Five years ago today...

From Dissent the Blog, August 15, 2011:

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What are these mangy, disgruntled Old Guardsters yapping about?
Dissent the Blog, 8-15-2011

     AS YOU KNOW, the proposed faculty contract will be presented and discussed at tomorrow’s Faculty Association luncheon/gabfest. In their August 11 “faculty alert,” a group of disgruntled Old Guardsters (DOGs) objected to two features of the contract. (My apologies to canines everywhere.)
     ① One objection concerns the proposed fate of “75” senior faculty who (they say) are at the highest paid step in their "column." You see, the DOGs noticed these features of the proposed contract:

• Elimination of the lowest two steps of each column on the salary schedule, increasing the base salary;
• Each faculty member not at the highest paid step in her column will receive an additional step increase, in addition to the regular step increase, in the fall of 2010*

FA Prez Long: often
compared to a Boy Scout,
"only less cynical"

     These grizzled curs are sayin’, “Hey, what about us? How come we don’t get no increase?” (For background, see 1997 Times article re SOCCCD salaries.)
     So they're like a dog without a bone. All snarly.
     ② The other flea-bitten objection concerns alleged “discriminatory lab compensation decisions.” I shall assume that the objection refers specifically to the following mangy feature of the proposed contract:

• Load value equivalency to lecture (1 for 1) for Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology and Nursing labs.

     The problem for the money-grubbing mongrels, evidently, is that this “upgrade” in the valuation of an instructor’s “lab” hours is visited only upon Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology, and Nursing instructors.
     "What about all us other labbers?" howl the DOGs.
     (Gosh, I had no idea so much labbing went on!)
     Below, I present the relevant verbiage of the old (2007) contract and the proposed (2011) contract:

OLD CONTRACT:

NEW CONTRACT:

*I found the three contract features referred to here in FA President Lewis Long's Aug. 1 email to faculty

Labs come in several varieties

A group of employees--mostly biologists--vandalizing property at Irvine Valley College

One particularly notorious School at IVC actually teaches vandalism.

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FYI • OMG/WTF

Dissent the Blog, 8-15-2011

Ray

     Newer faculty: you might want to learn more about Ray Chandos, Michael Channing, Sharon MacMillan, Mike Merrifield,* Sherry Miller-White, and Ken Woodward—a group of faculty who recently sent out an “alert” regarding contract negotiations between the district and the Faculty Association.
     It is important that you understand what these people are capable of. I have already described (and documented) some of their outrageous antics (see). But there’s much more.

Ken

     To learn more about the Old Guard’s defense of Holocaust denying trustee Steven Frogue, see When is an anti-Semite not an anti-Semite?, Chandos' letter to the Times in 1997.
     To learn more about the Old Guard’s efforts to secure Tom Fuentes’ appointment as Frogue’s replacement (in 2000), see Fuentes’ suspicious appointment, an account from Dissent.

*As I recall, Merrifield was not associated with the union Old Guard (c. 1996-2000). The rest of these characters, however, were.

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Drugged? Illiterate? They'll love you at Argosy!

                                             Dissent the Blog, 8-15-2011

Harris seeks millions in for-profit college lawsuit (California Watch)

     The U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general in four states, including California, filed a complaint last week against for-profit college giant Education Management Corp., which operates 14 campuses in the state under the Argosy University and Art Institute brands.
     The 122-page complaint contends the Pittsburgh-based for-profit college company illegally paid admissions employees based on the number of students they recruited, regardless of the students' qualifications. The Higher Education Act prohibits colleges and universities that participate in the federal financial aid program from paying commissions, bonuses or other incentive payments to recruiters based on how many students they enroll.
     The exact amount of California's claim is still unclear, but state Attorney General Kamala Harris is suing Education Management for all the state financial aid the colleges have received since 2003, mainly in the form of Cal Grants. The state is also seeking $10,000 per false claim.
. . .
     The lawsuit says the company created a "boiler room"-style sales culture in which recruitment of students was the sole focus. A guide for assistant directors of admissions includes a points-based salary chart, described internally as "the matrix." The chart rewards a set number of points for each type of student recruited in one year.
     The company relentlessly monitors each recruiter's enrollment statistics, the complaint states. Admissions personnel who recruited the most students in a year won all-expenses-paid "President's Club" trips to Puerto Vallarta and Cancun in Mexico and Las Vegas.
     Education Management also instructs its sales force to enroll applicants regardless of whether they can write coherently and even if they appear to be under the influence of drugs, the complaint says.…

Argosy? Cool!

