Given the past few years of municipal sweater-unraveling and general opaqueness in both policy and attitude in Orange County – OMG, text messages make government happen, you guys! – it should come as no surprise that we don’t throw too much weight behind the notion of political coincidences locally. This is Happytown™, not happenstance, after all. We just like it when things make sense.
But nothing, presently, does make sense at the Orange County Board of County Commissioners. Seriously, nothing has made sense there since Sept. 11, 2012, the dawn of textgate, but following Commissioner Fred Brummer’s recent omnibus attack on democracy – about which we frothed at length last week – things have seemingly stepped into the Twilight Zone. By now, you should be aware that Brummer – or whomever is dropping bits of cheese into his cage – is seeking to rush through a special election in May that would appear to appease a litigious Hispanic population while simultaneously wrecking everything in the background. In essence, Brummer wants to strip everything Democratic (and democratic) from the local government process while telling everyone that it’s in their best interest. Interesting, considering that Brummer is a termed-out Republican who seems ripe for the lobbyist picking (or a particularly robust gin blossom, your pick).
So maybe it’s not a coincidence that just last week we also learned that Koch-snorting legislative bullies theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council – speed-dating your elected state legislators with powerful corporate entities behind closed doors since 1973 – had launched a new initiative aimed at rebuilding some of their credibility following some bad press involving a certain Sanford shooting and associations with an ALEC model-bill.
