Category Archives: Taxes

Handcuffing republican government

28 Replies

This started as my reply to some readers’ comments, but it got involved enough — and I think the ideas expressed are relevant enough to recurring issues — that I’m making it a separate post.

To understand the context, you should first read the first four comments on the previous post:

    "Unfettered growth rates?"
    RTH has a point, even though he expresses himself in an uncivil manner.
    Lee, LexWolf and Doug seem not to grasp the fundamental idea underlying representative democracy in a free society.
    "All government has to have limits set by law from above…"
    WHAT!?!?!? You just described fascism, or some other totalitarian system.
    In THIS system, a free electorate chooses representatives to run government (an entity that derives its power from us) in keeping with our general wishes.
    I say "general" wishes because — and this is what irks absolutists — the whole reason why we delegate representatives to start with is that it is impossible for the entire population to get together and make such complex decisions in real time, so "general" is as specific as voters’ directions to representatives can get.
    So the representatives study the various challenges before them, and make decisions about laws, and expenditures and taxes. And if we don’t like those decisions, we replace them in the next election. Representatives are hyper-aware of that, thanks to the (unfortunate) fact that most seem to prize re-election above all else.
    So, with a constant eye to their perceptions of our will regarding both taxing AND spending, they make their decisions based upon the factors present at a given time.
    No one, of any political bent whatsoever, has the right to impose their ideological will upon future decisions of a representative body. And that is precisely what growth-limit advocates want to do.
    Can you imagine how furious they would be if someone were to set an arbitrary minimum by which taxes must rise in the future?
    And they would be right to be furious, because that would be wrong. It would be hijacking the political will of a free people going forward, and that would be unforgivable in America.
    Well, so is this.

Irrelevant numbers

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Cindi Scoppe‘s column today makes reference to the fact that local governments will soon be required to limit increases in their property tax rates by a percentage arrived at by adding the rate of inflation to the rate of population increase. So, she explains,…

…if inflation is 3 percent and the population grows by 2 percent, the tax rate could be increased by 5 percent.

A formula such as this makes sense to a lot of people.

No, really — it does. Why it does is a mystery that I’m sure some of my readers will be glad to explain.

To me, it makes as much sense as, say, adding my waist circumference to my hat size to determine what size suit I should buy. It’s a formula that might work out to what I need or want, and in fact in my case it comes close. The sum of those two is 41 3/4, but I wear a 40 regular. I could wear a 41 or a 42, and in fact in some cases might, depending on the cut of the suit. But generally, I’d prefer to stick with a 40 regular.

Let’s set aside for a moment this outrageous usurpation of local governing authority by state lawmakers. The state could be limiting itself this way, or local governments deciding to limit their own growth, and the formula would still be ridiculous.

Just as a guy with a bigger waist size will likely need a more-or-less proportionally bigger jacket — an assumption that off-the-rack suitmakers actually follow, which is why we have alterations (and even they don’t assume inseam length, if it’s a good suit) — a certain percentage increase in population is likely to have a rough correlation to the cost of government services that the community in question chooses.

But to think that one will be an arithmetically precise function of the other is to be one very confused individual. At least, it doesn’t work that way in a free country. We get to choose what kinds of communities we have — how many public parks for instance, and what they should include and how well they should be maintained. Our preferences cannot be predicted by arbitrary formulae — even ones based on almost-reasonable assumptions.

In our representative democracy, the voter is king — and kings don’t buy their suits off the rack. They have tailors. On the local level, those tailors are city and county council members. How do they do their jobs? Well, they don’t count the number of people passing through the kingdom’s gates, or check the price of ermine capes.

They measure — here, there, everywhere. They ask questions listen to the king telling them what he wants — more or less cuff, how much break in the trousers? And they have to remeasure and make him a new suit every year, because factors change over time. "Oh, I see his majesty has been pumping iron — more room in the shoulders." Or if he hasn’t worked out, a little more room in the waist.

Of course, if they always give him exactly what he demands, they will lose their heads. So when the king shouts, "I wear a 32 waist! I’ve always worn a 32 waist, ever since high school!" wise tailors listen politely and then make him a pair of pants with a 38 waist.

If he doesn’t like the suit, he can still get rid of the tailors. The voter is king.

Is that all it takes?

19 Replies

Michael Kinsley is apparently doing well after brain surgery last week. As he wrote in his most recent column for TIME,

That’s right, brain surgery — it’s a real conversation stopper, isn’t it? There aren’t many things you can say these days that retain their shock value, but that is one of them. "So, Mike — got any summer plans?" "Why, yes, next Tuesday I’m having brain surgery. How about you?" … People don’t expect to run into someone who’s having brain surgery next week squeezing the melons at Whole Foods. (Unless, of course, he’s squeezing them and shrieking, "Why don’t you answer? Hello? Hello?") Self-indulgently, I’ve been dropping the conversational bomb of brain surgery more often than absolutely necessary just to enjoy the reaction. And why not? I deserve that treat. After all, I’m going to be having brain surgery.

Anyway, this was attached to the end of the column:

Editor’s note: Kinsley’s surgery took place on July 12 and went fine.
His first words were, "Well, of course, when you cut taxes, government
revenues go up. Why couldn’t I see that before?"

Ken Clark column

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Clark372
Money, ideology, populism,
apathy descend upon Ken Clark

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

THE COLLARD Kitchen was steaming Tuesday night, and I could hardly hear above the sickly hum of the air conditioning. S.C. Rep. Ken Clark was talking his heart out to a “community meeting” of 11 people, not counting his wife and campaign manager.
    One of the finest, smartest and hardest-working members of the Legislature is fighting for his political life against a well-funded challenger who seems to have decided to run on a mere whim.
    Kit Spires, a Gaston pharmacist (below, at right), is not going to like that characterization, and I don’’t blame him. He seems to be a nice man, and he’’s sincere. I spoke to him for this column longer than I did to Mr. Clark, and I like him. I can see why the folks he provides with medicine like him, too.
    But I’’ve covered politics since the 1970s, and I can’’t remember a more lopsided match. Ask bothKispires72 men about any issue you choose, and it is as bright, as sharp, as clear as the edge of a diamond that Ken Clark is a better representative than Kit Spires is prepared to be.
    But Mr. Spires got 45 percent of the vote June 13 to Rep. Clark’’s 35 percent. The third-place finisher has thrown his support to Mr. Spires.
“    "Clark’’s toast,"” says one local official.
    If that’’s true, it’s a dramatic illustration of the corrosive effects of three things that are eating the heart out of American politics:

  • Money. People who see South Carolina as a guinea pig for their project to defund government across the country have sent out 13 mailings attacking him or supporting his opponent. The attacks are off-the-shelf garbage that read like a transcript of those ideological shouting matches on cable TV. “"What’s that smell, you ask? Oh, that’’s just Rep. Ken Clark burning through your hard earned tax dollars."” No specifics, because they don’t exist. I am not making this up. The mailings are actually that stupid.
  • Ideology. The money comes from rich people who have developed a religion around the idea that they should pay less in taxes, and they don’’t give a damn what the money goes to pay for. Mr. Clark gets up every morning and sees problems in this poor state of ours, and he works obsessively to find sensible, cost-effective ways to solve them. The ideologues write checks to pay others to rid them of people like Mr. Clark. (And the money goes to more than mailings. As Mr. Clark noted, Mr. Spires was able to afford signs twice as large as his — see below — and more of them.)
  • Populist apathy. (Or should it be populism and apathy?) This world is rapidly becoming one in which far too few care about anything that happens beyond the ends of their own driveways. Such attitudes have an alarming imperviousness to Mr. Clark’’s 32 years in the U.S. Navy, or his intense service since then on school board and in the House.

