This Is What It Sounds Like When Moose Cry

As you know, occasional contributor Mr. Eugene Debs is mysterious; his whereabouts are unknown and his intentions are variously incomprehensible, dismal, or opaque. As usual, his new piece appeared on my computer without explanation or signs of entry. Attached to it was a note that virtually begged that we not accept it. —RB

I confess to feeling a mite gypped* that Our Subarctic Lady of Perpetual Betcha has bailed on us. I was really looking forward to the Palin Administration, and not just as a last-chance vindication of the unacknowledged potential of Dan Quayle.

WWIII and — in the second term — marauding caribou-riding neo-barbarians and ubiquitous cannibalism promised to be excitingly atmospheric.

But it looks like we'll have to do without that. And as if that weren't enough, PalinFAIL has had the unfortunate side effect of causing a thought to occur to me, namely, that the long-term intellectual dry rot of the American right is getting a bit out of hand, like a house in which the termites have finally eaten through the load-bearing posts and beams, causing visible slouch.

By way of illustration, No More Mr. Nice Blog has a cogent meditation on the puzzling continued respectability of Pat Buchanan. During the first US election I experienced firsthand —1992 — P-to-the-B-Dog was the rightmost bound of good taste — beyond him there be naught but manticores and Grand Wizards. But Buchanan was at least not a fool; he could express complex ideas, if generally loathsome ones.

The Buchanan/Palin comparison is like Augustine vs. Aimee Semple MacPherson, and besides Palin makes Buchanan look moderate.

Or to put it differently: some time ago I read — well, glossed — "The Naked Communist" (a very misleading title, BTW; I'm stll steamed over the absolute lack of a Valentina Tereskhova centerfold, or at least Ninotchka showing some leg). Fifty years ago, it may have been the angry face of raw Bircher populism, but if you subtract the obvious insanity, it seems by contemporary standards almost charming; wheedling, plaintive, didactic — even the obviously insane parts are oddly decorous, such as the chapter in which Presidents Truman and Eisenhower are politely accused of being Soviet agents. I defy anyone to find a given hour of modern talk radio in which the Democrats are not accused of trying to legalize child molestation; the word "treason" is tossed around so casually as to have lost all meaning, like accusing someone of not separating their recyclables or being a Nazi. As for the gravitas of ideas, that will have to wait for Joe the Plumber's Untitled "Aaaargh, My 15 Minutes Are Almost Up!" Project,** featuring a rare preface by the self-effacing, publicity-shy Newt Gingrich.

Anyway. All of this describes a trajectory; and while the moral arc of the universe may bend toward justice, this thing appears to bend in a direction not known to mainstream topology, into a willful, Borges-like denial of reality (with a quick stopover at Cletus the slack-jawed yokel's shack). Frankly, I have no idea if there is a natural bottom to this phenomenon, though I suppose a candidate need at least be ambulatory and continent. In another generation or two, Palin and Huckabee may be the voices of sanity and moderation, whereas God only knows what rough — but lotioned-up-for-HDTV — beast may be slouching toward New Hampshire, waiting to be served pancakes.

*My dictionary does not suggest that this term has anything to do with Gypsies: "ORIGIN late 19th cent.: of unknown origin." So there. [RB]

**Maybe this is unfair; the modern Left has a gaping lack of vision, too. Gore Vidal is a poor substitute for Bertrand Russell (OK, yes, not an American. Whatever).

A curious OC Reg editorial

Oddly, the OC Reg now seems to be taking John Williams’ side with regard to two scathing reports about his efforts as OC Public Administrator/Guardian that were recently issued by the OC Grand Jury. In yesterday's editorial, ignoring the GJ’s central complaint about Williams—that he promised huge savings but delivered vastly increased spending instead—the Reg pounced upon factual errors concerning minor issues and even suggested that the reports are the result of a “vendetta.”

Editorial: The watchdog vs. the guardian

…Because of the scathing tone of the reports…, we expected the investigation to be filled with allegations of abuse. Instead, the reports focus on detailed complaints about the agency's management structure. In the one case where the grand jury accuses the office of mismanaging a person's $7,100 estate, the jury got the basic facts wrong. The public administrator didn't handle the case at issue….

[The argument from "fishiness"?]

