Yay for work!

There is nothing that feels as good as having work, being productive, using the skills that God and a good education gave you and allowed you to develop, and learning new things from students to boot.

'Twas a good day today. Maybe 2010 will indeed be a better year?

Holiday depression crap

As I get older, I dislike the holidays more. Not because I don't like or believe in the reason for the season—I know that over two thousand years ago, a remarkable man was born mortal but under extraordinary circumstances, and that this man had gifts and abilities that we have not had on this planet since. Unfortunately I don't think we remember this is why we have this holiday, and it's become something else, a time of reflection I suppose.

Today my daughter left open her Facebook page to her cousin, my deceased sister's daughter. I do not consider this young woman to be my niece, but it's her choice. She has totally embraced my deceased father's widow and her family as her family—something I cannot do. This girl posted a bunch of Christmas photos taken with my father's widow and her children. It was like a stab to the heart. They celebrated the holiday in the huge house my father built his second wive; it's a 4 or 5 bedroom home, and it was built for the two of them, plus plenty of extra bedrooms for "visiting family." My father has been dead longer than he was married to this woman, yet she continues to live like a queen, and her daughters continue to benefit from their mother's good fortune to marry an older man who fortunately for her, died and left a crummy will.

I look at those photos of that house and see no sign that my father lived there. The furniture is not what was there when he was alive, except for the ebony baby grand piano that no one is able to play. There were gifts strewn about everywhere. Everyone is wearing nice clothes.

When I was a kid, my father was quite thrifty, and drummed it into my head that we were sacrificing for the future, that he in his old age would not want for anything and that his children would have his investments to help them to live comfortably long after he was gone. I believed everything my father said. I did what he asked. I did not report him to the cops when he hit me when I was a teenager, convinced I was a slut (believe me I wasn't). When my father remarried, his new wife was quite a bit younger than he, and I was warned by a co-worker that she was a golddigger, out for the money. But what could I do about it? Nothing.

Her three daughters became his perfect new family. He took them on vacations to Mexico, Hawaii, and places I don't know about. Vacations we did not take when I was a kid because we were sacrificing for the future. They had designer clothes; we had mail-order clothes from Spiegel. They had anything they wanted; when I was a kid we couldn't afford it.

One constant was the promise that there would be a piece of property for each of my paternal grandparent's grandkids—that promise had been made by my grandparents, understood by my father and uncle. But my dad kept stalling, saying he needed to transfer the property in the most beneficial manner tax-wise. A couple of years before he became ill, we decided on which lot he would deed to me, and I had house plans drawn up. My father knew I wanted to have a place to keep horses. My dad had also had numerous conversations with me regarding his estate, his wishes, and how I was to be executor even though I wasn't so crazy about the idea.

He wanted his widow to have income from certain investments, and I agreed that was the right thing to do. However, there were certain real estate investments he wanted held in trust to benefit his heirs, and that included an apartment complex, mobile home park, the 350+ acre ranch owned by my family from before my birth, the house I grew up in and the house he built to be held in trust.

Long story short, that's not what happened, and I had to endure my father's widow telling the cops that I'd made a death threat against her while his last-minute non-attorney written will was being probated. It was easier for me to leave the area rather than deal with her threats and accusations. She lives on $12K a month, most of that from his investments and his social security benefits. I am having a good month if I earn $3K. Usually it is quite less than that.

While my father was alive, I never asked him for money. My siblings did. I should have gotten a piece of the pie while he was still alive; I'd have at least gotten something. As it is, I don't have the promised acreage, and my beloved horses are gone. I thank my father for his cruelty and mind-fucking abilities daily. (note sarcasm)

It's not healthy to wish ill on someone. It's also not healthy for a kid, even if that kid is an adult, to not be able to remember one truthful thing a parent has said to her. But I cannot help wish that somehow something my father said would become the truth. I look at those photos and feel a hollow emptiness toward my father that is not healthy, and his widow has done her level best to keep me feeling that way.

Someday her lies will come back on her, and she will be made to face up to her greed and cruelty, if not this life, the next. And my sister's daughter hopefully never needs her mother's blood family for any reason.

