Showing posts with label Frank Mickadeit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Mickadeit. Show all posts

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Gustavo Arellano: Longtime editor of the OC Weekly resigns

Gustavo earlier this year at the UCI launch party for Orange County: A Literary Field Guide,
edited by Rebel Girl and Red Emma, with a foreword by the Mexican himself. 
The Saddleback College "Gaucho"
—a perennial embarrassment
Word came down Friday morning that Gustavo Arellano had resigned from the OC Weekly. Faced with an ultimatum from the corporate owners to cut half his staff, Arellano proposed a plan to keep them all employed by cutting his own salary. That proposal was rejected.  He resigned as he had told them he would. (As Rebel Girl's 93-year-old Aunt Lucy wrote on Facebook: "What a thoughtful man. God bless him." It's hard to imagine the OC Weekly without Gustavo, who's been writing for it since 2001.

The LA Times has the story here:
OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano resigns from alt-weekly newspaper in dispute over cost cuts (Oct 13)
You could call Gustavo up and say "Help," and he'd help.

Gustavo with Rebel Girl, her cousin former OCC prof Sharon Daniel and Red Emma
at Newport Beach Library's "Library Live" kick-off event for the season in September.
You could say, "Guess what they're doing now!" and he'd listen.

We made the cover! (1998)
Long after the LA Times left the county and the OC Register could care little or less, the OC Weekly continued to care - because that was their job and they were led by a man who understood that.

You could send Gustavo students looking for meaningful internships and he'd give them those internships and then, years later, hire one as a full-time reporter: IVC alum Mary Carreon whose cover story graces Gustavo's final issue.

We will miss him in the pages of the Weekly but fully expect to see him elsewhere continuing to raise desmadre. Indeed, Gustavo was a guest on NPR's All Things Considered Saturday afternoon, part of  The Barbershop, a roundtable of journalists who today discussed soccer, Eminem, the Boy Scouts and much more.

For sense of Gustavo's visionary leadership and the Weekly's contribution to covering our fair district, here are some highlights, some written by Gustavo, others by other fearless Weekly staffers, especially the indefatigable Matt Coker (OMG! Matt. Jeez.). Their coverage made a difference. We owe them some good tequila. And more.

Trustee Dave Lang and OC Sheriff Mike Carona, felon
SOCCCD newbies may be particularly interested. The past, as Faulkner said, is not even past. Not even! Especially here! You can't make this stuff up, though you wish you could. Together these articles create quite a story of the last couple decades. Just look at the titles! It's sort of unbelievable, but then again, as we at Dissent like to say, "It's Orange County, Jake."

* * *

✩ Connecting Donald Trump Dots with OC's Steve Frogue and John G. Schmitz (2017)
     What do former (as in retired) far-right South County disgraced politician Steve Frogue and former (as in no more) far-far-far right South County disgraced politician John Schmitz have in common?
     BZZZZZ!
     The answer is: sons who worked on Donald Trump's transition team (and still sniff around the White House).
     Half of the preceding game show Q&A is brought to you by Dissent the Blog, operated by the ever-rascally Irvine Valley College philosophy professor Roy Bauer....

Hung with pride at IVC Library

✩ Irvine Valley College to Rededicate Emigdio Vasquez Mural THIS THURSDAY (2015)
     ...Irvine Valley College ain't exactly thought of as a Chicano mural stronghold, but it's one of the many places in Orange County that hosts a mural by legendary artist Emigdio Vasquez--a 40'x8' beauty called La Educación y El Trabajo (Education and Work). And, unlike the rest of OC--which keeps letting the maestro's work fade away or tries to criminalize it--IVC cares enough about its treasure to not only take care of their Vasquez mural, but to restore it, and rededicate it in a ceremony this Thursday....

     ...1993: Two African-American students at Saddleback College running for homecoming king and queen abandon their efforts after receiving hate mail. After a town-hall meeting to address the issue, the president of the Black Student Union finds a racist note under his car's windshield wiper.
     1994: OC Register letter to the editor: "Black Americans [should] be grateful for the fact that their ancestors were rescued from the horrors of African tribal warfare [and were] brought here by our Southern states, albeit as slaves."....

