fuentes files

 
Tom, 1974
     The worst thing that ever happened to the South Orange County Community College District was the arrival and tenure of Trustee Tom Fuentes. Fuentes, until 2004 the chairman of the OC GOP, was somewhat of a kingmaker and tended to run things with an "iron fist." Though he never sought direct leadership of the board, he did transform it, for it included its share of those who sought higher office: John Williams, Don Wagner, Nancy Padberg, Dave Lang (Republicans all).
     Fuentes was known for his no-holds-barred approach to politics, which in truth infected our little college board, distorting it and its policies and actions. Fuentes' ugly shenanigans sometimes led to national embarrassment, as when he led the non-approval of "study abroad" trip to Spain on the grounds that, by withdrawing its troops from Iraq, that nation had "abandoned our fighting men and women."
     The list below is by no means the entirety of our postings about Tom Fuentes, but it’s everything going back two or three years.

~ Tom's hatred of women

~ Understanding OC political history: the importance of Butcher-Forde and the Caspers victory.

~ Tracing OC's "win at any cost" legacy

~ Why was Cella paying Overby? Why did Arlene Hoffman reveal so little about Fred Harber's activities in her courtroom testimony?


Ron Caspers c. 1973
~ Caspers & team accused of bullying solicitations in 1974; the (SOCCCD) Old Guard solicitation letter after Fuentes' arrival in 2000; worries about the pressures to collect campaign cash in 1974

The corruption files: early seventies (Fuentes, Michelena, et al.) - Jul 3, 2012
~ The new board majority (Supes) of 1970; curious pursuit of clean government on the board; the "Firehouse Restaurant" case; lobbyists before TINCUP

~ Microcosmic

~ Tom applied to replace Frogue on the SOCCCD Board in July of 2000. Did he then proclaim that there should be no appointment, that trustees should leave the matter of Frogue's replacement to voters in the general election just four months away? He did not.

~ Jolene and one other apply to replace Tom in Area 6. The Fuenteans (and their toady, Dave Lang), anticipating the board's selecting the far more qualified applicant, James Wright, urge the board not to appoint—to leave the matter to the voters in November (in five months). "That's what Tom would have done," says Jolene. No, the board has decided, says board prez Nancy Padberg. Former military man and Saddleback administrator Wright gets the nod. The Fuenteans (via Frank Mickadeit's column, which posts only hours later) cry foul.

~ The other Supes don't show to Caspers service. Too busy, I guess. Tom Fuentes has nothing to say except that he saw lots of people there. He counted 'em, apparently.


El Toro, 10/6/64: soon to be Caspers'
~ What are the odds of a guy experiencing two weird boating tragedies?

~ Both as a Santa Ana College student and as a Chapman College student, Tom got in the news—and wrote some right-wing letters, too.

~ It's pretty clear that Dick and Doc's political mastermind, Fred Harber, was the puppeteer to OC Supervisor Bob Battin's puppet. And yet Harber was Battin's "assistant." File this under: things are not always what they seem. We examine Tom Fuentes, Ron Caspers "assistant," and the extraordinary roles he seemed to play during and after Caspers' mysterious disappearance in 1974.

~ Right after Tom returned from the St. Patrick's—where he studied to be a priest—he joined Bein & Frost and commenced lobbying government officials. Evidently, he and some others, including Sheriff Gates, invested in a "singles bar" together. Golly.

Harber, 1960
~ A RIPPING YARN: Based on two 1978 articles (Reg, Times): Richard Jordan's account of how Supe Caspers and consultant Harber tried to shake 'im down. (Tom figures into this story.) Jordan brought in the DA's office, but then Caspers, Harber, and eight others mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Baja: see "Shooting Star" below. Jordan sued; the County settled: $700,000.

~ It's really quite odd. There are the ten deaths of the Shooting Star sinking. There's the Arlene Hoffman killing (arrow through chest), never solved (she was Harber's secretary). Air plane crashes galore. I know that most of this is just coincidence, but still: weird.

~ Nothing special. Tom was a Schmitz fan—until Schmitz turned hard against Nixon.

Tom, c. 1973
~ An attempt to provide a fairly big picture. Upshot: (1) Caspers and Co. [Harber, et al.] were seriously dirty; (2) Fuentes was Caspers' right-hand man during those dirty years. (3) Do the math.

~ Contra revisionism. Goofy/dishonest local pro-Fuentes right-wingers complain that Baugh and crew are undemocratic, corrupt—not like St. Tom. Wisckol smacks that down, and I provide further details.

