Tea: the last beverage of scoundrels

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
                  —Samuel Johnson

WHITHER MATHUR? On Monday, the SOCCCD BOT passed a resolution honoring Dr. Eddie Hernandez, retiring chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District. Good for them.

It is reasonable to suppose that our own soon-to-be-unemployed Chancellor, Raghu Mathur, might be interested in the soon-to-be-available RSCCD Chance gig.

–And the Capo gig (no firm verification yet that Mathur was a finalist in the search for a new Superintendent).

BTW, I’ve heard (from an insider) that Capo has hired its new Superintendent and will make an announcement perhaps on Monday.

It’s not Mathur.

DON WAGNER, TEA PARTIER? Did you know that our own Don Wagner is a Tea Partier?

Well, evidently he is. Nearly two weeks ago, Larry Gilbert of the Orange Juice blog posted a recap of the Mission Viejo TEA Party of April 15. Gilbert, apparently an idiot, describes the event as a huge and glorious success. Garsh, he says, the dang OC Reg underestimated attendance. “Three different participant,” he notes, told him that the crowd was larger than last year. In some areas, he says, “patriots” were “crammed together 4 or 5 deep….”

Tea Partiers call themselves “patriots.” As I recall, those Liberty Lobby bozos that descended upon the district twelve or thirteen years ago also called themselves “patriots.”

You know what Samuel Johnson said about patriotism. Yeah.

Gilbert is sensitive to the charge that some Tea Partiers are racists:

[MC] Mark [Dobrilovic] opened [by] saying this isn’t about black and white. This is not a racist event. In fact he said the first person we will go after is a white Republican foreigner named Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Foreigner? Is there something wrong with Americans born in another country?

Like I said, Gilbert is an idiot. Dobrilovic too.

Upon noting that the crowd listened to the “patriotic music of Charlie Daniels and Lee Greenwood,” Gilbert lists the “event speakers,” including “Assembly Candidate” Don Wagner.

I wonder if Don is a “birfer” too?

Who you callin’ worthless?!

Tustin base project called worthless

Two units of J.F. Shea Co. say they want to back out of a deal to develop an 820-acre parcel at the former Tustin Marine air base, saying that falling land values make it impossible to build homes, shops, offices and a hotel in today’s economy.

Shea maintains that land once valued at $236 million is now valued near zero, one city official said.
. . .
The development is the biggest project at the 1,600-acre air base. Plans included 2,105 housing units, up to 6.7 million square feet of office, retail and inudstrial [sic] space and a 500-room hotel. Development is to be built around a two-mile-long linear park. ¶ The first blow to the project came in April 2007 when an earlier partner, Centex Corp., backed out of the partnership….(Continued)

Schwarzenegger Promises to Veto Future Cuts to California Colleges (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Mentor and friend and wacko

I FORGOT TO MENTION one funny moment during last night’s board meeting. Saddleback College’s "Utt" library is going through renovation. The building is named after a notorious OC Congressman.

Trustee Tom Fuentes therefore found it necessary to announce that “James B. Utt was a mentor and friend in my youth….”

Why, of course he was!

According to Wikipedia, “one of [Utt’s] unachieved goals was to remove the United States from the United Nations.” Further, he “voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1960, 1964, and 1968, and against the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

Further,

In 1963, [Utt] claimed that "a large contingent of barefooted Africans" might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the United States. [See OC Almanac.] In that same year, he also claimed that black Africans may be training in Cuba to invade the United States.

Other than that, he was a really swell guy.

Dave "Quisling" Lang participates in Treasurer face-off on KOCE

"Um, what makes you qualified, College Boy?"
"Well, I am a bean counter. An Irvine bean counter."
"Yeah?"
"Absolutely."

SEE Poll: Who won the treasurers debate?

As of this moment, 90% of Reg readers judge that Mr. Rodenhuis won. 10% judge that Ms. Freidenrich won.

Nobody thinks that Bean Boy won.

So they tell me

MORE RIGHT-WING POLITICS. A source tells me that IVC's Performing Arts Center (PAC) was rented this past Sunday. He says that he is under the impression that the PAC people thought it was an earthquake event. Instead it was a Republican Party Rally -– including Trustee Don Wagner, local candidates, etc. I’ll seek confirmation. UPDATE: an anonymous person emailed me to say that "they were told it was a mtng about water issues - which it was - it just also became a rally." I did some looking, and it appears that the event concerned the California "water crisis." The issue is very popular among the "patriot" or Tea Party crowd. See, e.g., "California Water Crisis." 

As far as I know, political groups are entitled to rent the PAC. On the other hand, we sure do see lots of right-wingery in this district. Doesn't look good.

MR. GOO AT CAPO? Another source tells me that a reliable friend insists that Raghu Mathur is a finalist for the Superintendent job at CAPO (i.e., the Capistrano Unified School District). Again, I’ll seek confirmation.

Education Alliance is the right-wing political group that hovers in the background of the CAPO board's policies and actions--at the very least EA is a major funder of CAPO trustee campaigns--and Mathur has connections with EA. Gosh, I hope the CAPO teachers union knows about this (well, if it's true).

UPDATE: I recall a meeting two or three years ago in which Mathur referred to his attendance of an Education Alliance gathering. So I checked the SOCCCD website and found the September 07 Board Meeting Highlights. There, we're informed that

Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur...thanked Trustee Wagner for inviting him to the Education Alliance dinner....

UPDATE #2: for the Spring '08 SOCCCD "Chancellor's Opening Session," Mathur invited Lance Izumi as his special guest.

Izumi is on the Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). PRI and Izumi appear to be aligned with the Education Alliance-affiliated trustees of CAPO.

