County corruption: a tasty morsel for a Friday

Williams

     As you know, that unsavory and hodgepodgular Fuentian stew of corruption known as Orange County government nevertheless includes many tasty morsels, such as the curious circumstance that DA Tony Rackauckas’ girlfriend, Peggi Buff, sans qualifications, somehow managed to snag a fancy job at the Public Administrator/Public Guardian office—she was second in command!—an office headed, of course, by Rackauckas’ crony and former SOCCCD trustee John “Orlando” Williams.
     By now, the whole world knows that Williams, who spent much of his time in Orlando, FL (on the district’s dime!), ran his County offices completely into the ground. And, I’m told, the likes of Tony's girl Peggi really helped out.
     Now get this: one of our sources down at the county informs us that the County has “demoted” Buff, “cut her pay from $120K to nearly $96K,” and has now got her doing “clerical work.”

Buff

     Oh my.
     Our source, Pen Pal, speculates that the Board of Supes (five blowhardian Republican creeps, four of whom have at some point, like Williams, retained Phil “ethically challenged” Greer as their lawyer) has agreed to save Buff “and Williams’ other Executive Assistant” from terminal downsizularization. But that hasn't prevented this demotion.
     This raises a question often raised during the Williams/Rackaukas/Spitzer mini-saga: why are the Supes bargaining with Williams at all?
     What has he got on those people?

Pen Pal

     Obviously, the Supes want to cut their losses and get Williams out of his County office ASAP; his presence there is an ongoing embarrassment, a veritable turd in the punchbowl. That wish has been stymied by the fact that elected officials, even corrupt, stupid, incompetent, and beDisneyed ones like Williams, can’t just be fired. They are, after all, the people’s choice (even if the people are ignorami or worse).
     But my guess is that Williams possesses more cards than just that one. Who the hell knows.
     Pen Pal reminds me that Williams had agreed to leave his office on January 20, 2012.
     But that doesn’t mean the fellow will actually hold up his end of the deal!
     Stay tuned.

Highly redacted internal memo:

From: XXX
Sent: Mon 11/14/2011
To: OCCR All Users
Subject: Educational and Professional Reimbursement Program - Updated Information and Procedures

   Beginning today, Monday, November 14, 2011, Organizational Development team member, Peggi Buff will be responsible for processing OCCR’s Educational and Professional Reimbursement Program requests.
   Please continue to utilize the Requisition Portal of Expeditor for processing and updating requests for reimbursement. The transactions will automatically be routed to Peggi, the Tuition Reimbursement Processor. Attached are updated procedures for your convenience.
   For assistance and/or questions related to reimbursement request processing, please contact Peggi at ....

Thank you.

XXX

Last night in Laguna Hills (just down the road)

Recommended reading:

‘Clues That Lead to More Clues That Add Up to Nothing’, HEATHER HAVRILESKY, New York Times

“The first three seasons of ‘Lost’ may have approached the imaginative charms of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, but the next three were nearly as awful as George Lucas’s catastrophic prequels. You could easily picture the stumped writers of ‘Lost,’ helpless in the face of an ever-growing pile of unsolved mysteries, madly skimming Wikipedia entries on space-time geometries and black holes.”

Of blogs and dogs—and OC IncompeVillainy

Derek

     CREEPS. As you know, unless you're incompetent, incompetence is a major issue of our day, especially if you live in Orange County, though, for us, it ain't just incompetence, but also venality and other forms of severe assholery.
     It's always been that way in the OC (have you been reading Gustavo Arellano's series about OC's rich KKK past?), but, nowadays, it's especially bad, and sometimes it seems like our district (the SOCCCD) is the very hellmouth of OC incompevillainy. —You know: Mathur, Williams, Fuentes, Wagner, et al. And those guys brought their hideous friends: Mike Carona, Chriss Street, and so on. Aincha proud?
     Speaking of incompetence, as you know, recently, we've heard that the two colleges have messed up bigtime and, as a result, summer sessions will likely have to be cancelled (this info seems to be emanating from Faculty Association folks). We're trying to get more information about that. Let us know what you know.
     An hour ago, I turned to the OC Register, only to find more tales of incompetence.
OC Register watchdog, Teri Sforza, reports today that

Two-thirds of Americans said they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in their local governments to handle local problems….

