IAFF: California’s John Bagala on Criticism of Frank Lima
John Bagala, Facebook “friend” and IAFF labor leader, hauled me off to the woodshed regarding my comments on Lima’s handling of Harold Schaitberger’s pension scam.
Here’s the sense of it:
Bagala writes,
I’ve got to ask, do you (and all the other folks on here that apparently have an opinion) actually know 10th District Vice President Frank Lima, or are you simply so blinded by your dislike of Harold, that you are deciding to form an opinion based on the fact that Frank didn’t excoriate the GP to your satisfaction?
Bagala believes that to know Lima is to love him. I will instead rely on Jesus’s commentary during the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
Lima’s fruit is rotten.
According to Bagala, there is a simple choice: either we don’t know Lima or we dislike Schaitberger.
But there’s a third option, Lima publicly demonstrated his unfitness when he found Schaitberger’s pension deal to smell like a fresh picked rose.
Bagala’s last part is key, [Lima] “didn’t excoriate the GP to your satisfaction?”
Since excoriate means to criticize severely, we need to point out that Lima, in fact, did the exact opposite, he exonerated Schaitberger.
In absolving Schaitberger of responsibility, Lima gave him a free pass instead of holding him accountable.
Bagala has Lima doing the exact opposite of what he actually did.
That attempt to rewrite history falls flat.
As for being blinded by dislike of Harold Schaitberger, I am instead alarmed and angry by the way Schaitberger and his minions have ruined the IAFF through their habitual lack of ethical concern.
Bagala asserts that with Schaitberger on the way out, I am now in search of fresh targets in order to remain relevant.
Here I proclaim my complete irrelevance but also remind him that for seven years, beginning in 2014, I have continuously pointed out that the IAFF executive board and trustees own the Schaitberger corruption because they aided and abetted it every step of the way.
I have written dozens of posts examining in detail how the board and trustees failed to act, either cringing in fear or hogging at the trough.
Rather than searching for targets, I have become one myself as Bagala tries to keep Lima from, in fact, becoming irrelevant.
Twice in a row Bagala gets it exactly backwards.
Were my many blog posts warnings of a sort?
If so, they went unheeded by our “leaders” and now the FBI, DOL, IRS, and U.S. Attorney are in our house.
So Bagala’s claim that my criticism of either Lima or the board is new found is once again false and that’s strike three, but who’s counting?
I’ve played more the part of an inept and bungling town crier, shouting about the misdoings of the king and his court.
Lima is currently front and center only because he went all in supporting Schaitberger’s greed and then doubled down by running for a principal office.
As they say, don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger.
Lima has become the poster image for an IAFF board member in the Schaitberger era.
The board and trustees have hidden behind the apron of Mama Schaitberger for twenty years, now she’s leaving the kitchen and they may find the heat to be intense.
So be it.
Some of them still seem to think it’s all gonna be on Mama.
As a team they plundered our assets and crushed morality and decency along the way.
All of them deserve to be audited and many of them should be working on a chain gang where the only steak they see is one on the hoof staring at them across a fence.
Cheers.
