Rebel Girl's Lifestyle Tips for this Electoral Season

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.....In the aftermath of the last presidential election, Rebel Girl spent an inordinate amount of time staying up late, listening to the songs of the Spanish Civil war (Freiheit!), and sipping Greek Metaxa (five stars!).
.....It seemed to help.
.....This year, she's getting started early and has vowed healthier habits.
.....If you too feel the looming doom, she suggests brewing large mugs of Redbush Chai tea (resist the sweetener!) and reading George Orwell. He always helps.
.....Today's reading is from his essay "The Lion and the Unicorn," published in 1941. An excerpt (bolded phrases are Reb's, of course):

"Almost entirely we are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of command by right of birth. Few if any of these people are consciously treacherous, some of them are not even fools, but as a class they are quite incapable of leading us to victory. They could not do it, even if their material interests did not constantly trip them up. As I pointed out earlier, they have been artificially stupefied. Quite apart from anything else, the rule of money sees to it that we shall be governed largely by the old - that is, by people utterly unable to grasp what age they are living in or what enemy they are fighting. Nothing was more desolating at the beginning of this war [WW II] than the way in which the whole of the older generation conspired to pretend that it was the war of 1914-18 over again. All the old duds were back on the job, twenty years older, with the skull plainer in their faces… It was like a tea-party of ghosts. And that state of affairs has barely altered. The shock of disaster brought a few able men like Bevin to the front, but in general we are still commanded by people who managed to live through the years 1931-9 without even discovering that Hitler was dangerous. A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses."

Fuentes bashes faculty

A video that presents Trustee Fuentes' remarks during a notorious 2004 Leisure World TV interview:

IVC's "Hometown Hero" resigns

See Carona to resign in the OC Reg:

Sheriff Mike Carona announced his resignation today “with a heavy heart,” saying it would be best for the department and the county if he was not distracted while defending himself against federal public corruption charges. Carona placed his announcement on the department’s Web site and is expected to meet with reporters later today.

From the Times: O.C. sheriff's resignation causes turmoil:

...As he departed, Carona took steps to leave his political imprint on the department, firing one of his assistant sheriffs, Dan Martini, without explanation, and appointing as interim sheriff one of his biggest loyalists.

His choice of Assistant Sheriff Jack Anderson to run the department immediately raised concerns in some quarters, because in addition to being a strong Carona ally, Anderson is an official of the Orange County Republican Party….

Turf War? Community college funding in the hot seat

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: A Proposition They Can Refuse?:

On Thursday, …California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency and proposed 10 percent cuts across the state budget. The deep cuts proposed for the state’s public education system would require lawmakers to suspend Proposition 98, a 1988 measure that sets aside about 40 percent of the General Fund revenues for K-12 and community colleges.

Against that backdrop, California voters will head to the polls in early February to decide whether a certain proportion of that allocation should be strictly reserved for community colleges – and whether California’s fees, already the lowest in the nation, should be reduced from $20 to $15 a credit hour and essentially locked in at such low rates….

“It continues to evolve, the political climate around the initiative. I think initially, when this initiative was first put together, there was a feeling that there would be a lot of support,” said Marilyn Grinsdale, a government relations officer for Citrus College, a community college in California’s San Gabriel Valley. “As the budget situation has gotten worse, I think people have suddenly started thinking, ‘We’re afraid we won’t get what we need.’”

“There has been, much to community colleges’ dismay, some opposition coming in from other systems.”

California’s controversial Proposition 92 has pitted the various components of California’s higher education system against one another. Among its supporters are the Community College League of California and community college chancellors, presidents and trustees. Among its opponents are the California State University and University of California Systems, and the powerful California Teachers Association. (Although CTA’s statewide affiliate, the Community College Association, broke from its parent organization to support the initiative).

The debate has largely denigrated into a turf war: “Proposition 92 if passed could result in unintended problems that will negatively impact the CSU and threaten funding for other critical California programs,” CSU says in its statement. “Proposition 92 requires more state funding and reduces student fees for one segment of higher education without regard to the needs of all of higher education. Since it does not create or identify any new revenue sources, unprotected state programs such as UC and CSU would be competing for a smaller share of available General Funds,” UC’s regents said in theirs….

