Wherever you see corruption and cronyism in this County, he’ll be there (no, not Tom Joad; Tom Fuentes)

     When I think about Tom Fuentes, I think about Tom Joad. Yes, Tom Joad.
     In particular, I think of Joad’s famous “I’ll be there” speech at the end of John Ford’s “Grapes of Wrath”:

...I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too.

     Joad’s imagined ubiquity was a “we’re all in this together” kind of thing—something good and noble. Tom Fuentes’s I’ll-be-there-itude, however, is something entirely different. He is the inevitable nexus of all manner of OC Republican shittiness.
     Yes, shittiness. Consider:
     Tom’s there when guys are intimidating Latinos from voting by hiring guards to stand outside polling places. Tom’s there when guys make sure that their political cronies get County jobs and contracts. Tom’s there—to provide moral support and exploit celebrity—when the Sheriff used his office for personal gain and gave cronies important department jobs. Tom’s there when an opportunity for cheap demagoguery cancels a good college program. Tom’s there when a guy who obviously breached his duty for self-gain is promoted as a political star as manager of the county’s assets.
     Well, I could go on. And on. And on.
     Tom was also there when, back in 2006, his advisee Tan Nguyen sent letters to Latino voters in an effort to intimidate them from voting (in Nguyen's bid to secure Loretta Sanchez’s Congressional seat).
     Well, today, Nguyen was finally sentenced—not for sending the letters, but for lying to state investigators about his role in the enterprise.
     So, like Tom’s pals Mike Carona and Chriss Street (whom he endlessly promoted and exploited), Tan Nguyen was brought down by the courts.
     And, like Carona, Nguyen will be spending his immediate future in prison. Yep.
     Read all about it:

A typical Fuentean hero: throwing others under the bus

Former candidate Tan Nguyen: 'It's been hell' (OC Register)

     Dean Steward, Nguyen's attorney, argued that the two-time GOP candidate deserved probation, but [Judge] Carter said people who run for public office should be held to the highest ethical standards, and that Nguyen's conduct showed a "true lack of character.". . .
     After a mistrial last August, Nguyen was convicted in December of one felony count of obstructing a probe into a controversial letter that his campaign sent to 14,000 Latino voters. Sanchez is the longtime Democratic congresswoman whose district includes Garden Grove, Santa Ana and parts of Fullerton and Anaheim.. . .
     At the time, Nguyen denied having anything to do with the letters, and blamed them on a campaign volunteer whom he fired. Nguyen also cast blame on another campaign volunteer who was a close college friend.

Tan Nguyen Gets Prison for Anti-Loretta Sanchez Vote Scheme (OC Weekly)

     A native of South Vietnam and a man who has clearly struggled to understand simple ethical concepts in the U.S., Nguyen has long claimed he had no role in devising a pre-election letter that sought to frighten 14,000 Latino citizens from voting. Multiple investigations proved otherwise, yet Nguyen attempted to convert his status as a convicted felon into a martyrdom. That effort pathetically failed, too….

Williams gutted and depleted the value of the Tapout estate, says Lewis’ ex-wife

     Today, I got a kind of thank-you note from Kimberly Edds of the OC Reg. I wasn’t sure what she was thanking me for, but she did leave a link to her article about Williams in today’s Register:

Claim filed against O.C. public guardian in TapouT estate case (OC Watchdog)

     The heirs of TapouT co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis have filed a claim against the county, accusing Public Administrator/Public Guardian John S. Williams of negligence in the handling of the multi-million dollar estate of Lewis, who died in a 2009 car crash.
     The claim, filed last week by Diane Larson, Lewis’ ex-wife and mother of his two children, accuses Williams of failing to properly manage the multi-million dollar estate, operated TapouT “in a manner to gut and deplete the value of the estate’s interest,” and sold TapouT without authorization.
. . .
     A judge will decide how the fees are distributed. Larson wants the fee matter decided by an out-of-county judge; the public administrator is fighting Larson’s change of venue request for the case….
     Meanwhile, Williams is working with county officials to move in a new executive manager to overhaul the culture of his struggling agency. It is unclear whether Williams, who has repeatedly been criticized for the way he runs his agency, will step down in the wake of the Board of Supervisors’ decision to bring in additional oversight and make immediate personnel changes.
     The Board of Supervisors can remove Williams from the appointed position of public guardian at any time. He is also the county’s elected public administrator, a position which the Board of Supervisors cannot take from him.
. . .
     Williams, who began serving a new four-year term in January, remains in charge of the office for now. Williams still owes himself $125,500 for his campaign, according to campaign finance filings.
     Williams is cooperating with Board Chairman Bill Campbell and the county’s Chief Executive Officer Tom Mauk to ease into the transition, Campbell said. Discussions are ongoing about Williams’ fate in the office, Campbell said.
. . .
     While trying to negotiate his own future, Williams is negotiating with the county to save the jobs of his political appointees if he leaves office before his term is up, county officials confirmed.
     Among Williams’ political appointees is Peggi Buff, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas’fiancee, who was promoted by Williams from executive assistant to his second-in-command five years after she began working for the office. Williams has political ties to Rackauckas and longtime Orange County Republican Chairman Tom Fuentes.
. . .

