A seriously wacked Reg article about John McCain's daughter

McCain's daughter visits Irvine:

The OC Register reports that, in Irvine today, people lined up at A Whale of a Tale Children’s Bookshoppe to meet John McCain’s daughter, 23-year-old Meghan McCain, who has written an illustrated biography of the GOP Presidential candidate entitled “My Dad, John McCain.”

The OC Register story quotes someone named Irine Barbashova. "I'm just fed up with the socialists," declares Ms. Barbashova.

OK. So I guess that means she likes McCain. Or does it mean she doesn't like 'im? (He's supporting the bailout.)

The Reg reporter explains that Barbashova arrived at the bookstore with her three daughters, who “seemed preconscious.”

They seemed preconscious? What does that mean? 

Ms. B, we’re told, has a 16-year-old who “wore a psyched smile….”

A psyched smile?

Meghan explains that her first draft of the book was too “ominous” and “intense.” Hence, “A monkey fist that John McCain may have been served as a prisoner of war was softened to a slightly less-gross chicken foot.”

OK, the Reg writer is saying that those nasty North Vietnamese jailers (a) softened prisoners’ meat and also (b) turned this monkey meat into chicken meat. Or maybe John softened and transformed the meat himself. Could be.

Evidently, Meghan was asked whether Sarah Palin would make a good subject for a bio:

"I straight up can't say I know what it's like to be a moose hunter," she said, likening Palin to ye-olde American sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Ye-olde?

Is it just me, or is this writing seriously wacked?

THE PALIN-MCCAIN FOLLIES CONTINUE:

No Comment: What She Reads to Stay Informed

We are a nation of idiots

As you know, our nation is nuts. And so is our county: the "OC."

Yeah, and so is the city of Orange, with its wacky Orange Unified School District, one of the county’s many occasional “culture war” hot spots. Tom Fuentes and his operatives have been known to hang around OUSD board meetings, stirring up right-wing trouble.

One of the trustees of that board, Steve Rocco, is a lunatic. You don’t even have to talk to him to understand that. See his pic?

Today’s OC Register recaps Rocco’s colorful school board career:

Rocco…is known for winning his seat on the school board without campaigning, his often-present beanie and dark sunglasses during meetings, and his conspiracy rants and personal attacks on other trustees during board meetings…. An appellate court recently ruled that Rocco and his co-plaintiffs must pay the $37,000 in legal fees it cost the Orange Unified School District to respond to a lawsuit claiming the district violated his freedom of speech.

He’s a freaking train wreck. So then why was he elected?

(Why was Bush elected? Twice?)

We are a nation of idiots, is why. Voters are clueless. Politicians are worthless. Everyone has a cell phone or iPod. We see idiots on TV and smile.



Qua lunatic, Rocco just keeps improving. Here’s the latest: on Saturday, Rocco “was detained and cited for allegedly stealing a bottle of Heinz ketchup from Chapman University's cafeteria.”

That’s right. A security guard saw him take the bottle, hide it on his person, and then escape on a bike. Or so said Sgt. Dan Adams of the OPD.

No word yet on whether Trustee Rocco plans to bring the bottle to the next board meeting. I hope so.

Missed opportunity for ATEP?

I came across a story (LA Times) about the recent purchase of the Boeing plant in Long Beach. It looks like it will now be converted to an enormous film studio: a million square feet!

One of the names that came up in the story was familiar. I do believe that the people who are going forward with this project are among those turned down by our Board of Trustees in the course of development of our district’s ATEP facility on 68 acres of the old Tustin helicopter station.

As I understand it, our board was not convinced that these people were for real, moneywise.

Well, clearly they were.

So it looks like our efforts to develop ATEP will now proceed with a tad less “dearthiness” in So Cal, filmstudiowise.

KABC’s story (from a week ago: Long Beach airplane hanger goes Hollywood) includes a brief video of the Boeing facility and its new owners.

