OC Weekly follows up on our "Holocaust museum shooter" story

Sheesh, I just noticed that the OC Weekly’s Matt Coker took my recent “Holocaust museum shooter” dot-connecting saga (Part 1, Part 2) and ran with it. I'm pleased! TANGLED WEB OF HATE WEAVED BY CARTO, VON BRUNN & CO. Essentially, Matt repeats my dot-connectings, adding a few details, but he also shares his memories of a notorious board meeting back in '98, involving Nazis and JDL thugs (a meeting we described in detail in Dissent; see Oh, what a night! and Night of the Nazi):

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry and it takes Irvine Valley College philosophy professor Roy Bauer to connect the dots between National Holocaust Museum shooter James Wenneker von Brunn, some of our most notorious local haters and The Unabauer's own South Orange County Community College District.

… As Bauer notes on his Dissent the Blog here and here, von Brunn was once employed by Noontide Press, which is currently based in Newport Beach and is part of the Institute of Historical Review, which over the years has been located in Torrance, Costa Mesa and, most recently, Newport Beach. … So what does any of this have to do with the community-college district? Or anything? Glad you asked. … In 1983, von Brunn was sentenced to prison for attempted armed kidnapping of members of the Federal Reserve board. After he was released from prison in 1989, he came to Southern California to work at Noontide Press. That was during the IHR reign of now 82-year-old Willis Carto. According to Talking Points Memo blogger Zachary Roth, Von Brunn tried to use Wikipedia to promote the work of Carto, who claims to be a Jeffersonian and populist, not a racist and anti-Semite. In 1955, Carto founded Liberty Lobby, which was best known for publishing the newspaper The Spotlight from 1975 and 2001. … It was the [paper] that promoted white supremacy and denied the Holocaust ever happened. Carto in 1969 started Noontide Press, which has published books on white racialism and, with David Hoggan's The Six Million Myth, became among the first publishers to deny the Holocaust happened. A decade later Carto founded the IHR as sort of an umbrella organization over all his publishing ventures. But he was booted out by his own board in the early 1990s over misuse of funds as IHR and Noontide Press was facing bankruptcy. It is believed von Brunn left Noontide Press around this time. Carto has said he did not know von Brunn, while Weber says he only knew of him. Weber also maintains IHR and Noontide have returned to their "populist" roots since Carto's ouster. I'll let you check out his websites and decide for yourself. Carto and several Spotlight staff members went off to start a new newspaper called American Free Press. Among his stable of writers is D.C.-based Michael Collins Piper, who hosts a weekday talk program on shortwave radio that has been described as pointedly anti-Zionist.

From 1996 to 2000 [actually, from 1992 until 2000], the South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) had a board trustee named Steven J. Frogue, who was also a history teacher at Foothill High School in Tustin. Frogue was controversial locally because there were reports out of his classrooms that he had said some nutty things, such as denying or questioning the number of Jewish deaths caused by the Holocaust. Other than an embarrassing headline or two, he escaped political damage that would threaten his board seat. But then in 1998 [actually, August, 1997] Frogue tried to get the board to use taxpayer funds to cover some expenses for a John F. Kennedy assassination symposium he was organizing as a summer elective course at Irvine Valley College. [Note: actually, the forum would have been at Saddleback.] ... A war was waging at the time that pitted the conservative board majority Frogue was aligned with against some administrators and faculty members (including Bauer) over who should make decisions regarding academics, the naming of deans and other matters that had traditionally been overseen by the Faculty Senate. Doing some digging, Frogue's foes discovered that among the "experts" the trustee had enlisted for his forum was Piper, who had just penned a book that attributed the JFK assassination to the CIA and Israel, with an assist from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Among the costs the Frogue-led majority agreed to pick up were the travel expenses of Piper and other speakers--some of whom had been branded as equally as loony. Taking a look at Frogue's past comments with new eyes, as well as scribbling down new quotes he was making while struggling to defend himself amid a new controversy, it was discovered the trustee was a big fan of Carto, the IHR and Liberty Lobby. [Actually, some of that had already been revealed in 1994 by the IVC Voice and then the OC Reg.] The story of the little college district hosting a Holocaust denier and other nutbars at a JFK assassination forum generated national headlines, then international ones. Late night comics made fun of the SOCCCD. Subsequent board meetings turned into three-ring circuses—and smelled about as bad. The worst, on a steamy June 15, 1998, night, featured appearances by Piper, trenchcoated National Socialist and admitted child molester Joe Fields, Jewish Defense League wack bags Barry Krugel and Irv Rubin (now dead, from suicide or murder in jail) and other area Nazis, Zionists and the people who love them. Cameras and security guards were everywhere. Frogue looked as if he was in the midst of passing a crome-spiked German helmet up on the dais. Having covered that meeting, this exchange between opposing audience still echoes in my head: "Nazi!" "Cockroach!" Student trustee Marie Hill summed it up best: "Every time I get up in the morning and see a story about this district in the Orange County Register, it's like seeing your mother on The Jerry Springer Show." Frogue was nearly recalled—but damn if Orange County is going to toss out an incumbent. After the controversy died down, he quietly resigned in 2000—before his term was up so his board pals could appoint his replacement. South County was rewarded with the equally odious Tom Fuentes, the former Orange County Republican Party chairman now loathed by much of the SOCCCD faculty.

