In recognition of Andre’ Bauer’s awareness of and efforts to meet the needs of South Carolina’s seniors during his tenure as Lt. Governor, Lexington County Recreation & Aging Commission is naming its senior center in Batesburg-Leesville the “Andre’ Bauer Senior Center.”

The naming ceremony will be at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, May 23 at the senior center, 241 Highland Avenue in Batesburg. Speakers honoring former Lt. Governor Bauer will include Batesburg-Leesville Mayor, Jim Wizowaty and Senator Jake Knotts.

The construction of the senior center in Batesburg-Leesville, completed in 2007, would not have been possible without $350,000 of Senior Center Permanent Improvement Project (SC PIP) funding provided by the Lt. Governor’s Office on Aging. Prior to the construction of the Andre’ Bauer Senior Center, the senior program shared 2,000 square feet of space with programs for other age groups at the Batesburg-Leesville Leisure Center. The SC PIP dollars covered approximately 56% of the cost of building the 4,500 square foot center.

In recognition of the needs of the rapidly expanding senior population in South Carolina, the SC Legislature established the SC PIP program to help entities and communities that provide programs and services to seniors build, expand, and renovate Senior Centers. Money for the SC PIP program is generated by bingo taxes. Funding for a senior center is obtained through a grant application process with the Lt. Governor’s Office on Aging. Under former Lt. Governor Andre’ Bauer, numerous senior centers were built, expanded, or renovated throughout the State.

Lexington County Recreation & Aging Commission (LCRAC) serves Lexington School Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4. LCRAC’s mission is to improve the quality of life for all citizens through creative, meaningful, life enriching experiences. This is done through the provision of program services, facilities, and education. To make programs and services easily accessible to seniors, LCRAC operates seven senior centers. Each center offers nutrition (home delivered and center based meals), education, recreation, fitness, transportation, health promotion, volunteer opportunities, and support services that are responsive to the needs of seniors in the local communities.

Over 1,400 seniors participate in programs offered by the seven senior centers. More than 600 people receive a noon meal from LCRAC, Monday thru Friday, approximately 60% are home delivered meals.

Currently, more than 200 seniors benefit directly from programs, services, and activities offered at the Andre’ Bauer Senior Center. Sixty plus of them receive home delivered meals. The center, with its walk-in freezer and cooler also serves as a food distribution site for both the Gilbert-Summit and Lexington senior centers, impacting the health and well-being of another 500 plus seniors.

Lexington County Recreation and Aging Commission is pleased to be able to recognize the impact former Lt. Governor Andre’ Bauer has made in helping to improve the lives of seniors in South Carolina.

Yes, I know that Andre took that make-work function that lawmakers gave him so he could pretend being Gov Lite was a real job, and worked hard at it. Andre works hard at everything. And I hear that the old folks he worked with doted on him, although I haven’t polled them.

But… come on. This business of naming things after living politicians was already ridiculous enough in this state. If we’re not going to stop doing it altogether, which we should, how about if we just curtail it to this degree: Why don’t we make a rule that you can’t have a senior senator named after you until you are actually a senior?

That would be a start…

Phil Bailey, Wesley Donehue’s co-host on “Pub Politics,” has always been an easy-going, reasonable guy who gets along with everybody — even his opposite number, Wesley. (Phil works for SC Senate Democrats, Wesley for the Republicans in that same body.) You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy. (Well, maybe you could, but who’d listen?)

Then a video surfaces showing him listening to Jake Knotts ooze ethnic intolerance all over him (“She is a sheik, and tryin’ to be a Methodist…”) — and Wesley, and the impressionable young Boyd Brown, and the elegant Anne Peterson Hutto (at least, I think that’s who everybody was; the picture was blurry).

And now… Phil is in all sorts of trouble for having called Nikki Haley a… let me get this right… a “Sikh Jesus.” From The State’s story. No, not “sweet Jesus;” that’s something your grandpa used to say when he was deeply moved and grandma wasn’t around:

Phil Bailey, the S.C. Senate Democratic Caucus political director, was reprimanded and told to take down his Twitter feed after calling Gov. Nikki Haley a “Sikh Jesus” in tweets, a Senate leader said.

