• 67% think he is a socialist;
• 57% think he is a Muslim; AND
• 24% say he may be the Anti-Christ.

As someone who grew up going to a fairly rural fundamentalist church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night and whenever else the church doors were open, I am not shocked by the last finding.

What is the antidote?  Surprise, surprise … it may be formal education.  The more education you have the less likely it is that you believe this garbage.

The story concerns the South Charleston Technology Park, about which I have written before.  The Governor and his friends have hatched a plan to save the Tech Park, in part by moving a significant number of state government offices there.  But Judge Berger ruled several years ago when the West Virginia Lottery Commission tried to move its offices to Teays Valley that the West Virginia Constitution, which declares the seat of government to be Charleston (Article 6, Section 20), prohibited such a move.  While technically in South Charleston, the Tech Park is literally feet, not even miles, from Charleston and a mere five-minute drive from the State Capitol Complex itself.

The Governor basically dared anyone to sue, but several Charleston politicians made it clear that they were ready to take that dare.  Then some Charleston politicians hatched a plan to annex a portion of the Technology Park, but the City of South Charleston balked.  All this craziness because of Judge Berger’s flawed ruling.

Stop and think for a minute:

• At one extreme, no one could argue with a straight face that every single state government job should be housed within the four corners of Charleston.  After all, all major government agencies have offices scattered throughout the state, and the state’s citizens are better off as a result.
• At the other extreme, it would be hard to argue that West Virginia’s elected state officials should be headquartered outside of the State Capitol Complex, much less Charleston.
• Should statutorily-created Cabinet-level offices be required to be housed in Charleston?  No.  If the West Virginia Constitution’s framers did not see fit to require these offices, they almost surely wouldn’t view them as important enough to justify a requirement that they be housed in Charleston.  A clear, easy-to-apply standard that can be justified with a reasonably logical argument.
• But do realize that the Lottery Commission itself is not a Cabinet-level office.  It is one level down organizationally under the auspices of the West Virginia Department of Revenue.  Just like the Division of Rehabilitation Services, headquartered in Institute, and the Division of Tourism, headquartered in South Charleston.  If Judge Berger’s ruling applies to the Lottery Commission, it logically applies to Rehab Services and Tourism, too.
• Having said that, if I were a legislator, I would sponsor a bill that lists government agencies that can be headquartered outside of Charleston because the relevant provision of the West Virginia Constitution contains five important words: “unless otherwise provided by law.”
• And having said that, I seriously wonder whether Judge Berger’s wrong-headed decision may have prevented state politicians from making a wrong-headed decision of their own to take over a Tech Park that’s unlikely to flourish under the best of circumstances – an opinion that many of my friends do not share, but which seems pretty obvious to me.

There is a standard legal fiction applied in a wide variety of situations: A corporation is the same as a person.  We, for instance, wouldn’t want to give people free license to steal from a corporation, but say it’s not a crime because the theft didn’t harm a person.  By the same token, we wouldn’t want to allow negligent acts that harm corporations to go uncompensated; otherwise, no one would bother to establish them.

Having said that, the blind application of a basic principle to a different concept is absurd.  All of us know that a corporation really isn’t a person, and saying it is doesn’t make it so.  And we don’t want to call a corporation of person if it’s going to interfere with free and fair elections.

“I know House Speaker Earl Ray Tomblin is open-minded to looking at what is cost effective,” he said. ["]We need to look at where the money is needed most, everyday things for people to go to work. I don’t want to look at one thing.”

• If you have a vendor like Mr. Diehl generating documents that would suggest that bids were solicited from other vendors when they were not, you logically have a state government employee, who ordinarily would do this work, as a co-conspirator.  Who might that person be?  Was he or she directed to assist in the cover-up?
• I recall that a General Services Division employee named Jim Burgess was dismissed about the same time, but received a sizable settlement after he alleged inappropriate procurement practices in connection with Governor’s Mansion renovations.
• There has been a lot of gossip about the Alcohol Beverage Control Administration and  the provision of liquor to the Governor’s Mansion.  It’s interesting that Mr. Diehl was a liquor vendor.