     …But Frank M. Meldau stepping away from his Trustee Area 7 seat has created some fireworks. Topping the list of candidates seeking the seat is John S. Williams, who served on the same SOCCCD board for years, spanning the end of Frogue's and beginning of Fuentes' terms.…
     Williams left the board to become Orange County's public administrator/public guardian, elected/appointed offices that left Williams in charge of estates left by Orange Countians with no heirs and the affairs of living people who cannot fully care for themselves and have no family to help them. Williams was ultimately driven out of office by two separate grand jury reports and an Orange County Board of Supervisors that blasted his management of the offices. It was telling because friends and supporters of Williams were among those who told him to scram. His departure turned bizarre when he remained in his physical office after he said he'd leave, and the board was forced to have the locks changed to keep him out….

✩ Frank Mickadeit, OC Register Columnist, Slams College Professor on Behalf of Late Tom Fuentes (2012)
     ...In a follow-up post, [IVC Philosophy prof Roy] Bauer—prodded by Mickadeit and The Liberal OC's Dan Chmielewski—goes to great lengths to amplify the sins of Fuentes with more fact-based ammo than either critic has ever deployed. Like that Fuentes 40 years ago was the right-hand man to Ronald W. Caspers, during a time the Register itself was reporting on the corrupt county supervisor's bribery, unethical election and other assorted political corruption....

✩ Tom Fuentes, Longtime Head of Orange County GOP/Protector of Pedophile Priests, Passes Away from Cancer (2012)
     ...The best that can be said about Fuentes is that he was colorfulif, by colorful, you mean you enjoyed a man who helped put poll guards outside Latino-heavy precincts during a 1988 election that cost Fuentes, Curt Pringle and others $400,000 in a civil judgement, or someone who once opined, "I can tell you the registration of the people in the house by observing the neatness of the lawn, what cars are in the driveway...and whether there is a leaky oil can in the driveway."....

✩ The Evil of Froguenstein (1998)
     ...News of the [Frogue "Warren Commission"] seminar turned seats at the district's monthly board meetings into hot tickets. First came Israel backers, Holocaust survivors and militant Jewish activists. They were soon joined by Frogue supporters—uninvited, according to Zanelli—who spouted neo-Nazi and white-supremacist rhetoric. While protectors and supporters took over the meetings—loudly—the man of the hour either remained silent or didn't show up at all. Frogue's defenders insist he was trying to keep an out-of-control situation from getting worse. Others read his silence as smugness toward critics or agreement with creepy supporters....

Black history?
✩ Irvine Valley College Celebrates Black History Month with Gandhi, Graffiti Wall, Double Obamas! (2010)
     ...Oh, the racialist merriment of the South Orange County Community College District never end! We've previously written about Saddleback College's gaucho-masquerading-as-bandito, and now Irvine Valley College has gotten into the simplistic-approach-to-race game so endemic in Orange County. IVC spokesperson Diane Oaks sent out a campus-wide email yesterday advertising the juco's Feb. 24 Black History Month celebration. Attached was a flyer (above) that is...interesting....
     For starters: exactly how is Mahatma Gandhi black?

✩ Tangled Web of Hate Weaved By Carto, Von Brunn & Co. (2009)
     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.
     Keep your eyes on the road because it gets twisty....

✩ Heriberto Erick Vergara Calvillo Gets 22 Years for Role in Slaying of Popular IVC Student (2014)
Raghu P. Mathur - more DtB
Photoshoppery in the Weekly
✩ Campuses Remember Mikel Anthony Williams and Carlos Salas, Victims of Violent Deaths (2012)
     A 28-year-old man who'd admitted his involvement in the fatal stabbing of a popular Irvine Valley College student was sentenced today to 22 years in state prison....

✩ Saddleback College Students Seek to De-Mexicanize their School's Gaucho Mascot (2010)
     ..."Whereas, Saddleback College, an educational establishment, reiterates institutional racism through caricatures of a minority that misrepresent it, and Whereas, the inaccurate depiction of the Gaucho suggests a climate of tolerance towards stereotype," the resolution states before asking for the "halt of Saddleback College merchandise and school publications with the image of the current Gaucho."....

