Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 12, 2010

ROCHA (cont. from page 4)

The appointment of Dr. Rocha was the 
culmination of a nationwide search conducted by 
Academic Search Incorporated and the PACCD. 
The selection process included campus candidate 
forums, candidate meetings with campus groups 
and community members, and extensive input 
from students, faculty, staff, and community 
members.

In their comments, many faculty noted Dr. 
Rocha’s experience and knowledge in basic skills 
and his deep commitment to student success, 
especially in STEM (Science/Technology/
Engineering/Math) and workforce education. 
The PACCD Board carefully reviewed and 
considered all faculty and staff input and voted 
unanimously to appoint Dr. Rocha as PCC 
president at its June 9 meeting.

 “I am very pleased at the decision of the Board 
of Trustees to appoint Dr. Mark Rocha as the 
next president of Pasadena City College,” said 
Dr. Jack Scott, California Community College 
Chancellor. “Dr. Rocha has a wealth of experience 
in community college administration, including 
a very successful tenure as president of West Los 
Angeles College. I have heard many glowing 
reports about his outstanding work at that 
college. I predict a bright future for Pasadena 
City College as Mark Rocha works with the 
Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff at PCC in the 
years ahead.”

 Dr. Rocha has more than 20 years of experience 
in higher education including nine years of 
experience in the California community college 
system, most recently as president of West Los 
Angeles College in the Los Angeles Community 
College District. He brings extensive experience 
working in a large, multi-college district. 

 “We were highly impressed with Dr. Rocha’s 
collegial teamwork approach at West Los Angeles 
College that resulted in great progress in the 
areas of enrollment, budget and external grants 
and fundraising,” said Dr. Bradbury-Huang. 

 During the last four years as president of West 
Los Angeles College, Dr. Rocha also led a major 
bond construction program that has transformed 
the campus and has provided faculty and 
students with state-of-the-art instructional 
technology. Dr. Rocha also serves as chair of 
the Workforce Education Task Force for 2nd 
District Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark 
Ridley-Thomas and is a member of the Board of 
Councilors of the Rossier School of Education of 
the University of Southern California.

 Previously, Dr. Rocha served as Mission College’s 
vice president of Academic Affairs. Over the 
past 20 years, Dr. Rocha’s administrative career 
has included service as associate dean and dean 
in the California State University System and 
provost at Seton Hall University.

 An English professor by training, Dr. Rocha 
received his Ph.D. in English from the University 
of Southern California, his master’s degree from 
California State University, Fullerton, and his 
bachelor’s degree from Villanova University.

 In 1993, Dr. Rocha was awarded a Fulbright 
Fellowship and taught for a year in Caracas, 
Venezuela at the Universidad Simòn Bolìvar. 
His scholarly work is in the field of American 
drama and theater and includes publications on 
the playwrights August Wilson and Tennessee 
Williams, among others. Dr. Rocha has two 
sons, Brendan, 19, and Samuel, 13, and resides 
in Sherman Oaks with his wife Nancy. A runner, 
Dr. Rocha finished the inaugural Pasadena 
Marathon last March.

Left Turn / Right Turn

9

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 12, 2010


GREG Welborn

Gulf Disaster Compliment of

Environmentalists

 In his column last week, Greg 
mentioned “6,000 to 10,000 
rocket attacks per year into 
Israel from Gaza”.    According 
to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, the highest number of rocket attacks 
took place in 2008, with a total of 1,750; 
followed by 946 in 2006, 896 in 2007, 556 in 
2009, 268 in 2004 and 222 in 2005 (there have 
been 30 through mid-March of this year). 
  
Wanted to get that out of the way.

 

 I also want to thank reader Paul Hovsepian 
for his appreciative and appreciated letter 
in last week’s paper.   Paul points out the 
need to be both informed and to hold our 
representatives accountable.   Since none of us 
can be thoroughly informed on everything (no 
matter how assiduously we read the Mountain 
Views News), it’s important we elect leaders 
upon whom we can rely to do their homework 
and perform in the best interest of our 
communities and our country while we get on 
with our own day jobs.

