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Righteous Justice For Edwards And Easley

By Bernie Reeves

British historian and writer Paul Johnson devoted his book Intellectuals to the irony that the personal lives of people who dwell in the rarified air of political righteousness are usually dissipated and dishonest. He concluded that the more dedicated the political activists, the more unsavory their personal habits in proportion to their zeal to save the world. Johnson’s theory applies more broadly today, as one after another of the torch-bearers for the downtrodden find themselves under investigation for sleazy personal behavior.

John Edwards, the champion of the dispossessed, is drowning in a putrid sea of scandal. The matinee idol-cum advocate for the redistribution of wealth has been outed for his sordid affair with a campaign video freelancer who gave birth to their love child while Mrs. Edwards battles cancer — and worse, allegedly set up a male co-worker as the presumed father. The extent of his duplicity matches the political extremes of his campaign rhetoric.

And US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a delusional virago dedicated to imposing the socialist party line in Congress, bilks taxpayers so she can lord around like Queen Elizabeth with a retinue of attendants and a palatial private jet to accommodate her entourage. Now she has been caught in a colossal lie about her knowledge of CIA interrogation techniques, creating national security repercussions ringing ’round the world. While Edwards and Pelosi claim the disenfranchised as their constituencies, they enfranchise themselves with the usual trappings of sex, money and power.

The former governor of North Carolina is in the act too. Mike Easley finds himself the object of a grand jury investigation for using elected office to elevate himself into the upper echelons of greed and squalor. He called on his political donors to fly him around the state and nation in fancy private jets to avoid the public record log for the perfectly nice plane provided by us dumb taxpayers. Easley’s flunkies also clued him into potentially lucrative real estate deals and landed a sinecure at NC State University for the Lady Easley that reeks of favoritism and cronyism.

The Raleigh News & Observer nailed Easley, forcing federal prosecutors to impanel a star chamber to get to the bottom of the governor’s shenanigans, treating the public to another spectacle of questionable ethical behavior by political blowhards. But sleaze has been trumped by the questionable and third-rate response by officials at NC State who cut the deal to hire Mary Easley at the request of the governor’s rent boy McQueen Campbell. While in office, Mike Easley arranged for Campbell to be elevated to chairman of the school’s board of trustees where Campbell, it appears, returned the favor by arranging for the school to hire the governor’s wife for $850,000 over five years.
NC State’s Chancellor James Oblinger praised Mary Easley’s appointment at the time and cleared it with UNC system President Erskine Bowles. All appeared above-board in their delusional world where insularity and the perceived power of their positions insulated them from reality — and from the wrath of the lowly taxpayer, more and more a pawn in a dark new age where political entities rule by fiat. But thanks to The N&O, and to new Gov. Bev Perdue, who released documents the Easley gang hid from public view, a wrecking ball crashed through their oblivious smugness.

How did the university leadership respond to the newspaper’s revelations? By tossing the NC State provost Larry Nielson to the crocodiles as a sacrificial morsel thinking the problem would go away. Oblinger seems to have forgotten where the buck stops, but he is learning from the university community — students, professors, administrators and alumni — who are walking around with their heads bowed in shame.

Not only did the chancellor and his confidants misinterpret the public effect of Neilson appearing to fall on his sword, they also completely misjudged the reaction of Mary Easley, who refused to capitulate when they publically called for her to resign. That Oblinger and Bowles felt they would force her to take a hit for their team is naïve, dumb and sadly typical of the highly-paid inferior grandees who perch on the pinnacles of academic power far above the professors and contributors who carry the water for the university.

Did Oblinger — and Bowles, who sent Mary Easley little mash notes over the past two years — really think she would simply walk away in shame because they said it “would be best for the university” for her to throw away her contract and admit wrong-doing? Maybe it’s the chancellor who should step down and take the hit as maximum leader of the university — or be fired for cowardice and mendacity.

The long-term marriage of state government and the public university system has been a boon for the state — until now. The rampant corruption in government has stained the university and will bring to light more of the pitfalls created by using appointments to boards of trustees as political payoffs.

As the Easley-Campbell-NC State scandal hit, new buildings on Raleigh Road leading into Chapel Hill arose abruptly and ominously, scarring the landscape and allowing the violation of the visual integrity the campus town has maintained for 215 years. The buildings also serve as a dramatic symbol of the unfortunate paradigm shift caused by the politicization of university governance.

Are members of the UNC Board of Trustees behind this arrogant affront to the home of the nation’s first public university? Stand by.

Notes from La-La Land…
Intelligence friends in high places tell me CIA field operatives are sticking to their desks for fear of retribution by their own government via threatened war tribunals to punish them for using extreme interrogation techniques in the battle against terrorists. If the frontline warriors in this dirty war are prevented from doing their duty, no wonder Americans are buying firearms in record numbers and stockpiling food and water.
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Oh yeah, in context with the brouhaha over the Easley scandals, where is their close friend Libba Evans? After running rough-shod over employees and programs as Secretary of Cultural Resources, she abandoned her post for the last nine months of the administration without so much as a how-do-you-do. Will the Grand Jury run across her name in their investigations?

(Read commentary by Bernie Reeves in his Between Issues column at www.metronc.com.)