✩ Separated at Birth? Ask a Mexican's Logo, Saddleback College's Gaucho (2009)
     My first actual visit to the campus happened last week, at a well-attended lecture that was well-attended only because nearly all the attendees earned extra credit. I took a quick glance at the school's newspaper, the Lariat, before my speech and became speechless. There, in the sports page, was the logo for Saddleback's sports teams' nickname, the Gaucho, the fabled cowboy of the Argentine pampas. Except it wasn't a Gaucho—it was a dirty Mexican that looked just like my dirty Mexican!....

✩ Alan Cohen (2006)
     At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes about his father, biologist Alan Cohen, who taught at Irvine Valley College. Cohen died following a heart attack two weeks ago....
✩ Darius Porter, Freeway Suicide or Accident Victim, Remembered by IVC Basketball Team (2013)
     Irvine Valley College's basketball program is mourning the loss of a former player, while wondering if the young man took his own life by wandering on foot into freeway traffic....

✩ Why Does Saddleback College Have an MRAP Armored Vehicle? (2014)
     ...The campus cops acquired the 2012 [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle] this April at no cost through the federal 1033 program. The South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) approved the transfer.
     "I think the trustees let our cops get an MRAP when they found out that some of our students are Democrats," says Irvine Valley College (IVC) philosophy professor Roy Bauer. He also runs Dissent the Blog, which kept a close eye on the SOCCCD that IVC and Saddleback belong to, when police tried unsuccessfully to arm up from carrying .38 Specials to 9mm handguns....

     Irvine Valley College professor Roy Bauer's Dissent the Blog is reporting that after about a decade, Raghu Mather is out as chancellor of the South Orange County Community College District.
It's official. During tonight's board meeting, Board Clerk Marcia Milchiker read out board actions taken during tonight's closed session. She reported that a decision was made essentially to end Chancellor Mathur's continued tenure as Chancellor.
     The vote was apparently 5-2, with board president Don Wagner and trustees Milchiker, Nancy Padberg, William Jay and John Williams voting for the agreement to terminate and trustees Tom Fuentes and Dave Lang voting against....

✩ College District Board's Battle Cry: Send Lawyers, Hired Guns and Money (2010)
     The South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) board votes tonight on whether to pay a private lawyer $25,000 in taxpayer funds for helping negotiate what the district calls the "Mathur settlement." Why the district must settle anything with Raghu Mathur, who in January was fired/didn't have his contract renewed/was lovingly told it's time to tackle new career challenges (depending on who is doing the spinning), is unclear. Why it's paying someone other than the lawyers it already pays to handle labor matters is equally murky. What is known is the lawyer in line to get the dough has more skeletons in his closet than a college anatomy department.
     He's Phillip Greer, Orange County Republican politicians' attorney of choice....
Trustee and Public Administrator
John Williams


✩ [UPDATED] Federal Lawsuit Targets Orange County College District Prayers (2009)
     ...The district's campuses are Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine, but Westphal v. Wagner ... specifically targets prayers at Saddleback, where school officials are accused of routinely sponsoring official invocations at events for students and faculty, including scholarship-award ceremonies, commencement ceremonies and training programs for faculty....

✩ UPDATED: College Board Sued Over Prayers Weighs Prayer Policy Tonight (2009)

✩ "God's Lawyer" Aids College District in Prayer Suit (2009)
     ...The new suit against the SOCCCD was filed last week by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of Saddleback College faculty members, former and current students and one Irvine Valley College professor, Roy Bauer. Writing as the ever-lovable "Chunk Wheeler" on his Dissent the Blog, the philosophy prof points out that the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom is now known as the Pro-Family Law Center of Abiding Truth Ministries.
     The resource center presents writings by its president and lead attorney Scott Lively, who co-wrote with Kevin Abrams The Pink Swastika, which denounces as a gay myth the fact that the German Nazis were anti-homosexual. Bauer blogs that Bill Berkowitz of Buzzflash called The Pink Swastika a "Holocaust revisionist anti-gay book" and said Lively declared "war against the Southern Poverty Law Center for refusing to remove his Abiding Truth Ministries from its list of hate groups."
     Another anti-gay book Bauer came across was As We Sodomize America by O.R. Adams Jr., who mentions a documentary that Llewellyn partly narrated called The Gay Agenda. Adams, who Bauer labels "a nutjob," describes The Gay Agenda as "an authoritative and comprehensive explanation of the homosexual movement, and homosexual activity."....

