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Corruption Watch - Mayor Noguez & Political Porn

Gambling, Card Clubs, Strip Joints & Sex Entertainment
Mayor Noguez's Idea for Economic Growth in the city of Huntington Park

Gambling makes money. Sex sells. Sex is business and our openly Gay Mayor John Noguez wants a piece of it. City
ordinances are secretly and quietly passed. All council members claim to be cross carrying Catholics in campaign
propaganda.

The Editor,
WatchOurCity.com
Posted Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Huntington Park, CA - So how did Noguez and his lackey slate in city council go from promising to take care of families,
children and seniors to doing everything contrary to that promise?

Politics is a game of deception. The trick is to fool all of the voters all of the time. Make campaign promises to do one thing,
once you're in, fist thing is break promises made. Make sure to send out printed campaign propaganda stating that you
stand for integrity, honesty and experience. No one will question you on it. Rosario Marin, your political mentor taught you
that lesson well. Deceit is a politicians best trick. And never mind the public trust, it's only a formality that you can choose to
ignore. Your back is covered politically. The only trust you must worry about is that of your political mentor's.

John Noguez first ran for city council in 2003. He was the leading candidate and part of a slate that included current council
members Ofelia Hernandez and Mario Gómez. He had $125,000 in campaign contributions to market himself to the voters. He
used such terms as "Honesty", "Integrity", "Experience". He used slick, full color brochures to present himself as a man of
the community. He even grew a very Mexican macho mustache to dispel any doubts about his masculinity, despite being gay.
But he never told the voters about it. Not that it was an issue. It's just that he came out after he was in office. This served
as a pattern for and his team.

Noguez, Ofelia and Mario are teaming up as a slate again for the March 2007 local elections. Their campaign tasks are
equally divided according to skill, with Noguez, the smart, white collar one, collecting the money; Ofelia and Mario getting
stuck with the campaign's dirty grunt work; no brains, but plenty of political braun.

In 2003, the Noguez slate sported the hottest endorsement commodity unmatched and unparallelled in the history of local
elections: Rosario Marin, a Republican and then U.S. Treasurer appointed by President Bush, intimately involved in election
strategy, and Democrat Fabian Nunez, current California Assembly Speaker, were the high-level, high profile endorsements.

A third high profile endorser, the mayor-slash-campaign manager, was Rosario's water boy and political protege, the now
convicted Edward Escareno.

The 2003 city council elections presented an historic perfect storm of a grand opportunity for a complete and rotund power
grab with three council seats open but no incumbents to claim them. This was beautiful. Planning for the 2003 campaign
started in 2001 when Rosario Marin was still a Huntington Park council member, and before President Bush appointed her to
be the 41st U.S. Treasurer.

Rosario Marin knew that whomever controlled those three seats controlled millions of dollars in city contracts, and if you
controlled the majority vote, you could even dispense with the trivial formality of taking contracts out to bid. In fact, once the
Noguez slate was elected in March 2003, Rosario's friends were favored recipients of non-competing city contracts totaling
millions of dollars, including the city attorney contract, the bus transportation contract, the graffiti removal contract, META
2000, CDBG funds, senior housing management contracts, AIDS clinic contracts, Meals-on-wheels to seniors contract
(sponsored through the County of L.A.).

The Corruption; Oh, the Corruption!
In 2003, Noguez and his lackey slate came up with a catchy but nebulously empty campaign slogan: "Actions Speak Louder
Than Words".

Indeed, their actions did speak louder than their words, and the slogan began to make sense the very fist instance that
Noguez, Ofelia and Mario indented the leather covered council seats.

The public record since 2003 suggests that the Noguez campaign slogan this time around should be "The Corruption; Oh,
The Corruption!", with an added by-line at the bottom, "The Cover-Ups; Oh, The Corruption Cover-ups".

Their 2003 campaign propaganda stated that they would look after the needs of the families, children, student's education,
and senior citizens of this Southeast L.A. County city.

In fact, Noguez and team started looking after the needs of Rosario Marin's friends.

