A new law restricts telemarketing. Presto! Junk mail is up. Daryl West, senior plant manager for the U.S. Postal Service in Santa Ana, says his region handled about 9 million pieces of mail a day in January, up 20% from a year earlier. West says similar jumps were seen nationwide. A stronger economy and more aggressive marketing by USPS might be factors, but “some of it’s a direct result of no-call legislation,” West says. And he loves it,one person’s “junk” is West’s “business mail, direct mail, advertising mail.” The more there is, he says, the longer before stamp prices need to be increased …
There’s buzz in the pro- and anti-airport camps alike about Irvine City Council’s hiring of Bruce Nestande,erstwhile El Toro airport strategist, George Argyros adviser and former Newport Beach politician,as a $15,000-a-month Great Park consultant. Nestande’s Sacramento connections and his transportation and land-use experience could help the city to build and fund the park. Plus, the deal keeps Nestande off the other team. But some airport foes worry the fox has been let into the henhouse. “People who talk that way, on either side, don’t understand what it’s like to be a professional in your field,” Nestande says. “The people have voted. The airport’s dead.” L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn’s recent interest in El Toro “is just politics.” Noting Nestande’s setbacks with the airport and as Bill Jones’ Senate campaign manager, one critic snipes, “This is the beginning of the end of the Great Park.” Nestande deflects the shot: “I’m not the policy maker. I’m a consultant. So be it” …
It’s good for a rock band’s reputation to be from Orange County, says Adam Lohrbach of Home Grown. “It resonates, for sure. ‘You’re from Orange County?’ It’s a big deal.” The ska-punkers played a couple of tunes on “Inside OC” before embarking on a nine-stop tour of the U.K. Lohrbach, 29, recently moved into his own place, the last of Home Grown’s members to leave the nest …
Arnold’s ATM: The Los Angeles Times’ list of the top 12 contributors to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s main campaign fund in 2004 included five OCers,Henry “Nick” Nicholas, Ameriquest Capital (Roland Arnall), American Sterling (Larry Dodge), Paul Folino and William Lyon Homes. But while Nicholas supports Schwarzenegger, the Insider is told his giving,topping $1.5 million,was earmarked for stopping Prop 66, the measure that would have modified the Three Strikes law …
Former The Irvine Company exec Franz Wisner’s “Honeymoon with My Brother” has hit bookstores. Franz, with brother Kurt, begins a national publicity tour having already nailed a movie deal with Sony, the cover of the Jan. 23 Los Angeles Times Magazine and
bookings on “The Today Show,” “Dennis Miller” and NPR. He’s talking with Oprah. And it all began with travelogues in the OCBJ, for which EE RR gets a book acknowledgment and the promise of “a couple of cold beers.”