    Why “"populist"”? Mr. Clark is a highly intelligent man who does not hide his light. He came up in a system in which capable men made decisions and saw that things got done. Mr. Spires is unassuming, and seems to have rubbed far fewer people the wrong way. Nowadays, that plays better than competence.
    Mr. Spires burns less brightly. He says he’’ll take an interest in whatever he hears people talking about in the local diner, and what he hears them talking about most is property taxes.
    He sees no reason why his mother, who hasn’’t had children in the public schools for 30 years, should have to support them.
    Mr. Spires is an unusual ally of the kind of people who are underwriting his campaign. He praises the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the biggest Big Government spending boondoggle since Lyndon Johnson. But he’’s flexible on the outsiders’’ plan to divert public funds to tax credits for anyone who will send their kids to private schools. "“I’’m not against public schools,"” he says. He just believes "in “compromise."”
Clark272    Mr. Clark does not compromise on anything of such critical importance. That’’s why he works so hard to improve schools, rather than abandon them.
“    "My name is on every piece of education (reform legislation) that has gone to the governor,"” Mr. Clark truthfully tells every soul who will listen. That includes encouraging charter schools, and granting the right to transfer from "“failing"” schools to any public school a parent chooses. He sponsored a law likely to do more than any other idea I’’ve heard to counter our state’’s abysmal dropout rate, by engaging kids in careers early, and preparing them for those careers.
    And taxing and spending? Thanks to legislation he helped pass, “"You will see a decrease in your property tax bill of about 40 percent or 50 percent next year.”"
    Mr. Spires is utterly unimpressed that the Legislature just abolished all residential property taxes for school operations. He rejects the idea that his one motivating issue is now moot. People are still talking about how they don’’t like their property taxes, so how can the issue be dead?
    And maybe he’’s right. He’’s counting on the people who think he’’ll come up with a way of lowering their taxes (he’’s still vague on details) outnumbering the ones who understand that Ken Clark and his fellow lawmakers have just cut their property taxes so dramatically that I don’’t think it’’s entirely sunk in with most of us.
    Besides, thousands of fliers have gone out telling people what a big tax-and-spender Ken Clark is. It doesn’’t matter if it’’s not true. That’’s what folks have in front of them when they go down to the diner and gripe about their taxes.
    Meanwhile, in the place where they cook the collards for Gaston’’s signature festival in the much- cooler month of October, there were only about a dozen people Tuesday night. That counts me, and I don’’t get a vote.

Signs72

Instead, we get THIS insanity

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I had my previous post fresh in my mind when I read about this pandering insanity. For those of you too lazy to follow links, here’s the gist:

WASHINGTON, April 25 — President Bush announced a series of short-term steps on Tuesday intended to ease the rise in energy prices, including a suspension of Bushoilgovernment purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a relaxation of environmental rules for the formulation of gasoline and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing.

This is as bad as when Al Gore got Bill Clinton to loosen up reserves to help him get elected in 2000.

I say "as bad as" because I can’t quite decide which is worse: For a president at war in the Mideast to do this, or for a guy who pretends to care about the environment and sensible energy policy to do it in peacetime. Each action has its own loathsome qualities.

Rationing? Even better

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Gas1"Look!" wrote my colleague Mike Fitts in an e-mail yesterday. "– an idea even less popular than your huge gas tax hike!"

"And even better, in my book," I wrote back.

He was referring to this letter on today’s page:

After reading Mike Fitts’ excellent column, (“U.S. helping to keep
oil prices marching upward,” Friday) on the woeful consequences, both
economic and diplomatic, of rising oil prices and of the inevitable oil
shortages to come, I’d like to put another option on the table: oil
rationing, which could bring a variety of benefits.

Many lament the fact that the only ones called upon to sacrifice in
this time of war are those on the front lines (and their families).
Rationing gas would call on everyone to sacrifice, just as during World
War II, when we all had ration cards, not only for oil but for many
other of life’s necessities such as meat, clothing and tires.

Fitts tells us that demand for fuel keeps going up, despite the
steadily rising price, which means leaving it to the market to control
supply and demand isn’t working. So perhaps only the government can
bring this control.

Fitts also points out that since our country consumes 25 percent of
the world’s oil, we can’t lecture other countries on the need to
conserve. But we can lead by example.

Rationing could give us some short-term breathing space as we labor
to find alternatives for the long haul. Yes, it is a political hot
potato, but isn’t it time to at least bring it to the table for
discussion?

HARRIET KEYSERLING
Beaufort

Mike was also referring to my enthusiasm for the idea floated by such disparate voices as Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman and Jim Hoagland, advocating a huge increase in the federal gas tax to take the already uncomfortably high gasoline pump prices high enough to depress demand. This would in turn create an oversupply, driving down prices. But (at least in the variant I like), you’d keep the tax rate up and use it additional for such sensible things as reducing the deficit, paying for a Manhattan/Apollo-style project to find and develop viable alternatives to petroleum, and pay for other aspects of our underfunded war — you know, like, put enough troops into Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done. And note that I call military operations "other aspects" of the war. Reducing our energy dependence and taming deficits are as important to our strategic position as our ability to project force.

Oh, yes: Krauthammer would use the revenue to cut some other tax. But he has to say that; he’s a neocon.

Former Rep. Keyserling’s idea is even better in one respect — everyone would share the pain. With a high tax, the rich would keep on driving Hummers, and the poor would have a lot of trouble getting to work. The main benefit would occur among the middle class, who would make the choice of driving less and, when they bought a car, buying a much more fuel-efficient one. With rationing, everyone would be limited in their consumption. And it would be a more overt, deliberate way of saying, "We’re all in this together, and we’re doing something about it together," rather than letting the market pressure of high prices sort things out.

But then, it wouldn’t produce the revenue. So I qualify my flippant remark to Mike: The higher tax still might be better.

We need some smarter idiots

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In response to a recent post, regular contributor "Lee" cited the oft-repeated, but seldom true, statement that "Any idiot can raise taxes."

If he’s right about that, then we have extraordinarily substandard idiots in the S.C. General Assembly. Most of them were not members in 1987, which was the last time this state had any kind of general tax increase. (It was a couple of pennies in the gas tax.)

The current members of the General Assembly act as though they are unaware of the concept of raising taxes. It’s something they’ve never done, and they don’t ever intend to do it. When some vital state need (say, keeping our overstuffed prisons guarded) is underfunded, their stock answer is, "We WISH we could fund it, but we just don’t have the money." They say this with a straight face. It simply doesn’t occur to them to either cut something else, or (God forbid!) raise a tax, to GET the money.

So apparently, they are much, much stupider than any idiot Lee knows.

The only way the cigarette tax increase was even under desultory consideration was that it was NOT a general tax increase. It would essentially be a user fee paid by a minority, and it would not have hurt anyone in the world. Even the people who paid it could only benefit, because more expensive cigarettes MIGHT encourage them to smoke less. Win-win-win.

If it had involved anybody having to give up anything of value — whether for a good reason or not — they would not even have considered it.

How they voted to kill the cigarette tax hike

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Just in case you missed, or got whiplash trying to follow, the peremptory manner in which the House threw out the idea of even a modest increase in our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax, Cindi Scoppe relates a few salient facts about it on today’s editorial page — including the one about how the money would have gone to helping the state get serious, for the first time, about youth smoking prevention and cessation (beyond the fact, of course, that increasing the tax in an of itself exerts downward pressure on the rate of teenage smoking).

What Cindi didn’t have room for in her column was how they voted. I’ll supply that:

The House voted 58-53 to table a budget amendment that would have increased the cigarette tax by 30 cents a pack.

