Stoning gay people to death not immoral? The money man behind the "Protect Marriage Act"

.....As Dissent readers know, OC resident Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., is a major funder of right-wing religious causes—creationism, establishing a Christian state, keeping gays down, etc.
.....And he has connections to our right-wing crew in the South Orange County Community College District. He was the key funder of Tustin’s Education Alliance, an organization with which some of our trustees (and our Chancellor) have recently associated and on whose board (SOCCCD trustee Pres) Don Wagner currently sits.
.....Further, he’s a close pal of—you guessed it—Trustee, and former chair of the OC GOP, Tom “Prince of Darkness” Fuentes.
.....Well, Ahmanson is the subject of a Gustavo Arellano’s article in today’s OC Weekly: OC FUNDIE FUNDER GIVES MONEY TO WACKY REEPS, HOMO-HATERS—AND LOU CORREA?!.
.....Some excerpts:

.....The most influential Orange County man you've never heard of is undoubtedly Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., heir to the Home Savings … fortune. He rarely makes public appearances due to suffering from Tourette's Syndrome, but that hasn't stopped him from giving millions of dollars away to some of the craziest causes imaginable: creationism, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay clerics in the Episcopalian Church, and so many others that in its list of America's most influential evangelicals a couple of years back, Time listed Howard and his wife Roberta as simply "The Financiers."
.....It's no surprise then, that Ahmanson has so far been the top individual donor to the Protect Marriage Act, the November ballot initiative that wants to create a California constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Through his private philanthropic enterprise, Fieldstead and Co., Ahmanson has donated an amazing $400,000 to the initiative—even more than Focus on the Family and topped only by the National Organization for Marriage, a nationwide group whose campaign headquarters to defeat those marryin' gays are in Santa Ana. And remember: this money was spent just to get the ballot measure qualified for November—heaven knows how much money Ahmanson will donate to this cause for the rest of the year.
.....Going through Fieldstead's campaign contributions (he was also one of the principal funders behind Proposition 22, the 2000 measure that the California State Supreme Court recently overturned to allow homosexual nuptials [sic]), we found Ahmanson also gives money to the county's crazy Republicans—last year, he donated to supervisors John Moorlach, Pat Bates, Janet Nguyen and Diane Harkey; Assemblymember Chuck Devore and Mimi Walters; Dana Point Mayor Diane Harkey, and DA Tony Rackauckas, while 2006 saw him donate to the campaigns of Irvine councilmember Christina Shea, Costa Mesa Minutemen councilmembers Allan Mansoor and Wendy Leece, South Orange County Community College District trustee (and former OC GOP chair) Tom Fuentes, and more to Walters and Devore. If the local Democratic Party had any brains, they'd pull a Jeremiah Wright on all these people for accepting money from such a paleo-conservative (just read up on his mentor, R.J. Rushdoony—and the Wikipedia entry doesn't do justice to the looniness of the man. Or consider that when the Orange County Register's Peter Larsen interviewed Howard and Roberta for a 2004 story, Howard said of countries that stone adulterers and homosexuals, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," and that Howard saw "homosexuality as an illness akin to alcoholism, which treatment might cure."). But they won't do that, because to criticize politicians for taking money from Ahmanson means they'll have to go after one of their own: State Senator Lou Correa….

"G.I. Bill" benefits more than doubled; other news

• Some are very unhappy with how this will be funded, but, yes, the increase in benefits will be funded. According to the Associated Press (Bipartisan accord reached on war funding bill), a bipartisan agreement reached yesterday would provide “$162 billion in long-overdue funding to carry out military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year.”

