Oct
10
Judge rules Los Al City Council “broke the law!”
Filed Under C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., City Council, Decency, George Briggeman, Trash contraact, Troy Edgar | 29 Comments
(Los Alamitos, 10/7/2011, updated) This afternoon, after reviewing hundreds of pages of documents submitted to him by the attorneys for Los Alamitos, Consolidated Disposal, and Citizens for a Fair Trash Contract, Superior Court Judge Alan Banks ruled that, despite months of obfuscation by the city, Consolidated, and the best attorney’s a seven million dollar overcharge could by, the obvious is still true: The Council Majority broke the law when the awarded the solid waste disposal contract franchise for Los Alamitos businesses and residents to the fifth highest bidder. As a result, Read more
Jul
13
The $20,500 tip of the Briggeman/Poe/Stephens iceberg
Filed Under 2011 Issues, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., George Briggeman, Trash contraact | 22 Comments
(Los Alamitos, 7/13/2011)This originally posted 5 days before Los Alamitos 2008 City Council election, in which Marilyn Poe and Ken Stephens, assisted by a massive cash infusion from Consolidated Disposal’s consultant George Briggeman, were elected to replace Cat Driscoll and Ken Parker.
I am reposting it now because of it’s relevance to the current lawsuit over Read more
Feb
2
Mubarak’s empire strikes back. . . shades of Los Al politics?
Filed Under 2011 Issues, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., International news | Leave a Comment
(2/2/11, 8 a.m. in Los Alamitos, 6 p.m. in Cairo) by Dave Emerson:
The battle between the forces of democracy and President Mubarak’s corrupt but powerful regime were joined today, and it was not a pretty sight.
Sadly, in many ways, if you take away the violence it has many similarities to we’ve seen in Los Alamitos over the last five years.
Tuesday night Egyptian time, which is ten hours ahead of Los Alamitos, President Mubarak tipped his hand when he announced via a giant video screen in Cairo’s protester-filled Liberation Square that he would not run for reelection in September.
The protesters viewed Mubarak’s concessions as delay tactics from the hated regime, too little too late, and began waving their shoes at the screen.
But Mubarak apparently has a plan, and today’s actions in Cairo (which occurred overnight, Los Al time) make it pretty clear what it is and how Read more
Nov
5
Chuck Sylvia speaks to the press. . . kind of
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., City Council Meetings | 1 Comment
(11/4/2010, Los Alamitos) by Dave Emerson
Wait til you hear aboutOCNEWS180′s Dolores Barr’s efforts to interview Chuck Sylvia earlier this week.
Or Barr’s her take on Mayor Poe leaving the dias as Monday’s Council Meeting “collapsed amid public outcry.”
Let’s start with Barr’s attempt to interview Sylvia after seeing his last hit piece (which prompted my post, “Chuck Sylvia, meet Joseph Goebbels.”
Noticing the “inflammatory negative comments” in the flyer were ” devoid of context and substantiation,” Barr called Sylvia “to see if there was any truth to the claims.”
Wait until you hear how that call went, as reported by Ms. Barr: Read more
Oct
30
(October 30,2010, Los Alamitos) When I got today’s seemingly libelous hit piece from Chuck Sylvia’s “Los Alamitos Taxpayers Association,” several thoughts popped into my head:
- Another total lie! (“Warren Kusumoto. . . was forced to resign [from the Traffic Commission] after being exposed for serious ethical lapses.”) I’ve worked with Warren Kusumoto in our local Boy Scout Troop, observed him in action, and spent hours discussing local issues with him. He’s a great guy with a high sense of ethics. He 1) was never forced to resign 2) was never” exposed for ethical lapses,” and 3) probably couldn’t commit a “serious ethical violation” even if he wanted to! (More on this charge in a letter from Warren below)
- Their polling must be showing them the race is tightening–they’ve never attacked Kusumoto before, & they’ve never sent flyers 2 days in a row before.
- Two old lies repeated: Can’t they come up with anything new? I just finished exposing the charges against Mejia yesterday (see “Still more lies from Chuck Sylvia’s LATA“) and the lies against Sheridan last Monday (see “Chuck Sylvia’s worst smear piece yet?“), and Sylvia & his professional hit man is simply repeating the same old lies.
- Wait a minute, who was it that said “If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it?” That’s what Sylvia’s hired gun is doing! So I did a little research on the quote, and it tended to keep coming back to either Hitler or Read more
Oct
29
Still more lies from Chuck Sylvia’s Los Al Taxpayers Ass.!