NOT LONG AGO, a reader requested that we present some Curtis Mayfield. Evidently, Mayfield's "Move On Up" has become somewhat of a semi-official Obama campaign song. Here's a performance from 1987:

MOVE ON UP


I've never been much of a soul fan, but I do have my favorites. This one could be my all-time fave:

James Carr's DARK END OF THE STREET


This one goes out to My Own Private Idaho! Be well, be happy,  ST.

Review of Arellano's "History"

Luis Alfaro reviews Gustavo Arellano’s history of the OC in the LA Times:

IF SURREALISM has an address, I think it exists in Orange County.

The fifth-largest suburban county in the U.S., and the nation's second-most expensive housing market, Orange County is framed on television shows like "The O.C." and "The Real Housewives of Orange County" as a money-grubbing, social-climbing, xenophobic enclave of the super-rich.
…
It's hard to imagine that one region could be home to Rep. Robert Dornan and Mickey Mouse, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and extraterrestrial basketballer Dennis Rodman, not to mention the largest community of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. Here we have but a few of the parallel universes that one experiences while exploring the county's 789 square miles.

These odd juxtapositions and contradictions exist at the center of Gustavo Arellano's warm memoir-cum-history lesson, "Orange County," a familial journey of immigration interwoven with a hilarious dissection of the region's history. Arellano, who writes the syndicated "¡Ask a Mexican!" column for OC Weekly, is a satirist at heart, and his brand of humor and bold subject matter has its critics and supporters among Latinos and non-Latinos. He is irreverent, very funny and willfully liberal—a distinct irony coming from a region once referred to by Ronald Reagan as the place where "all the good Republicans go to die."….

For the entire piece, go to 'Orange County: A Personal History' by Gustavo Arellano

GUSTAVO EXPLAINS:

Social Sciences/Humanities and Languages party

Bea gave a party to celebrate our new hires in these two schools. It was a success! The party, I mean. The hires? They're young!

Boy could this crew use some new blood. For a while there, I think they were contemplating merging the schools and calling the resulting school the AARP.

Don't know why these pics are so jumbled on the page. But I like the jumbelosity. Here's Melanie, who has a great sense of humor.

During the party, the big debate played in the background. It was hard to miss the fact that this was mostly an Obama crowd. People did not disguise their contempt for "that clueless, mean-spirited geezer" on the TV.

Bea's kids are way cute. I think they're Republicans, though. Bea's house is in a gated community deep in Irvine. I saw guard dogs. Somebody sprayed Armor-All on the trees.

Mysteriousness and ominosity hung in the air. Don't know why.



Yemmy looked cool. We don't have a whole lot of coolitude among the faculty of these schools. Thank you, Yemmy, for being cool.





A newbie, introduced.

Brenda introduces Julie, a new writing instructor. She used to play V-ball.

Melanie and the Reb are being ironical or something. They do that.



This poor fellow (at left) was revealed to be a devotee of the dismal science, a fortuity that unleashed the evening's only ugliness. He was cornered and asked, "What do you people really know?" "Why don't you people fix this thing?" "Who do you people think you are, anyway?"

He was forced to make an impromptu presentation in defense of his so-called discipline. He managed to quell the growing violence. In the end, few were hurt. He slipped out the back door and got past the security gate, disappearing into the night.



New "Poli-Sci" blood.

We even had a cowboy. Not the "YMCA" kind. I managed to blur the pic, but so what.

Few are aware that there is a TIME WARP at the Portola exit of the toll road. Did we pass through unscathed? Who knows. Perhaps, today, I am in a new universe. This will mean nothing to you, of course.

When we got home (Modjeska Canyon), Limber Lou asked me if he could play with my car key. On and off went the lights, in the night. —In my new universe? Perhaps so.

No Comment: Sarah Palin Corn Maze

Irvine Valley College Reading Center "Open House"

IVC's new Reading/ESS Center held an "open house" today, and it was a big success.



There were free books and valuable cash prizes. Well, no cash prizes. But there were freebies in that basket.

Melanie and Beth can generally be found in the center. They seem to be pals.

The always-rowdy Academic Senate crowd dropped by and had some snacks. They were only asked to leave after that food fight broke out.


