MORE RIGHT-WING POLITICS. A source tells me that IVC's Performing Arts Center (PAC) was rented this past Sunday. He says that he is under the impression that the PAC people thought it was an
earthquake event. Instead it was a Republican Party Rally -– including Trustee
Don Wagner, local candidates, etc. I’ll seek confirmation.
UPDATE: an anonymous person emailed me to say that "they were told it was a mtng about water issues - which it was - it just also became a rally." I did some looking, and it appears that the event concerned the California "water crisis." The issue is very popular among the "patriot" or Tea Party crowd. See, e.g.,
"California Water Crisis."
As far as I know, political groups are entitled to rent the PAC. On the other hand, we sure do see lots of right-wingery in this district. Doesn't look good.
MR. GOO AT CAPO? Another source tells me that a reliable friend insists that
Raghu Mathur is a finalist for the Superintendent job at CAPO (i.e., the Capistrano Unified School District). Again, I’ll seek confirmation.
Education Alliance is the right-wing political group that hovers in the background of the CAPO board's policies and actions--at the very least EA is a major funder of CAPO trustee campaigns--and Mathur has connections with EA. Gosh, I hope the CAPO teachers union knows about this (well, if it's true).
UPDATE: I recall a meeting two or three years ago in which Mathur referred to his attendance of an Education Alliance gathering. So I checked the SOCCCD website and found the September 07
Board Meeting Highlights. There, we're informed that
Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur...thanked Trustee Wagner for inviting him to the Education Alliance dinner....
UPDATE #2: for the Spring '08 SOCCCD "Chancellor's Opening Session," Mathur invited
Lance Izumi as his special guest.
Izumi is on the Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). PRI and Izumi appear to be aligned with the Education Alliance-affiliated trustees of CAPO.
Back in December of 2009, we posted
Trojan horses in public schools, a portion of which follows:
TODAY,
the Reg reported that
A libertarian think-tank that prominently features the Capistrano Unified School District in a documentary about how the U.S. public school system is broken will screen its 49-minute film this afternoon on Capitol Hill. [The documentary] recounts a five-year effort by the CUSD Recall Committee parents group to bring reforms to a school district plagued by scandal, community unrest and allegations of corruption reaching into the highest levels of its administration.… The 2:30 p.m. screening will be hosted by two leading GOP lawmakers....
Co-hosting the screening will be the film's executive producer, Lance Izumi, and [the director]….
Lance Izumi? Does that name sound familiar? It should. Izumi was
Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur’s super-special guest speaker at the
Spring ’08 “Opening Session.” He was co-billed with
Elvis. Remember?
The filmmakers highlight the much-criticized construction of Capistrano's sprawling district office building, the grand jury indictment of a former superintendent, and the unpopular decision to build a high school on a hilly site bordered by high-voltage transmission lines, landfills and a high-pressure gasoline pipeline.
The filmmakers also traveled to Nashville, Tenn., to profile a family's unhappiness with local public schools, to Sweden to examine that country's school voucher system, and to Oakland to chronicle the turnaround of an inner-city charter school.
...
Several Capistrano trustees who ran on the CUSD Recall Committee's "reform" platform attended the May premiere of the film, drawing ire from critics who questioned why public school officials were apparently supporting a film calling for sweeping reforms to public education, including school choice [i.e., programs allowing parents to spend government vouchers on private schools].
That
is mighty strange, isn’t it? Public school officials in favor of the
private school “voucher” concept? Gee willikers! It's almost perverse!
In 1963, [Utt] claimed that "a large contingent of barefooted Africans" might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the United States. [See OC Almanac.] In that same year, he also claimed that black Africans may be training in Cuba to invade the United States.
