The governor’s campaign has released a detailed set of allegations aimed at the record of Democrat Tommy Moore, who is challenging Mr. Sanford in the fall election.
I’m hoping you’ve already read about a portion of that, in Cindi Scoppe’s column today dealing with a portion of the allegations. It will take time to check out all the other stuff that Tom Davis gave us. In the meantime, I’m putting Sen. Moore’s responses to the whole document up in a separate post.
Normally, you wouldn’t see any of this until we had vetted it and tried as well as we could to check out both sides’ assertions. But it occurs to me that both the Sanford broadside and the Moore response are on the record, so why hold them back? I mean, I’ve got this blog and all. (And if Sen. Moore and the governor would like to continue the discussion right here, well all the better.)
Anyway, here’s the link
to the document from the Sanford campaign (it’s a PDF), and here’s the link to the quotes from Moore.
We’ll keep looking at this stuff. In the meantime, see what you make of it.
By the way, I’ll be writing in my Sunday column about what this development says about both candidates.
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I think it clearly shows Sanford is worried about Moore – especially releasing this in mid July when NO ONE IS PAYING ANY ATTENTION.
But Moore doesn’t have the ability to capilitze on any of it – at least that is the way I see it.
“By the way, I’ll be writing in my Sunday column about what this development says about both candidates.”
What does that mean? Do you want us to give you your opinion?
Now here’s a stunning little quote in Cindi’s hagiography:
“Mr. Moore admits not reading the entire budget bill. The clips aren’t necessary: Mr. Moore readily admits he doesn’t read all of the “thousands and thousands of bills being introduced and debated.” Any honest legislator admits that. But he notes that he is more familiar with the details of bills than most legislators.”
What the…? He doesn’t even read what he’s voting on? Maybe his district should find
a legislator who does. And this guy wants to be promoted on top of it?
Why does Cindi just blithely accept this statement and even seem to agree and approve? Any top corporate manager would be out on his ear if he admitted not reading the 10-K or 10-Q. In fact, if he signed off (just as Moore voted) on those documents and some irregularities were found later, he would be looking at a stretch in the Big House, no matter how much he claims not to have read the whole thing. Yet Moore can admit that he doesn’t even read a budget in excess of $5 billion before voting and Cindi virtually begs for more stuff to lap up. Only in government!
No, that’s not what Cindi thinks, and I’m sorry if the column isn’t clearer on that point.
I’ve discussed this with her a number of times. She believes Moore is culpable, because of the role he played, for the problem. He shouldn’t have let that get by him. She contrasts that to the simple fact that NOBODY can read EVERY bill they vote on. Try it sometime. Representatives have to depend on people closer to the process to let them know what the bill does.
The problem here was that Moore was one of the people closest to the budget, and OTHER people were depending on HIM. So he let everybody down letting this through.
“simple fact that NOBODY can read EVERY bill they vote on. Try it sometime.”
Sorry Brad, but I don’t really care for all those excuses for your favored legislators. If Moore can’t be bothered to read what he’s voting on then he should make room for another legislator who will. And if you really think it’s impossible for our legislators to read every bill maybe that should tell you that government, even at the state level, has gotten way too big and needs to be cut way back. If our greedy piggies didn’t stick their noses into all manner of things that are none of their business then maybe they would have the time to read the bills that are their business, like the state budget.
One of your favorite hobbyhorses is that we have republican government where our representatives decide because the “regular” people don’t have the time to decide for themselves. I can tell you one thing, I certainly would have the time to NOT read the bills and then vote on them in a referendum. That certainly couldn’t be any worse than what Moore and his ilk seems to be doing!!
“Favored legislators.” You’re kidding, right? We’re talking Tommy Moore, a guy about whom I have pretty mixed feelings.
Check it out — we were talking about ALL legislators. And if you know one who reads every bill he votes on, you’re either talking about a miracle worker, a liar, or somebody who hardly ever votes.
The deliberative process still works better than direct democracy because the bills are scrutinized in committee, and then debated on the floor. That’s a thousand times better than somebody just showing up on election day and giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on something he saw a TV commercial about once.
But you’ll say, we elect our representatives that way. That’s right, and to the extent that republican government doesn’t work, that’s one of the reasons. One of the good things that happens, though, is that people who have no redeeming qualities as candidates often rise to the occasion once in office. It doesn’t happen often enough, but it happens enough to make this system still better than the dangerous approach of government by plebiscite.
OK Brad, let me define favored legislator for you, as you see it: one who votes against tax cuts and any other ways to return power to the people or leave power with the people, and who votes mostly for big-government.