✩ Don Wagner Kicks Off Assembly Bid With a Little Help From His Far-Out, Far-Right Friends (2009)
     ...Both Fuentes boy toys—that would be the Christ and the chancellor—got a run for their tidings during the Chancellor's Opening Session in August, when Mathur showed a video of images accompanied by the tune "God Bless the U.S.A." The collage ended with the words, "Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you—Jesus Christ and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom."....

The embattled Tom Fuentes, Mr. GOP, RIP
✩ [UPDATED:] Eamon Daniel Higgins GUILTY in Foreign Student Visa Fraud (2010)
     Eamon Daniel Higgins, 46, of Laguna Niguel, pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiracy for allegedly orchestrating a visa fraud scheme involving dozens of Middle Eastern students enrolled at Southern California colleges and universities, including Irvine Valley College.
...
     He obtained counterfeit California driver's licenses, took tests and exams and attended classes on behalf of students from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar. Co-conspirators helped Higgins with his scheme, including a mysterious blonde who apparently posed as a Middle Eastern man....


✩ What Do Barry Bonds and Saddleback Ballplayers Have in Common? (2006)
     The answer — alleged steroid abuse — is apparently in the May 11 issue of the Lariat, the student newspaper of the goosesteppin' South Orange County Community College District's Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College (IVC) in Irvine....

✩ No Entiendo: Tom Fuentes and friends ax Saddleback Colleges Spain study-abroad program (2005)
     ...But [former OC GOP chair] Fuentes shocked everyone in the audience when he began to assail his ancestral home. "One hundred ninety-five years ago, in 1810, my family arrived on this continent from Spain, so I have an affection for that land," Fuentes said. But he quickly dropped the amicable pretense, simultaneously attacking Saddleback College's study-abroad program as catering to "an elite" and as a death wish given the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings that left 191 dead.
     Terror wasn't what disturbed Fuentes the most, though. "Now: something more," he intoned sternly. "Many of our students in this college and its sister college, Saddleback and Irvine, past and future, today fight on the battlefield of Iraq under the flag that is behind us. Spain has abandoned our fighting men and women, withdrawing their support. I see no reason to send the students of our colleges to Spain at this moment in history."....

Rebel Girl
✩ I Have a King Day (2006)
     Our pal Rebel Girl at Dissent the Blog has a dream: it is a dream for a week worth of activities at Irvine Valley College dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., and kicking off on his birthday today. Those activities include: a new on-campus Peace and Justice Center; an institutional adoption of Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience; a campus-wide re-creation of the 1963 March on Washington, D.C.; school Trustee Tom Fuentes (the former Orange County Republican Party chairman) reciting King's "I Have a Dream" speech; and, to cap the week in honor of Dr. King, the announcement that the school district has agreed to give classified employees a fair contract.
     In other words, Rebel Girl's dream can only be dreamed.

✩ I Am a Terrorist: I Teach (2004)
     ...There's a clear pattern here, a trajectory of terror: thin mints, folk music, political prisoners, fur seals, nukes, tamales and, finally, a membership card in, yes, a terrorist teacher's union. And not only do I belong, but I also sit on the California Teachers Association's state council. Hundreds of deep-cover operatives like myself regularly gather in plain sight at an LAX hotel for a weekend of cell meetings and training workshops, receiving our marching orders and instructions on disseminating the goods to our locals: "Read Across America" curricula, school-bond bumper stickers and research on student-teacher ratios....