 

 Choosing leaders who can offer reasonable 
assurance they’ll do the right thing is the hard 
part.   For me, one of the first things I look 
to is where the money behind the campaign 
is coming from.   I was disappointed to see 
Democrats, especially former President Bill 
Clinton, complaining about the out-of-state 
union money going to the primary opponent 
of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), but not about 
the out-of-state money from the healthcare 
and securities/investment industries going 
to Sen. Lincoln.   On the one hand there are 
organizations representing working men and 
women, and on the other those seeking to 
deprive working men and women of affordable 
healthcare and the assurance their retirement 
funds won’t be gambled away by Wall Street 
yahoos.

 

 Another thing I consider is not just what 
a candidate promises for the future, but 
how that candidate has contributed to our 
community in the past.   In gubernatorial 
candidate Meg Whitman and senate 
candidate Carly Fiorina, we have two 
people who have devoted their lives to 
making lots of money - for themselves. 
  
Even to a “community” of shareholders, 
their contributions have been found 
lacking - with Whitman forced from her 
eBay position after a shareholder suit 
accusing her of self-serving dealings with 
Goldman Sachs, and Fiorina ousted from 
Hewlett-Packard following her drive to 
dump tens of thousands of American jobs 
in order to exploit cheap offshore labor, 
and presiding over a 60% drop in HP’s 
stock value.   Both rarely, if ever, bothered to 
vote, and both became politically involved 
via brief flings with John McCain’s 2008 
presidential campaign (where Fiorina 
memorably commented she considered Sarah 
Palin fully qualified to be Vice President of 
the United States, but 
not to run a major 
corporation).

 

 One of the best ways 
to assess a candidate is 
to talk to them.   I had 
the opportunity to 
do so at an election-
night celebration in 
Claremont.   Darcel 
Woods, Democratic 
candidate for our 
59th Assembly 
District, seems to 
be the opposite of a 
Whitman or Fiorina; 
whereas they were 
unable to find time 
to vote, Darcel has 
devoted her life to 
public service.   Teacher, college professor, 
deputy sheriff, probation counselor, senior 
center and food bank volunteer - while 
others talk of job creation, Darcel has been 
getting it done through involvement with 
CalWORKS, displaced worker counseling, 
employment skills retraining and correctional 
reintegration programs.   When I asked about 
partisan battles in Sacramento, she responded 
by not mentioning parties at all and described 
a community of common interests rather 
than blocs of competing ones.   To her it was 
not a matter of Democrat vs. Republican, but 
of common sense solutions vs. continuing 
practices that have failed in the past.   Darcel 
made clear there are some things (home 
health care availability, for instance) that aren’t 
options to be bargained with but are essential - 
and it doesn’t matter what the party affiliation 
might be of the person needing it.

 

 The theme of “community” also ran through 
my chat with 26th District congressional 
candidate Russ Warner.   Russ described 
himself as the “moderate” in this race, as 
opposed to sequestered incumbent Republican 
David Dreier.   There are concerns most of us 
have, whether being able to afford skyrocketing 
health insurance premiums or needing 
financial legislation that protects consumers 
as well as big banks; concerns Russ shares but 
that Dreier has ignored and actively opposed 
for no apparent reason other than that party 
bosses have told him to.   It’s reassuring talking 
to a candidate who’s experienced “corporate 
downsizing”, starting and running a business, 
seeing a son go off to Iraq and dealing with 
household concerns most of us share.   With 
Rep. Dreier, I’ve often wondered if, for example, 
he’s ever in his life had to shop for private 
health coverage.

 

 David Dreier’s record has pretty much been 
supporting whatever came out of the Bush 
Administration, and opposing whatever’s 
proposed under President Obama.   I asked 
Russ if he had any issues with the current 
administration.   He said he regarded the 
president 
as being as 
smart as Harry 
Truman, but 
who sometimes 
could stand to be 
a bit more Teddy 
Roosevelt.   In 
comparing this 
campaign to the 
one two years 
ago, there’s that 
palpable anti-
incumbency 
mood 
throughout the 
nation, which 
might account 
for Dreier’s losing 
almost 30% of his 
own party’s vote 
to an unknown, 
unfunded 
challenger.   For Russ himself, he said he’s more 
prone this time around to tell audiences 
exactly what he feels, rather than what 
he thinks they’d like to hear.   And, in 
this era of poll-driven, party-defined 
talking points, that’s an approach 
audiences appreciate - whether they 
like what they hear or not.

