Monthly Archives: April 2009

Getting pumped over the budget

If you want to see someone who gets pumped about his job, look no further than Wesley Donehue over at the S.C. Senate Republican Caucus. I got this release from him a few minutes ago:

Members of the Press –

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for a fun week of super charged budget debate live from the South Carolina Senate Chamber.

The state budget will be reported from Finance Committee tomorrow and placed on the Calendar for Wednesday. You should expect the normal Senate schedule to change a bit throughout the week. In addition to budget debate, both the payday lending bill and the 10th Amendment bill are set for debate on special order slots.

Here are the other hot items popping up this week:

ON THE SENATE CALENDAR

Stimulus Resolution (S.577 – Leatherman); Adjourned Debate

Payday Lending (H.3301 – Harrell); Special Order, 2nd reading

10th Amendment Resolution (S.424 – Bright); Special Order

Dental Health Education Program (S.286 – Cleary); 3rd reading, uncontested

State Spending Limits (S.1 – McConnell); 2nd reading, McConnell objecting

Smoking in Cars (S.23 – Jackson); 2nd reading, L. Martin objecting

Fee moratorium (S.517 – Davis); 2nd reading, Lourie, Hutto objecting

Public Private Partnerships – DOT (S.521 – Grooms); 2nd reading, Hutto, Thomas objecting

Telecom Local Exchange Carriers (H.3299 – Sandifer); 2nd reading, uncontested

ESC Reform (S.391 – Ryberg); 2nd reading, Minority Report

24-hour Waiting Period for Abortions (H.3245 – Delleney); 2nd reading, Minority Report

SENATE COMMITTEE MEETINGS

Water Withdrawal (S.452 – Campbell) – Agriculture Subcommittee, Tuesday, 9 a.m.

“Kendra’s Law” (S.348 – Fair) – Judiciary Committee, Tuesday, 3 p.m.

Home Invasion Protection Act (S.153 – Campsen) – Judiciary Committee, Tuesday, 3 p.m.

Concealed Weapons on School Property (S.593 – S. Martin) – Judiciary Committee, Tuesday, 3 p.m.

SC Healthnet Program (S.455 – Thomas) – Banking & Insurance Committee, Wednesday, 9 a.m.

Education Opportunity Act – (S.520 – Ford) – Education Subcommittee, Thursday, 9 a.m.

Public School Choice Program – (S.607 – Hayes) – Education Subcommittee, Thursday, 9 a.m.

Car Title Lending (S.111 – Malloy) – Banking & Insurance Subcommittee, Thursday, 9 a.m.

Have a wonderful week!

Thanks,

Wesley

I don’t know about y’all, but my eyes are open a little wider, and I’m just that much more excited about my week than I was a few moments ago…

NYT on cops and robbers in Columbia

You probably saw the piece in The State about efforts to beef up the Columbia police department, but you may have missed the story in The New York Times Sunday about our capital city and its troubles with too many crooks and too few cops.

So I pass it on for your perusal.

I was particularly struck by this brief explanation of just how shorthanded Chief Tandy Carter is:

The southern part of town, where most of Columbia’s residents live, is divided into 11 patrol districts. On a recent evening, as on most nights, a complement of seven officers patrols the whole terrain, leaving four areas uncovered.

I also call to your attention this passage featuring my twin, Leon, and a USC prof explaining the rather obvious reason for an uptick in property crime:

National crime statistics and academic literature generally support the notion that property crime tends to increase with unemployment, said Geoff Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina.

“When people get desperate, they’re going to feed their family,” said Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County, whose jurisdiction includes parts of Columbia and its suburbs.

Sheriff Lott has noticed a pronounced increase in insurance fraud and credit card scams in recent months. “When you catch people and ask them why they did it, they’ll say: ‘I’m desperate. I can’t pay my bills.’ ”

‘The Russ’ had a more tragic future than Paine foretold

I was struck by the ironic contrast between two things I read today. First there was this passage from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man:

Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two Revolutions of America and France. By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by the latter, in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite expression, the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning to think. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.