That same definition fits pretty much most of the people you and The State favor. As I said some time ago, the only way you or The State would endorse Sanford or someone else outside that definition above, is if the opponent is a supreme doofus or if the opponent is an incumbent who has failed to deliver on one or more big government programs he promised you or, even worse, passed something you don’t like. Hodges, for example, seems to have hit the trifecta on that. Let’s see how Moore will do.
You still haven’t answered the point that if our politicos can’t be bothered to read all the bills they are voting on, maybe they have been sticking their noses into too many things that are none of their business, such as smoking bans. Maybe they need to restrict themselves to only the things the state constitution specifically puts in their bailiwick. What say you?
What I really would like to see is some legislators with integrity who would rather refuse to vote on a bill because they haven’t read it than to vote on a bill they don’t know anything about. Another useful thing might be a Truth In Voting law. Every legislator, at the time of voting, would have to also state Yes or No as to whether he/she actually read the bill. No vote would be valid unless the legislators on the winning side who have actually read the bill also comprise a majority of the House or Senate. In other words, a bill would not go through unless a majority have both read the bill AND voted for it. A side benefit, of course, would be that people like Moore could no longer claim later that they didn’t read the bill.
The above covers ALL legislators. Now to Moore himself who after all is the subject of this thread. This case is devastating to Moore with any thinking voter. You and Cindi may be willing to let Moore slide on his misfeasance (hey, they all do it, don’t they?) but that shows significant intellectual laziness in both of you. You say that all legislators do this and that they rely on others to tell them what’s in those bills. Here’s the problem I see and I will stay with Moore’s case: who is telling Moore what’s in those bills if he doesn’t read them himself? Here are some possibilities:
1. Staffers: in that case, state senator Moore has picked some pretty poor support staff. Now he wants to be governor. How can we have any confidence in his ability to pick competent people for his cabinet and various other positions if he can’t even handle picking a couple of competent people for a little state senator’s office? How will he know as governor which bills to veto and which to sign? Or will he just rubberstamp whatever the legislature sends him? Somehow none of this is very confidence-inspiring, wouldn’t you agree?
2. Lobbyists: in that case, Moore seems to be either an easy dupe or a knowing ally of special interests. Is this what we want in a governor?
3. Other legislators: in that case, Moore seems to have exercised very poor judgement in which of his colleagues can be trusted. Again, is this what we want in a governor?
There are other possibilities but I’m sure you get the drift. One way or the other, Moore made himself look very bad in this situation, and his lame “explanation” makes him look even worse. And then you want to blame Sanford or Tom Davis for shining the light of truth on Moore. If The State were really on the ball this would have been a big expose on Moore already but instead we get an attempt to blame the other side instead. Pitiful, just pitiful!
Lex, until you’ve spent a term as a legislator, you can kindly cease talking about something you know very little about.
Aaah, the ever clueless ‘you can’t talk about the legislature unless you’ve been a legislator’ canard.
If you have spent a term as a legislator maybe you could enlighten us?! And if you haven’t maybe you could kindly ceasing telling others not to talk about something you would clearly know very little about yourself?!
It seems to me that a major part of the problem is precisely the curious way legislators do their jobs. Surely there is a better way.
My criticism is specific, not a blanket “let’s not talk about the legislature.” I haven’t done that job and, by virtue of that, have no right to blindly criticize not reading every single bill. My point is that they could indeed have hundreds of lengthy bills to read every day, and to expect them to read every single one at length is a little farfetched at best.
So without explicit knowledge of what the job entails (down to the minute details of the ‘reading burden’), I’m not in a position to say “well, that fool should have read the whole bill…he didn’t, so he’s an unfit legislator.”
You know, I probably wouldn’t care if it was some minor, unimportant bill. Maybe they can’t read all the useless crap they are supposed to be voting on but I most certainly would expect them to read the biggies, and there are none bigger than the budget.
As I mentioned earlier, if a top corporate manager tried to get out of trouble by saying that she hadn’t read the 10-K for her business, our esteemed lawmakers would be grandstanding all over that person. Why would you want to let our legislators get away with something no private business owner could get away with?
I guess this is the same hypocrisy amongst lawmakers that currently wants to tighten federal standards for corporate pension plans to make them more fully funded. At the very same time Social Security doesn’t have a penny to cover its own future liabilities, tens of trillions of dollars worth.
It’s hard to be a career Democrat legislator and not have associated with a lot of crooks, many of them already convicted.
Ain’t that the truth, and the rest of ’em will be convicted soon. The real “culture of corruption” and all that.