Patriot Rally (there are good people in this world!) and more on the community college thing

The rally was held at San José's Discovery Park. Yes that's the World's Largest Monopoly game board. The light rail station is at the back.

I wish I had photos to share, but I spent a nice fall afternoon with about 200 like-minded patriots who came together to talk about the plight of the San Joaquin Valley farmers who have had their water turned off because two environmental experts said that irrigation was bad for the delta smelt, a pretty worthless little bait fish.

So to keep the delta smelt happy, the water that farmers need for their orchards and fields has been shut off. And for the most part, democrats in Sacramento and Washington have utterly ignored this whole issue.

Small towns in the Central Valley are dying. Some are suffering a near 50 percent unemployment rate. Fourteen percent of the produce we eat in the U.S. comes from the Central Valley. When farmers cannot farm, they cannot employ farmworkers, let alone taken care of their own families.

There was no media coverage in this overwhelming liberal area. I’m not surprised one bit

The Patriot movement isn’t about Republican or Democrat. It’s about upholding what the U.S. constitution says. It’s about less government intrusion. There were conservative independents, Republicans and Libertarians at the rally.

Why the media insists on calling this gathering of people “teabaggers” (and then they snicker at the double meaning like Beavis and Butthead) is beyond me. All these people really are is a gathering of individuals who remember what a great place America can be, and want to restore this nation to prosperous times based on sound economic principles.

My mother joked and said I was too old to go protest, and then reminded me not to resist arrest. Not a cop in sight and some members of the group walked around the park and picked up garbage that had been there before we were! I parked my car at the light rail station and rode the 3 miles into downtown.

Back to the community college thing …

One of the local televisions stations presented a two-part report about how mismanaged the community college district’s funds have been since August 2005. I watched in disbelief as I learned that things were worse than what I knew about! The reporter showed a large table full of documents, all public information and there for the asking, and started weaving his story.

In August 2005 the District had $14 million in the bank. Today, it’s cutting programs left and right, firing employees, cancelling classes. All while the chancellor, who is on leave of absence until the first of the year (and who will retire on June 30), is earning $300K a year, has a travel and expense account, yet still is reimbursed for coffee and Mentos! Yes, she asked for reimbursement for a pack of Mentos! I presume she did receive the money back, too.

I knew she did lots of traveling. When I first started doing some of the PIO job, I was informed as to her availability, for how long she was gone, and at first, where she was. I didn’t know about the Scotland thing in until the news report.

I’m not even going to get into sexuality and race here. Any person of any race or sexual orientation could have done what was done in this case. The community college district paid for a membership to an exclusive club called the Capitol Club, $5K for the chancellor, and I presume her life partner and the two community college presidents. There was a receipt for a $1200 dinner at said Capitol Club.

She promoted her life partner into jobs she was minimally if at all qualified for. I very nearly applied for a job working for this person, but there was a little voice in my head that said “Don’t do it. The great state benefits are not worth what you will go through. No one else can work with this woman. You get along with her now but every day … maybe not.”

As it is, that department is probably no more and I’d be unemployed again.

I think what bugs me most is how flawed my thinking was when I accepted the contract job. I could have charged up to $150 an hour for my services. Seriously, that was the going rate. But I felt that any dime not spent on me would be spent on students. Boy was I wrong! Any dime not spent on me was spent on travel!

I think of two marketing pieces I wrote trying to persuade employees to sign up to make automatic payroll deductions to the SJECCD Foundation “for students.” I went looking for heartwarming student stories, convinced people to give money so those students could get an education and give back to the community. What I was really doing was unwittingly stealing from those good people. I had no idea that their donated money would be used for recruitment trips to Thailand (where they didn’t recruit one single student!) and a trip to Scotland to see a K-12 program (That’s not higher education, why do college administrators need to study K-12? Anyone?).

If I were still working there, I'd have written those pieces about two weeks ago.

Watch the reports for yourself. Tell me you aren’t angry about it, even if you don’t live in the Bay Area.

