Today I received a string of “Password Lost and Changed for user” messages from WordPress, all involving blog regulars.
Is there a problem? Are folks getting kicked off the blog and having to re-register? Or are y’all just forgetting your passwords?
If there IS a problem, I may not be able to fix it right away — there is a lot I have yet to understand about WordPress — but I can try…
By the way, on the subject of Dems running for governor, I got this release today from Mullins McLeod, which says in part:
In order to clamp down on politics-as-usual in the governor’s office, Mullins McLeod has made the following pledge to the people of South Carolina.
(1) No PAC Money. Corporations and special interests use PAC money to buy influence. Mullins McLeod will ban PAC money from his campaign.
(2) No Future Run for Office. Our current governor spends all his energies focused on his own political advancement. Mullins McLeod will change that by swearing to return to the private sector once his time in office is done.
(3) A Ban on Lobbying by Administration Members. When citizens volunteer to serve in office, it shouldn’t be for the future hope of making money from influence-peddling. Mullins McLeod will require senior staff members to forswear any future employment as a lobbyist while he remains in the Governor’s office.
(4) Honesty and Transparency. Our governor spends too much valuable time bickering over whether economic development and jobless numbers are correct. Mullins McLeod will cut through this impasse by bringing in outside accountants and non-government experts to produce honest figures – which will allow all sides to come together and focus on creating jobs to tackle our record high unemployment rate.
You know what? Not to criticize Mullins, but hasn’t it sort of become “politics as usual” for politicians to promise no more “politics as usual?”
And is “politics as usual” our problem? Actually, I don’t think so. I think one of our problems is that since 2002 we’ve had extremely unusual politics in the form of Gov. Mark Sanford, and it hasn’t served SC very well. He practices a sort of anti-politics, a negation of the practice of working with other human beings to try to find solutions to common problems.
Today at my Rotary meeting, Joel Lourie spoke. He said a lot of things, but one of the last thing he said was this:
Unfortunately, “politics” can be a bad word.
I view politics through the eyes of my parents. They taught me that politics can be a way of bringing people together to find commonsense solutions to our problems.
And I pledge to you to continue to do that…
What we need is for the kind of politics that Joel Lourie believes in to become “politics as usual.”
That just had to be Rick Noble’s silver Hyundai I found myself behind leaving Rotary today. He’s the one guy in my Rotary who I know lives on Lake Wateree. Get it?
Not to be confused, of course, with Phil Noble, whom I mentioned on an earlier post…
Friday afternoon, two declared candidates for governor and a third who MAY seek the office in 2010 spoke to “New Democrats” over at The Inn at USC. (The difference between a “new” Democrat and and “old” Democrat seemed slight at the gathering. Rather than coming across as a sort of Third Way alternative, Phil Noble’s forum featured party chairwoman Carol Fowler as moderator, and most of the questions she posed were perfectly orthodox, partisan, us-vs.-them boilerplate, along the lines of asking the candidates to explain why South Carolina must reject those wicked Republicans and elect a Democrat. The candidates all did their best to oblige, which meant none of them was showing his best side, from my Unparty perspective.)
You’ve read at least a little bit here (and on my former blog) about Vincent Sheheen and Mullins McLeod. I thought I’d devote this post to a portion of what the third man, House Minority Leader Harry Ott, had to say.
Harry’s vision of how to run was more old Democrat than new — and by “old” in this instance I mean, pre-1968 Southern.
“Some of you may totally disagree with what I’m gonna say,” he warned, then went on to explain what he thinks a Democrat must do to become governor:
As far as the family values are concerned, “I’ve been married 32 years, I’ve raised two sons and have two grandsons; I believe I measure up.” He believes he measures up on the other standards as well.
Anyway, that’s a small taste of the approach of Harry Ott, who adamantly insists he is NOT a candidate yet… but could become one.
Eight days ago, I went backstage at the Koger Center to thank producer Todd Witter for asking me to be on “Whad’Ya Know?” Then I went out on the stage itself, where Michael Feldman was perched on the apron (or whatever you call the very edge), shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans.