 

 I felt reassured after talking face-
to-face with candidates Darcel Woods 
and Russ Warner.   With a simple 
phone call to either of their campaign 
offices, I’m sure anybody reading this 
can arrange to do the same.   Regardless 
of this assurance, though, I still agree 
with reader Paul it’s up to us to stay 
informed, keep them on their toes, and 
make sure they remember to whom 
they’re accountable.

HOWARD Hays 

As I See It

 
Thankfully, it would appear as though BP has 
finally been able to successfully implement a 
strategy to stop the oil spill in the gulf. Assuming 
that’s correct, there will be a brief – if even 
perceptible – period of political calm before 
the massive finger pointing and blame affixing 
begins. The odds-on favorite to play the fall guy 
is, of course, British Petroleum. Now, I want to 
go on record as stating that it appears BP made 
some colossal blunders, but I think there really 
is a more important question that needs to be 
answered.

Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the 
first place? 

 You see, I’m one of those people who assumes 
that humans make mistakes. I don’t assume 
that anything goes perfectly. So, were I to make 
public policy in the energy and environment 
realms, I would count on mistakes happening 
and do everything I could to make sure that we 
incorporated that realism into public policy. 
Given that, it seems pretty obvious to me that 
we should be drilling for oil (and yes we do need 
to drill for oil… it’s the 
only option we have 
right now) first on land, 
where it’s easy to contain 
spills and get people to 
the well site to fix the 
problem, then second 
drill in shallow water 
where it’s only a bit more 
difficult to contain the 
spill by getting people 
in to fix the problem. 
Unfortunately, we 
don’t do that primarily 
because of radical unrealistic environmental 
ideology. 

 Because environmentalists have succeeded in 
closing off the Arctic circle area of Alaska (a 30-
year moratorium in place) and have rendered the 
Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits 
to oil production, we have to drill deep, at 1,000 
feet or more, and after that have to drill really 
deep, at 5,000 feet. Think for a moment about 
the challenges of drilling, placing a wellhead, 
servicing that wellhead and then fixing problems 
to that wellhead in 5,000 feet of water. No diver 
can get there; light doesn’t penetrate that deep; 
and any robotic actions are painstakingly slow 
to conduct. Simply put, there is no precedent 
to the technological challenges of having to drill 
and operate this deep. The April 20 blowout in 
the Gulf of Mexico and the ensuing ecological 
disaster were inevitable and are the direct result 
of stupidity and hubris among those who claim 
to be protecting our environment. 

 There will always be catastrophic oil spills. We 
make them as rare as possible, but they are going 
to happen. Ask yourself: where would you rather 
have one: in the Gulf of Mexico 5,000 feet down, a 
geographic region which supports the livelihood 
of thousands of people, or in the Arctic, where 
you can walk to the wellhead and very few people 
actually live or work? All spills run the risk of 
seriously damaging wildlife. That’s part of the risk 
we have to take. But doesn’t it make infinitely 
more sense to drill in barren areas, where even 
wildlife is minimal, instead of in highly populated 
areas that are also teeming with wildlife? 

 Now, I’m not trying to defend BP here. They 
blew it. But if they hadn’t suffered a catastrophic 
screw up, someone else would have. Again, 
people are human, and we make mistakes. A 
huge blowout was inevitable, and – guess what? 
– there will be another one before you and I are 
dead and gone. That’s the nature of anything we 
humans do. Mistakes happen. 

 But since the accident, we have to stop the 
hysterical trashing of BP’s efforts. This company, 
like any company that wants to make a profit, 
has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to do 
anything except to fix this problem as fast as they 
possibly can. If only to repair their public image 
and to limit the amount of the economic damage 
claims and lawsuits that will be filed against 
them, they have to be doing everything in their 
power to fix this problem. To assert otherwise 
is stupid. So give them the acknowledgement 
that they deserve in these superhuman efforts to 
contain this problem.