~ ANOTHER RIPPING YARN: Rogers was OC GOP chair, 1969-72. Tells a great yarn about attempting to thwart Simon's move on George Murphy. His secretary was Arlene Hoffman, who worked for Jess Unruh and then Unruh's campaign guy, Fred Harber. Harber and Caspers were tight. They died on the Shooting Star. Much later (1994), she was killed by arrow, in Laguna Niguel; crime never solved.

~ Tom and his complex relationship with Rich Guys. He loved 'em—sought to be one of 'em. He hated when they controlled the party. He helped 'em get what they want. Where's Tom in this messy picture? WTF?



Tom meets his idol


~ A minor/obvious point about Tom's psychology.

~ He had secrets, kept 'em to himself. Died with 'em.



Tom, 1983
~ Mickadeit does his sychophantic best to portray Tom as a great man.

~ On the occasion of his death.

~ On the occasion of his death.


~ Minor tale of accidental connections between my childhood and Ron Caspers.

★ The SHOOTING STAR series (reverse chrono order):
Tim Klein on the Shooting Star, La Paz, BC, Mexico
Shooting Star, part 10: the "grand scheme of patronage" - March 22, 2012 
Shooting Star, part 9: straight-shooting conservative Tom Rogers on Caspers, Harber, and what they portended - March 20, 2012 
Shooting Star, Part 8: La Paz-to-Cabo details - March 13, 2012 
Shooting Star, part 7: my correspondence with passenger Lyle Overby - March 13, 2012 
The sinking of the Shooting Star, part 6: an 11th passenger? - March 12, 2012 
The sinking of the Shooting Star, part 5: psychics & shadow governors & seriously special executive aides - March 10, 2012 
Shooting Star, part 4: semi-rogue searchers & the elusive "unsinkable" Boston whaler - March 7, 2012 
The Sinking of the Shooting Star, part 3 - March 6, 2012 
The sinking of the Shooting Star, part 2 - March 4, 2012 
The mysterious sinking of the "Shooting Star." Part 1 - Feb 24, 2012
Tom and mentor, Ron Caspers, c. 1973
Dueling TJs? - Feb 9, 2012

Smouldering, anyway - Jan 26, 2012


~ Mutterings of a deluded, pompous ass. Feeling good about our performance, are we? Your story is "history," is it? It's actually easy to work up some passion against this guy. What a pious, narcissistic jerk.


~ Minor rustling of a dying lion, in the weeds.



~ Cella, now Fuentes.

~ Obviously, in Tom's view, the district—and the world, I think—is going to hell in a handbasket. The board ignores him.


More Tom - Nov 7, 2011





~ Tom always targeted "young people"—it was like a farm system for the Party and for Goodness on Earth. Always young men, it seemed. Took this one to the sauna at the BBC. Jeff turned out to be a pedophile. What does it all mean, Tom? We only want to understand.

~ Why doncha get a room?

~ A curious story of one old boy in the Party who was, in truth, a bit of a thug. Sloppy with acid in the 'hood. Got Tom his bust of St. Ronald.

~ They slapped me down. Tom ultimately did a victory dance and said he'd pray for me. The FPC is, as my dad used to say, as useful as "tits on a boar."

~ He figures, since I'm dying of cancer, I get to talk "tumor." And he calls Ah-nold a tumor. Guys like A, they're the real tumor, he says. I do think that Tom feels vindicated by Ah-nold's long slide into multifaceted and total ignominy. It blinds him to the mess he's made in other areas. Pissing off all those Mexicans was a seriously bad idea, dude. Claiming the high ground — that's always an unworkable strategy for a guy who daily donned brass knucks.

~ I don't really care. (Asians will survive.) But it's fun watching such profound, oblivious incorrectitude.

Fuentes - May 17, 2011


Bonzo Park - Mar 31, 2011
~ It's true. He wanted to name the "Great Park" after Nixon. Or was it Reagan? I've been examining those pictures he took with Reagan. I think Reagan disapproved of Tom. That must've been crushing. But was Tom crushed? He still had those notes from RN. Yeah. 


Who can ‘splain 'em? - Mar 24, 2011

~ Classic Tom. What boggles me about Tom, finally, is his certainty that his is right and others are wrong—not just wrong, but evil, the enemy, people to crush, to defeat, to send to hell.


~ Over the years, so many Fuenteans have gone down in flames. Recently: Carona, Street. (Still waiting for "T-Rack.") And now we see his boy John absolutely flaming out—with John giving the flames all kinds of wonderfully lurid colors and sparkles. What's Tom thinkin' right about now? What kind of Christian Soldier is he?



He has his father's eyes - Feb 10, 2011
~ Remember that great moment in Rosmary's Baby? Very cool.


~ Gosh, he'd just graduated from Chapman, but someone held out that brass ring: he ran Caspers' campaign—against the wishes of the local party. What was that thing Tom would always say years later? We support the GOP incumbents! I wonder what the ghost of Alton Allen did when he heard that?

