The Buzz

At a political meeting last week, the guest speaker was OC Register writer Brian Calle, head of OCR’s opinion department. In past years, the OCR staff didn’t endorse candidates in local races, but they did it for the November 2012 election. Mission Viejo watchdogs viewed the OCR endorsements of Frank Ury and Wendy Bucknum as support for the county’s corrupt power clique. The paper’s rationale for endorsing the two evolved as the election grew closer. By Election Day, OCR’s sole reason for endorsing Ury and Bucknum was “they didn’t accept union money.” NO CANDIDATE in Mission Viejo’s 2012 city race accepted union money, and shame on OCR for implying they did. At last week’s event, Brian responded to a question from the audience, indicating he doesn’t like the big political donors “who want a redistribution of wealth to themselves.” Ury and Bucknum’s campaigns were funded almost entirely from donors such as the south OC trough feeders, utility companies and housing developers. If Brian understood the situation and made the right call in San Juan Capistrano, why didn’t he get it in Mission Viejo?

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On Apr. 19, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the entire city of Boston to stay inside during the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Sean Hannity opened his radio talk show that afternoon by saying, “How many Boston liberals spent the night wishing they had a gun?”

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Alert from Tea Party Patriot Cliff Sumrall: “Common Core is being implemented in California. No one has stepped up here to stop it.” Cliff forwarded a video that presents concerns about this federal program, which is a radical restructuring of educational standards. Full implementation is moving forward and taking people by surprise, including parents, teachers and state legislators. Citizens are now learning about this federal takeover of education, which is a complete perversion of the Constitution, to implement mediocre standards and impose decisions that should be made locally. Common Core offers experimentation without evidence of effectiveness or success, and at tremendous cost as an unfunded mandate. Where will the money come from? View the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODz4X0GO-Fk&feature=youtu.be and also read http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338428/common-core-corrupts-michelle-malkin

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Mission Viejo City Hall placed its quarter-page Earth Day ad in the Apr. 19 Saddleback Valley News. Residents remember the city’s fiasco several years ago, Easelgate. Hundreds of easels were dumped on a hillside on Apr. 22, Earth Day. Trashed signs mixed with the easels included such sayings as “Be a Green Machine.” Other messages in the trash heap encouraged residents to “walk to downtown Mission Viejo,” in a master-planned community with no downtown. While the rest of the planet marks Apr. 22 as Earth Day, the city’s pseudo-greens will take over a city park on April 27.The city’s newest assault on taxpayers is to add more permanent monstrosities on medians.

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James Dobson of Focus on the Family is credited with saying, “If the lottery becomes the source of revenue for education, it will become the downfall of education.” Educators, parents and other citizens were deceived if they thought the lottery money would bring additional funds to schools. Instead, lottery sources replace (they do not add to) other funding from the state. Dobson writes, “Be assured, the net societal impact of gambling is negative, as social costs outweigh the state gambling-derived revenues by a ratio greater than three to one.” ( http://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/social-issues/lotteries/our-position.aspx )