Yearly Archives: 2009

Time-Warner spins off AOL, restoring order to the universe

Did you see this news?

Time Warner to spin off AOL, ending ill-fated deal

By RACHEL METZ – AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK — Time Warner Inc. is dumping AOL after spending nearly a decade trying to build a new-age media empire only to wind up in a weaker position than when the marriage began.

The divorce, announced Thursday, will spin out AOL as a separate company run by former Google Inc. advertising executive Tim Armstrong. He was hired in March to try to restore the luster to a brand once known as America Online.

Although AOL has been eclipsed by Google and other Internet stars, Armstrong still can try to build on a wide-reaching online ad network as well as AOL’s Web sites, which remain a relatively big draw.

I’ve always looked at the deal where AOL essentially bought Time-Warner as the ultimate example of the Dot.Com bubble’s madness. And this isn’t me as an old-media guy being phobic about new media. The problem was that AOL was lame new media. I mean, AOL wasn’t anywhere near the cutting edge of dot.com at the time, but rather a relic of the early dialup days of the PC. It was, as I recall, actually sort of late to the Web.

And here it was swallowing Time-Life and Warner Brothers and cable TV and all those old media giants, which still had demonstrable value. It just didn’t make any kind of sense.

And now, for some time, Time-Warner has been trying to rid itself of the death-grip of AOL. Which for me, sort of restores some order to the universe.

Why not a Mentat for the court?

Folks, I’ve got nothing against Sonia Sotomayor so far. Still gathering info, in an offhand, passive sort of way. She seems to have really nice teeth. The NYT reports that her rulings “Are Exhaustive but Often Narrow.” Narrow sounds good. They say she saved Major-League Baseball. That’s good, right?

But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not liking all this human-interest, fuzzy-wuzzy stuff I keep hearing. Nor do I like the rather blatant Identity Politics language, of which even the judge herself has been guilty:

Judge Sotomayor has said that “our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.” In a lecture in 2001 on the role her background played in her jurisprudence, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

You see, I’ve got this thing about the Rule of Law. The law should be no respecter of persons. We should be a nation of laws, not of men. Or women. In other words, who you are and what the law is are two entirely different things, and no one should be more cognizant of that than a Supreme Court Justice. Respect for that notion ought to be right up there at the top of the job description.

So yeah, I’ve got a problem with this. And it’s reinforced by the fact that President Obama himself indicated that HE would be looking for something other than someone who objectively ruled on the law. I wrote about how that was really starting to disturb me right before the election. (A lot of you thought that column was just about abortion — a problem which I attribute to the tragic way that abortion has distorted our political discourse. But it was about much broader concepts.) An excerpt from what I wrote at the time:

Sen. Obama seems to judge court rulings based more on their policy effects than on legal reasoning. In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he wrote, “The answers I find in law books don’t always satisfy me — for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed.” That hinted to me that he cares more about good outcomes than law. But I forgot about it until I heard him say in the debate that “I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.” That third qualification disturbed me because it seemed to demand a political sensibility on the part of judges, but I wasn’t sure.

And now here we are — with a nominee who is not embarrassed to say such things as what I quoted above. And I have a problem with this.

Which, I know, puts me on the “right” side of the left-right wars on this one. And you know how I hate being on either side, but it happens.

That said, I’ve seen nothing yet that would keep me from voting to confirm her were I a senator. Why, you ask? Because, unlike the president, I don’t consider this touchy-feely biography-as-qualification stuff to be important enough to make up my mind either way. It’s peripheral. The point is, is she a good judge, which is something that is entirely independent of how she feels about herself as a Latina, or how the president resonates to that.

And yes, I know that to many liberals, this makes me sound like, at best, a cold fish. But folks, the law is a cold-fish thing, if it’s going to be fair. It’s about the intellect, not the emotions. My liberal friends, do you want Roberts or Scalia or Thomas ruling on the basis of how they feel about things, or on the basis of the law? That’s what I thought.

Maybe the ideal judge would be a Mentat, as imagined by Frank Herbert (or, to a lesser extent, a Bene Gesserit, who are also trained to override their emotions). Or Robert Heinlein’s Fair Witnesses. Of course, maybe the fact that my examples come from science fiction is an indication that such intellectual rigor and cool objectivity is impossible in the real world. Maybe.

But at least it ought to be an ideal that we strive for, rather than celebrating the possibility that a judge would rule on the basis of how he or she feels, or what groups they might identify — which frankly, as a believer in the Rule of Law, I find disturbing.

My former employer is having me followed

Not sure what to make of this.

One of the pleasures — for a megalomaniac — of Twitter is that instead of having “friends” (and I’ve never quite gotten the meaning of the word as Facebook uses it), you have “followers.” My number of followers has been steadily, but gradually, growing since I signed up over the weekend. Each one makes me feel slightly more powerful and influential, just because of the word.

But what am I to make of my 26th follower?

