(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where the hot iron blows as you raise the shade.

We begin, believe it or not, in the Commonwealth (God save it!), where public higher education is eating its own liver right in front of us. It all began with the announcement that the University of Massachusetts would purchase Mt. Ida College, a 119-year-old liberal arts institution in Newton. It then was announced, clumsily, that Mt. Ida would be closing at the end of this school year, a decision that blindsided most of the school’s students and their parents.

Current students will be allowed free admission to UMass-Dartmouth, south of Boston. High school students already accepted at Mt. Ida have been offered admission at a number of different local colleges. Both Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey both expressed dismay at what happened at Mt. Ida, and Healey’s office has opened a hotline for those people affected by the closure. Generally, however, there was disappointment and anger at the way the purchase was handled. The process, shall we say, was not transparent.

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But, most significantly, the purchase of a campus so close to the city has exacerbated existing tensions between the mothership campus in Amherst, and UMass-Boston, the branch located at Columbia Point, next door to the John F. Kennedy Library, in Dorchester. For some time, the administrators and faculty at UMass-Boston have felt like an unwanted stepchild in the system, even as they built up their school into a thriving university. The purchase of the campus in Newton threw these feelings into hyperdrive. From The Boston Globe:

To them, the university system trustees’ approval of Amherst’s plan reinforces a longstanding belief on the Dorchester campus that the University of Massachusetts Boston is considered second-best. “The board just really doesn’t care about Boston,” said Katie Mitrano, president of the UMass Boston undergraduate student body.

At the same time, UMass-Boston is floundering in its efforts to find a new chancellor to replace J. Keith Motley, who resigned in April. This set off a fight between Motley’s allies in the city and Martin Meehan, the former congressman who presides over the entire UMass system. Again, from the Globe:

Still, Motley is a widely respected figure in Boston, especially in the black community, and many voiced outrage Wednesday night over what they perceived as his forced departure. “This sequence of events has been a campaign to diminish and embarrass one of the most powerful men of color in the state. And I think it’s disgraceful,” said state Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, whose district includes UMass Boston and who has been an ally of Motley. She said it sends a troubling message to the district she represents, and she hopes the decision will be reversed.

The search for Motley’s replacement came apart when three candidates dropped out this week, and that prompted a war of words between Meehan and the university’s faculty. From WBUR:

Latin American studies professor Reyes Coll-Tellecha said the last-minute notice was an example of how the UMass administration feels about the faculty. What happened next, she says, was extraordinary. Nearly 20 percent of the faculty came together to inject themselves into the chancellor selection process. "In my 25 years at UMass Boston I have never seen consensus among 200 faculty members. The consensus was that none of the three candidates were appropriate or a good match for us at that moment. It was a strong consensus," she said.

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That consensus led those faculty members to write an open letter to UMass President Marty Meehan. They said the three candidates had neither the skills, the experience, nor the values to lead the campus. Instead of commenting for this story, Meehan’s office pointed WBUR to a letter he wrote with news of the candidates’ withdrawals. Meehan said he was “mortified” that the candidates’ commitment and qualifications were called into question publicly. He added it would be futile to reopen a search that went through 195 candidates over seven months.

More than a few people suspect that the UMass system will open a campus at Mt. Ida and shut down the campus in Dorchester. And make no mistake: UMass-Boston has grown into a significant institution in the city, especially for the children of recent immigrants, and it has a strong ally in Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, who’s thrown himself into the controversy. From MassLive.com:

UMass Boston, a campus clashing with the head of the university system amid fallout from a failed search for a new chancellor, won't be closing like Mount Ida College, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh vowed Wednesday. "We can't let that happen," Walsh told reporters in South Boston. "I won't let that happen as the mayor." When Walsh was a state representative at the Massachusetts State House, his district included UMass Boston, which is located in the city's Dorchester neighborhood and next to the JFK Library and Presidential Museum. A 20-year veteran of city politics, Walsh has seen chancellors come and go from the Boston Harbor campus. "I think, moving forward, it needs some stability," the mayor said.

This is one of those things that shouldn’t be hard unless some people determine that it’s to their advantage to make things hard.

