"PASADENA MOM" OUTED AS A POLITICAL SMEARER

The following is a response to a comment posted on this website by "Pasadena Mom." 

Dear Mr. or Ms. Smearer:

Thank you for reading this blog even though your Internet I.D. address is in the City of Ventura but you use the online moniker of “Pasadena Mom” perhaps falsely indicating you are a Pasadena parent with a child in the school district.  

I can always tell an Elitist like you who wants to tell others what they should believe and know.  But let's try and have a conversation anyway. 

You claim I didn't get the facts correct about Sean Baggett.  I paid the L.A. County Superior Court about $5 to look up the legal record of Sean Baggett at the Criminal Defendant Index.  I consulted a prosecutor who went over Mr. Baggett's record with me.  Being curious I also looked up the names of other public officials in the Pasadena area to check if they had similar court records as Mr. Baggett.  What did you do to get the facts to be so arrogant as to charge I didn't get my facts right?  

After reviewing Baggett's record I found that the newspapers, particularly the Pasadena Weekly, were smearing Baggett with regard to insinuating he was a felon (he is not), he is a registered sex offender (he is most definitely not), and he would be banned from entering any PUSD campus (not consistent with other public officials who have visited PUSD classrooms and also have similar court records as Mr. Baggett).  So it is your facts and allegations that do not hold up not mine.  

On this website I repeatedly made efforts to not gloss over Mr. Baggett's legal record. Just go back over the posts since the March 8 primary election and read them.  Neither did this website or blogger endorse Mr. Baggett. I merely advocated that he should get as fair a shake as other "elites" already holding public office in Pasadena. And if you don't like my using the word elite to describe elected public officials in the Pasadena area who work their way up a ladder of patronage and privilege what would you call it?  Please don't dignify such with the term "public service." Even liberal Common Cause wouldn’t agree with you after they won a lawsuit to prohibit undisclosed conflicts of interest in Pasadena but the City just refused to comply.

By the way I'm a long-time government civil service worker, a union member and a former social worker.  What are you?  It would be more helpful if you would use your real name otherwise one can only surmise you are a relative, fellow traveler, or board or PEF member with Mr. Selinske. Why else would you cover up your identity?  So you already have very little public "virtue" or credibility with readers when you fail to disclose your name.  Sure I often don't use my name on this blog but anyone who looks around can find it. 

Bloggers like me are attuned to the Pasadena political smear machine.

I opposed taxes in Pasadena in 2008 only to find that I was nominated to ride in the Doo Dah Parade as the "Thorny Rose," to be publicly ridiculed, which I refused.  

I had my property broken into with nothing taken but a message left to intimidate me.  

I had my property regularly bombarded with litter and trash and my walls graffitied. 

All this stopped when the election was over.  It's the "Pasadena Way" of ruining candidates who are outside the privilege system in Pasadena from ever opposing taxes or running for office.  And this is done with the collaboration of newspapers and other so-called non-partisan organizations, even some churches. 

In my experience I have found this same crowd are the ones duplicitously deploring the lack of "civility" in political conversation as a leading cause of fallaciously labeled right wing violence, such as the horrific attack on Rep. Gabriela Giffords and murder of many others (committed by an apparently Leftist leaning individual by the way).  The elitist rule of political conversation: "civility for me, uncivility for thee."  Smearing can lead to violence. 

You use straw man statements in accusing me of excusing illegal behavior and mediocrity of the candidate. I did nothing of the sort. Once again, go back and read what I wrote.  Do not put the words of a straw man or a puppet of your own making in my mouth. The whole point of what I have written about Baggett's candidacy is that whether he should be elected or not should stand on his record, not on malicious smears. If Mr. Baggett has such a horrible record then why would you and others need to smear him and not others who are already elected but never smeared?  Because he is an outsider to the system of collusion and the Oligarchy that runs Pasadena and its schools.  And that is threatening. 

Your comment maliciously and anonymously charges Mr. Baggett with many things (including again inferring he is a sexual predator like a Catholic priest), which cannot be substantiated and is possibly tantamount to committing libel -- an illegal act.  How can you judge Mr. Baggett's crimes while committing your own? So much for your moral superiority. 

Contrary to your statement there is no public verifiable information that Mr. Baggett is a "parasite" on the public.  Where is the substantiation that Baggett has ever received a kick back, an insider consulting contract, abused perks such as use of a credit card, filed a false mileage or per diem claim, or filed a false Conflict of Interest statement?  We have no knowledge of such for you to smear Mr. Baggett as a "parasite." Again you reveal yourself as one of the Smearers. 

My post "Sean Baggett's Crime" was not a "populist rant that goes nowhere." It was intended as serious political conversation about how we can obtain broader political participation and conversation.  I proposed to create a new at large seat on the Board of Education similar to the Roman Tribune. What I also should have proposed is a civil court, not part of the state courts, that could vet false accusations, smears, and calumnies and issue corrective statements during political campaigns.  The problem is in Pasadena it would just be used as a Kangaroo Court. 