Perhaps “the Russ” was beginning to think. But that nation’s future was not nearly so glowing as Paine envisioned. Note this piece by George Will from the same op-ed page that contained the Harrell piece I praised earlier. It speaks of a Russia that is falling apart, and a people that is rapidly fading away:

Nicholas Eberstadt’s essay “Drunken Nation” in the current World Affairs quarterly notes that Russia is experiencing “a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation.” Previous episodes of depopulation — 1917-23, 1933-34, 1941-46 — were the results of civil war, Stalin’s war on the “kulaks” and collectivization of agriculture, and World War II, respectively. But today’s depopulation is occurring in normal — for Russia — social and political circumstances. Normal conditions include a subreplacement fertility rate, sharply declining enrollment rates for primary school pupils, perhaps more than 7 percent of children abandoned by their parents to orphanages or government care or life as “street children.” Furthermore, “mind-numbing, stupefying binge drinking of hard spirits” — including poisonously impure home brews — “is an accepted norm in Russia and greatly increases the danger of fatal injury through falls, traffic accidents, violent confrontations, homicide, suicide, and so on.” Male life expectancy is lower under Putin than it was a half-century ago under Khrushchev.

Martin Walker of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, writing in The Wilson Quarterly (“The World’s New Numbers”), notes that Russia’s declining fertility is magnified by “a phenomenon so extreme that it has given rise to an ominous new term — hypermortality.” Because of rampant HIV/AIDS, extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and alcoholism, and the deteriorating health care system, a U.N. report says “mortality in Russia is three to five times higher for men and twice as high for women” than in other countries at a comparable stage of development. The report, Walker says, “predicts that within little more than a decade the working-age population will be shrinking by up to 1 million people annually.” Be that as it may, “Russia is suffering a demographic decline on a scale that is normally associated with the effects of a major war.”

Apparently, the arrival of the Age of Reason was not enough for Russia.

Bobby Harrell’s excellent column today

Bobby Harrell’s op-ed piece in The State today was quite good. Not just because I agree with it. In fact, there is nothing remarkable in that. Pretty much everyone from all parts of the political spectrum holds the view I do on the stimulus — that now that it is a fact and we will have to pay for it, we must make sure that South Carolina gets every penny of its share. Only a tiny band of reality-denying ideologues disagrees. Unfortunately, one of them is our governor. Our state is cursed in that regard.

But I often read columns that I agree with, and wish I didn’t, because they are so weak. They actually harm the cause. Not so in this case. Bobby does a pretty decent job. I wonder if it was this good when he turned it in, or whether Cindi (who has handled local op-eds since Mike left last year) made it this good editing it. Whichever is the case, I liked it.

Set aside the issue of whether Marie Antoinette actually said the thing about letting the peasants eat cake (she probably did not). I find often that the lead anecdote or analogy is the weakest part of an otherwise good column. And in this case, the idea expressed is sound, even if the historical reference is not.

The speaker sets the governor’s nonsense against hard reality, such as when he invites the governor to seek out the places where he thinks government is growing:

If he really thinks we are somehow growing spending by 11 percent this year, I invite the governor to visit the schools, police stations and disability care facilities and see for himself the reductions — not expansions — they are having to make.

And of course, the governor’s assertion that government is growing will NOT stand up to scrutiny at the rubber-meets-the-road level.

Then, he rather deftly takes away the one thing even many of the governor’s detractors would concede him — his ideological purity — by pointing out his inconsistency:

While Gov. Sanford has made it clear that he adamantly opposes taking this education and law enforcement stimulus money, he has at the same time already accepted all the other funds that he can out of the remaining 90 percent of the $8 billion in stimulus money and tax cuts coming to our state.

It makes no sense for the governor to cherry-pick the funds he will accept — such as the $50 million to make buildings more energy-efficient that he requested the other week — and oppose money for teachers and law enforcement officers on so-called “philosophical” grounds. This is inconsistent with any kind of viewpoint and goes against what most people would consider to be common sense.

Finally, he explains why the governor’s oft-repeated claim that lawmakers could avoid deep cuts simply by following the budget HE recommended months ago simply doesn’t fit reality:

These budgetary facts are not some form of “scare tactics,” as the governor claims. Pointing to his executive budget written months ago, the governor says he was able to fund key areas of government without stimulus money. But what he doesn’t tell you is that he also had $254 million more in state funds than budget writers have available today because the Board of Economic Advisors has twice lowered the revenue estimates since then.

Given the quarter of a billion dollars less in state funds that we have to write a budget with, the only thing scary about these facts is the reality of the situation — a reality Gov. Sanford doesn’t seem to grasp.

On the whole, a good piece.

Robert’s got his mojo working!

One of Michael Feldman’s gags on the show today was to insist that Robert Ariail and I must be the same person, because we both left the paper at the same time, and he had never seen us together.