Here’s the amendment, followed by the vote:

/64 (DOR: Cigarette tax) (A)   In addition to the tax imposed pursuant to Section 12-21-620(1), there is imposed an additional tax equal to 1.5 cents on each cigarette made of tobacco or any substitute for tobacco. The tax imposed pursuant to this paragraph must be reported, paid, collected, and enforced in the same manner as the tax imposed pursuant to Section 12-21-620(1).
(B)   There are created in the state treasury, separate and distinct from the general fund of the State, the Youth Smoking Prevention and Cessation Fund and the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund. Four percent of the revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the Youth Smoking Prevention and Cessation Fund and monies in the fund must be used by the Department of Health and Environmental Control in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control recommended comprehensive programs using best practices for youth smoking prevention and cessation programs. One percent of the revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the Department of Agriculture for research and promotion of healthy lifestyles with food grown in this State. The remaining revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund. The General Assembly shall appropriate the monies from the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund to critical programs that meet health needs of South Carolinians, including using funds for a Medicaid match each year, as needed. The monies credited to these funds are exempt from budgetary cuts or reductions caused by the lack of general fund revenues. Earnings on investments of monies in the funds must be credited to the respective fund and used for the same purposes as other monies in the funds. Any monies in the funds not expended during the fiscal year must be carried forward to the succeeding fiscal year and used for the same purposes./

Voting to table the amendment (58)

Altman
Bailey
Bannister
Barfield
Battle
Bingham
Brady
Cato
Chalk
Chellis
Clemmons
Cooper
Davenport
Duncan
Edge
Frye
Haley
Hamilton
Hardwick
Harrell
Harrison
Haskins
Hayes
Herbkersman
Hinson
Huggins
Kennedy
Kirsh
Leach
Loftis
Lucas
Mahaffey
McCraw
Merrill
Neilson
Norman
Perry
E. H. Pitts
Sandifer
Simrill
Skelton
G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith
W. D. Smith
Stewart
Talley
Taylor
Thompson
Toole
Townsend
Umphlett
Vaughn
Viers
Walker
White
Whitmire
Witherspoon
Young

Voting to support the amendment (53)

Agnew
Allen
Anderson
Anthony
Bales
Ballentine
Bowers
Branham
Breeland
G. Brown
J. Brown
R. Brown
Ceips
Clark
Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter
Coleman
Cotty
Dantzler
Delleney
Emory
Funderburk
Govan
Harvin
J. Hines
Hiott
Hodges
Hosey
Howard
Jefferson
Limehouse
Littlejohn
Mack
McGee
Miller
Mitchell
Moody-Lawrence
J. H. Neal
J. M. Neal
Ott
Owens
Parks
Phillips
Pinson
Rhoad
Rice
Scott
Sinclair
D. C. Smith
G. M. Smith
J. E. Smith
Vick
Whipper

The ‘Scoop on Scoppe’

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Scoppe_1Oops. I almost forgot that my colleague Cindi Scoppe’s column today promised that you could find, right here on my blog, the item that the anti-tax folks were circulating about her. Here it is, as e-mailed to her (be sure not to miss the real knee-slapper about how these folks "have not noticed her complaining about
the unmentioned tax
on the poor, the lottery."):

Chairman’s
Opinion –
February 1, 2006

The hypocritical scoop on Scoppe

    The battle to secure and preserve true home ownership for the citizens of South Carolina has proven itself to be long, and hard.   
    My ten year concern over this matter – based first on the simple concept that we should not have to “rent” our homes from government – has grown far beyond my original basis of conviction.  Because property taxes levied collectively upon South Carolina’s homes have virtually doubled within three years, my initial point of principle now pales in comparison to the financial hardships that have surmounted tens of thousands of homeowners in South Carolina.
    Quite honestly, this effort illustrates the struggle of South Carolina’s lawmakers as they continuously try to balance the will and voting ramifications of their districts against the campaign-funding lobbyists and special interests.
    The latter-mentioned forces are more than enough to place the underfunded citizens groups at a disadvantage.  But there is another force with which we must also do battle:  the liberal news media.
    From Greenville to Charleston to Florence to Aiken, they aid and abet the effort to maintain the property tax status quo.  Borne in the left-leaning colleges of journalism and promulgating their views of a “correct society” for South Carolina, they spin their webs to protect their beloved big government bureaucracies.
    Out of this journalistic jungle stands one above the others.  Her one woman crusade against real home ownership has been a sight to behold.  She is none other than that editorialist extraordinaire of The State newspaper, Cindi Scoppe.
     Were her idea of journalistic achievement the infuriation of the masses, she should cautiously be satisfied with self.
     It is one thing to share an opinion in this land of (diminishing) freedoms, but to compromise one’s viewpoints with innate, blatant hypocrisy is an exercise in self relegation.
    One of the most often used mantras of those who oppose a (in this case revenue neutral) tax swap is the argument that the poor will suffer disproportionately.   Rolling down the grocery tax was a tactic of equalization that negated that argument. Habitually leaving that component out of the equation, perhaps Ms. Scoppe should look to the idea’s point of origin – the citizens group that formulated what became that unmentionable touchstone, Senate Bill 880.
     Relying on reports from liberal-minded and left-leaning think tanks is another sure way to set up oneself for compromise.   To begin with, the reports from her revered Holly Ulbrich, self-proclaimed tax expert and writer of tax papers that are swallowed as gospel by bureaucrats alike, are nowhere guaranteed to be entirely rock solid. 
    Case in point is the fact that Ms. Ulbrich has of late had a somewhat difficult time defending some of her stances when challenged by certain, knowledgeable citizens.  More revealing, Ulbrich’s statements are made as a member of the Strom Thurmond Institute.  We have recently learned that just because she states opinion, that is not necessarily the majority opinion within The Institute.  However, based on public delivery, one would never guess, would they?  Lesson for Cindi – don’t hang on Holly’s every word.  Her years of working within bureaucracy might just have skewed her vision.
    While seizing upon such data as included in the Miley Report, she did get one thing right, and subsequently proved one of our long thought contentions.  Such reports, sponsored by those like the SC Chamber of Commerce, habitually come out in favor of that group’s prior stances.   No different here.
    Amongst all Ms. Scoppe’s favorite reports and studies, the McCall Study is absent.  It shows, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and The Census which includes (southeastern) average family spending data, a household with a property tax bill of $499 (BLS average) with income of $19,187 would have a 2.4% advantage gain, while a household with a property tax bill of  $1,618 and income of $62, 986 would have a lesser percentage gain of 2.2%.   Comparing the latter income to the median South Carolina household income, so much for the “rich” advantage.
    I am not aware of Ms. Scoppe railing on behalf of the lower class against higher gas prices.  Nor the increased cost in food, clothing, medicine, utilities, or especially, property taxes on the poor.  I have not noticed her complaining about the unmentioned tax on the poor, the lottery.  Disagree on that one?   Then just look at who buys the most tickets of chance (while heaven forbid, subsidizing scholarships for the children of the wealthy).
    And I could mention several more points, but space doesn’t allow.
    However, we must visit the street of Ms. Scoppe’s personal residence.  According to public county tax records, Ms. Scoppe is receiving a chunk of tax relief herself.  In addition to her state tax relief of $460, she gets an additional $869 tax credit.   Being true to her stated beliefs, maybe she returns the $869 to the county, or gives it to the poor.
    For by what means does she get the $869 worth of relief?  According to her tax bill – it is from none other than that dreaded tax on the poor – an additional one cent sales tax, by local option. 
    Being the defender of the lower class that she is, how can she abide this travesty?   Why, this is 50 percent of the amount she has determined will send the poor over the edge, and it did not even roll down the grocery tax in the county by one cent to make the sixth cent less regressive!  Even worse, it did nothing toward permanent, constitutional removal of property tax from their homes.  In the words of the Hindenburg reporter, “where is the humanity?”
     Did she editorialize zealously against the local option sales tax before its imposition?  I haven’t had the time to research that, but if not, only one word applies:  shame.
     Lastly, if permanent and meaningful property tax reform fails, we know exactly who to blame.   Should the status quo remain intact, and the trends of the property tax cancer continue to grow, thousands upon thousands of hard working South Carolinians will be forced from their homes. 
     So perhaps not that far in the future, the newly homeless can occupy all the grand school buildings (although those three story atriums relate more to HVAC capacity than to people capacity).  Some might settle for the plush offices of the county and city councils and their thousands of bureaucratic peripherals.  By then the Rutledge Building will be antiquated and abandoned – having been replaced with forty nine (guess why) stories named the Tenenbaum Tower of  Education) – so there is another option. 
     Fling open your eight foot high office doors, Association of Counties, SC Municipal Association, and Chambers of Commerce all across the state.  Your new residents can enjoy their new digs all the while thanking you for forcing them to move in with you. 
    And Ms. Scoppe, hope you have plenty of room down at The State.  Since the newspaper industry will still be profiting from its sweetheart sales tax exemptions, we know you’ll overlook the inconvenience.
Dan Harvell