Chancellor's lavish spending questioned

Chancellor's lavish spending went beyond travel

God works in mysterious ways, and I am thanking Him yet again …

I’ve written ad nauseum about my disappointment in not being hired for a public information officer job for a community college district—a job that I met every single job requirement for. I did much of the job for over two years, and had been promised the job by the chancellor of the district and her assistant, whom I now know to be her lesbian life partner.

Instead of me getting the job, a less qualified Latina was given the job and the job description was rewritten, taking duties that she was unable to do, away from her so she’d fit the job description.

I knew this district was living high on the hog. When I accepted the contract job, it was “name your price” to take the position. I grossly underbid and under billed, thinking what I was doing was the right thing to do when you work in education. Seems I was the only person doing that …

In today’s local paper, a second article has popped up about the chancellor of that district and the misuse of funds, how her salary grew by 47 percent while programs and classes were cut.

The chancellor announced her retirement “due to health reasons” effective at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2010.

Today’s story about a possible misuse of funds is here: San Jose area community college chancellor enjoyed big benefits as class offerings shrank

I’ve known about this for a long time. In the summer of 2006, the district sent a contingent of board of trustees members on a marathon trip to China and Vietnam, in the name of “recruiting” students. That same summer a contingent was sent to the Salzburg seminar, and every year since the district has sent several instructors and deans. In December 2007, a contingent of students and faculty went to Vietnam for a week. The chancellor and her life partner were scheduled to go until there was a public outcry by a small but vocal group of Vietnamese, objecting to a trip to communist Vietnam. I know this because I was going to go and blog about it for the district, but I didn’t have the money to self-pay at the time, as my beloved elderly cat became ill and needed vet (and my) care.

The chancellor is also very fond of co-sponsoring education conferences that further a liberal and one-race agenda (Hispanic). I know about two or three while I was still with the district.

In January of this year, the chancellor and a group went to El Salvador in the name of “service learning.” Both colleges in the district have service learning programs. One of the colleges sends a group of students every two years or so to do public works programs in impoverished towns in Mexico and Central America. This particular trip was more of a vacation for the chancellor and her contingent, described by the chancellor as “going home,” though she’s American-born.

It’s no secret I’ve been struggling big-time as far as work is concerned this year. The PIO job would have paid $80K a year plus great state benefits. I am lucky if I earn $25K this year. I am five months behind on my student loan payments, can barely pay my utilities, and have lost 17 pounds because I can’t afford to buy food and have three meals a day. But you know what, I have my integrity, I did not take advantage of a situation where everyone else was milking the cow and taking advantage of taxpayers’ good will, and perhaps I will get the last laugh after all.

I promise to write about the patriot rally I attended on my birthday, but this one comes first. Thank you Lord for looking out for me, even though I had no idea you were looking out for me …

No title good enough ... a flight of ideas

I just a pair of Veteran's Day themed-television movies/documentaries. The first was "Area 60," an HBO documentary which was about the location in Arlington National Cemetery where those military persons killed in Iraq and Afghanistan now rest. The second was the movie “Taking Chance” with Kevin Bacon. It’s an HBO movie, a true story of Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (played by Bacon), who volunteers to escort the remains of a 19-year old Marine, Chance Phelps, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Chance enlisted from Strobl’s home town, so he decided to volunteer to escort Phelps’ remains home. Pehlps’ hometown was actually Dubois, Wyoming, several hours from Billings, Montana, the nearest large commercial airport

With today being Veterans’ Day, and the crap our president is pulling with his indecision about his little war in Afghanistan, I guess this documentary and the movie touched me deeply. I am sitting here crying.

Over the past several weeks, there have been violent crimes such as gang rapes, the attempted murder of two pre-teen boys because one was wearing shoes favored by a Mexican gang, another boy murdered in his back yard within 2 miles of where I live. Then there was the massacre of good military people in Ft. Hood by a Muslim wackjob who was an enlisted military psychiatrist. I honestly have come to the conclusion that what is wrong with this nation is our tolerance ad our desire to think everyone deserves to live like we do in America, with plenty of freedoms (that our current government wants to take from us).