While I waited for a break in which to thank him too, some of the fans broke off and spoke to me, congratulating me on my performance, such as it was. People are really polite that way, you know. Anyway, one of them was Elizabeth Rose Ryberg, who happens to be married to Sen. Greg. She was quite gracious as always, and complimentary, but at one point she remonstrated with me in the kindest way, suggesting I shouldn’t be so rough on “Mark” — the governor, that is.
Not that she thought the governor was completely right in his refusal to request our state’s share of stimulus funds. In fact, she noted that her husband and Tom Davis had been working hard to bring about a compromise between the governor and legislative leadership on the issue. This surprised me slightly at the time, since I had thought of Sens. Ryberg and Davis as being two people in the governor’s corner if no one else was. After all, they had recently stood up with him at a press conference to support his position (although I had noticed that they had not stood very close to him in the photo I saw — and take a look at that expression on Ryberg’s face — that’s him at the far right).
But it makes perfect sense that even people who share the governor’s political philosophy would want to pull him in a direction away from the position he’s taken — especially if they are his friends.
A few days later, Sen. Davis and Ryberg went public with their “alternative budget” in an op-ed piece in The State. They say all this confrontation is unnecessary, that they can balance the budget and avoid teacher layoffs and prison closings without a dime of the disputed stimulus money.
You know what? I have not idea to what extent their numbers add up, because frankly I find budget numbers to be a form of math far more slippery than Douglas Adams’ satirical “Bistromath.” I’e seen lawmakers resolve budet crises on the last day of the legislative session, with a puff of smoke and a “presto — we found more money!” — too many times. But I know that Tom Davis and Greg Ryberg are perfectly sincere. I trust their intentions; I know they believe what they’re saying. They’re good guys — I refer you to what I’ve said about Tom and about Greg in the past.
But to the extent that they are trying to find a way to compromise with the governor, I say thanks but no thanks. Aside from their efforts, I’ve heard others speak of compromising with the governor on the stimulus — say, let’s just spent this much, and then use this much to “pay down debt.”
But there are two really big reasons not to go along with that, reasons not to compromise with the governor’s position in any way: First, whether you think the stimulus bill passed by the Congress was a good idea or not (or well-executed or not), South Carolinians are going to be paying for it, and need to get maximum benefit out of it. And as Cindi Scoppe pointed out in her column Sunday, no sane person would pass up the chance to keep a few more of our public servants working and paying their bills for a couple of years, rather than on unemployment, to help us get through this rough patch.
The second reason is this: The governor is WRONG. He is philosophically wrong, and he uses bogus numbers (I refer you again to Cindi’s column) to support his rather sad arguments. This man does not believe in the fundamental functions of state government. He is openly allied with people whose goal is reduce government to a size at which it can be drowned in a bathtub. He sees the size of government ratcheting downward (even though he claims, absurdly, the opposite), and his number-one priority is to make sure the ratchet sticks, that the cuts to essential functions in government are not restored. His insistence on using money that is needed now on something, ANYTHING other than immediate needs — even to pay debts that NO ONE expects the state to pay at this time — is essential to the permanent reductions he seeks. The last thing he ever wants is for the state to be rescued by any sort of windfall.
And that point of view needs to be rejected, flatly and clearly. No compromise with a position so wrong should even be contemplated.
Remember last year when I wrote about the fact that, although I really liked both Barack Obama and John McCain, unfortunately neither of them measured up to Energy Party standards? Well, I did, whether you remember it or not:
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.
Well, I wish I’d been wrong, but I was (yet again) right. I can’t help it; it’s like a curse.
Just as the last administration was too focused on “drill, baby, drill” and wanted nothing to do with conservation and little to do with alternative sources, the Obama administration is looking like a typical, old-school, Democratic “no-nukes,” we-can-do-it-all-with-wind-and-solar bunch of ideologues.
