By Robert Haugh
Santa Clara City Councilman Anthony Becker has been campaigning on how he can be a better fiscal manager for the City as Mayor.
But he has had serious problems with his personal financial history.
Santa Clara News Online (SCNO) pointed out how he spent an extraordinary amount on food in his last campaign, making local fast food restaurants happy that he’s running again.
Since that story appeared, a person who Becker had a dispute with over a financial matter pointed out that Becker has a troubled financial history.
Between 2004 and 2018, Becker has been taken to court for collections by:
- Keypoint Credit Union,
- Pallisades Collections,
- Calvary, and
- Discover
On Becker’s 2020 Form 700, his economic interest disclosure, he reports a car loan from Ally at 19 percent interest.
A person in the finance industry, says this is a “super high interest rate.” It’s called a “beat loan” and means the person has bad credit.
Becker frequently talks about his challenges of living in a high-cost area for someone who like him who doesn’t have a steady job or income.
A lot of people can relate to that (including SCNO). But we’re not running for Mayor and hoping to manage a billion-dollar plus budget and figure out if the 49ers are paying their stadium debt.
I imagine you wouldn’t. If your experience is you are bad at managing your personal career and finances, why would you be the one to save Santa Clara? Anthony Becker is not capable to help himself or my city.
Why do you care being a San Jose resident? I’m sorry your donation went in the garbage. Well you will have an excuse to drink yourself to sleep. Again…
Suds, why would we want someone that has not made anything out of themselves specifically financially run our city? It’s obvious Anthony has not demonstrated any financial experience other than trying to stay ahead of debt collectors.
It’s great that Anthony can relate to renters, but would they want him to guide us financially?
Once again Suds, your comments make no sense.
Missed your point. Only homeowners should be entitled to vote?
Byron,
Are you being purposefully obtuse in reading the below?
“It’s great that Anthony can relate to renters, but would they want him to guide us financially?”
This clearly is asking if not just homeowners but also renters in Santa Clara would want Becker to guide the city financially?
Especially in the context of the piece on which it is commenting the reasons for doubting Becker’s financial acumen have to do with his lack of any sort of professional achievement and the possibility that his financial mismanagement of himself has led him into overspending on credit.
I am surprised that a lawyer finds it hard to parse sentences I can read clear as day.
I am not surprised however at a lawyer engaging in disingenuous rhetoric.
I find it incredibly ironic that people like Robert Haugh and James Rowen (AKA John Galt, Andrea Orsini, Stan Garcia, Diane Torres, Stalker Suds, Matt Dillon, Mrs Peel and now Ben Matlock) would go after Anthony Becker for this. Robert Haugh was fired from the Santa Clara Weekly and lives with his parents. Rumors are that his truck was reposesed. James Rowen lives on public assistance and has no problem filing at least a hundred of PRA requests against me that have gone nowhere, costing the City tens of thousands of dollars. Sure Anthony is struggling but that makes him more empathetic to renters and young people that are in similar situations compared to Lisa Gillmor whose father built a real estate empire and who hands out huge favors to her real estate friends who then help with her campaigns.
Suds Jain,
Neither Robert Haugh not James Rowen are running for mayor of Santa Clara.
Neither of them are entrusted with taking part in the management of our city’s finances.
Neither of them are entrusted to defend our public interest against corporate special interests.
And neither has been having dozens of meetings with that special interest in an artificial way devised to keep the meetings private while making votes in the interest of that corporation while voting against publicly explaining those votes and all of this while receiving the benefit of millions of dollars spent by that corporation on their own behalf.
Neither of them claims to be holding the Forty Niners accountable while seeming to act in their interests and clearly having self interest in doing so. Neither pretends they can hold the Forty Niners accountable for honest operation of the stadium and not bilking the public out of millions while unable to even stop the Forty Niners on spending millions for their political campaigns.
I would advise you to stop caring so much about what Haugh writes about you and members of your bloc here. Or what Rowen and others comment about you. It indicates a lack of maturity to distinguish between important and relatively trivial matters. The gossipy communications between you and Becker and Caserta are embarrassing to you all. Especially to you given that you should have the life experience unlike them to not gossip behind the back of rivals and antagonists like a thirteen year old.
Spend your time convincing your bloc that the public deserves a full and detailed explanation of why you felt it better to settle the lawsuit and why it is that you know the Forty Niners are managing the stadium honestly. You have talked about winning mode financial transparency but is it complete transparency? Will the city now get total access to original financial data systems or will it still rely on the Forty Niners to self report data honestly?
