Anaheim city council member and candidate Lorri Galloway has made no secret about her new home in the Fourth District, hosting fundraisers there where voters can get to know the candidate better and ask questions for a personal response.  But an invitation to a candidate’s home is one thing – a series of drive-bys and unwanted phone messages is quite another. 

Galloway tells TheLiberalOC that she has received a number of unwanted phone calls from someone using a number belonging to a “Richard Zavala of Placentia” and the vast majority of messages don’t show a return phone number via caller ID.  The messages reference Galloway’s “Lorri in 4th Gear” videos and the FFFF blog which has been hypercritical of Galloway.  “Richard” makes it plain he’s a reader and a fan of Tony’s Bushala’s Fringe blog in Fullerton.

Now elected officials do get calls at their home from their constituents at night.  That’s a given.  But serial harassment of an elected official at their home and via telephone is against the law. 

According to Lorri, “Richard” has allegedly left messages that leave all sorts of derogatory and defamatory names for Galloway and references her “corrupt associations” in Anaheim without being specific.  Since Lorri is in the business of dealing with abusers, stalkers, and other creeps who prey on and victimize women, she did the right thing and kept records of the messages.  The numbers used a Northern California area code, making them hard to trace back to a source here in OC.

 But “Richard” did make a tactical error and appears to have called from a location where the Caller ID revealed the number.  Galloway reports she called the number and the voice message on that line is identical to the voice left on her answering service.  The stored messages and phones numbers have been reported to the Anaheim Police Department which is investigating the case.  We’re working on an MP3 of some of Richard’s voice messages and will post it once we get it produced.

Galloway is a legal resident of the fourth district and is eligible to run for office there.  The same is true of the GOP endorsed candidate Harry Sidhu.  As an Anaheim city council member, she already represents a significant number of voters in the Fourth District.  Bushala’s blog seems to equate the practice of “carpetbagging” with something approaching mass murder.  He and fellow bloggers are coming out hard for Robert Shawn Nelson (let’s just call him “Bob Nelson”), a Republican candidate so inept that despite the endorsement of State Ass. Chris Norby, “Bob” couldn’t garner the endorsement of local Republicans. 

Is it me, or is it just creepy that “Richard” and Tony Bushala spend their time stalking candidates for office?  In Lorri’s case, she did the perfectly appropriate thing.  Frankly, this is what any woman who is the subject of unwanted and harassing phone calls should do.  Document the evidence and report it.  There are laws against harassing public officials in their homes.   And perhaps that’s all the caller had in mind, but too often, telephonic harassment can evolve to something far worse. 

And before the Ministry of Truth that is Tony’s blog tries to defend this telephonic stalking as ”something a reporter does,” reporters don’t do this.  Reporters who do call an elected official at home always identify who they are and the publication they are calling from (as well as a short description of the story they are writing).  The caller did none of this.  But he did slip up.  And let’s see how Anaheim PD responds. 

What’s clear is Lorri is the only Democrat in the race with a chance to win.  Should Harry Sidhu and Bob Nelson split that GOP vote, Lorri can take this seat.  And I have no doubt she’d represent the interests of voters in the district well.

We spoke with Lorri while she was wrapping up filing her papers at the Registrar of Voters; she’s in!

More importantly, if people like Richard are backing Bob Nelson, what does that say about Nelson’s candidacy?

I have been meaning to get to this post for weeks (life intrudes sometimes), but Rep. John Campbell (R-No Earmarks Ever for Orange County) put out an email last month where he felt the need to clarify who he was to his own email list. And with a Hat Tip to OC Weekly, the Congressman wrote:

Clarification: I am not TOM Campbell. I am JOHN Campbell. We are not related (unless we share some kilted ancestor 1,000 years ago in a highlands bog).  He is not currently a Member of Congress, whereas I proudly represent California’s 48th Congressional District.  He is running for U.S. Senate from California. I am not.  There seems to be lots of confusion out there so I wanted to set the record straight. I am also younger and better looking. (-;

Note that emoticon! 

