Sunday, October 31, 2010

Wagner's extremist connections: wacko Ahmanson and loon Frogue!

     Oct. 31: Today, I came across a month-old post by Robert Cruickshank of the Calitics blog. Essentially, it reveals that Republican 70th Assembly District candidate Don Wagner is getting campaign contributions from some seriously right-wing people and organizations, including Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and, well, STEVEN J. FROGUE.
     Yes, that Frogue.
     (Admittedly, the Frogue connection is mostly just wacky and interesting. But the extreme-right pattern of Wagnerian contributions is arguably significant.)
     I did some checking on my own, and I found that notorious right-wing nut, Howard Ahmanson, Jr., is also contributing to Wagner’s campaign (through his Fieldstead Institute).
     You’ll recall that Ahmanson is the guy who thinks it’s OK to execute gay people for, um, gayitude.
     Here’s Cruickshank post from a month ago:

Don Wagner’s Holocaust Denying Donors and Extremist Supporters (Calitics)

     Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles [DFI-LA] has called upon [Don] Wagner to give the donation [he received] from [Steve] Frogue to the Jewish Federation of Orange County. A quote from DFI-LA's Andrew Lachman:
     Tolerating Holocaust denial lies in a district that has most of Orange County's Jewish population is not acceptable. We call on Wagner to show his commitment to fighting intolerance and anti-Semitism by donating the money to the Orange County Jewish Federation.
Original post begins here:

     Don Wagner is the Republican candidate for the 70th Assembly District seat currently held by the termed-out Chuck DeVore in central Orange County. AD-70 went to Barack Obama in 2008 by a 51-47 margin, a sign that this district has become quite purple in recent years.
     But Don Wagner comes from a different tradition – the older, far-right tradition in central Orange County that produced people like DeVore, going all the way back to at least the 1950s and 1960s when the region's politics were dominated by the John Birch Society.
     Sure, his website is crafted to make him look like an unobjectionable Republican. But his list of donors and supporters suggests he's much further to the right – with donations from Holocaust deniers and support from other right-wing extremists.
. . .
     First, the Holocaust-denying donor. When I was growing up in Tustin, located in AD-70, there was a controversial history teacher at Foothill High School named Steven Frogue. He had a reputation for not just being right-wing, but even racist. I attended the other high school in our district, Tustin High, but friends of mine who went to Foothill told me about this guy and his crazy right-wing statements he would make in the classroom, including denying the Holocaust and repeating racist stereotypes about Asian and Latino students.
     About this time, those statements started getting noticed. In 1994, a group of parents went to the district and succeeded in getting Frogue reassigned to supervising detention instead of teaching history. The LA Times reported on Frogue in a 1996 article:
Frogue has been accused of denying the Holocaust, according to a former board member and several former students who say his comments about Jews and those who died at the hands of the Nazis cross over a line of ethics, propriety and recorded fact.
     Frogue went further in his capacity as a board member of the South Orange County Community College District. As the LA Times reported, Frogue denounced a class being taught at Irvine Valley College on the Holocaust by someone with ties to the Anti-Defamation League. Here's what Frogue had to say about the ADL:
     Frogue's high school students voice a similar complaint, saying his lectures are often angry diatribes against the ADL, revisionist views of this or that chapter of history or passionate speeches about who actually pulled the trigger on President Kennedy....
     "I believe Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the ADL," Frogue said in a half-whisper during a recent interview on the Foothill High campus.
     Asked to repeat his assertion, Frogue said, "That's right. . . . I believe the ADL was behind it."
     Frogue also had links to the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust-denial organization. He served on the SOCCCD board of trustees until he finally resigned in the year 2000. One of his fellow board members was Don Wagner, who later became board president.
     Wagner likes to claim he's distanced himself from the likes of Frogue. So why did Wagner accept a donation from Frogue back in May?
     Perhaps it's because Wagner himself is backed by a group of right-wing extremists. One of his key organizational supporters is the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed's new movement to elect right-wing extremists. FFC touted Wagner's win in the June primary as one of their most important nationwide successes this year:
     FFC spent weeks blanketing conservative voters in the 70th district with targeted voter guides on issues ranging from balancing the state budget to life and protecting marriage. The outcome was recently decided in another nip-and-tuck race. Don won the race against his less conservative opponents by a mere 860 votes.
     Wagner and his defenders might argue that one's donors and supporters don't necessarily reflect on the candidate himself. While that's hard to believe, we can look at Wagner's own positions and find evidence he too is a right-wing extremist.
     As the OC Weekly reported, Wagner revoked the SOCCCD schools' membership in the American Library Association after calling them "liberal busybodies." Wagner's board considered ending involvement in study abroad programs in Spain in 2005 when the Spanish government announced it was withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the SOCCCD board has been frequently accused of ignoring the boundary between church and state.
     On his website, Wagner outs himself as a card-carrying member of the religious right:
     The family is the bedrock of our civilization. It is critical to our state that we protect the family from threats to re-define it, make it obsolete, or undermine its importance to society. I will defend the God-given right of parents to teach their children their values, to defend marriage, and to defend the right to express our faith in the public square. I believe that life is precious and will fight to defend life from conception to natural death.
     In other words, he is against marriage equality, against a woman's right to choose, and for prayer in school.
     As I explained last month, Orange County is becoming bluer, partly as a rejection of the kind of extremism that Don Wagner represents.
     While Wagner is taking money from Holocaust deniers and carrying out Ralph Reed's agenda, Orange County residents in my hometown assembly district are focused on jobs, preserving good schools, and improving their quality of life. That's not something Don Wagner can or will offer.... [END OF QUOTATION]

     I noticed (see) that some interesting names come up among those who have contributed to Wagner's campaign.

