Your first paragraph says it all and it has the whole time you've been banging this drum, Jubal: you're paid to hold this opinion.

Relentlessly pounding away against the largest employer in Anaheim-- the one which literally built the city-- and your apparent crush on union flack Lori Galloway... who woulda thunk it?

Check yourself, Matt. Really, try to step back and ask yourself what you would think of all this if you didn't have a dog in this hunt... there is NO WAY you'd hold this opinion if you weren't being paid to by Suncal.

What a joke.

what is really funny is how far off the reservation Pringle is.

Conservatives don't tell people how they can use their property.

If SunCal wants to build housing. Great, it's their land. Let them do what they want with it.

If SunCal wishes to sell to Disney, that is fine too.

If Disney really needed this land, they'd make an offer to SunCal.

So, Matt takes the conservative position on an issue and gets paid for it. Good for him.

Your first paragraph says it all and it has the whole time you've been banging this drum, Jubal: you're paid to hold this opinion.

Believe what you like -- that's why I put the disclosure there, so people can make up there own minds about the information I present.

That said, I was in agreement with the SunCal position long before I went to work on this project. I found out many, many years ago that it's a tortuous grind to work on a campaign or project you don't believe in, and makes one a less effective advocate.

Relentlessly pounding away against the largest employer in Anaheim-- the one which literally built the city--

I've pounded away at the methods, misinformation and falsehoods they've employed in this campaign. That doesn't take away from Disneyland's great contributions to Anaheim -- and those contributions don't hand title and deed to the city over to Disney.

Check yourself, Matt. Really, try to step back and ask yourself what you would think of all this if you didn't have a dog in this hunt... there is NO WAY you'd hold this opinion if you weren't being paid to by Suncal.

And you know that how, anonymous commenter? I have thought long and hard about this issue. If I weren't involved in this project I would oppose Disney's ballot box zoning initiative as vehemently as I did its twin, Greenlight. And I'd oppose the referendum, too: Disney lost at the council. The general plan amendment was approved fair-and-square. They should deal it it and stop trying to control how other property owners can do with their property.

And now that you're finished substituting personal attacks for reasoned argument, would you mind telling me if anything in the above post isn't factual?

'Pringle off the reservation' said it. "If Disney really needs this land".

Darn right they do. It is the key to Disneyland's third gate. The Great Parkway (Gene Autry Way), has people movers from the convention center to the stadium that will go right through the property. See Sarah Tully's article in today's Register.

And SunCal knows it. Disney will lie, cheat, and steal in order to avoid the price SunCal is demanding. And that is exactly what Disney is now doing.

Blog for sale---load, fire, aim. Get real-there are plenty of conservatives and liberals on both sides of this issue. I'm with Disney on this one but to me it's a close call and I have friends on either side.

Matt has always been upfront when he has some financial stake. Here, he could have just as easily been pumping away if he had no financial interest in the issue. Look at how often he keeps posting on the 241 even though he has no financial interest in that issue.

Stick to the issues--you only make the Disney side look weak when you lauch scuds like that.

I have not posted on this issue, for a lot of reasons. Despite what some people have said, I do not have a paying client here. Disney has their team, and I have other issues to occupy my time, so I have stayed out.

Of course, I am close to Curt Pringle, as political insiders around OC know, and he has a position, so you can decide for yourself if I have any credibility on the issue.

That being said, here are some random thoughts:

1. It is not my place to question Matt's credibility. I have known him too long, so he has to answer that question for himself. I suspect the volume of his posting on this issue is driven by the paying client, if not the position itself. But that is only my opinion.

2. However, there are some philosophical inconsistencies on Matt's position, including in his posts in this very thread. These tend to lower the credibility that this is pure philosophical grounds, or at least reduces Matt's posting on this topic to that of a paid spinner for his client rather than a blogger/journalist of opinion.

For example:

I have been told that Disney changed petition firms from their original initiative to the new referendum, and that SunCal is now employing the original petition firm, that one that Matt has blogged against, as their "blockers" against the referendum.

For those who don't know, "blockers" are employed by people trying to keep a measure off the ballot. They physically place themselves near petition gatherers collecting signatures for an initiative, and try to "convince" people not to sign. This is a pretty controversial tactic, because in practice, they usually end up making people not sign by just making the situation confrontational or uncomfortable for the voters.