The State Newspaper (thestate) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Not Warren or Cindi or even Mark Lett, or Gary Ward with thestate.com. No, the institution itself. Its icon is an extreme closeup of the paper’s nameplate.

Of course, you know that I’ve always loved Big Brother. Even ex-Big Brother.

I guess I should deal with this by following it right back, huh?

Nothing to say, but it’s OK

Folks on Twitter and elsewhere are going on about various filings in the stimulus lawsuits, and posting serious info, such as this on Facebook from Jim Rex:

Rex agrees that governor should adhere to state budget that employs federal funds
Today at 2:12pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, May 26, 2009

COLUMBIA – State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex today agreed with the key points in a lawsuit that seeks to compel Governor Mark Sanford to accept federal stimulus funds aimed at helping schools and law enforcement agencies hit with massive budget cuts.

The South Carolina Association of School Administrators filed the suit Friday after Sanford said he would refuse to obey the General Assembly’s state budget, which requires him to accept $350 million in federal stabilization funds. Although SCASA listed both Sanford and Rex as defendants, the association said Rex’s inclusion was a legal technicality because the state budget’s language tells him to work with the governor in applying for the federal funds.

In his response filed today, Rex agreed with SCASA that the General Assembly’s budget for next year is a valid law that the governor is required to follow. Rex also said that his agency had completed the official application for the federal funds and that he had signed and delivered it to the governor for his signature.

In an optional filing, Rex also petitioned the South Carolina Supreme Court to accept the SCASA lawsuit under its “original jurisdiction,”
meaning that it should bypass lower courts and go directly to the state’s highest court for a decision.

“It’s important that we have a quick ruling because July 1 is the deadline for South Carolina to apply for the stabilization dollars,” Rex said. “South Carolina taxpayers are going to have to pay back this $350 million regardless, so it should be spent here in South Carolina.”

Two additional lawsuits were filed late last week over the federal stabilization dollars. In the first, filed last Wednesday, Sanford asked a federal court to invalidate the General Assembly’s budget because, in requiring that he accept the funds, legislators had usurped his authority. A second lawsuit, filed in state court Friday by a Chapin High School senior and a University of South Carolina law student, seeks to require Sanford to accept the funds. Rex was not listed as a defendant in either of those actions.

Today is the deadline set by the General Assembly for Sanford to apply for the federal stabilization funds, but the governor has indicated that he will refuse because he believes the budget law is unconstitutional.

That release is probably courtesy of my friend Jim Foster, last heard saying “Woo-hoo” in response to the stimulus veto override. (That was it, just “Woo-hoo,” unless the paper got it wrong. Interestingly, the link to that quote no longer exists.)

But I just don’t have anything to say about all the legal back-and-forth. I’ve said so much about the whole stimulus issue, that there’s nothing new to say. Good thing I’m not a lawyer being paid to file briefs in the case, because I’d just say, “The governor has no clothes,” and there go my billable hours.

So while everyone else is eagerly perusing the legal documents, I’m like…

A Mrs. Sotomayor was my teacher in the 5th grade in Ecuador. I had a crush on her. Probably not the same one.

… over on Twitter. Perhaps I lack seriousness. But really, I’ve just reached my saturation point on all these ridiculous gyrations our governor is forcing us all to go through. I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s OK. Tweet me when it’s over.

How do they get away with this?

nondairy

As you know, I’m extremely allergic to milk and all products derived from it. Fortunately, I learned long ago not to believe products that claim to be non-dairy. But not everyone is hip to that.

And in this era in which — and I’m very grateful for this — allergens have to be clearly pointed out on food labels, I have to wonder how a product gets away with that claim, when the evidence to the contrary is so clearly laid out.

Check this container I picked up at a local restaurant today. It blithely claims, in all-cap letters, to be “NON-DAIRY CREAMER.” smallnodairyThen, in letters that an awful lot of people my age can’t read, it acknowledges that it contains “Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative).” The image at right, by the way, is approximately the actual size.

Then, at the end, still in tiny letters (although now slightly boldfaced), it says “Contains: Milk.”

Duh.

So how does it get to say “NON-DAIRY CREAMER” in much bigger letters? How does either the government or the marketplace let it get away with that? There is no way, in any rational way of looking at things, that something that “Contains: Milk” is “NON-DAIRY.” No way at all. Total contradiction.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Meanwhile, in parts of the world where stuff still happens

Perhaps all hell is about to break loose because I’m writing this (if so, I apologize), but this has been a particularly news-free holiday weekend. I’ve seen nothing in S.C. or nationally worth commenting on. Imagine my dismay after spending 75 cents on the paper this morning.

