Laurin raises a question over at Indigo Journal (and by the way, it was nice seeing Laurin, if only for a split-second, at the rally last week): She wonders why Columbia City Council would be meeting to be talking stimulus with Gresham Barrett, an opponent of the stimulus who has no obvious political connection to the Midlands other than running for governor.
Well, I don’t know exactly. But it didn’t strike me as all that odd. After all, Mayor Bob mentioned to me several weeks ago, about the time I was doing this column, that Jim DeMint’s office was being helpful to the city in its effort to get in line for stimulus funds. And there’s nothing strange about that.
Here’s the thing that I have to keep reminding folks on both the right and the left about: The stimulus passed. It’s now time for those who are elected to represent the people to make sure their constituents (and, in Barrett’s case, those he would LIKE to be his constituents) get their share of it. After all, we will all be paying for it (as will our children).
This is the thing that Mark Sanford’s dwindling cadre of supporters still fail to grasp: This isn’t a left-vs.-right or Democrat-vs.-Republican thing now. Every public servant who takes his responsibilities seriously, who believes in doing the job, will usually make SOME effort to make sure the people they work for don’t get shortchanged. Rhetoric’s one thing; doing the job is another.
Mark Sanford is the only significant officeholder I know for whom ideology and rhetoric are the only reality. Now watch — Doug and others will say that’s him being consistent and principled! But they’re not following me. Sanford never notices when his ideology is at odds with reality. He doesn’t care.
For instance, just to mention something routine that illustrates my point, take the hydrogen conference last week. Any other governor in the country would have been proud to have that going on a couple of blocks from his office, and would have broken through barricades to make SOME sort of appearance at it. I’m talking about basic courtesy here, not political opportunism. Something like that comes to your state, to your capital, and you acknowledge it. You encourage it. You care about it. Our governor doesn’t give a damn about it, so he ignored it. What he cares about is taking ideological stands that get him into the national news.
Any other governor, one who was serious about the responsibility of the job, would make it clear that he had problems with the stimulus, if that’s his point of view. But once the debate was over (and at most, the viewpoint of a governor on such a congressional matter is peripheral), he would go ahead and facilitate the flow of the funds, to keep his state from losing out on a benefit that it was going to pay for.
That’s at the least, the very least. What Mark Sanford is doing, acting deliberately as an obstacle, is so far beyond the pale of what any public servant who believed in serving would do that it is inexcusable. And this governor is the ONLY officeholder I have ever run into who would do anything like this.
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You’re making too much sense Brad.
Keep it up.
This very much is a “left vs right thing”.
The entire stimulus is socialism – fascism to be exact.
It is intergenerational theft.
It is about transferring more money from taxpayers, present and future, to the tax eathers.
The Democrats made it about race, too, by claiming the money was targeted towards blacks, and the resistance is by white taxpayers. Maybe they let the cat out of the bag about their own racist intentions for this to be more of Obama’s promised “reparations for slavery”.
Whatever it is. South Carolina doesn’t need it, and real Americans know better than to touch it.
But Lee, at this point the money has been transferred. All we are doing now is deciding whether we should transfer it again out of this state to another state.
For the purposes of determining whether to accept it or not, it really doesn’t matter that it is intergenerational theft. The theft has occurred already. There’s nothing that can be done about that.
It’s a non-sequitur to say we shouldn’t take it or we don’t need it because it’s theft or “reparations.” Turning it down won’t change those facts.
The argument against accepting the money is and should be that it will create an unfunded liability in two years resulting in a necessary action from our State government. That resulting action could be (though I’m by no means convinced) more harmful in the long run than not accepting the funds. Any other argument just muddles the debate.
Keep trying to marginalize Sanford, Brad.
Do you disagree that Sanford will accept the money if it is used to pay down debt or if the Senate will shift other funds to pay down debt?
Do you disagree that the current budget for next year is larger than last year’s budget?
Do you have ANY evidence of his “dwindling cadre of supporters”?
What do you want Sanford to do? Take the money and walk away from being Governor?
Ha!!! Brad talking about the “real world”… who was he having this discussion with Clyburn and Coble?
