03.31.04 - 12:51 p.m.

I started a blog devoted to the WVa political scene, but didn't publish it publicly - before publishing publicly, I wanted to see if I could be bothered to keep updating it. Of course, I couldn't. Or wouldn't. There's only so much time in a day, and I don't believe I'm well suited the to facile treachery of political blog-writers. There's something seductive about the instant responses one can generate and the influence one can gain by finding and spinning news, particularly when one is relatively articulate and able to see through a good bit of the BS that tends to accumulate around people who have spent too much time reading their own press releases and have started to believe their own schtick.

I think it's even more critical on a state and local level to have critical, informed responses to policy initiatives and local and statewide races, but I'm not sure it would do any good, and in any case, I'm not quite enough of an egoist to comment on everything. Or, maybe I'm just a lazy egoist, because I do think I can comment on everything.

I will say that it is nice to see Jerry Mezzatesta get his comeuppance. That guy is a double-dipping sleezeball, with nary an actual idea about education, whose sole accomplishment as chairman of the education committee over the last ten years has been to land himself a cushy "grant-writing" job with the county school system, for which he draws a paycheck from the citizens of Harrison County while simultaneously drawing a legislative salary. Oh, wait. He has also presided over a number of "reorganizations" of the superstructure of the state higher education system that have done absolutely nothing, whatsoever, except shuffle high administrators around and create work for those nebulous, nefarious consultants who hang around the upper echelons of any organization - military, industrial, government - and suck the lifeblood out like the parasites they are. I mean, these oh-so-clever people took away all the two year programs from Glenville State College except for the forestry program (because there's a complete sawmill on campus). This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. If Glenville has a future, it is essentially only a future as a two-year community college-type program for local folks. The expansion of the university system, the continued growth of Marshall and WVU, a variety of cultural changes - all these things continually pull against Glenville's continued existance at all, but it could PERHAPS find a niche as a primarily two-year institution, feeding into the state's larger universities. But of course, eliminating the school or demoting it to a two-year institution would require the kind of intelligence and political courage that does not exist in a state legislature.

So, although Mezzatesta's current problems simply reinforce a certain elemental simplicity regarding personal integrity (i.e., that it all comes down to money. That pandering to people and refusing to make difficult, unpopular choices, that promising people everything (such as: a war in Iraq, prescription drug benefit, lower taxes, and puppies and bunnies and guns for everyone) is not also evidence of one's intellectual and moral bankruptcy) the sweet, intoxicating schadenfreude is too much to resist.