That wacky Don Wagner!

.....Back in September, as always, Tracy’s Board Meeting Highlights described trustee reports given during the SOCCCD board meeting. Trustee Don Wagner, it said, reported that he had “attended the Education Alliance dinner and encouraged everyone in the community to take a look the organization, of which he is a board member.”
.....Near as I can tell, EA is growing and is becoming a player in OC politics. (For a brief review of its activities since 1994, read this.)
.....Well, ever since Tracy’s report, I have regularly visited the Education Alliance website (see), keeping an eye on the organization.
.....Education Alliance’s politics are typical of the religious right. Its platform (see) lists seven “principles”:

1. Back to basics education
2. Rights of parents
3. Local control
4. No bilingual education
5. Eliminating union and other special interests control over school administration
6. Promoting positive values and discipline
7. Term limits

.....Now wait a minute! Don’s on the board of EA, and EA favors term limits.
.....According to EA, term limits “prevent constant unbroken sustained long-term re-election of any particular individual to any particular office in the government of education.” That’s a bad thing, evidently.
.....OK, but Don Wagner holds office in the government of education. He’s a trustee of a community college district.
.....Don was elected in 1998. He was reelected in 2002. And then again in 2006.
.....Just sayin’.
.....From now on, though, I'm callin' him "Ralph Waldo" Wagner.

Some district history you may have missed: Wagner debates, 1998



SEE also Video: Wagner goes after "liberal busybodies"

Fear and loathing in Costa Mesa

A Gustavo Arellano review in this afternoon’s OC Weekly: Humberto Caspa's New Book Chronicles the Fear and Loathing of Mexicans in Costa Mesa

If Orange County is the Mexican-hating capital of America, then Costa Mesa is its capitol—the crucible where anti-immigrant measures get debated, adopted, executed, and then mimicked nationwide. The past four years alone have seen the city introduce America to Minutemen mayors, migra agents in city jails, shuttering of day-labor centers and human-relations commissions, and arresting local activists. Couple that with xenophobic NIMBYers, and no wonder Humberto Caspa titled his book chronicling Costa Mesa’s Mexican madness Terror in the Latino Barrio: The Rise of the New Right in Local Government….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: The lawn is full of breathing statues

Some poetry. It helps.

from Elizabeth Spires:

The Faces of Children

Meeting old friends after a long time, we see
with surprise how they have changed, and must imagine,
despite the mirror's lies, that change is upon us, too.

Once, in our twenties, we thought we would never die.
Now, as one thoughtlessly shuffles a deck of cards,
we have run through half our lives.


The afternoon has vanished, the evening changing
us into four shadows mildly talking on a porch.
And as we talk, we listen to the children play
the games that we played once. In joy and terror,
they cry out in surprise as the seeker finds the one in hiding,
or in fairytale tableau, each one is tapped and turned

to stone. The lawn is full of breathing statues who wait
to be changed back again, and we can do nothing but stand
to one side of our children's games, our children's lives.


We are the conjurors who take away all pain,
and we are the ones who cannot take away the pain at all.
They do not ask, as lately we have asked ourselves,

Who was I then? And what must I become?
Like newly minted coins, their faces catch
the evening's radiance. They are so sure of us,

more sure than we are of ourselves. Our children:
who gently push us toward the end of our own lives.
The future beckons brightly. They trust us to lead them there.