     The move to wrestle control of the agency away from Williams is a result of two county grand jury reports and the county’s own investigation which exposed “serious concerns” about the department’s operations, according to the county’s chief executive office.
. . .
     Williams’ private attorney, Phil Greer, called the Watchdog back Monday afternoon to provide a “no comment.” Greer is a county GOP insider who has represented all five current county supervisors except Supervisor John Moorlach….
     The yet-to-be hired manager will be charged with establishing a risk-averse culture, instituting new standards for obtaining goods and services, and making personnel adjustments after a human resources audit of the Public Administrator/Public Guardian is finished.
     The county wants to fill the position with an experienced lawyer, banker or receiver, Campbell said. The executive manager will report directly to Mauk, who has the final say on who is hired. Williams, a former Orange County marshal, holds a masters’ degree in public administration, but is not a lawyer.
. . .
     Renewed calls for reform were made last fall after then-Assistant District Attorney Todd Spitzer was fired by Rackauckas after he made a call to the Public Guardian’s office regarding a case.
     Rackauckas, in an October press conference, admitted he was uneasy about confronting Spitzer over his call to the public guardian because of his fiancée’s position in the office. He also confirmed he spoke with Buff’s staff before firing Spitzer.
     Rackauckas’ chief of staff, Susan Kang Schroeder, also admitted during the same press conference she discussed Williams’ press release criticizing Spitzer for calling his department. Williams had said in a previous interview that the press release was the work of several people within his own agency and did not involve anyone from an outside agency. Kang Schroeder had also previously denied any involvement.
     Buff, who was a one-time campaign fundraiser for Rackauckas also helped raise campaign money for Supervisor Pat Bates during her 2010 re-election campaign. Buff was first appointed to the pubic administrator/public guardian in 2003 as an executive assistant….

The Loss of Nameless Things: Tad Hall

Some of you knew Tad Hall; more than a few have heard Rebel Girl speak about her friend, the son of her teacher Oakley Hall, the brother of Reb's best friend Brett. Over the weekend, word came that he had died.

Here's some words:
Oakley Hall III, “Tad,” died of a heart attack this past weekend. He was 60 years old.

Oakley Hall III, eldest son of the late novelist Oakley Hall, was a playwright, director, and author. In the mid-70s, when he was a rising star in the New York theatre scene, his play Mike Fink was optioned by Joseph Papp of the Public Theatre. He founded and was the Artistic Director of the legendary Lexington Conservatory Theatre, in upstate New York, where his plays Grinder’s Stand and Beatrice and the Old Man, and his adaptation of Frankenstein enjoyed their premiere productions. Lexington Conservatory Theatre moved to Albany in 1979 and continues today as Albany Rep.



In 1978, Oakley suffered traumatic and massive head injuries in a fall from a bridge. He eventually returned to California to live in Nevada City near his family; his play Grinder’s Stand was produced by the Foothill Theatre Company, directed by Philip Sneed. The story of this production, entwined with Oakley’s fall and the slow process of creating a new life, are movingly told in Bill Rose’s award-winning documentary, The Loss of Nameless Things. (posted below)

Oakley made a life-long study of the surrealist playwright, Alfred Jarry, and over the years translated several of his plays from the original French. In 2008, Hall moved to Albany, New York, to live with Hadiya Wilborn, who helped set in motion a collaboration with acclaimed puppeteer Ed Atkeson. This resulted in a production of one of those translated plays, Ubu Roi, at an Albany theater, Steamer 10, directed by Oakley, with Steven Patterson in the title role.



In the fall of 2010, Moving Finger Press published Oakley’s novel, Jarry and Me, in which Oakley intertwines a memoir of his own life with a sly “autobiography” of Jarry. One of the last sentences of the book is, “Jarry dies with a grin on his face.” We are told that Oakley too had a grin on his face, at the end. As Oakley would say: “Merdre.”