.....House passage of the bill, expected Thursday, would also pave the way for a quick infusion of emergency flood relief for the Midwest, a 13-week extension of unemployment payments for the longtime jobless and a big boost in GI Bill college for veterans.
…
.....The White House — and Capitol Hill Republicans — had signaled greater flexibility in recent weeks after Democrats orchestrated impressive votes to more than double GI Bill college benefits and give a 13-week extension of unemployment payments for people whose benefits have run out.
.....In late-stage talks, Democrats dropped a provision to pay for the GI college benefits by imposing a half-percentage point income tax surcharge on incomes exceeding $500,000 for singles and incomes over $1 million earned by married couples….
…
.....Conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats are upset that the new GI Bill benefits, with costs tentatively estimated at $62 billion over the next decade, will be added to the deficit instead of being "paid for" as called for under House rules.
....."We know the day of reckoning is coming," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., who called the measure "totally irresponsible."
.....The new GI Bill essentially would guarantee a full scholarship at any in-state public university, along with a monthly housing stipend, for people who serve in the military for at least three years. It is aimed at replicating the benefits awarded veterans of World War II and more than doubles the value of the benefit — from $40,000 today to $90,000.
.....Full details of the nuts and bolts of the measure won't be released until Thursday….

• In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

A civil grand jury blasted the governing board of San Joaquin Delta College in a report released Wednesday, accusing trustees of misspending millions of dollars in public funds and of repeatedly violating the state’s open records laws by discussing the contents of closed session outside its meetings. “The Grand Jury has no confidence in the Delta College Board of Trustees as they are currently constituted,” its members wrote in the report of their investigation, which was prompted by citizen complaints. “The District needs capable trustees who are able to meet the task of bringing Delta College into the 21st century.”

• In this morning’s New York Times: Seas Rising and Warming Faster Than Realized:

.....On a very busy climate-oil-politics day I was able to just squeak in a short print piece last night on a new study in the journal Nature clarifying what’s happening with the oceans in a heating world (the heat held in by a building greenhouse blanket has largely accumulated in the oceans and physics demands that it will eventually add to atmospheric warming).
.....As you may be aware, those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling. This new work may help resolve that particular line of debate. The formula holds: more CO2 = warming world = less ice + higher seas + lots of changing climate patterns.
.....The study, by Australian and American researchers, reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures taken using a particular instrument on submarines and other vessels over four decades. The researchers found a subtle error that, when fixed, shows that the rate at which seas warmed and rose between 1961 and 2003 was about 50 percent greater than previous estimates.
.....The instrument in question, an expendable bathythermograph, is cheap and disposable, used for example by submarines to find the thermocline, the depth where warm and cold layers of ocean water meet. It was designed to take snapshots of water temperatures, not to collect readings that could be compared year after year, as is required with climate studies. Oceanographers have been trying to identify errors in the ocean-temperature data for awhile....

• Did you notice this one in Tuesday’s OC Reg?

OC tsunami ready

.....We’re not actually ready, of course, but we did meet certain minimal standards. Better than nothing.
.....Dissent has covered the topic of OC tsunamis before:

So Cal Tsunamis?
Preparing for the Big Wet One

The upshot? If a big landslide occurs on the Catalina side of the channel, we've got about ten minutes to prepare for a huge tsunami that will devastate our coast. Such events have occurred historically—and are thus inevitable?—but remain unlikely any time soon.

Sunny's back!

She's back from the vet, and she's more peevish than ever! Plus, now, she's only 4 pounds of brat! And she's sick and tired of that McCain fella, too!

Chuck D (aka Charles Darwin) was a spectacular fellow

.....The Origin of Species was published nearly 150 years ago, and so, soon, a celebration of that event will begin. Naturally, the anti-science crowd—including our own Trustee Tom Fuentes—will piss and moan in private and, sometimes, in public.
.....Let 'em. Chuck was a spectacular fellow, a hero to those who will use their goddam minds, not shut 'em off and roll their eyes in mindless ecstasy.
.....In yesterday’s New York Times (Darwinmania!), evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson asks, Does Charles Darwin deserve all of the glory that is about to be bestowed upon him?
.....Her answer: “Yes.”