Melanie seems happy in her new digs. Here, we see her smiling, watching the Ac. Senate crew leaving Dodge. Whew!

Michael Chabon on Obama: Game On

Michael Chabon once taught here in the academic groves of Irvine Valley College. This was before the books and the short stories, the essays, the film adaptation with the original theme song penned and sung by Bob Dylan and then, of course, the Pulitzer Prize. Back then Chabon was just one of the many grad students who drove across town from the university to teach part-time. He was one of us for awhile.

Some faculty still remember his mop top of hair and every now and then an archival file is discovered and oohed and ahhed over. (See image to the right, a shrink-wrapped collection of readings dated fall 1988.) On rare occasions, desk copies still arrive addressed to Professor Michael Chabon.

Michael has an essay in the October 9th issue of the New York Review of Books: "Obama and the Conquest of Denver." Chabon accompanied his wife, the writer Ayelet Waldman, a pledged Obama delegate, to the convention. He writes about it. It's something.


excerpt:

It was not that, arriving for the DNC, I now felt less faith or confidence in Barack Obama than I did back in February. Obama turned out to be the kind of man he said he was in his books, dogged and perspicacious, considerate, principled but pragmatic, driven, and oddly blessed with a kind of universal point of human connection, of the understanding of loss, in the place where the memory of his father ought to be. No one who could see history the way Obama saw history, or who read the man’s books, would have expected him to emerge from a nasty, bitter, all but eternal presidential election campaign with his dignity or his principles entirely intact; but Obama had tried, and for the most part, I thought, he had conducted himself with honor. There could have been only one way for the idealized Obama—the perfect candidate he never claimed to be—to escape the rough and tumble of history, and that was too terrible to contemplate.

The problem was not Obama; the problem was that at the instant when Hillary Clinton at last conceded, the nature of the campaign changed. It was, I considered (perhaps under the influence of the kind smile and exhortatory squeeze on the arm bestowed on me by Jimmy Carter, president of my darkest adolescence, as he passed me in the doorway of a LoDo Mexican restaurant), like the change that might occur between the first and second volumes of some spectacular science fiction fantasy epic. At the end of the first volume, after bitter struggle, Obama had claimed the presumptive nomination. We Fremen had done the impossible, against Sardaukar and imperial shock troops alike. We had brought water to Arrakis. Now the gathered tribes of the Democratic Party—hacks, Teamsters, hat ladies, New Mexicans, residents of those states most nearly resembling Canada, Jews of South Florida, dreadlocks, crewcuts, elderlies and goths, a cowboy or two, sons and daughters of interned Japanese-Americans—had assembled on the plains of Denver to attempt to vanquish old Saruman McCain.

Suddenly it was hard not to feel that we were, once again, teetering on the point of something momentous, but something different than the previous momentousness. It was time to get serious. It was time to put on a little Curtis Mayfield (whose “Move On Up” has been one of the campaign’s unofficial theme songs) and take stock of our forces, our resolve, and the odds against us. It was time to take the fight directly to the Padishah Emperor himself. Game on was the nerdy expression I kept hearing people use.

To read the rest, click here.

Bob Parsons interview in OC Reg

Bob Parsons, who has taught at Saddleback College from the beginning (in 1968), was interviewed by LINDSEY BAGUIO:

He's the guy who has talked for thousands of hours:
…
Q: What was the atmosphere on campus 40 years ago?
A: It was really right wing and there was a dress code.... People who wanted to register had to cut their hair. During the time, there was a lot of student unrest at ... Berkley and Santa Barbara; this board (in 1968) was determined that they wouldn't put up with it. It was a different place. What loosened it up were the veterans who came back from Vietnam. A lot of them were older than the average student....

Q: What was it like having those veterans on campus?
A: When someone looked them in the eye and told them they had to get a haircut, they said, "Oh yeah?" It was a different attitude. A lot of them went along with it; we became their school. ... The college used to play the "Star Spangled Banner" in the morning. Some UC Irvine students came over in a bus and wanted to put a stop to it. And the vets came and threw them out and told them to go back to UCI. It was a different place, and started by people who were very conservative.... 