It started with giving Francisco Leal the city attorney contract in a closed door session and without competing bids just
months after the new slate was sworn in as council members, presided over by their political mentor and den mother Rosario
Marin herself.

Then, a multi-million dollar city bus transportation contract came due. Rosario and Noguez's good friends George Cole of
Oldtimers Foundation and Victor Caballero of Fiesta Taxi, both eager and prominent campaign contributors to the Noguez
slate, and such an unlikely odd couple, were awarded the $3.9 million dollar bus contract. This contract was awarded under
the most dubious and highly questionable of circumstances since George Cole's Oldtimers Foundation was rated the worst
and placed last out of 4 bidders.

Oh, and needs of families and children? Well, actions speak louder than words: the 2004 budget passed by the newly
elected slate eliminated funding for pre-school programs, increased fees for little league by 100% and the yearly park fees
charged to the Otero adult Baseball League were raised from $6,000 a year to $30,000.

Guilty By Association
Exactly one year ago today, on January 16, 2006, WatchOurCity.com broke the story on Escareno's quiet conviction in L.A.
Superior Court. Escareno was convicted for "Grand Theft" of public funds while he was councilman.

Escareno was unemployed during his tenure as an elected official, but claimed he was a businessman. Rosario Marin was his
top endorser during his 2001 campaign. Ofelia, John and Mario were spooked by the conviction, and rightly so: they would
be tainted by association.

Their 2007 re-election campaign would suffer a setback and their chances for reelection in 2007 would be grim if the public
knew that their very own campaign manager was convicted of Grand Theft; their very own campaign Manager!

And Escareno is Rosario Marin's very own and favorite political water boy/protege! Such a political PR nightmare. Que
desgracia! (translation: what a disgrace).

Complicating matters, Rosario Marin, along with the Governor, was already scheduled to make an appearance at Huntington
Park council chambers a few days later, on February 2, 2006, to announce Marin's political appointment to head the State's
Consumer Affairs Division, a multi-billion dollar bureaucracy.

How would it look if the media was alerted about the Huntington Park councilman's conviction, a former mayor, and very
politically intimate protege to Rosario Marin?

So, everyone, from the Marin herself, the Noguez team, to the Governor's office would benefit from a cover-up of Escareno's
conviction. The cover-up would be enabled by Rosario's good friend and Republican buddy, who owes Rosario a favor or two:
Steve Cooley, District Attorney.

All the D.A.'s office had to do was, well, not announce the conviction. But wouldn't that deprive the D.A.'s office of a PR coup
and garner some media attention trumpeting and attesting to his office's success rate at putting away corrupt elected
officials? Not in Escareno's case.

The cover-up was a no brainer and had to happen in order to avoid at all costs tainting and marring Marin's appointment by
the Governor and to avoid undue embarrassment and tainting by association for Noguez, Ofelia and Mario.

Besides, the voters in Huntington Park are stupid anyway and nobody's watching.

Corrupcion En Huntington Park
On January 18, 2006, two days after WatchOurCity.com breaks the story on councilman Escareno's conviction, the La Opinion
Newspaper announces in a front page heading "Corruption en Huntington Park", and credits this website for the breaking
news.

By that evening, the story is also broadcast on Spanish language evening newscasts. The big question everyone was
asking: Why was the conviction of Huntington Park's councilman Edward Escareno kept from the public?

A most startling and disturbing fact: Escareno's conviction was kept a secret for nearly one month! From December 20, 2005,
the day Escareno was convicted in L.A. Superior Court, until January 16, 2006, when WatchOurCity.com broke the story
based on an anonymous tip sent via email, no one knew of the conviction.

Contrast this bizarre political damage-control cover-up with the conviction three years earlier of another Huntington Park
elected official. Linda Guevara, then councilwoman was accused of not living in the city by Rosario Marin and company. News
of Guevara's conviction was released far and wide to every local and national news media outlets, and trumpeted by the
District Attorney's office as it's very first successful conviction for Steve Cooley's newly formed Public Integrity Unit.

So, is the quiet and secretive conviction of Escareno still a mystery?

How bizarre; how Bizarre!

The corruption plot thickens with John Noguez and city council team.