But one advantage to these periods of quiet is that they make it slightly more likely that we in this self-absorbed nation might notice what’s going on elsewhere, such as:

  • Iran shutting down Facebook to try to stack an election in Ahmadinejad’s favor (which is a bad thing, my facetious comment on Twitter notwithstanding).
  • North Korea setting off another, much bigger, nuke. (And we might as well pay attention to them for doing so, since that is largely why they did it. If we ignore them, they’ll just set off a bigger one, or at least try.)
  • Sikhs rioting in India over an incident of violence in Vienna. (Odd how people — and obviously, not just Muslims — do that in that part of the world. It makes you wonder about how they perceive cause and effect. What effect do you suppose the rioters expect they will have, and upon whom?)

Interesting thing about that last item: It underlines that in other parts of the world, people DO pay attention to what happens elsewhere, even if their response seem irrational by Western norms. For instance, while I don’t expect Christians here to riot about anti-Christian violence elsewhere — I certainly hope they won’t anyway — one wonders if they’re even aware when such things happen. Call the rioters beknighted if you will, but at least they have a sort of rudimentary international awareness that we tend to lack.

One reason I like to read The Economist and other Brit publications is because they do tell us about the rest of the world, and not just on news-free weekends, but all the time. American publications downplay the international stuff, or ignore it altogether, for the simple fact that their audiences are uninterested.

Oh, we pay attention to a briefly riveting pirate drama, or a famine with dramatic pictures of babies with swollen bellies, and other things that portray the rest of the world as unappetizing places we’d just as soon avoid. But we miss the routine, and therefore lack context when problems do occur. Doubt me? OK, ask the next person you meet on the street who the president of Mexico is, or which party leads the governing coalition in Canada, or to name four European heads of state.

I’m not sneering. Those would be tough for me, too (I can name 3 Europeans — Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel — but I said 4 because that exceeded my own grasp, without looking it up). We’re just a very insular people.

A sort of lame version of haiku

While my main motive in getting a Twitter account was to promote the blog, I confess to be slightly seduced by the thing itself, as it is slightly fun to try to express something in that straitened form.

Sort of like a cheesy, less-demanding form of haiku.

Here’s what I’ve posted today while I was not blogging:

Cap City closed. Lizard’s Thicket instead. Monday paper $.75. (Paper free at Club). Poor me.

Oppressive Iran regime shuts down Facebook. Oppressive regimes not all bad.

Happy Yankee Memorial Day, y’all! (Six days early, that is…)

Walking across the Horseshoe, thinking, “Could this weather be more perfect?” Even in coat and tie…

Starbucks again. Have to. I do a meeting or two in the a.m. these days, and I’m wiped. PTSD or something.

Yep, it’s insipid, but you can see me trying to post an actual thought there on the Iran thing. Hey, I didn’t say it was profound; but it was a thought.

And I’m actually kind of worried about the Starbucks thing. I posted from there yesterday as well:

I’m at Starbucks now. Got a refill and I’m watching the rain. Is this tedious enough for y’all yet?

Actually, waiting for this cup to cool a bit, feeling the 1st one, watching the rain is sort of beautiful.

I can sort of see why the heathen spend their Sundays this way. An alternative way to keep it holy, perhaps…

(…or is that rank heresy, may God forgive me yet again?) Must go now…

Is it cheating to do multiple tweets in a row like that? Am I failing to preserve the unities? Do I care?

I don’t know why I get so tired by mid-afternoon every day. When I w0rked at the paper, I’d go for 12 hours without feeling a thing. I think it’s more tiring just to do different stuff every day, and to have one’s future so uncertain. Probably good for me in the long run, though. I hope. Don’t new challenges help us stave off Alzheimer’s?

I surrender to Twitter

OK, I did it. I signed up for Twitter. After months of dismissing and abusing the very notion of it, I gave in yesterday and signed up.

The last straw was that Tim Kelly told me last week that you could arrange it so that when you post on your blog, the headline goes out on Twitter. Haven’t figured out how to do that yet, but seems like it would be pretty cool. He said there’s also something clever I could do with Facebook vis-a-vis the blog.

I need to either get serious about this blog — fix up the appearance, promote it more, and most of all post more often — or give it up. As I’ve mentioned before, I actually find it harder to blog without full-time, permanent employment. As busy as I was at the paper, I was sitting at a computer (actually, two computers, or even three if you count the Blackberry) for about 12 hours a day, and I could post any time things slowed down a bit — when I was waiting for copy, or for somebody to call me back, or for proofs, or whatever. I had to go through tons of e-mail each day, and frequently things that came over the transom that way made for quick-and-easy blog fodder.

Now, as I run hither and yon trying to earn a living, I might have ideas for blog posts, but I don’t have time to sit and write them. I need to either figure a way to do that, or the blog’s gonna die on me.

Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me thus far. And suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Hey, folks, can’t you talk about this on a BLOG?

Y’all know how dismissive I was about Facebook a few months ago. Still am, to a great extent. It just seems like a lousy way to communicate, compared to blogs. I mean, I’m ADD enough without constantly being interrupted by the face that someone I knew 30 years ago is going to the supermarket today, or some such. And Twitter is worse, in this regard.

