The end is near

"No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

1. WHAT ABOUT TOM? Did you see the article about Trustee Padberg in yesterday’s LA Times?

As you know, Nancy is running for Superior Court judge, office No. 4. She is running against a Superior Court Commissioner, Lyle Robertson, and a senior deputy DA—Sheila Hanson, Democrat.

Robertson has the endorsement of Robert Gallivan, the retiring judge, plus a gaggle of other judges.

But he seems to be without funds.

Plus his website is daffy. On his site's endorsement page (Robertson's website), Judge Chaffee is quoted as saying, "he's a keen guy!"

A keen guy?

I noticed that among Robertson's endorsements is one from Adam Probolsky. Probolsky is a card-carrying member of Team Fuentes/Schroeder.


anson seems most likely to win. Her campaign war chest is four times larger than Nancy’s. Plus Hanson’s been endorsed by Tony “Rat Bastard” Rackauckas, the DA. She's got the inside track.

Rackauckas, of course, has close ties to Trustee Fuentes. It is commonly said that Fuentes' crew--led by attorney Mike Schroeder--is very powerful in OC. Schroeder is a close advisor to both DA Rackauckas and OC Sheriff Mike Carona.

To Beelzebub, too.

Meanwhile, Nancy Padberg has been endorsed by the State California Republican Assembly—a very conservative body. Plus the OC Young Republicans. They're pretty conservative, too.

An impressive group of prominent Republicans has endorsed her. (See Nancy's website). Plainly, Nancy's the Republican choice, and the conservative choice, for this non-partisan office.

According to Nancy's website, all of our (SOCCCD) trustees have endorsed her.

Except for one. Guess who?


’ve been told (I’ll seek confirmation) that, in this race, if no one achieves a simple majority in the upcoming election (June 6), then there’ll be a run-off.

Further, I’ve been told that, if Nancy remains in the race at that point, she cannot also serve as Trustee.

Looks like things could get interesting, starting June 7.

2. ABOUT NANCY. Nancy Padberg’s website includes a section “about Nancy.” It says:

Prior to practicing law and nearly 20 years ago, I was instrumental in securing the arrest and conviction of a high school teacher who sexually molested his female students for nearly ten years. When school administration and local law enforcement were unable to protect our students, I was able to secure his removal from the classroom and end his access to students by getting his teaching credential revoked before his conviction and incarceration.

I did not know that. Inquiring minds wanna know more.

Here’s an odd factoid. Listed among Padberg’s endorsements is “Councilwoman Christina Shea, City of Irvine.”

But listed among Hanson’s endorsements is—you guessed it!— “Christina Shea, Councilmember, City of Irvine.”

Um, I don’t get it.

I guess voters have sex crimes on the brain. In her biography, Hanson emphasizes that she was:

Sexual Assault Prosecutor—Prosecuted Orange County’s most dangerous sex offenders while assigned to the sexual assault unit prosecuting rapists, child molesters and sexually violent predators for more than 5 years.

3. CAREER STUDENT. This morning's New York Times had an odd little story about “career students." It focussed on one student in particular:

Despite his 12 years as an undergraduate student, Johnny Lechner realized something was missing from his academic career: he had never studied abroad… And so, Mr. Lechner, 29, who was finally expected to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, withdrew his application for graduation on Monday, five days before commencement…Michelle Eigenberger, an editor at the student newspaper, The Royal Purple, said Mr. Lechner might have achieved celebrity status, but most students were tired of it…"It's getting old," Ms. Eigenberger said. "For the sanity of the rest of the campus, we want him to get out of here."

Many of us in the district have the very same feeling about Raghu Mathur.



4. THE END IS NEAR. Recently, at a birthday dinner, I sat next to the spouse of a colleague. This fellow, who teaches at a local High School, told me that a particular year of students—I’ve forgotten which one: maybe it was 16-year-olds—is significantly “worse” than anything before seen. He spoke about these students as though they were a cloud of locusts on the horizon.

“How’s that possible?” I asked. "Aren’t such changes usually gradual? What could explain a sudden drop in the quality [aka "preparedness"] of students?” I asked.

The fellow was adamant. He was not sure why this was happening, but it was happening all right.


Then, this morning, I came upon an article (in the NYT) about a mysterious drop in SAT scores:

…[A] new mystery has arisen over the college admissions exam. Many colleges are reporting that their applicants' average scores this year on the verbal and math sections of the exam fell significantly, some by more than 10 points. Usually, scores change glacially, a point or two a year. Colleges and board officials are unsure of the reasons for the decline, and no one points to scoring errors. But the declines have created jitters and puzzlement.

Lee Stetson, dean of admissions [and, no doubt, of hats] at the University of Pennsylvania, said he noticed the decline last fall. "It was only four or five points," he said, "but it was too much of a shift to be a coincidence…He added that at a meeting of Ivy League admissions deans yesterday "there was general concurrence that SAT scores had dropped a nominal amount."

That trend is being reported elsewhere. The University of California saw a 15-point drop in average scores. At the University of Washington, the decline was 5 to 10 points.

The article goes on to offer possible explanations. Check it out. (Colleges report mystery decline in SAT scores)

I sure hope that my High School teacher friend wasn’t onto something! Creepy, ain't it?

But enough about that.

Summer's arrived!

Plus: Happy graduation, graduates!