     --I do believe that Argosy reps regularly visit Irvine Valley College. I guess they're looking to see if we have any druggies and illiterates.

* * *

     I did some digging. Sure enough, I reported the following in early March, 2009:

[O]n Saturday, members of the Irvine Valley College community received a curious email from Dean Elizabeth Cipres (Counseling and Library Services). She wrote:

Dear Faculty:

I have attached a Lunch and Learn invitation from Argosy University that will be held in our Career & Transfer Center … on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 11:30 am to 1:00 pm. Also if you are considering a doctorate program, I have attached the recently updated doctoral matrix for your review. 

Liz Cipres

     Like Raghu Mathur, Cipres has a gig at Argosy.
     I made a big point of Argosy's unsavoriness back then. I don't think it had any effect. We're still promoting the crap out of these for-profits.

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Mickadeit's "ode" to Tom Fuentes
Dissent the Blog, 8-15-2011

     The OC Reg’s Frank Mickadeit posted a tribute to Tom Fuentes today:

     Walked in the newsroom Monday and told my editor, "I'm going to write an extraordinary column today. I mean, even beyond my usual extraordinariness." He raised an eyebrow. I continued: "I'm going to publish my eulogy, ode, whatever you want to call it, to Tom Fuentes before he dies. So he can read it."
     I'd gotten a call last week from his doctor, Ken Williams, saying Tom had taken a bad turn and it would be "maybe only days," before he passes from his long fight with liver cancer. Now was the time to see him. I didn't want to…. (continued)

"It's Hillary"

Maureen Dowd: ‘The Republicans Have Their Candidate’ in Hillary Clinton (Truthdig)

Seeks guidance from Kissinger

     …All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can’t rally behind their flawed candidate is crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit strategies, is getting old.
     They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger and hawk it up — unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.
     The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary….

     See Dowd’s The Perfect G.O.P. Nominee (NYT)

Recommended

What the emails show: "donations ... win access to ... State Dept. diplomatic officials...."

Transparent? No, "opaque"

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Santa Barbara, where we’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Grimaldi. He’s a senior writer at The Wall Street Journal and has covered the Clinton Foundation since 2014. … Can you talk about what this latest group of emails suggests…between the State Department under Clinton and the Clinton Foundation…?

JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, I think this confirms what we sort of knew. There are obvious ties and relationships. The key tie here would be Douglas Band, who was a top aide to Bill Clinton. … He was very close, of course, to [close Hillary associates] Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin. … It shows how donations to the Clinton Foundation win access to … State Department diplomatic officials….

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: … [D]uring her confirmation hearings as secretary of state, Secretary Clinton specifically said that she would take, quote, "extraordinary steps ... to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest."…

JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, over the past year, we have looked at that issue. And what I did was I went into the lobbying records to see which companies and other entities were lobbying the State Department, and also looking to see how many of them had given to the Clinton Foundation. And one of our findings was that at least 60 companies had lobbied the State Department, had given as much as $26 million, and many of those companies, 44 of those 60, had participated in what they call commitments, or philanthropic projects, that were valued by the Clinton Foundation at $3.2 billion….
. . .
JAMES GRIMALDI: Right. Well, that’s how Hillary Clinton got involved. And we know this, thankfully, to WikiLeaks. The cables that were obtained under WikiLeaks happened to be that snapshot in time when these discussions were going underway. And what we saw was that when the Swiss foreign minister came to Hillary Clinton and said, "We really would like to take care of this UBS problem," Hillary said, "Well, we have a few things we would like, as well." And this was the time that the Clinton administration—I’m sorry, the Obama administration was eager to close Guantánamo Bay. And Mrs. Clinton was pressuring Switzerland to take some of the less dangerous detainees, in particular, some Chinese Uyghurs who were deemed to be not particularly dangerous, which they eventually agreed to do. That seemed to be part of the overall deal that was made between the United States and Switzerland regarding UBS.
. . .