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If you want to read a Valentine's Day poem, visit Rebel Girl's The Mark on the Wall.

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Blast from the Past: "stay together, learn the flowers, go light"

It's all birds in the garden this morning—jays, robins, bushtits, towhees—and some creature Rebel Girl can't identify: a mid-size bird, big as a quail, bright red splotch on the breast, striped tail feathers set off on a dashing diagonal angle—russet, white, black- plus a stern straight black beak (Northern Flicker?)

The birds want everything—acorns, pine needles, worms scratched up from beneath the fallen leaves, sticks.

This activity so early in the season—made Rebel Girl seek out this post from four years ago. The little guy is now nearly nine and Rebel Girl is approaching her half century mark. And the birds—the birds are two weeks early as are the trees with their green buds, their white and pink flowers flowering.

from March 1, 2007:

MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON and I see birds in the morning, flying by with their beaks full of twigs and long grasses.

It's cold today, for southern California. The ice on the windshield is thick, something to marvel at until the driver, my husband, realizes that he can't actually see through it and it isn't melting. He stops at the fire station down the hill and uses their hose.

My son and I watch the nest-building birds from the hot tub where most mornings we spend some time. It's good for the body and the family. We look at the sky, try to identify the clouds. This morning, none, just the radiant post-storm blue. We listen for the birds, the neighborhood dogs and chickens. We watch the steam rise around us. We're a kind of poem, at least for ten minutes.

It's nearly 30 years since Stephen Jama first had me read Gary Snyder's poem, "The Bath" but I have thought of the poem and my former teacher (almost certainly dead by now) nearly every morning when we open the tub and the steam escapes, the cloud of warm vapor into the cool.

In 1979, I was an 18-year-old student at El Camino College, enrolled in Jama's poetry workshop and over my head, to be sure. But I tried. I read "The New American Poetry" edited by Donald Allen. I wrote. I did my paper on Stuart Perkoff's poetry. The girl who sat next to me did her paper on rocker Patti Smith's poetry and wrote poems about her crushes on girls. My poetry was full of ashes, of cigarettes I didn't smoke and cars I didn't know how to drive. I brought sharp cheddar cheese with red wax rind to the end-of-the-semester workshop party and Jama himself asked me where I had bought it. The Italian deli on PCH in Redondo Beach where the highway curves away from the ocean. I rode my bike there. The deli is gone now too.

I have no idea how I got through that class. But part of it must have been that Jama knew what he was teaching was not the end but the beginning. Most of us would go on and be more somewhere else. He was starting us out. We were doing what we could do with what we had. So was he.

I worry that this year's birds are being premature. But there are tight tiny hard buds of new growth pushing through the tangled branches of the large unknown bush beyond the hot tub. When in bloom, the bush's white flowers smell orange. Framed by my study windows, the reddish beginnings of new growth leaf on an unnamed tree. In weeks those leaves will broaden, their flowers will fluff into pink. Spring. Maybe this year I will learn the names.

****

by Gary Snyder:

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

A night song (or two)

I want to be a good woman
And I want, for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why, I can see you no more.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever

I don’t want to be a bad woman
And I can’t stand to see you be a bad man
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever
And this is why I am leaving
And this is why I can see you no more
This is why I am lying when I say
That I don’t love you no more

Cause I want to be a good woman
And I want for you to be a good man



the moon is not only beautiful
it is so far away
the moon is not only ice cold
it is here to stay

Loose ends

     For me, this was a day of messages. Three of ‘em.

Taxable?

1. WHO PAID CORRUPT CARONA'S BOFFO BILL? A few days ago, I posted about Jones Day, the big law firm handling defense for the SOCCCD in Westphal v. Wagner (the prayer suit). I noted that Jones Day attorneys also handled former OC Sheriff Mike Carona’s defense in his corruption trial and that Carona was unable to afford such representation (see A strange world). Why, I asked, semi-rhetorically, would Jones Day attorneys defend him for free?
     Today, one of our readers wrote:

You are right on in regards to Jones Day and Carona. They are the largest law firm in the world (over 2,000 lawyers)…. The lawyers assigned to Carona are their best white collar crime litigators on the West Coast. They have provided Carona with a couple of million dollars worth of legal and appellate work, all of which is TAXABLE as income to him. In no way is this "pro bono" work, and somebody is paying them to protect Carona and his confederates.