OK, my turn on the Folks op-ed

7 Replies

OK, now that the comments on the Will Folks op-ed have reached critical mass of 34 comments and rising (including two from Mr. Folks himself), I will take a few moments to address some of the points raised by readers.

First, though, let me give you a brief summary of my thinking as it went before the piece ran — before the storm, as it were.

When the proof landed on my desk, I saw Will’s mug and thought, "Oh, man — what, again?" Then I remembered the earlier conversation in which it had been mentioned that this piece was in the pipeline. A board member responded by asking, "Is it something we would run if someone else wrote it?" That’s pretty much our standard response whenever the question arises whether we should give this person or that person space on our pages — what if it were from someone else? If the answer is "yes," we generally go with it. The answer was "yes."

So I read the piece on the page and agreed with my colleague who had put it there that yes, if this had been from some other similarly situated advocate on that side of the debate, we would have run it. But note that qualification of "similarly situated": It probably NOT have run if it had come in from someone who had never been a player of some kind in the debate. I say that because the arguments were pretty weak, and persuasive only to someone who already believes all this stuff, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Coming from Will Folks, its weakness was interesting in and of itself. Coming from someone unknown to the readers, it would have had little value.

To elaborate on that, some folks have asked why we would "give a platform" to someone who pleaded guilty to criminal domestic violence. Well, we wouldn’t. But we would "give a platform" to someone who is writing on a subject that is important and timely and who:

  • Was the spokesman, until quite recently, of the current governor.
  • Demonstrated his temperamental unsuitability for the job a number of
    times during the four years he spoke for the governor, but continued to
    hold the position until, as I just said, quite recently.
  • Is still advocating, as hard as he can, policies that are priorities for that governor.
  • Writes with a tone and style that is much the same as the way he spoke when he was in the governor’s office — lashing out, dismissive toward those who disagree, etc.
  • Brings to the surface, in a particularly stark manner, something that has been hinted at more subtly up to now — the growing tension between the governor and those who think like him and an increasingly unified business leadership.

My friend Samuel Tenenbaum said "Shame!" over our having run this piece. But I feel no shame. Well, I will admit that one thing about the
decision to run this does nag at my conscience just a bit: the fact that the piece was so
weak in its arguments that it undermined Mr. Folks’ point of view, with which
I disagree. So should I have waited for a stronger piece expressing that
point of view to come in? Well, if I had, I’d still be waiting. It’s not like we had a strong piece and this one, and picked this one. This is what we had.

Another respondent says critics are attacking Mr. Folks, but dodging the substance of what he said. Well, let’s discuss two or three points of that substance:

  • Will dismisses the financial acumen of some of the heaviest business hitters in South Carolina (or as he puts it, "prominent leaders of the so-called ‘business community’"), and does so in a way that takes for granted that HE and the governor know better than they do what is good for business in South Carolina. He sneers at the "left-leaning S.C. Chamber of Commerce" (note to Hunter Howard — better quit wearing those Che T-shirts around the State House). He calls Darla Moore and Mack Whittle "self-appointed dilettantes." To provide a little perspective, as the governor said to me awhile back about his having hired Will in the first place, "You take someone who was playing bass guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band and you give him a chance." Yeah, OK, let’s see — to whom would I go for credible financial advice? Darla Moore, or Will Folks? Mack Whittle, or Will Folks? Harris DeLoach, or Will Folks? Don Herriott, or Will Folks? Ooh, that’s a toughie.
  • While the governor can be said to have more experience in business than his former protege, to suggest that he is someone whose credentials suggest more real-world experience in financial dealings than the people Mr. Folks dismisses is ludicrous. Mr. Sanford’s record in the private sector before he took up politics is by comparison to these people — and this is charitably understating the case — less than impressive.

Actually, I’m going to stop there, and not get into his strong suggestion that ONLY the kind of tax cut the governor wants could possibly help our economy, or his indulgence in yet another gratuitous slap at public schools ("unquestionably the nation’s worst") or his mentioning that "state spending jumping another 9.1 percent" without noting by how much it had been cut in the several preceding years (some agencies, such as the Corrections Department, by more than 20 percent during that period). Basically, I’m tired of typing.

But before I go, let me address a few reader comments specifically:

  • Scott Barrow says "you’re giving him credibility and helping him restore his bad name by printing his columns." I don’t see how.  If anything, I’m hurting the cause he advocates by running a piece from him (I already addressed the fact that my conscience nags at me about that, even though my conscience, yaller dog that it is, doesn’t know what it’s talking about).
  • Uncle Elmer asks, "Does Mr. Sanford really need cool-headed, articulate friends like this?" Well, no, he doesn’t. In fact, the last time
    we ran a piece by Mr. Folks, the governor’s office called to question our having done so.
  • Honesty says, "The fact that you found the need to edit his previous editorial due to
    his apparent dishonesty while deeming him worthy of now being published
    as a guest editorialist borders on bizarre." Well, not really. We edit everybody, and a lot of what we edit out are unsupportable statements that are wrongly presented as fact. Sometimes we miss such mistakes and instances of outright attempts to mislead, but we try.
  • Will Folks himself complained that "Just once… it would be nice to submit an article and actually
    have folks debate its merits instead of venting their spleens with all
    this anonymous speculation regarding a domestic situation they didn’t
    witness and don’t possess the slightest bit of insight into." Well, once again, Will, I tried. I refer you to the above.
  • Finally, Don Williams raised a broader complaint "about the plethora of conservative local columnists which have been given platform" on our pages. Well, first, I wouldn’t call Will Folks a "conservative." I think that term refers far better to the "left-leaning" Chamber of Commerce than to him. And Mr. Williams lumps him in with Bob McAlister and Mike Cakora as being three who "arrive at the same conclusions time after time." Well, Bob works for those "dilettantes" over at the Palmetto Institute, and is therefore pushing very different views from Mr. Folks on these issues. Mr. McAlister is also a very conservative Southern Baptist, while last I read, Mr. Cakora was an atheist. I have no idea where Mr. Cakora (whom I met once, about six years ago — a fact I thought I’d throw in for Mark Whittington‘s benefit) stands on the tax issue (maybe you can find out on his blog). Beyond that, we usually get complaints about running too many liberals. I don’t know whether we do or not. I particularly don’t know on local columns. Basically, we generally take what we’re sent, and choose between them based on quality and relevance (and whether they’ve been published somewhere else, which is generally a disqualifier). Mr. McAlister sends us far more columns than probably any other local contributor — more than we actually run, I would point out. Joe Darby — who is no one’s definition of a conservative — probably comes in a distant second (we hear from him less since he moved to Charleston). Tom Turnipseed? I would say he submits columns less often that Mr. McAlister, but more often than than Mr. Darby. (Mr. Turnipseed is also regularly published elsewhere). We run letters from him more often, including a short one on Dec. 18.