I seem to recall Matt opposing the use of this tactic in the past, when the California Teachers Association employed blockers to try to keep a school choice or union dues measures off the ballot.

If this is true, Matt, that the same firm you railed against is now employed by SunCal, then I would like to hear how that original firm was so "bad" when they worked for Disney, and is now good? Or if my info is incorrect, please let me know, and I will retract.

Matt states above that he opposes Disney's initiative, on the grounds that it is ballot-box planning. Fine. I have run several campaigns against ballot box planning measures, and I generally oppose them as well.

For those who support the Disney measure, I would have to guess that it has to be, somewhat, an "end justifying the means" situation, because there are several strong property-rights, anti-ballot box zoning people on Disney's side.

Again, without speaking to them, I would guess that the principle of defending the Resort Area and by that, the financial stability of Anaheim, has a higher calling than the "I oppose ballot-box planning" principle.

But where is the philosophical basis for Matt's argument against the referendum? His quote above states:

"And I'd oppose the referendum, too: Disney lost at the council. The general plan amendment was approved fair-and-square. They should deal it it and stop trying to control how other property owners can do with their property."

By that logic, no use of the referendum process in the state Constitution is valid. My firm has been hired on several occasions to defeat via referendum bad laws passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, including John Burton's SB 2 (employer mandated health care) which we overturned via referendum as Prop 172, bad faith insurance liability, and others. In each of those cases, the legislature passed, and the Governor signed, legislation that my clients and me personally thought were bad policy. But they had passed "fair-and-square" by the definition used above. Was it wrong for us to use the referendum to overturn them? I think not, and I assume, because I have known Matt for nearly 20 years and have talked political philosophy with him many times, that he backed my position and my clients.

As to the issue of SunCal's property rights...there are none, as even Steve Greengut has written before. First of all, SunCal does not own the land in question. They have an option on the land, presumably conditioned on whether they can get the zoning changed and their project entitled. To assign SunCal any property rights here is a big stretch because:

1. They don;t own the property.

2. There is no "right" to a zoning change.

You may agree or disagree with the policy of granting the zoning change in this case, but that is clearly not a philosophical act, it is a technical policy decision. Do you think housing is compatible with the resort uses nearby? Important decision, yes. Core philosophical issue, no!

If SunCal had a property right here, then I have the same "property right" to buy any parcel around, (or for that matter, just buy an option), change the zoning to a more dense, more intense, or just plain more valuable use, and my neighbors who had existing uses have NO recourse. After all, it's my property rights, and if I can get the Council to change the zone, I won "fair-and-square."

Again, I do not question anyone who has a position on either side of the issue of whether the zoning change should be made. Zoning questions are hard to assign core philosophical principles to. The good public policy on zoning, as far as I see it, are consistency and stability. Set out the rules, and play by them. Developers and property owners will thrive in those conditions, as they have in Anaheim.

Finally, I should state that as an advertiser and relatively inactive blogpen member here at OC Blog, I am troubled some my Matt's frequent posting on this issue. As he often says, it's his blog, he can run it how he wants.

But I see blogs like this as the 21st Century version of journals of opinion, like National Review. I love NR, I love the writing, the wit, and of course, generally, their philosophical stance on most issues. I would be quite disillusioned if I ever found out that NR was writing about an issue because they were being paid to rather than it being a core philosophical issue...and that is why I can;t wait until this current issue in Anaheim is over so OC Blog can go back, I hope, to being a pure "journal of opinion."

The above post was by me, Jeff Flint. I was signed into my typepad account when I posted, not sure why it didn't list me.

Jeff-- I agree with you on the property rights issue and that a referendum is part and parcel of the entire planning and development process. I think the Council majority has got it wrong on this development. But I think you're wrong when you claim that Matt's frequent posting on this issue results from his SunCal business. In the time I've observed Matt, he tends to get a hair up his butt about certain issues and posts ad naseum about them. The Concreto-Enviro battle on 241(as I noted above), Tom Umberg's Campaign to ride share with Bill Campbell from Vanilla Park, and yes, the Mouse That Roared in Anaheim. I picture him in front of his computer worked up about these things and I don't think it matters whether he's paid for it or not. I guess Sun CAl is happy but they are probably paying for something they'd get anyway.