But even as we spoke, Robert was getting the bugs worked out on his blog, and now it’s up and fully operational — which it was not yesterday. Go there, and enjoy.

So this proves that I’m not him. Or he. And besides, I wear glasses and he doesn’t. Duh.

Whad’Ya Know? Plenty.

In case you missed the show today, here’s everything you need to catch up and be like the cool kids.

First, we have a photo above taken by my favorite “pollster,” Emerson Smith. It shows me with Michael Feldman (that’s Michael in the garnet “Cocks” shirt). That’s bassist Jeff Hamann hanging his head in the background; I don’t know what I said to make him do that.

Then, there’s this synopsis of the segment featuring me from the Web site, notmuch.com:

:10 – Michael talks with Brad Warthen, formerly of The State Newspaper and blogger of “all the opinions that weren’t quite good enough to put in the actual paper.” See http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/. Warthen was the Vice President of the paper and the Editor of the editorials and lost his job. What happened?! “It’s happening all over,” Warthen said. He and Michael talk about the state of the economy in South Carolina. The Governor of South Carolina doesn’t want to accept federal stimulus funds, “because he doesn’t believe in public education. He actually has control over this. Congress is sending out this money in a way that allows Governors to apply for it, assuming that they will. This is actually a moment in which he actually gets to make a decision…and we see the quality of the decision he’s made.” Other political hot buttons? “Everything is related to [the Governor’s choice]. We have 11.4% unemployment,” for example. The cigarette tax is .07 cents…it’s the lowest in the country, “all but subsidizing kids to smoke.” Is Columbia a Democratic enclave? Richland County is. Lexington County, where Warthen lives, has been one of the most Republican counties in the country. The University of South Carolina is working on a new fuel initiative. In the area of research, there’s unprecedented cooperation between USC and Clemson. Michael asks Warthen if he has season tickets. “I do not…I’m not a football fan,” he admits. He went to school here for one semester, started in the Honors College, but had a disasterous experience. “There was all this freedom!” he exclaimed. He transferred to Memphis State University after that, and majored in journalism and history. See bradwarthen.com for Warthen’s online columns, or his blog noted above.

Or, you can go to that same link and listen to the whole show.

Finally, for those who wonder what goes on in the moments before the show, here’s some very bad video from my phone, shot from the wings. About the only part you can hear clearly is when Michael is coaching the audience to say “Not much. Y’all?” instead of the usual “Not much. You?”

If you’ll forgive the cliche, a good time was had by y’all.

You don’t want to know what I think

Somebody wrote me an e-mail today saying,

Brad-

No blog post on yesterday’s tea parties? Shame on you.

Tom Willett

Now that doesn’t give me much to go on, but I’m sort of guessing that Tom thought I’d have something NICE to say about these demonstrations. That’s usually the case with such nonspecific comments. Which brings to mind the old Bugs Bunny line, “He don’t know me very well, do he?”

And you know, I don’t want to say anything snide. I did say something snide at the actual event yesterday, and felt bad about it, because those folks were all pretty well behaved and probably sincere and it was a beautiful day, but sometimes you can’t help yourself. But I’m not going to repeat it. I mean, my rep’s bad enough already. In fact, when I ran into Andy Haworth from thestate.com, who was shooting video of the event, he joked (I think it was a joke) that he’d better get away from me lest he catch a stray bullet.

Ironically, he said that not far from the spot when the first editorialist for The State, N.G. Gonzales, was shot down in broad daylight by the lieutenant governor, James Tillman. Y’all know the story: Tillman shot him in cold blood in front of multiple witnesses, including a cop — and the Lexington County jury (there was a change of venue) acquited him, on the grounds that N.G. had written all sorts of mean, nasty ugly things about the killer, causing him to lose an election, and therefore had it coming. That was in 1903.

He got shot, and I only got laid off. So times are better for editorialists, although getting laid off lacks the romance of the way N.G. went out. He did it with style, too. Remember what he said as he fell? “Shoot again, you coward.” Editorialists had a lot of sand in those days.

Oh, but I was supposed to be writing about the anti-tax thing. Look, y’all know how I am about this subject. I’ve always thought the fuss that some whiny people make over what they call “Tax Day” is ridiculous, and a demonstration such as this just doesn’t connect with me. I don’t get it why people resent paying their taxes so much. But they do go on about it, don’t they? (When I see all these folks walking around with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and such, on a beautiful day in the freest country in the history of the world, I wonder how they would react if they actually were oppressed? What if they lived in a country where you got shot or locked up for protesting? Would it matter enough to them to do so? What if they actually lived in a country that HAD no government to tax them — say, Somalia? Would they like that better? Or worse? I don’t know.)