JAMES GRIMALDI: …You know, there’s usually never a stop in what you can do in terms of contributions you can make to the various Clinton pots. You know, you’ve got money that you can donate to the foundation. You can partner—at the State Department there are these partnerships between the Clinton Foundation and corporations. Some of that went into building an Expo in China for the Chinese world fair that they held there. And the Clinton Foundation—Mrs. Clinton, at the State Department, was very eager to see those being built, because, apparently, under the Bush administration, it really had kind of had a—reached a point where they hadn’t raised enough money to even have a pavilion there. But then you could see that there are money coming from corporations to their own personal wallet, their purses, campaign contributions. It just seems as if there are many, many places that you can make a contribution and you can partner with either Mrs. Clinton at the State Department or get involved at the Clinton Foundation....

I decent introduction to the discussion re Third Party candidates

Feedback from the Stupid People

Raghu Mathur joins a rinky dink local for-profit

"Global"

     As you know, I occasionally Google the name “Raghu P. Mathur.” I've tried to keep track of our former Chancellor.
     He's pursued politics, but his record has proved a difficult obstacle to overcome. He worked briefly for the for-profit (boo! hiss!), Argosy U. No surprise there. Mathur is, after all, a Republican.
     Tonight, my occasional Mathurian Googling yielded a new and curious factoid. I found that Raghu is now “Executive Vice President” of an outfit called “Study America,” based in the city of Orange, on beauteous The City Drive.
     According to SA’s website, Study America

is a global company that specializes in identifying quality students for quality schools. Study America provides a highly supported, custom-tailored international student experiences. Our service include assisting you with your application materials, acquiring your I-20, assisting with your housing needs, organizing language assistance tools, and preparing you to take the TOEFL. We can also assist you with any other program requirements….

     I'm not sure what they mean by calling their little company "global." Maybe somebody down there has a globe on his or her desk.
     The website further explains:

When we were international students studying in Los Angeles 25 years ago, we started Study America to encompass the services we wished we had, such as help with student visa forms, airport pick-up, housing assistance, cultural exchange opportunities, language training and more….

Website: Raghu is on the Study America "team."

     Here’s the Study America “team”:

William M. Vega, Ed.D., Chairman of the Board
Senator Richard Polanco (ret)., Executive Vice President International Relations
Abdi Lajevardi, Chief Executive Officer
Martin C. Yousef, Ed.D., Chief Operating Officer
Ali Ebrahimipour, Chief Information Officer
Tami Erickson, Ph.D., Vice President of Compliance
Raghu P. Mathur, ED. D., Executive Vice President, Academics
Uwe Gemba, Headmaster, American Summer Academy

     At least one name here, beyond Mathur's, will be familiar. Back in 2008, then-Chancellor Mathur hired former Coast Community College District Chancellor Bill Vega as a consultant—possibly at the direction of our accreditor (ACCJC)—to assess “decision making” at the colleges, something that wasn't working well, according to reports.
     Oddly, a day after Vega met with a hastily assembled group of noisy, complaining faculty, Mathur unhired Vega. Or something. It was all very odd. (See here and here.)
     (Fun fact: Vega recently finished a lucrative three-year gig at Dubai Men’s College. That's right: a "men's college" in freakin' Dubai. Concerning the latter, see Slaves of Dubai.)
     Most of the people working at Study America (SA) are small-time. There's Mathur, of course. Mr. Gemba has been associated with various troubled or failed for-profit institutions in Southern California (see Eucasia Schools Worldwide) for decades. Mr. Lajevardi, the CEO of SA, was President of United Education Institute (UEI), which got into hot water with the feds owing to funding hinkitude. Mr. Yousef is or was the Executive Director of the same dodgy for-profit trade school, UEI. I can find nothing about Mr. Ebrahimipour, which is odd given his alleged "past experiences [as] Vice President, CTO, and CIO...." A couple of these guys are local businessmen and I have discovered nothing interesting about them.
     On the other hand, Mr. Polanco, the Executive Vice President, International Relations, served in the State Assembly for eight years, then the State Senate.
     He then became a lobbyist. Money, money, money, baby.

