Wednesday's Headlines N Surprises: Bootlicker on Tasers

  • Welcome to the Real IC: We should change the name of this place to Irony County. Latest reason? Peggy Lowe, a sleuth at the Register, reports today that during the very same meeting that the Orange County Board of Supervisors talked about slicing into generous pensions for sheriff’s deputies they spiked their own. Yes, the all-Republican board so often yelling about looming pension funding disasters increased the taxpayer contribution to their own retirement plans from six percent to eight percent. Lowe also found that the supes “nearly doubled the number of annual leave hours they may cash in for a salary jump and increased their monthly car stipend to $765.” Larry Yellin, president of the Orange County Attorney’s Association and a damn fine prosecutor to boot, told the Reg: “It's the height of hypocrisy to carry a banner of pension reform while quietly spiking your own pension.” County CEO Tom Mauk said his bosses needed a more lucrative package because his bosses had recently sweetened pay and perks for county executives and—I swear to God I’m not making this up—the supes have to have a “higher category of compensation” than the execs. Hey, these people are going to continue to rob taxpayers blind because the public isn’t paying attention.
  • Please get some effective help now: The Daily Pilot reports that Kurt Eric Reiter allegedly fell asleep intoxicated behind the wheel of his Toyota SUV at about 8 a.m., jumped a curb into a Newport Beach elementary school area and crashed into a tree this week. The paper claims that if the crash had happened minutes earlier, kids could have been injured or killed. They also noted that Reiter has been convicted of possession of narcotics and multiple traffic violations. What they left out was that the 44-year-old has three drug convictions, about a dozen traffic violations including exceeding 100 mph and has been locked up for grand theft. With the help of Costa Mesa criminal defense lawyer Paul S. Meyer, Reiter’s often received light punishment if anything. Your honors, what is it going to be this time if he's found guilty again?
  • More Lost in OC: Top five Times stories in the paper’s online Orange County news section: Los Angeles is still the reigning champ of traffic delays, (story listed twice); Google spokesman is pushing a project in San Francisco; L.A. Unified “can’t figure out the math on employee paychecks”; and Schwarzenegger seeks funds for dam projects in the Bay Area, Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. I’m not saying each isn’t a good story. But this embarrassing trend says the Times is okay with OC’s 3 million residents turning elsewhere for local news.
  • Bootlicker Likes Police Tool: Register columnist Gordon Dillow writes today that—quick: would it be gung-ho pro-police or gung-ho pro-soldier?—that citizens have only themselves to blame if they get in the way of a lethal police Taser. Background: Yesterday, sheriff’s deputies unknowingly shot Tasers into a 15-year-old autistic kid darting into traffic. The event prompted some controversy around the question of excessive force claimed by the kid’s mother. Dillow, who probably had been working on a column about the evils of Miranda warnings, quickly dropped the hot, stiff Glock he was fondling at his desk and called—drum roll—a police officer to find out if police believed police had overreacted. Cop to Gordo: Nope. Gordo to his readers: Nope. See how the facts line up so easily? Anyhow, Bootlicker ended his column with his usual cowboy code: “Statistics make it pretty clear that Tasers are not the instruments of death that they're often portrayed to be. And if you get high on dangerous drugs and get in a fight with the cops and get Taser-ed and then die, it almost certainly wasn't the Taser that killed you. Instead, through your own reckless behavior, you managed to kill yourself.” Ok, Bootlicker. You've done your deed for the day. Go back to the Glock.
  • OC Waitress Finishes Second on Big Brother: The CBS reality series Big Brother 8 ended last night with 21-year-old Huntington Beach waitress Daniele Donato finishing second to her father, LA night club manager Dick Donato for the $500,000 grand prize. Other contestants preferred Dick, 44, to the daughter even though he was a nightmare to live with during the 70 some days of filming. Daniele’s big contribution to the show was an on-the-air romance with Nick Starcevic, a former European League professional football player considered the stud on the show.

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