Go on as they did, even they had a limit. I missed most of the rally because I had an appointment at noon. I arrived at about 1:30, expecting it to go until 2 as announced. But it ended at 1:41. I guess they didn’t have as much outrage as planned, or something.

I shot the above video with my phone. As you can see, what I captured was pretty vanilla stuff, not much to write home about. Maybe the parts I missed were more exciting. Probably not to me, but to someone.

Check out Jeffrey Day’s ‘Carolina Culture’ blog

Lots of folks have said very kind things in expressing their dismay at my having been laid off from the paper. But I don’t think the outpouring I’ve received has been quite as intense as the feeling in the arts community over the loss of my colleague Jeffrey Day. I saw an e-mail calling for a letter-writing campaign to protest his departure within 24 hours of the news breaking — and unlike me, Jeffrey wasn’t even mentioned in the news story. The arts grapevine just moved that fast. The gist of the message I saw was, we may have hated what he said in some of his reviews, but we’re going to miss the serious attention he gave the arts. Or something along those lines.

Well, Jeffrey’s back — with a blog he unveiled today. I urge you to go check it out. There’s something to be said for taking a little time before launching your blog. Jeffrey’s is certainly more esthetically pleasing than mine. But you’d expect that.

You know, once Robert gets the bugs worked out of his new blog (he actually has a Web guru going to his house to cast spells over it tomorrow, I hear), between that and mine and Jeffrey’s, you’re practically going to have a reconstituted Stet Pepper online. Just add water.

Whad’Ya Know? I’m gonna be on the radio

Don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m going to be on “Whad’Ya Know?” when it broadcasts live from the Koger Center on Saturday. Show starts at 11, but I have to be there at 10:30. They said there’d be coffee.

And that’s about it. No prep. I’m told that host Michael Feldman is prepping by reading thestate.com and this blog, which is probably why his signature answer to the title question is, “Not much.” The Web site, in case you haven’t been there, is notmuch.com.

And if you haven’t seen the show at all, Otis Taylor provided a taste of what it’s like in his story today. The State also provided some “if you’re going” info.

Alternative reality

You know, setting the record straight on the bizarre things Mark Sanford says could be a full-time job. If only I could figure a way to get paid for it.

Basically, to continue to hold the positions the governor does, you have to cling to an alternative version of reality. Take some of the things he has said over the last day or so:

He told Sean Hannity that in joining these tax protests today, he is speaking for a “silent majority.” He should leave the Nixonian expressions alone. Does anyone on the planet Earth think that the anti-gummint types have been “silent” about their resentment toward paying their taxes? Ever? Certainly not in this state. They whine constantly, and the Legislature grovels at their feet and gives them whatever they whine loudest about at a given moment, which is a big reason why our tax structure is such an irrational, patchy mess. They are the reason why lawmakers hardly ever let a session go by without a major tax cut, but have only raised a general tax once since 1987 — and that was the sales tax increase that was passed to offset the virtual elimination of school taxes on owner-occupied homes (perhaps the whiniest of all tax whiner groups). Whether they are the majority remains to be seen. But they have never, ever been silent for even a moment. And they are always heard.

Then, he put out this statement:

“Today it’s worth noting the fact that we are at a truly frightening tipping point with regard to federal spending, and the consequences it will have for every current -and especially future – taxpayer here in South Carolina. This year, government spending will account for more than a quarter of the entire economy, a level not seen since our country was fighting for its survival against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Federal debt is nearly the size of our yearly economy, and is about four times the size of the economy when you add in other government promises like Social Security and Medicare.

“That’s why this stimulus debate we’re having in South Carolina is so important. Though today’s taxpayers are the ones who benefit from the so-called ‘stimulus,’ they’re not the ones paying for it – it will be their children, their grandchildren, and likely their great-grandchildren. We continue to believe that in the midst of this spending, it’s important to leave a dividend for those future taxpayers in the form of debt repayment.”

Ahem. We are not having a “debate” on the stimulus. The debate occurred in Washington. Sanford’s point of view lost the debate. South Carolinians WILL be paying for the stimulus, which WILL be paid out to the states. If South Carolina is insane enough (and we never do quite give up trying to prove wrong the axiom that we are too large to be an insane asylum) not to
take its share of the funds, that amount will be paid to other states and territories.