As for nationally syndicated columnists, here’s a blog by a fairly nonpartisan guy who takes the trouble to rate columnists according to how much they lean either Democratic or Republican. Of the ones on his list we run regularly, he sees five as Dems and only one as GOP. But then, he lists George Will, of all people, as being slightly Democratic, so… Also, he doesn’t include some of our conservative regulars, such as Charles Krauthammer and Cal Thomas. I guess "left" and "right" are pretty much in the eyes of the beholder, which is one reason I hate using the terms.

That’s all I have to say about that. For now.

About Will Folks…

43 Replies

I just wrote this long piece asking what y’all thought about Will Folks’ op-ed today — not the content, but the fact that we ran it at all. I’ve gotten a lot of flak about that today.

And just as I went to save, TYPEPAD BLEW UP ON ME!!!!

Just as well — I had written down MY thoughts on the question, and it’s probably best to see what y’all think first, and then answer you.

So, what do you think?

Outsourcing the republic

14 Replies

Outsourcing the deliberative process
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE POSITION we take in the above editorial is an uncomfortable one. I say that not because using a “BRAC” approach to consolidate school districts is a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great one. But it shouldn’t be.
    Our system of representative democracy is all about the deliberative process: We, the people, elect representatives to go to Congress or the Legislature and study complex issues in detail, debate them, make tough decisions for the sake of the whole nation or state, and then come back and face the voters.
    This proposal sidesteps that process: It empowers a separate body — not directly elected — to address a long-neglected statewide problem. The members of that body do all the studying and work out all the details — that is, the actual discernment. Then they hand the whole package to the elected body for a simple “yes” or “no.”
    The tragedy is that this is apparently the only way that our small state can do away with the shameful waste of having 85 school districts — some of them incredibly tiny, each with its own separate administration.
    Why? Because elected representatives won’t touch it. Why? Because they’re elected.
    Anyone with common sense looking objectively at this can see that it would be insane not to consolidate districts. But any representative who advocates shuttering a local district faces the danger
of not getting re-elected.
    So we find ourselves in a situation in which the most effective approach is to outsource the deliberative process. And school consolidation isn’t the only tough state issue that our delegates may choose to sub-contract.
    S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell is proposing the same approach on tax reform. He would have a special panel draw up a list of sales tax exemptions to eliminate. Why? Because elected representatives don’t have the guts to face the narrow constituencies (from auto dealers to newspapers) whose tax breaks such a plan might eliminate.
    The truth nowadays is that on some issues, our republic’s deliberative process freezes up and dies like a car engine without a drop of oil in it.
    That’s how “BRAC” — for Base Realignment and Closure — entered the language to start with. It was impossible for Congress to achieve savings and efficiencies by closing and consolidating domestic military bases. Why? Because every member of Congress had to have one. Or two, or more.
    Instead of an objective comparison of the relative merits of this or that military facility, followed by tough but smart decisions, the only sort of “debate” that occurred before BRAC went like this: “You keep my base open, and I’ll scratch your back, too.”
    Our system is dysfunctional — at least on issues that involve sacred cows — not because representatives are out of touch, but because they are never out of touch with home long enough to collaborate seriously with their colleagues for the greater good.
    Most advocates of term limits say lawmakers get “corrupted” by Washington or Columbia to the point that they forget the wishes of the folks back home. Hardly.
    Syndicated columnist George Will has advocated term limits for the opposite reason. He says the only way lawmakers will stop listening to the folks back home long enough to think is if they cannot run for re-election.
    I oppose term limits for various reasons, including the fact that I’d rather have laws made by people with some experience at it. But we’ve got to find some way to make critical decisions that politicians with their eyes on the next election refuse to face.
    One good thing about a BRAC is that it can be seen as representative democracy the way it was intended to work: A group is delegated to study the issues with few distractions and deliberate until a rational plan emerges.
    This may be the only way our elected representatives ever vote on a proposal that takes the whole state’s interest into account. A plan that makes the tough calls would probably never make it to the floor otherwise.
    I like to think our system is timeless. But that reckons without technology: In the days before the 24-hour news cycle, blogs, cell phones and mass e-mails, representatives had a chance to concentrate constructively on issues and make decisions accordingly. The cacophony of modern communications makes that nearly impossible.
    Some look at this situation and come up with a whole other way: skirting the republican system entirely. Gov. Mark Sanford would ask voters to curtail the Legislature’s power to appropriate, by setting an arbitrary constitutional limit on spending growth.
    His reasoning sounds a bit like ours: The system isn’t working. When I asked how he could advocate undermining “small-R” republican ideals, he said: “You need to be more aware of the political environment that you’re operating in — be less, you know, idealistic, less, uh, you know, high and lofty, and just get down into the gears of how our government system actually works.”
    Talk about being disillusioned. Of course, I can identify. But there’s a difference. While the BRAC idea reflects a lack of faith in the Legislature’s deliberative fortitude, it does not abandon faith in deliberation
itself. In fact, it gives the General Assembly a little help in that area.
    The contrast between such a careful, studious process of objective decision-making and what the governor is proposing — a quick Election Day show of hands, yes or no, on an unfathomably complex fiscal question — could hardly be greater.
    I’m still not thrilled about having to institute a “work-around” to set policy, but comparing a “BRAC” to setting future budgets in a single plebiscite makes me feel a lot better about it.