(My emphases.)

SOCCCD's Faculty Association is a member of CCA (and ipso facto CTA). I do believe that our district is a member of CCLC. I recall that our trustees occasionally attend CCLC conferences.

Desire and Obligation

REBEL GIRL spent the last weekend before the semester at a family holiday party in Parker, Arizona, on the banks of the Colorado River, some six or seven hours across the desert. As you may know, the Colorado River is held hostage by technology. This baffles Rebel Girl. The result this weekend was that the river was "low"–too low for boat rides, too low to gaze at and have one's spirits raised. She gazed instead at the television screen and watched a football game between the Green Bay Packers and some team from Seattle that was played in a raging snow storm, which added something, she must admit, to the spectacle. She opined to the cousin nearest her that her mother used to root for Green Bay way back in the late 60s. They were good then, the cousin confirmed.

Others headed out to the infamous Desert Bar where they drank and shot at things. Upon their return, yet another cousin confided that, at the Desert Bar, he was told that his grandfather had had a vasectomy BEFORE his own father was conceived, which suggested that his bloodlines to the family were perhaps thinner than originally believed. That means that you can go home NOW, Rebel Girl said but he didn't seem to hear.

The next day, on their way home, on the California side of the river, they drove past the Wyatt Earp Post Office. It's something sitting there, in the middle of nowhere. She wished she had a letter to mail. Next time she'll stop.

Meanwhile, the new semester begins.

Crisis caveat

Faculty, welcome back.

As you know, the big news right now is the governor’s proposed budget. According to CCC Chancellor Diane Woodruff, “The California Community Colleges received a reduction of $525 million that includes a two-thirds reduction in growth funds.”

No doubt, you’ve already received lots of emails alerting you to the trouble ahead.

But NOTE WELL: there can be no doubt that Chancellor Mathur will exploit the situation to serve his interests. That’s what the man does.

As you know, owing to his bungling, our colleges are, and have been, in crisis mode re the 50% Law. The gist: state law requires that at least half of expenditures (in community colleges) go to faculty salaries and benefits (“instruction”). But, for years, in part because of ATEP start-up costs, we’ve spent increasingly less on instruction and are now doomed to cross below the 50% mark. (See The data & Documents.) Among the desperate measures we’ve taken: the en masse and ASAP hiring of faculty.


No district would do that unless it had to. Faculty hiring should be done carefully, deliberately. Not hurriedly.

Our haste has already produced fiascos. HR has bungled advertising for these 45 new hires. Check out our ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's useless; and it contains errors. (This was discovered during a recent IVC Academic Senate meeting in which it occurred to folks to actually go online and check out the ads that HR was in such a hurry to get into the CHE.)

No doubt Mathur will seize the opportunity to blame all of our woes, including our 50% woes, on the state budget. He’ll announce various obnoxious initiatives too, using the budget crisis as cover.

We can’t let him get away with that.

"But wait!", you say. "The state’s budgetary woes do not apply to us because we’re on basic aid!"

Well, yes. But there’s a big “but”: despite our special funding situation (we rely on local property taxes), our board of trustees insists on funding the colleges as though we received the more common state funding. And so that means we’re headed for seriously lean times. We’ll have to spend less money.


Meanwhile, the district (i.e., Gary Poertner) projects that we are headed for non-compliance with the 50% Law (for 2007-2008) to the tune of four and a half million dollars. But the projection assumes a faculty COLA of 4.53%.

Among the provisions of the state budget: no COLA.

That means that we’re headed for an even greater degree of non-compliance (with the 50% Law) than we thought. And that means: we need to hire more faculty or increase faculty salaries/benefits.

How that all fits with spending less money ain’t exactly clear to me. (Admittedly, I’m no money guy.)

At any rate, it’s important that we learn the facts about all this and keep an eye on you-know-who.

So welcome back.

Historic districtular video

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Relive that lovely day in May of 2004 in which the ballots were counted and it was determined that 93.5% of the faculty of our district voted "no confidence" in Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur.


The last ballot.

The League of Women Voters was on hand to make sure that everything was on the up 'n' up.

A good time was had by all.