      Michael Rubino of Atkinson Andelson Loya Rudd & Romo and David Hunt of gkkworks both gave money to Wagner’s campaign. Each firm has done (or is doing) work for the SOCCCD.
     Another contributor: Tom Fuentes’ former employer Tait & Associates.
     IVC’s Glen Roquemore gave $1,000 and Saddleback College’s Tod Burnett gave $250.

     The Faculty Association’s Bill Hewitt evidently gave $500 in June of 2009 and then $1,000 in September.
     Then Chancellor Raghu Mathur gave $500 in August of '09.

Update on Westphal v. Wagner — The District "outs" the student plaintiffs

     Back in December 2009, we filed a motion to allow the two student plaintiffs (Doe 1 and Doe 2) to participate anonymously. The judge granted the motion in April and issued a protective order accordingly.
     Then, this summer, the students were deposed. In August, the defendants filed a motion to vacate the “anonymity” order.
     Alas, the motion was granted, and so the students had to decide whether to go forward. “Doe 1” has chosen to withdraw, but “Doe 2,” Ms. Bain, has opted to continue with the case. I’m told that she is now a student at UC Berkeley, though she continues to take Saddleback courses online. Doe 1’s anonymity will be maintained by both sides.
     Here’s Judge Klausner’s ruling:
     Plaintiffs had asserted that anonymity was necessary to ensure Does’ safety. Plaintiffs further alleged that if the Court did not preserve Does’ anonymity, school officials and professors might retaliate against Does through prejudicial grading. In light of the purported safety concerns, the Court granted Plaintiffs request on a provisional basis. The Order specified, “Does shall only remain anonymous in the case for this stage of the proceeding. At later stages... the Court may... compel the John Does to disclose their identity or abandon the suit.”
     Now that the record has been further developed, the Court finds it unnecessary to extend anonymity to the two Doe plaintiffs. Safety was the primary rationale the Court relied on in originally granting the Does leave to proceed anonymously. However, Does’ deposition testimony presents no indication that the students fear for their physical safety. Instead, both Does indicate the possibility of prejudicial grading as a primary reason for anonymous participation in the underlying lawsuit. It is doubtful that this possibility alone provides adequate reason for proceeding anonymously. If Does were subjected to prejudicial grading due to their participation in this suit, they could seek redress in another suit. In any case, by their own admission, Does have little to support their fear of academic retaliation beyond the fact that it is theoretically possible. The Court finds that the possibility of retaliation, by school officials or others, is purely speculative. Accordingly, Does may no longer advance their action under cover of anonymity. …The April 5, 2010 Order granting plaintiff Does 1 and 2 leave to proceed under pseudonyms is vacated.
     Since then, our lawyers have filed the “reply brief” (re the case itself).
     It is my understanding that they are also working on a motion for “summary judgment.”
     So stay tuned.

Scariest, Spookiest OC Halloween Ever! (Red Emma)

     Hey, boys and ghouls, it’s that extra-spooky time of year, Halloween Eve, a celebration of ancestor worship, imagination and, yes, the occasion for Red Emma’s annual re-telling of our favorite revelatory anecdote about life as we know it here in Dissentland. The “social construction of reality,” Red Emma likes to remind his students, is a phrase used in the title of an important sociology text, a helpful and instructive synthesis of ideas built on the research of well, everybody, including Alfred Schutz, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Franz Boas, that whole gang.
     Warning!  This is an entirely true story, and so scary and spooky and frightening you may want to stop reading here, now, to avoid the hair-raising fright that it illustrates about life in the OC (which I like to pronounce “ock” for even bigger and more scarifying effect!)
     So:  It was fifteen years ago, Red and the Rebel Girl lived in a small beachside community in South County.  It was, indeed, Halloween.  We’d carved the pumpkin, decorated our little trailer, and purchased the treats (good stuff, like Snickers and Three Musketeers, not junk). Dusk settled, there was a knock on the door.  Red Emma answered, to discover a princess, a pirate and a monster of some kind. “Trick or treat,” hollered the kids.  Red loves that moment. 
     Immediately behind the trio of revelers stood, on our porch, the mother, this evening’s parent in charge.  I knew her.  A handsome woman, mid-thirties, she’d costumed herself in what was obviously her own old high school song girl or cheerleader outfit. She looked good, a sexy woman, though let’s say that she did not fit into the song costume that night as she had as a young girl. Zaftig works for Red, and I smiled warmly, and acknowledged her, offering the usual small talk about how much I liked Halloween with a frisson of perhaps Eros tossed gently in her direction.
     Then I noticed, standing a few yards back, in the twilight dark just outside the reach of my porch light, a couple, a woman and a man, same age as the sexy mom cheerleader.  Maybe one of the kids’ parents?  Aunt and uncle, or family friends along for the trick-or-treating. 
     They wore nearly identical ensembles:  big cowboy hats, tapered blue jeans, shit-kicker boots, and leather belts with giant belt buckles and magnificent floral Western shirts with mother of pearl buttons.   
     Now, here it’s important to remind you, Gentle Reader, that this was Halloween Eve but that it was also South Orange County circa 1998, in a universe which often celebrates obliviousness.  And that reality, as I remind my students, is generally assumed to be “constructed” by groups, by citizens, based on an agreed-upon, if fluid and broad, set of perceptions.  And, did I mention, it was Halloween?
     Red Emma considered the scene, Rubenesque mother in costume.  Princess, pirate, monster.  And the two adults in the shadows.
     “It’s so great,” Red offered, distributing the last of the quality chocolates, and admiring again song girl-woman and nodding in the direction of the presumptive cow-gal and cow-fella, “that the parents are dressed up too.” 
     Silence.  Nothing.  Sexy mom went a little pale.  From out of the twilight stepped the cowman, rodeo rider, line-dancer, whatever he was, thumbs in his belt loops, I kid you not.
     Slowly, carefully, he answered.  “We’re not dressed up,” he said.