✩ Hate Central (1998)
     ...Yes, the technobigots have struck again, this time at Irvine Valley College. On Oct. 22, about 400 teachers and staffers at the college found a message in their e-mail boxes headed "Very Important Information." The e-mail, sent by someone calling himself "George Washington," contained anti-Semitic quotations attributed to such historical figures as Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and a list of 60 government officials headed "USA's Rulers-They Are All Jews!"....

The late Irv Rubin
✩ Not So Liberal (2001)
     [Historian Bill] Billingsley said state legislators might have been sincere in their anti-communist convictions. However, he said, "A question I put to ones I interviewed was, 'Define communism.' And most of them couldn't. To many of them, I think communism meant any manifestation of social disorder or violation of the 'natural hierarchy' of race. It was a commonplace assumption of segregationists that blacks were satisfied with the racial status quo. So when there was a sudden eruption of what they'd thought were docile black people, the answer to them was that the communists were behind it."....

✩ You're a Creep (2002)
[SOCCCD board meeting highlights:]
     9:38 p.m. Someone leaves the standing-room-only meeting, and Rubin is allowed in by the doorman cop. [The JDL's Irv] Rubin and [Frogue supporter Michael] Piper exchange death stares. 9:38 p.m. "Shouldn't you get your money back for that haircut?" Piper crony Jim Scott asks Rubin. 9:40 p.m. Barry Krugel, Rubin's colleague, is finally admitted. Barry is the brother of Earl Krugel, who is also being held in the alleged bomb plot. 9:47 p.m. After much back and forth, Scott calls Rubin "subhuman" and "a lower life form." 9:59 p.m. Rubin wants to "shed the spotlight" on Joe Fields, who had to leave the meeting early for another engagement. "He's a self-admitted Hitler-lover," Rubin says of Fields. "He is also a convicted child molester who tries to pick up young girls and put them in his dirty little movies. And yet we have nothing but silence from Mr. Frogue. Mr. Frogue, your silence speaks a great deal. Maybe you ought to look yourself in the mirror and wonder who you're associated with." 10:07 p.m. As pro- and anti-Frogueans shout at one another, Rubin stares down Scott. "Don't look at my face," Rubin demands....

✩ Not-So-Secret Service: An Open Letter to IVC President Raghu Mathur (1999)
     As your presidential security consultant, I am prepared to:
     • Escort you to and from your car and the administration building every morning and evening.
      Maintain secret files on high-profile personnel (we'll call it an Enemies List), including—but not limited to—academic-senate president Peter Morrison, philosophy instructor Roy Bauer and anthropology instructor Wendy Phillips....

✩ The Unabauer Manifesto (1999)
     Professor Roy Bauer has let everyone in the South Orange County Community College District know he wants to drop "a 2-ton slate of polished granite" on the head of his boss, Irvine Valley College's president. He's proclaimed an "urge to go postal" during an election party for conservative Board of Trustees candidates. And his e-mail address is frighteningly similar to the handle of another college professor preoccupied with going postal: "Unabauer."

✩ Cirque du Socccd (2000)
     ...Andrew Tonkovich, a liberal adjunct faculty member at IVC and a constant thorn in the side of conservative trustees and administrators, responded to the fax campaign by putting out a satirical release from the "One True Conservative Faculty Association." Noting that his organization "put the 'con' in 'conservative,'" Tonkovich announced his group's endorsement of Fuentes for not one but all four vacant district trustee seats this November. He concludes his delicious lampoon by pointing out that his public "remarks were met by complete indifference."....

✩ LA? No Way? (2001)
     Hot on the heels of its recent vote to disallow a student trip to Cuba, South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) trustees on Monday night voted to block all student outings to Los Angeles County. "The trustees have serious concerns about allowing district-sponsored travel to Los Angeles," said a district spokesperson. "It's far away and dangerous. Plus, students might get lost."
     In discussion of the recent controversial Cuba vote, trustees cited a report that "Fidel Castro made derogatory remarks about President George W. Bush." Later, in announcing the ban on Los Angeles field trips, conservative members of the board of trustees raised concerns about student health and safety during visits to the nearby metropolis.
     "It's all about protecting our kids," said one....


