Oh the irony.
It's Grand Jury Awareness Week - I am not kidding - and just when the City of Taft is reeling from a report issued by the Kern County Grand Jury which chastised just about everyone at city hall - except the City Attorney according to the Not The Daily Midway Driller - City Hall just didn't need this kind of celebration to brighten up all those long faces on the City Council.
By the way, what does one do to celebrate Grand Jury Awareness Week? I'm just asking.
I tell you one thing, Taft just didn't need any awareness about the Grand Jury this week, not after Spiffy Cliffy's Grand performance, as pathetic as it was, at the City Council Tuesday evening.
Yep, the old Cliffman was in rare form in his go-to-Sunday meeting suit when he took the stage in front of the city council during council comment time and began his bizarre power point explanation of why he and the Grand Jury was right about City Manager Gorson and the devious ways of the city council majority, and why they were wrong.
"This is the truth, it's in black and white and I have the documentation to back everything." said the Spifman.
Well, you just had to be there to appreciate the manic, somewhat paranoid presentation as Cliffy went on about how City Manager Bob Gorson was a bad man, that the Taft Independent was a lying rag so-called newspaper, that everyone on the council had released privileged council documents, and, well you get the idea.
Cliffy even brought up his old glory days in 2000 during the Belli-Railroad fraud and how the Grand Jury sided with him then and how he was right then, and he is right now.
Well, if you didn't know any better, you would of thought, "hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. That old city government is rotten to the core and those people are just trying to make Cliffy look bad."
Well, it didn't quite work out that way.
Councilmanic Paul Linder, Taft's squeaky clean, All-American - Maricopa raised - do gooder pubic servant read a prepared statement refuting Cliff's rant, and then sanity began to return to the room.
"...because of a lack of integrity and honesty by some..(go Pauly go)...we can not operate as a full council."
"The only person that has released privileged documents that I am aware of, is Mr. Thompson - we have the pot calling the kettle black."
Then Linder read a prepared statement by Councilman Randy Miller, who was missing in action because he was sick at home.
Randy's statement, in great detail, gave an overview of the whole Grand Jury ordeal, acquitting himself and the council quite well.
Randy was responding to the Grand Jury's accusations that the council was uneducated, suspect in its motivations, failed in its fiduciary responsibilities, and just didn't know what they were doing, as well as saying what the council should have have done long ago - censure the Cliffmeister.
So, the best part was when Randy asked the council to consider censuring Cliffy - a really bad note from the council that Cliffy would have to take home - for leaving the council dais during a meeting and threatening members of the media (the Taft Independent publisher), conning the city manager and his wife into a $200,000 loan, evaluating the city manager when he had a conflict of interest, not going to meetings that were paid for by taxpayer dollars when he was suppose to, leaving closed session meetings in a huff when he needed to be there, and best of all, releasing privileged documents to the Bakersfield Californian to undermine the council.
Censure? This could be really interesting - I bet a million dollars that the censure resolution is on the agenda at the next meeting, but that Cliff won't be there to face up to his peers.
Well, all these Grand Jury accusations and Cliffy's rant didn't sit well with Mayor Dave Noerr who spoke after Pauly, and gave perhaps one of the best summations of the whole entire mess.
Dave's comments were spot on and if you get a chance to go on the Taft Independent's Facebook page, you can see in its entirety Cliffy's rant, Pauly's speech and Mayor Dave's neat summation of all that is wrong with Cliffy's logic and how the Grand Jury just got most of it wrong. If the get a chance to view it, maybe the Grand Jury could learn something about Taft politics.
Take it from the WSW. The Olympics are boring, so go watch the videos, see democracy in action by going to the Taft Independent's Facebook page.