     This curious factoid (based on a new Gallup poll), says Sforza, proves that “Orange County Register readers … are not on the Gallup Poll call list.”
     Guess so. Do any Orange Countians trust government in the OC? If so, who are they and how can their IQs be that low? They can't be Tea Partiers, cuz, though Tea People are plenty stupid, their chief impulse seems to be hostility to government, not confidence in it.

* * *

From OC Reg

     PHIL GREER. You’ll recall that Phil Greer, an ethically-challenged attorney who seems to be the go-to guy for corrupt pols in the OC Fuentesphere, was paid $25,000—by taxpayers!—to assist then-Chancellor Raghu Mathur in negotiating his exit from the SOCCCD—you know, when Don Wagner finally felt that last Mathurian straw land on his back. (I tried to get people pissed off about the $25K, but I got nowhere.)
     Not long after, Greer represented the odious John Williams, onetime SOCCCD trustee, during the county’s efforts to derail that rascal’s Public Administrator/Guardian gravy train. Who knows how much Greer got for that job, which is ongoing, I think.
     As if that weren’t enough, just before all that went down, Greer represented OC Treasurer Chriss Street in his big fraud trial. Greer lost that one bigtime, and Street wisely decided not to run for reelection, which gave trustee Dave Lang his chance to throw away $100k of his own money to run for Treasurer, with Fuentes' apparently worthless help.
     Almost from the start, Street has carped that his attorney, Greer, was a fool, and that's why he lost the case. As it turns out, he's still saying that.
     Today, OC Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley reports that

     Street is blaming his sensational $7 million bankruptcy court loss in 2010 on his own lawyer, Phillip B. Greer, and he's demanding that Greer pay him for alleged lousy, incompetent trial work.
     According to a lawsuit filed this week in Orange County Superior Court, Street believes Greer owes him "in excess of $8,800,000" in damages for professional negligence, fraud and violations of California's business and professional codes.

Moxley reminds us of Street’s misconduct:

     Street hired Greer in 2007 to defend his service [from 1998-2005] as a bankruptcy trustee of a struggling Los Angeles company [namely, Fruehauf Trailer Corp]. While in that job, Street abused his position by using the company's funds to pay himself a $250,000 salary plus $175,000 in bonuses and $477,000 in personal expenses that included a European vacation, cosmetic surgery and gym memberships. A federal judge ruled that Street had breached his duty as trustee.

     Of course, plausible accusations that Street had indeed abused his position as Fruehauf trustee were already in print before Street was elected. But this is Orange County, and that means that most voters are incredibly ignorant and often stupid. Plus they only respond to corruption when people tell 'em to. And so they happily elected the guy (in 2006, a year after Street’s Fruehauf trustee gig came to an end).
     But now

Street claims that Greer didn't know what he was doing in the [Fruehauf trial], botched a session with an expert witness, skipped a critical pre-trial meeting, hid multiple prior ethical problems and signed (without his permission) a stipulation of facts that was "false and misleading." ¶ "Defendant Greer failed to exercise the skill and care of a reasonably careful bankruptcy litigation attorney would have used in similar circumstances," Street wrote in his 11-page, Oct. 3 complaint.

It's hard to know who to root for in Creep v. Creep. May the biggest creep lose.

     REEVE REEMERGES. Today, Tea Partying San Juan Capistrano City Councilman and Saddleback College adjunct instructor Derek Reeve scored a guest column in the Capistrano Valley News: Of blogs and dogs: Councilman's message to San Juan. In the piece, he defends himself against the charge that he plagiarized on several submissions to the SJC Patch:

     Now [Mayor Sam Allevato and Councilman Larry Kramer] are at it again, piling on in the most recent attack stemming from the charge of plagiarism…. I was invited to blog on the Patch and carelessly submitted previously published material [by others!]. This involved one informal published blog that Patch made into three without my consent. This was a blog worthy of Facebook, not a formal article, yet now the editor has the chutzpa to compare this to a student's thesis, which is like comparing apples to gorillas.
     In the legal and education professions in which I work, I take pains to add footnotes to identify the origin of ideas. But in everyday communication, and most especially blogging, the atmosphere is much more relaxed and informal, as was indicated to me when Patch invited me to blog. Most people recognize that blogging is an informal style of communication, like musings, in which the standards of communication are relaxed. Despite this, a false set of assumptions have been erroneously placed upon me in order to make pseudo-accusations of "plagiarism."

