, brothers and sisters.

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About Anaheim Insider

Identity suspected but unsure, Anaheim Insider is SOME slavish devotee of Curt Pringle and the Disney/Chamber kleptocracy in the OC's biggest city, and can always be counted on to spout their official line. [OK, he's a satirical character based on the anonymous "Anaheim Insider" who posts on Matt Cunningham's "AnaheimBlog.net", and is known for his tagline "Anaheim Insider here" and referring to Mr. Pringle as "The Great Man."] Oh, and of late, the editors have been using "Anaheim Insider" for non-satirical Anaheim-related pieces which are either collaborative or simple announcements.