Further up Sh*t Creek

★★★★

     Don Wagner watch: According to the always-underwhelming Matt Cunningham (Red County), trustee Don Wagner’s two Republican opponents in his bid for the 70th AD are embroiled in a slugfest over who is the dirtier campaigner. While Steven Choi and Jerry Amante smash each other in the face and pelt one another with slime balls, Don is in the audience, quietly eating his extra-buttered popcorn.

     Gary Miller is a creep: Even Republicans are jumping on the anti-Gary Miller bandwagon since the news broke that the notoriously corrupt Congressman (my Congressman) has long embellished his military record. Unlike me, he does in fact have a military record. He was at Fort Ord for seven weeks in 1967 and then was medically discharged. (Reasons for the discharge have not been disclosed.) Nevertheless, Miller seems to have spread or permitted the misinformation that he served in the military “from 1967-1968.”
     As Allen Wilson of Red County explained yesterday, Miller has written such prattle as: “The leadership skills which I experienced in the U.S. Army allow me to take the lead on issues which promote a stronger defense.”
     That stuff about his experiences preparing him to promote defense is, of course, pure horseshit. I suppose it’s possible that Miller “experienced” leadership skills (what does that mean?) during those seven weeks at Fort Ord. I recall that my late brother Ray experienced leadership skills during his training immediately after Marine boot camp. He also broke his foot kicking one of the soldiers he was leading. Maybe Miller's leadership experience was getting kicked in the head by a guy like Ray?
     In his post yesterday, Orange Juice Blog’s Larry Gilbert noted Gary Miller’s participation in Monday’s Mission Viejo Memorial Day ceremony. Miller made the opening remarks.
     I wonder what the soldiers and veterans in the audience were thinking about this guy?

Miller visits a Hollywood set, plays soldier

     City Council Red Meat Tossage: Meanwhile, last night, the City Council of the sleepy Nixonian city of Yorba Linda voted 3-0 in favor of supporting Arizona’s SB1070. Two Councilpeople essentially walked out on the vote, judging it a distraction. That left the three bozos and their red meat.
     As OC Weekly’s Matt Coker explains, an effort to support SB1070 at the Villa Park City Council failed last week (4-1). But, earlier in May, Costa Mesa declared itself a "Rule of Law" city—though, according to the Mayor, that had nothing to do with ‘Zona. Sure.
     Santa Ana condemned SB 1070. So, there you go.

UPDATE: late this afternoon, the Voice of OC’s Tracy Wood provides a fuller account of the Yorba Linda City Council discussion and vote. It appears that the discussion was very heated.

     Uncle Miltie's legacy: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that there’s faculty resistance—in the form of a petition—to an administrative plan to develop a “Milton Friedman” institute at the University of Chicago.
     In part, the faculty complaint is that administration is pushing through grand educational projects without consulting them (in academia, faculty, not administrators, are assumed to be the experts on curriculum and teaching) and that it is embracing “corporatization”:

     The establishment of a Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics without a vote of the full faculty is hardly the only action by the administration that the letter cites as objectionable. It also objects to the university's decision to allow the creation of a Confucius Institute—a language institute sponsored by the People's Republic of China—on the campus without the Faculty Senate's approval.
     The letter argues that the university has risked having its reputation used to "legitimate the spread" of such institutions, which have been cropping up at colleges in the United States and other nations around the world.
     Among other complaints, the letter alleges that the administrative staff has experienced "metastatic growth," that the administration has been interfering with academic matters at study-abroad programs, and that the administration has been withholding information on the budget and other matters from faculty governing bodies. It argues that the university has assumed "a business mentality, in which academic units are understood—even designed—to function as product lines and profit centers," and that power over academic matters is being shifted "to the donors whose favor the administrators court."

Another, lesser, problem concerns Professor Friedman and his legacy:

A faculty group formed to oppose the institute, the Committee for Open Research on Economy and Society, played a central role in the latest petition drive. The letter its leaders are submitting … characterizes Mr. Friedman as "among the most partisan, most polarizing figures in the history of this university," and says his name is associated with "his relentless championing of a free-market fundamentalism now largely discredited" and with "the services he rendered to brutally repressive regimes in Chile, China, and elsewhere."

     In a tiny parallel universe: Naturally, our problems at Irvine Valley College are not so grand, though they to some extent parallel these U of C issues. In the last year, some faculty have grown concerned that administration is pushing through educational programs without fully consulting faculty—i.e., the Academic Senate, which is the voice of faculty regarding academic matters. For instance, IVC administration pushed through a highly problematic off-campus teaching arrangement with Crean Lutheran South High School (DtB helped draw attention to those difficulties—though we never reported the most worrisome problems). Also, the administration has pushed through an “Early College” program at local high schools that, according to an Academic Senate inquiry (essentially, a poll of faculty who have taught in the program), is highly problematical.
     As a long-time member of the IVC senate, it is clear to me that, had faculty been in a position to reject these programs, they would have done so, and for the reasons that are now becoming clear. Administrators seem to have their eyes on the wrong balls.
     No doubt, in the Fall, we’ll be hearing lots more about that.
     Corporatization? Well, as you know, some of our clueless administrative leadership across the state and even in our district seem to embrace and even promote for-profit college operations such as the U of Phoenix and Argosy University. Recently, the State Chancellor for the community college system entered into an agreement with one such outfit, yielding much grumbling from faculty.
     Much of this for-profit instruction is scamular, you know. It verges on the fraudulescent. Know what I'm saying? Such instruction is expensive, and students often pay for it using government loans. In the end, many of these students get nowhere and end up with huge debt, and then the taxpayer is further up Shit Creek.
     Check out the ads in Saddleback College's student newspaper, the Lariat.