Why do we allow people who live in America to do un-American things? Why do we let Mexican (and black) gangs do what they do? Why do they deserve the freedom to be alive at all? And why are American youth fighting in the Middle East, supposedly fighting for freedom that isn’t even a way of life for the people who live there. Do they even want us there? What is the United States getting out of it? We aren’t even taking their oil—we pay for a war with our tax dollars and young American lives and what is the reward?

Do we honestly expect people in Iraq and Afghanistan to ever thank us for helping them be more like us? They don’t want to be! They have been killing each other for hundreds of years. It's their way of life, and they could stop it anytime if they really wanted to. It’s not going to stop.

If you choose to live in the U.S., you live like an American. Period. You don’t embrace little violent subcultures and expect people to sit by and understand that what you are choosing to do is cultural. If you don’t fit in, you don’t belong here. Deport what’s deportable (of course make damn sure the border is secure), and throw the rest in prison. Or send those big bad gangstas to fight in the Mideast if they are really so badass tough and like to kill.

If the U.S chooses to be in a war, fight it to win, and fight it for people who want to be like us. Period. Either our troops are given the assistance they need to win a war over there (and then annex whatever territory into something and call it the U.S. annex or something). And if they aren’t going to be given the best equipment and the manpower to win a war, then get each and every one of them out there now, all at the same time. No cautious withdrawal, Americans leave immediately and let those people kill each other.

Bless the family of Pvt. Chance Pehlps for letting Lt. Col. Strobl share your story.

NASCAR Mayfield saga continues, and it's laughable!

There's a story on CA$HCAR's website about former driver Jeremy Mayfield's failure to pay his attorney, Bill Diehl. Diehl represented the driver, who failed a random drug test back in May, but was replaced when Mayfield hired "celebrity lawyer" Mark Geragos.

I am hysterical with laughter over that one. How'd Geragos work out for Scott Peterson, eh?

Charlotte-based Diehl bills $1,000 an hour for his services. Not a typo. One thousand dollars an hour.

Back when Diehl was representing Mayfield, court documents stated that the suspension deprived Mayfield of the ability to earn an income, and Mayfield does not have funds to cover basic living expenses.

Yesterday the attorney said that wasn't true.

But Mayfield will be auctioning off 475 acres of land, a home under renovation, jewelry, guns and cars from Mayfield's personal collection. He claims it's not for the money, it's for "fun" and not necessity. He says he buys stuff at auctions all of the time and sometimes just ends up with stuff he didn't need ...

All of this was avoidable had Mayfield manned up and said "Yeppers, I was bad. Put me in NASCAR's drug program... I'll be a good boy." Instead, he blamed the Adderall he "forgot" to tell NASCAR about... his ongoing behavior tells me that random drug test was right ...

The Richmond rape case, and why race is relevant or irrelevant

Does this look pleasurable to you? Me neither.

Again I’ve put my best work on T & T, so go there for a summary of the Richmond Homecoming rape case that happened a week ago today. As of this writing, one man who was questioned has been released from custody (not enough chargeable evidence … yet), and five remain in custody with no or very high bail. The three underage suspects are being charged as adults.

The 15-year old victim is out of the hospital but I am sure not out of the woods. Seriously, will she ever be out of the woods, even with the very best of therapy?

When I first heard about this crime, I confess I thought exactly what the majority of people thought when they heard about the actual location of the crime. Richmond is a formerly nice town, especially when the military was still in the area. But with the de-militarization of the United States, something else moves in when the military moves out, and what moved in caused Richmond to become a hood.

Now before you jump all over me, “hood” does not mean an exclusively black or Hispanic neighborhood. There are plenty of areas that could and are described as “white trash,” and hood is just a more politically correct term in my eyes if that’s possible. The word “ghetto” evokes strong feelings toward one race, “barrio” toward another, and those ill-feelings toward the people who may live in those areas is entirely too destructive.

So knowing a little about what kind of people live in Richmond now, I figured this was going to be more black-on-black violence (like the epidemic in nearby Oakland) or Hispanic-on-Hispanic or white or black (like most of the Bay Area). Didn't matter to me, it was still disgusting that a female was taken advantage of yet again by uncivilized males.