But now I see that Facebook is capable of fostering sustained thought, and serious discussion. This is a revelation to me. But I find myself wondering: Why not just have this discussion on a blog? After all, that’s where it started, with this item by Adam Beam on The State‘s “Metro Desk” blog:

For $250, you can be Charles Austin’s friend

The Columbia Urban League is hosting a retirement tribute for former Columbia City Manager Charles Austin June 15 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

The Urban League is sending out letters to community leaders, asking them to join the “Sponsorship” category with a $1,000 donation. The money gets you a nod in the program and eight reserved seats. Donors of at least $250 become “Friends of Charles Austin” and get two tickets.

The money, according to the letter, will support youth leadership programs at the Columbia Urban League.

Austin served as Columbia’s police chief for more than a decade before becoming Columbia’s City Manager in 2003. He retired in January after one of the worst budgeting crisis in the city’s history. He will remain on the city’s payroll as a consultant through June 30.

That fostered a Facebook discussion of admirable depth and seriousness, with none of the pointless digressions that you find too often in the blogosphere. Maybe it’s the nature of the Facebook community, being based however losely on the concept of “friends” rather than random strangers. I don’t know. In fact, I don’t even know if y’all can go read it unless you’re “friends” with these particular people. I suppose I could copy the whole discussion here, but it’s really long.

Here’s a sample, from our own Kathryn Braun Fenner, that illustrates how this discussion dealt with some pretty sensitive topics with both frankness and civility:

I have already come perilously close to being seen as racist, if not having crossed that line, when I have suggested in the past that some of the black community’s emperors have no clothes. Perhaps it would be better heard from someone with darker skin.

I believe the way to progress as a multi-racial society is to move toward colorblindness–judging on the content of character, etc., and that cuts both ways. I support some affirmative action, but only insofar as it does not “Peter Principle” unqualified people into places where they merely reinforce truly racist perceptions. [See, e.g., Charles Austin]

The mostly white power elite know what the deal is–they are paying “tribute” fees to the black power elite. Nelson Mullins wants to show off that it is a Platinum level sponsor while Parker Poe only ponied up Gold level, ergo, Nelson Mullins is the friend of the black man (!). Like I said, there are some talented African-Americans who have achieved a great deal against not insignificant odds, like some of us in this discussion, who are never feted in these events. Then there are the usual suspects.

Harrumph.

Other participants include Kevin Alexander Gray, Bob Amundson, Rhett Anders, Debbie McDaniel, Dan Cook, You, Iris W. Olulenu, Aiyetoro Laura Olulenu, Ernest Wiggins and Catherine Fleming Bruce.

Mind you, I’m not endorsing all the opinions expressed in the discussion. It’s dismissively harsh toward my friends with Columbia Urban League (I was on the board for 10 years). And once or twice it’s too harsh toward Charles Austin, who is a really good guy, but a terrible city manager. But his honor is quite eloquently defended, also — without blinking at his failures running the city. On that point, here’s Kathryn again:

Whoa–what do you mean Charlie doesn’t have any honor left?!?!?

He didn’t steal. He didn’t lie. He didn’t commit any crimes or ethical violations. He just was too nice to fire incompetent people, and didn’t know what he was doing. He tried to “live” his faith, and found that you can’t run, or at least he couldn’t run, a city like a Sunday School. I think that’s plenty honorable.

…and how exactly are we going to hold “folks accountable at the ballot box”? I’m not going to vote for Joe Azar over Bob Coble. Steve Benjamin has payday lender issues and hasn’t formally announced yet. Who’s running against Sam, and is it right to kick him out? Tameika is up, too–is she responsible? Who’s running against her–someone better?

Charlie was accountable and he resigned. Pretty honorable all told. Not perfect, could have done it sooner, should have done it sooner, but he did ultimately do the right thing. He’s essentially getting severance, which is dubious under current conditions especially, but not unwarranted under the circumstances of his long, and for the most part, excellent service. He basically deserved and got an honorable discharge. Being promoted beyond your competence and doing your best, honestly, and failing, is not in any way dishonorable!

He didn’t even torture anybody!

So it’s a good discussion all around.

And what I want to know is, why didn’t this discussion happen on a blog?

Running out the clock

One more thing to share about the stimulus issue today…

This morning, I ran into Hugh Leatherman, and he pointed out something I had not thought of: I had assumed, like many others, that the reason Mark Sanford went to federal court instead of state court is that he was pretty sure a state court would rule against him.

Sen. Leatherman proposed another motive: He said that filing in federal court automatically gives the governor 30 days before anything can happen, thereby running out the clock on the Legislature’s requirement that he draw down the stimulus money within 5 days. I said, “Doesn’t he have to get an injunction or something from the court to get that delay?” The Senate Finance Chairman said no, that it was automatic.

Huh. Is that right? Maybe some of our lawyer friends can weigh in here…

What do you mean, “we,” white man?

