Chicken John Fails To Get Public Funding

Well, the wind is certainly out of our sails. We’ve spent such a long time devising what we’d do if Chicken John got public money to pay for a campaign he doesn’t even want to win. The calls to the Ethics Commission, the letter to our Supervisor and the papers… looks like all our planning was for naught.

John Rinaldi has been denied matching funds due to paperwork problems.

Damn, his hijacking of public funds for his self-described “art project” was so positively villainous, it made it so easy to malign him. Oh well, it won’t be long before he does something else idiotic. Like, pretend to be poor while spending his money on $120 haircuts, or something.

And, we were hoping he wouldn’t get funds because, oh, the system works and candidates don’t deserve $50,000 to run in elections they don’t want to win. But we’ll settle for him tripping himself up yet again.

We’re baaaa-aaaaack

Sorry for the gap on reporting. We’re only back on the anti-campaign now, we had to take a month off, it took a few weeks to dry out after burning man. Actually when we woke up on the playa last week, we wondered where everyone went. It took a while to realize it was over, then there was the hitch-hiking home, etc.

But what a nice surprise when we got home. Apparently we’re not alone. A lovely person calling themselves “Campaign Insider” had read our site and taken it upon herself to design a poster satirizing one of CJ’s posters. Thanks, CI, for making our day. Now we’re a little less lonely.

She had taken the picture down for a while after it turned out that Chicken John didn’t get the matching taxpayer funds he was after for his little prank. We convinced her to re-post it.

In other news, it looks like a lot has gone down while we were unconscious. Look for multiple updates… shortly.

Chicken John: Buying Loyalty with Other People’s Money

In our last post we talked about Chicken John quietly redacting words from a “Vote for Chicken” blog post that well, maybe weren’t so well considered, after we pointed them out to a reporter. Almost lost amidst the guffaws was a look at what he chose to replace his talk of figs and booze with. Presumably, he thought this makes him look better than that did:

“…if we fundraise a total of $50K (by January), that’s $200,000 total. We gotta make it, it’s too cool. $200,000 grand to spend on relevant, intelligent debates with all the candidates in interesting and fun locations. $200,000 to spend showing the city of San Francisco how an art spark works. $200,000 total, which a lot would end up going to artists to prove my calculations. Money to pay the artists who are painting the mural on my building. Money to pay the photogapher who hasn’t taken a dime yet. Money to get the permits and navagate the process to make a business go off grid. Money to build a gasifier to give to the city to run a muni bus on. And on and on. Matching funds is a program that is in place to make people’s contributions worth more. My intention is to give everyone their money’s worth. Times 100.”

Sounds great doesn’t it? Hey, Chicken’s not such a bad guy after all.

But, wait a minute, we thought to ourselves (we here on the editorial staff pool our thoughts, it saves energy. Also, our brains run on coffee grounds.) Isn’t this exactly like what Chicken tried to do to us a few days ago, offering to pay for our domains with his campaign donations? Chicken seems to be very big on ingratiating himself, trying to buy people’s loyalty. Not least when he can do it with someone else’s money.

So let’s look at that revised post again. He needs the public money so he can:

• Pay the artists and photographers he’s hired, with your money.
• Give the city a gassifier for a muni bus, built with your money.
• Take a business off the grid, with your money.
• “Give everyone their money’s worth”, with your money.

That Chicken, he’s really generous with other people’s money, at no absolutely expense to himself, when it makes him look good.

Bravo, Chicken John. You’re like Robin Hood or something, if he sat back and got someone else to do the stealing for him.

Chicken Revisionism: John Rinaldi quietly eats his words

Up until yesterday, John Rinaldi’s mayoral campaign blog had a blog post that blatantly read:

“The fundraising goal is $25K by next Tuesday. Today we’re at $17,000. We’re doing it. We need more help, though. Please. Making the $25K by next Tuesday is a guaranteed $50K. Next week. Then a 4-1 match after that. So if we fundraise a total of $50K (by January), that’s $200,000 total. We gotta make it, it’s too cool. $200,000 grand to spend on parties in the next 3 months. $200,000 grand to spend and pushing the ideas, baiting the machine, forcing conversation about the issues, having the intellectual exercise… and serving strange exotic figs and top shelf booze! Whatever!!!!?” [emphasis added]

Strangely, as soon as we actively pointed it out to an SF Weekly reporter during a joint email interview yesterday, that post was silently changed. It now reads:

“Then a 4-1 match after that. So if we fundraise a total of $50K (by January), that’s $200,000 total. We gotta make it, it’s too cool. $200,000 grand to spend on relevant, intelligent debates with all the candidates in interesting and fun locations. $200,000 to spend showing the city of San Francisco how an art spark works. $200,000 total, which a lot would end up going to artists to prove my calculations. Money to pay the artists who are painting the mural on my building. Money to pay the photogapher who hasn’t taken a dime yet. Money to get the permits and navagate the process to make a business go off grid. Money to build a gasifier to give to the city to run a muni bus on. And on and on. Matching funds is a program that is in place to make people’s contributions worth more. My intention is to give everyone their money’s worth. Times 100.” [emphasis added.]

