The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
[Allan Bartlett of RC identifies the following as a “press release from Don Wagner:]
Irvine Attorney and Community College District President Enters Race
IRVINE- Attorney and Community College District President Donald Wagner has kicked off his campaign to replace termed out Assemblyman Chuck Devore to represent the 70th Assembly District.
Wagner's strong conservative message of change away from the current fiscal recklessness in Sacramento, and his long history of effective government leadership, has already earned the Wagner campaign a number of endorsements from conservative education leaders, the Family Action Pac, and Republican voters and community activists throughout Orange County.
"I believe that the State Assembly is simply not doing the job we are paying it to do," said Wagner. "By raising taxes and allowing spending to get out of control, the State Assembly is not putting the needs and concerns of the citizens of California first."
Wagner has hired Duane Dichiara and Jason Roe of Revolvis Consulting. Long time conservative activist John Fugatt is already aboard the Wagner campaign as its treasurer. Grassroots volunteers and fundraisers are also in place as the campaign kicks into high gear. Wagner will later this month report more cash on hand for this race than his primary opponent, Tustin Councilman Jerry Amante, who has been running for more than eight months yet reported less than $12,000 cash on hand at the close of the last reporting period.
Wagner and his wife Megan have three children, and have been residents of Irvine since 1991. He is a graduate of UCLA and the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Wagner has been elected to three consecutive terms on the Board of Trustees of the South Orange County Community College District since 1998, and currently serves as the Board's President. Wagner also founded the Orange County chapter of the Federalist Society, a nationwide organization of lawyers, law professors, and judges.
Interesting factoids:
• Don has run for Assembly (the 70th) before, though with little success. He's just too peevish a being. See 2004 campaign website. "Corporal punishment in the lower grades work [sic]," opines the Donster. (See Q and A.)
• According to Politics, Revolvis Consulting, which launched only two months ago, “will specialize in general consulting and direct mail with an emphasis on targeting Latino voters, a fast-growing demographic and one essential to future Republican success.”
•John Fugatt is (or was) the Executive Director of “Christian Coalition of California,” which is, of course, affiliated with the notorious Pat Robertson-founded “Christian Coalition.”
I'M ABOUT to leave my beauteous suite here at the San Luis Obispo Days Inn (on Monterey). Been here for the wedding of an old pal—who happens to have been among my very first students at Irvine Valley College back during the Reagan Administration! (Fall 1986)
Lovely wedding. Lovely bride. Nice tats. Took pics, but don't have the technology to show them here.
SLO is one of the great Cal towns. I'd love to stay and explore, but...
Gotta go. Stay cool!
The band: the excellent Tres Gatos
P.S.:
I was mystified by 100 Miles' comment, and then I got to thinking: Hmmm, Could it be that the word "tats" refers to something other than tattoos?
The Urban Dictionary gives two meanings: first, "tats" refers to tattoos. Second, "tats" is a synonym for, um, well, tits. (I did not know that.)
Actually, what I said works both ways, but I meant only the first. (Pace, M!)
The topic for the last part of Patt Morrison’s radio show (KPCC, 89.3) today (2:30 p.m.) is Scientific Illiteracy:
Unscientific America
Despite the fact that the United States leads the world in scientific breakthroughs most American citizens can not name a living scientific role model. Why has our nation fallen so behind in science and does it really matter? According to Chris Mooney it does. Patt sits down with the co-author of “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.”
Guest: Chris Mooney, co-author of “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.”
In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an OpenCourseWare system that would post videos and other course materials for virtually all MIT classes online for the world to see, thereby starting to break down the traditional barriers to higher education.
Eight years later, we may be seeing the student response.
The development of free note sharing Web sites, where students upload their class notes to share with their peers, has begun to create an open stockpile of downloadable information that some say is further leveling the academic playing field. With an influx of note sharing sites – from the innocuous sounding GradeGuru to the most "college" sounding isleptthroughclass.com (soon to be relaunched as Wise Campus) – many of them advocate the spread and collaborative use of knowledge beyond the classroom and university. … The possibilities are great for "open educational resources," like note sharing, said Steve Carson [of] MIT Open Courseware, but one must differentiate between sharing information from credentialed teachers at accredited institutions and sharing student notes that are not verified or fact-checked. Note sharing could lead to issues of questionable factuality similar to those that arise with the user-updated Wikipedia.
And because of the controversial nature of sharing notes, these Web sites have raised eyebrows across academia, especially with regard to professors' intellectual property. Some, too, have expressed the concern that these websites blur the line between cheating and doing one's own work, which could be seen as propagating laziness among students. And some professors worry that these sites could devolve into gossipy commentary on the course….
As OC Weekly’s Nick Schou notes, local “birther” queenpin Orly Taitz was interviewed yesterday on MSNBC by David Shuster and Tamron Brown. It didn’t go so well--Schou describes it as a "meltdown." (I can't help but think that her thick accent is a huge disadvantage. A little generosity please?)
Taitz is seriously unsavvy about this sort of thing, it seems—it does not occur to her to just get to the point—and so she seems even wackier and more clueless than she actually is.
I guess.
Clearly, the woman doesn't have handlers. If she does, they're Obamaphiles, fer sher.
Remember the recent "wedding/dance" video? It has inspired a spoof:
As you know, owing to a bout of self-interest, I missed the July 21 meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees. Having now viewed much of the meeting (video is available at the district website), I can report that July’s meeting exhibited the following features:
Board Prez Don Wagner asked board clerk Tom Fuentes for his report on "actions taken" during the closed session that had just then concluded. Tom archly reported that, during that session, “the board did nothing.”
It was the apex of good feeling for this meeting.
