Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of government' gets done, and where Jack the Ripper sits at the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

We begin this week in Michigan, where a surprising thing happened. A public official was indicted on charges of manslaughter for nonfeasance in office that caused the death of several citizens. This almost never happens in this country; for example, the explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, nearly took out the whole town and killed 15 people. Nobody ever was charged criminally.

However, in Michigan, a state official will face charges that his failures in office killed two people in Flint, where people still don't have clean water to drink. From MLive:

The decision means the judge found there is probable cause to believe involuntary manslaughter was committed against Skidmore and Snyder and that Lyon, 49, committed the crimes. Monday's ruling marks the first time a judge has weighed in on the evidence against a city or state worker charged with criminal wrongdoing related to the water crisis. It also involves the highest-ranking of 15 current and former city and state government officials charged with criminal wrongdoing in Flint. Lyon, a member of Gov. Rick Snyder's cabinet, has remained on the job while facing the charges against him.

There is no telling whether this decision will stand up on appeal, but its significance lies in the fact that a government official is facing charges in this context at all. That simply does not happen in the United States the way it has happened in this case. Political corruption is one thing. But political crimes against a constituency generally get you a book deal. This is a nice change.

We move on down to Texas, where everything and everybody is political, even the people who pretend that they're not. The folks at the Texas Tribune have got their teeth into a byzantine. A guy named Robert Duncan resigned suddenly as the head of the Texas Tech university system and nobody can figure out why, although a proposed new school of veterinary medicine seems to be in the middle of the whole mess.

In the words of state Sen. Charles Perry , a Republican from Lubbock: "Unfortunately, this is the outcome when politics — at its worst — gets involved in a decision...You can't put lipstick on a pig and call it anything different. It's still a pig. This was about a vet school. This was about power players at the state level," Perry said. "The Duncan that everybody knows and loves and respects would never intentionally discredit this institution, himself, his family, this community or Lubbock."

The state's other vet school is run by the Texas A&M system, and those folks appear to be fairly proprietary on the subject.

The title of a June opinion article from John Sharp, the hard-charging chancellor of the A&M System and another former lawmaker, summarized the sentiment: "Texas doesn't need another veterinarian school," it said. A&M officials say Tech's proposed vet school is redundant and, if built, would spread limited state resources too thin. But residents of West Texas and advocates of Tech's program say it would fill a need for vets that treat cattle and other livestock, not just "poodles" as they say A&M's school largely does. The Legislature committed $4.1 million to Tech's program in 2017, and the school has raised some $90 million from the city of Amarillo and other donors. When the system's governing board met last week, some funding for the vet school was on the agenda, and approved. Days later, Duncan said he would retire.

Sources close to the Legislature and to Tech, who hold Duncan in high esteem, see the vet school as a key factor in his abrupt departure, and see political chicanery behind the move. Tech's vet school is vying not just for funds that could go to A&M, but for attention that could be trained on the system's proposed dental school, in El Paso, where the chairman of Tech's board is from. "The timing is awfully suspect," said Perry, the state senator. "Unfortunately, this was the nemesis that brought down a really great person that was awesome in his job and gracious, and kind and humble and forward-thinking."

Icon Sports Wire Getty Images

The Texas Tech people suspect the fine hands of Governor Greg Abbott, and of former governor and current U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry—who is a proud A&M grad—in all of this, which both men deny. Tribune analyst Ross Ramsey believes that the Texas Tech regents simply got rolled.

The regents at Texas Tech showed their mettle — demonstrating why they’re little fish and not big fish — when a more brazen academic institution bellowed about their plans to launch a veterinary school in the Panhandle. Texas A&M University, headed by former legislator, railroad commissioner and comptroller John Sharp, believes one vet school is enough. That was communicated to the Tech regents, who quailed. They dumped Duncan, who offered his resignation after an informal vote of no confidence and gave less notice than a produce manager at a grocery store. One version of this tale — denied vociferously by Gov. Greg Abbott’s office — is that the governor told the regents to yank Duncan’s leash. It’s hard to believe the regents – who are appointed by the governor – are independent enough to have done it on their own. And there wasn’t any foreshadowing — no steady building up of grievances against Duncan or anything like that.

This may seem a little insular for the purposes of our semi-regular weekly survey but, over the past few decades, Texas politics have developed a nasty habit of working their way into the country's politics in general. So we should ever keep an eye on these folks.

We move along to Kentucky, where Tea Party Governor Matt Bevin keeps taking poor people on Medicaid to court and losing. Bevin wants to drop co-pays and work requirements on these folks, and they keep suing, and he keeps counter-suing, and losing, in courts across the length and breadth of the Republic. From The Lexington Herald-Leader:

In the Washington case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg struck down Kentucky’s plan to require many thousands of able-boded Medicaid recipients up to age 64 to work or volunteer 80 hours a month in order to continue receiving health insurance. While Boasberg did not rule out the possibility of adding work requirements, he said the federal government failed to adequately consider whether the tougher standards included in Kentucky’s waiver would interfere with Medicaid’s legal purpose of providing medical care to low-income Americans. The plaintiffs claimed that Bevin’s plan — known as Kentucky HEALTH — violated the 1965 law establishing Medicaid because poor people’s access to health care would be reduced.

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After the Medicaid recipients sued, Bevin obtained permission to join the Washington case on the side of the federal government. Bevin then sued the Medicaid recipients in federal court in Frankfort to defend his changes as legal, setting up the possibility of two different outcomes before two different judges. The Washington judge is a Democratic appointee; the Frankfort judge is a Republican appointee.

This is yet another one of those cases where the mystery resides in the fact that conservative voters and legislators rail endlessly about "frivolous lawsuits" and wastes of the taxpayer's money, but are willing to throw money down the rathole of these endless and futile legal actions just because they don't like a policy outcome. 'Ees a puzzlement, yes?

A teachers’ protest in Oklahoma J Pat Carter Getty Images

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Wildcat Driller Friedman of the Plains brings us the latest in the state's ongoing wrestling match with education. From the Tulsa World:

Officials at the Oklahoma State Department of Education said about 915 more emergency certifications are expected to be approved when the Oklahoma State Board of Education meets this week. In the first two months of hiring for the 2018-19 academic year, the state board already approved 1,237 emergency certifications. In all 12 months of 2017-18, 1,975 were approved. In 2011-12, Oklahoma issued just 32 emergency teaching certificates in a single year.This growing reliance by school districts on new hires who have not yet completed the state’s requirements for either traditional or alternative certification is one of the strongest indicators that the statewide teacher shortage has not yet reached bottom...“We are now experiencing the full weight of a crisis we have been warning of for the past three years,” State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said. “It is no surprise, and our children have paid the price of years of inaction which cannot be immediately reversed.”

You may recall that, back in April, Oklahoma teachers were so frustrated with the spending cuts levied against the public schools that they walked out in a massive protest. It was part of a spontaneous national movement by public school teachers; there were walkouts in West Virginia and in Kentucky. This even caught the attention of the national media for a spell. But, alas, like the Flint water crisis, this story never comes to an end. It just comes to the end of its sizzle.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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