So, I starting thinking.  What other Camnpbells have had a more lasting impact on Orange County voters.  Here’s my list:

There is hot model Naomi Campbell.

Actress Neve Campbell

Former NFL great Earl Campbell

Country star Glen Campbell

And my favorite, B-movie actor Bruce Campbell.

Chances are you know more about what these Campbells have done in their careers than our own Congressman.  Naomi Campbell has graced a number of magazine covers.  Neve Campbell was our Scream queen.  Earl Campbell won a Heisman Trophy for Texas and was a crushing fullback for the Houston Oilers.  Glen Campbell was a Rhonestone Cowboy who knew Jesus before he was a SuperStar.  And Bruce Campbell is one of the greatest actors of his generation (and Army of Darkness remains one of my favorite flicks).  If I’m missing any, please let me know….

But other than vote no on any bill to help Orange County, can anyone name something John Campbell has done in his 5 years in Congress?

Click here to view the embedded video.

In light of the story yesterday about the three failing schools in Santa Ana I fully expect to hear the cries for charter schools, firing of all the teachers and administrators, as well as the inevitable assignment of blame to teachers unions. To shift the conversation with a different perspective than what I expect to hear I found this story and video on the website Democracy Now.

As the Obama administration touts No Child Left Behind and the “Race to the Top” competition for school grants, we speak to leading education scholar and former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. She’s long been known as an advocate of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, standardized testing, and using the free market to improve schools. But she’s had a radical change of heart, as chronicled in her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ravitch says, “The evidence says No Child Left Behind was a failure, and charter schools aren’t going to be any better.” [includes rush transcript below]

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Department of Education announced sixteen finalists Thursday in the first round of its “Race to the Top” competition, which will deliver $4.35 billion in school reform grants. The finalists were selected from a pool of forty-one applicants and include Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, quote, “These states are an example for the country of what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing.” The winners will be chosen in April, and a second round of applications accepted in June.

The Washington Post reports that all the first round finalists, except for Delaware and South Carolina, received financial help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in preparing their “Race to the Top” application. The foundation gave many states grants of up to $250,000 each to pay for a consultant to help them craft their application.

While protests around cuts to public education took place across the state, California learned it was among the twenty-five states rejected in the first round. Governor Schwarzenegger said the decision from the Education Council showed that, quote, “we need to be more aggressive and bolder in reforming our education system.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for a critical appraisal of “Race to the Top” and the Obama administration’s approach to education reform, we’re joined by a woman who’s long been known as an advocate of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, standardized testing, and using the free market to improve schools. But she’s had a radical change of heart in recent years.

Diane Ravitch (photo edweek.org)

I’m talking about the influential education scholar Diane Ravitch. She was Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H.W. Bush and appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton. She’s the author of over twenty books. She’s research professor of education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her latest book chronicles how and why she decided to break with the conservative education policies she once championed. It’s called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Diane Ravitch, welcome to Democracy Now! With this latest news, what is your assessment of where we are going under the Obama administration?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, unfortunately, the Obama administration has adopted and is building on the foundation of No Child Left Behind. And as I explain in this book, I believe that No Child Left Behind has been a failed policy, that it’s dumbed down the curriculum, narrowed the curriculum. Our kids are being denied a full education, because so much time is being spent on test prep and on tests that are really not very good tests and, in some cases, even fraudulent scoring of the test. The kids are getting a worse education as a result of No Child Left Behind.

The Obama administration, however, has bought into this rhetoric of accountability and choice, and they’re actually taking the Bush policies to a greater extreme. There is more support from the administration, this administration, for choice, because they have no opposition in the Congress, because it’s a Democratic president and because they had all this money, this $5 billion, to use as play money with no authorization, no oversight from Congress.

They’ve said to the states in the “Race to the Top,” this competition that was just held, that the requirements to be considered are, first of all, that the states have to be committed to privatizing many, many, many public schools. These are called charter schools. They’re privatized schools. The Bush administration would have never gotten away with that, because Congress would have stopped them.