 Government officials who rail in righteous 
indignation against BP are simply trying to 
deflect attention away from their own role in 
the disaster. Ken Salazar’s 
Interior Department was 
lax in its permitting and 
oversight responsibilities, 
which makes them equally culpable that the 
inevitable happened now (in 2010), but even 
here we should cut them some slack. I can only 
imagine the legitimate complaints about the 
difficulty of drilling in this deep sea area that BP 
articulated in an effort to get some relief from the 
extraordinary costs associated with the endeavor. 
Perhaps someone at Interior realized how insane 
the effort really was. I don’t really know, but 
when I stand back and think about this, I’m 
amazed that humans are even able to get any oil 
out of the ground under the circumstances that 
exist at 5,000 feet below sea level. What amazing 
and ingenious creatures we are.

 Likewise, I find President Obama’s finger-
pointing Rose Garden speech unpalatable and 
inappropriate for a man who claims to have 
the wisdom to guide the free world. First, he 
denounces finger-pointing, then he proceeds to 
point the finger at everyone 
but his own government 
that forced the oil companies 
to drill in this inhospitable 
environment when much 
more accommodating ones are 
readily available. 

 In the end analysis, the buck 
always stops at the president’s 
desk. At least President Obama 
has been gracious enough to 
admit to that obvious truth. 
He didn’t start the whole 
environmental paranoia that 
has much of this country sipping cool-aid when 
it comes to the development of sound energy 
policy, but he certainly has claimed the mantle of 
being an intelligent enough – gifted even – leader 
to have realized how stupid our policies have 
become. He should have been able to see that a 
disaster of this magnitude was right around the 
corner. He should have been able to realize that 
safer, easier, more controllable and less potentially 
damaging drill sites were and are available. 

 This disaster is Obama’s. Of that there can be 
no mistake and no excuse. But he doesn’t own 
it because of what happened after the spill. The 
more legitimate Obama paternity claim is based 
on the environmental policies he has championed 
as a candidate and as a President. He has done 
nothing to lift the ridiculous burden placed on 
nuclear power development projects. He has all 
but killed any chance that new coal-fired energy 
plants will be built in this country. In short, he 
has increased our reliance on foreign oil and 
increased the demands that we seek our own 
energy development in the most dangerous and 
potentially damaging of environments possible. 

 We drill deep – and suffer catastrophic 
ecological disasters – because of the foolishness 
of current environmental fashions championed 
by this president. The gulf oil spill, the 
concomitant death and destruction, the loss 
of jobs and economic ruin were caused by the 
very people who take every opportunity to grab 
a microphone and lay claim to the title of grand 
protector while accusing the rest of us common 
sense folks of being insensitive and uninformed.

 I’m just a simple guy when it comes to some 
things. But even I can figure out that I’d rather 
have our oil drilled on land where few animals, 
and even fewer people, live ,and where fixing 
problems is tantamount to taking the car into the 
shop instead of doing it where mistakes are more 
disastrous and fixing them more difficult than 
putting a man on the moon. 

 So, let’s have some Congressional hearings, let’s 
have the inevitable investigation to document 
what went wrong, but in so doing, let’s be honest 
about who should have known better and who 
could have solved this problem with the stroke 
of a pen. Let’s be sure that an honest assessment 
of all this shows America just how much damage 
unchecked environmental ideology can do. 
Maybe then we’ll get a reasoned and balanced 
approach to energy policy wean ourselves from 
foreign oil and actually protect a bit more of the 
planet in the process.

 About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance 
writer and has spoken to several civic and religious 
organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in 
the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and 
is active in the community. He can be reached at 
gregwelborn@earthlink.net.

Because environmentalists have 
succeeded in closing off the Arctic 
circle area of Alaska (a 30-year 
moratorium in place) and have 
rendered the Pacific and nearly 
all the Atlantic coast off-limits 
to oil production, we have to 
drill deep, at 1,000 feet or more, 
and after that have to drill really 
deep, at 5,000 feet. 


Russ Warner and wife Chris


Darcel Woods