While you are at being transparent yourself please also provide detailed and comprehensive notes on all the private meetings you took part in with Forty Niner Executives. And please explain why they had to be private instead of in public or even stadium authority closed session. Or why the city attorney or city manager or even city clerk should not have attended not to mention the two remaining stadium board members.
Spend your time and energy regaining public trust and not squabbling over silly things like this article.
Suds,
It is EXTREMELY shameful of you to shame Haugh and Rowen of any financial and housing circumstance that they are in. As a public servant, you owe them respect and must publicly act in the best interests of the city ( remember — your actions reflect Santa Clara). Also, please read your posts before sending them in. RUN OFF SENTENCE GALORE.
Bad Form, I guess you didn’t get the point that Becker is a loser and has never earned enough to have two nickels to rub together. Becker would be the poorest selection to help the financials of our city.
Buchser Alum
.how does suds jain know anyone lives on public assistance?
MediCal is not public assitance. People who work, as two working moms in Santa Clara who are now preparing a written petition asking for Jain’s resignation for discrimination, can verify.
Lucas,
I do not understand the question you asked of me.
3 of these are within the last 6 years. Wow, so easy for some people to dismiss all this. What this list shows me, is that he has a 15 years long solid track record of having judgments filed against him. Personally, I have ZERO judgments ever filed against me, and I bet most of the people that I know are also clean. But Becker is Better? So exemplary! Mismanaging his money is something he should quite proud of! Yup, he’s a GREAT candidate for mayor of Santa Clara. Ha ha ha.
Do tell. What’s your name so we can check your credit history. Go. Lol!
Byron,
Kevin rhetorically stated a willingness to make a bet. If you literally want to take him up on it then offer up a dollar amount you are willing to stake on successfully challenging his assertion.
You do not of course. You are just pulling a minor variation of your rhetorical recourse of asking people for their names when you are unable or unwilling to engage them on the substance of their written comments.
You are transparent with your name and your rhetoric is transparent as well.
I really do not know Mr Haugh’s situation. It is not my business. I do know of 25 families in Santa Clara where people move in with mom or dad who suffered a stroke and care for them. 3 want to also attend
the next meeting and ask Jain to tell their parents the son and or daughter cheats society.
Buchser
Suds indicates someone who relies on MediCal is living on public assistance. MediCal is not public assistance. Many working people especially with kids use it. Unless someone is on general assistance or using Afdc, and do not rely on ssi, they are not public assistance. Ps the people Jain attacks do not receive ssi, which is not public assitance. Yes?
According to that screen shot, all line items have either been dismissed or resolved. Most of those case/credit line items are more than 15 years old and likely no longer reflected on consumer credit reports anyhow. If dates are accurate, Becker would have been in his late teens or early twenties when the majority of these cases were closed. One of the most common reasons for delayed credit payments is loss of income, how many of us had a $100k salary, knew how to effectively manage bills, or had $20k sitting in a rainy day bank account in our early twenties?
This post shouldn’t have been written, it’s petty. And if the author couldn’t have deduced that before he posted, then he is petty.
In a certain way, while Haugh’s post is despicable, it may backfire. Here’s why:
We happen to live in one of the most expensive places on earth. Financial stability is tenuous for most. Think about it.
Are we not all just one sickness/death in the family, one divorce, one “job restructuring,” one recession from being kicked out of our hometown/community? Of course. Happens to most.
Even if you’re lucky and escape those calamities, we all are impacted when those life events happens to others.
For instance: you have a business. One of those life events happens to one/several of your major customers. They can’t pay you. Now their financial pain has been passed on to you. What do you do?
The latter happened to me, and many others in the Great Recession. First, you stop paying yourself so you can keep paying your staff in an effort not to pass the financial pain on to them. You pray for end of the downward spiral. Second, you cash out savings/401k (knowing you’ll be hit with tax penalties). Lastly, you max out on credit cards. There is nothing else left. All in the hope that things turn around. House underwater? You short sell to avoid foreclosure, if you can. Actually, this happened to me. Takes years and years to recover, if you do at all. No one’s “fault” of course. Just the luck/bad luck of life.
I suspect everyone can relate, especially Haugh and his posters. Of course they (all 5 of them) will never acknowledge what they all have/will experience. That’s how Trumpsters roll.
Byron,
Many can relate to financial struggle and even those who cannot should empathize.
But there is relevance to the public interest if a candidate shows lack of incapability in managing even their own personal finances prudently if they are running for office in which they are entrusted with managing far vaster financial arrangements as Becker is.
Your analogy and experience is inapplicable to Becker who has never operated a business enterprise and has never made budgetary tough calls to support an employee. If he did he might have some of the real world practical experience that he has always lacked.