Did you notice that as he got to be more and more alone on the stimulus issue, Mark Sanford resorted more and more to the royal “we” in referring to himself? An example from earlier this week:

“We know a suit will be filed against us on this issue, and as such we’ve filed a suit tonight in response,” Sanford said in a prepared statement. “We believe the Legislature’s end-around move won’t pass constitutional muster.”

Note that this odd locution was in a prepared statement, so it’s not like he just misspoke. I’ve noticed the governor doing this before, but he seems to have stepped it up this week.

The ultimate was this jarring construction in a quote from yesterday:

“This is about the larger question of why have a governor if their hands are constantly tied?”

Note the innovation here — even though he’s speaking of himself in the third person, he shifts from A governor to THEIR hands without pausing for breath. This takes the art of self-pluralization to a whole new level.

Our governor are remarkable that way.

Sanford, McConnell agree on one thing: It’s about power

When I read the lead story in today’s paper, I was struck by the headline, “Sanford: Stimulus suit about power, not money.”

What struck me was that that was exactly what Glenn McConnell said about the dispute, that it was all about power.

Usually, when McConnell and Sanford square off on gubernatorial power, I’m on the governor’s side. I’m speaking of his efforts to gain for the chief executive the actual executive powers that the other 49 governors in the nation wield, so that the governor’s office has a chance to be both effective and accountable. McConnell has been a champion of those resisting that since at least the Campbell administration. And of all those who resist it, he probably has the clearest notion why: He is jealous of senatorial power.

But the governor’s arguments in this case are patently ridiculous. Even if we got everything that he and I want in the way of restructuring, the legislature would still be (and should be) the entity that appropriates money, and it would still have the power to override gubernatorial vetoes with a two-thirds majority.

The line-item veto is one area where the governor has all the power he needs (more than the president of the U.S., for instance). And to have his way, all he has to do is make a sufficiently reasonable argument that a third of lawmakers go along with him. That’s really not an onerous provision for the governor — unless he’s Mark Sanford, and he has thrown away every opportunity he might have had to get as many as a third of lawmakers to listen to him.

McConnell gets way harsh on the gov

Thought you might be interested in this release from Glenn McConnell. Several points I’ll make about it:

  • First, I don’t often see dramatic political statements from McConnell. He’s generally not one for public posturing in this particular way.
  • What you see here is a particularly articulate expression of the extreme frustration that lawmakers have experienced with this governor. Sen. McConnell is fully fed up, and expresses why in no uncertain terms.
  • McConnell is one of the most ardent libertarians in the General Assembly. It’s one thing for Bobby Harrell or Hugh Leatherman to be fed up with our anti-government governor, but a libertarian really has to try to turn the Senate President Pro Tempore against him to this extent.
  • That said, Sen. McConnell is a passionate defender of legislative prerogatives and state’s rights, which makes the statement a little less remarkable. But only a little.

Anyway, here’s the statement:

SC Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell Responds to Governor’s Lawsuit
McConnell: “Governor asks federal judge to usurp states’ rights in quest for more power”

Columbia, SC – May 21, 2009 – South Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell today issued the following statement in response to Governor Mark Sanford’s lawsuit:

“Governor Sanford says this court case is about the “balance of power.” The truth is that this case is about his power. The Governor wants more of it, and he’s willing to trample over states’ rights to get it. He has run to the federal courts asking them to reinterpret our state Constitution so as to give him powers not granted to him by the people of South Carolina. While we have debated the 10th Amendment, little did we know the Governor was conspiring to ride over it in the federal courts.

For seven years Governor Mark Sanford has worked tirelessly to increase his power and the scope of South Carolina’s executive branch of government. While working to centralize power under one individual, the Governor has continuously attacked the General Assembly for what he describes as liberal tendencies.  Never before have I witnessed such hypocrisy as I did today when Governor Sanford asked a federal judge to usurp South Carolina’s rights.

Whether the stimulus money should have been appropriated by the United State Congress was a federal matter. But the question of separation of powers involves the duties of the executive and legislative branches of government as prescribed by the South Carolina Constitution. As such, the rightful arbiter is the South Carolina Supreme Court. Either he is fearful of a South Carolina court ruling or he is playing to a national audience.

I disagree with Congress’ stimulus plan, but I know that it’s fiscally irresponsible to let South Carolina tax dollars go to other states while we struggle to fund education and public safety at appropriate levels. We have received clarification from the United States Department of Education that if we do not formally apply for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund Program by July 1st, our stimulus funds will be allocated to other states. Governor Sanford’s move may ensure that our tax dollars will be caught up in legal proceedings for what could be up to two years. He may have finally found a way to send our tax dollars to New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Michigan. Governor Sanford’s lawsuit is an irresponsible move that tramples on the South Carolina Constitution and the future prosperity of our taxpayers.