There’s no debate. There can’t be a debate, because the governor does not have a position that can be rationally argued — except, of course, by pretending that the facts are other than what they are. Which is what he continues to insist on doing.

FEELING like I’m 100 years old

Here’s the problem with live blogging and twittering and all that (which is the same as the problem with 24/7 TV “news”) — if I were to write what I’m actually seeing and thinking and experiencing, I’d write stuff like this from sitting in the gallery at the SC Senate:

The guy who reads the bills aloud sounds a lot like Richard Gergel — but he’s not Richard Gergel.
We just spent a long time being introduced to a 100-year-old lady by Jake Knotts. One of the things I learned about her (I think) is that she was once John Spratt’s schoolteacher. She was presented with a framed resolution, and the senators sang “Happy Birthday” to her. All this was explained when Jake said, “Miz Kennedy still votes, and you know who she votes for.” Well, bless her heart.
The senators THEN sang “Happy Birthday” to Hugh Leatherman, after he blew out a candle atop a stack of donuts. A senator explained that this “cake” consisted of 70 donuts, adding that “Each donut represents $1 million in stimulus we’re not going to get.” I guess he meant $10 million.
Kulturkampf was alive and well in the chamber, as one senator got up and said if we were going to protect children from smoking in cars, we should also protect UNBORN children from smoke in cars. An objection was voiced, so that was set aside.

And so forth, and so on. I came hoping to hear something about Vincent Sheheen’s proposal to get the stimulus funds in spite of the governor. But I either missed it (which I think is what happened), or they’re just too busy with “more important” stuff.

This is why I was an editor all these years — so somebody else could sit through all this stuff, and get to me when something actually happened.

An hour of this can make you FEEL like you’re 100 years old…

Tony Blair contradiction?

Back on this earlier post Herb drew my attention to a piece in The Times about Tony Blair. His link didn’t work, so I went there and hunted for the piece on my own, and found two items of interest.

Well, three. The first is that I hadn’t checked in with my hero Tony in a while, and last I knew he was thinking about converting to Roman Catholicism, as I did long ago. According to both pieces in the Times, that’s a done deal now. Good. Welcome, Tony.

The other two things suggest a contradiction in thinking, which may result from bad reporting as Herb suggests, but there is the remote possibility that our Tony has been caught being inconsistent. In a piece about Iraq, he suggested that sometimes, in order to do the right thing, you have to look past the polls:

In an interview with Time magazine last year he said: “The worst thing in politics is when you’re so scared of losing support that you don’t do what you think is the right thing. What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it.”

Tony’s certainly right about that, and he was always right about Iraq. I used to wish HE had been in charge of the Special Relationship, as he was actually able to explain clearly why we were there, unlike a certain chief executive I could name over on this side of the pond.

But then, in another piece — and I think this was the one to which Herb meant to refer — he suggests something very different. After telling the Pope he should “rethink” his ideas about homosexuality, he goes on:

In the interview Mr Blair spoke of a “quiet revolution in thinking” and implied that he believed the Pope to be out of step with the public.

“There are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a wellattended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised at how liberal-minded people were.” The faith of ordinary Catholics is rarely found “in those types of entrenched attitudes”, he said.

In other words, the magisterium should bow to the popular view of the moment.

Contradiction? You be the judge. If it is, it’s a natural human failing. We all tend to admire individuals standing against the herd when we agree with them, and not so much when we don’t.

Three rounds, not ‘a hail of bullets’

Forgive me for being pedantic, but I hate it when I see misleading cliches such as this one in the WSJ today:

U.S. Navy Seal sharpshooters brought a five-day hostage standoff to an abrupt end Sunday with a hail of bullets that killed three pirates holding Capt. Phillips.

It’s not just that it’s a cliche. I’ve got nothing against cliches in general; they can be a handy way to communicate information quickly. What gets me is when they are clearly at odds with the facts.

Those Seals took out those pirates with three perfectly aimed rounds, probably fired simultaneously.

“Hail of bullets” makes it sound as though those Seals were no-talent gangsters wildly spraying the scene on full auto or something. Sonny Corleone died in a hail of bullets. Last scene of “Bonnie and Clyde?” Hail of bullets. But this was not.