In Bryce Canyon, a few weeks ago.

Fraud or no?

Monday’s OC Reg story about the curious way that Saddleback College receives state funds for Emeritus (for-the-elderly) PE courses (Is college cheating state for seniors’ fitness classes?) has legs, I guess. As of this morning, the story, which was occasioned by the persistent complaints of Laguna Woods Woods resident Doug Goforth, has attracted 64 comments, almost all of them indignant and angry. That’s not counting comments that the follow-up piece, including a brief response from Saddleback College’s Jennie McCue, has attracted.

On the other hand, only five comments were posted in the last two days, and so reader interest is flagging.

"They're free, Pops!"

In that follow-up piece (which appeared only hours after Monday’s initial article), the college had been asked to respond to Mr. Goforth’s claims, and McCue did so, but her remarks did not respond to important aspects of Goforth’s objections—essentially, that fraud is afoot.

Further, the Reg reporter, Teri Sforza, stated that “we’re still waiting on dollar figures for the Emeritus physical education program….”

Naturally, since Monday, I’ve been keeping up with the Reg, hoping to see those dollar figures and any further explanation or defense by the college. As far as I know, after five days, none has appeared (at least in the Reg).

Yesterday, the Reg posted the article again (Laguna Woods man skeptical of classes), this time essentially combining the original article with the follow-up.

Sforza repeats that:

We could be way off base here, but the entire episode sounds hauntingly similar to the “phantom classes” investigation done by our colleagues at the Register five years ago. They found that the state's community colleges artificially inflated enrollment by counting high school athletes – at their regular high school sports practices – as community college students.

Yeah. The worry here is that, once again, a kind of fraud is afoot.

Naturally, one must keep these matters in perspective: the state's community college system is huge, and the occurrence of instances of fraud simpliciter are pretty rare. Instances of systemic unselfish fraud (i.e., fraud for the sake of programs, not perpetrators' gain) are, I suppose, less rare, but by no means epitomize the system.

By Friday, had Sforza received any financial data?

We have asked Saddleback, and the state of California, for dollar details of these “Emeritus” physical education classes, both locally and statewide. We are waiting for those figures, and we'll keep you posted.

Sforza also quotes from a petition “for Eliminating Clubhouse One Saddleback Emeritus Classes,” which was presented to an LWV governing board weeks ago:

“This class is not a traditional class environment in that it is not designed for group instruction. Since there is only one Saddleback College instructor present for the class, most of the students never receive individual instruction either. The Fitness Center Staff is used to assist in the operation of the facility while these classes are in session. Most workout programs of residents are prepared by this staff outside of class. This same staff operates the Fitness Center in the afternoon and evenings without a Saddleback instructor because there is no additional benefit to the residents in having an instructor there.”

Sforza once again notes that, despite the petition, LWV’s governing board decided that residents liked the classes, though the board evidently recognized the need for some changes, including adding another instructor per course.

Some critics of Saddleback's Emeritus PE courses are pretty clueless about public education and, too often, they offer the simplistic demagogic rhetoric of the “government is the problem” crowd. But it seems to me that, at bottom, they do have a point here. Are we (i.e., the two colleges of SOCCCD) getting state funds for courses that aren’t really courses or that aren’t sufficiently course-like?

Seems so. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Let's hope we won't once again become the poster child for some idiocy or scandal.