Let me say that the black-on-black violence sickens me, but what sickens me more is the attitude of black opinion leaders who virtually ignore what happens in Oakland. Toss a white or Hispanic person into the mix (a la the Oakland cop massacre earlier this year) and you get Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson all over the place decrying how unfair everyone treated the black perp—it wasn’t his fault he was a felon, it was all about lack of opportunity, blah blah blah.

I feel the same about Hispanic-on-Hispanic gang violence. There’s outrage, but no opinion leaders stand up and offer suggestions as to how to stop it. More often than not, it’s shrugged off as being a “cultural thing.” How that cheapens life!

When the Richmond rape occurred, I believed the victim was more likely to be black or Hispanic. But when the usually predictable overblown response (or lack thereof) from black or Hispanic opinion leaders didn’t pop up, that was a big red flag that the victim was white, which is the case.

The boy who lured her over to the group of boys and men who were drinking on the Richmond High campus was white, and a friend. At Richmond High, whites are the minority, big time. Most of the group of male (thus far) appear to be Hispanic, though there is one black boy charged as well.

The black boy’s family say he was arrested because he’s black, and they are threatening to sue the city of Richmond for targeting the boy because of his race. The family claims he walked by and left the scene.

But Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton haven’t rushed to the black boy’s family and started their rhetoric. They must know something the family is denying ...

So far none of the Hispanic boys/men or the white boy’s family are squealing about race being the reason they were arrested. Of course media accounts have said that none of the males took questioning seriously—until the cops told them how grave the situation was and just what they were facing. No reset button. No do-overs. No taking it back.

I keep saying this to anyone I speak to about this horrific crime—it’s not about race. Bad people come in all colors. And do I think the girl was targeted because she was white? I honestly don’t know. I am inclined to believe she was just an available girl, that the group didn’t talk about targeting a white girl—it was more like any girl would do.

But we have to know about the race of the perps to know which “audience” to target in order to figure out remedies. Rape is not a crime about sex, it’s a crime of control. Standing by and watching an unconscious girl be raped is not entertainment, it’s a symptom of something much bigger—the lack of empathy and accountability. And neither the cause nor the solution are going to be easy to figure out.

You’ll get people who say this negative change in attitude and caring is because of absent fathers and irresponsible mothers on welfare. You’ll get people who say this happened because the United States is turning away from Judeo-Christian principles. You’ll get people saying this is a cultural thing (for example, me la robo bride-selling in the Trique culture), especially in a culture that devalues women and treats them as possessions. You’ll get people saying the boys/men were bored and the girl was a tart (by all accounts she was a churchgoing kid trying to fit in on campus, and went to the dance dressed nicely). You’ll get people saying it’s because of violent video games which facilitates a break from reality because of the reset button. You’ll get people saying it’s because of rap and hip-hop music that teens of all races listen to, and a common theme in that music is devaluing females (“hos”).

Maybe it’s all of that.

Yes, the school itself needs to take part of the blame. According to friends of the victim, boys/young males who were not Richmond High students were hanging around on campus. Back in the 1970s when I was in high school, that simply would not have happened—school administrators, chaperones or the cops would have chased them off. To be let into a school dance, you needed to show your student body card. If you wanted to bring in a date from another high school (or someone who had already graduated), you had to submit that person’s name to the office early in the week for approval.

And kids weren’t wandering to and hanging around in the dark, poorly-lit areas of campus—there were adults patrolling. I know this one for a fact, being the stupid little pothead I was in high school, being chased from a nice dark corner trying to toke up.

Race is relevant only in it helps sociologists, anthropologists and educators study why stuff like this happens. To make a blanket statement that says Hispanics and blacks are more likely to rape is wrong. To embrace that believe is to perpetuate racism and rape, and the devaluing of females of all colors.

Young men need to be raised with a sense of accountability and empathy. They need to be told—repeatedly—that despite what pornography tells them, rape is not fun for the woman. And they need to suffer the consequences when they cross the line.

I hate the idea that we need to raise our daughters to be more paranoid and less trusting of males, but until males understand the gravity of rape (and that means prosecute it, period), it’s up to us females to minimize their opportunities. And being a strong, assertive and streetwise female is definitely not a racial thing!