South Carolinians need to know that Governor Sanford has already politically left this state, sometimes physically, but always mentally. This is just another press stunt to put him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and in front of Fox News cameras. Governor Sanford’s presidential aspirations and hunger for power are so strong that he is willing to put South Carolina’s future at risk. This lawsuit is a gift that keeps on giving – giving the Governor out-of-state headlines and giving South Carolinians uncertainty and discord.

As the elected voice of South Carolina’s taxpayers, the General Assembly has stated that Governor Sanford should now take all stimulus funds available for appropriation. Sadly, I believe that the end result of this lawsuit may be that on July 1, the people of South Carolina will be left with nothing but the bill. “
###
** This press release is sent on behalf of South Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell

See what I mean?

Why the good falls with the bad

Cindi Scoppe’s column today about Mark Sanford’s “good vetoes” makes an excellent point. Many of his vetoes as governor have truly been about good and smart government, and have tried to undo some of the General Assembly’s more objectionable excesses.

Unfortunately, the governor has generated so much bad blood between himself and lawmakers — and damaged his credibility outside the State House with such wrongheaded moves as trying to block the stimulus — that he’s made it much, much easier for lawmakers to brush him off, even when he’s right.

Some who still defend the governor believe this is not his fault, that it’s all the fault of those wicked, wasteful lawmakers. And indeed, legislators give such critics ammunition when they reject even the governor’s demonstrably good ideas.

But the sad truth is — and it IS  a sad truth to someone who initially was a Sanford supporter, as I was — that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure his own ineffectiveness in dealing with the Legislature across the board. However wasteful or foolish you may think lawmakers as a group are (and Lord knows they give plenty of opportunities for you to draw that conclusion), the fact is that the Republican leaders would love to have worked with a governor of their own party to achieve his agenda, even when it wasn’t theirs. It’s in their nature, whatever their flaws.

Cindi does a pretty decent job of explaining how that happened, although you had to be there watching closely to fully get the degree to which he has spoiled his opportunities:

Unfortunately, the Legislature dealt with his 2004 vetoes in a most irresponsible way (overriding 105 of 106 of them in 90 minutes, before most legislators even had a chance to hear his arguments), which prompted his even more-irresponsible response (carrying two squealing, defecating piglets into the State House in a made-for-TV protest), which made legislators even more angry, which made the governor even more provocative, which made legislators even more determined to ignore him, which made him even less concerned about making nice — or acting responsibly — which prompted legislators to not just ignore him but punish him, which ….

You get the point. And all of that was before he united just about the entire Legislature — Republican and Democrat and, more significantly, House and Senate — in seething opposition to his campaign to reject federal stimulus funding unless it is used to not stimulate the economy.

And let me tell you, it’s one thing to unite Democrat and Republican. Uniting the House and the Senate against you takes real talent for p0litical self-destruction, bordering on genius.

The result is that the governor’s good ideas get swept away with the bad, and that truly is a shame.

“Good tired”

This evening, I dropped by another one of those events like this one. It was a fund-raiser for Anton Gunn over at the Inn at USC.

Anyway, I did the usual thing of chatting with several folks (Bud and Julia Ferillo, Trip King, Ann Timberlake) and then ducking out. But as I was leaving something hit me. I saw Bud walking out ahead of me and I called to him and said, “Uh… did you see Anton in there?” No, he hadn’t. But he said that was because the House was still in session. This was coming up on 6:30 p.m.

I thought about that for a second and observed to Bud that overriding all those Mark Sanford vetoes can be tiring work. Bud said he supposed so, but he bet it was “a good tired.”

Indeed. If lawmakers get that done, and get us the stimulus money and so forth, it will be a good day’s work.

Thanks, Senator Courson!

Back in my newsroom days, probably the most valuable and jealously guarded thing on my desk was my Legislative Manual. As the gummint editor, I had occasion to use it often, and if you weren’t careful it had a way of walking off. So I wrote WARTHEN in heavy block letters on the edges of the pages on three sides, so that I could easily spot it wherever it went.

Anyway, even though I can now get access to most of that info via my Blackberry from the Legislature’s Web site, it’s still a handy thing to have on your desk or in your pocket. And I’d been missing the fact that I didn’t have an up-to-date one. In fact, I was thinking about how I’d like to have one just yesterday.

Sen. John Courson must have been reading my mind, because I got a small-but-bulky package in the mail from him today at my home address, and lo and behold, he had sent me a new 2009 Legislative Manual! He’s never done that before, and what possessed him to do it now, I don’t know. But I was certainly glad to get it.

So now, I’m going to start concentrating real hard on how much I want a permanent, full-time job with benefits, and see if the good senator can send me one of those in the mail. It would probably take a pretty big envelope… But in case he can’t swing that, in the meantime I truly appreciate the Manual.

Blessed are the poor…

… because they give more generously than the rich, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Did you see that story?

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America’s households contributed an average of 4.3 percent of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1 percent.