Back in December of 2009, we posted Trojan horses in public schools, a portion of which follows:

TODAY, the Reg reported that

A libertarian think-tank that prominently features the Capistrano Unified School District in a documentary about how the U.S. public school system is broken will screen its 49-minute film this afternoon on Capitol Hill. [The documentary] recounts a five-year effort by the CUSD Recall Committee parents group to bring reforms to a school district plagued by scandal, community unrest and allegations of corruption reaching into the highest levels of its administration.… The 2:30 p.m. screening will be hosted by two leading GOP lawmakers....

Co-hosting the screening will be the film's executive producer, Lance Izumi, and [the director]….

Lance Izumi? Does that name sound familiar? It should. Izumi was Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur’s super-special guest speaker at the Spring ’08 “Opening Session.” He was co-billed with Elvis. Remember?

The filmmakers highlight the much-criticized construction of Capistrano's sprawling district office building, the grand jury indictment of a former superintendent, and the unpopular decision to build a high school on a hilly site bordered by high-voltage transmission lines, landfills and a high-pressure gasoline pipeline.

The filmmakers also traveled to Nashville, Tenn., to profile a family's unhappiness with local public schools, to Sweden to examine that country's school voucher system, and to Oakland to chronicle the turnaround of an inner-city charter school.
...
Several Capistrano trustees who ran on the CUSD Recall Committee's "reform" platform attended the May premiere of the film, drawing ire from critics who questioned why public school officials were apparently supporting a film calling for sweeping reforms to public education, including school choice [i.e., programs allowing parents to spend government vouchers on private schools].

That is mighty strange, isn’t it? Public school officials in favor of the private school “voucher” concept? Gee willikers! It's almost perverse!

Tonight's board meeting: we need a billion

First, check out Tracy's always colorful Board Meeting Highlights!

NOTHING earth-shattering occurred at tonight's meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees. Tom Fuentes asked that the discussion of the "nepotism" report be put off until next month. There was some push-back—the board was not pressed for time—but Fuentes got nasty, glowering and repeating his request, and so Wagner relented.

Predictably, much attention was paid to Saddleback College's securing of the Men’s State Basketball Championship. Briefly commenting on the team, the coach said that they weren’t the most talented team there (ouch!), but they worked very hard, etc. T-shirts were distributed. The trustees permitted themselves big smiles and enthusiasm.

Bob Cosgrove, whose tenure as Saddleback's Academic Senate President is coming to an end, again noted the absence of an apostrophe in the golden phrase hovering above trustees' heads: "Ronald Reagan Board of Trustees Room." Wagner offered a mock slow burn.

During his report, Trustee Fuentes noted that he recently gave a speech at Tulane U (in Louisiana). After his speech, said Tom, a 5-year student came up to him to say, “You are the first conservative speaker that I have had the opportunity to hear in my college studies.” Fuentes intoned that this fact does not reflect well on academia.

The discussion of the consultant/committee's recommendations for a few (non-radical) changes in the Chancellor hire brochure caused some sparks between Fuentes and Wagner. Fuentes took the opportunity to issue some (perhaps unwarranted) "told you so's" and referred to the majority's rushing through the process, but Wagner couldn't let that go unchallenged. There's been no rush; everything is going as per plan, he said, echoed by Marcia Milchiker. Very cool.

The report concerning capital and scheduled maintenance needs (over the next twenty years) was "sobering," to use Mathur's term. (Mathur said virtually nothing during the meeting, and he didn't look good.) It appears that we'll need close to a billion dollars (for the twenty year period). That means that we're gonna have to get seriously creative to pull together that kind of scratch. Some guy named "Dante" (sans Inferno) dazzled us with a dozen or so cool (or hinky?) revenue-producing ideas, but, in the end, he seemed to say we'll have to raise taxes just a little bit to make that billion we need.

This board hates the "T" word.

Asked Fuentes, "Is a little bit of tax increase like a little bit pregnant?" He added that he was quite serious.

Nope. No slippery slope here, said Dante.

That didn't go down well. Fuentes glared.

One of the revenue ideas was inspired by something that board already does. If the district were to put aside $20 million of basic aid per year, that would add up to $400 million (in the twenty year period).

Mathur piped up to suggest that the colleges must pursue much more online instruction--something that goes beyond merely adding more classes. Raghu didn't sound like a "bricks and mortar" guy at all.

I'll have more tomorrow. Maybe.


THIS JUST IN:

Capistrano Unified teacher strike is over

The 5-day-old strike standoff between the Capistrano Unified School District and its teachers union ended late Monday, with the two sides coming to a tentative mutual agreement that will end three days of teacher picketing.

“We are really, really happy for our teachers and our schools, to have our family back together again,” school board President Anna Bryson said of the agreement that was reached about 11:30 p.m. “It’s a really wonderful feeling to know our kids will have their teachers.”

Details of the agreement were not immediately available, but Bryson said the school board was pleased with the outcome and that teachers would all return to their classrooms Tuesday....

Community College Association (CCA) supports CUEA

Over the weekend: I do believe the occasion was the CCA Board Spring Conference (April 23-25) at the Rio in Las Vegas.

CCA is the higher education affiliate of the California Teacher's Association (CTA). The SOCCCD Faculty Association (aka the faculty union), of course, is an affiliate of CCA and thus CTA.

Saddleback College's Ken Woodward addresses the group, making a plea for support of CUEA (the Capo Unified Education Association)--a resolution and cash.

In the end, the body supports the resolution (for CUEA) and increases the financial support from the proposed $2000 amount to $5000.

Striking union calls trustees 'inconsistent' (OC Reg)
NEA message of support for CUEA