Mr. Barlow,
I am glad you and others realize what Obama, Pelosi, Clyburn, and local Democrats are trying to rob the nex generations and push off fiscal responsibility to the future. But the money has not already been stolen.
If every state would refuse to share the loot, this scheme would collapse.
Mayors, legislatures, and Congress would be forced to reform now.
On a personal level, even if someone else has stolen the money, you become just as much a thief if you split the loot with them. Hugh Leatherman, Bobby Harrell, Jim Rex and Bob Coble have no problem with that.
Lots of us do have a problem. Those who dirty their hands now have no authority to run for office in the future on any promise of honest government. Everyone who participates in this theft must be removed from office.
Brad does get a bit hyperbolic sometimes and muddies the water with his ongoing name calling of the governor. That is something Brad deplored when people called his darling John McCain things like “warmonger”. (True in my book).
But this time he’s on the right side of the issue at least. To turn down the money would be a severe setback for the state. It would thwart the economic recovery that is barely getting under way. In the long run it would discourage outside business investment from complanies that see us as foolish demagogues. Teachers and troopers WILL be laid off. Unemployment WILL be higher than otherwise. The larger SC budget is a result of the economy, not because of legislative excess so Doug’s obsession with that is a non-sequetor.
An honest question: of the $2.8bn. supposedly coming to SC, why was the legislation structured so that about 3/4 comes directly to the State without further ado while the remainder requires a request from the executive?
How is Barack Obama less of a “warmonger” than John McCain if Obama has continued Bush’s/Robert Gates’s policies almost across the board?
Obama has actually expanded the war effort: more troops for Afghanistan.
(Where the focus should have been all along.)
It’s not about Democrats vs. Republicans.
It’s about Sanford vs. Everybody Else.
Only six hundred forty-five days until South Carolina gets a leader.
At this point the leaders of the General Assembly need to sit down with the Governor and try and work out a compromise. The time for finger pointing, screaming and hysterics has passed. The time for being shocked or horrified has passed. All of the people with the power to make something happen are experienced negotiators, now they just need to sit down and agree upon the formula which will satisfy all parties (or at least be acceptable to all parties). The yelling, the rallys, the tent cities will, in my opinion, have no effect upon this Governor. So lets have both sides sit down and figure it out. Leatherman telling Sanford he has no interest in a deal does not move the ball. Maybe it will end up with 70% of the $700 being appropriated from other sources to pay for debt reduction, I don’t know. However, I do know this, Sanford is acting within the law and doing what he feels is right. Those who disagree need to sit down with him in a mode of compromise.
Travis, Obama has been a disappointment with regard to the war issue. We should have all our troops home from Iraq by now. Afghanistan is more difficult given that wacky country’s role in 9-11. But at the end of the day it’s probably time to bring all our troops home from abroad.
How about Iraq’s role in sheltering Al Qaeda and running hijacker training camps? Our Army captured them, and they were exactly what the CIA said they were.
How about Saddam Hussein financing terrorists and suicide bombers, and paying $20,000 to the families of those killed attacking Israel and America?
Iraq has never been a serious threat to the US. Only the easily duped and utterly delusional could possibly believe otherwise. Iraq was a threat to its NEIGHBORS until The Gulf War, when we shot its Air Force out of the sky in one day, bombed them for a month, and proceeded to liberate Kuwait.
And Iraq’s full aresenal of chemical weapons did it absolutely no good whatsoever in defending it from our smashing of its Army.
We then wisely chose to contain Iraq rather than invade it and run it, whereupon we bombed it with impunity – for 12 years.
Iraq had no WMDs. WMDs are nukes. Cheney insisted Saddam was close to getting one: nothing could have been further from the truth. His “WMDs” ie crap chem weapons were 99+% destroyed by the time we re-invaded.
And even if he’d had them, they posed us no threat. He could only barely hope to slightly and temporarily threaten his neighbors – because we were based right there ready to bomb him to smithereens at any time.
Saddam’s Iraq had no direct cooperation with Al-Quaeda: even President Bush Jr. finally admitted that fact. That made national news. Repeatedly.