They’ve also required states to commit to evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, which means that that will put even more emphasis on standardized testing, more drill down of test prep, more emphasis on basic skills. And also, it’s a very unfair measure, because it means that the students who live in poor communities, that they’re likely to get small gains, whereas the kids in the affluent communities will get big gains. And so, we’ll see the third emphasis of the Obama plan, which is close low-performing schools.

And Obama has said that he wants to see 5,000 low-performing schools transformed or closed, as we saw just recently in Rhode Island, where the only high school in a desperately poor community is supposed to fire all the teachers, close the school. And I think this is a terrible thing for public education. And I think we’re going to see a devastation of public education over the next—however long this president is in office, unless he changes course, which I hope he will, and doubt that he will.

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the things that fascinated me as I was going through your book last night was how you’ve traced historically how the leaders of both political parties over the last few decades—it was the same way under Bill Clinton, that Democrats and Republicans have reached sort of a consensus on what they call school reform. And when you were in the Department of Education under George H.W. Bush, you had an idea of school reform that was based on the curriculum—

DIANE RAVITCH: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —strengthening the content of the education, not the bells and whistles and the structures for measurements, but that that was actually defeated and that Lynne Cheney had something to do with that. Could you talk about that, bring us some of that history?

DIANE RAVITCH: Right. Well, when I went to work for the Department of Education, I came in as a Democrat, and I thought, somewhat naively, that education was somehow a nonpartisan issue. And so, I came in to work on the idea of promoting arts education, science education. And in the department—part of the department I was in, we gave grants to different professional associations of educators to develop voluntary national standards of the arts, science, history, geography, economics, civics, lots of different areas. We wanted people, educators across the country, to say this is what an education is, this is what all American children should have. It was not a race to the top. It was based on the idea of equal educational opportunity means that all children get these wonderful things.

But I think, within the Bush administration, the more important dialogue that was going on, that I was just very peripheral to, was the idea of school choice, vouchers, charter schools, and then also accountability. And where the Democrats and the Republicans began to make common cause was around this theme of accountability. And what accountability ultimately meant, not just in the Bush administration, but in the Clinton, and now in the Obama—in the, you know, next Bush and then this administration, accountability means who should be punished. If the scores don’t go up, who should be punished? Teachers. Teachers should be punished. The unions should be demonized.

But you asked me about Lynne Cheney. The reason that Lynne Cheney gets into this conversation is that she was the one who saw that the history standards were—you know, she attacked them. And there got to be a huge national brouhaha back in 1994, 1995, about whether the history standards were politically correct. And it caused such an uproar in the press with—you know, the right-wing talk-show hosts jumped all over it, and then you had people on the left defending it. Congress and the administration just said—and this was in the Clinton administration years. They said, “Let’s not touch this whole idea of standards. Let’s just stick with basic skills.” And that’s how we today have inherited this legacy of the only thing you’re allowed to really talk about is reading and math, don’t touch science, the arts. They’re all too controversial. You might get into an argument over evolution if you try to talk about science.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But you also say that in many state curriculums that have been developed now, even in reading, it’s more about the functions of reading—

DIANE RAVITCH: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —than the actual content of the literature that people are reading.

DIANE RAVITCH: Right, sure. I mean, this is—to most people, it would come as a shock, if you pick up your state standards and you say, “Well, where’s the literature?” Because what they talk about is strategies and processes and previewing and reviewing and predicting. And you think, you know, why aren’t kids getting good literature? Aren’t they reading the great stuff, you know, world literature, American literature, English literature, Spanish literature? No, it’s not there, because if you make a choice about literature, then choosing this means you’re not choosing something else, therefore choose nothing at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Diane Ravitch, what caused your change of heart?

DIANE RAVITCH: Many things. Firstly, I grew up going to public school. I grew up in Texas. I went to the Houston public schools. My brothers and—I was part of a large family. I was one of eight children. We all went to public schools, except for the ones who were really bad. The really bad ones had to go to military school or be sent off. They weren’t allowed to go to public school. They didn’t behave. So public school, to me, was a really good thing, and I always had a very great affection and respect for public education.