✩ Read All About It (1999)
     South Orange County Community College District trustees on Nov. 22 decided to appeal a court ruling favorable to Roy Bauer. The Irvine Valley College (IVC) professor publishes rabble-rousing newsletters that hilariously lampoon a board and administration that does a damn fine job of hilariously lampooning itself (Nazi sympathizers attending board meetings, homophobic political mailers in trustee elections, faculty fuckheads willing to sell their souls for coin—such a hoot!). Bauer's bosses tried to force him to seek therapy because, they alleged, his Vine and Dissent newsletters were filled with violence and hatred. Bauer sued on First Amendment grounds. The district countersued, claiming employees had been threatened physically in what friends and foes affectionately refer to as the "Unabauer Manifesto." But the judge sided with Bauer—in humorous fashion. When the district tried to make hay out of a comment in one newsletter that stated the author wanted to drop "a 2-ton slate of polished granite" on the IVC president's head, the judge dismissed it as pure hyperbole, noting, "Think of the logistics!" So now the not-so-appealing district is appealing, even though Bauer's court record against them is a solid 3-0....

✩ Another Fine Mess (1999)
     ...Clockwork asked Irvine Valley College (IVC) philosophy and ethics professor Roy Bauer the other day: Roy Bauer, you just won a $98,000 decision against the South Orange County Community College District. What are you going to do now?
     "Why, I'm going to Disneyland," he shot back. "There's a fella there, and the trustees hope to appoint him president of Saddleback College. His name's Goofy."....

Dandy Don Wagner. Nowadays, Irvine Mayor and shill for developers, et al.
✩ Teach Your Children Hell (1998)
     ...So it should not surprise us that hate literature littered two South County public schools on Oct. 28-a week after anti-Semitic e-mails were sent to 400 faculty and staff members at Irvine Valley College (IVC). About 500 index-card-sized leaflets featuring a disparaging cartoon of a Jewish man were found on El Toro High School's tennis and basketball courts. Nearly 100 miniature posters ridiculing African-Americans were scattered across Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School's athletic field and parking lot. A sticker attached to the fliers directed students to the Fallbrook chapter of White Aryan Resistance, which recruits young skinhead activists. Meanwhile, IVC officials are still trying to determine who sent the electronic letters to employees on Oct. 22. Clockwork isn't suggesting Frogue had a role in these incidents, but his continued presence on the board isn't helping matters....

✩ Textbook Love Affair (2002)
     ..."Hi, Steve, this is Glenn Roquemore," Steve [Zicree] remembers the voice on the other end saying. Roquemore was vice president of instruction at Irvine Valley College. "I'm calling to let you know that we won't have a contract for you."
     "But I already signed it," said Steve.
     "Yes," said Roquemore, who's now the president of IVC. "It's being revoked."
     "Anything more you want to say?" Steve asked.
     "Not at this time, no," Roquemore said before hanging up....

✩ Adventures in Advertising (1996)
     Local political observers are calling it the "most scurrilous and vile" campaign ad of the season, and it wasn't the deft handiwork of U.S. Congressman Bob Dornan, Orange County's most infamous negative campaigner. No, the ad—which critics say was designed to tap anti-gay sentiment—was sent by a college-faculty association on behalf of a slate of three conservative candidates and one Democrat vying for seats on the governing board of the Saddleback Community College District. Three of the candidates supported by the controversial ad—including the Democrat—won....


* * *

Plus Gustavo married one of IVC's beloved alums, Delilah Snell, owner of Santa Ana's Alta Baja Market

Lucky guy. 
Of course, the Weekly's coverage of the college district is just a tiny bit of their contribution toward making the county a more just and accountable place to live. Remember Mike Carona, "America's sheriff? He used to be a frequent visitor to IVC back in the day, all dressed up. Remember how the Weekly went after him? Scott Moxley! Fearless.  Check it out:  Mike Carona: No More Excuses

Sheriff Mikey with Glenn Roquemore
Rebel Girl wouldn't have wanted to live here the last quarter of a century without the Weekly, with Gustavo. 

—Gracias Gustavo!



We understand that this song is a favorite of the Weekly staffers. Play it loud.