What’s the matter Chicken John, afraid your own words are going to hang you? You should have left the line about the “exotic figs and top-shelf booze” up, anyway. It was funny. You told us you’re running because you’re a comedian. So don’t go removing the original funny stuff from your blog, we like it!

More commentary on Chicken’s new revision in the next post. Next up: Buying And Selling Loyalty, With Your Instructor, “Chicken” John Rinaldi.

Laughingsquid: Shame on you for hurting art in SF

So Laughing Squid has shamefully undermined the SF Art scene by once again supporting John Rinaldi’s attempts to divert public money to himself and cheapen dialog about art in San Francisco into empty repetition of words that no longer mean anything.

Hypothetical question: Which is the best way to support the arts:
1.) Encourage people to donate to arts organizations
2.) Encourage people to donate to a blowhard attention-seeker who pays lip-service to art

Guess which route Laughing Squid has chosen to promote?

Choice propaganda, courtesy of the above-linked post: “For Chicken, a person who over the years who has done amazing things with almost no money, that amount of money will make for a really interesting campaign and push forward many of the issues of art and innovation that Chicken is championing.”

Uh, right. What issues of art and innovation have John Rinaldi been championing? Are you referring to him simply saying the phrase “Art And Innovation” over and over again as if that will accomplish anything constructive? The man has not expressing a single constructive idea to help art, unless you count saying over and over again that he’s going to help art somehow.

Scott, you’re encouraging people to help public money get diverted to a guy who privately says things like, “I’ve got all this mayor money…. kinda burning a hole in my pocket. I can’t for the life of me figger out what to spend it on. Got any ideas? You seem like a prankster… help me out. I’m all horn and no driveshaft. “

Everybody, Scott Beale is a great, and I mean GREAT, guy and a boon to this town. (I can tell you this because he’s my babydaddy.) I don’t know what’s gotten into his tapwater to make him behave this way.

Im sure the worthy and poorly-funded Arts organizations in town are just thrilled to see LS throwing their considerable weight behind blowhard Chicken John, and asking people to send money to Chicken’s ineffectual publicity stunt. Don’t donate your money to arts organizations, folks – give it to Chicken John! Yeah, that’s how to support the arts!

Scott, please turn your brain back on, and stop encouraging people to make foolish choices. I know John is your friend. You should use that to talk some sense into him, not play along with his empty, selfish quest for dollars and attention, and pretending his saying “art” over and over again is the same thing as actually saying something about it.

And there are hundreds of worthy arts organizations in this town that are actually doing constructive things for the arts that could have used the $20,000 in donations (so far) that you’ve help persuade people to give instead to “Chicken” John Rinaldi. We’ve said it before an we’ll say it again: How can you tell people to give Chicken John $25,000 while there are arts organizations out there that are hurting? What exactly are your priorities, man?

SF Weekly Interview

So I got an email from Joe from SF Weekly. He found our vote for Chicken John parody site and wanted to write a story about it, and about John Rinaldi’s reaction to it. I went into uberstealth mode, after John’s attempts to find out who we were and/or buy us off last week, and after I made it clear we wouldn’t be giving him our number or calling him in person, he agreed to interview by email today. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid but he seemed pretty hot to either get a phone number or hear our voices.

Turns out, he sensibly wanted to know why we’d bother making a parody site for a “non-serious” candidate. I told him, the guy has already solicited nearly $30,000 in donations, and hopes to solicit $200,000, 75% of that from public money, despite the fact that he’s already revealed that he has no game plan whatsoever, and even privately told us he had no ideas and asked us for help spending the money!

We whipped up a 4 page email detail our past history with John Rinaldi, all the things we’ve seen him do, and the things he said to us in his emails which he seemed to think we wouldn’t show people. And we told him, our problem isn’t with Chicken John or his candidacy. It’s with the people sending money down that hole that they could instead be legitimately using to help the arts, instead of a guy who has promised to spend it on “exotic figs and top shelf booze” (see his site, I’m not going to give him a trackback here.) It’s a sick, sick scene when there artists are more interested in banding together to support loudmouthed, shallow, self-aggrandizing egomaniac entertainers than The Arts. I’ve said it before: every one of you who supports John Rinaldi’s “campaign” scam ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Those of you who give him money, it serves you right if he manages to drive any serious discussion of the arts out of political discourse in this town for years.

It was an interesting rant and after Joe calmed down about wanting to call us, he seemed like a decent guy. Anyway, in a funny twist at the end, a half hour after his last question to me, I got one last email, where he went all Columbo on me… “Just one more thing. Rinaldi says he did thechickenjohnformayor.org website. Any thoughts? Can you guarantee you’re not Chicken John?”

I thought about that for a while.

Then I snapped a picture of my penis, pasted it into a reply, and wrote “Yeah. Here’s my penis. Now get Chicken John to show you his, and you can compare them.”

Joe hasn’t written me back.

I guess the story will be inWenesday’s weekly. Might be interesting.