As I became a scholar and, you know, got into the academic world, I found myself—I don’t know. I fell into a sort of a conservative mindset about a lot of things, but when I got into the Bush administration, I found myself trying to justify why—I believed always in a strong curriculum. That was considered very conservative. If you believed that children should study history and geography and real things, you’re conservative in the academic world, because you’re not supposed to believe in a real curriculum. I believe that it’s not conservative; it’s actually very liberal and empowering to have real knowledge. So this has always been my shtick, is kids of all backgrounds should have lots of knowledge. If you want to empower people, you give them access to the knowledge of the world. But having been castigated as a conservative for believing in having a traditional curriculum, when I went into the Bush administration, I found myself kind of getting caught up in the choice rhetoric. And so, for about ten years or so, I was advocating for charter schools. They didn’t exist, so I didn’t know how things would turn out.

Over the years, from the period in which charters started and in which the whole accountability movement started, I began looking at the results. When I looked at No Child Left Behind and saw, you know, we’re not really making any improvements under No Child Left Behind—the test scores have been either stagnant or made tiny improvement. Actually, the gains before No Child Left Behind on national tests were larger than since No Child Left Behind was adopted. I mean, I looked at the evidence, and I thought, all these things that I hoped would work didn’t work.

And now I find myself castigated. First of all, I’m castigated by people on the right who say, “You were never a real conservative.” Of course, they’re right. I never was a real conservative. But people on the left are saying, “You had your hand in this stuff. How dare you change sides?” Well, I guess the answer is, look at the evidence. I’m not on anybody’s side.

I’m just trying to say the evidence says No Child Left Behind was a failure, and the evidence says that charter schools are going to lead us into a swamp of—well, first of all, they’re not going to be any better, because if you look at national test scores—charter schools were first part of the national tests in 2003—they didn’t do any better than regular public schools. They were tested again in 2005, 2007, 2009. They have never outperformed regular public schools. So if we’re looking for a quantum leap in educational performance, as the President—as President Obama says, charter schools have no evidence behind them. You can find one charter school here or there that did spectacularly well, but on the other side will be others that were terrible.

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the things that you’ve pointed out many times is that the entire testing system of the country right now is rife with corruption and with fraud—

DIANE RAVITCH: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —because you basically have every state deciding its own test standards, and they keep reporting that their kids are doing better. But then every time the national government does a national assessment test, these same states are not improving.

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, this is the great legacy of No Child Left Behind, is that it has left us with a system of institutionalized fraud. And the institutionalized fraud is that No Child Left Behind has mandated that every child is going to be proficient by the year 2014. Except they’re not, because no state and no nation has ever had 100 percent of the children proficient. Kids have all kinds of problems. And whether it’s poverty or a million things, there’s no such thing as 100 percent proficiency.

But every year we get closer to 2014, the bar goes up, and the states are told, “If you don’t reach that bar, you’re going to be punished. Schools will be closed. They’ll be turned into charter schools.” That’s part of the federal mandate, is that schools will be privatized if they can’t meet that impossible goal. So in order to preserve some semblance of public education, the states have been encouraged to lie, and many of them are lying, and so we see states that are saying, “90 percent of our kids are proficient in reading,” and then when the national test comes out, it’s 25 percent.

AMY GOODMAN: Diane Ravitch, we said at the top of this segment that the Department of Education announced sixteen finalists for its first round of the “Race to the Top” competition. They’re going to deliver something like $4.35 billion in school reform grants. And the Washington Post is reporting almost all of these finalists got money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In your book, chapter ten is called “The Billionaire Boys Club.” Explain.

DIANE RAVITCH: “The Billionaires Boys Club” is a discussion of how we’re in a new era of the foundations and their relation to education. We have never in the history of the United States had foundations with the wealth of the Gates Foundation and some of the other billionaire foundations—the Walton Family Foundation, The Broad Foundation. And these three foundations—Gates, Broad and Walton—are committed now to charter schools and to evaluating teachers by test scores. And that’s now the policy of the US Department of Education. We have never seen anything like this, where foundations had the ambition to direct national educational policy, and in fact are succeeding.