No commies here

25 Replies

Mark Sanford is not a communistSanford_state_2
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
‘I DON’T want people to lose sight of who they’re talking to, and I sound like a half communist by the time I’ve laid out all these different options,” said Gov. Mark Sanford at a pre-speech briefing on his State of the State address Wednesday.
    “… which I’m obviously not,” he added with an easy laugh, the same laugh he uses when he calls me a “socialist,” which he does with some frequency.
    I should add some context.
    First, the governor isn’t any kind of communist — half, quarter or full. Nor am I a socialist; he just says that because he’s such a thoroughgoing libertarian, and I’m not. I’m sort of in the middle on the whole small-government-versus-big-government thing. Government should be as big or small as we the people, acting through our elected representatives, decide it should be, and whether taxes rise or fall should depend upon the situation.
    The governor was mock-concerned about being perceived as a demi-Marxist because in his speech, he was actually taking a more pragmatic view of the whole tax-and-spend thing. While insisting that if lawmakers swap a sales tax increase for a property tax reduction it must be revenue-neutral or even an overall decrease, he went on to speak about the need to consider other aspects of our overall tax system. In other words, he was to an extent embracing our position that tax reform must be comprehensive.
    He spoke positively of impact fees to transfer the cost of growth to new development, and proposed to “take the opportunity to look at (sales tax) exemptions that are not serving their purpose.”
    Mr. Sanford tiptoed repeatedly around the question of whether he considers property tax relief — which conventional wisdom holds is Job One in this election year — really needs to happen in 2006.
His fancy footwork on that went over the heads of many legislators — the first time they interrupted him with applause for a policy statement was on page 21 of a 24-page speech, when he said, “We think this can be the year of property tax relief….”
    The solons clapped like crazy, and I had to wonder why.
    Can be? Not will be? What did he mean by that? Back at that luncheon briefing with editorial page editors, Charleston Post and Courier Editor Barbara Williams tried for several minutes to pin him down on that. Finally, with a somewhat exasperated tone, she said: “Are you pushing for it this year? This is what I’m asking. Are you going to be one of those who says we’ve got to absolutely do something this year?”
    “Do you see that written in here?” the governor asked.
    “No,” she said.
    After a grunt that sort of sounds like “Yeah” on my recording, he concluded, “But that’s as much as I’m going to say.”
    But even though he refuses to declare himself clearly as part of this headlong rush to placate angry homeowners before November, the governor need not fear that anyone will erect a bust of him alongside Lenin’s (assuming anyone still has a bust of Lenin).
    Never mind that he has stopped saying overtly dismissive things about public education. Nor should you attach much importance to the fact that he keeps saying things like, “This is not about some philosophical jihad that says government is bad and the private sector is good.”
    Make no mistake: Mark Sanford is still a libertarian to his core. It’s hard-wired into his reflexive responses, even while he’s trying to reach out to folks to the “left” of him by repeatedly citing Thomas Friedman.
    Check out the one most radical proposal in his speech.
    This is a man who ran for office on a plan to restructure South Carolina’s government so that each branch can exercise its separate, enumerated powers, with proper checks and balances. So you’d think he’d understand the way the system should work.
    And yet, he proposes to undermine the central deliberative principle underlying the republican form of government devised by our nation’s Founders. He would do this by asking voters to approve a change in the state constitution that would set a specific formula for future spending growth, regardless of what future needs might be.
    Does that sound good to you? Well, fortunately, George Washington and James Madison and Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton et al. realized that you couldn’t conduct the complex business of running a government — even one firmly rooted in the consent of the governed — through simple, up-or-down plebiscites. They knew that we would need to delegate the business of deciding what needed to be done through government, how much it would cost, and how to pay for it. And that if we didn’t like the decisions delegates made, we could elect somebody else.
    If you ask most people, without context, whether they want to limit government spending — yes or no, no in-between — they will of course say “yes.” If you ask me that, I’ll say yes, and mean it.
    But if you ask me whether I think this state is adequately meeting its duty to, for instance, keep our highways safe, I’ll say “no.” And if you ask me whether insufficient funds might be a factor in that failure, I’ll say “yes.” And if you ask me whether I have the slightest idea what percentage of our state economy the General Assembly would need to devote to that purpose to get the job done in future years, I’d have to say, “Of course not.”
    And yet that is the kind of arbitrary judgment that the governor would have us make this fall — and lock into our constitution — with his proposed “Taxpayer Empowerment Amendment” plebiscite.
So never fear: Mark Sanford is still Mark Sanford, and he’s certainly no commie.
    If Mark Sanford were not still the supply-side, privatizing, anti-tax, anti-spending guy we’ve all come to know over the past four years, I’d be disappointed in him. I’ve always res
pected his honesty and consistency. And those are definitely still intact.

Let’s talk tax reform

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That’s right, I didn’t have a column today. Not out of laziness, I assure you — as plausible as that explanation may sound — but because I thought it worth making room for our full-page editorial overview of the main issues that should be considered as the state embarks upon tax reform.

Comprehensive tax reform, of course, has long been one of our favorite hobby horses, right up there with government restructuring. But here we put most of the main principles involved in one place. I urge you to peruse it, and use this post as a forum for sharing your thoughts on the subject. Or better yet, write us a letter to the editor.

Or best of all, write or call your lawmakers, and urge them to carefully consider the good of the whole state in changing our tax laws for the better.

Lake rising column

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First, take action to make
the whole lake rise
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
POLITICAL NOSTRUMS often become obnoxious with excessive application. Some simply start out that way.
    For me, one that has always fit in the latter category is “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
    I’ve never denied that there’s truth in it. At least, I intuit that there’s truth in it. I’m no economist, but it’s always made sense that if you pump more wealth into a reasonably fair and open economic system, many people’s boats — if not most people’s — should float somewhat higher. Not all boats, of course, what with the poor always being with us, but there was logic in the saying.
    I still didn’t like it. It was too devil-may-care: Don’t worry about whether everybody’s boat is seaworthy; just don’t impede the tide, and assume everything will be copacetic. It’s like something one would say over drinks at the 19th hole, followed by: “I’m fine. Aren’t you fine? Well, then everybody must be fine.”
    Oh, and don’t give me a bunch of guff about “class warfare.” I enjoy a round of golf as much as the next man. That doesn’t mean I have to adopt an air of insouciance toward society’s have-nots. So the “rising tide” metaphor always left me a little cold.
    At least, it did until last week, when I heard it put another way: “The whole lake has got to rise for my boat to rise.” That implies a sense of responsibility for raising the water.
    Harris DeLoach — chairman, president and chief executive officer of Sonoco Products — said that Wednesday, when he and other state business leaders presented their “Competitiveness Agenda” for the 2006 legislative session, which starts Tuesday.
    This is an agenda with considerable juice behind it, since it is being promoted in common by the state Chamber of Commerce, the Palmetto Institute, the S.C. Council on Competitiveness and the Palmetto Business Forum.
    The groups banded together last year to push successfully for tort reform, retirement system restructuring, a measure to encourage high school students to choose “career clusters” that help them see the point of staying in school, and “innovation centers” to connect university-based research to the marketplace.
    They had less success advocating adequate funding for highways and health care, but overall, the stratagem showed what could happen when state business leaders combine their clout and let lawmakers know they’re truly serious about some issues.
    “This time last year, I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive,” said Chamber President Hunter Howard, who has carried water for his organization in the State House lobby for many a session. But once he tried a “whole new approach… going after the Legislature with really a stick kind of approach — but in a nice way,” he was pleased with the results.
    There will no doubt be those who detect an odor of self-interest whenever business people push for anything. And there’s truth in that, too. Mr. DeLoach does want his boat to rise, after all. But the encouraging thing is that he and the others leading this coalition understand that for that to happen, the water has to rise for everyone. Rather than simply saying “I’ve got mine” and being satisfied, they are pursuing policies that — whether you think they’re smartly crafted or not — acknowledge the truth that we’re all in this together: If the least of these in South Carolina are left back, so are we all.
    Take tax reform, for instance. As my colleague Cindi Scoppe noted in a recent column, the business sector is determined not to be outsqueaked by homeowners to the extent that businesses bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
    But there’s good in that. Lawmakers are coming back to town this week all in a sweat to get angry residential property taxpayers off their backs, which creates the danger of overreacting yet again with little regard for the stability, fairness and efficacy of the overall tax system.
    Basically, the business honchos are saying what this editorial board has said for years — that however much emotion swirls around property taxes or some other outrage of the moment, the goal should be “comprehensive tax system reform.”
    Of course, the biz types have a few things on their wish list that most of us would never think to ask for, such as workers’ compensation “reform.” (I put that in quotes because I haven’t decided whether it’s reform or not.)
    But I’m still struck by the extent to which these business leaders seem more interested than many of our politicians in doing, as Mr. DeLoach put it, “what’s good for the whole state,” seeing that as the way to benefit them all.
    Those who reflexively distrust the private sector see it as wanting nothing more from government than to cut its taxes and leave it alone. But too many aspects of this agenda give the lie to that.
    In fact, “We’re referred to as the group that wants to raise taxes,” said Carolina First Bank CEO Mack Whittle. “Well, we’re the businesses that pay the taxes” (about 43 percent of the total, asserts the Palmetto Institute’s Jim Fields). “We have to look at the road system; we have to look at education. And if it does take more revenue, then so be it.”
    So it is that you see the business community leading the charge for kindergarten for all 4-year-olds who need it.
    It is, in large part, the kind of agenda that reflects what real pro-business conservatives — the kind who have a proven ability to meet a payroll, and a realistic grasp of what it would take to provide better paychecks for all South Carolinians — see as the state’s real needs.
    What they come up with differs necessarily from what professional “conservatives” who are all theory and no practice tend to advocate. You know, the Grover Norquists, and those w
ho would play along with them.
    Am I endorsing this whole agenda? Of course not. I haven’t begun to make up my mind about significant portions of it. Others I know I’m against. For instance, while I welcome these groups to the comprehensive tax reform cause, my colleagues and I staunchly oppose some of the particulars they advocate under that umbrella — such as imposing spending caps on local government. And we disagree with their position on the powers of the Ports Authority.
    But I do like the stated attitude that underlies much of this approach. Like Mr. DeLoach, I want to see the whole lake rise.