     What could be hinkyer than somebody paying millions of dollars to defend that creep Carona, I ask you?! I’m gonna follow up on this (alleged) factoid (or encourage local journalists to do so).

A misunderstanding

2. DENIAL AND DONUTS? One of our sources down at the County left a comment today about John Williams:

Williams had a staff meeting yesterday (he actually showed up). Of course it was all about political conspiracies and denial, and that they didn't really know what was going on, attempting to rally the troops behind him (he tried to bribe them with the usual box of stale Crispy Creme donuts). Pretty sad that most people know he is negotiating a leave town deal but he tells his staff everything is great and its all a misunderstanding. Don't know who to feel more sorry for, him or his staff. P.S.: the Buffoon [Williams’ second-in-command and DA Rackauckas’ fiancé Peggi Buff] was no where to be found at the staff meeting.

     This has the ring of truth: I’ve heard before about Williams’ donut gambit. He's got donuts on the brain.

For my next trick...

3. DEAN DODO. [PLEASE READ UPDATES BELOW.] After my morning class today, I checked my mail folder and found a note that said:

Hi Roy,
Dean of XXX hired [his/her] roommate to work temporarily in the XXX while the permanent staff is [away]. How is this ethical? Please put in blog.

     The writer of this note named names, which I’ve deleted. DtB has noted this administrator's spectacular incompetence once or twice in recent years. A very reliable source once informed me of one of the dean's even more questionable hires. Of course, we don't know if this latest story is true, but it certainly fits with much that we've heard from good sources.
     I cannot believe that our leaders at the college are unaware of this pattern.
     Evidently, they just don’t care.
     UPDATE: I've been assured that whatever was done by this dean was soon undone. Let's move on.

     UPDATE #2: the employee in this case was not an instructor, and, as I said, the hiring was undone almost as soon as it was done (evidently, it did not pass muster with HR). A friend reminds me that there are many instances of the hiring of friends and relatives at Irvine Valley College. So let's move beyond this particular case which, as I said, is somewhat of a non-case.

One more time

Mathur: the type of guy who brings a balloon to a culture war

Ruling: College invocations did not violate First Amendment (OC Reg)

     A federal judge has ruled Saddleback and Irvine Valley Colleges may continue to open school events with invocations, but said district officials violated First Amendment rights on at least two separate occasions.
     In his order, U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner, ruled partially in favor of the district officials and partially in favor of the faculty members and students who filed a lawsuit in 2009, seeking to prohibit prayers at school events.
. . .
     Klausner determined that nonsectarian invocations at events like graduation and scholarship ceremonies do not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which enforces the separation of church and state. Klausner denied the plaintiffs' request to prohibit invocations because they could not show that irreparable damage would result from continuation of the tradition.
     Klausner also determined two incidents – one involving Mathur and another involving former SOCCCD trustee Donald Wagner – did violate the Establishment Clause.
     The incident related to Mathur occurred during the Chancellor's Opening Session in August 2009. A slide show of patriotic images set to "God Bless the USA" was played during a faculty training session, ending with two slides picturing flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers.
     According to the court order, the images were superimposed with the message, "Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you. Jesus Christ and the American G.I. ... One died for your soul, the other died for your freedom."
. . .
     The incident related to Wagner occurred at a May 2009 scholarship ceremony, which Wagner opened with an invocation.
     In the invocation, Wagner mocked "the special interest group that has contacted this college to pursue its agenda of driving God from public square….
. . .

     Lawyers for both sides claimed victory with Klausner's order.
     "They challenged invocations, and we're pleased with the outcome," said John Vogt, the attorney representing the defendants. "We think it's consistent with other cases in this context."
     Plaintiffs' attorney Ayesha Khan saw things differently.
     "The district has been found to have violated the constitutional rights not once, but twice, by presenting religiously hostile messages at district events, Khan said.
     The lawsuit was filed against Wagner and Mathur in their individual and official capacities. They were found to have violated the Establishment Clause in their individual capacities only, Vogt said.
     "It was a mistake," Vogt said. "The court found that they are not likely to be repeated and were one time in nature."
. . .
     The attorneys for both parties will meet with the judge for a mandatory settlement conference on Feb. 17. If no settlement is reached, Klausner may issue his final judgment in the case. It was not immediately clear when the judgment would be issued.
     Khan said she plans to appeal the portion of the case her clients lost. Vogt would not comment on whether college or district officials would appeal the case, calling the decision "premature" since final judgment has not yet been rendered.

Mattel has released a Don Wagner doll, complete with tiny Bible and "detachable" beard.