Perhaps you're right, BR. Since Matt and I agree on so much, and have done so over the years, it may be my mistake to assign other motives to the frequency of his posting on the issue when, as in this case, we are in rare disagreement.

On the 241, Matt is dead on right, and his is motivated. But no one from the "center-right" questions Matt's philosophy on this one.

On the issue of your friend Mr. Umberg, I think Matt is being a loyal partisan. Again, hardly suspect for a blog from the center-right.

But, let me ask this comparison, which has driven one of my concerns about the super-posting on the Disney-SunCal issue.

We've had two prior ballto box planning measures in Orange County in recent years...Measure B in Yorba Linda and Measure X in Newport Beach. I ran the no side of both campaigns. How may posts did Matt initiate on those issues?

Is the same Jeff Flint, Pringle's former chief of staff, who with Pringle's help, screwed the people of Anaheim with the one sided Earthlink Wi-Fi contract?

I am impressed, three falsehoods and/or misleading statements in one sentence. Maybe that's why your candidate for Mayor got 20% of the vote.

I bet if Jubal were a Disney consultant, Jeff wouldn't be complaining.

Jeff- I'd be interested in Matt's response but itshard to compare Duvall Land and Crevier Beach to the Big A. No offense to Yorba linda and Newport but there is no comparison. The Mouse That Roared saga has everything---traditional Goliath city powerhouse that is the golden goose, streetsmart developer who is doing his best to imitate David, a dash of partisan politics as streetsmart developer throws in 200+ "affordable" units to seduce the lone Dem on the council. The move also draws in the union workers who aren't looking far enough ahead to realize that Disney expansion means union job expansion. In an economy where union jobs aren't exactly a bull market. Revenge scenarios---how else does one explain kring flipping on Disney?
There's more but the point is that this is an exciting story. No offense to you and your campaigns either Jeff but those 2 campaigns were backwater battles in comparison(Even Yorba Linda, where somehow Tom hayden got thrown into the breech).

So stick it to matt on the issue and give him a hall pass on Sun Cal. There's plenty of ammo to launch w/o going personal.

BR:

I don't think I am being personal against Matt. It's hard for someone in my business to begrudge someone else having a client. The blending of Matt's clients and his blog posting bugs me, however, because he contends that his client is in the ideological "right" (as in both correct and conservative.)

My contention is that there is no ideologically correct position on this issue, it is just a matter of your interpretation of the correct zoning policy, and reasonable people can disagree. So when Matt purports that all Disney does is bad, and all SunCal does is good, is, in my mind clearly spin for a paying client, not ideological/opinion journalism.

It gets into some of the questions I asked, which I hope Matt answers:

1. Is SunCal using the same petition firm to counter the referendum that Disney previously employed for their initiative? If so, please explain how Disney's use of that firm was so bad and SunCal's use of the firm is OK.

2. If winning a vote at the city council is "fair & square" and automatically grounds to oppose any referendum, then how is it ok for the business community to use the referendum in California, as it has done on several occasions in the last two decades, to over turn bad laws that were passed by teh Legislature and signed by the Governor, "fair & square?"

As far as the ratio of posts on the Anaheim issue versus the Yorba Linda and Newport Beach campaigns, sure, I agree that Anaheim is a bigger deal, for all the reasons you state and more. But, assuming the Measure X category tag is correct here on the Blog, and teh same with the "Nimby Mouse" category tag, then in the ENTIRE Newport Beach Measure X campaign, from qualification, campaign, etc, Matt felt that was worth two posts. For the Anaheim issue, the matter has not even qualified for the ballot yet, and Matt has generated 17 posts, if not more, in a month and a half. At that rate, he could generate nearly 100 new posts on the Anaheim issue between now and a February election. Is tha ratio of importance of Anaheim to Newport Beach 120 posts to 2 posts?

Today, the Daily Breeze mentioned that the Conservative Costa Mesa city council placed a hold on any property owner wishing to convert their apartments to Condos.

Where all those so called property rights do-gooders? Oh I see as long as it's not your neighbor who wants to build a strip bar on their property then it all gung ho about owner rights.

Soar intiative will win because it's Suncal who wants to buy the council so they can get an exemption for their company and make mucho-dinero.

They could care less about afordable housing but this stance is winning the minds of bleeding hearts in conservative drag.