On the sixth day of Christmas…

37 Replies

… I finally filed a post…

Did you wonder if I’d fallen off the face of the Earth? Or were you too busy with more more worthwhile pursuits than perusing my pontifications? Let’s hope the latter. I also hope you’re having a fine Christmas season, and rest assured I will be opining to the limits of your endurance and likely beyond, once the new year is well under way.

In the meantime, this matter has come to my attention, as it no doubt has to yours. What do y’all think about it? Personally, I think what I’ve always thought: Does it really matter whether we were meeting the constitutional minimum, in terms of what South Carolina really needs to be doing to catch up with the rest of the nation? I mean, it’s shameful for a court to have to find the state to be deficient in any area by that lowly standard. But suppose the judge had found the state had met the "minimally adequate" standard in every area? Would that have been enough so that South Carolina would no longer be last where it should be first, and first where it should be last?

Of course not. Most every other state in the union has been doing much more than South Carolina’s minimum for generations.

What does "doing more" look like for South Carolina? Does it mean devoting more resources to make schools in Richland District 2, or Lexington 1, even better than they already are? No. It means the state stepping in to make sure that kids in Marion, Lee and Allendale counties have the same opportunity for a good education as do those growing up in Columbia’s suburbs and bedroom communities.

And what that means is that the main business of the upcoming legislative season should still be what it already needed to be before this ruling: Revamping the state’s entire system of taxing and spending so that fundamental needs are met in every corner of the state (not just those parts with good property tax bases), and raising the money in a manner that is fair, reliable and conducive to economic growth.

I look forward to seeing what y’all think about this once I have time to return to the blog on a regular basis — which, as I said, will be a couple of days or so into the new year.

Until then.

“Three Amigos” column

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Reform backers disappointed,
but not discouraged
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THEY WERE called the “Three Amigos,” even though there were up to five of them. They were business leaders who were instrumental in pushing the Legislature to pass the Education Accountability Act of 1998. Later, they served on the Education Oversight Committee that was created by that legislation.
    They were Bill Barnet, Larry Wilson, Joel Smith, Bob Staton and James Bennett (scroll down on the link to bio). But the old “Amigos” gag led me to ask three of them for reaction to last week’s news that, for the first time since the standards they pushed went into effect, schools across the state failed to advance.
Far more (354) got a lower grade than received a higher one (55), compared with 2004, while most (668) held steady.
    Messrs. Wilson, Barnet and Staton were all “disappointed” by the results, but none would own up to being “discouraged.”
    They were not surprised by what they saw as a temporary setback on a long “journey.”
After all, this is what the Accountability Act was supposed to do — use tough standardized tests to show objectively where the challenges are, so that they can be addressed.
    “I’m not all that upset about it,” Larry Wilson (whose latest ideas on education and economic development were the subject of last week’s column) called to tell me.
    “You have to look at long-term trends,” he said. One year’s setback isn’t enough to worry about. If schools lose ground next year, too, “Then I’ll begin to be concerned about a trend.”
    He noted that those who have spent their whole school careers under the law’s regimen are showing remarkable progress. For instance, our fourth-graders exceeded the national average in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, the “nation’s report card.”
    “As these students progress, we’ll see better results,” he said.
    He said the state has four big areas to work on:

  • Appropriate, early remediation for kids who need it.
  • Consolidating school districts to eliminate the “inefficiency and high cost of small districts.”
  • Early childhood education, getting children ready for the increased rigor they’ll face in K-12.
  • Raising expectations of students, parents and communities.

    As one trained in systems engineering, he says “education’s no different from any other complex system.” The key is finding the right buttons to push and dials to turn.
    Bill Barnet left the Oversight Committee to become mayor of Spartanburg, but his interest in the mission hasn’t waned.
    He said it’ll take time to overcome the “generational abuse” that led to the conditions the Accountability Act sought to address.
    He illustrated this with a story: For years, he ignored a herniated disc — until the pain in his leg became excruciating, and he consented to surgery. When his leg still hurt weeks later, he complained to the doctor. The doctor told him he couldn’t just assume the pain would go away overnight when he had allowed the damage to continue for 10 years.
    Similarly, the challenges to educational achievement in South Carolina “cannot be solved in any one- or five-year period.”
    He bristles at any suggestion that the struggle should be abandoned for, say, tax credits that encourage parents to abandon the schools.
    “The governor says, ‘How can you be comfortable and pleased with where you are?’.æ.æ.æ. I look him in the eye and say I’m not comfortable and I’m not happy,” he said. And then, he says, he tells Gov. Mark Sanford that while he, Bill Barnet, believes in “choice” (such as charter and magnet schools) where it works, the “Put Parents in Charge Act” is “all about your constituents, and maybe your run for president.” Ultimately, it’s a “huge distraction” from the real issues, such as the inequality between rich and poor districts.
    He keeps an eye on efforts to address that through comprehensive tax reform, but wonders if it is politically possible: “Greenville has to be willing to accept the premise that they’re going to take their money and send it to Dillon.”
    The message, he insists, shouldn’t be “stay the course.” It should be “stay the course, with thoughtful adjustments.”
    The only one of the three still on the Oversight Committee, Bob Staton takes heart from the knowledge that “Our kids are still being better educated than they were seven or eight years ago.”
In fact, he expected a setback such as this one last year — the first time the bar was raised on what schools had to accomplish.
    But he knows not everyone sees it his way: “People will use this information to validate their point of view that we’re awful, we’ve always been awful and we’ll always be awful,” he said.
    “My frustration is, people just look at a piece of it,” such as graduation rates. But today’s dropouts started school before the Accountability Act. “The kids that are beginning to come through it are doing better,” he said. “The graduation rate is the culmination of 18 years of that kid’s life and what goes on in it.”
    He cited “three things to look at” going forward:

  • Where a child is in the third grade. Remediate if necessary.
  • The transition from middle to high school, when reading proficiency is essential to mastering critical thinking skills.
  • Moving out of high school and into career preparation.

    “We’ve got to get them through each of those stages,” he said.
    And my reaction? The questions to be asked today are: What are the conditions that led to 55 schools doing better, and how do we go about replicating them in the 354 that slipped?

Attention, District 5 voters!

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Opponents of Tuesday’s referendum on whether to let Lexington-Richland School
District 5 borrow $131 million needed to build new schools think they smell a
rat: They shrug off the district’s insistence that the bond issue will not
increase the taxes they pay for capital debt service, saying their taxes for
operating these new schools will go up.

Typical of this point of view is Don Carlson of
Chapin, who was quoted in today’s lead news story as saying:

"Unless these new buildings plan on heating, cooling, feeding,
supplying and teaching these students all by themselves, you can bet … your
tax bill is going to see an increase."

For Mr. Carlson and
like-minded voters in the district, I have the following three points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  2. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  3. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.

OK, so I’m being a
little facetious. Actually I only have two serious points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway, because the school-aged population of the
    district is growing at a rate of 500 to 600 kids a year, and the district has to
    pay to educate them somewhere, somehow.