Filed Under 2010 Issues, 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A. | 6 Comments
11/16/10 update: Surprisingly, in his Council Comments at last night’s City Council meeting, Council Member Troy Edgar, who was endorsed by Sylvia’s LATA, said he “supported” the exact same “tax incrase” that Sylvia slammed Mejia for in three different flyers prior to this year’s election, as reported in a comment posted last night!! (Los Alamitos 10/29/2010)Another day’s mail, another deceptive flyer against the people’s Trust, Truth, and Transparency team of Warren Kusumoto, Gerri Graham-Mejia, & Brad Sheridan.
If you’re having trouble deciding which team is funded by the special interests who are destroying our precious little town, and which is supported by the citizens, just compare the number of expensive, professional, full color card stock fliers mailed by the DDT team of Dean, Dean, & Troy & their supporters and the number from Warren, Gerri, & Brad & their supporters!
So here’s today’s blatant lies, & the truth, direct from the agenda for that 2/4/08 City Council Meeting referred to in the hit piece:
LIE: “Gerri Graham-Mejia has supported Read more
Oct
27
Irwindale Council Arrests: More proof Los Al Taxpayers Ass. is lying!
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A. | 2 Comments
(10/27/10, Los Alamitos) As reported today by the Associated Press, “Four current and former officials of this small Southern California city were charged Wednesday with spending $14,000 of taxpayers’ money on baseball games and Broadway shows when they were supposed to be working to improve Irwindale’s bond rating.”
Just one more piece of evidence that all the flyers put out over the past two years trashing Gerri Graham-Mejia and Ken Parker were every bit as deceptive as we told you.
Why? Because charges never were filed. And, believe me, if there’s one thing Carol Sylvia believes in, Read more
Oct
26
A revealing letter from Lyn Sheridan
Filed Under 2010 Issues, 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Decency | 6 Comments
(Los Alamitos, 10/26/2010) Yesterday, another expensive, horrible hit piece came in our mail courtesy of Chuck Sylvia’s Los Alamitos Taxpayers’ Association, which was primarily funded by George Briggeman in the 2008 election cycle.
This time he was smearing not an incumbent Council Member but a long time resident, family man, and community volunteer who had served for six years on our Traffic Commission with no compensation.
This is the 4th long-time Los Al resident that Chuck Sylvia & company have seen fit to smear. This is the 4th family with children in our schools that Sylvia, Briggeman & their cronies on the Council decided to drag through the mud.
This time, the victim’s spouse e-mailed everyone she knew to protest what was going on.
When I received a copy of Lynn’s e-mail tonight, I asked the Sheridans’ permission to post Lynn’s letter here, along with a family photo from LosAl2010.com.
I think it helps put a human face on what is being done in our small little town.
It’s lengthy, but it’s Read more
Oct
25
(10/25/2010)We just got Chuck’s “Los Alamitos” Taxpayers Association professional hit-piece on community volunteer Brad Sheridan.
I really can’t decide which of his many hit pieces is the worst: this year’s on Gerri Graham-Mejia, the Sheridan beauty, or the several pieces on Ken Parker two years ago.
I can say that if we as a community don’t stand up and vote for the people Sylvia is smearing and against the people he supports, we can expect the garbage to continue flowing in our town as long as George Briggeman has someone he can siphon his money through!
I’ve known Brad personally for years. He is a good man, a man who cares about his community and who has spent countless hours as a community volunteer.
He was unanimously elected to Chair Los Alamitos’ Traffic Commission by his fellow Commissioners three times.
He has lived in Los Alamitos at least twice as long as Troy Edgar and five times as long as Dean Zarkos, who practically moved in so Edgar & friends could appoint him to the Council in stead of Commission President Sheridan. Brad’s also active in his church locally, and a long time AYSO volunteer.
Chuck’s hit piece is as full of lies and distortions as ever. It repeats assertions made in the slimy “push poll” which have already been refuted here: (See Los Al’s dirtiest campaign yet? New details of my “survey” call)
- It implies Brad is a Los Angeles resident, when he’s lived and raised his family here for years.
- It grossly distorts his record as an attorney.
- It claims that Edgar & Zarkos kicked Sheridan off the Traffic Commission for “unethical behavior,” when the city attorney herself indicated that was an inappropriate charge. It sure was obvious to me he was booted for exposing the six and a half million dollars we are going to be overpaying for trash for the next 10 years.
- It falsely claims he “helped argue for lowering the ethics testing standards for California lawyers” because, as a law student, Sheridan fact-checked for an article by his professor comparing California and U.S. license requirements for attorneys.
