Last week’s warm, spring-like weather had me crunching some raw data I mentioned in my previous column. “Data crunching” is just academic slang for processing facts in some way that shows relationships between categories of things.
My processing began in the form of laundry. I washed piles of clothes from my past, looking for clues to my true identity as a child of God despite the clear evidence of massive strokes of sin. A flannel shirt from my field work days, for instance, helped offset some guilty-looking underwear. A pair of jeans I’ll never squeeze back into reminded me I once thought size 12 was large. Examining one’s conscience through the lens of previous wardrobes can be a growth experience in humility, one trait of the saintly. But hanging wet stuff on the clothesline, letting it dry in full view, preparing for its new life as a rag or thrift shop donation - man, that’s cathartic.
I keep wondering how Val is doing with his data crunching. His job is a little different from mine: he’s got to organize his raw data well enough to contradict the data provided by his clerk. His data need to provide a different picture of relationships than the one her data paints. His data have to convince a panel of people not from his home town or county that he’s a child of God qualified enough to keep serving up justice here at home despite the clouds on his apparent character. All I have to do is convince my internal judge and jury that I qualify to keep breathing.
When I crunch the data in the judicial committee’s report, the relationship I see is one of invidious paternalism. He was trying to take over her life. With the anonymous letter accusing her of having an affair with another court employee, supposedly sent to her husband’s workplace and cc’d to Judge Val, he was inserting himself between her and her husband as well as the other employee with whom she was still on a friendly basis. By instructing her to tell no one about the letter, he was also inserting himself between her and her other friends. He then began depositing cash into her bank accounts and providing other luxuries, from AAA coverage to a BMW. As benign as he tried to make these look, they are steps toward a predatory relationship, how paternalism goes ugly. Ask any daughter of incest.
I probably wouldn’t mention this again except for the possibility that Judge Val has been using his power in other inappropriate ways, particularly within our community. The most blatant example I know was his signing the LPD’s search and arrest warrants over a 3-day weekend in the unwarranted arrest of Councilman Mecum last year. The Saucedo’s home is three doors down from Lindsay’s police station, which made it convenient, I’m sure. But his past history on the city council and multiple terms as mayor leave too strong a connection to City Hall to guarantee impartiality in evaluating the validity of those warrants. Most judges refuse to sign warrants in the communities in which they live simply to avoid the appearance of potential conflict of interest.
The other was his attendance at Lindsay City Council meetings during the LARGo lawsuit on CEQA violations and neglect of historic preservation provisions in Lindsay’s outdated general plan. I didn’t know it at the time, but that may have been a violation of the judicial ethics code. At the time, however, I felt it was some kind of betrayal of the community, his appearance and comments meant to sway the Council back toward the staff’s direction at a time when they were beginning to move away.
I hope the community will come to understand that the loss of this “local hero” may in fact be a gain for our efforts to build real democratic process. Maybe it’s time Val did some laundry.
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Trudy Wischemann is writer who loves to get her hands into soapy water and make things clean. You can send her your data crunching stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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