     Wow. Reeve offers absolutely nothing to rebut the well-supported assertion that he plagiarized—that he presented others’ writings and ideas as though they were his own.
     Well, he does seem to offer this incompetent "argument": plagiarism is not plagiarism when it occurs in “informal” publications and “relaxed” communications. So if I walk up to Clueless You at a party and gin up my verbiage with sassy one-liners from Community, that's OK. It's theft, but it's only party theft; hence it's not theft. (Tea Partiers: I'm not talking about you. Further, I'm making a moral point, not a legal one.)
     That’s a little like saying burglary isn’t burglary when it occurs in your garage or on your patio. Or cannibalism isn't cannibalism if it's in a rowboat and not at the dinner table. Etc. Is Reeve really that stupid? Perhaps another vice is at work here. Yep.
     Reeve suggests that his blog posts are mere “musings.” To muse is to be absorbed in thought. Now, I muse all the time—I'm a philosopher—but I never “muse” just with other people’s writings, word for word, apostrophe for apostrophe! That ain't musing, man!

muse 
v. mused, mus·ing, mus·es v.intr. To have others' exact thoughts—and even their punctuation—in one’s head. v.intr. To steal others’ ideas during meditation: Om. I invented the word “Om.” Om. n. A state of meditation during the act of theft.

     CHANDLER'S UPDATE. Meanwhile, Jenna Chandler of the SJC Patch today updates us on the Reeve saga: Councilman Shrugs Off Plagiarism Charge, But Authors He Copied Fume. I haven’t read it yet, but Rebel Girl says it ends with mention of little old me!

     Roy Bauer, a philosophy instructor at Irvine Valley College who has taken jabs at Reeve's politics as a city councilman, is now blasting Reeve for the blog posts.
     Bauer's blog, Dissent the Blog ... Life Among Neanderthals, questioned Reeve's integrity and fitness for teaching. If Reeve "repeatedly represents others' writings as his own ... [he] cannot be trusted to argue honestly; he certainly cannot be trusted to instill academic honesty in his students."

Yes. Exactly.

* * *

     I’ve just read Chandler’s Patch piece and it’s excellent. Chandler notes Reeve’s assertion that blog postings are mere “musings,” that, in musings, the usual standards don't apply. But, she reports, “According to those whose words he lifted, Reeve's actions were plagiarism and theft, plain and simple.” (See the article for details.)
     According to Chandler, neither Concordia U nor Saddleback were willing to comment on Reeve's plagiarism, when asked.
     And what about the notion that these institutions shouldn’t care what Reeve does outside the classroom or college? One “Saddleback spokeswoman” evidently takes that incompetent view. (Really? Suppose Reeve continues to publicly put his name to political articles written by others. This would be hunky dory with Saddleback College? Good Lord, I hope not.)
     Says Chandler,

     It's not unprecedented for colleges to discipline instructors for off-campus plagiarism. In 2004, a committee at the University of New Hampshire penalized a professor for "scholarly misconduct" over a column published in Manchester's The Union Leader.
     Gregory F. Scholtz, a director at the American Association of University Professors, said disciplinary decisions are often made by a faculty committee that weighs whether a teacher's work outside the classroom has any bearing on his professional competence.
     Saddleback's code of conduct requires faculty to "exhibit intellectual honesty and integrity in all scholarly endeavors."
     Although Reeve's work on Patch arguably occurred outside that realm, Scholtz said it still raises questions about his intellectual honesty. Scholtz referred to the association's statement on professional ethics, which says professors, "guided by a deep conviction of the worth and dignity of the advancement of knowledge ... practice intellectual honesty. Although the professors may follow subsidiary interests, these interests must never seriously hamper or compromise their freedom of inquiry."