What do you have to contribute to serious conversation other than smearing? Unsurprisingly, your closing statement infers you favor political censorship over dialogue and discussion. 

By the way you can read some of my other serious writings (not letters to the editor) in the L.A. Business Journal, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, CalWatchdog.com, Privatization Watch, the USC Journal of Planning and Markets, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and many other newspapers and professional journals. Where have you written something serious? 

For the record I am not a member of the Tea Party. I have attended their meetings and am sympathetic with their cause, as they are the only ones raising responsible questions about the fiscal sustainability of government at all levels. I don't like social movements - Right or Left - and am not much of a joiner.  But maybe you would like to be transparent enough to disclose your own political persuasion?  

If you don't like the name, theme, background music, recommended books, or the content of this blog don't read it (to borrow a phrase from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie).  Your comment actually is providing material to out you as just another of the political Smearers, which we thank you for profusely. 

Write your own blog each day and find out how many people are willing to read your vindictive and malicious thoughts over and over like a broken record.  Good luck to that! 

You criticize me for citing the 15th Century political thinker and playwright Niccolo Machiavelli.  As an aside, have you ever read any books by Machiavelli? Any of his plays, music, or political works? I doubt it.  I would suggest reading his Asino d'oro - The Golden Ass - it might fit you.  Otherwise I would not suggest reading his book The Prince, which was written when Machiavelli was put in prison by the Medici family - the elites of Florence, Italy.  He wrote the book to get out of jail and it has been misunderstood ever since.  

You might also try reading liberal political scientist John P. McCormick's book Machiavellian Democracy (2011) which explains about the creation of the position of Roman Tribune to get more "egalitarian" (your term) political representation.  Machiavelli was an advocate for the People (the Popolo), not the elites or the plebians. Or you might try reading liberal philosopher Erica Benner's book Machiavelli's Ethics (2009).  Yes, contrary to popular notions Machiavelli had ethics, something you apparently lack.

Please don't leave any more comments on this website trying to also smear it.  If you want to have an honest dialogue, fair enough.  But you apparently do not know how to converse with anyone without smearing, caricaturing and scapegoating them.  This is not a good reflection on you.  

Thank you again for your comment, which allows us to out you as another of the Smearers.  

PASADENA MOM’S COMMENTS  - BELOW

Get your facts and be careful not to excuse poor performance and lack of any accomplishment with snobbery and perfection. Surely one doesn't need to be perfect in order to contribute to the school board; the more egalitarian an institution, the better. But asking for some merit--in Baggett's case any at all--isn't elitism. It's appropriate when we seek to build the very common-man meritocracy you evoke yet elude with this poor example. 

But Mr. Baggett's criminal record aside (because unsavory and illegal behavior is somehow a public smearing), evidence of professional accomplishment is wanting. If this is what counts as you imply, then where’s the beef? The continuation school that has employed him has floundered in program improvement for years; it hires teachers from abroad with anchors of visas to address high turn-over; he's well-known within that organization for his lack of work evidenced by numerous Facebook postings from golf-outings during company hours, refusing to attend mandatory meetings, and bragging how he's managed to 'succeed' in a system known to shuffle lemons such as himself more than the Catholic church does its priests. That urban public education doesn't attract elite leadership is one of the many causes of its malaise. A little elitism would go a long way to improve a system led by the den of fools from where Baggett hails.

It's an insult to categorize Baggett's parasitic public career as "the working class route to social mobility". Sadly, he and those like him are able to receive praise from writers like you not due to professional effort and results on their part nor journalistic effort on yours, but rather because a lay reading without the facts dovetails into lame quotes by Machiavelli and a trite, populist rant that goes nowhere.

And by the way, what's up with the rant on elitism while citing Machiavelli, playing music by Liszt, creating look-what-sophisticated-works-I-read book lists [eye roll: the Medici family] and a Latin moniker? Please. Don’t knock elitism when you evoke it yourself but decry it all the same because it keeps mere bloggers like you off the New York Times.

 

 

 

Comments

[Nick]

What a nasty little piece of commentary. Who is it?
You know the PWeekly has a sister paper in Ventura, the Ventura County Reporter:
http://www.vcreporter.com/cms/index/
So is it possible that someone on the Pasadena Weekly staff or even Kevin Uhrich himself is concocting many of the nasty "pasparent"-type comments?
Maybe because of the connection to the Ventura paper some of the PW computers show a Ventura IP address.

[Al Abaster]

I think Urich just does it for the advertising. PUSD spends a lot of taxpayer money lauding itself in print ads, and Urich just paid his dues.

[Michael]

Yeah, paid his dues, in order to keep a crappy newspaper alive that doesn't deserve to exist at all if it operates this way.
I think it's way past time for these people to quit the newspaper business, there are better, more time-honored ways to cheapen yourself. Sell drugs or get a job as a solar panel salesman or something.

[George G]

"... sell drugs or get a job as a solar panel salesman or something." That made my morning. Thanks!