Let us skip away from home and travel on over to Ohio, where the state legislature has fed itself into the woodchipper. From Cleveland.com:

The FBI's previously unclear interest in ex-Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger came into sharper focus on Wednesday morning as agents raided his Southwest Ohio home, along with a nearby storage facility owned by his former campaign treasurer. Rosenberger, who has denied wrongdoing, resigned abruptly from the legislature in April, shortly after he learned the FBI had been looking into his international travel with lobbyists. Meanwhile, another potential federal investigation looms which also involves Columbus Republicans. Republican Ohio Auditor Dave Yost earlier this month announced he had contacted local and federal prosecutors after his office found the now-shuttered Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow might have fraudulently inflated its student-attendance data to get more state funding. The school's founder, William Lager, has given millions to Republicans in campaign contributions while receiving more than $1 billion in state funding since his school opened in 2000, years Republicans largely have held tight control of state government.

Oh, John? John Kasich? Yoo-hoo! About that $30,000 contribution your campaign got from the allegedly crooked Electronic Classroom 0f Tomorrow? Might want to come up with an answer before your next messianic medicine-wagon trip to New Hampshire.

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Meanwhile, FBI raids do tend to gum up the legislative process. An outbreak of political cannibalism doesn’t help much, either.

Ohio Republicans followed the raid of Rosenberger's house on Wednesday with a mix of fascination and disappointment and for some, nervousness over where it might be headed. All the while, the Republican-controlled state legislature has been unable to pass any bills since Rosenberger's departure last month. State Rep. Kirk Schuring, a top Rosenberger lieutenant who's now serving as a temporary House speaker, on Wednesday canceled two more planned sessions amid uncertainty whether Rosenberger's preferred successor, State Rep. Ryan Smith, had the votes necessary to secure the job. A faction of Republicans loyal to State Rep. Larry Householder, Smith's rival for the speaker's gavel next year, refuses to support anyone connected to Rosenberger, citing the investigation into Rosenberger.

(Also, doesn’t the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow sound like something you’d find at Epcot, next to the concession stands?)

Sliding down to Alabama, via Josh’s joint, the AP tells us that the state is suing the U.S. Census because, you know, some people just don’t count.

In the lawsuit, Alabama argues the predicted 2020 census numbers will cause Alabama to lose a congressional seat, and an electoral vote, to a state with a “larger illegal alien population.” The state and Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks are plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in federal court against the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, all people, including citizens and noncitizens, with a usual residence in the 50 states are counted in the census and in apportionment counts.

Of course, this is one of the latest fronts in the war against the franchise. Along with the unconstitutional “citizenship” question, this is a way to preserve some part of the Republican political finagling that has led to statewide elections where the Democratic candidates get more votes but the Republicans maintain their legislative majorities. It also makes undocumented residents effectively non-persons, so ICE and the local sheriffs can do with them what they will.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, the saga of Governor Eric Greitens goes on. Things have moved into the legislature for possible impeachment proceedings, and it's getting mighty ugly. From CNN:

Two state Republican lawmakers told CNN they were contacted and interviewed in recent weeks by FBI agents, who asked whether they were aware of any threats and bribes made on behalf of the governor regarding an impeachment vote. One of the lawmakers, who met with an agent in Jefferson City, said they told the FBI they were not directly aware of any such incidents. The second lawmaker declined to discuss their responses to FBI questioning. The second lawmaker also said the FBI's questioning suggested investigators' interest is not limited solely to possible threats and bribes, although that was one focus.

Greitens already has demonstrated that he will do almost anything to cling to his office, which is splitting the Republican legislative majority. He is still facing a criminal action regarding his alleged misuse of a donor list from the charity he founded. The legislature still is looking into the charges that he allegedly blackmailed a former paramour. She is facing what most women in her situations face. That is not pretty at all.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Sorghum Squeezer Friedman of the Plains brings us the artistic stylings of former Representative Paul Wesselhoft, who has more guts than I’ll ever have. From nondoc.com:

Yet another rare confluence exists in the author himself, who not only claims status as an Army veteran of Vietnam, the first Persian Gulf War, Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but also lays bare his heart and soul in one of the most vulnerable modes of expression possible. The book’s foreword helps explain this tendency toward the saccharine: These poems constitute an anthology of Wesselhöft’s poetic works focused on romantic love from age 15 through 30. They truly are capital-R Romantic works as well, with enough “Oh!”s, AA-BB rhyme schemes and inverted phrasings to please any lovesick, melancholy 19th-century stripling.

FOTP was kind enough to send along a sample of the poet’s work:

Orgiastic thrills of love

Should make an atheist

An agnostic.

Yet there is no greater sensation

In creation

Than that of a father

Hearing the heartbeat

Of his love’s procreation.

Good Lord.

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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