Rebel Girl and Roy

Friday, June 29, 2012

"Innuendo" about Tom Fuentes? Nope. OUTUENDO

     Good Lord!
     I only just now noticed a terrific Matt Coker piece (in yesterday's NavelGazing) that, well, makes yours truly look pretty damned good!

Frank Mickadeit, OC Register Columnist, Slams College Professor on Behalf of Late Tom Fuentes (NavelGazing)

     Thanks, Matt!
     Er, I mean: thanks for doing your job, being objective and fair and such.

     The upshot of Matt's post is that the Fuenteans, or, rather, one of their toadies—Frank Mickadeit, the OC Register columnist and Tomophile—responded to the board’s choosing James Wright as Tom’s replacement by screaming “disgraceful!” (see Fuentes family stung by college board)—and by going after MOI. According to the Mick, so hateful am I that I dragged out old “innuendo” to defame the sainted Tomster. (My so-called "innuendo" focused on Fuentes' close association with corrupt pols in his early days.) So I responded (says Matt) with research (old Reg and Times articles, not innuendo) that showed that Tom was a truly hinky fellow—and I'm not talking about any carnations he may or may not have worn.

     Well, Yeah.

     Check it out: here.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Tom Fuentes and the events of "40 years ago"

A veritable web of public service/corruption

From the "Trustee Tom Fuentes files" [Fuentes got his start working for corrupt OC supervisor Caspers; Caspers' chief crony was the corrupt Fred Harber]:

     “There’s always some professor writing a report. I don’t pay too much attention to them.”
—Ronald W. Caspers, 1963
     THIS MORNING, Dan Chmielewski of the The Liberal OC commented as follows:
Hi Roy — I'm curious but Mickadeit says you published old rumors about Fuentes without documenting a single fact. This seems to be counter to your regular work of going overboard to document stuff you write about. Can you address this in a post please?
     In fact, last night, in a comment to Mickadeit’s piece, I responded to the “documentation” point as follows:
     You write: “The hate is so palpable that one of the faculty activists, Roy Bauer, two weeks ago rehashed for his blog a bunch of 40-year-old innuendo about Fuentes to smear his memory – and never documented a single original fact.”
     Hate has never motivated me. I am trained as an ethicist (a specialty in philosophy). My criticisms of Mr. Fuentes (and others) are fundamentally about their lack of moral decency.
     Whether or not I have “documented a single original fact” about Mr. Fuentes’ record (I certainly have) is irrelevant. I’m perfectly happy to assemble the already available facts and let them guide us to the most reasonable view about Mr. Fuentes’ nature and his activities “40” years ago. Those facts overwhelmingly suggest that Ronald Caspers and his confederates were unethical and corrupt. And Tom Fuentes was Caspers’ right-hand man for the four years in which Mr. Caspers and Co. pursued their corrupt operation.
     Please note that Mickadeit did not write that I have "not documented my claims"; he wrote that, in my post (actually, there are numerous posts, not one) two weeks ago, I “never documented a single original fact.”
     On the other hand, he describes my post as a rehash of "40-year-old innuendo about Fuentes….” So Mickadeit seems to be saying both that (1) I provide only innuendo and (2) I present nothing original.
     Let’s stick with the events of 40 years ago—namely, Fuentes’ four years with supervisor Ronald W. Caspers (which started with Fuentes' management of Caspers' 1970 supervisorial campaign and ended with Fuentes' role as executive assistant to Caspers upon the latter's death in June of 1974). My point above is that there is no need to document anything new, since the already documented facts are sufficient to portray Caspers and Co. as corrupt. 
     That Caspers' operation was corrupt is a crucial premise in my case against Fuentes. Recently, I colorfully described that case as follows:
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. [See here.]
     (I might have added another point about the intimate nature of Fuentes' "right-handedness" to Caspers and Fuentes' reported involvement in various disturbing or questionable events and actions.) 
     In my recent series of posts about Caspers/Fuentes, I have been concerned about the issue of “documentation”—or, as I would prefer to characterize it, of “evidence.” That led me to emphasize the deposition (from 1975) of Richard Jordan, which was associated with his successful lawsuit of the County of Orange in 1978. (In a settlement involving agreements of silence, the County agreed to pay Jordan $700,000.)
     You’ll recall that, in 1978, both the Register and the Times wrote lengthy pieces about Jordan’s allegations (which the Reg uncovered by way of a public records request). In the course of its reporting, the Times came upon an old case from the mid-60s:



—I did some research on Cypress City Councilman Denni and, unsurprisingly, I found nothing about this aborted prosecution, though I did find considerable news coverage of Denni and a bribery trial in which he was acquitted, along with another man. Obviously, that he was acquitted in one case is consistent with the suggestion that prosecutors pursued another case against him. (The fellow who became Caspers' chief political advisor, Fred Harber, was the City Manager of Cypress at the time.)
     I have unearthed various other news articles concerning the bribery trial of Derek McWhinney, the Mayor or Westminster. That case and the Denni case reveal that specific elements of the Caspers/Harber shakedown scheme that Jordan describes in his deposition (namely, the $10K lump amount; the notion of payment of $2K per month) appear in other cases in which Caspers and his crew are present. (See my Puppets and Puppeteers.)
     There's more. I present former OC GOP chair Tom Rogers' account of Caspers' defeat of Supervisor Alton Allen by unscrupulous means and the behind-the-scenes regard of Caspers among establishment Republicans in and around 1970. I discuss Caspers' close relationship with the "Dick and Doc Show"—the campaign funding scheme run by Richard O'Neill and Louis Cella and relying on the political acumen of Fred Harber, who seemed to be involved in the campaigns and operations of many in the "Dick and Doc" stable. (Cella was the big fish in a series of numerous "corruption" prosecutions by OC DA Cecil Hicks' in the mid- to late-1970s.)
     And who was right there in the middle of all this? Tom Fuentes. 
     Let me be very clear about what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. I am not saying that I have proof that Fuentes participated in shakedown schemes and various unethical shenanigans during his Caspers years (c. 1970-74). What I am saying is that, given the strong indications of the nature of Ron Caspers and his associates’ actions (including apparent shakedown schemes, various unethical actions and strategies, etc.), and given Fuentes’ intricate and intimate involvement in Caspers’ public and private affairs during this period (Fuentes was not only Caspers’ chief executive assistant at the County but also a consultant at his Westminster S&L), it is implausible to suggest that Fuentes was unaware of what was going on. Indeed, given the full fabric of evidence, it is likely that he participated in it.

Fuentes' old political machine; now rusted
     We can consider also Fuentes’ pattern of controversial (i.e., ruthless, bullying, and arguably illegal) actions, especially as OC GOP chairman, long after his Caspers years. These include, of course, his involvement in the Bein & Frost/Santa Margarita Water District “gift” scandal of the early 90s and the “poll guards” scandal of the late 80s.
     Fuentes, I submit, learned quite a lot in his early years with the likes of Ron Caspers and Fred Harber. He was brought into their culture of corruption, internalized its ethos, and then regularly exhibited its unsavory impulses and preoccupations as pol/“businessman.” (Starting in 1975, Fuentes made his living helping private firms to secure lucrative contracts with government agencies, and the appearance of impropriety clung always to those dealings, even in recent years.)
     For those who wish to review the fabric of evidence that places Tom Fuentes smack dab in the center of a web of illegality and dirty dealings, I suggest reading the following:

The Fuentes file: Puppets and Puppeteers - Jun 21, 2012
~ 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.

Harber and Caspers attempt to bribe a developer, but then they die instead - June 18, 2012
~ 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.

Orange County's dark underbelly
The Fuentes file: Fred Harber & the ubiquity of violent death - June 17, 2012
~ 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.

What does Fuentes’ tutelage under, esteem of, and four years with, Ronald "shakedown" Caspers tell us about him? - June 14, 2012
~ 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.

Tom Fuentes at age 34: "consultant" - Oct 9, 2010
~ 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.

Tom Fuentes: ubiquitous paid consultant - Oct. 4, 2010
~ 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.
    

 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.


See also:

Always loved this song.

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...