- It presents what looks like a yellow page ad for Sheridan that was purely a Read more
Oct
23
Carol Sylvia’s You Tube Video
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Decency | 27 Comments
(Los Alamitos, 10/23/2010) Personally, there’s a lot I like about Carol Sylvia. But I sure don’t like the professional, deceptive smear flyers her husband’s” Los Alamitos Taxpayers Association” puts out.
There’s one thing she has in common with George Briggeman, the biggest donor to L.A.T.A. in the 2008 election. (Briggeman’s video is below Sylvia’s)
Check it out:
I was not involved in either video in any way, and am not necessarily endorsing their content. It appears that Sylvia did not remove the sign, but moved it to a location further from Katella.
Comments posted below indicate the property only gave permission for the signs for the “Transparency & Truth” team (Warren Kusumoto, Gerri Mejia-Ford, and Brad Sheridan).
To find out more about Sylvia’s Los Al Taxpayer Association, who probably will be mailing another flyer to you shortly, check out LosAlTruth.com.
Sylvia & Briggeman are supporting the “DDT” team of Dean Zarkos, Dean Grose, & Troy Edgar, although their support for Grose so far this election has been less pronounced .
Here’s the video of Briggeman Read more
Oct
12
The mud hits the mailbox!
Filed Under 2010 Issues, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A. | 1 Comment
Same expenive smear flyers as 2008, when the web design firm kept Sylvia's CPLA file as a subfile of the "Briggeman" file.
(Los Alamitos, 10/12/2010) Well, now I guess we know who paid for that telemarketing smear campaign wrapped up in a “scientific poll.”
Yup, our former Council Member for over 20 years, Mr. Chuck Sylvia and his “Los Alamitos Taxpayers’ Association.”
That name itself would be your first clue. Last time I checked, the Treasurer was in Newport Beach, and the bulk of their money came from outside Los Alamitos.
And about 95% of that money could be traced back to George Briggeman (click here for details in my 10/25/2008 post, “Gotcha!”).
Briggeman, you’ll recall, was last seen taking down Mejia-Sheridan-Kusumoto yard signs from a neighbor’s property. (Click here for youtube video, or click here for So Cal Public radio’s take on George’s antics.)
But that’s nothing compared to the hit piece on Gerri Mejia that arrived in my mailbox and yours today.
Before I go too far, I’d encourage you to watch a short video from USA Today on local volunteers during last winter’s big storms. It shows the real Gerri Mejia, the gal born & raised in Los Alamitos volunteering for one of her passions–disaster relief. (You’ll have to wait through a brief but funny AllState commercial before the short video begins:)
That would explain why she’d travel to New Orleans in 2007 for disaster-preparedness training. Guess Sylvia’s hit man didn’t have room to fit that into today’s flyer. Wonder why.
And it clearly was based on the smear-filled push telephone poll that pouted our little town a couple weeks ago.
The slick, expensive, oversized card-stock postcard is the work of professional political hit men at their worst.
Why talk about issues when you can launch personal attacks based on distsortions?
Some people think that’s just fine on the national or state level, but I think it’s about time for us to stand up and say “NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD, MR. SYLVIA!”
Not by throwing mud back, but by mobilizing to help elect Mejia’s “We Get Better with Warren, Gerri, & Brad” slate, and to defeat Sylvia’s DDT (Dean, Dean, & Troy) team, on whose behalf he’s poisoning our town.
Distortions 101
I imagine LosAlTruth.com will have a complete dissection of the sleazy hit piece up within 24 hours, but attending events to become a better Council Woman in Palm Springs or Sacramento or Lake Arrowhead without your family is hardly “Traveling across America on Taxpayer-Paid Vacations.”
I don’t know too many people who’ve “vacationed” by themselves in Texas. Or New Orleans shortly after Katrina hit.
If I was going to take “Taxpayer funded vacations,” I’d be going to Hawaii, not Texas or Sacramento.
Looks to me more like she was putting in extra time without pay working hard for our city. Even if she did accidentally Read more
Oct
4
Los Al’s dirtiest campaign yet? New details of my “survey” call
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Dean Zarkos, Decency, Troy Edgar | 5 Comments
Updated 10/5/2010, 8:30 p.m., with details of “survey” questions, first 5 paragraphs written 10/4/2010, Los Alamitos) I got the call while working at home this morning.
I didn’t answer the first two times, but finally my curiousity drove me to pick up.
I already knew it was a “push poll,” paid for by Troy Edgar, Dean Zarkos, or the not-so-Los Alamitos Taxpayer’s Association. Edgar spent over $16,000 on push polling two years ago. . . and he wasn’t even running for office then! LATA spent $20,000, most of it apparently from George Briggeman.
The call confirmed my worst suspicions.