*     *     * 
     And so concludes this year’s telling of the scariest, spookiest Halloween story you will ever be told, except of course for what you hear and read and see on so much commercial media, where it is possible to imagine the construction of reality in which Tea Baggers, birthers, Libertarians are, we are told, not at all what they seem:  racists, nativists, No-Nothings, pro-war nationalists, reborn John Birchers and members of the White Citizens Council, Prop 13 voters, anti-Voting Rights Act Goldwater Republicans, shills for the Koch Brothers, admirers of Newt, and on and on.
     The four truest and scariest words of this Halloween-election season?
     They’re not dressed up
Spooky Halloween music for you kids


In honor of Prop 19

Dedicated to Annie


It’s all true. The Mekons know. (Might want to pause the Jukebox below.)

Everybody's so in love
But they don't touch or meet
Eyes all weeping eyes all red
A bunch of flowers in the street

I love a millionaire, I love a millionaire
I love a millionaire, I love a millionaire

The champagne was never cheap
But I could pay someone to drink it for me
Never rise up from these sheets
Watching time just roll away

[repeat chorus]

Stretching out my bones
A million miles from home
Lust corrodes my body
I've lost count of my lovers
But I can count my money
Forever and forever

[repeat chorus]

Dreaming of a creature who is too pale and large to stand
And only feels the terror on his vain flight from earth
Lust corrodes my body
I've lost count of my lovers
But I can count my money
Forever and forever

[repeat chorus]
The Mekons

Online learning going mainstream! —PLUS: Insider trading at Apollo?

     Check out The Chronicle of Higher Education’s special edition on Online Learning.
     Subtitle: “Virtual Education Goes Mainstream”
     That’s right. Mainstream. Deal with it.
     Be sure to inspect CHE’s snazzy charts and graphs: here.
     There, one encounters such factoids as these:
  • More than 2/3 of colleges report that the amount of online courses is failing to meet demand.
  • Enrollments of online-only students pursuing B degrees, by field, 2009:
  • Criminal justice (27%)
    Computer and info tech (19%)
    Health care (16%)
    Business (14%)
    Nursing (13%)
    Public administration (12%)
    Etc.
  • Students taking at least 1 online course, 2003: 12%
  • Students taking at least 1 online course, 2008: 25%
ALSO: big trouble for U of Phoenix?

• For-Profit Schools, Tested Again (New York Times)

Back in 1978
   LAST week was challenging for the Apollo Group, the big for-profit education company that runs the University of Phoenix, Western International University and other institutions. One reason is that the Obama administration instituted new rules barring pay-for-enrollment deals among student recruiters at for-profit colleges — a development that is likely to cause significantly lower enrollment levels at Apollo and its peers.
   But last week also brought a disclosure from Apollo that the Securities and Exchange Commission had requested information about the company’s insider trading policies relating to stock sales made by some of its top officials in 2009. The sales the S.E.C. is focusing on occurred around the time that the Department of Education was asking questions about the University of Phoenix’s policies relating to money it receives under the federal government’s Title IV financial aid programs.
   A majority of Apollo’s revenue comes from federal student aid. The University of Phoenix, which accounted for 91 percent of Apollo’s net revenue this year, gets the bulk of its own revenue from Title IV programs. Just 1 percent of cash revenue at the University of Phoenix comes from student loans that aren’t channeled through the federal government.
. . .
   “Given the chairman and his son sold roughly two million shares in July of 2009 during a program review that was raising questions around the proper refund calculations, it should come as no surprise the S.E.C. is asking questions,” [Robert S. MacArthur] said.
   Stay tuned.

• New Federal Rules Set on Career Colleges (New York Times; Oct. 27)

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...