To deny that is to choose delusion over reality.
In any event, Osama Bin Laden, a Fanatical Wahabist Muslim was a sworn enemy of Saddam, a Fanatical Athiest Fascist, who was historically opposed to Islam. They were enemies, not allies.
Now we’ve spent close to a trillion dollars just in DIRECT spending on the wars, with the vast majority of the funds going to try to fix a country we broke. What a waste.
Either Reagan or JFK said:
“We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.”
Democrats voted overwhelmingly for war on Iraq in 1998 and in 2002.
Democrat haters of Bush came up with the lie about how the “real war is Afghanistan”. The real war on terror is wherever we contain it. If we don’t contain it, the war will be here in America.
It is an undisputed fact that Iraq was harboring Al Qaeda and training and financing hijackers and suicide bombers.
It is a fact that Saddam Hussein offered sanctuary to Bin Laden.
Bin Laden turned him down and went to Afghanistan, to help the Taliban suppress the Northern Alliance of Tribes.
Other leaders of other armies of Al Qaeda accepted the sanctuary, and moved to Iraq. We captured or killed all of them since 2004.
Doug, has it occurred to you that we may need a bigger budget as our population grows? We need even more, really since Gov. Sanford has erased any safety net we might have had.
If the population is not growing taxpayers, we need to be figuring out how to make them productive and carrying their own weight, or how to get rid of them.
If our population was composed mostly of productive people, gainfully employed in the private sector, the scale of government should be decreasing, not increasing. Overhead costs as a percentage should decrease as the productive parts of a business, or society, grows.
Lee, it must be a joy to live in a world where you can make up your own preferred narrative and call it “fact”.
You are using the tried-and-true Dick Cheney jab-hook propaganda punch combo of muddy distortion and outright big fat lie.
Al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until AFTER we invaded and destabilized the place.
And Saddam and Osama were not buddies. They did not plot and plan against America together over games of ping-pong in the basement of the Royal Ba’athist YMCA. Osama was never offered safe harbor in Iraq. Saddam saw him as a threat and a problem, and Saddam already had problems aplenty.
Besides, this guy knew there was no real connection:
Karen,
I believe Sanford has proposed limiting the growth of government to the % increase in population + inflation. He was laughed out of the Senate on that one. They don’t want any limits.
Repeat after me: The Governor does not have any control over the budget.
Sanford on the state budget, October 2008:
http://www.upstatetoday.com/news/2008/oct/16/sanford-pushes-reform-during-seneca-visit/
“The carnage we’re going to go through at the state government budget level is self-induced,” Sanford said. “It is exacerbated and elongated based on what is happening at the national level, but it is originally caused by self-inflicted injury.”
“Sanford said the last four years have seen 40-percent growth in government spending in the state.”
“First, Sanford continued his longstanding fight against spending — this time by calling for legislation introducing spending limits restricting spending in proportion to population growth plus inflation.”
“If the population is not growing taxpayers, we need to be figuring out how to make them productive and carrying their own weight, OR HOW TO GET RID OF THEM.” (emphasis mine)
I think that says all that needs to be said about your political philosophy.
(Your propensity to propagandize and make up facts aside.)
I like some Libertarians in theory – in fantasy – but in person I find most Libertarians are fueled by class resentments. They often come from the lower middle class, are ashamed of it, and wish to cut themselves away from their roots, and cut others the less fortunate off from state benefits they themselves once enjoyed. Or “get rid of them”.
Which may be why the Libertarian Party got 500,000 votes in 2008 to Senator Obama’s 70 million and the 60 million for Senator McCain (who got my vote). When your Party represent less a fraction of 1% of Americans, you’re not mainstream, you’re fringe. Which puts you in no position to say you should decide who qualifies as a “real American”.
The letter below appeared in The State on Mar 28, 2009. For some reason it resonates with this ongoing discussion.
http://www.thestate.com/satopinion/story/729502.html
“• Unthinking bureaucrats killed Big Hitter
The euthanization of Big Hitter by the Columbia Animal Shelter is a classic case of bureaucratic nonsense in action. The prized hunting dog was euthanized even though the owner was in negotiations to retrieve the animal.