We're not usually given to accepting the "political vendetta" argument, but we do find some things fishy about the double-barreled reports, which complain about excessive management growth, pension spiking and excessively large caseloads by conservators responsible for handling the assets of the clients. For starters, we can't figure out why the grand jury took the unusual step of releasing a second report before the legal deadline had expired for Mr. Williams to respond to the first one. The rationale, according to the grand jury foreman, was that the office continued to engage in the same practices it had criticized: "They basically went on to do the same thing in spite of our report," grand jury foreman James Perez told the Register.

But how could anything have changed even before the [two month] deadline had expired to even respond to the allegations? The second report, which supposedly contained new information, read to us like a rehashing of the first report. Our guess is the grand jury received a leaked copy of Mr. Williams' initial rebuttal to the Board of Supervisors, and lashed out again because they didn't like that he disputed each of their recommendations. Some of those recommendations sound reasonable, especially regarding budget growth. But some of the points had such simple explanations that it makes us wonder about the thoroughness of the report.

For instance, the grand jury raises the issue of "questionable pension practices" because Mr. Williams promoted an employee to a top management position within a year of retirement. But as Mr. Williams told us, he didn't know when that person would retire, and it would be discriminatory to not promote someone because of her age. We agree that the county's pension system is ridiculously generous, but we can't see how this amounts to any deliberate form of pension spiking barring some additional evidence.

On a broader point, we agree with Mr. Williams that a closer look at the grand jury system is warranted. He complains that the grand jurors came into his office with subpoena power, an ax to grind and little to no understanding about how the office operates. "These people struggled to understand all the basic stuff.”….

We have appreciated the grand jury's civil oversight function, mainly because of the desperate need for oversight of government agencies. But grand juries can be abused by those with personal and political agendas, and we have seen the O.C. grand jury insert itself into political disputes that seem far afield from its legitimate purview….

Is it really so hard to understand why the GJ issued a second report before Williams responded to the first? According to the Times,

Jurors intended to issue only one report on the agency. But within two weeks of its release in May, they got a "significant" number of calls and letters informing them that not only had management not changed, but that the situation had worsened. (See OC Grand Jury.)

—That is, contrary to the Reg editorial, there were indications that Williams was actively engaging in further practices of the sort they objected to--or, at any rate, he was acting to make matters worse. “Failure to change things” and “open defiance” are two different things, Reggie. Get it right.

A PROMISE UNFULFILLED:

Again, a focus of the original Grand Jury report was financial accountability:

This report explains how the agency has failed to keep its promise to the taxpayers of Orange County to cut costs and improve services. The annual base salary of management has increased over 96% since 2005.

Indeed, the OC Reg’s first article about Williams’ GJ woes began with this:

Public Administrator John Williams and then-Treasurer/Tax Collector John Moorlach promised county supervisors in 2005 they could save $300,000 over three years by combining the offices of public administrator and public guardian. ¶ Yet Orange County's grand jury says they didn't even come close. ¶ A scathing county grand jury report … takes aim at Williams for doubling salary costs at the agency and engaging in questionable personnel practices. ¶ "The annual base salary of management has increased over 96 percent since 2005," read the grand jury report. ¶ "They have failed to deliver on their promise to save Orange County taxpayers' money."

The GJ offered specifics:

According to the report, in 2005 there were seven employees who had combined yearly salaries of $529,796. By 2008, the number of employees had risen to 10, a spike of 40 percent. And their wages totaled $1, 042,828 annually.

Somehow, the fiscal center of the GJ’s criticism now seems unimportant to the Reg. Why? Cuz conspiracies are afoot: the jury foreman, Jim Perez, was out to get Williams owing to the latter’s trusteeship at the SOCCCD (?!), and he somehow managed to get all jurors to go along with him.

Wow.


Williams and the Reg focus on alleged factual errors in the report. But, on Tuesday (see update of Public guardian fires back), we learned that

James Perez, foreman of the grand jury that published the two reports, said … that Williams was allowed to review both reports before they were published and that he did not raise concerns about their accuracy. ¶ "He made no factual corrections," Perez said. "What he said was, the facts are correct, but I dispute your interpretation of the facts." [My emphases.]

Something doesn’t add up here. Having observed Mr. Williams for many years (especially with regard to the board's "persistent and defiant" violations of the Brown Act), I know him to be an inveterate schemer and liar. He's Karl Rove, but without the brain.