I don’t know enough to know precisely where this investigation may be headed, but I’d be really surprised if it’s over.

Today Senator Byrd speaks truth to power about coal.  His theme: “The time has come to have an open and honest dialogue about coal’s future in West Virginia.”

• Why aren’t we having that important dialogue?  Because politicians and industry are “scapegoating and stoking fear over the permitting process.”
• Can the world live without coal?  ”No deliberate effort to do away with the coal industry could ever succeed in Washington because there is no available alternative energy supply that could immediately supplant the use of coal….”
• What about mountaintop removal coal mining?  ”It is not a widespread method of mining, with its use confined to only three states.  Most members of Congress, like most Americans, oppose the practice, and we may not yet fully understand the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the health of our citizens.”
• What about climate change?  ”To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand….”
• What do we need to do?  ”West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it.”

West Virginia will pay a heavy price if it fails to heed Senator Byrd’s message.

Reflecting on this, I read with amusement Kathleen Parker’s wonderful opinion piece in The Washington Post titled “The GOP’s Suicide Pact” on Sunday.  Ms. Parker makes fun of the GOP’s proposed ten-point  purity test “to weed out undesirables from their ever-shrinking party.”  If the purity test is adopted, a Republican will have to agree with at least eight of the ten points to receive party support.

The first purity test item: “We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s ‘stimulus’ bill.”  What about the bazillion dollar bailout of the financial services industry, which dwarfs the stimulus bill in terms of cost and was supported by many Republicans?  What about those earmarks Republicans were so fond of during the Bush administration?  What makes it OK to support one initiative, but not another, given that all have expanded government and increased national debt and deficits?

How about purity test number two: “We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care.”  We will have no health care reform at all if we leave it to the market.  Isn’t the better question: What role should government play – regulator, provider, or some combination of the two?  But that would require nuanced thinking.

Lest any of you Democrats think Republicans have the market cornered on obsequiousness, I encourage you to look at the Wise and Manchin administrations.  Having observed both closely, I repeatedly saw people in key positions suppress good ideas because they knew it was better for them to go along and get along than to speak the truth. By way of example:

• I know of two situations in which state-level cabinet officials allowed flawed legislation to pass, rather than raise basic problems that readily could have been corrected, for fear of running afoul of the Governor.
• I repeatedly saw state-level cabinet officials avoid important public policy issues because the issues could not be summarized in a five-second sound bite.
• Read the op-ed commentaries of your state-level cabinet officials: Not one of them says anything meaningful or important, much less nuanced.  Indeed I would refuse to publish them if I were a newspaper editor.

Savvy political parties, politicians, and leaders don’t surround themselves with sycophants.

The most telling quotation: “My contention has never been that the student did not do the work to earn the grade,” Wyant said. “The problem for me has always been the way it was handled, and the fact that right from the beginning I knew it was not right. Other students do not get that kind of attention.”

Emily Perdue did the work, but it’s a crime because she was given special treatment?  By special treatment, I assume we’re talking about an expedited path for completing coursework after Marshall University treated students in this program pretty shabbily as best I can tell?  And just where is the quid pro quo – the thing that someone at Marshall University was promised in exchange for the favorable treatment?  Again I ask why anyone would take a matter like this before a federal grand jury?

Today we are watching the greatest higher education system on earth implode: On Thursday the University of California System increased tuition 32 percent and still needs $913 million (not too far from $1 billion) in cuts to balance budgets.  On Friday students across the UC system protested and students at Santa Cruz and Berkeley took over buildings. Meanwhile California’s community colleges cut students, classes and staff at a time when community colleges are expanding by leaps and bounds elsewhere.

Has California hit rock bottom?  Some people say no; I say yes.  Why?  Any state in which the state’s former finance director seriously researches whether the state can convert from a state to a federal territory so the federal government can step in to address the fiscal crisis has no direction to go but up.  Incredible, just incredible.

As best I can determine, the only scenario that would produce an indictable federal crime is this: Someone made it easy for Emily Perdue to earn grades for her independent study because her father is the State Treasurer AND he or someone close to him somehow exerted influence inappropriately (not just as a concerned parent) to obtain a favorable outcome on behalf of Miss Perdue.  I can’t imagine the second half of the equation being satisfied in the absence of some clear quid pro quo, which no one has suggested publicly to date.  Furthermore, the quid pro quos available to a State Treasurer, unlike a Governor, Senator, or Congressman, truly are very limited.