In this case, the folks at the shelter and their supervisors are guilty of “rule fixation.” Rule fixation is:
• Rules above reason.
• Policy above people.
• Compliance above common sense.
The nonsensical decision at the shelter also points out the differences between efficiency and effectiveness.
• Efficiency is doing the thing right; effectiveness is doing the right thing right.
• Efficient people can do dumb things right; effective people can do smart things right.
Governmental bureaucratic nonsense is what nonsensical efficient people hide behind. They never met a law or ordinance they didn’t like. Their very efficiency is what drives us crazy.
Now, I would not urge folks to stop supporting the animal shelter. Given the recent decisions at that place, the animals need all the help they can get.
TOM FINCHER
Chapin”
I passed by the “tent city” about 7:00 PM. Maybe half a dozen tents, about 20 people, many of whom seemed to be press. Obviously the chattering classes are more upset about this than the public at large. Any comparison to “Hooverville” is just sad.
Saying the the Governor’s role in this matter is inconsequential is silly as he was given discretion. I still do not understand why, with all of the federal money that is distributed this required the request of the executive, but that’s the way the legislation was written.
I’m not so worried about those who can get out and work. I’m worried about the mentally disturbed (including the plenty of vets with PTSD), whose current best chance of treatment seems to be in prison. I’m worried about the fragile elderly, who are dependent on medicare and medicaid for care, and I’m worried about the physically and developmentally disabled, who, through no fault of their own, cannot work. These are the people whose ‘safety net’ is in tatters. And it doesn’t take much (a killing fever, a car wreck) for any of us to join them.
A partial list of Al Qaeda leaders who came to Iraq in 1992 and 1993, and high-ranking Iraqi military who were also members of Al Qaeda, killed or captured 2003 – 2006:
Abdel Fatih Isa – former Iraqi Army officer and al Qaeda emir
Ahmad Hasan Kaka al-‘Ubaydi – Ahmad Hasan Kaka al-‘Ubaydi is a former Iraqi Intelligence Service officer, and is now believed associated with Ansar Al Islam affiliate.
Rafid Ibrahim Fattah – He traveled throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq for the last 15 years, forming a relationship with al-Qaida in 1999. He served as a liaison between terrorist networks, as an operations officer coordinating the activities of the various terrorist groups, and as a security chief for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. military.
Kurdi moved to Iraq in 1992, joining the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan.
Muhammed Hila Hammad Ubaydi – aka Abu Ayman, Until his capture, Abu Ayman, the former aide to the Chief of Staff of Intelligence during the Saddam Hussein regime for 30 years, was the leader of the Secret Islamic Army in the Northern Babil Province . Abu Ayman has strong ties to terror leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, still considered the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq .
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri – possibly dead, “The former vice chairman of Saddam’s Baathist Revolutionary Command Council. He swore fealty to Zarqawi in 2005 and commanded a significant element of the Baathist/al Qaeda converts to Al Qaeda. He has significant links in Syria and is an important source of funding for al Qaeda in Iraq (link).”
Unidentified man – “The man who was killed was later identified as a retired officer in the Iraqi Air Force serving under the Saddam Hussein regime. The male who initiated the gunfire is a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist for whom the troops were searching, as well as the retired officer’s son. ”
Abu Asim – A former Special Republican Guard officer under Saddam Hussein, authorities believe Abu Asim has been active within the insurgency since the fall of the former regime. Associate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, co-leader with Ossama Bin Laden of Al Qaeda
Fadhil Ibrahim Mahmud Al-Mashadani – “the former leader of the Military Bureau in Baghdad during the Saddam Hussein regime, was apprehended by security forces in a military operation conducted at a farm in the northeast of Baghdad
Abu Talha, also known as Mohammed Khalaf Shkarah al-Hamadani = a key facilitator and financier for al Qaeda, the purported head of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi’s terror cell and former member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, a warrant officer in the Iraqi army
Abed Dawood Suleiman = former Iraqi general believed to be Jordanian extremist and Al Qaeda Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “military adviser”
Abed Dawood’s son, Raed Abed Dawood – former Army captain in the Iraqi army
Yes, yes, Lee.
