Monday, March 16, 2009

Was history made—by John and Ken?

OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano is calling out the Times for its failure to cover the March 7 “Tax Revolt” rally in Fullerton. The well-attended protest was instigated and choreographed by local radio morons “John and Ken”:
More than 15,000 people showed up last Saturday outside the Slidebar Cafe for a "Tax Revolt"... and the Los Angeles Times couldn't bring itself to cover it.... A Times editor dismissed it … as a "promotional event for radio personalities"…. (WHY CAN'T THE LA TIMES ACKNOWLEDGE THEY SCREWED UP ON JOHN & KEN?)

According to Arellano,

What happened on March 7th was something extraordinary, something as key to California conservative history as Howard Jarvis or the taking-over of the California Republican Assembly during the early 1960s by O.C. wackies.

Guess so. Whatever.

To get some sense of the racism unleashed by the event (some attendees were members of the Minutemen), check out this video (included in Arellano’s post). Warning: it's pretty ugly.



SEE ALSO:

The Tige, enjoying the Santa Ana Mountains this morning

TigerAnn loves to go outside and enjoy the fresh air.

For a while, she rested on a lounge, a Sphinx. She seemed to take in the view—Rancho Santa Margarita, in the distance.

THE TIGE RECOMMENDS THESE ARCHIVE FAVES:

Educationally sound?

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Composition, Overcrowded (3/16)
Class sizes and teaching loads for composition courses at community colleges – courses typically required of most students and seen as crucial for college success – appear to be growing well beyond levels that are considered educationally sound. ¶ That was the suggestion from preliminary data released here Saturday at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. The conference has long had standards for writing courses, based on the idea that composition teaching requires the assignment of more papers than is typical of college courses, quick turnaround on evaluating those papers, and detailed discussion of those papers with students. According to the conference's guidelines, undergraduate writing sections should be limited to 20 students (15 for remedial writing), and no faculty member should be responsible for teaching and grading more than 60 writing students a semester (or 45 students in remedial courses). ¶ It doesn't appear that anyone in charge at community colleges is paying attention….*

*
Um, actually, the pic above is of some goofy event at Cornell U. Composition classes at Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges are typically smallish. Nevertheless, in my experience, comp teachers (at Irvine Valley College, where I teach) seem to spend half their lives grading student papers. For them, the torture never stops. BTW, it seems best to prohibit student use of the semicolon altogether; they never seem to get it right;;


Read Their Lips: No New Tenure (3/16)

In a one-sided vote, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System’s Board of Regents decided Friday to eliminate tenure for all new faculty hires. Though top system officials lauded the move, many faculty groups pledged to take fight to the state Legislature. ¶ In the future, the system will offer new faculty hires only short-term contracts….


From the New York Times:

The Academic Freedom Agenda (3/10)

…[Former President Bush] had often said that he viewed the Freedom Agenda — his campaign to promote democracy around the world, and above all in the Middle East — as the great legacy of his time in office. And now, even as Obama and his foreign-policy team edge away from the language of democracy promotion, which they fear that the Freedom Agenda has rendered toxic, Bush has begun to shape what he has called the Freedom Institute, a policy center to be housed alongside his presidential library and museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University….

Imagine that! A Bush "think tank," likely run by Karl Rove, and answerable only to the Bushies. Imagine the scholarship! Did you know that Thurston Howell III was an SMU alumnus? 
 
From the Contra Costa Times:

Colleges ill-prepared for influx of parolees (3/15)

A federal court has tentatively ordered California to release as many as 57,000 inmates to relieve overcrowded prisons. Although the state is fighting the order, it could bring thousands of new students to the colleges in the next two or three years….

I hear that Fuentes' pal Mike Carona is interested in taking some courses at IVC. He's a felon you know. I suggest that he take the new "paint ball war" course at ATEP. At left, we see him in his backyard, manning his paintball Howitzer.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...