Q: How are the students today different from back then?
A: Everyone walks around with a cell phone...and you have to make them turn it off in class. They're just generally more relaxed than they used to be. I don't think they've quit studying. They are working really hard....

Q: What do you think has been the biggest change on campus?
A: It's gotten big. Traffic is a nightmare....

Q: How has the way you teach class changed?
A: ...I taught slide rule and now that's completely extinct. I had a budget of $1,500 one year for student supplies. I took it all and bought an HP calculator. That's the biggest change from a slide rule to a hand calculator.....

Q: How have you seen the field of physics change?
A: It's fun to keep up now ... --for example, energy is a big conversation, but my subject matter was worked out in 1865 by James Maxwell and Newton's Laws of Motion haven't changed. I do talk about relativity and the Large Hadron Collider. 

It's a frontier but you've got to be a PhD to be doing that. It's not the perpetual novelty that keeps me going – it's the students.

GOLLY!

Old Town Tustin on television:

Huell Howser's "California's Gold" show on Old Town Tustin airs on KCET at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Howser visited Old Town in July for a trip around the Historic District, starting at the Tustin Area Historical Museum, stopping by the Tustin Blacksmith Shop and the Wooden Indian, and ending at the Beach Pit BBQ.

Mathur's low, low road

This video provides an overview of the Sept. 22 board meeting (aside from the 40th Anniversary stuff).

The ending is pretty special. Mathur takes the low road. It's classic!

Click on the button in the middle!


My favorite part: Fuentes announces that Mathur will offer "ethics training" to other districts! (2:18)

ETHICS TRAINING?!

One of Those Days: Ghosts and the Autumnal Equinox

In the writing center Monday morning, Rebel Girl reviewed a student's essay on a significant moment, a typical developmental writing assignment. This student had chosen to write about the moment his good friend had died, an event which, as he wrote in his wobbly thesis statement, "impacted my life greatly."

The essay told the story of a group of high school friends who partied perhaps too much and took too many risks. And then at the bottom of page two, when the student began to describe the sad predictable details of the particular death (alcohol; poor judgment; etc.), Rebel Girl recognized his friend, who had been her student two years ago, in the fall semester of 2006 and who had died that November. He had sat in the third seat in the second row in a narrow classroom and she was worried about him from the beginning. A handsome young Californian, but not ready to focus, to settle down, not ready to work. Willing to show up, but not willing to write. After a few weeks, he dropped the course. There was nothing she could do. She saw him on campus, said what she usually does: "Next semester. We'll try it again." Then she read about him in the newspapers.

Two years later, here he is again, described by his young friend who still tears up about that night, what it was like to see him die.

Later the same day, Rebel Girl was holding forth in front of the fancy whiteboard in one of the airy, expansive classrooms in the new Beefsteak building. The board was already full of her scribbles: a cartoon of Joan Didion, a sketch of California, and in between stretched the plot line of a chapter from The Kite Runner. The class was tracking down moments of death, moral challenges and rebirth.

There was a bustle in the hallway. Suits. Men looking pleased with themselves, moving with appraising eyes. She recognized the college president, a handful of trustees. They walked by, glancing in the classroom through the window in the door, moved on.

The class returned to the discussion.

Rebel Girl noticed a movement at the door.

Tom Fuentes had returned and stood there, watching her. Glaring, no. He had a smile on his face. Seemed genial in a paternal manner that she found a bit spooky, a bit too reminiscent of church actually, a kind of superior demeanor, the dim gracious smile, the watchful gaze that has seen it all.

She didn't even know if he recognized her as the high profile union thug she was. Perhaps he imagined she was just a typical overpaid faculty personette, doing her damnedest to promote her socially liberal agenda. Who knows?

He stood there, smiling, bobbing slightly.