Bailey’s tweet on Wednesday came after Haley spoke to the S.C. GOP executive committee before the group voted to certify Katrina Shealy to run in the Republican primary against Sen. Jake Knotts of Lexington. Shealy was among more than 180 candidates punted from the ballot after the state Supreme Court ruled office seekers needed to file a paper copy of their statement of economic interest.

Bailey tweeted: “@nikkihaley is the Sikh Jesus. She can resurrect an unlawful campaign from the dead by simply appearing at a @SCGOP hearing,” according to a report from BuzzFeed. He used the term “Sikh Jesus” in another tweet…

Now what that tells me is that Phil was as flabbergasted as I was at what the state GOP presumed to do in the Shealy case. Only I, being older and more courtly, was not so shocked as to engage in blasphemy.

This got Phil in so much trouble that he was forbidden to play on the interwebs. For how long, I don’t know. Surely not for long. Not even the state Democratic Party, as clueless and out of the swim of things as it is, could think that a guy could represent it effectively in 2012 without a Twitter feed. Heck, even Cindi Scoppe’s got a Twitter feed these day.

Anyway, I hope Jake really is sorry for what he started…

How could the executive committee of the state Republican Party, after a session in which that party’s governor emoted all over it, overthrow the decision of the state Supreme Court and say, hey, Katrina, you can be on the ballot? How could anyone think for a second that the party had the power to do that? Like the professional valet parking guy said, “What country do you think this is?”

And that was the first thing I was going to blog about this morning. Only I didn’t have time to blog this morning. By the time I was able to turn to it, late this afternoon, the state Election Commission had stated what should have been obvious:

The South Carolina Elections Commission said today that Katrina Shealy’s name cannot appear on the June 12 primary ballot despite being certified by the state GOP executive committee on Wednesday.

The commission said the ballots became official with the names submitted May 4. Shealy had been decertified along with more than 180 other candidates who county parities found had not submitted copies of their statements of economic interest when they filed for office.

But then, just in case that double-double back didn’t throw your neck out of joint, Ms. Shealy promised to do her best to jerk it back in the other direction yet again:

A spokesman for Shealy’s campaign referred comments to the state GOP.

“The State Executive Committee is examining its legal options in light of today’s State Election Commission statement,” the S.C. GOP said in a statement.

Oh, and get this from the governor (in fact, go read the whole story, most of which I’ve reproduced here):

Haley said today that the elections commission should not squash voters’ rights: “Under no circumstances should a government bureaucracy stand in the way of a free and fair election in South Carolina. The people of our state deserve to have their voices heard.”

You see, the duly constituted official authorities — along with the Supreme Court — are “bureaucrats.” Apparently, the decisions about who appears on the ballot should be left up to Nikki Haley, and the state party, if it agrees with her.

Look, I think it’s lousy that all these people got booted from the ballot, too. And Ms. Shealy no more and no less than any other candidate so affected, if they acted in good faith. But you don’t get to make an exception in one instance to the Supreme Court’s matter-of-fact ruling that the law says what it says, even if the governor really, really, really wants you to, with sugar on top.

Of course, one can hardly blame the governor being confused about all this rule-of-law stuff. I’ll confess to being pretty confused about various aspects of this situation. For instance, I need to ask Todd Kincannon, next time I see him, to ’splain to me how a case about trying to be on the ballot turned into a case about… military absentee votes? Whabba-who? Homina-homina?

There’s just all kinds of bad craziness going on.

Army Specialist Leslie H. Sabo Jr., an American hero.

