It’s time to take a closer look at our Republican candidate running against Democrat Charlie Brown.
LameDuck State Senator Tom McClintock (R, Thousand Mailing Addresses, currently using one in SoCal ) the Republican candidate for CA- 04, a district in the North, went to the Rocklin Unified School District Board on Wed, July 16, and did a little 3 minute speech in favor of Rocklin Academy’s company being able to establish a charter high school for grades 7 to 12, which would be called Western Sierra Collegiate Academy, aka “WSCA.” http://www.wscacademy.org/
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Southern CA State Senator Tom McClintock at the Rocklin School Board meeting July 16, 2008
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The public meeting started late while the Rocklin school board wrestled in private session with the teacher’s union, and finally got going after 8pm. (The teacher’s union is not real happy that the charter school would use the public facilities yet pay the private teachers a higher salary.) This gave me a chance to study the written curriculum proposal in detail, it resembled what I took in high school for college prep classes over 30 years ago.
Finally, after the proponents began the proposed WSCA Charter School presentation, they let Tom McClintock go first as one of the public commentators because He Was Important. Before that he was sitting up in front of the room full of Moms who wanted the Chartered School. It was a little bit scary for me to be there, I was the only one not in polyester, I was really hoping I wouldn’t be standing out as {{{ A Potential Secular Humanist for having read George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” in High School, besides all that Shakespeare }}} but the lady handling the information packets was super nice and helpful.
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Besides the thick notebooks full of the details, and various endorsements from politicians, there is even a single page handout with what McClintock’s Opinion On the Charter School Proposal. Mind you, this is a private business enterprise. The Rocklin Academy, which runs a charter elementary school in the district, tried pitching this high school before, and their proposal was rejected on not having the proposed financial budget being realistic. The WSCA Charter School would use state funding, therefore, it must operate in the black and not on a deficit.
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Tom McClintock (left, front row, red tie ) and the professional advocates of the proposed Western Sierra Collegiate Academy (WSCA) Charter School, at the Rocklin School Board meeting July 16, 2008 . This is what the school board is looking at. They’ve threatened to sue the school district if they don’t get the charter school approved, the district is balking over the financial budget. The photos on the wall in the background are the schools in the district. The Charter company is proposing using the public facilities for its high school.
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So Tom McClintock goes into his little prepared speech about the Chartered School. This is one of his first SPEAKING public engagements since he started running for the Congress seat being vacated by Rep. John Doolittle (R, CA-04, Chevron, Not Yet Indicted), so there are people with Real Cameras there, beside me with the smaller camera.
Where is Rep. Doolittle ? He’s here in the state the same day, but he’s flying around overhead with President Bush and Governor Schwarzenegger and Rep. Wally Herger , chaperoned by Senator DiFi, and surveying the catastrophic wildfire damage caused by lightning strikes June 21, which were ongoing. He doesn’t dare show up in his own burning district with Bush and McClintock when the air is literally this thick.
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A month after lightning sparked over a thousand wildfires, smoke still chokes the foothills of Northern CA near Lincoln, at 8am in the morning over 50 miles away from the 2 largest ones near Paradise and Foresthill. ( This picture was taken a few days after the Presidential flyover. )
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They are instead going to land in Redding. I created a graphic image for this using magic markers on posterboard.
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July 16, 2008. Chart of locations of politicians that day in California. President Bush, the state’s Governor Schwarzenegger, Rep. Doolittle, Rep. Herger, and Senator Diane Feinstein have flown over the state looking at the ongoing wildfire castastrophe, which started June 21, and landed in Redding. The aspiring Doolittle replacement is in Rocklin. Map is to scale, drawn by author.
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CA- 04 is in the upper north eastern quadrant of the state.
See how far away Redding is from Doolittle’s district. It’s in Wally Herger’s (R) district in CA 02. See how far away State Sen. McClintock’s current district, down in Southern California on the coast near LA, is from our district.
I talked to some people in Wally Herger’s (R) CA 02 district afterwards, and much to my relief there was a protest contingent up there in Redding to greet the President and the Enablers.
Back to Rocklin.