At least, I get that impression from this release I got yesterday from Lindsey Graham:
FERC Chairman Says U.S. May Not Need Any More Nuclear or Coal Power PlantsWASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today responded to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Jon Wellinghoff, who said our nation may not need to construct any new coal or nuclear power plants. Wellinghoff deemed nuclear energy “too expensive” and said he saw no need to build coal or new nuclear power plants to meet future electricity needs.Wellinghoff was named Chairman of FERC, the agency that oversees wholesale electric transactions and interstate electric transmission and gas transportation in the United States, by President Barack Obama on March 19, 2009.Graham said:“I’m afraid if we follow his advice we may be marching into darkness.“To suggest a few sources of alternative energy alone could handle our future energy needs — in place of new nuclear or coal plants — defies reality. I support capitalizing on all of our energy options, including deploying more alternative sources of energy. However, the public is ill-served when someone in such a prominent position suggests alternative energy programs are developed and in such a state that we should abandon our plans to build more plants. How the Chairman of FERC arrived at such a conclusion — and one which really no one else has arrived at – is not reassuring.“I am writing Chairman Wellinghoff and want him to explain to me how America can meet its energy needs and remain competitive in the global economy without new nuclear or coal plants. I hope he was taken out of context because what he has reportedly said is breathtaking.”#####
Marching into darkness, indeed.
For those of you who are not sufficiently indoctrinated, we in the Energy Party believe you have to do EVERYTHING that will make us energy-independent, with the primary strategic goal of freeing us from the whims of some of the world’s worst thugs, and the side benefits of transforming our economy and saving the planet (without being all ideologically anal retentive about it). Yes, drill. Build nuclear plants. Open frickin’ Yucca Mountain. But push like crazy for electric cars (and, eventually, hydrogen). Support public transit, to get people out of their cars (and besides, I love subways, and it’s my party). Support innovation and experimentation. Lower speed limits to 55, and enforce them. And so on and so forth. Read the Manifesto, so I don’t have to repeat myself so much.
But all we ever get out of Washington in EITHER-OR. And neither ideologically limited approach is going to get us where we need to go.
Another Democrat has openly expressed interest in next year’s race for governor:
Calling for Change, Mullins McLeod Announces Run for Governor
“We Deserve a Governor Who Focuses on Creating Jobs — For a Change,” says McLeod
In a letter to delegates to this weekend’s South Carolina Democratic Convention, Charleston attorney and successful small businessman Mullins McLeod announced his candidacy for Governor today. McLeod is originally from Walterboro, SC and is a graduate of Wofford College and The University of South Carolina School of Law.
In the letter, McLeod says that the state’s current political leaders have “proven themselves powerless in the face of record unemployment” and says that it is “abundantly clear that South Carolina needs a new direction.”
“The current crop of career politicians in Columbia have given us the second highest unemployment rate in the country and done little to help our public schools. We need a governor who will fight for jobs, and stand up for the people of South Carolina. That’s not going to happen if we turn to the usual crowd of politicians,” said McLeod.
McLeod added that, unlike some South Carolina Democrats, he will not back down from his Democratic Party label. “They continue to lose elections because they don’t stand up for our progressive values and fight back against Republican smears.”
“I’ve spent my entire career fighting for working families in this state. I believe that it’s time South Carolinians had a Governor who will fight for them, and a Governor who focuses on creating jobs — for a change.”
McLeod also encouraged delegates to visit his campaign’s web page at www.mullinsmcleod.com.
So with Vincent Sheheen, that makes two.
I don’t know much about Mr. McLeod, beyond the fact that he could hardly come up with a name that shouts “South Carolina” any louder (Maybe “Beaufort Ravenel?” How about, “Charleston Shealy?”), and I read his recent online op-ed piece.
Meanwhile, over on the GOP side, I see that The Greenville News has done a story about Furman prof Brent Nelson, about whom I wrote previously. I was a little confused, though, because the G’ville paper said “Nelsen hasn’t formally announced a campaign,” whereas I thought he had. But then, even after more than three decades of closely observing politics, I get confused over the whole “official announcement” thing.
