The Inconvenient Truth for Shannon Lambert

Shannon Lambert is a staunch Voigts supporter and in the last few days she has been commenting on my posts and spreading false and misleading information. Rather than respond to each and every time she makes one of these comments, I thought it best to provide a summary here.

CAGLEY AND MILLER

She claimed that Col. Cagley, Mrs. Miller and I received $3000. We did not. We received $900 each in nonmonetary contributions.

She claimed “Cagney and Miller just put their names on all your campaign materials”. They did not.

She claimed Cagney and Miller were “silent partners”. They were not.

She claimed they “only contributed money” That’s not true.

Col Cagley and Mrs. Miller were full partners with me, involved in every aspect from conception to production to payment. They even helped chose the quality of the paper. In fact some of the materials appear from their Committees, not mine. These are not only false claims but an insult to Col. Cagley and Mrs. Miller.

MARIJUANA

She claimed “He makes the case for why the City should have marijuana stores…” That was a lie, as she subsequently admitted.

OC REGISTER ARTICLE ABOUT DEVELOPERS

She claimed that the OC Register article (that exposed developer contributions to the campaigns of Voigts, Bass, and Hamilton) was written by me, not by the writer Sarah de Crescenzo. That’s a lie and an insult to Ms. de Crescenzo.

PLANS TO FIGHT CRIME

She claimed “he never gets to any specific details” when talking about crime. That’s not true. I gave 3 specific examples of details I gave in the campaign literature. Obviously there isn’t much space in campaign literature and my extensive comments on ways to fight crime are well documented. But even in the limited space I had in the campaign literature, I had 3 separate listings. Her accusations were lies.

MUSICK JAIL

She claimed that I said “two city council members are responsible for the expansion of a County jail on county land”. That’s not true. I said that “Voigts and McCullough approved and endorsed the project.” They did. She lied.

SUPPORT FOR BATTERED WOMEN

She claimed that because The Patch’s 3rd party server randomly inserted a photo of Ray Rice into one of my articles (a glitch which The Patch admits and for which I provided evidence) when it uploaded it to Facebook (something that happened to others during this period), that I am sympathetic to abuse against women.

When I lived in Australia I worked with a multi-disciplinary group to fight domestic abuse and among other things we helped write legislation. As a therapist I worked with abused woman.

Here in Lake Forest for years I have worked with Soroptimists International whose mission it is to improve the lives of girls and woman, and a good part of their time is spent raising funds for scholarships that go to battered woman. I have participated in this, helped raise funds, and sat on the selection committee to assist these women.

Does that sound like someone who supports domestic abuse?

RACISM

She accuses me of racism, partially because a flyer from Cagley for Council went out with a picture of a black man behind bars. The original artwork for that flyer had a picture of a white man behind bars, but the graphic designer changed it at the last minute. Regardless, having a picture of a black man’s hands behind bars hardly constitutes racism.

When I lived in Australia I worked to improve the lives of the Aboriginal and Islander community. I helped set up programs to deal with alcoholism and I worked with the Police to give them a better understanding of the community and to improve relationships.

In Africa I headed the Department of Applied Psychology and personally admitted the first Black students to ever be enrolled in a graduate Psychology program. This was during Apartheid and our acceptance was a revolutionary step in academia.

I re-oriented the Psych services division in order for black people to be able to receive treatment that was sensitive to their needs and desires, rather than to conform to traditional Psychological modalities.

When my 2 black graduate students went on their internship, the hospital refused to allow them in because the white patients objected. In order to advance their study, I had to set up a training program at a local blacks-only hospital, and because there were no black professionals, I personally supervised the students. I was physically threatened during this time by white extremists who broke into my car and my home. I ended up living in hotels for my own protection.

Does that sound like a racist to you?

BOTTOM LINE

Bear in mind, this is only a partial list.

It’s OK to disagree and have different opinions. But resorting to false claims is not appropriate.