While certainly worthy of internal examination by Marshall University’s provost and faculty senate, the Perdue matter hardly seems worthy of CRIMINAL investigation. To an outsider, these subpoenas appear to be political.

In yesterday’s newspaper, Miss Perdue and her father talked to a reporter about the story.  For those of you who were saturated and satiated with coverage of the WVU-Bresch degree scandal, stop reading the newspaper for a few more days.

Interestingly, there appear to be some significant similarities and differences between this story and the Bresch story.

Significant similarities:

• The daughter of a powerful politician;
• A fairly quick investigation/decision by the provost (vulnerable to second-guessing as a “rush to judgment”);
• A decision that favored the daughter; and
• FERPA (privacy law) violations by an individual or individuals seeking to expose the “truth.”

Significant differences:

• We are talking about grades in two classes, not a full-blown degree.
• Miss Perdue actually can produce work that she completed.  She also claims to have met with the dean on multiple occasions recently, which should be easily verifiable.
• Miss Perdue has a reasonably good GPA and appears to be a fairly conscientious student.
• This professor may have an axe to grind with the dean.
• To date, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the State Treasurer or friends of the State Treasurer did anything to influence the outcome.
• To date, there’s no evidence of presidential involvement (beyond, I would hope, his being apprised of the results of the provost’s investigation) or connections to Miss Perdue or her father.
• This issue appears to have been treated as the truly academic matter it is.

Predictions:

• You’ll be learning about several things you probably should not, given federal student privacy laws, as this story unfolds.  This is a serious downside to being a politican’s daughter; you are a public figure whether or not you want to be.
• This story will not have the “legs” that the Bresch story had because of the “axe-grinding” issue and the evidence that work actually was completed.

• As a general rule, nothing goes on the Governor’s call unless there’s general agreement.  What happened?  During Governor Manchin’s first term, he wielded a lot of power.  Now he can’t get a feel-good $500 bonus payment for state workers approved.  Is this an example of his lame-duck status?
• The annual increment law clearly covers higher education employees.  Why did the Governor not include funds for those employees?  Did the Governor expect students’ tuition and fees to pay for the bonuses – or that higher education employees would not receive the bonuses?
• Did anyone question whether this was the best way to reward state workers?  If you have a limited pool of funds, should you give it to everyone equally or try to determine who is most deserving?
• Using the money for employee benefits would be tax-free, while these bonuses probably would be taxed at a heightened rate.  Did anyone wonder whether it might be better to use these funds to offset health insurance premium payments or to cover retirement program debts?

This week the Economist includes an opinion piece about President Barack Obama.  My favorite quotation:  ”He has been curiously ill-served by a press short of useful criticism, with liberal America prepared only to debate what sort of water he walks on best, while conservative radio hosts argue over when exactly he became a communist.”  I can come up with no sentence that better captures the left-right media divide – and the utter uselessness of their chatter – better.

Meanwhile, notes the Economist, President Obama is losing the support of independent voters, who are concerned about federal spending, and needs to show leadership on important issues like health care and environmental reform.  ”Back in the honeymoon days,” says the Economist, “Mr. Obama was constantly compared to Roosevelt.  No longer.”

I recently had an opportunity to read FDR’s fireside chats.  FDR would talk directly to the American people about important issues in plain, easy to understand, but not condescending, language.  I think President Obama needs to do more of this.  It’s harder now, with so many media competing for our limited attentions, but he needs to make a conscientious effort to reach us.