Surfing channels a few minutes ago, I ran into an Andy Griffith gem that I had to go to Facebook and share with my oldest friend in the newspaper biz, Richard Crowson (you know, the cartoonist who got laid off about six months before Robert and I did). I wrote to him:
You know what I just saw, not two minutes ago? Andy and Barney were just a-settin’ on the porch, talking about going downtown to get a bottle of pop. Andy allowed as how he reckoned it might be a good idea, and Barney he said the same right back at him, and they were poised to act upon the suggestion when they noticed the fella they were a-settin’ thar with had fallen asleep, and the episode ended on that high note.
Deeply satisfying.
May none of y’all will appreciate that the way Richard would, but I pass it on just in case.
Here’s the actual dialogue:
Andy: You know what would be a good idea? If we all went up town and got a bottle of pop?
Barney: That’s a good idea, if we all went up town to get a bottle of pop.
Andy: You think Mr. Tucker would like to go?
Barney: Why don’t we ask him…..if he’d like to go uptown to get a bottle of pop?
Andy: Mr. Tucker?
(No response from Mr. Tucker)
Andy: You wanna lets me and you go?
Barney: Where?
Andy: Uptown to get a bottle of pop?
(Camera pans to a sleeping Mr. Tucker, with a completly peeled apple skin dangling from
his hand.)
I’ll go to bed now and stop bothering y’all.
OK, that last post was so heavy and depressing, I feel the need to lighten the mood by mentioning another story from the WSJ’s front page, this one about “stirrups” in baseball.
You know, the leggings — the socks you wore over your socks, the colorful ones with the heel and toe cut out.
This piece was about how the major leagues have abandoned the stirrups, mainly because the players don’t want to wear them — you may have noticed that in MLB, they wear their pants right down to their shoes, which means they don’t look like ballplayers any more — and the players are such big shots and make so much money that nobody can tell them what to do. But in the minors, discipline still reins, so the players still wear them.
Some points of interest from the story:
A story such as this appeals to my own particular sort of instinctive conservatism. I believe players should not only be made to wear stirrups but should WANT to in the same way that “woods” in golf should be made of persimmon. It was good enough for our daddies and granddaddies. Of course, as I type this, I’m looking at a picture of my own grandad, “Whitey” Warthen, pitching a game in the 19-teens. He’s wearing full colored socks, not stirrups, because in his day men were men. Me, I’d settle for stirrups. Because I’m still not sure about that blood-poisoning thing. You can’t be too careful.
I love the way the WSJ story ends:
On the field, as the Pelicans and Blue Rocks lined up for the anthem, half-moons glowed along the baselines. Kicking high, Michael Broadway pitched two perfect innings. In the fifth, Cody Johnson stepped into a fastball and sent it over the right-field fence.
It fell apart for the Pelicans in the ninth: walks, hits, errors. They lost, 9-2. “I want my $7 back,” a fan yelled on his way out. But for the stirrup-conscious in the crowd, the final score didn’t matter. On this spring night in Myrtle Beach, the socks won.
Just now got to looking at this morning’s Wall Street Journal, and I see they have another disturbing report about U.S. counterintelligence fecklessness.
Last week, it was Chinese and Russian spies probing our electricity grid to figure out how to shut in down in case of war.
This week, the WSJ reports that Chinese (probably) hackers have done the following:
WASHINGTON — Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.
Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad…
The good news, to the extent that there was any, was that “while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, they weren’t able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.”
Well, duh. So we actually took steps to defend SOME of our most sensitive national security data. Yay for our side.
But beyond that, we’re looking pretty pathetic.
I’m sort of enjoying getting the daily business updates from Mike Fitts, which I just signed up for last week. I cited Mike’s work yesterday, and now I come to share some sad news from 5 Points — Hiller Hardware’s going away.
An excerpt from Mike’s report:
An iconic business is heading out of Five Points. Hiller Hardware is planning to leave its longtime location at Blossom and Harden streets, making way for a new branch of BB&T bank.