Do such things bother you, too? And yes, it seems a small thing to worry about in the context of three lives suddenly and messily snuffed out, but I appreciate precision in language as well as in marksmanship (in a good cause, that is).

Get your new Robert Ariail cartoons right here!

With great pleasure, I note that my great friend and colleague finally has his blog, robertariail.com, up and running, with the new cartoons he’s done in the last couple of weeks.

This is a relief. Over the weekend, I tried to give him some remote technical aid — he was having a lot of trouble getting the cartoons up on the site — but it was beyond my poor, humble talents.

Great to see that someone has come to his rescue (or, he figured it out himself).

Sorry about the comments glitch

Noting that there were NO comments on today’s posts, I was wondering why I was so unpopular all of a sudden. Halitosis, perhaps? Then I looked and saw there were some comments “awaiting moderation,” and one of them was from Greg, saying:

Why have you gone to moderating comments? That certainly slows the flow of conversation.

I agree totally, Greg. And I certainly didn’t do it intentionally. Someone was helping me fix some other settings yesterday, and maybe the wrong thing got accidentally clicked. Clumsy me.

Anyway, I think I’ve got it fixed now. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Joe Darby’s revelation

Joe Darby’s quicker than I am, I learned from his op-ed piece today:

South Carolinians of every cultural and political mindset have asked why the governor has drawn a firm and ludicrous line in the sand on the use of stimulus funds for education; they have wondered whether he’s cold and insensitive, out of touch with the common people or laying the groundwork for future political aspirations. I had the chance to talk with the governor prior to his first-term election and early in his first term, and I think the real reason for his stance is that our governor really isn’t a Republican — he’s a libertarian.

I probably had a lot more exposure to Mark Sanford than the Rev. Darby did, during the 2002 campaign and in the early days of his administration, and it took me several months to fully realize what Joe picked up on from fewer clues, if he realized it way back then.

Sure, his idea for cutting back income taxes was out there during the campaign, as was his tuition tax credit proposal. But they didn’t seem that central at the time — the tax credit idea was presented as a sort of boutique, experimental, peripheral thing, not his entire education strategy, which is what it turned out to be. And lots of “conservative Republicans” have some economic libertarian ideas mixed in with their other positions.

But it took a lot of exposure on my part to realize how very different this guy was from that herd. I had picked up on the way he stood aloof from other Republicans, but that had seemed almost a virtue, hating parties the way I do.

Then, one day, in a private conversation in his office, it hit me fully just how outside the box he was, and I blurted out: “You ran as a ‘conservative Republican,’ but you’re not that at all! You’re a libertarian!” He allowed as how perhaps I had a point.

Yeah, I know — that sounds amazingly stupid on my part, mainly because everybody knows now that that’s what Mark Sanford is. But the realization had to do with the utter purity of the difference. What I had realized, and what I was saying, was that he was utterly unlike any other Republican, and certainly any “conservative,” I had ever met. And suddenly I was realizing how many GOOD points normal Republicans had, points which he lacked. Normal Republicans wanted efficient, streamlined government, and felt a responsibility to make it run on time and on budget. This guy simply didn’t believe in government, on a very deep, fundamental level. Lots of “conservatives” grumble and even rant about government. None dismiss it as fully as he does.

There was, essentially, nothing conservative about him. He was a classical liberal, through and through, and his ideology was utterly unmodified by experiences in the real world. Most people, as they live and work and interact with the world, modify such extreme views, seeing how they don’t always work. Not this guy. Most people try to get things done, and to get things done you have to face reality. He had never cared about getting things done. He hadn’t in Congress. He was perfectly satisfied to cling to hermetically sealed ideals, unsullied by experience.

And yes, there was a time when that was a revelation to me.

Cindi sets the governor’s numbers straight

I highly recommend Cindi’s column in The State today, which debunks the numbers the governor uses in arguing his quirky view of the stimulus, and does so in highly understandable (even for me) terms. A sample:

The governor’s other numbers aren’t quite as obviously skewed, which is why we need to take a closer look at them. Since Mr. Sanford consolidated most of his claims in a recent op-ed column, let’s just work from that:

• “Last year state government spent $19 billion, and this year we will spend $21 billion.”

The budget passed by the House, which includes all $928 million in stimulus funds, was $21.2 billion, but because of another across-the-board cut last month, it will have to be cut to $21.1 billion. If you left out the $350 million Mr. Sanford wants left out, you’d be down to $20.7 billion. That’s about $800 million more than the current budget of $19.9 billion, which has been cut many times, but it’s less than the $20.9 budget the Legislature passed last spring.