In closing, some interesting words from FDR to ponder:

• On stimulus spending: “It is going to cost something to get out of this recession this way but the profit of getting out of it will pay for the cost several times over. Lost working time is lost money. Every day that a workman is unemployed, or a machine is unused, or a business organization is marking time, it is a loss to the Nation.”  14 April 1938.
• On health care: “Whether we come to this form of insurance soon or later on, I am confident that we can devise a system which will enhance and not hinder the remarkable progress which has been made and is being made in practice of the professions of medicine and surgery in the United States.”  14 November 1936.
• On the environment: “If, for example, in some local area the water table continues to drop and the topsoil to blow away, the land values will disappear with the water and the soil. People on the farms will drift into the nearby cities; the cities will have no farm trade and the workers in the city factories and stores will have no jobs. Property values in the cities will decline. If, on the other hand, the farms within that area remain as farms with better water supply and no erosion, the farm population will stay on the land and prosper and the nearby cities will prosper too. Property values will increase instead of disappearing.”  6 September 1936.

I think the Daily Mail is confusing democracy with political partisanship.  If I remember correctly, there were no political parties when that august group of gentlemen pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in Phily.  If these men had known the levels to which political party squabbling could degenerate, I daresay they might have decided to stick with the Brits.

• Former House Education Committee Chairman Jerry Mezzatesta got into trouble for his role in the distribution of a grant.  He is receiving $192,000.
• Mylan Chief Operating Officer Heather Bresch got into trouble for claiming a master’s degree from WVU.  She has been promoted to President.

It is good to see people who have struggled doing so well.

Today there are 500,000 people in prison for drug offenses.  That number is larger than the entire prison population of this country in 1980.  Despite this, half of all Americans report trying illegal drugs.  With a market that large, it is unsurprising that nothing, from mandatory minimum sentences to $6 billion coca defoliation efforts in Columbia, has worked, and neither will this state’s latest effort: “Operation Eviction.”

What do we need to do?  First and foremost, eliminate the federal sentencing disparities for crack cocaine, which have sent a disproportionate percentage of African Americans to prison for ridiculous amounts of time.  Second, focus more on education and treatment.

We’ll have a lot of money to devote to these and other efforts if we stop locking up drug dealers and throwing away the key – at an estimated cost of almost $24,000 per prisoner per year.

I have a message for everyone who believes that prisons are the answer to West Virginia’s and America’s drug problems:  “Puttin’ the smackdown won’t keep the crack down.  Havin’ a crackdown won’t keep the smack down.  Education is liberation.”

In Iran people have taken to the streets and Twitter to fight for democratic principles.  In New York?  In West Virginia?

Is this what all the fighting’s for?  I hope not.

I hope everyone involved reads the new report from the Stanford University Center for Research on Educational Outcomes about the (in)effectiveness of charter schools.  The report, which has received a lot of attention nationally, found that 17 percent of charter schools performed significantly better than traditional public schools, 46 percent performed about the same and 37 percent performed significantly worse.  While far from dispositive, the report suggests that a lot of charter schools are not only not better, but actually worse, than traditional public schools.

Interestingly, the study was funded by charter school proponents.

22 June 2009.  For additional reading and listening:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/education/22duncan.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105461724&ft=1&f=1013

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105461713&ft=1&f=1013

It is a ironic that the Gazette is lampooning southern West Virginia politics and the Daily Mail is singing the praises of divided government during a week that has seen one of the grandest exhibitions of back-room politics and divided government gone awry – not in West Virginia but in New York State.

After the most recent statewide election, Democrats found themselves in control of the New York State Senate by the narrowest of margins – 32 to 30.  As a result, two fine Democrats saw opportunity and decided to align themselves with Republicans.  The first fine Democrat Pedro Espada previously was fined more than $60,000 for failing to disclose campaign contributions; a non-profit group he founded is under investigation for using misappropriated money; and there are even questions about whether he resides in the district he represents.  The second Democrat Hiram Monserrate currently is under indictment for assaulting someone with a piece of broken glass and was elected to the State Senate only after retiring from the New York Police Department because a psychological disability prevented him from performing his job.  Equally amusing, the Republican coup was orchestrated by a billionaire Democrat who was mad at State Senators for raising his taxes.

Because of these power struggles, New York Senate Democrats have sued Senate Republicans and locked them out of the Senate chambers while important issues like control of the New York City public school system remain unresolved.  The next time the Gazette or Daily Mail waxes poetic about southern West Virginia political wrongs or the charms of divided government, it needs to look outside of West Virginia because southern West Virginia is not unique, and divided government is not always charming.