Wal-Mart Sock Puppets Make Me Laugh!

One of the sock puppet groups sent out an hysterical letter recently.  It had me ROFLMAO:

"The recall supporters are planning to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defeat Jay and Gary!  We need your support.  WE CANNOT ALLOW THE SPECIAL INTERESTS TO HIJACK OUR CITY. . . ."

Of course, the *real* outsiders in this race have already spent HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars trying to keep them in office.  So who is *really* trying to hijack our city?

They're recycling old smears

The sock puppet letter also repeated a couple of smears that we have already discredited.  First, they claimed that the election was going to cost the city $200,000.  That's funny, because when we started the petition campaign last year, they said an election would cost  the city $35,000.  Their claim for the cost of this election keeps going up and up.  At recent city council meetings, Gary Taylor has tossed around a $500,000 figure.

 

Of course, the reason why the number has gotten so large is that Jay Imperial sued the city of Rosemead to try to stop the election.  That's forced the city to pay some huge legal costs to defend itself in the suit.  Rosemead has also had to pay to reprint and remail a lot of election material.  So, if the $500,000 figure is accurate, that means Jay's suit has cost our city between $400,000 and $465,000 so far.  [Thanks a lot, Jay].

 

Other charges in the letter were addressed in a letter to the editor I wrote last year.  You can see it at the bottom of this link, here:

http://saveourcommunity.us/?q=node/140#comment

Another laugher

Wal-Mart's hired gun, Mike Lewis, had another letter in the Tribune today.  Jean Hall signed this one.  This time, he writes:

 

"The opponents of Wal-Mart are, as usual, twisting facts and figures to suit their needs in order to keep their war going on forever."

 

My response:  Ridiculous.  The facts are so clear that we don't need to do any twisting.  And we certainly don't want to keep this war going on forever.  Remember, we're the ones who wanted this election seven months ago!

 

More Mikey:

 

"The opposition has used the recall process in an inappropriate manner. It's supposed to be used for fraudulent or illegal actions by persons in office. This has not been the case."

 

Au contraire, my little petite fromage (that's "West Wing" humor).  That's not what the recall was instituted for.  It was designed to overcome monied special interests that dominated the state government at the turn of the century.  But, of course, there HAVE been a lot of illegal actions by the persons in office.  Just this week, they broke the Brown Act on open meetings.  Last summer, they violated the campaign disclosure laws.  And they've been allowing Wal-Mart to ignore their permit conditions and mitigation measures for the past eight months.  So, you see, Mikey, no matter how you slice it, RECALL is a fully appropriate remedy for the problems that ail Rosemead.

Another Mikey Letter, SGV Tribune, Sept. 28

This one, signed by some guy in San Dimas.  Same claims as the one signed by Jean Hall: Recalls are only for use when there's illegal or incompetent elected officials.  Gary and Jay only wanted what's best for the city, so they should not have been recalled.

 

Mike Lewis has been busy these past few weeks, hasn't he?