Rebel Girl remembered the time when she was twelve or so and devoured trashy novels about Henry VIII and his six unhappy wives that she bought at corner liquor stores with change stolen from her mother's tips. There was something faintly Cardinal Wolsey-like about Fuentes, she thought. Fuentes would be a perfect fit for Henry's court, full as it was of intrigue and betrayal, power plays and puffed collars, men in tights and velvet cloaks.

Eventually, he moved on and she returned her full attention to the class. She looked down. She had been wearing, as she had all day, a handmade ribbon over a foot long that she had cut from the newspaper. It read: Bailout tab: $700,000,000,000

It rustled when she walked. It floated in the breeze. It was extravagant. The font size was large and eye-catching. Maybe that was what he was looking at.

Maybe.

Resolutions & Presentations

This is the first in a series of brief videos of Monday's night's board meeting.

This video presents "resolutions & presentations" regarding Saddleback College's 40th Anniversary. Mostly, it was an opportunity for politicians to get their mugs in front of the public. Still, it was fun. I edited out Mathur and Co. as much as possible. You know how they can stink things up.

At the end, Professor Bob Parsons receives a fine resolution for his 40 years of work at the college.

Click on the button in the middle!

Tonight's board meeting

(Be sure to check out Tere's Board Meeting Highlights.)

Tonight’s meeting started with board clerk Tom Fuentes reporting actions taken in closed session: there were none.

The audience was unusually large because of board resolutions concerning Saddleback College’s 40th Anniversary (tomorrow). Numerous politicians, including stunningly corrupt Congressman Gary Miller—represented by an underling, made presentations to honor the college. It was fun. I’ll have video tomorrow.

Saddleback College President Tod Burnett managed to scrape up and display 4 or 5 former Saddleback College Presidents, including the first one (1968). Naturally, lots of photos were taken, and Chancellor Raghu Mathur and board president Don Wagner managed to get in most of them.

Professor Bob Parsons was honored—he’s been working at Saddleback College continuously these forty years. He offered some entertainingly gruff remarks. Nurses Terri Whitt and Judy Krieg were honored too, though I don’t think their efforts (volunteer work in Beliz) had anything to do with the 40 year thing.

During trustee reports, John Williams presented a few artifacts from the beginning years of Saddleback College, including a college catalog that was the size of a small pamphlet. He read from the "dress code," which forbade open-toed shoes, etc.

Tom Fuentes praised the Chancellor for organizing some sort of "ethics" training event (at Saddleback College). That produced a moment of silent weirdness. Do you suppose these people are insensible of the irony? 

There were public comments. Saddleback College Academic Senate President Bob Cosgrove spoke, as did Faculty Association President Lee Haggerty, who objected to trustee Fuentes’ and Steve Greenhut’s recent remarks in OC Blog and the OC Register. Lee referred to factual errors and even the possibility of some sort of “public” negotiating violation by Fuentes.

Two kids presented the IVC 2008-9 Associated Students budget. When they finished, they were praised for the clarity of their graphs and accounting, but they were dinged bigtime for not leaving money for the next year. Evidently, IVC student government experienced some sort of windfall last year (something over $70,000 as I recall), and so their budget (half a million) was unusually large. Evidently, this crew allocated all of that to the usual items supported by SG.

You will recall that some trustees, especially Fuentes and Wagner, have long objected to the cost to students of student government and especially the manner in which student government receives income—a percentage of book sales at the bookstore. Tonight, Lang, Wagner, and Fuentes expressed discomfort with the students’ proposed budget. Wagner, for instance, suggested that it would be better to put the extra $70 K into scholarships or otherwise return the money to students. He mentioned the tough economic times in which students now find themselves.

In the end, the matter was tabled. There can be little doubt that the students are expected to bring back a very different budget next month.

THE ACCREDITATION REPORTS

Eventually, the board got to the IVC and Saddleback Accred reports. The board does not approve these documents but it is informed about them.

Board President Don Wagner, who served on the IVC Accred focus group, offered heartfelt praise for that committee. There can be no doubt that he appreciates the sincerity, dedication, and intelligence of the classified, faculty, and administration of Irvine Valley College with whom he labored for many months. He urged his colleagues on the board to read the report and to appreciate the fine work that the group has produced. He even asserted, half jokingly, that if the ACCJC does not renew our accreditation, that will be “actionable.” Wendy G, who co-chaired the committee and who wrote most of the report, indicated agreement with that sentiment. These two are lawyers.

