Oh Yeah, a Decade’s Ending! Worst of the ’10s in OC.

.

.

.

Top: Angels Giveaway, Poseidon Giveaway, ARTIC Debacle; Middle: Ejection of Homeless from Riverbed, Murray/Brandman corruption, 405 Toll lanes; Bottom: Kelly Thomas killing, Pulido & corrupt police raid, Snitch Scandal … among many other possible photos

This has been an exciting decade for Orange County, as national trends among suburban and educated counties reached into our corner California and — thanks to the DCCC overruling the DPOC in various primary races and spending sneakily tipping the scales in others like CA-39 — turned our county’s Congressional delegation blue.  (The decade’s bigger Democratic wins, in my opinion, were finally taking back the Governor’s post in 2010 — yeah, it wasn’t that long ago that we had an almost unbroken stream of Republican Governors! — and stopping the crashing Red Wave at the Nevada border in 2014.  The latter was the year when I’d say contemporary California took form.)

We had already learned in 2008 that OC voters don’t like idiotic grifting Republicans on the Presidential ticket.  (Sarah Palin went over poorly here.) The rejection of Donald Trump in our county underlined that we didn’t like male grifters any better, especially cowardly sadists with personality disorders.  Our county isn’t truly “blue” by any means — our NPPs tend to be conservatives and libertarians who can’t stand Trump or Democrats, and the Republican successes in local races shows it.

But if there’s one thing that brings most people associated with this blog together — and often there is not even one thing — it’s a revulsion at corruption  So let’s — and this will be an interactive exchange, at least between me and Vern, even if no one else — come up with the most awful rotten political events of the 2010s.

These are unranked, but here are some starters:

• Santa Ana — a decade of Pulido and corrupt cops
• Fullerton — Kelly Thomas & aftermath, especially the not guilty verdict
• Anaheim — uh, we’ll need some subcategories here:
  • The Sandbagging of Tom Tait (for 6 of his 8 years as Mayor) 
  • The Kleptocrats’ three-year, $3 million dollar, losing battle against District Elections
  • Attempted, and now Completed, giveaways to Moreno and the Angels
  • Evading a public vote on the Convention Center Expansion Bond
  • Kowtowing to Disney, including the streetcar scam and the 45-year gate tax moratorium
  • the ARTIC boondoggle
  • Anaheim Chamber of  Commerce and other monsters, right up to tomorrow
• Police Shootings (and beatings, suffocations and stranglings) in all of the above and beyond
• The continuing and growing homelessness crisis and our governments’ indifference to it
• Poseidon’s long-term and persistent scamming – including most recently the hiring of the formerly decent Barbara Boxer
• The 405 Toll Lanes, creating shortcuts for the rich at the expense of the non-rich
• The South County Toll Road extension AND Toll Lanes
• Rackauckas, Hutchens, and Don Barnes, crapping on the Constitution and making a mockery of justice
• County Government-level corruption
• Stomping on Democracy (public records, public comment)
• False promises that San Onofre was safe and wouldn’t keep its waste onsite
• The failed Irvine Great Park, and the related failure of Irvine voters & council to agree on a location for the OC Veterans’ Cemetery

I’m sure that I’m forgetting plenty — and I’ve been limiting myself to scandals rather than tragedies like our fires.  (I’m not sure where to categorize the surge in white supremacism and nationalism, including the violence and offenses at minority religious institutions: certainly a tragedy, also in part a scandal.)   Add to the list in comments, suggest added topics and links to the accounts of what’s up there, and we’ll try to come up with something definitive!