.....…Does he deserve all this? He wasn’t, after all, the first person to suggest that evolution happens…. Natural selection is what we normally think of as Darwin’s big idea. Yet he wasn’t the first to discover that, either….
.....…[The “Origin of Species”] changed everything. Before the “Origin,” the diversity of life could only be catalogued and described; afterwards, it could be explained and understood. Before the “Origin,” species were generally seen as fixed entities, the special creations of a deity; afterwards, they became connected together on a great family tree that stretches back, across billions of years, to the dawn of life. Perhaps most importantly, the “Origin” changed our view of ourselves. It made us as much a part of nature as hummingbirds and bumblebees (or humble-bees, as Darwin called them); we, too, acquired a family tree with a host of remarkable and distinguished ancestors.
.....The reason the “Origin” was so powerful, compelling and persuasive, the reason Darwin succeeded while his predecessors failed, is that in it he does not just describe how evolution by natural selection works. He presents an enormous body of evidence culled from every field of biology then known….
.....At the same time, he uses every form of evidence at his disposal: he observes, argues, compares, infers and describes the results of experiments he has read about, or in many cases, personally conducted. … In short, he tests his reasoning over and over again.
.....… The “Origin” does not just expound natural selection. It contains a wealth of additional ideas and hypotheses, some of which Darwin went on to elaborate in other books….
.....This is not to say that the “Origin” is flawless, or that Darwin was right in every respect. … Yet his knowledge of the natural world is so immense, and the scrutiny to which he subjects his ideas is so thorough and scrupulous, that the “Origin” presents a grand new vision of the world. A vision that, as far as possible given the knowledge available at the time, he worked out in every detail. A vision that changed the world forever.
.....Let’s party!

Tiny newsberries

.....This morning, I took the Sunny Girl to my vet ($49), who sent us up the road to a specialist in Irvine. That guy insisted on keeping the Tiny Beast (4 lbs. 3 oz.!) over night ($1200).
.....I dropped by school (Irvine Valley College) and talked to every spook in that ghost town.
.....It looks like Karima Feldhus, former Dean of Humanities & Languages/Fine Arts, will be returning, this time as the dean of Fine Arts/Business. She left IVC at the end of the Fall for a gig at Long Beach City College. I don't think she's happy there.
.....It’ll be great to have her back. Naturally, the board has to approve the appointment, but there’s no reason to think they won’t. Unless Mathur gets involved. That’s always possible, even though it’s none of his goddam business.
.....We’re pretty much sans deans here at IVC, you know.
.....It’s no secret that Bob Kopecky, until recently the Provost of ATEP, will be joining the faculty at IVC this Fall. He’ll be working in the Learning Center.
.....Speaking of ATEP (i.e., the Advanced Technology and Education Park, in Tustin), I keep hearing that things are FUBAR with the ATEP confabs. Is Camelot a buttnugget? If so, plan B will look nothing like plan A, and SOCCCD will look like SHIT once again P.D.Q. (The Young Americans want to put up their tents and park their clown cars at ATEP. Is that part of plan B?)
.....As you know, some of our trustees (and trustee Tom Fuentes in particular, who has philosophical misgivings) are unhappy with Big ATEP. When, a few months ago, things got rocky Big-ATEPwise, the board was barely able to scrape up a green light for continued efforts.
.....In the end, could be that our Tustin campus, after ten years of development, will amount to a small cluster of classrooms on the corner of Redhill and Valencia with a few hundred students learning about plastic molding and bedpans.
.....BTW: I asked folks at the district to make available a map of the seven district areas (corresponding to the seven trustees) and they were very accommodating. A very detailed map is now available here (see "boundary map" link) at the district website. Thanks, R and T!

Pictured: (i) Sunny Girl, yesterday, (ii) the old chapel at the former Tustin Marine Helicopter Station (now ATEP).

Going to the Chapel...

~
This was the scene this morning at the Civic Center in Laguna Hills when the first licenses were issued for same sex marriages. We feared protesters but there were none - all the crazies must have gone to Santa Ana.

The sun-drenched courtyard was filled with supporters with roses and good wishes, tearful, happy family and friends and newlyweds, one after another, young and old.










Rebel Girl and her little guy just stopped by to lend their support - only to discover - surprise, surprise - two people they knew poised to take the plunge.


Rebel Girl always cries at weddings. Today was no exception.

late afternoon update: Over thirty couples were wed. Rebel Girl was in good company in the courtyard with members of a local Unitarian Univeralist Church; together they formed a welcoming party. The rainbow flag stuck in the planter was a friendly signal. Some people were clearly apprehensive at what might await them.

A lone woman walked up shortly after noon and asked how it had been going. Fine, fine, they replied. "I mean," she said, "about the other side. Have they been here?" She was reassured that it had been peaceful. She returned a couple hours later and got married, posing with her spouse afterward, seated on the planter next to the flag. They'd been together for years, she said. Had a son who was 22.