     It looks like Reeve has abandoned all hope of appealing to a wider audience, if he ever had such dreams. He has no excuse, no argument, to defend his intellectual theft, among other sins. Of course, in the case of his "base," a Tea-soaked mob ranging from the stunningly clueless to the loutish, none of this will make any difference. He named his dog "Muhammad." He prays and waves the flag. He yammers endlessly about "liberals." He doesn't bother with logic. He's their kind of guy.

• What Did the Other Four Officers Do in the Thomas Beating? (OC Voice)

$25,000 for another creep? Enough!

Dear fellow denizens of the SOCCCD:

Boy, this is quite a place to spend your professional life.

For instance, over here, we’ve got an elephant-footed, hardball-playing trustee who, when he isn’t taking the lowest of roads (stationing guards at polling places, nixing study-abroad programs to punish critics, etc.), he’s praying to the Lord or calling insufficiently pure Republicans “whores.”

Lovely.

He’s got a team of sorts, including a lawyer. A big fat card on his Rolodex is dedicated to one Phil Greer, attorney to the right-wing OC stars, such as the ethically challenged OC Treasurer, Chriss Street, the junket-loving and incompetent OC Guardian/Administrator, John Williams, all but one of the brainless OC Supes, and—well, Raghu P. Mathur.

Greer is the OC Republican mafia's consigliere. He's a total creep.

I’ve been assured by a reliable source that the SOCCCD recently paid the fellow $25,000. What for? Well, for participating in that heart-warming endeavor called the “Mathur settlement,” aka the Twilight Zonean saga of Mathur playing every desperate card up his sleeve (and one or two cards that he only imagines) while determined former admirers hustle him forcefully out the door, and for good.

But wait! This Phil Greer fella must be a pretty good lawyer, right?

Dunno about that. I’m more interested in his ethics. Now, what manner of ethics do you suppose the fellow has? HINT: he’s Fuentes’ go-to lawyer. He represents Street, Williams, Mathur, and their pals.

That’s right. NONE.

Here’s what the LA Times had to say about him a couple of years ago:

Rebuked O.C. lawyer keeps busy (H.G. Reza)

Janet Nguyen was barely losing the February election for county supervisor. When she decided to ask for the recount that would eventually put her ahead, she did what many Orange County Republicans do when they need election law advice. She hired Phillip Greer.
. . .
Despite his status as an advisor to Orange County Republicans, the State Bar of California has disciplined Greer twice in the last 11 years and ordered him each time to take ethics courses. His advice to Nguyen that she set up a secret defense fund, which was later ruled illegal, led state election officials to rebuke the supervisor. When Greer returned the donations, which had been sent to one of his accounts, at least one of the checks bounced.
. . .
This month, Nguyen agreed to pay $5,000 in fines to settle investigations into the fundraising scheme. The county supervisor has said she acted on Greer's advice. Nguyen did not return phone calls seeking comment for this article.

. . . [The Times goes into the details; check 'em out.]

According to state bar records, Greer represented a Georgia firm in one lawsuit at the same time he was suing the firm in another case in 2002. The state bar investigation found that Greer's representation of both parties was a "willful violation of Rules of Professional Conduct."

In the earlier disciplinary action, Greer settled a client's personal injury lawsuit for $5,000 in 1990, withholding $1,634 to pay her medical bills. The money should have been kept in Greer's client trust account.

In 1991, the client asked Greer for the remainder of the money because her insurance had paid the bills, records show. Greer did not pay her for three years, and when he did he used a cashier's check instead of one from his client trust account. According to the state bar's findings, his trust account daily balances "consistently fell below $1,634," the amount that should have always been in the account.

Greer blamed his office manager, saying the employee had removed client files, which he discovered after closing his Long Beach office. The state bar said Greer's failure to supervise the office manager prevented him from properly representing the client.
Greer was required to take ethics courses in both cases.

There were also apparent problems in repayment of at least one $5,000 contribution made to Greer's client trust account for Nguyen's defense fund. The refund check was written from Greer's office account to Townsend Public Affairs, a lobbying firm based in Irvine, and marked "Nguyen refund." The check was dated April 15, 2007, but the firm did not receive it until June 7, according to sources familiar with the transaction. It bounced June 12. Eight days later a firm official wrote Greer, asking him to mail another check. It did not arrive until Oct. 18, sources said. This appears to conflict with the finding that Nguyen returned the donations within a month of receiving them.