~ Todd called me up and said, "Gosh, you're the onliest one on top of this!" I filed with the FPC. Didn't need the S-man's encouragement.

~ More of the profoundly anti-democratic philosophy at the heart of CI. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

~ Tom and some of his rich pals are seriously connected to this "conservative think tank." What do you suppose they're thinking? Pretty unbelievable stuff, that's what. It'll curl your hair.

~ It's a little-known fact, I guess: these for-profits are, well, mostly like corporate welfare: a mechanism for taking taxpayers' money and funneling it to some rich guys who don't give a shit about anything but profit. A few years from now, there'll be a massive public bailout. Thanks, GOP. 


~ Todd called me up and said, "Gosh, you're the onliest one on top of this!" I filed with the FPC. Didn't need the S-man's encouragement.


~ Just before he became the OC GOP chairman. About to get married to the "love of his life." Running around, taking care of his "properties"—just like Fred Harber used to do! A 1983 article, catching Tom at his most vibrant and hopeful. Someone needs to write a novel.

~ I ain't finished spelling out the "thuggery" part of the TAF story. But here it starts.

~ A tasty (apparent) factoid, revealing the real Tom Fuentes? Think so. 

~ Tom appears to have made his living helping firms "connect" with taxpayer money, by hook or by crook. But wasn't Tom always carping about public employee unions sucking on the public teat? I'm trying to understand how Tom didn't help others, and thus himself, do precisely that. Tom was complex (disturbed?).



~ Tom is seen doing what Tom did. Oh my.


~ Tom's Borg-like march into the infrastructure of this institution. Cronyism. Petty pay-back. Furthering careers of team members of creeps like Williams, Lang. And all the while, complaining about nepotism, cronyism, and teat-sucking. There's a special circle of hell, I think, for curious guys like you, Tom. (I hope not, but I fear so.)

~ A little docu-fiction for you kids.

~ When you get Tom Fuentes, you get his stable of stars, including Mike Carona (in federal prison), Chriss Street (fraudster), Phil Greer (ethically challenged attorney), et al. Thanks, Tom. And just what did Phil do to earn that $25,000 he got from the district to help Raghu sign the dotted line?

~ Try to guess. Could it be Tom?

~ Among those taken under Tom Fuentes' fluffy wing was one Jeffrey Ray Nielsen. Yikes!

~ It gets seriously ugly in the Ronnie Reagan Room. Wagner v. Fuentes.

~ "[Don] Wagner, [Tom] Fuentes and other board members love to crow that the SOCCCD has raised no taxes through bonds. That's true, but because of the unusual amount of tax money diverted to the district owing to its reliance on local property taxes (this peculiar funding arrangement is called "basic aid"), the district has been swimming in dough (aka tax money) for years and thus has had no need to seek bonds."

Incumbent Republican Alton Allen
taken out by Caspers, 1970
★ Tom Fuentes, Caspers' "bagman"? - Sep 17, 2009
~ Young Nathan R wanted to run against the lazy Republican incumbent, but Tom declared, "thou shalt leave GOP incumbents be!" Nathan got pissed, right on TV. Called Tom "Caspers' bagman." The truth is revealed, but Nathan's political career is over.

~ No biggie, really. It's Orange County. On the other hand, isn't Tom a Mexican? Yep. (He's a Mexican like I'm a German.) My guess: it tells us something that Tom would put up with a guy talking about his people that way. There was some serious self-loathing going on inside TAF. I'll say no more.

~ Is it possible that this was just payback for some imagined slight? Yeah, it's possible.


SEE ALSO:

 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good Lord!

3:12 PM, August 22, 2012
Anonymous said...

RIP, Tom. One day "Resentful Roy" will meet his maker, the aimless piece of cosmic shit rocketing to nowhere that he is.

10:12 PM, February 20, 2013
Roy Bauer said...

His maker is an aimless piece of cosmic shit? Do tell.

11:22 AM, March 14, 2015
Unknown said...

You sorry losers who think Tom Fuentes was so innocent, and that Roy was just making up stories, New Flash, FOIA act confirms the Shooting Star had bombs planted on it, that Fred Harbor faked his death, There we're 9 killed aboard the Shoot Star, and Ironically, Cella,and Fuentes, who worked so hard to "find" the Shooting Star, we're up to their necks in this murder of innocent people. You can't make this shit up. I lost my 3 oldest brother, Bashor's lost 3 family members, Casper's may or may not have been the target, to silence him, regardless, his two sons, were innocent victims, as we the other young men onboard. My family has Never believed this was an accident. We knew more than you think. Fuentes and Harbor will burn in Hell for what they did.

6:31 AM, January 25, 2019

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