Somewhere in this building

HUH?

A finger in many pies

     In the course of my brief Googling, I came across the name of a small, local for-profit institution called “American Heritage College” (AHC). It was founded in Orange in 2006.
     AHC has the same address as “Study America,” and it sports much of the same “team,” including Mathur! (Five of AHC's "faculty" are on the Study America "team." Mr. Lajevardi is the CEO of both AHC and SA.*)
     On its website, one learns that

American Heritage College is led by a team of highly experienced leaders in postsecondary education, and boasts a faculty composed of leading experts in a variety of fields, such as business, technology, health management, human resources, and more. Furthermore, with courses targeted toward working professionals, our passionate and motivated student body creates an inspiring environment for all.

     In reality, AHC is a tiny operation comprising about ten employees, including five of the folks mentioned above.

American Heritage College "faculty"

     Raghu is identified both as "faculty" and as a member of AHC's board.
     I poked around in AHC's website.
     Most of its programs appear to have no students, not just this year, but year after year. (See also here and here, etc.)
     According to its yearly report (to the Dept. of Consumer Affairs), AHC has a grand total of 27 enrollees, despite its having existed since 2006.
     In the college catalog, we’re told that “American Heritage College does not have any Articulation Agreement with any educational institution.”
     I can find no accreditation info about AHC. The AHC website doesn't mention accreditation. (I typed "accreditation" into their search engine and that yielded nothing.)
     Here’s AHC’s mission statement:

American Heritage College shall strive to provide the best training to individuals looking for an alternative to the traditional educational system; acquire the necessary skills to obtain employment in their chosen field or achieve their educational goals and realize their hopes and aspirations for a rewarding future. [My emphasis.]

     It all looks pretty half-assed.
     Here’s one of AHS/SA’s videos:


   
     More curious factoids. "American Heritage College" is trademarked. The owner of the trademark is 247 Classrooms LLC. 247's address is "abdi@studyamerica.me, 2445 West Chapman Avenue; Suite 260, Orange, CA 92868." (See Trademark File.) "abdi" is, of course, AHC CEO Lajevardi's given name. The street address (campus location) is also the (Chapman Ave.) address of American Harbor College, another small-time for-profit. (When I press the link to the "PHT [phlebotomy technician] fact sheet," I get instead the data for Harbor Career College, which is quite plainly located in Los Angeles. I don't get it.)
     The latter (AHC) seems to have three employees. (Under "instructors," only one person is identified, at least for ESL instruction.)
     Such organizations—and, of course, the much larger for-profits such as the U of Phoenix—are notorious for exploiting clueless young people, who take these schools' pricey (and often inferior or worthless) courses. These for-profits help students to secure loans guaranteed by the government—loans that, when taken to pay for inferior for-profit education, experience very high default rates. This means that the taxpayer foots the bill for such institutions' incompetent instruction and profit-making.
     Natch, Republicans have worked hard to protect this gravy train for years, but, in recent years, the Obama administration has made inroads in an effort to rein in these excesses.

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. LAJEVARDI

     *Curiously, Mr. Abdi Lajevardi, the CEO of both SA and AHC, is also the CEO of the business consulting firm “Pro Education Group” (the address of which is “2445 W Chapman Ave # 200” in Orange). According to one source, PEG has a staff of one. It is, according to another source, "FTB suspended" (i.e., it is suspended by the tax board for failure to meet tax requirements).
     Evidently, Lajevardi, a consistent donor to the Republican Party, was a co-founder, in the early 80s, of the International Education Corporation, the latter being the owner (I think) of UEI (see), but Lajevardi is no longer affiliated with it or UEI. (At any rate, his name cannot be found on IEC's website.)
     Further, Lajevardi is associated with the now apparently defunct MyAmericanEnglish.com. I think it was some kind of software available online. No longer.
     Mr. Lajevardi is also the CEO of something called 24-7 Classroom (see Catalog), another dodgy-and/or-defunct for-profit, this time located on 4th Street in Santa Ana. It specializes (specialized?) in ESL, business, and nursing. (Bill Vega, this time, is listed as President.) Its school performance fact sheet suggests that it has precious few students, a handful at most. (24-7 Classroom is not to be confused with Classroom 24-7, which seems viable.)
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Come to Jesus

Trump team, RNC to meet at pivotal moment (Politico)
Struggling campaign requests Orlando sit-down to fix the relationship and plot a turnaround.