McClintock is chugging along at the podium for his 3 minutes with his notes, comparing private vs public school competition to that of Ford automobiles to GM automobiles, and how that makes cars better, and I feel a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe the Republicans will say something vaguely interesting before November. I’m a little surprised he didn’t use Model T vs. Horse and Buggy, but he’s obviously being coached by a lot of expensive campaign consultants and it is having results.
And then he mentions that when he was renting a house here in Rocklin during the 1995- 1996 school year, (he’s real proud of that one, he RENTED a house in the district 13 years ago so that’s his local residency proof of purchase ) when his daughter was attending Cobblestone School in Rocklin, he wished that there was THIS charter school there at the time.
And I thought, whoa Nelly. Here’s why. This is a picture I took during the 4th of July parade this year in Lincoln. I had a small pic of his float in my previous diary which was on the EENR blog. http://www.eenrblog.com/showDi…
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Republican Parade Float Entry Lincoln 4th of July parade 2008
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This was his first large scale public appearance during the general election campaign, the others were done mostly as Republican debates with the other Republican candidates in front of mostly Republican adult audiences during the primary this spring. This is a closeup of the McClintocks on the float.
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Tom McClintock & “Family” on the 4th of July parade float in Lincoln
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As you can see, this is Tom McClintock, and that is his wife, Lori McClintock. I know this is Lori, because she was at the March 2008 McClintock campaign launch in Auburn, where somebody produced a bouquet of daffodils, handed it to the male Republicans, and they kept passing them around like yellow cooties until Lori got stuck with them. McClintock’s press releases always say McClintock is married to Lori and they have 2 children, Justin and Shannah. It would not be unreasonable to assume, therefore, that if somebody has 2 kids and they and their wife are on a parade float that has ANOTHER FAMILY FOR McCLINTOCK placards plastered all over it, plus is surrounded by Republicans bearing the same signs, that those could be the McClintock children.
Now, note how YOUNG those children look in the photo. The little girl looks maybe 10 or at most 12, and the little boy about 5 years old. Tell me how old the girl on the parade float must have been in 1995.
Did this child even exist yet in 1995 ?
And then I thought, this is absurd. He is standing here in front of a bunch of mothers who want to send their kids to a charter high school and pretending he had a like aged child ready for high school college prep classes 1995, and he didn’t. Otherwise the child would now be 13 years ago + age 14 ready for 9th grade class, or about 27 years old by now !
But it gets better.
I went through lots and lots of “official” Tom McClintock information on the web, and all it ever says is “he has 2 children, Justin and Shannah.” No ages. I want to know old they are.
So I went digging back through some older back issues of various news articles until I finally found several in different years (because he has run for so many different state offices ) that referenced their ages. They are currently approximately 17 or 18 years old for the girl, and 15 or 16 years old for the boy. From an August 2003 story in the LA Times
“McClintock and his wife Lori, have a son, Justin, 11, and a daughter, Shannah, 13”
http://articles.latimes.com/20…
I also searched for any pictures, and finally came up with this, taken in September of 2003. Click here for what the McClintock children looked like 5 years ago:
http://www.jamd.com/search?tex…
http://www.jamd.com/image/g/25… (edit. try clicking on this)
As you can see, these children 5 years ago already looked much older than the children on the parade float. So by now the daughter is too old to attend that charter high school anyway. But the resemblance of the real ones to the parade float children is spooky, is it not ?
The town the parade was held in, Lincoln, CA, has quadrupled its population in the last 10 years from about 10,000 to 40,000. This means that most of the people don’t know the McClintocks, not that he ever lived around there recently. They would be looking at the parade float, and be fooled. McClintock and his family have lived for years in Elk Grove, south of Sacramento, which is in Dan Lungren’s ( R ) CA- 03 district, although McClintock uses Thousand Oaks in SoCal as his “official” residence and collects a tax free per diem payment from the state of CA for the travel obligation.
I was very tempted to title this story “Forever Young.” I have seen lots of cynical attempts to manipulate one’s public image, but this one has to take the cake. When it happens more than once, it is definitely a trend.
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photos by diary author unless otherwise attributed. Appearance of candidate continues to be pinker than his surrounding humans, creating a difficult quandary…. decided to leave him pinker and let it be.
cross posted at EENR blog. cross posted at dailykos.