On top of that, more than a third of the money is federal funds, which agencies don’t have the discretion to divert the way they can state funds. And of course our population is increasing, which increases the demand for government services.

• “Even education spending will go from $3.3 billion to $3.5 billion.”

After I raised questions about the first figure, Mr. Sanford’s office sent out a note Tuesday saying it got bad figures from the State Budget Office and it should have said education spending will go from $3.43 billion to $3.55 billion. But even the “correct” numbers demand explanation. The budget passed by the House includes $3.8 billion in state and federal funding for the state Education Department; eliminate stimulus funds, and it drops to $3.55 billion. Last month’s budget cuts would reduce that figure to $3.5 billion. So, the increase would be $70 million, not $200 million.

Still, that is an increase. Sort of. Here’s where context is crucial: The budget the Legislature passed last spring promised $3.8 billion to the schools, so they started this school year thinking they had $3.8 billion to spend; they paid the raises the Legislature mandated, and kept their staff at the levels that would support. Then the state budget cuts started. Since schools were barred by law from laying off teachers or cutting their pay, they had to dip into their reserve funds. That means they will actually spend significantly more than $3.5 billion this year.

So getting $3.5 billion next year would be a reduction, and reductions mean layoffs. (At an average $61,000 in salary and benefits, a $100 million cut takes out more than 1,600 teachers.)…

But you should go read the whole thing. It’s all valuable.

There’s no journalist in South Carolina who understands, or explains, state fiscal matters better than Cindi. I’ve relied heavily on her ability to explain these things — to me, and to the readers — for over 20 years.

Obama looking appalled in the Corridor of Shame

Bud Ferillo and I had lunch today for about two hours and 40 minutes, which is something we unemployed people can get away with (although it doesn’t touch my all-time personal best, a three-hour lunch with the late Gov. John C. West at the Summit Club, sometime around the year 2000, when I actually had a job).

Anyway, we spoke of many things, and one of them was this photograph he shared with me of Barack Obama last year when he first beheld J.V. Martin Junior High in Dillon. Bud urged me to note the president-to-be’s look of disgust that children were still attending class in a structure so old. (Or is he just squinting in the sunlight? You be the judge.)

Bud is the director of the acclaimed “Corridor of Shame,” by the way.

Why do Democrats resent Barrett helping on the stimulus?

The thing I noted in my previous post has gone a step further:

Columbia, SC– South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler issued the following statement today in response to Congressman Gresham Barrett’s meeting with Columbia City Council regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Earlier this year, Barrett spoke out against the federal stimulus bill, and he joined the state’s other Republican members of Congress in voting against it, but today he said he supports stimulus funds for local governments.

“Gresham Barrett is showing himself to be hypocritical in his early campaigning for governor. He was vocal about his opposition to the stimulus, but now that this view has proven to be unpopular in our state he’s modified his stance. That’s not going to work with voters in 2010. The only thing we need to know from Mr. Barrett is whether or not he supports Gov. Sanford’s rejection of $700 million in stimulus funds primarily dedicated to public education. Decisions need to be made quickly to avert thousands of teacher layoffs and other deep cuts in our schools. South Carolinians don’t want or need another Republican governor who’s willing to play politics with the lives of real people.”

Maybe some of y’all could explain this to me: Why would Democrats resent Gresham Barrett, who had opposed the stimulus, now helping local governments get their share? Don’t they want him to do that? Or is criticizing a member of the other party SO important to partisans that they have to criticize the guy as “hypocritical” when he tries to do the right thing? In other words, is hitting the other side more important than S.C. communities getting the benefit of the stimulus.

It’s not even inconsistent. As rational people keep pointing out, the stimulus debate is over. Now it’s time to make sure that South Carolina gets its share of something that South Carolinians will have to pay for whether we get the benefit or not. This is obvious to rational people, whatever party label they wear — unless they are one of the dwindling band of Sanfordistas.

Those of you who have trouble understanding me when I talk about how parties foment conflict purely for the sake of conflict, see if you can understand me now. This is what I’ve been on about. Yeah, I agree that we don’t need another governor, of any party, “who’s willing to play politics with the lives of real people.” But isn’t that what you’re doing when you place criticizing the opposition ahead of making sure everybody’s on board in getting the stimulus funds to real people in SC?

Meanwhile, over in the real world…

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.