The figures probably undercount remittances by legal and illegal immigrants to family and friends back home, a multibillion-dollar outlay to which the poor contribute disproportionally.

None of the middle fifths of America’s households, in contrast, gave away as much as 3 percent of their incomes.

Did this surprise you? It didn’t me — at least, not after I thought about it for a moment. It’s the identification thing. The more affluent one is, the more likely one is to think of the poor as the “other,” to think of poverty as “a way you’ll never be.” This can lead one to think there must be something wrong with the poor on a moral level — that they’re lazy and just don’t try or whatever.

Not that I’m a paragon of sensitivity or anything, but I’ve never had that attitude, mainly because God blessed me with a tendency toward depression. He’s given me a taste of what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and unable to meet the challenges before me. Just a taste, mind you — I always manage to cope, and have never had that crippling kind of despondency that keeps people in their beds. But I’ve seen through that door, and I can easily see how dysfunctional I’d be if I’d never been successful at anything, had no education, no home, no real prospects. In fact, it causes me to marvel that people who are down and out manage to do ANYTHING, as so very many do.

So I didn’t really need to get laid off to see into the abyss, but now that I’ve had THAT experience, and am still having that experience — no permanent, full-time job with benefits at hand yet — I’m less likely than ever to be dismissive of the plight of the poor.

That AP story raised another interesting explanation for the relative generosity of the poor:

Herbert Smith, 31, a Seventh-day Adventist who said he tithed his $1,010 monthly disability check — giving away 10 percent of it — thought that poor people give more because, in some ways, they worry less about their money.

“We’re not scared of poverty the way rich people are,” he said. “We know how to get the lights back on when we can’t pay the electric bill.”

Now there’s an instance in which I do suffer from a malady of the bourgeois: I do have that middle-class horror of not being able to pay the bills. The prospect, which gets closer each day that I don’t have a steady job, is more than a little appalling. There’s that middle-class voice in my head that goes, “The electricity turned off? OHmyGod, NO!” Whereas Herbert takes it in stride, and keeps on giving.

Which ought to teach us something.

So how should I act now?

Sunday afternoon, I dropped by a fund-raising reception for Vincent Sheheen‘s gubernatorial campaign, just to check it out the way I always do.

It was at the Hunter-Gatherer. Kevin Varner from that establishment was my fellow guest on “Whad’Ya Know?” several weeks ago, and I told him then that I’d never been to the place but intended to do so sometime. This seemed like a good chance to follow through on that.

So I did what I usually do at such events — breeze by the sign-in table and start chatting with the guests, without signing in, and without making a contribution. Because I’m press. That is, I WAS press, for my whole adult life until very recently. Now, the closest thing I am to “press” is that I’m a blogger. But it feels natural to keep going to events such as this one for various candidates so I can keep up with what’s going on. After all, over the four years since I started blogging, I’ve gone to such events primarily as a blogger, not as an editorial page editor. So what’s different now?

I don’t know, but I recognize the potential for awkwardness. For instance, the next day I saw Boyd Summers at Rotary, and he mentioned seeing me at the Sheheen thing, and said isn’t it great that now that I’m not an editor, I can “do things like that.” Obviously, he thought I was there to be involved, that I was declaring my support for Vincent by being there. Which I wasn’t, so I set him straight on that. (Incidentally, I also saw Boyd at the “tea party” protest recently, and he didn’t assume I was supporting that, so what’s the diff? I was reminded of that yesterday when someone on Facebook called my attention to this picture of me and Boyd at that event. If you follow that link you’ll see that someone mistakenly identified Boyd as Mark Quinn from ETV.)

Anyway, I had a nice time for the half hour I was there (and yes, you CAN have a nice time even if you’re actually working). Had a pleasant chat with Vincent’s wife, Amy. We talked about the pope and other Catholic stuff for awhile. Then I excused myself, explaining that I was going to see “Star Trek” with my younger son, and she totally understood, because she and Vincent went to see “Star Trek” for their anniversary.

Anyway, others who were there included James Smith, Joel Lourie, Vincent’s dad Fred and others whom you would expect to find there. Maybe 30 people. I don’t know if there were speeches, because I left so soon.

But I had to wonder — did anyone else there make the mistake Boyd made? And how can I prevent that? Should I wear a sign that says, “I’m Just Blogging,” in letters big enough to be seen across the room? Or should I simply not go to political events? If so, how do I write about them? How do I have those critical casual conversations with people, the kind where you find out what’s really going on (as opposed to those stiff, “I’m calling you up to interview you” conversations)? Do I have to rely entirely on running into them by chance at Starbucks? I don’t mind, but as a strategy, that seem iffy.

Anyway, I’m still figuring out this “I used to be a newspaperman, but not any more” thing.

“Star Trek” was really good, by the way.