I’m betting on Perez, not Williams.

One more thing. If these reports are merely the product of a “vendetta,” then why aren’t Mr. Williams’ supporters defending him? On the contrary, on Monday, Supervisor John Moorlach’s chief of staff was quoted as saying, “We are very troubled….”

It’ll be fun to see where this thing goes next. Stay tuned.

HE'S A SCUMBAG, DON'T YOU KNOW?

Passings: Charles Eastman

When Rebel Girl first started showing up in Jim Krusoe's writing workshop at Santa Monica College in the mid-1980s, she met Charles Eastman, a rather august figure who also showed up week after week to sit in a circle and read aloud his stories and listen to those of others. The writing workshop is a deceptively simple ritual.

It was in Krusoe's workshop that she learned and learned again that there was more than one teacher in that circle - nearly everyone had something to teach.

Charles Eastman was one of those, with his measured advice and his own quietly powerful work and wide-ranging reading.

Truth to be told, Charles frightened her for the first few years, using words that she'd never heard before, citing unknown writers and working week after week at patiently growing a short story, scene after scene. In that workshop where you read your work aloud, Rebel Girl would read hers at home and wonder what Charles would say.

During breaks, while people bought paper cups of vending machine coffee, other students told her things about Charles - facts that were confirmed in today's Los Angeles Times obituary: he was a playwright; he was a screenwriter: his films had big stars in them; his sister was famous too, had written Five Easy Pieces; he, himself, was famously select about what kind of work he did and for whom.

From today Times, Robert Towne, screenwriter of Chinatown:

Screenwriter Robert Towne, who met Eastman in the '60s, recalled how impressed he was by an early Eastman screenplay that never made it to the big screen: "Honeybear,I Think I Love You," the story of a disturbed young man's obsession with a girl.

"For me, it was quite a revelation because it was the first contemporary screenplay I had read that just opened up the possibilities of everything that you could put into a screenplay in terms of language and the observations of contemporary life," Towne said this week.

"It was a stunning piece of work, and I think it influenced a lot of us, even though it wasn't made," Towne said. "Everybody tried to get it made, but Charlie was very particular about how it was going to be made, and in some ways I think he kept it from being made.

"Charlie was an original, that's all. He used language in a way that I hadn't seen used before."

Towne said Eastman was "very particular, very quirky, very much like his sister," who wrote "Five Easy Pieces," starring Jack Nicholson, under the pen name Adrien Joyce.

"I think she was writing about Charlie in some ways," said Towne. "Charlie was just one of those shadowy figures that I think cast a longer shadow over most of us than was generally recognized."

Rebel Girl wasn't Charles Eastman's friend but they did sit in a room together with others, for years and years, and listen to the stories people told and shared some of their own.

To read the rest of Dennis McLellan's obituary, click here.

To see the closing scene of Eastman's film, Little Fauss and Big Halsy, (yes, that's a young Robert Redford) and to listen to Johnny Cash sings its title song, click below.

"Adverse publicity probably didn't help"

I just noticed this report about Laguna Woods Village from two days ago:

• Four Emeritus morning fitness classes at Clubhouse 1 will be discontinued after end of year (OC Reg)

During his Community Activities Committee report at Tuesday's Golden Rain Foundation Board of Directors meeting, Director Bob Hatch announced that the four Saddleback College emeritus fitness classes held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 12 noon at Clubhouse One's equipment room will be discontinued after the end of this year.

Other emeritus fitness classes will not be affected.

"The fall term will be last term," Hatch later verified.

"The state has reduced the amount of funds the college has, so Saddleback had to determine where their services were most appreciated." Objections raised by some Village residents in having to register for the classes so as to use the equipment room during the 8 a.m. to noon time period may have affected the college's decision, he said, adding that "Adverse publicity probably didn't help." Hatch also emphasized that, as of this time, no plans have been made to discontinue other emeritus classes….

In other news...

• Cal State closes 2009-10 spring admissions because of budget crisis (LA Times)

In a move to cut enrollment because of the state budget deficit, the 23-campus Cal State University system announced Thursday that, with few exceptions, it will not allow students to start at the university next spring. Cal State usually admits about 35,000 freshmen, undergraduate transfers and graduate students in the spring, officials said….

