Proud Mary Easley

Y know, every now and then
I think you might like to hear something from UD
Nice and easy

But there’s just one thing
You see UD never does nothing
Nice and easy

She always does it nice and rough
So we’re gonna take the beginning of this song
And do it easy

Then we’re gonna do the finish rough
This is the way we do Proud Mary

And we’re rolling, rolling, rolling on the river
Listen to the story

She left a law job in the city
Working for the man every night and day
And she never lost one minute of sleeping
Worrying bout the way things might have been

Big wheel keep on turning
Proud Mary keep on earning
And we’re rolling, rolling
Rolling on the river

Ate a lot of roe in Russia
Had a chauffeured car in Gay Paree
But she never saw the good side of her marriage
Till she got a job at the UNC

Big wheel keep on turning
Proud Mary keep on earning
And we’re rolling, rolling
Rolling on the river

Mary Easley Now Into Bootsie Mandel Territory.

Like the wife of Maryland’s governor many years ago, Easley will not be moved.

Bootsie wouldn’t leave the governor’s mansion, while Mary won’t leave her amazingly lucrative patronage job at North Carolina State University.

Is UD the only person who recalls Bootsie?

Bootsie Mandel, perhaps not everyone remembers, was the aggrieved First Lady of Maryland who, in 1973, refused to vacate the governor’s mansion when the governor (I remember her name but not his) [Marvin] declared he was maritally moving on. Needless to say, the standoff was a jolly media occasion, which ruined the forgotten governor’s career.

While Bootsie said many memorable things (“I don’t know what everyone’s talking about. The governor left my bed this morning.“), Mary’s kept absolutely silent as everybody screams at her to haul ass.

Leaders in the state’s university system moved publicly Monday to force the resignation of Mary Easley, the former first lady criticized over a $170,000-per-year position she holds at N.C. State University.

The chairwoman of the UNC Board of Governors, the president of the UNC system and the chancellor at N.C. State University all said Easley should give up her job.

Easley Unwilling to be Eased Out?

Background here.

Mary Easley has been told that she should resign from her $170,000-per-year position at N.C. State University because it is in the best interest of the university.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles said today that Easley has been given that message. He said he could not elaborate on her response. N.C. State University Chancellor James Oblinger earlier today also said it was in the best interest of NCSU that Easley step aside.

New disclosures over the past week about the position already have led to resignations of the provost who hired her and the N.C. State trustee — and friend of the Easleys — who also played a role in the job.

NCSU spokesman Keith Nichols said today that Oblinger would only say that Easley’s resignation now is “in the best interest of the university.” Oblinger will not discuss whether he has delivered that message to Easley, saying he cannot talk about personnel matters.

Bowles said he also believes it is in the best interest of N.C. State that Easley give up her position…

Sure sounds as though Easley won’t go easily. They’re ganging up on her, but she ain’t moving. Hm.

Easley the Worst Decision of His Life

You figure universities are primarily dumping grounds for politicians, their friends, and their families. You figure that because that’s the way it’s always been.

And then things suddenly change on you, and your life becomes unbearable.

The top academic official at North Carolina State University stepped down Thursday, saying controversy over his hiring of the state’s former first lady has become “unbearable.”

Provost Larry Nielsen created a new faculty position and used it to hire Mary Easley, wife of former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, who left office in January after two terms.

The 31,000-student school hired Mary Easley in 2005 to oversee a lecture series and teach three courses. Last summer, a new compensation agreement expanded her role and boosted her salary to $850,000 over a five-year contract. [88% raise.]

The News & Observer of Raleigh has raised questions about why Nielsen was hired as provost even though he was not among an initial pool of candidates.

He served as interim provost during the search, and school officials named him to the post permanently in June 2005, shortly before the university announced Easley’s hiring. The newspaper said Nielsen worked closely with Easley ally McQueen Campbell, who chaired the university trustees’ personnel committee.

… N.C. State is the largest campus of North Carolina’s 16 public universities.

Last summer, Nielsen defended Easley’s increased salary by saying she had new duties, working at the Center for Public Safety Leadership and Strategic Legal Partnership. Before joining the university, she had taught law at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

University of North Carolina system leaders launched a review of the deal but later approved her salary while saying a portion of the pay would come from private funds.