In an e-mail to The Times, Greer wrote, "I have no idea as to why the April check was not tendered till June, and it is my understanding that they were made good as soon as we were informed there was a problem."….

What a freakin' creep. C’mon. Aren’t you sick and tired of the district being saddled with the likes of Tom Fuentes and his creep brigade—Chriss Street, Mike Carona, Raghu Mathur, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Adam Probolsky, Jack the Ripper, Phil Greer, Arlene Greer, Rosy Greer, and Pam Grier?*

I don’t care how many times the guy prays to the Lord and rolls his eyes to Heaven. He’s a creep. And our district is up to its eye balls in his rotting, sulphurous creepitude, mixed with various exotic other varieties of appalling, epic creepulescence: Mathur-creep, Gensler-creep, Fennel-creep, Sherry-creep, “sorry, Roy, but I’ve got to play the game to protect my program”-creep, “It’s a new era of trust!”-creep, “how-come-you-didn’t-hire-our-favorite-adjunct?”-creep, and all the other f*cking creeps.

Our district will now move forward with a chancellor search. (And, after that, there will be other hires.) Given our district's record with such hires. I'm worried.

I have no doubt that Board President Wagner is a better man than Mr. Fuentes. I’m not even gonna call him a creep. But better-than-Fuentes creepitude is not good enough.

I want some freakin’ decency. At long last!

This aging Eagle Scout is dedicating himself to one thing. I want honest hiring processes. I don’t care who we hire. I’m beyond caring about that. For me, it’s simple. I wanna work at a place where, fundamentally, decency and honesty prevails. That means that there’s no FIX. Not to any degree—and, yes, this admits of degrees, and you know it. They can hire Nixon’s corpse for all I care. They can hire Dr. Laura or Michelle Maulkin. I DON’T CARE, as long as she’s the best hire, straight up.

Yes!

There was a time when more of us than now stood together and said “NO WAY” to hinky hires, including the kind where “good” people get to know each other and depend on each other and, hey, even do good work together—and, so, naturally, they make damned sure that the “right” person ends up with the right job.

Nope.

I don’t give a shit anymore. I don’t care how good the person is. I don’t care how freakin’ wonderful it would be if they got the job. Unless the process is clean, it’s flat wrong and there’s no way we’ll ever get healthy around here with that stuff in the background, like the miasma of rotting pools of bubbling moral rot.

Enough!

*OK, I don't really have anything against these last two "greers."

COMMENTS:

Anonymous‬ said...: Since Chriss Street spells his first name with two S's, it seems natural to me to pronounce Chriss with an emphasis on the "iss," so that it rhymes with "hiss." He is a snake, after all. ~ 8:56 PM, February 10, 2010
‪Anonymous‬ said...: It's true that their creepy attitude has spread throughout the district -- little matters to folks anymore, even the ones who make the nicey-nice speeches. Sigh. Everyone is just out for their own. ~ 9:35 PM
‪Anonymous‬ said...: No fix! I'm with you Roy but I think we're outnumbered. ~ 9:36 PM
‪Anonymous‬ said...: Pam Grier is great.

(Do you know something we don't know, Roy?) ~ 9:47 PM
‪B. von Traven said...: See the asterisk? Yeah, she's great. I just wanted to write "Pam Grier." ~ 9:48 PM
Anonymous‬ said...: When you're kids, everyone wants you to be good little boy or girl scouts -- then when you grow up they want you to forget all about it and do the expedient thing, to sell out, yourself and others. ~ 9:51 PM
‪Anonymous‬ said...: I think it will come down to two choices for replacing Raghu. Glenn or Tod. With the current Board hiring policy it seems they could find a drunk bum passed out in front of the "Ronald Reagan Board of Trustees Room" and pick him/her (assuming they have the proper conservative credentials). That's one hiring committee I wouldn't want to be on. It would be a total waste of time. ~ 11:14 PM
‪Anonymous‬ said...: I like it when Roy gets all idealistic. ~ 6:40 AM, February 11, 2010
Anonymous‬ said...: I'm with you. $25000! ~ 8:56 AM