The Obama administration appointed somebody from the NewSchools Venture Fund to run this so-called “Race to the Top.” The NewSchools Venture Fund exists to promote charter schools. So, what we’re seeing with the proliferation—with this demand from the federal government, if you want to be part of this $4 billion fund, you better be prepared to create lots more charter schools. Well, it’s all predetermined by who the personnel is. And, you know, so we see this immense influence of the foundations.

And I think that with the proliferation of charter schools, the bottom-line issue is the survival of public education, because we’re going to see many, many more privatized schools and no transparency as to who’s running them, where the money is going, and everything being determined by test scores.

So the whole picture, I think—I just wish that people wouldn’t refer to this as reform, because when we talk about “Race to the Top,” we’re talking about a principle that is antithetical to the fundamental idea of American education. The fundamental idea, which has been enshrined at least since the Brown decision of 1954, was equal educational opportunity. “Race to the Top” is not equal educational opportunity. It is a race in which one or two or three states race to the top to have more privatized schools, more test-based accountability, more basic skills, no emphasis on a broad curriculum for all kids, and no equal educational opportunity. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s also not the role of the federal government to do what’s being done and to call it reform.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much, Diane Ravitch. This is part one of our conversation. Diane Ravitch is professor of education at NYU, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her book is called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. And she didn’t always feel that way.

There is more in Part II over at DemocracyNow.org. Please take the time to visit the site and support their great work when you get the chance.

If you’ve been reading the OC political blogs for some time and want to put some faces and voices to the words, then please come to the March meeting of Neighbors United For Fullerton on March 22 at 6:45 PM for a panel discussion on the OC political blogsphere.  The panelists include Marty Wisckol from the OC Register’s Total Buzz Blog, Tony Bushlala from FFFF, Art Pedroza from the Orange Juice, Matt Cunningham from Red County and moi, from the Liberal OC.

The session will be held at the Fullerton Library on Commonwealth and admission is free.  I’m told each of us gives a short overview on our respective blogs and we take a set of questions from the moderator.  Then, the audience gets to ask us questions.

Yep, as in “out of the closet.”

Last week Sen. Roy Ashburn was arrested for drunk driving after reportedly leaving a gay bar called FACES. Today, on a radio station where he used to host a talk show, he told radio host Inga Barks he is gay.

This news would be unremarkable if it weren’t for one tiny little, itsy-bitsy, minor, small problem. In the legislature Ashburn has repeatedly voted against gay rights, and in 2005 he hosted a rally in favor of “traditional marriage.” Furthermore, he has voted against expanding anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation, recognizing gay marriages performed in other states, and establishing a day honoring Harvey Milk.

Ashburn claims he voted the way “his constituents wanted.”

Shame on you, Senator Ashburn. If your constituents wanted you to vote in favor flag burning, would you have done that too? If they favored kiddie porn, would you try to legalize it? Do you have any moral compass of your own or are you strictly driven by political ambition?

Senate terms are for four years and Ashburn won’t be up for re-election this year. He’ll leave the Senate in 2010 due to term limits. I can’t wait to see how Hollywood portrays his life story of dissociative identity disorder that I suspect will be titled “The Two FACES of Roy.”

In the meantime, humorists already have their tongues in Ashburn’s cheeks. Over at the Borwitz Report, Andy Borowitz writes

Anti-gay California State Sen. Roy Ashburn today demanded a sweeping recall of the vehicle that drove him to a gay nightclub this week.Sen. Ashburn, a Republican who has consistently voted for anti-gay legislation, said that the car drove him to the club “against my will.”

“If we are recalling cars for problems with their brakes and power steering, then surely we should be recalling vehicles that force their drivers to go to gay nightclubs,” Sen. Ashburn said.

Read the whole parody here.