     Donald Trump’s campaign and top Republican Party officials plan what one person called a “come to Jesus” meeting on Friday in Orlando to discuss the Republican nominee’s struggling campaign, according to multiple sources familiar with the scheduled sit-down.
     Though a campaign source dismissed it as a "typical" gathering, others described it as a more serious meeting, with one calling it an "emergency meeting." It comes at a time of mounting tension between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, which is facing pressure to pull the plug on Trump’s campaign and redirect party funds down ballot to protect congressional majorities endangered by Trump’s candidacy....

Act like everything's fine

Clinton Embraces Endorsement of John Negroponte
(Democracy Now)

"Death squad" guy

     Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has embraced her recent endorsement by John Negroponte, the former director of national intelligence. The President George W. Bush official also served as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, which was the staging ground for the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua. Hillary Clinton has faced questions on the campaign trail about her own role in Honduras as secretary of state, including legitimizing the 2009 coup in Honduras.

Did Hillary’s Top Aide Help Cover Up Her Private Server?
(Daily Beast)

Cheryl Mills, chief of staff

     The top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was told in late 2012 that a non-profit watchdog group had requested information about Clinton’s email, including the number of accounts she used, according to documents released Wednesday.
     The aide, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and other Clinton advisers knew at the time that the secretary was using a private email system to conduct official business. But despite the information request, the State Department told the group that it had found no “responsive” records.
     “This is evidence that Cheryl Mills covered up Hillary Clinton’s email system,” Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that sued for information about that original 2012 request, said in a statement. “She was aware of the [Freedom of Information Act] request about Clinton’s email accounts and allowed a response to go out that was a plain lie. And you can bet if Cheryl Mills knew about this inquiry, then Hillary Clinton did, too.”…

Is Brand New Congress the Future of Progressive Politics?
(The Nation)

     The goal is audacious: harness the enthusiasm and fund-raising muscle of the Sanders campaign to elect an entirely new Congress committed to the same platform.

Trump’s birtherism is now Republican gospel: 72 percent of GOP voters still doubt President Obama’s citizenship
(Salon)

     While Trump was making his latest outrageous statement at a rally in Florida Wednesday evening, NBC News released a very revealing — albeit rather apparent — poll finding that seems to have been underreported.
     72 percent of registered Republican voters still hold doubts about the President’s citizenship, even as his second term in office enters its final months.

Abedin, State Dept

Progressives Urge Clinton Not to Appoint a Wall Street Cabinet
(Truthdig)

     …Earlier this year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a report which found that Washington’s revolving-door system is part of what allows corporate crime to run rampant.
     The groups include advocacy organizations Public Citizen, MoveOn.org, and RootsAction.org, as well as the union Communications Workers of America (CWA), which in December endorsed Clinton’s then-rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president. Ending economic inequality became a well-known cornerstone of Sanders’ campaign….

Clinton Campaign & Foundation Facing Questions over State Dept. Emails
(Democracy Now)

Chagoury and pal

     The Clinton campaign is continuing to face questions following the release of 44 State Department emails showing close ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during Clinton’s time as secretary of state. The emails include communications between top members of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s top State Department advisers, including Huma Abedin and lawyer Cheryl Mills. One of the communications was about billionaire Nigerian-based developer Gilbert Chagoury, who had contributed between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. The emails show a top Clinton Foundation executive writing to Abedin and Mills asking for help putting Chagoury in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. Abedin responded, "I’ll talk to jeff," referring to then-U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. On Wednesday, Chagoury’s spokesperson said Chagoury "was simply passing along his observations and insights about the dire political situation in Lebanon at the time."