Muscle cars are back, evidently

Ignorant and perverse

Today, New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean reports on a survey just completed for the giant American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public).

Guess what? Scientists and Joe Public are not on the same page.

…[W]hile almost all of the scientists surveyed accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity… is causing global warming, members of the general public are far less sure. ¶ Almost a third say human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time, a view held by only 2 percent of the scientists. Only about half agree that people are behind climate change, and 11 percent do not believe there is any warming at all. ¶ According to the survey, about a third of Americans think there is lively scientific debate on both topics; in fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution and there is little doubt that human activity is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere in ways that threaten global climate.

OK, nothing new here. The public is pretty clueless.

Predictably, according to the survey, Joe and Jane Public hold scientists in high regard. –Right. They like science and scientists; it’s only what scientists produce that they reject.

Sure, I get it. I like my compass, but I reject the idea that it points to magnetic north.

Joe and Jane aren’t just ignorant; they’re perverse.

OK, I’ll say it. Democracy sucks. –I know, I know. All other government forms suck even more.

That really sucks.

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

--Winston Churchill

"He made no factual corrections," Perez said

On Monday, the OC Reg (here) described John Williams’ response to a “scathing” Grand Jury report about his agency (Trustee Williams is also OC Public Guardian/Administrator). According to the GJ, Johnny Boy is mighty incompetent. Plus he's blowing off the GJ's recommendations.

Today, a reader alerted us that the Reg article has been updated:

UPDATED 7/7/09: James Perez, foreman of the grand jury that published the two reports, said Tuesday that Williams was allowed to review both reports before they were published and that he did not raise concerns about their accuracy.

"He made no factual corrections," Perez said. "What he said was, the facts are correct, but I dispute your interpretation of the facts."

Williams rejects the claims, as well as most of the grand jury's recommendations, in his official response. For example, the grand jury reported that Williams' office took four years to resolve the estate of a man who had died. The estate was worth $7,100 at the time of death, the report said, but it had dwindled to zero before it ever reached the court to be dispersed.

"The public administrator office didn't even handle this case," Williams wrote in his response. He also defended his staffing levels, saying they're in line with other county agencies and that the grand jury comparisons are misleading. He denied pension spiking and said his office has saved the county money.

Williams still has two months to respond to the grand jury's second report, but he doesn't believe voters will support splitting his office or change it from being an elected job.

"It makes as much sense as dividing up sheriff and coroner," Williams said. "It would be too cost prohibitive."

My money's on Perez.

Big man

As Rebel Girl noted, this morning, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur spammed the district community, alerting us to two recent newspaper articles about declining property tax collections (County's property tax values tumble $5.2billion [OC Reg] and First property tax dip since 1994 [LA Times]).

Sounds alarming.

"I encourage you,” he wrote, “to read [these] two very important newspaper articles … regarding the decreasing property taxes in Orange County. This will have an adverse impact on our District budget, especially in the area of basic aid dollars.”

Naturally, the Chancellor’s links to the articles didn’t work. The link to the Reg article opened up my mail program. The link to the Times article opened to a page that did not include the article.

Whatever. I, too, noticed these articles. Our district is an unusual “basic aid” district, which means that we get lots of our funding from a portion of locally collected property taxes. So when property values decline, our funding declines. On the other hand, compared to other districts, we’re swimming in dough, a fact that has inspired resentment across the state. We’ve got shitloads of extra money, and so the issue has been: how do we spend it? New facilities? A bust of St. Ronald?

As you know, here in Dissent, we’ve often noted our dependence on local property taxes, and we’ve monitored board discussions of the situation. We've been on top of it, baby.

So why didn’t I provide a link to yesterday’s articles?

It was because of lines like this one: “Orange County's total property tax values for 2009-10 are down 1.23%....” (LA Times).

One percent. Wow.

You know me: I have no clue about fiscal issues. But I do have a question: do we get a portion of the whole county’s property tax collections (which took a 1% hit) or do we get a portion of the property tax collections specifically for the cities that we serve (i.e., South County cities)?

I ask because some cities—e.g., Laguna Beach and Irvine—actually experienced an increase: they “have slightly increased their assessed values, mainly because of development,” reported the Times.

So exactly where do we stand?

Raghu likes to play the big man. We should just buy him a crown and then ask him to hide somewhere, incommunicado.

That would be best for all concerned, I think.