I can copy and paste from WorldNetDaily, too. Or any other evangelical fake news website that plays fast and loose with names and dates in an effort to justify an unnecessary, imprudent war.
Mark ain’t right in the head and I’ve had serious doubts about his intellect since his “throwing spaghetti against the wall” interview with Brad years ago.
He’s not interested in his job. I can’t think of 5 things , other than school vouchers , no new taxes, tax credits to subsidize coastal homeowner’s insurance and the benefits if cycling, that he has used the bully pulpit of the governor’s office to really promote. He has no genuine leadership qualities .
And, Mr. Ross, he cooks the numbers and it may be out of ignorance rather than intentional.
I think we have a real case of the emperor’s new clothes. A man surrounded by yes-men syncophants who are not able to believe that he has finally become so extreme /irrational that people who have voted for him in the past have seen the light, so they continue to support rather than advise him against his leap off a cliff.
I spent over 20 years working with people who were having psychological evaluations for a variety of reasons. When you read and discuss enough of these and observe the problems, it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that we may have a psychiatrically impaired chief executive. And, remember this is the South and we have always loved eccentricity. It just sometimes gets out of hand.
Someone made a comment, possibly on another thread, about people not being irrational because you disagree with them and that most people with strong opinions come to them through rational thinking. It’s also possible that absolutely psychotic people can have extremely stong opinions based totally on completely irrational premises. A strong opinion does not mean one has to be sane or intelligent. We should know that from blogs.
jfx, I have been keeping my own records of our military success and failures n Iraq, and the terrorist activities, since Bill Clinton’s timid years of barking without biting.
Anyone can search those names I posted of Al Qaeda leaders who were operating in Iraq during the CLINTON years, and learn more.
They can search for Salman Pak and read about the hijacker camp we captured, complete with jetliner, busses and train cars for practicing attacks.
Mark, consider the possibility that Governor Sanford is more rational than you are, has put more thought into this subject, and is more grounded in principles than you are.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/
“Editor’s Note, November 2005: More than two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there has been no verification of the general’s account of the activities at Salman Pak. In fact, U.S. officials have now concluded that [b]Salman Pak was most likely used to train Iraqi counter-terrorism units in anti-hijacking techniques[/b]. It should also be noted that the general and other defectors interviewed for this report were brought to FRONTLINE’s attention by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a dissident organization that was working to overthrow Saddam Hussein. This interview was conducted by FRONTLINE and The New York Times in Beirut. The Lt. Gen. was later identified in other stories as Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, a former high-ranking officer in the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service. Abu Zeinab reportedly now lives in Baghdad; he claims not to have left Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein and that the story of Salman Pak was a hoax. He maintains that the man FRONTLINE and The New York Times interviewed was an impostor provided by the INC. The INC denies this claim, and stands by the original story.”
We didn’t capture a “hijacker” camp at Salman Pak. We “captured” an anti-hijacking camp, the same sort of counter-terrorism training camp that ALL intelligence services in countries ALL over the world use for practice.
The Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi cooked this one up, just like they cooked up all that other junk they fed to an overeager, neo-con-infested Bush administration. Salman Pak goes right along with the “mobile weapons labs” and the “aluminum tubes”. The INC has no credibility. Chalabi has no credibility. Are you really that gullible, still to this day?
Think about it, Lee. Don’t you think if we had a real, honest-to-goodness smoking gun like the INC purported Salman Pak to be, that Bush AND Cheney would have been waving that around like madmen? Instead, the Bush-Cheney admin quietly acknowledged, over time, that the vast amount of “intel” provided by the INC was garbage. The INC just wanted us to invade and get Saddam. And we fell for it.
At Salman Pak, we captured a videotape of Saddam Hussein telling a graduating class of foreign terrorists, “Destroy Israel, but attack America first.”
There were also videotapes of terrorists storming airliner cabins, trains and busses, and shooting dummies dressed like crew members and passengers. Only a fool would believe they were not terrorists.