That's what was heard all day. The chorus of years: 45. 30. 7. 13. 10.

Never thought I'd live to see the day said one man.

Obama on education: higher standards

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, went to Kettering University, in Michigan, Monday to deliver what he billed as a major speech on U.S. competitiveness and his focus was very much on education at all levels. In his talk, Obama said that changes in the world economy require national leadership on the scale of earlier leaders’ decisions to create land-grant universities, to build the Hoover Dam, and to launch the space programs. Most of the education and research proposals he outlined were among those he has made before, but not always linked together as he did Monday. Among the ideas he discussed: the need for higher standards in elementary and secondary education so more high school graduates are prepared for college, recruiting new teachers, “updating” schools of education, adding student aid and tax breaks for college education, and greatly expanding education benefits for veterans. He also called for major infusions of federal research funds, with an emphasis on research that promotes the environment and improves U.S. energy policy. Aides to Sen. John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent, held a briefing for reporters Monday to respond to the speech and they accused Obama of not believing the United States can compete with the rest of the world, and of favoring high taxes.

Also in this morning's Inside Higher Ed:

• BASIC SKILLS: It turns out that one of the problems with remedial instruction in California community college instruction is the failure to include the expense of counseling in the 50% Law—which requires that at least half of expenditures (at a cc district) be on “instruction.” As you know, our own district (SOCCCD) is now struggling with that law owing to the failure of the Chancellor, Raghu P. Mathur, to pay any attention to it.

Remediation Plan for Remedial Ed:

.....Paul Steenhausen recalls when his brother, a California high school teacher, asked a failing student what, precisely, he planned to do with his life. “And the kid said, ‘Oh I’ll go to Crafton Hills,’ ” the local community college.
.....“A lot of kids in high school don’t know that there are standards at a community college and they certainly don’t know how they match up,” says Steenhausen, a senior fiscal and policy analyst at the nonpartisan California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), which released a report Monday on improving remedial education in the 109-institution California Community College System.
.....“While they are all welcome to attend a community college — there are no admissions standards based on high school performance — they’re not going to go very far and they’re certainly not going to get a degree or transfer unless they address these basic skills deficiencies.”
.....The report addresses structural changes that could improve remedial, or “basic skills” education, throughout California’s community college system, finding, for instance, a need to better “signal” college readiness standards to high school students. The report comes amid lots of effort and millions in new funding for improving instruction in remedial math, English and English as a Second Language throughout California, with a focus, for instance, on trying innovative new teaching techniques.
.....The colleges face an uphill battle. The report finds that the community college system offered basic skills instruction to more than 600,000 students in 2006-7. The success rates are “generally low.” For instance, in terms of persistence, about half of students enrolled in credit-bearing basic skills math, English and ESL courses in the fall do not return to college the subsequent fall, the report finds.
.....The report also finds that only 60 percent of students enrolled in credit-bearing remedial English courses obtain a C or better (the success rates for math and ESL are 50 and 75 percent, respectively). And less than 10 percent of noncredit basic skills students ever complete one credit-bearing course applicable toward a degree (the report includes the caveat, however, that “an unknown number of noncredit students” – some ESL students, for instance — never aspired to that goal).
.....“What this report takes a look at are a lot of policies that colleges individually can’t change. The system as a whole and/or the legislature has to make those changes in order to untie their hands,” said Steenhausen, who wrote the LAO document. Among the report’s recommendations: change the state statute so that students who test into remedial math or English are required to take those courses in the first semester. (Currently, placement test results are, under state law, nonbinding. More than a third of students determined to be in need of basic skills courses choose not to enroll.)
.....The report also suggests developing a standard, statewide community college placement test, based on questions from existing California Standards Tests (used at the K-12 level)….
.....Lastly, as many basic skills students never receive mandated counseling services, the LAO recommends amending a state law requiring that districts spend at least 50 percent of their general operating budget on in-classroom instruction. Analysts recommend that counseling expenditures should be counted toward instructional costs, “to give community colleges fiscal flexibility to address the counseling needs of their students,” Steenhausen said….