Trustee Marcia Milchiker’s invocation focused on the expectation that everyone present (i.e., the trustees?) would be thoughtful and civil. “I know” everyone will be, she said. (Perhaps Marcia was alluding to a failure of civility & thoughtfulness recently exhibited—by board members? Dunno.)
Chancellor Raghu Mathur got his chance to run the “Did You Know?” video, which failed to flicker during June’s meeting owing to a technical snafu. According to the district website, this “electronic presentation” is “about the technological revolution in the world today and its impact on all segments of education.”
In truth, the presentation was just what you might expect: a sequence of images designed by people who believe that an audience can be enlightened by a quick succession of discrete, unexplained (and often dubious) factoids.
I.e., idjits who confuse knowledge with "information."
Among these factoids: that we are training people for jobs that do not yet exist; that “We are living in exponential times.” (I did not know that "times" could be "exponential.")
One motif was that the world is being overwhelmed by Chinese and Indian people. (I watched Mathur’s face. He snickered in silence.)
The video's background music was a bland bit of thumping pop featuring a woman chanting, “Right here, right now.”
The presentation ended with the question: “So what does it all mean?”
That was it. Silence. Nobody noted, let alone answered, the ending question. There was awkward and feeble applause, which (as I sat, staring at my Mac) caused me to chuckle.
Evidently, the presentation came to the board via Fuentes, who got it from some friend in New Mexico or someplace. (In fact, the video is readily available on YouTube. See below.)
(NOTE: the creators of "Did You Know?"—educators Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod—explain their video here.)
Public comments: Saddleback College’s Bob Cosgrove noted that the outside lettering that identifies the “Ronald Reagan" room refers also to the “trustees” meeting place. Bob carped about the missing apostrophe. Illiterate, that, said Bob.
Nobody cared. Williams nudged Lang and asked, "What's an apostrophe?"
Board reports: Jay was absent, so his report was unusually crisp. Padberg or Fuentes offered nothing. Wagner briefly noted the state budget cuts' impact on education. Milchiker declared her super-duper membership in some alumni association.
Trustees Dave Lang and John Williams (and the student trustee) offered no report.
Chancellor … Mathur commented on the state budget deal which cost California community colleges close to $1 billion, mostly in categorical programs such as EOPS and DSPS. If passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor, fees will go up from $20 to $26 per unit starting this fall, which will be challenging to implement because fall registration has already begun. … Orange County Treasurer Chriss Street met in the Chancellor's Office recently … to discuss the impact on our basic aid revenues of the decline in value of … properties assessed in Orange County. Indications are that property values will be down 1.2% this year, 5% next year and then stay down for a number of years….”
There were two discussion items: 4.1: the foundations; 4.2: “My Academic Plan” (MAP).
Saddleback College Prez Todd Burnett presented the Saddleback College Foundation's new prez, Gary Capata, a lawyer. The latter spoke of the foundation’s accomplishments, including receipt of a gift. When Capata said, “[The gift] will help with technology,” some of our technology immediately broke, and a tech guy had to come up and fiddle with faders and dials while Capata grinned awkwardly at the three people in the audience.
Board meetings are such fun.
IVC Prez Glenn Roquemore introduced IVC’s Al Tello, who offered a PowerPoint presentation. Blah, blah, blah, said Al who, as always, seemed to sport good hair.
Bob Bramucci, who does not sport good hair,got up to explain that even ATEP has a foundation. He was very brief. Marcia noted that she did not know that ATEP had a foundation. Well, yes, it has had a foundation since 2005, said Bramucci.
Next, Bramucci explained “my academic plan” (MAP), which is a reportedly excellent career planning program that is available to our students. We don’t have enough counselors to help every student with academic plans (hint, hint), and so students can use MAP instead. It's got lots of bells and whistles.
Do you ever get the feeling that, if all the counselors and librarians were to disappear one day, nobody'd notice?
Just kidding. Actually, I'm just testing to see if anybody actually reads this.I suspect that, at this point, what with summer and all, I am writing to no one.
And yet. --And yet ... I am writing to the cosmos.
Ever get all existential like that?
Bramucci handed off to Jim Gaston, who explained that MAP has received awards, expressions of interest from other districts, and so on. We’re approaching “50,000” plans done, said Gaston. “I’m a geek,” he added. He joked about installing “GPS chips” in “students’ necks,” which yielded guffaws. Somebody actually snorted.
Bramucci and Gaston did a good job, as usual. I do believe that Tracy offers a link to video of the presentation in her “Highlights.” I wouldn't bother with it though.
Trustee Williams, who has recently received harsh criticism for his phenomenally shitty performance as county Guardian/Administrator, persisted in his strategy of acting as though everything were just peachy-keen. He yammered uselessly about MAP. He was twinkly. Mathur joined him in this (not the twinkling, the yammering). Padberg offered “kudos.” She never twinkles.
Trustee Dave Lang quibbled--or, indeed, beefed--about something somehow misleading in the “basic aid” report. Gary P tried to shrug it off, but Dave did not join in Gary's shruggery, maintaining intead his beefery.
Gary seemed irked.
Wagner, exhibiting pure and pithy Wagnerian peevitude, publicly spanked Marcia for turning something on, then off, on her console. Trustees were too focused on the prospect of the meeting's impending end to roll their eyes or chortle.
It was a trivial event, like all of the events of this meeting.
P.S.: I've been plowin' through the first season of HBO's drama "True Blood." It's about a vampire and his girlfriend living in some sleepy Louisiana town. From the creator of "Six Feet Under."
I recommend it. Cool metaphors. Check out the bluesy opening credits sequence below. (Singer: Jace Everett.)
I feel like that vampire right now. Thsssssssssssssss (glug, glug).
P.P.S.: TigerAnn's Lithuanian cousin, Tige, a musician, has finally hit the big time. Check out this recent performance:
Gosh, I leave for a coupla days, and then shite happens!
