With 100% of precincts counted, Measure O fails.                                        Board of Directors just wasted half a million dollars of taxpayer money on this election.                                        Criminal complaints against the district will continue to be pursued.                                        Criminal and FPPC complaints against the Astro-Turfers will continue to be pursued.                                        Your property taxes based on indebtedness will now go down, as they should.                                        

Astro Turf

Astro Turf is fake grass. It's also used to refer to fake grass roots organizations.

When an organization is funded by moneyed interests, then it's not really grass roots at all.

The Committee to Support Outstanding WVUSD Schools (the Astro-Turfers) claims it's just "a grassroots organization of volunteer parents, educators and community leaders". That doesn't compute! It's funded by the businesses, large and small, who stand to benefit from a big pile of money that would be raised by the bonds (your debt) that you'll be paying off for 40 years.

These businesses are part of the school bond industry that has grown up around the billions of dollars of debt that Californians have voted themselves over the past 15 years.

These businesses are not particularly concerned with your children's education. They're concerned with making a profit - a good thing, for a business. Some, if not all, of these businesses have already benefited from previous bonds (Measures S and Y).

The Money Men

The above information was disclosed in the September 24, 2015 campaign finance filing Form 460 - Campaign Income and Disbursements by the Astro-Turfers.

Who Is P-Line Construction Inc?

I checked out each of the contributors. To a greater or lesser extent all of them are legitimate businesses with offices somewhere in southern California -- except for P-Line.

The Secretary of State has no record of that corporation name or variations. The California Contractors State Licensing Board, similarly, has no record of it. The Orange County Clerk has no record of it. WhitePages.com has no record of it. An Internet search yields absolutely nothing. It uses a residential address in Buena Park which lists four, possibly related, family members.

While I can't conclude with certainty that this business doesn't exist, it looks awfully suspicious that an out-of-district business with $10,000 to blow doesn't use a business address and can't be found. Can you find it?

The Astro-Turfers

Profit is a good thing. What's not a good thing is when you're deceived into thinking that the people putting up the fancy signs and sending out the fancy mailers are paying for it out of their own pocket.

The Astro-Turfers filed their paper work before the ink was dry on the bond measure.

And by the way, who are those people?

Astro-Turfers
NameStatusCity
Rowena JoeWorks for optometrist Jonathan JoeWalnut
scribbledSecretSecret
scribbledSecretSecret
Lily EibertParentWalnut

How did they raise $66,750 in two months? They went around and collected it from the parents, educators, and community leaders who agree with them, of course.

NOT!

You see, behind the scenes, the Board had already hired TBWB, a high-priced, manipulation marketing firm with its digs on Wall Street of the West (Montgomery Street, San Francisco). The firm claims over 250 local governments clients (mostly school and community college districts, including Walnut Valley Unified School District) and over 200 successful bond measures.

So, when the Astro-Turfers paid TBWB $17,612, it was with the money that TBWB raised for them. (Sounds like money laundering, doesn't it?) Who gave TBWB the list of potential marks contributors? Why the Board, of course. (The Board keeps you in the dark about who it pays with your money.) That way the Board could say it didn't use public funds. When TBWB was consulting with the Board and doing opinion surveys, it was doing it for "free" -- there's always some poor fool who's willing to believe that profit-making businesses do anything for free.

TBWB's purpose in the whole scheme was to manipulate you get "public consensus". (See Delphi Technique.) Who do you think wrote, designed, and produced the fancy marketing materials that the Board sent out in April and August? You know, the ones that you probably tossed out with the junk mail. Every aspect of this measure was planned before-hand. The Board kept it secret. Only the people on the inside knew the game plan. How do you feel about being manipulated?

 


Copyright © 2015, Richard Michael. All Rights Reserved.