If the deal goes through, BB&T will tear down the existing structure as part of a 30-year lease on the property, said Merritt McHaffie, executive director of the Five Points Association. The plans will be discussed at the May 5 meeting of the city’s Design Development and Review Commission….
Columbia City Councilwoman Belinda Gergel, who represents Five Points, said she’s been a longtime Hiller customer, buying a wide variety of items, such as rakes or candles….
Hiller has been at its Five Points location since 1951 and in business in Columbia for almost 70 years. A Lady Street location closed during streetscaping there several years ago….
He went on to report that the family business MIGHT open elsewhere, but that’s by no means certain.
The problem is the big-box hardware retailers, and I must confess that I am part of the problem because I’m a regular customer at Lowe’s. My wife, on the other hand, used to always go out of her way to do business with Ace Hardwarehouse in the Park Lane shopping center in Cayce — which closed last year.
That was another local landmark. It was also a prized advertising customer of The State. Once, years ago, a previous publisher decided that we non-business types on the senior staff needed to shadow some ad sales reps just to learn what they did. The rep I was assigned to took me first to the Hardwarehouse, where the owner or manager was so into his newspaper ads that he would put them together himself, pasting bits of file art onto posterboard at a drawing table in his office.
Yeah, the newspaper makes big bucks from big boxes (although not as big as in the past). But an important part of the community that has been dying and taking newspapers along with it consists of businesses like Hardwarehouse and Hiller. And it’s a shame to see them go.
Herb was kind enough to pass on this interesting online exchange with a Davidson College professor about the Somali pirates. The Washington Post ran it on April 10. Two things — two things that have nothing to do with each other, and may even be contradictory — occurred to me while reading it:
Today I got this release from the S.C. Chamber of Commerce:
Urge Your House Member to Vote for Comprehensive Tax Reform
Debate Expected This Week!Thank you for contacting your House members over the past few weeks urging them to move forward on comprehensive tax reform. Your calls have made a difference in the debate! The House is expected to take up the legislation either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
Today, please again contact your House member and ask them to:
- Amend S.12/H.3415 to contain a comprehensive (holistic) approach to tax reform. A complete analysis of taxes should be performed and not looked at individually. The business community is fearful that if a comprehensive approach is not taken, a huge cost shift to the business community, similar to Act 388 (Residential Property Tax Relief), could occur again.
- The approach needs to examine state and local taxes including: county, municipal, special purpose districts and schools.
Contact your House member today! Click here for contact information, or click here to find your legislator.
That’s all well and good, and I’m with the Chamber on this. The State‘s editorial Sunday did a good job of explaining just what a hash lawmakers have made of the chances for real tax reform. (Two big problems: They want the big tax swap of 2006 that was so awful that it prompted what momentum exists for reform to be off limits, and they don’t want to require a vote on the final product, which is essential.) But I’m ever hopeful, and if contacting my House member will help, I’m all for it.
One problem: The release went on to tell me my representative was James Smith. But I live in Ted Pitts’ district. I’ll be glad to speak to Capt. Smith, but I don’t see how it will help…
My old buddy Mike Fitts says Henry McMaster says that the state of SC has no objections to the Supreme Court hearing the lawsuit brought on behalf of a Chapin high school girl over the stimulus, but he also listed reasons why the court should reject her petition — including the fact that since she is about to graduate, she will soon no longer have standing.
If Henry’s right, Dick Harpootlian and Dwight Drake will have to run out and get a junior or a sophomore next time.
He had other reasons, which you can read in Mike’s story. One thing that did strike me as interesting, though:
McMaster said the court seems to be setting a quick timeline on the dispute. His office often gets 20 days to respond to an appeal for the court to bypass the lower state courts. This time, the court said Thursday it required a response by midday Monday.
“That indicates the court wants to move very quickly,” McMaster said.
That news is almost as exciting as the Senate taking up the budget this week…
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…
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.’ ”
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 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.
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.
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.