Trustee Lang similarly praised the committee that produced Saddleback’s Accreditation report. 

It was a love fest.

Chancellor Mathur ended all that. He made a point of praising trustees Wagner and Lang for all of their unpaid work on these committees. No doubt these two deserve praise, but it is no secret that, in the course of producing these reports, some faculty put in literally hundreds of hours for which they were not compensated. Predictably, Mathur was blind to that, an omission that IVC Academic Senate President Wendy G pointedly corrected later in the evening.

There was no indication that any of the trustees were disposed to object to these reports. Fuentes remained silent.

REASSIGNED TIME AND THE "2%" RULE

The board also discussed a report of expenditures for “reassigned time and stipends” for the 2007-08 academic year. Trustee Fuentes and Chancellor Mathur took the opportunity to pretend that reassigned time and stipends are terribly expensive to the district. Mathur, as usual, offered voodoo math in explaining the cost of reassigned time, which Trustee Bill Jay briefly undercut with some impromptu calculating.

At some point, Wendy G noted that the manner in which the original 1998 “action” (there is no policy) was taken greatly exaggerated the cost of reassigned time (the true cost is backfill with part-timers; the 1998 action absurdly requires that the instructor’s pay be used in calculating cost).

The 1998 “2%” rule seems to have changed over the years to 2.4%—a fact that obviously greatly displeased Mr. Fuentes, who sought to nail down when and how that change occurred. Mathur muttered about the accrediting commission’s demands for faculty work on SLOs and the like. Fuentes remained perturbed.

In the course of the discussion, Wendy (I think) noted that the “rule” unnecessarily and unfortunately ties the hands of the college Presidents in their efforts to run the colleges. She underscored the reality that such work as the recent college accreditation efforts (she held the enormous IVC draft in the air) are produced with a great deal of uncompensated work by faculty. (That won't do.) She asked that the trustees bear such facts in mind.

Mathur stared at her homicidally.

Trustee Lang noted that, as a matter of fact, the Saddleback College Accred report objects to the “arbitrary” nature of the “2% rule.” It complains, too, about how it restricts the college Presidents.

In the end, Fuentes recommended that the matter (despite its being only an information item) be tabled so that a more “fleshed out” report can be presented. Much to Mathur's chagrin, he declared the report to be "inadequate." He expressed his hope that the 2.4% figure would be addressed and revised “downward.”

Red meat and lies

Steve Greenhut, editorial writer for the OC Register, was on KPCC’s “AirTalk” the other day, arguing with Gustavo Arellano about controversies at our district. A friend who heard the broadcast told me that Greenhut merely repeated Tom Fuentes' absurd and stunningly dishonest talking points, recently made in an interview on Red County/OC Blog.

Have you read the interviews? Fuentes offers red meat and lies. The district, he says, is threatened by “union labor bosses” and their “liberal” agenda. Virtually nothing is said about our “plague of despair,” and our serious accreditation difficulties, brought to us by Fuentes and his friends.

This morning, Greenhut repeats the performance in his column.

Naturally, Greenhut reveals that he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. For instance, he imagines that faculty seek to avoid office hours and that they pursue “fad programs.” Huh?

To prove that faculty salaries are high, Greenhut cherry picks the unusually high salaries of “the district's real estate instructor” (?) and “[i]ts Spanish instructor” (?). He repeats Fuentes’ old canard about faculty's “36-hour weeks.”

He calls me a “union activist.” I'm hardly that. He wrongly supposes that Carl Christensen is the union’s candidate for the Mission Viejo trustee seat. No, the union supports John Wiliams, who Greenhut identifies as one of Fuentes' fellow anti-union crusaders.

Well, read Greenhut's piece. Judge for yourself.

Steve Greenhut column: An endangered friend of the taxpayer:

Anyone who is not in a coma has noticed that the U.S. economy is in the tank….