I previously posted on the smear by Alex Vega and Frank Ibarra on Alfredo Amezcua in Rumores. A little over a week ago, I decided to do a little research into their attack, and what I uncovered is much more sinister than some vicious political attack, but an organized effort to destroy a man’s career and his ability to provide for himself and his family.

Last weekend, I decided to contact one of the phone numbers in the ad upon hearing that they led to a disconnected number. Instead the number led to Alex  Vega, who answered the phone and identified himself. Deciding to do some research, I pretended to be a bitter ex-client of Alfredo Amezcua, claiming he was my lawyer in a divorce case and I had lost my children because of his botched representation. Vega then claimed that I was not alone and he had spoken to others with the same story. He then went on to explain their goals.

He stated one of their goals was to expose to the community what a bad man he was. Then he went further and said another goal was to expose as many cases as possible in Rumores and I was to write down my story and deliver it to Rumores and to leave with the editor my contact information and wait for more instruction. I asked exactly what I would be waiting for.

He said one of their other goals is to take some of the spurned clients and file complaints with the California Bar Association to have Amezcua’s law license taken away. In addition, they wanted to take the same spurned clients and file a class action lawsuit against Al Amezcua for law malpractice. Vega mentioned that a local attorney is helping them get a national law firm to take on this case. When I pressed for the name of this local attorney, he said the local attorney was none other than… SANTA ANA CITY COUNCILMEMBER VINCENT SARMIENTO.

Vega stated that Councilman Sarmiento is very involved in their project and is trying hard to get a powerful law firm involved. Vega went on to say that Amezcua needed to be exposed for the man he really is and that it was not about politics. It is funny that they waited until he runs for mayor against Pulido to suddenly get this urge for “honesty.”

Afterward I decided I would attempt to see if the story would get printed in Rumores. Would they print an unverified false story of a client spurned by Al Amezcua? I wrote up a story and contacted Rumores. A person called me back who informed me to bring it by or e-mail with all my contact information. The person then instructed me to contact Alex Vega again before I sent the story in. I did.

When I called Vega, he answered the phone but claimed to be a cousin of Vega. Some stomping was then heard, as if to fake footsteps, the person then whispered something in Spanish and then a person with the exact same voice began to speak claiming to be Alex Vega. I had to keep from laughing at this. I told him the story was ready and wanted a complete detail of what would happened next.

Vega didn’t disappoint. He said Rumores would cross check the name on the OC Superior Court website to make sure their was a case with that name, in that specific court. He said that would be all the vetting they would be doing. Then he explained what would happen next. Vega stated they would be choosing the top 20 most heinous stories and asking those people to be in the class action lawsuit against Amezcua. Vega then said if I was lucky enough to be one of the 20 I would likely be a little richer one year from now when the case settles. He said it would be like an economic stimulus. Vega kept going, he said like doctors, attorney’s have to purchase malpractice insurance. He said that the insurance would cover Amezcua and their would likely be an out of court settlement, but the insurance would pay some money out to all of the 20 plaintiffs. Vega then said this was too send a message, to Amezcua and other attorney’s to be better attorneys. IN fact, Vega said, they were trying to help Al Amezcua by doing this.

Collecting this information, I now inform you, the public at just how low Alex Vega, and now allegedly bv Vega’s admission, Councilman Vincent Sarmiento are willing to go to keep Mayor Pulido in office. It should be noted that Vicnent Sarmiento is a co-host for Miguel Pulido’s upcoming fundraiser. So is a co-host for Mayor Pulido’s fundraiser openly colluding with an Independent Expenditure? Aren’t there laws forbidding that?

Last of all ask yourselves people, if Pulido were doing such a great job, would there be a need to resort to this. Going after a man’s career is just plain evil and wrong on so many levels.

On Friday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Richard M. Neiter on Friday ordered Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street to pay more than $7 million in damages to the End of the Road Trust. Back before he was elected in 2006, Street was the trustee hired to close up the bankrupt Fruehauf Trailer Corp. from 1998 until he was forced to leave in July 2005. The new trustee sued Street for mismanagement of the trust assets including fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in February 2007.

Street is facing reelection to his current position of Treasurer-Tax Collector in June. Currently two people have announced their intentions to challenge Street, Patrick Desmond a county employee in the Assessor’s office who ran against Street in 2006, and the elected treasurer from Huntington Beach, Shari Freidenrich.

We expect to hear from Street’s Attorney Phil Greer sometime today with a statement. While you’re waiting, check out the coverage by Ron Campbell and Jennifer Muir of the OCRegister here.

Bill Hedrick

Media Release/For Immediate Release
Contact: Katie Mantz, 951-440-5546, kmantz@hedrickforcongress.com

The Ken Calvert Corruption Chronicles

The Ken Calvert Corruption Chronicles are weekly reviews of Ken Calvert’s 18 years in Congress.
The series will look into Calvert’s record of hypocrisy, extremism and corruption.  This is Episode 2.

Episode 2: In Environmental News…

This week, Ken Calvert earned a score of 14% on the League of Conservation Voters 2009 National Environmental Scorecard, long used as the yardstick to rate members on environmental, public health, and energy issues.

Calvert’s rating is based on votes made during the 2009 session, including:

• voting against the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act that works to fight global warming and the effects of climate change
• voting against the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009
• voting against the Federal Land Assistance Management and Enhancement (FLAME) Act that makes it easier for the Forest Service to fight wildfires like those that have ravaged California in recent years

To be fair, Calvert voted for the Rare Dog and Cat Conservation Act, which is one reason that his LCV rating has increased from 2008 when he received a score of just 3%.

Also this week, Bill Hedrick earned the endorsement of the Sierra Club. Bill is the first congressional candidate challenging a sitting incumbent to receive their support. Bill is proud to have his work on behalf of the environment recognized by such a prestigious organization.

The League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard for Ken Calvert can be viewed here: http://capwiz.com/lcv/bio/keyvotes/?id=667&congress=1112&lvl=C

Bill Hedrick has been a public school teacher for 35 years and, as a member of the Corona-Norco Board of Education, has helped lead California’s 8^th largest school district for 21 years, improving the education of 53,000 children.  With a grassroots campaign and no national support, Bill came within less than two percentage points of unseating 16-year incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert in 2008.  Bill is running again to bring real leadership – leadership we can trust – to the people of California’s 44^th Congressional District.

One week after the story broke on the smear campaign in Rumores newspaper, the common citizens of Los Amigos, a Latino advocacy group who meets at the Jaugerhaus every Wednesday morning, are seeking a Grand Jury investigation of longtime Santa ana Mayor Miguel Pulido. The want the Grand Jury to focus on the confilict of interest in regards to a recent article in the OC Weekly on Mayor Pulido’s alleged connections to the vending truck industry.

Definitely they have upped the ante from the recent attacks in Rumores. To be fair, Los Amigos did invite Mayor Pulido to come and explain his side of the story to them, but like he usually does with anyone not presenting him a check, he  chose to ignore them.

What will be interesting to watch is if the Orange County Grand Jury does decide to investigate. Although the Grand Jury cannot formally press charges unless the DA asks them too, their findings could put Rackauckas between a rock and a hard place. The Grand Jury has broad powers to subpoena anyone they wish in regards to the case and investigate information on other acts of misbehavior. Mike Carona is an example of this, where they dug up more crimes he had committed. Bill Clinton is another example of this, when the Grand Jury exonerated him of the wrongdoing they were charged to investigate but found he had cheated on his wife. Let us hope the Grand Jury finds real evidence like the former and not frivilous actions like the latter example.

As I have stated before, watching the Mayor and his actions the last five years, I believe he has is hand in more cookie jars than he wants us to know. One has to wonder if the vending truck issue is really just the tip of the iceberg. If it is, The Grand Jury has the power to find out.  These actions demonstrate a Mayor who seems to be ignoring the needs of the many to please the few. Stay tuned, this Mayor’s race is going to get more and more interesting by the week, I can feel it in my bones.