Here’s what we have at this hour:

1. Greeks withdraw €3bn in 10 days since election (The Guardian) — And the rest of us watch in fascination, hoping Europe doesn’t go down the tubes and take us with it.
2. House unanimously passes “born alive” bill (?????) — Note the question marks, and the lack of a link. I haven’t seen an MSM story on this. Will Folks is running a press release saying this happened (and as he notes, “The above communication is an email from a politically active organization”), and I received a release from Senate Republicans congratulating the House. No independent news coverage yet. But it seemed like something that would generate controversy, and I didn’t want to ignore it.
3. Voters to decide if governor, lt. governor should run jointly (thestate.com) — How about that? Voters in SC will actually get to vote on a governmental reform. Columbia City Council, please take note.
4. Ratko Mladic trial finally begins (BBC) — And the world takes another halting step toward civilization.
5. Decades Later, Soldier Gets Medal Of Honor (NPR) — It took us far too long, but thank you, Spec. Sabo.
6. They Moved a Robot With Their Minds (NYT) — “Scientists said a tiny brain implant allowed two people who are virtually paralyzed below the neck to maneuver a robotic arm.” Wow.

I just thought I’d add some elaboration on the Medal of Honor presentation. From the AP story:

Obama presented the Medal of Honor to Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary, and said doing so helps right the wrongs done to a generation that served freedom’s cause but came home to a brooding and resentful nation.

“Instead of being celebrated, our Vietnam veterans were often shunned,” Obama said in a hushed East Room. “They were called many things when there was only one thing that they deserved to be called and that was American patriots.”

Spec. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. of Elwood City, Pa., was serving with U.S. forces near the village of Se San in eastern Cambodia in May of 1970 when his unit was ambushed and nearly overrun by North Vietnamese forces.

Comrades testified that the rifleman charged up from the rear, grabbed an enemy grenade and tossed it away, using his body to shield a fellow soldier. And shrugging off his own injuries, Sabo advanced on an enemy bunker that had poured fire onto the U.S. troops — and then, pulled the pin on his own grenade.

“It’s said he held that grenade and didn’t throw it until the last possible moment, knowing it would take his own life but knowing he could silence that bunker,” Obama recounted. “And he did. He saved his comrades, who meant more to him than life.”

Sabo was 22 years old when he gave his life for his comrades.

General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising with Facebook Inc. after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers’ car purchases, according to a GM official.

The move by GM, one of the largest advertisers in the U.S., puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products. On Friday, Facebook is expected to sell shares in an initial public offering that could put a market value on the company of as much as $104 billion…

That aside… personally, I have trouble understanding why Facebook wants to go public anyway. Of course, I’m pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to — hence his childish, obnoxious gesture of showing up for business meetings on Wall Street in a sweatshirt.

But while I blame him for not dressing like a grownup, I find any reluctance he feels to go public totally understandable. I say this as someone who suffered for decades working for publicly-traded newspaper companies — and who would still be a newspaperman if his paper had not been owned by an overleveraged public company. To me, anyone who is making plenty of money from his private company would be totally insane to go public.

No one, but no one, would accuse me of being any sort of financial whiz. But I fail to see the presence of any of the usual reasons for going public. What does Facebook really need an infusion of cash for? It’s not capital-intensive like, say, a steel mill. It’s always been able to rake in the money for relative little investment.

Yes, I’ve gone out there and read explanations of why. But I’m unconvinced. So what if, for instance, going public would be a huge windfall for Facebook employees? Why would I, as an investor (if I were an investor), want to spend my money to give them that windfall? Where’s the competitive advantage in encouraging a company’s founding talent — the people responsible for making the property valuable — to cash out?

The one rational excuse seems to be that in this converging online world, the only way to compete with the other titans out there, such as Google, is to have mountains of cash on hand, so you can beat the others to the punch when it comes time to buy a YouTube or an Instagram.

In other words, it’s a necessary step in the bid to become all things to all people online. Which seems, in and of itself, a debatable goal. But hey, nobody’s asking me.

The key is his post-boomer leadership style. Critics are always saying that Obama is too cool and detached, arrogant and aloof. But the secret to his popularity through hard times is that he is not melodramatic, sensitive, vulnerable and changeable. Instead, he is self-disciplined, traditional and a bit formal. He is willing, with drones and other mechanisms, to use lethal force.

Normally, presidents look weak during periods of economic stagnation, overwhelmed by events. But Obama has displayed a kind of ESPN masculinity: postfeminist in his values, but also thoroughly traditional in style — hypercompetitive, restrained, not given to self-doubt, rarely self-indulgent. Administrations are undone by scandal and moments when they look pathetic, but this administration, guarded in all things, has rarely had those moments….