Most of the cases are quite old and arguably have no bearing on who Becker is today. But one is quite recent and was around the time when Becker ran for mayor the first time. The question is if that is the same Becker in that case and do the circumstances of that case show that he mismanaged his life or were they the result of freak and unforseeable challenge? And has Becker got his finances well in order now?
It is also relevant to the public interest if a public official is in dire personal financial straits when that official also behaves as if he is the corrupt pawn of a corporate special interest he is supposed to hold accountable but in regard to which he pleads impotence at stopping then from spending millions on his behalf.
All’s I got to say, is that where’s smoke, there’s fire. You don’t get taken to court for no reason for having financial issues by multiple institutions, even if he “got off” for each one in the end. He’s “bought and paid for” by the 49ers.
Fleck’s Trump derangement is almost comical at this point. He hyperventilates at his keyboard thinking of ways to include Trumps name in a comment.
More important are becker texts to bouza.
Payment
Ben,
What Becker texts to Bouza? Can you link to them?
I regularly see people alluding to text messages or other things presumably revealed through public records requests. Unless people want to only make sense to people who already know what they know it would be best for them to be more detailed. Provide full quotations or better yet provide links to authoritative records.
Sadly, it’s really hard to digest public records and post them. You essentially have to spend a lot of time filtering through records, and hand-typing them since they usually are PDF files and are tough to share without spending time.
If I had time, I would gladly provide so many text messages acquired through CPRA requests. There’s been a lot of stuff out there.
I’ll try to filter through and provide more context. I wish the City made it easier to scan through the records.
Robert,
You cannot link to specific text messages in CPRA responses but you can at least link to batches of responses to a CPRA request and I believe a specific PDF.
You could also do a screen capture of specific bits.
I will try to post some Cpra items as photos when possible. It’s something many should see and view. I wish there was a way to simply link to the PDFs, but it’s a bit more tricky. I will certainly make a better effort to post snippets that come from PRAs.
Robert,
You can link to a public records request case as well as to specific documents.
For example here is a request:
https://santaclara.nextrequest.com/requests/22-1176
And here is a specific document provided in response to the request:
https://santaclara.nextrequest.com/documents/15990244
Thank you! I will certainly include more links like these. Very great feature that makes the requests, and documents easier to link. Thank you!
Classic Bobby when he hides from his own demons.
https://www.svvoice.com/santa-clara-blogger-charged-in-sex-crime-pleads-not-guilty/
You won’t read in this article one important fact. All charges were dismissed by the DA.
Trolling trolling trolling. Hmm.Just take a look at Twitter. you can figure out who wrote this POS.
Dr. G.’s free opinion,
Who wrote that? Can you provide a link to their twitter?
The texts between bouza and becker regarding his apoointment to planning commission will be emailed to at least a dozen people including Jeff Rosen by midnight.
Oh you mean the same DA Gillmor is asking to review the GJR she concocted? The same DA who’s done countless favors for Gillmor and Nikolai? Got it.
“Dismissed” doesn’t mean that you didn’t do it. 🤷
You know, you actually need permission/signature to review credit history.
That could be any Anthony Becker 🤦
Needless to say, this is criminal.
Buscher alum, go look at SCWeekly and Carolyn shuck’s posts. They did a number on Robert in Summer 2020 to falsely shut him down.
Dr. G,
So you are saying you think the “Classic Bobby” comment was written by Carolyn Schuk?
Seems it could be anyone from what was the Weekly including the “Editor” who just posted an insinuating tweet about it about an hour ago.
Could be anyone who has an axe to grind with Haugh though.
Robert,
Are you sure that the court cases that you tie to Becker are tied to the same Anthony Becker running against Gillmor for mayor? Is it possible that it is a different Anthony Becker?
I am glad that you at least put in a note of empathy because using this sort of personal financial distress to make a political point is distasteful. It can be a legitimate cause of concern in how it could be interpreted as reflecting poor personal financial management or even susceptibility to corruption. But if a public point is to be made about this it should be made with hesitation and sobriety.
I take no pleasure in knowing anyone was desperate enough for a car loan that they accepted a 19% APR. That is an example of disgusting predatory lending and nobody in these comments should be celebrating this sort of disclosure.
There are already three comments here that I think are a discredit to political opposition to Becker for being mean spirited. We can and should be better.
This is incredible. This idiot is an late 30s and is renting a room. That’s how accomplished Anthony and Becker is. He is not the person we need.
Becker is Better? Nope. He’s a broke, deadbeat loser. 🤣🤣🤣
Anthony Becker is the definition of loser. Homer Simpson has more going on for him than Anthony Becker.