Little-noticed stimulus development

harpo

Yesterday, I stopped by the Starbucks on Gervais for some afternoon coffee. There are sometimes closer places to get coffee, but I’ll go out of my way to go to this one. In this case, I even walked several blocks in coat and tie in the 83-degree sunshine, which caused me to make a note to myself to tell Mayor Bob that there are portions of our city streets that could use more shade trees.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The reason I go there for coffee even if it’s slightly out of my way is that I always run into somebody I haven’t seen in a while, and frequently learn something interesting. In this case, I ran into Dick Harpootlian (shown above at the Stephen Colbert event back in October 2007). Dick, as you will recall, was last seen in the company of Dwight Drake filing the lawsuit for that high school girl about the stimulus. You know, the suit that was thrown out, but with wording that sort of provided a road map for how to make sure South Carolina gets the stimulus money in spite of He Who Must Not Be Named (I say that because some of y’all say I write critical things about him too often).

Anyway, Dick says that he had a hand in the resolution that the Senate passed Wednesday. Dick says merely passing the budget that spends the stimulus money wasn’t enough. He said this resolution was needed to actually request the money, going around the governor, thereby putting the governor in the position of having to sue to get his way, instead of the other way around.

Dick said he called his old buddy Jake Knotts — at which point he paused to let me say, Your old buddy who once threw you over a counter at the solicitor’s office, to which Dick says he merely TRIED to throw him over the counter. Actually, they are friends now, though. Anyway, Jake said Hold on, and put Glenn McConnell on the line. McConnell apparently liked the resolution idea, and then so did Hugh Leatherman, so it was quickly drawn up and passed by both Houses. The speed and ease with which that happened is sort of remarkable in itself.

Anyway, I nodded sagaciously through all this, but the fact is, I was thinking, “What resolution?” I had not heard or read about it. If it was in the paper, I missed it. I did find this reference to it at thestate.com:

SC Legislature approves stimulus resolution

The Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina legislators have approved a resolution that might help them deal with legal challenges that could arise in forcing Gov. Mark Sanford to request $700 million in federal stimulus cash.

The House adopted the measure on a voice vote with no debate Thursday. The Senate had approved the measure Wednesday after sending Sanford a $5.6 billion budget that requires him to request the money.

The resolution says the Legislature accepts the money under provisions in the $787 billion federal stimulus legislation.

Legislators say the measure would help them defend taking the money if a lawsuit is filed.

I don’t know whether this development will prove significant as this unfolds or not, but I thought I’d mention it.

When Obama and Graham agree, so do I

For some time, I’ve had a sort of axiom I’ve more or less lived by: If John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are for it, I probably am, too. If I find myself disagreeing with those three guys (not that I ever do, but theoretically), I need to look at the issue a little harder.

Admittedly, getting McCain and Graham to agree is not much of a standard to meet. They’re sort of joined at the hip, policywise. But if Lieberman is on board, you’ve met a higher test. Mind you, if it’s just one or the other, I might not be on board. For instance, I don’t think Joe agreed with McCain about picking Sarah Palin, so bad call there. And I don’t agree with Lieberman on abortion. But if they agree, it’s probably a good call.

And now I’ve got a corollary to that: If Graham and Obama agree, so do I. I sort of indicated that in a column back just after the election (and went into more detail about it on my old blog). And here’s a fresh instance of the phenomenon:

Graham Applauds President Obama’s Decision to Use Military Commissions to Try Terror Suspects

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement on the decision by President Obama to use military commissions to try terror suspects.

“I support President Obama’s decision to seek a further stay of military commission trials.  Today’s action will afford us the opportunity to reform the military commission system and produce a comprehensive policy regarding present and future detainees.

“In my first meeting with then President-elect Obama in Chicago in December 2008, we discussed a path forward for Guantanamo detainees.  I appreciated the opportunity to meet with him and focus on the types of reforms that would protect our national security interests and help repair the damage done to our nation’s image.  I continue to believe it is in our own national security interests to separate ourselves from the past problems of Guantanamo.

“Since that initial meeting I have personally met with the President on two occasions and with his staff numerous times to discuss detention policy.  Our meetings have covered a wide range of topics including the various ways we could improve the military commission system to ideas on establishing a proper and appropriate oversight role for the federal courts.

“I have had extensive discussions with military commanders and other Department of Defense officials about the overall benefit to the war effort of reforming our nation’s detainee policies.  The commanders believe a reformed system would be beneficial to the war effort as long as such a system is national security-centric.

“Detainee policy is very complex.  The President wants to collaborate with Congress to reform detainee policy and we should use this additional time to come up with a sensible national security policy regarding terror suspects.

“I believe a comprehensive plan should be in place before Guantanamo is closed.

“I also believe that no detainees should be released into the United States.  Detainees determined by the military or a federal judge to no longer be held as enemy combatants should be transferred to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security pending their transfer to another country.

“I agree with the President and our military commanders that now is the time to start over and strengthen our detention policies. I applaud the President’s actions.”

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Good call there, fellas. I agree.