Nielsen said the personal stress had become unbearable and he understands that some people will interpret his resignation as an indication the allegations are valid…

For background on Easley, who, unlike the fragile provost, will tough it out for the sake of the money, go here.

The problem with being systemically corrupt…

… is that any particular revelation of corruption threatens to set off a chain reaction.

Take your typical southern university system — a crony dumping-ground, a favor-repayment franchise, a post-tailgate barrens of the blitzed and bilious. As with the 2009 Mary Easley scandal at North Carolina State (scroll down for several posts), one fallen crony begats another which begats another yea to everlasting. More recently, the unpleasantness in the University of North Carolina’s Afro-American Studies department has touched off a spate of panic-auditing which has begat more fallen cronies, among them a sporty, well-compensated couple that travels about hither and yon on the taxpayer’s dime.

Proud Mary…

… keep on earnin’!

With the latest resignation — they keep going up the food chain at North Carolina State; today it’s the chancellor — in the Mary Easley scandal, UD finds herself modifying her position vis-a-vis Mary, who, despite non-stop begging and bullying from a bunch of guys at NCSU desperate to get her out of her politically rigged, massively overpaid, totally corrupt job on campus, has refused to leave.  (Today we also discover, via just-released emails, that her husband — at the time the governor — got the job for her.)

UD now thinks Mary should stay.  Whenever a bunch of guys beat up on a woman it pisses me off.  Screw them.  They did all they could to get the little lady a big money do nothing gig at Patronage Acres and now they’re losing their jobs because they wrote emails to each other about what they were doing.  Mary did everything right according to the Corrupt Southern University System Handbook.  She kept her head down.  She didn’t write any emails.

She gets to stay.

**************

Update: Mary just got canned.
Tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.
Floor strewn with dead bodies, up to and
including Gertrude.

When Good Ol’ Boys Collide…

… with each other, or with themselves, it ain’t pretty. It can even become, as at North Carolina State University, a bloodbath.

So far the hacks and cronies who gave the wife of the scandal-ridden ex-governor a cushy job at a North Carolina campus and, soon after hiring her, upped her salary eighty-eight percent, have suffered two losses: The provost has had to go, and the chair of the university’s board of trustees is on the verge of going.


The president of the University of North Carolina
system has asked McQueen Campbell, chairman of the N.C. State University board, to resign immediately after learning this week that Campbell played a role in hiring former first lady Mary Easley.

Erskine Bowles told The News & Observer on Thursday that Campbell phoned him earlier this week and “went through a whole mea culpa,” then recounted telling Chancellor James Oblinger that Easley was looking to change jobs before N.C. State hired her in 2005.

“He said, ‘I did tell Jim Oblinger in passing that Mary Easley was going to change jobs and he may not even remember that.'” Bowles said. “And I said, ‘What?’ That was about the end of the conversation. I was surprised.”

Campbell was prominently featured in a two-part series last weekend in The N&O, which recounted his friendship and influence with Mike and Mary Easley. Campbell flew the governor often in his planes, sometimes for free, and bragged of his influence in getting key development permits. The governor twice appointed him to the N.C. State Board of Trustees, where he rose to chairman.

Campbell had insisted that he played no role in Mary Easley’s job at N.C. State. He denied having even a single conversation with university officials or Mary Easley before she got a three-year contract at $80,000 a year in 2005, or when she received a five-year, $850,000 contract that touched off controversy.

That story changed with his call to Bowles. Bowles then phoned Oblinger, who said in an interview Thursday that he did not recall being told by Campbell that Mary Easley would be available. Oblinger said he does not deny it might have happened…

The article goes on to cite the idiot head of trustees bragging about how his political connections allow him to break rules and skirt laws. Plus he’s on record lying to a reporter about his involvement in the Easley case. Just the sort of person you want at the helm of a university.

So far the bloodbath has bypassed the governor’s wife, understandably eager to retain her amazingly lucrative position. But the president of the North Carolina system now says, rather darkly, that she “will be reviewed in the appropriate manner especially as we look at where we’re going to place our budget going forward.”

*************************

Update:  McQueen Campbell (great name) obliges.

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