The push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll. Push polls may rely on innuendo or knowledge gleaned from opposition research on an opponent. –Wikipedia (click here for full article).
With “permanent vote by mail” ballots being mailed this week, it appears that the push pollers are targeting those voters at this point.
I keyboarded notes as I was “polled,” and here are some of the surprising and disgusting Read more
Oct
1
Election alert: There’s a hit piece coming. . .
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Dean Zarkos, Decency | 4 Comments
The Sylvia/Briggeman alliance's early hit piece two years ago.
(Los Alamitos, 10/1/2010) Warning to Los Alamitos voters: Your mailbox is about to be flooded with election flyers! These flyers can be hazardous to your health. . . and the health of our community!
I learned a lot 2 years ago when I ran for Los Al City Council. One was the amount of money, distortions, and outright lies some supporters of the current Council Majority are willing to expend to stay in control of our city and our City Council.
Since my son worked at CA Web Design, I had an idea that someone was spending a lot of money to oppose the current incumbants. I was OK with that, because I had some beefs with the Parker majority at the time.
However, when my son mentioned that all the work was kept in the “Briggeman” file, that caused me some concern.
Still, I had no idea the depths of distortion and deception the Sylvia/Briggeman/Edgar/Grose coalition was willing to go to until the flyers started arriving.
Eventually, the depth of distortion and source of their extensive funding caused me to spend a great deal of time on this blog exposing their mistruths. For example:
- 9/21/2008: Memo to CPLA: Could you please be more forthright?
- 10/6/2008: Hizzoner’s Sign: Much ado about nothing?
- 10/25/2008: Gotcha!
- 10/28/2008: OC Register finally reveals what we told you last Saturday
- 10/30/2008: The $20,500 tip of the Briggeman/CPLA iceberg
- 10/31/2008: Have you no decency, Mr. Briggeman? Mr. Sylvia?
So, based on my experiences two years ago, combined with the OC Registar of Voters’ staff advising me that “permanent vote by mail” ballots go out this Monday, I’m going out on a limb to Read more
Sep
15
Los Al Taxpayer Assn. lies, 2008 edition
(Los Alamitos, 9/15/2010) I usually stay calm and try to remind myself of the good in everyone, but on occasion I get pushed too far and just blurt out. . . the truth.
It happened in October, 2008, when Chuck Sylvia’s Los Alamitos Taxpayer Association’s nasty, deceitful last-minute hit-piece hit Los Alamitos mailboxes just before the 2008 City Council election and I wrote “Have you no decency, Mr. Briggeman? Mr. Sylvia?”
It happened again tonight, after reading one too many lies from an author whose posts I think are all too easily identified by regular readers here, no matter what name he hides under:
at 8:32 pm tonight, the following comment was posted by a person using the “name” of “To: Dave Emerson”:
The lies on the Troy Edgar recall petition were not an honest mistake. They were a flagrant lie that you tried to justify by saying that you were not aware of the circumstances. It was just another case of you getting caught with your hands in the cookie jar.
I guess we all get upset when we’re unjustly accused of lying. Especially when we’re pretty sure that the accuser a chronic deceiver himself.
I responded, and felt the exchange was significant enough to merit it’s own post.
Here is my response to the above, false accusation, from an individual who I”m pretty sure has made a career over the past two years of spending thousands of dollars of “the trashman’s” money spreading deceit and sewing discord, animosity, and hatred in our precious little town.
Somebody who, along with his benefactor, needs to either recognize and forsake the evil he is doing or to be called out, just as Joseph Welch called out demagogue Joseph McCarthy 56 years ago: Read more
Sep
4
“Dr. Seuss” weighs in on Dean Grose
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Dean Grose | Leave a Comment
"No Easter egg hunt this year" was the text with this photo that Grose e-mailed to local leaders and supporters
(Los Alamitos, 9/4/2010) In that slick flyer our new all Los Al voters got last weekend our new BFF, Charles Sylvia, told us to “Stay Tuned” because “we are carefully reviewing the candidates.” “Soon,” he promised, “you’ll be hearing our recommendations. . . .”
We already know Sylvia & his backers love four of the incumbents, giving all but Gerri Graham-Mejia an “A+,” but only two of their foursome are up for election, and there are three seats to fill. Based on Gerri Graham-Mejia’s “F” grade on Sylvia’s scoreboard, it appears they still need another candidate. (For LosAlTruth.com’s candidate scoreboard, which came out a bit differently, click here and then scroll down just a tad and click “Scorecard” on the left.)
I think Warren Kusumoto is a practical, conservative resident who doesn’t like to waste money (witness his opposition to the costly trash contract), and who has served on the Traffic Commission without being kicked Read more