Brooks said that in the process of marveling at the fact that Obama even has a chance at re-election, since so many of the fundamentals are against him. He concludes that “In survey after survey, Obama is far more popular than his policies” because of what Americans think of him as a man. Not just as a person, but as a man.

Oh, and for those who are tired of me talking about “guy stuff” this week, don’t blame me on this one; Brooks brought it up.

I don’t think either of us has precisely hit the nail on the head. I keep saying “Michael Corleone” to describe his quiet, non-blustering toughness. But of course, the president is a better man than Michael Corleone. “Mensch” doesn’t quite say it either, but it points in that direction. As for Brooks’ reference to “ESPN masculinity” (a term so important to his piece that it’s his headline) — well, I don’t even know what he means by that. Maybe I don’t watch enough sports. (I’ll confess that I also get confused with what people mean when they say “postfeminist.” Some seem to use it to refer to feminism being over and done with, and therefore “NONfeminist.” Others seem to refer to a state in which feminism is taken for granted and no longer a movement, just part of life. So the word is unhelpful to me.)

Another way to say what Brooks is trying to say — “thoroughly traditional in style — hypercompetitive, restrained, not given to self-doubt, rarely self-indulgent” — is “Gary Cooper.”

But we all want to be Gary Cooper (in “High Noon,” specifically — “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.”). What Brooks is saying, in a way, is that Obama pulls it off.

Overnight, I got this email that says it’s from Jake Knotts (I didn’t know the email address):

STATEMENT BY SENATOR JAKE KNOTTS WITH REFERENCE TO: Release of leaked video tape

When this story first appeared two years ago, I was embarrassed.  I’m embarrassed again now.

It was a very poor attempt at satire in an interview given inside a pub.  But it wasn’t funny.  It was offensive.  And I very much regret my remarks.

Once again I offer my sincere apology to the Governor and her family.

I only hope people will realize this two year-old interview is being leaked by campaign operatives who hope to hurt me politically.  But that’s no excuse for my behavior.  Heated political rhetoric is not the answer.  I can only say again that I’m sorry.

This experience has made me a better public servant.  I’m not going to let attacks and leaks by opponents distract me.  My focus is on creating jobs and helping the people I represent build a brighter future for their families.

This is in reference to a clip showing his “ragheads” remark from Pub Politics, which has surfaced as an “exclusive” (which means no embed code, which is just plain stingy) on BuzzFeed.

Tell you one thing — whenever Jake’s up for re-election, things are never boring.

The Guardian has a fascinating story about the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s expose of a case in which, its exhaustive research indicates, an innocent man was executed in Texas.

Some excerpts:

From the moment of his arrest until the day of his death by lethal injection six years later, DeLuna consistently protested he was innocent. He went further – he said that though he hadn’t committed the murder, he knew who had. He even named the culprit: a notoriously violent criminal called Carlos Hernandez.

The two Carloses were not just namesakes – or tocayos in Spanish, as referenced in the title of the Columbia book. They were the same height and weight, and looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. When Carlos Hernandez’s lawyer saw pictures of the two men, he confused one for the other, as did DeLuna’s sister Rose…

At the trial, DeLuna’s defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a “Carlos Hernandez” after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna’s lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a “phantom” who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a “figment of DeLuna’s imagination”.

Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.

By the end of that single day the investigator had uncovered evidence that had eluded scores of Texan police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges over the six years between DeLuna’s arrest and execution. Carlos Hernandez did indeed exist.

Liebman’s investigator tracked down within a few hours a woman who was related to both the Carloses. She supplied Hernandez’s date of birth, which in turn allowed the unlocking of Hernandez’s criminal past as the case rapidly unravelled…

You should just go read the whole thing. Or for that matter, the original study.

This, of course, is one of the main reasons I oppose the death penalty. There are others, but this one is enough for a lengthy discussion…

But I thought it interesting to put a bit more of a face on “austerity,” the concept that’s getting such a workout over across the pond:

Pension Crisis in Scotland?

U.S. states aren’t the only places facing pension crises at the moment: Underfunded and unsustainable pensions are wreaking havoc in Europe too. The Scotsman, in particular, is up in arms over new rules tying retirement to life expectancy; the paper describes the future under the rule changes as “a grim picture of aged toil.”

The gradual ratcheting up of life expectancy means that future retirees in the UK may be forced to continue working well into their seventies. And within the next decade, retirement age will rise from 65 today to 67. These changes will become more drastic as time goes on. Today’s toddlers may work until they turn 77, and their children are projected to work until they are 85.

The Scotsman (and others) shouldn’t forget the rather shiny silver lining to this supposedly ominous forecast: People may be forced to work longer, but that’s only because they are living longer too, and the new pension plan guarantees 20 years of coverage. Today’s youth may have to work until they are 77, but they can also expect to reach the ripe old age of 97 on average…

I’m with Mr. Mead. As austerity measures go, this one makes perfect sense. We should be be thinking more along those lines in this country.

Yeah, 77 is well up there. But it’s hardly the “grim picture” that the Scotsman would have it.

But it didn’t work out, according to Politico:

Americans Elect, the deep-pocketed nonprofit group that set out to nominate a centrist third-party presidential ticket, admitted early Tuesday that its ballyhooed online nominating process had failed.

The group had qualified for the general election ballot in 27 states, and had generated concern among Democrats and Republicans alike that it could wreak havoc on a close election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

But just after a midnight deadline Monday, the group acknowledged that its complicated online nominating process had failed to generate sufficient interest to push any of the candidates who had declared an interest in its nomination over the threshold in its rules.

“Because of this, under the rules that AE delegates ratified, the primary process would end today,” said the group’s Kahlil Byrd in a statement issued at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. He seemed to leave the door open for proceeding outside the original process, however, adding, “There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.”…

When I first heard about Americans Elect sometime last year, I was briefly excited about it. I even spent an hour or so answering the seemingly never-ending questionnaire about my political attitudes that I found on the group’s website.

But before I could even get around to writing about it on the blog, I started having my doubts, and decided to sit back, wait and see.

What gave me pause was the online process itself.

The Web is an awesome tool for many purposes. It beats snail mail all hollow. It’s a great way to shop (as long as you don’t want to examine the merchandise closely). And it enables us to do all sorts of things we couldn’t do before — such as share videos — with a wide audience. And it can be used effectively in the service of many political aims — the first serious step in any campaign is the establishment of a Web presence.

But I worry when we start using it as a substitute for analog participation. I especially don’t like the idea of online voting — or any type of voting that makes the process too easy. Perhaps I should say, too facile. I believe excessive ease breeds carelessness, and we have enough careless voting going on right now. People should have to think about how they’re going to vote, and go to a certain amount of trouble to go cast their votes.

As for forming a political movement from scratch… well, I think maybe “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” might be a better approach than an Ollie-Ollie In Come Free online invitation. If you’re trying to forge a Third Way movement, it seems like you need maximum interaction among people committed to the ideas upon which your movement is based, honing the principles involved and deciding upon standard-bearers — then turning to the public for input.

Or so it seems. Admittedly, I’m sort of thinking out loud here, and I welcome your input.

In any case, the approach that Americans Elect chose was doomed to fail. With the process wide open, it was predictable that what happened would happen — the group ended up with Ron Paul as its top vote-getter. As I’ve noted in the past, one of the best ways to boost readership of a blog is to put “Ron Paul” in a headline. Paulistas love them some Interwebs.

The main two problems with that result were 1) Rep. Paul is far on the outer fringe of one of the parties, the very opposite of the kind of centrist candidate the group was seeking, and 2) He didn’t want the group’s nomination anyway.

What the group wanted was someone of the ilk of Joe Lieberman or Lamar Alexander — either one of which could have persuaded me to vote for the ticket. But sensible guys like that do not get spontaneously nominated by a mob. You have to put them forward deliberately, and promote them in a concerted manner.