  2. The real issue in
    this referendum is whether you’d rather those taxes be spent entirely on paying
    teachers and operating the classrooms in new schools that will be assets to the
    community for generations to come, or spend a large chunk of that operating
    money — which would otherwise have gone into the classroom — on mobile
    classrooms that depreciate the moment they are placed on the grounds of
    increasingly overcrowded, less-excellent schools.

That’s the choice
before you: Whether to spend your increased taxes for operations wisely or
foolishly. A "yes" vote is for the wise option.

In the interest of
full disclosure, there are two ways that your property taxes might not go up to
pay for school operations. One is that you just let one of the best districts in
the state go to pot, and watch your property values fall like a rock along with
the quality of the schools. The second is that legislators come up with a better
way to pay for school operations. That could happen, but there are a lot of
variables between the talk going on at this moment and an actual new school
financing system.

Sunday, Oct. 30 column

19 Replies

Profiles in (incremental) courage
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
SEVEN U.S. senators tried to inject a little sanity into the federal budget last week. We can take pride in the fact that two of them were from South Carolina.
    Aside from Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, the group of Republicans included John McCain of Katrinacost_2 Arizona, John Ensign of Nevada, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Sununu of New Hampshire.
    Their proposals don’t go nearly far enough. But the sad truth is that by Washington standards, the initiative by these seven counts as a really bold move.
    They would:

  • Freeze cost-of-living pay raises for federal employees (including Congress), except those in the military and law enforcement.
  • Delay implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, set to begin in 2006. Lower-income folks would still get $1,200 to help pay for medicine, while upper brackets would pay higher Medicare premiums a year earlier than planned.
  • Eliminate $24 billion worth of earmarked pork projects in the recent $286 billion highway bill.
  • Cut discretionary — that is, non-entitlement — spending by 5 percent across the board, exempting only national security.

    Fine, as far as it goes. But consider:

  • This is billed as a way to pay for Katrina relief. It would free up $125 billion. But with a deficit of $318.62 billion in fiscal 2005, and a bigger deficit projected in the year just begun, these moves would be inadequate if we didn’t spend a dime on disaster aid.
  • Folks in Washington were actually celebrating the fact that the deficit was only $318.62 billion. It was expected to be higher. But it’s still the third-highest deficit in history, though dwarfed by the $412.85 billion shortfall in 2004. Another South Carolinian, Democratic Rep. John Spratt, noted that the Bush administration had once predicted a $269 billion surplus for 2005. As he told The Washington Post, that means 2005 turned out “$588 billion worse than the Bush administration projected when it sent up its first budget in 2001.”
  • The new drug benefit should not be merely delayed. It should be thrown out. The original cost projection of $400 billion over 10 years has risen to more than $720 billion. The legislation deliberately avoided obvious steps to lower drug prices, even forbidding the government to use its purchasing clout to force down costs. Kicking this can down the road doesn’t solve the problem.
  • Speaking of can-kicking: Baby boomers will soon start retiring in droves. And nothing has been done yet to pay for their Social Security and Medicare.
  • While federal employees still serving their country would lose raises, those who have retired from federal service will get a 4.1 percent increase in their pension checks starting in January. Nothing against retirees, but this is the biggest cost-of-living increase in 15 years. Is this the time for it?
  • About 48 million Social Security recipients will also get a 4.1 percent increase in the coming year — the biggest since 1991. What with higher energy costs, I doubt that many will be taking luxury cruises on an average hike of $39 a month. Still, do you expect a pay raise of 4.1 percent in the coming year? I don’t, and I don’t think I’m in the minority.
  • Any across-the-board cut — a favorite remedy on the state level in South Carolina — is a cop-out. It avoids tough decisions, and hurts efficient, vital functions of government just as badly as wasteful programs that should be eliminated entirely. If senators can exempt national security (which they should), they can go further and specify what gets cut and what doesn’t elsewhere.
  • Rethinking tax cuts — some of them, anyway (such as $70 billion in new ones proposed in the 2006 budget) — should at least be on the table. Republicans believe religiously that they are necessary to prosperity. I’m an agnostic on this point. It makes sense that some tax cuts would give a kick to the economy. Of course, so can federal spending. Maybe that’s why the GOP has pursued both courses so zealously since gaining control of the political branches. But I can’t believe all tax cuts are created equal in terms of their salutary economic effect. To refuse to reconsider any of them is to be blinded by ideology.

    I don’t expect any of my concerns to gain serious traction on the Hill. The modest proposals put forth by the sensible seven were, of course, immediately assailed by Democrats. Our own Rep. Jim Clyburn complained that these cuts would be unfair to poor and middle-class citizens.
    But Democrats always say things like that. What’s more relevant is what Republicans do, since they’re running the show. And what they’ve done is cut taxes while presiding over the biggest expansion of the federal government (not counting the military, which should have expanded) since Lyndon Johnson. Remember the huge intrusion into state and local affairs called No Child Left Behind? The latest farm bill? The $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska (merely a symbol of billions in spending on unnecessary asphalt)?
    Speaking of LBJ — we’re at war, folks. Everybody, rich and poor, should be giving up something Katrinacost2_2 to help us win it. Our volunteer military is doing its part, but almost no one else is.
    As for Katrina relief, the Republican leadership is talking about maybe cutting $50 billion or so — an absurdity in times when we consider deficits of over six times that worthy of applause.
    So what Sens. Graham and DeMint and five others are talking about deserves our praise and encouragement. It might not go far enough, but at least they want to do away with the Alaska bridge. That’s a start.

Brad’s Baseball Post-Game Show

32 Replies

This is a follow-up posting to address some of the comments (particularly some of those in the latter half of the string) on my baseball column Sunday.

Lee, Brent, Nathan — calm those itchy, libertarian trigger-fingers. There’s no target here to shoot at.

Read the column again. The only governmental entity involved is USC. USC is going to build a ballpark one way or the other, no matter what I say or what anyone else does. And before your hands start twitching toward your anti-tax guns, remember that the USC athletics department supports itself financially.

The issue here is whether the Gamecocks will get to play in a better ballpark in a better location. That can only happen, as I clearly stated in the column, if a private partner comes along — one that sees a way to put together a deal that benefits both USC and the investors.

Will the city need to be involved at some point? Sure. It is the source for key infrastructure, not to mention zoning and other issues. And if the city kicks in a little something — land, or a break on infrastructure costs — fine.

But — whoa, I see you going for your guns again. Hold on, pardners! I need to make two quick points that ought to settle you down a bit.

  • The first is that any material involvement by the city should be minimal. You’re probably forgetting that this editorial board rejected a plan for a dual-use ballpark put forward by the city because it had too much financial involvement on the part of the city — and therefore too much exposure of city taxpayers to cost and risk. (The mayor is still ticked because we complain about not having minor-league baseball, yet we didn’t go for his deal.) What we liked was the later deal that was offered by private investors, which had minimal city involvement. We tend to be guided by what we call the "Publix Standard." We believe it appropriate for the city to put forth the kind of incentive it did to get a supermarket downtown, as that was key to so many other goals for the city — goals that should eventually dramatically expand the tax base within the city, and more than pay today’s taxpayers back. The kind of deal we oppose is on such as the city’s awful plan to own and run a hotel. And we don’t want them essentially owning a baseball team, either.
  • Second point — The City Council’s politics being what they are, it may or may not be possible to get so much as a dime out of it. The mayor has been burned enough he seems to have little appetite for making a proposal. The council, which seems to be generally ticked at the mayor lately (perhaps over the city government restructuring panel that he convinced it to appoint?), seems inclined to say no to anything he does suggest. The city right now is a huge question mark, and whether it could participate at all will depend upon just how attractive a deal is presented to it.

The University and private partners will drive whatever happens, if anything does happen. And I surely hope it does.