Consider what's going on at the South Orange County Community College District, which operates Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine.

The current board has a fiscally conservative majority, and has been a rare friend of the taxpayer. The board refuses to do what most public education boards do these days – give the unions what they want and then float bonds to pay for the infrastructure the districts need. One of the big secrets of such bonds is that they really are pension and salary bonds. When boards give in to union demands, they use bonds to pay for the infrastructure that they should have been able to pay for without new debt, had they held the line on pay and benefits.

The South Orange County Community College District board has constantly opposed bond issues; managed the district without debt; balanced the budget every year and stood up to the district's surly faculty union. "We are the only community college district in Orange County in the past eight years that hasn't gone out for a bond," board member Dave Lang explained during a recent interview. "You can't find a more fiscally sound college district in the state."

Furthermore, the current board has put the focus on the students, not on the district's employees. The union is furious because the board insists that all professors actually put in the office hours required by their contracts. The district is more interested in keeping the teachers in the classrooms rather than having them, say, take sabbaticals to Europe. The district has focused on expanding its core programs, such as nursing, rather than on fad programs. They've built new buildings and upgraded older ones by managing their funds rather than putting taxpayers on the hook with debt. And – here's the rub – the current board has resisted the faculty union's demand for a 10 percent raise, something that would cost more than $17 million a year if all the district's unions get a piece of that contract. This is good for taxpayers, good for students and good for the vast majority of dedicated faculty members.

Currently, there are four conservatives on the board: former O.C. GOP chief Tom Fuentes, Lang, Donald Wagner and John Williams. There are three union backers on the board: Nancy Padberg, Marcia Milchiker and William Jay. Fuentes, Lang and Williams are up for re-election and are being challenged by the apparent union slate of Bob Bliss, Carolyn Inmon and Carl Christensen. Jay also is up for re-election and is challenged by a conservative-backed candidate, Arlene Greer. If the union picks up one seat, taxpayers better open up their wallets.
…
The district has 230 faculty who earn more than $90,000 a year in base salary. Almost all those employees earn significant "additional earnings" for everything they do beyond their short week – committee chairmanships and so forth. Then they get generous benefits. For instance, the district's real estate instructor earns a total compensation package of $269,343 a year. Its Spanish instructor has a total package of $183,000 a year. A lower-paid faculty member on the list earns a total compensation package of $114,000 a year. This is for a 9 1/2 month year of 36-hour weeks with only 15 weekly classroom hours.

Writing in Red County blog, faculty member and union activist Roy Bauer explained his side of it: "Naturally, the quality of a college cannot exceed the quality of its faculty. … There was a time when faculty salaries in the [South Orange County Community College District]were relatively high. … Further, in case you haven't noticed, living in South Orange County is expensive. But the era of high … faculty salaries is long past. These days, faculty salaries do not compare well with those of other districts in the area, and this means that the [district]is headed for decline."

Bauer and others claim, unfairly, that their not getting what they want will threaten the district's accreditation.

Bauer reveals the union approach in its full glory. First, it's all about them. It's expensive to live here! Well, that's true for everyone, even the taxpayers who foot the bill. Second, the claims are not exactly true. The California Teachers Association's own 20-year earning survey finds that the SOCCCD faculty are the fourth-highest paid out of 72 districts in the state. Third, union backers are skilled at focusing attention on those who do even better than they do. The faculty union wants to be paid at the level of the Mira Costa district, which pays the highest salaries in the state and is no model for fiscal responsibility. And the union uses scare tactics (accreditation) when it can't win the arguments on their merits….

If you go to Greenhut's column, you'll find my response. I've sent a slightly expanded version of that response to "letters to the editor."

UPDATE: several people have commented on Greenhut's piece. With one exception, they blast the fellow.

Holga "Hell" at IVC, by Jason

Our pal Jason, with his odd Chinese Holga camera, took some pics this week of that weird "Hell" guy discussed in a post earlier today (Lana Lang's Repent or Hell):

Does anybody know what this gal was doing?









A couple of details: