Still catching up on releases sent to me via email, I ran across this rather remarkable one from Rep. Bill Taylor, a Republican from Aiken:
Unanimous Agreement !
Passage of aBi-Partisan State Budget
Dear Friends:
In Washington D.C. partisan bickering seems to rule. In South Carolina elected officials know how to work together for better and more efficient government. Democrat and Republican legislators joined
together in the House of Representatives to unanimously pass a state budget this week.
Be assured there were disagreements and much debate on how to wisely spend your tax money, but both sides came together to pass a balanced budget that falls well within the proposed cap on spending. It focuses on the core functions of government – education, infrastructure and law enforcement – all of which are vital to our state’s growing economy.
The spending plan also provides tax relief, pays off debt and replenishes the state’s ‘rainy day’ reserve accounts.
Headlines from the $6 billion General Fund appropriations:
- $152 million in additional funds for K-12 used in the classroom and not for educational bureaucracy.
- $180 million set aside to pay for SC’s share of the deepening of the Charleston Port, the major economic driver for SC.
- $77 million in tax relief to employers of all sizes to assist them with some relief from the high unemployment insurance costs caused by the recession.
- $549 million in tax relief; 88% of which is property tax relief that must be granted annually if the relief is to remain.
- Nearly $400 million to the Constitutional and Statutory Reserves – those funds go into our savings account for the next economic downturn – “The Rainy Day Fund’.
While the General Fund budget grows by 4.56%, this plan calls for far less spending as compared to the beginning of the recession. The increase is aimed at patching the severe cuts that have occurred in recent years in law enforcement and education. It is a fiscally conservative spending plan designed to make SC more competitive.
The Governor’s Criticism: In Governor Haley’s fly-around-the-state tour this week she promoted her idea for a one-year only tax cut benefiting major corporations. The House budget plan cuts taxes for every single SC employer, hopefully, that will stimulate hiring.
The Governor also took aim on House Republican’s 7 point comprehensive tax reform plan introduced this week. She called it “disingenuous” even though she and her staff worked with our tax reform committee over the past eight months and the legislation included everything she asked for and much more. (Read the Aiken Standard’s story on this topic.)
What’s Next for the Budget? The proposed budget heads to the Senate. If past years are any indication, senators will bloat the budget with additional spending. Please let your senator know that’s not acceptable.
Wow. First we have all the Senate Democrats voting for John Courson. Now we have a Republican — a House Republican (the most partisan kind), no less — bragging to his constituents that the budget just passed was bipartisan. Instead of the usual business of giving all the credit to the GOP and mentioning Democrats only as obstacles, if at all.
Oh never fear — the zampolits are probably rushing to censure these folks for such UnParty sentiments, denouncing them as double-plus ungood. But for now, I’m enjoying this little Prague Spring.
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Come on Brad, you’re celebrating form over substance in the most dispicable way. Is it just possible that we can have a BAD bipartisan budget. One that fails to address the pressing needs of the state’s citizens while pandering to the cronyism and good-ole-boy network that has succeded in dragging us to the bottom in all major measures of quality of life. I don’t give a tinker’s damn whether the thing is bipartisan or not. It’s just not a factor whether it’s good or not. Just let me know what’s in the thing then I’ll decide. If it doesn’t give state workers a raise and address the retirement system or effectively help local governments retain teachers and cops then all the bipartisanship in the world is worse than useless. It simply sounds good with no real substance.
As usual (when it comes to UnParty matters), Bud, you’re missing the point. The point is that an actual Republican House member, right here in South Carolina, would actually turn to his constituents and boast of having voted for a bipartisan budget. Do you have any idea how rare that is, in a state in which Republicans go in terror that they will be called a RINO for having spoken to a Democrat?
This isn’t form over substance; this is substance.
If you think this Legislature is going to produce a budget that you actively like, you’re deluding yourself. Any budget we are likely to see is going to seriously underfund essential functions of state government that citizens take for granted in other states. That’s just where we are in South Carolina.
The only hope we have is that someday we’ll have some legislators with attitudes that differ from what dominates now. This is a step in that direction.
Oh, and as for the other example — you want to talk form over substance. How about Dick Harpootlian not caring that John Courson is a good senator who represents his district well. All Dick cares about is that the senator for that district have a “D” after his name.
What bud said.
Oops, Kathryn, you hit “submit comment” before you finished typing. You left out the part where you say “… is totally wrong.”
Bud is right–you are lauding the message about the budget BECAUSE it is “bipartisan.” I could not care less if it is bipartisan. It may or may not be the best budget possible under the circumstances–I’ll leave that to Cindi to analyze. The fact that it was bipartisan or that some legislator lauded it as such is a sideshow.
The legislators can stand in a big circle holding hands and singing Kumbaya but if they pass a crap budget it is still a crap budget. This one appears at first glance to be a bit better than some but it still doesn’t seem to include a pay raise for state employees or any sort of fix for the retirement system. Hopefully the Senate can correct this “bipartisan” budget.
I have to agree with Bud and Kathryn, although it may be the best we can do with what we have (which is, by and large, pretty poor material).
Well, I’m just going to have to accept that my Democratic friends aren’t going to get the point, but for anyone still open to it, here’s what I’m saying:
— Here’s one Republican who does not go in fear of being called a RINO and treated as a leper for even wanting to work with Democrats on anything.
— In our currently poisonous political environment, that’s a GOOD thing. Get enough people like that together, and we might be able to accomplish some things in this state.
What this post is not, does not pretend to be and never even thought of being is a commentary of any kind, even in passing, on the quality of the budget passed by the House. I didn’t even READ the bullet points in which Mr. Taylor described the budget (because they were irrelevant to my topic), but just threw in the whole release. Why people are thinking that I’m somehow praising the budget and arguing with me on that point just mystifies me. The stated point was the point (as always!). It was a small one. It wasn’t a big deal.
But the lack of willingness of some of my friends of the Democratic persuasion to give a brief nod along with me and say, “Yes, it’s good that there’s a Republican who’s not embarrassed to work with Democrats,” and move on simply illustrates the magnitude of the problem we have.
And as much of a problem as this never-give-an-inch partisanship is for an UnPartisan like me, guess what? It’s even worse for Democrats. Because the state is and will continue to be for the foreseeable future dominated by Republicans, and the longer it takes them to reach out and encourage the few Republicans who are willing to reach out to THEM and actually consider what they want, the longer they are going to get NOTHING that they want out of the SC political system.
Brad, I’m fully aware of your point. And that’s the problem. I DON’T CARE whether the Dems and GOP get along. I just don’t. You seem to find that important. I don’t. You seem to think that if Democrats work with Republicans that will make it more likely to get something useful passed. I don’t.
Ultimately the GOP controls the levers of government in the state and can always succeed in getting whatever budget it wants passed. Maybe it will end up as a good budget. Maybe not. But to suggest a bipartisan approach will make things better, even in a small way, is just not something I believe to be true. Frankly, I’d rather see the Democrats make a big stink over the GOP budget if it is in fact a very conservative budget. At least then I’d know they are fighting for me rather than capitulating.
Okay, one small step for mankind. I’ll give you that.
I do think that if the Republican Party doesn’t back down from the Santorum faction, it will lose a lot of support even here in da Bible Belt. The center-right is going to be up for grabs as the theocrats try to mess around in the bedrooms of ordinary decent people….
OK, I hate to say this when you’re trying to be agreeable. But such rhetoric as “the theocrats try to mess around in the bedrooms of ordinary decent people” is precisely the kind of overheated and wildly inaccurate nonsense that turns off those of us in the middle when we read it in those DCCC fund-raising emails…
I have to agree with Kathryn on this one. The Repubs need to stay out of my bedroom, and the Dems need to stay out of my checkbook & my arsenal.
“the theocrats try to mess around in the bedroom” pretty much describes the Santorum campaign. Not sure how that can be regarded as “inaccurate nonsense”. The war on contraceptions is clearly a vile attempt at bring theocracy into places where it is both unwanted and dangerous. The good news is it doesn’t have much appeal to the voters, even most Republicans.
This is what I hate, hate, HATE about this emotional Kulturkampf crap. I’ve been avoiding addressing it, despite the CONSTANT assault from the hyperventilators on the left in recent weeks — has anyone seen that ridiculous billboard in 5 Points that says something like “contraceptives could become contraband”? And don’t even get me started on the constant drip, drip, drip, of unfounded outrage that comes into my In box from the DCCC multiple times every day…
Here’s what happened folks. See if you can follow me. The US Catholic Bishops objected to a provision in the health care law that would force Catholic hospitals — private entities — to pay for their employees’ contraceptives.
OK? Are you following? The GOVERNMENT was forcing private entities to go “into people’s bedrooms” (if you like that metaphor and pay for their contraceptives. The bishops didn’t WANT to go into those bedrooms; they wanted out.
No one, absolutely NO ONE, sought to prevent anyone, within the context of this debate, from obtaining, having or using contraceptives. Some private actors were simply asking to be left out of the equation, and not be compelled to do something that they believed would be wrong.
Again, I’ll put it another way — it was about the government making church institutions do something, not about the church trying to make anyone else do something or not do something. “Leave us out” was what was being said.
And thus the brouhaha started. And I expressed dismay when it did start, because I knew the ABSURD places that this would take us. And now we’re there, with the standard social libertarian nonsense about people and their bedrooms.
I had so hoped that the little fiddle that the Obama administration offered as a compromise would end it, even though it was smoke and mirrors, and would simply succeed in shifting costs and making them less transparent. And it did work with the nuns who run the hospitals, but not with the bishops. And I don’t blame either party. I don’t blame the nuns because they (like me) want Obamacare to work, and don’t want it derailed by peripheral stuff like this. And I don’t blame the bishops because, well, the fact is that Catholic hospitals would still be paying for insurance policies that paid for contraceptives, even though that portion of the cost would be shifted to other people.
Here’s the bottom line: NO ONE in this debate is, or wants or aspires to be, a “theocrat.” Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t understand what a theocrat is.
No one is seeking to enter other people’s bedrooms, either directly or indirectly. No one — except, of course, those in the Obama administration who insist that the contraceptive mandate be in there — is trying to use GOVERNMENTAL POWER to compel anything.
What this completely unnecessary battle that the administration picked does is highlight, in a fresh and negative way, the compulsory nature of the health care law.
That is unfortunate because ANY meaningful health care reform MUST include something that is compulsory — in that everyone must be in the system. And I want Obamacare to succeed. So it ticks me off that, on top of having outraged the libertarian right already with the necessary mandate, the administration has unnecessarily gone out of its way to offend other people on First Amendment (“free exercise”) grounds.
And those are headwinds that this ship really doesn’t need.
And I know that I personally, don’t need the emotional nonsense that tends to enter the public discussion when we venture into such areas…
Brad, I agree that our legislators need to work together rather than snipe at each other. But working together to produce a non effective piece of legislation doesn’t help either.
Thanks, Karen, but forget the legislation. It’s immaterial. I was in no way celebrating the budget. I don’t care about the budget, in this context.
Taylor could have been writing about the weather, or football, or popular music. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he CHOSE, in the course of writing about it, to present himself to his constituents as someone who is proud to work with Democrats.
That is, tragically, a very rare thing these days. And when we see it, we need to ENCOURAGE it. Or else there’s no hope for SC.
Brad, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to suggest that Rick Santorum is a theocrat and damn proud of it, at least until the blowback happens. How about the evangelical (sorry, Herb, if I used that incorrectly) minister who Santorum was happy to share a stage with this weekend (the guy with the “Christian country” and “love it or leave it” speech)?
Brad,
Thanks for the screed essentially paraphrasing the Bishops hyperbolic letter, in which they tore into the Obama administration as gutting the entire Contsitution. No Kulturkampf there, because apparently it’s what other people do, not you. Where in it do I read anything of their support for the rest of the Mandate? Not one word, on a position that they claim to support, i.e. Universal Quality Health Care. Not a word. Zero. Only the part they don’t like.
By their logic the mandate should not support, for instance Blood Transfusions opposed by Jehovah’s Witnesses, use of pig heart valves opposed by Jews and Muslims, the use of almost any medical procedure by the Christian Scientists, or psychiatry opposed by Scientology. That’s a short list off the top of my head. Any of those people claiming faith who run a business get an automatic out of the Mandate. So, no mandate. Have a medical bill? Well, we need to send it to your employer first to see if they have a moral problem with anything you and your doctor agreed to. What’s the point of a mandate, if as it becomes clear, any employer who wants to lower his obligation for paying for services can claim any number of religious exemptions? Do you get a religious exemption from paying taxes to support things that you don’t believe in? Does a quaker get to say “I don’t believe in war” so subtract the defense department from my tax return? Many native tribes like to use Peyote in religious context, but can’t because of federal law. Many Rastafarians want to use pot, but can’t because of federal law. What all of those people of faith get is a vote, not always a choice.
Two points about Santorum:
— I like the guy personally, but not as a candidate. He either a) can’t shut up about culture war issues or, and this is probably closer to the truth, b) can’t resist rising to the bait when someone else brings them up. Either way, a president needs to be able to win the nation’s trust on other difficult issues, not keep everyone in a ferment about things that have little to do with the job of president. Santorum’s always been this way. I was glad when pro-life Democrat Bob Casey beat him so soundly up in PA. And if you’ll recall, I urged my readers rather strongly to vote for Romney in the SC primary.
2. What I have heard from him, over and over, is that religious people deserve to be at the table and participate in decision-making just as much as secular people do. While I wish he wouldn’t spend so much time on culture issues, when he does speak to them, I respect him for bringing his deepest values to bear on them, rather than trying to keep his faith a secret.
Something odd and paranoid happens in the minds of secularists when they hear religious people speak in the public sphere. I’m reminded of Norman Lear’s group, which used to (and may still) put out an annual report on “censorship” in America, along with all sorts of alarmed rhetoric about this terrible threat.
I flipped through one or two of those reports. The following is typical of what I found described as an instance of “censorship:” A conservative parent expresses concern about a book that her child has brought home from the school library. The parent raises the question of whether such a book should be made so easily available to children. The question comes before a school board. Usually, the board decides that the parent’s objection is unfounded, and keeps the book.
No one at any time was trying to ban the book from bookstores, or even (as I recall, but my memory could be off) from the regular public library. No one was proposing to round up copies of the book and burn them, or raid private homes looking for the books. In other words, there was nothing, in most of these incidents, that would fit a rational definition of “censorship” as an actual political issue.
What offended the Lear group was that cultural conservatives sought to be part of the perfectly legitimate community conversation about what it was appropriate to make available to children.
And I hear overtones of that sometimes when my liberal friends talk about Santorum.
Thankfully Santorum is now extremely unlikely to become the GOP nominee let alone POTUS but, make not mistake about it, he VERY MUCH DOES want some type of theocratic imposition on the American people. And that was a battle that needed to be waged. Since the GOP voters seem to agree with me on this maybe we can now do what Brad wants and focus on important issues like the economy, debt and bringing our troops home from Afghanistan.
Taylor could have been writing about the weather, or football, or popular music.
-Brad
Seriously, that is pretty ridiculous. If a Democrat and a Republican disagree on who will win the Superbowl it’s considered a spirited debate. If they disagree on what should be in the budget it’s regarded as partisan sniping.
Tim, if I recall correctly, the bishops didn’t support the health care law in the end, which is probably why you don’t “read anything of their support for the rest of the Mandate.”
I think Sr. Carol Keehan and the folks at the Catholic Health Association DID support it, as did the Sisters of Charity, who run Providence Hospital here. Sister Carol’s group also accepted the compromise offered by the Obama administration on the contraceptives thing, while the bishops have not.
This split was at the heart of my friend Kevin Hall’s decision to resign from the Sisters of Charity Foundation board — a decision with which I strongly disagreed.
I support the bishops on this issue, but it’s just another example of why we need to throw off the yoke of the New Deal and decouple health insurance from our employment.
So let’s move on. How about a nice discussion on what to cut from the budget and who to tax to bring it into balance. Paul Ryan has started a new assault on the the safety net while basically giving the military and billionares a pass. This is a very important battle to fight.
I believe there is some group that tracks banned books, and there are plenty that are banned from school libraries. I believe that children have the right to be exposed to many viewpoints, including Heather Has Two Mommies, Huckleberry Finn, A Catcher in the Rye, Little House on the Prairie, Jane Eyre, etc.
Oddly, no one ever seeks to ban Jane Eyre, with its much older employer who sexually harasses his barely legal, vulnerable employee while keeping his mentally ill wife locked up in the attic. No one seeks to ban Wuthering Heights with its abusive marriages and suicidal hysteria.
This story in USA Today found that 56% of challenged books were kept on the shelves, but that about 2/5 were taken off.http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-10-22-challengedbooks_N.htm
I don’t understand why the one time they get close to what they asked for here:
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/health-care/cover-the-uninsured-week.cfm#Joint_Ltr
They somehow missed that Universal Health Care involves mandates that force someone to do something they may not fully support. Sort of the definition of “mandate”. And probably most of the Universal Health Care in its home base of Western Europe provide contraception, but they somehow assumed it wouldn’t be included here? Then, rather than a reasonable debate to perfect a law they supported in concept while it was being implemented, they dove into the culture war on this one point, during the election season, and may have done much to bring about its defeat. Sorry. It makes no sense.
@ Silence– We need to uncouple health care from employment–by nationalizing it. That’s the way to stop all these mandate challenges and ensure the most rational allocation of limited health resources.
Too bad we don’t have single payer then we could simply furnish contraception free at any local pharmacy. That would get around the nonsense perpetrated by the vile Catholic Bishops.
Kathryn, two points:
— Children don’t have the right to read anything their parents don’t want them reading. And the adults of the community have not only a right, but a duty, to participate in deciding what their community schools make available to their young charges. It’s up to the grownups, not the kids.
— Of those two out of five books (which sounds high, compared to numbers I’ve heard in the past), how many disappeared from circulation, were not allowed to be sold, or were seized or destroyed by the government? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say zero.
One other point, before someone says it: Obviously, in America it’s possible for a kid who really wants to read a book to get his hands on it, for the simple fact that we DON’T censor books. Taking it off the school library shelves doesn’t ensure the child won’t be exposed to it.
But there is value in deciding what we will give our community imprimatur to. Put it on the school shelf, and you’re telling the kid that the grownups have decided you should read this. There’s value in that — in providing that sort of adult, community-based (as in, “it takes a village”) perspective on what the grownup world considers appropriate. Community standards are valuable in and of themselves, even if it’s possible for a kid to flout them.
@bud, well let’s start at home: In SC you are considered “rich” if you make $14,000. I’d call that pretty much a flat tax.
I want to ban the Twilight books. Or more the movies. I would put Mad Magazine in all school libraries.
Now see, Tim’s getting into the spirit of the thing. I hereby second both of his motions, although I would like to add the caveat that the library’s collections consist mostly of Mad’s golden days, with such contributors as Mort Drucker, Larry Siegel, Dave Berg, Al Jaffee, and Don Martin.
The motions are now open for discussion.
I fershlunk that motion
Who says a parent has a right to determine what his child reads? What if he decides his child should not read math books, or anything higher than the second grade? That horse left the barn with compulsory education, and a good thing, too.
Many of these parents don’t even actually read the books, just passages.
As long as you include Spy vs. Spy.
If Santorum is merely trying to ensure that “religious people deserve to be at the table and participate in decision-making just as much as secular people do,” then I’m not sure what country he’s been living in, seeing as how polls generally show 90% of Americans to be believers, with the vast majority of those Christian. Any “table” in America where decisions are being made is likely to made up primarily of religious individuals. This laughable paranoia about the “exclusion” of Christian viewpoints from American policy-making is in itself a sign of fundamental delusion and highly suspect motivation. Matters such as whether this or that book should be excluded from school libraries are relatively minor points; whether we should unconditionally and unquestioningly send our young people to die on behalf of Israel because it’s part of Biblical prophecy is where “bringing a Christian voice to the table” morphs into “fundamentalist fanaticism dictating geopolitical policy” and there, Santorum is potentially little different from, say, his corollaries in Iran.
I says, that’s who says. And mind you that my emphasis is on the will of parents and other adults in the community as expressed through the republican device of electing their school board.
As for Spy vs. Spy — of course! That’s the era I’m thinking of. Did you know that Antonio Prohías, who created that strip, fled Cuba just before Castro nationalized the press? How fitting that such a strip should be drawn by a Cold War fugitive…
I did know about Prohias fleeing Cuba, not sure where I acquired that nugget though.
I read Mad back in the 1980’s, but I think it was mostly recycled content by then. Of course, it was all new to me at the time, and my local used book store had hundreds of Mad paperbacks that I could buy for between 15 and 45 cents.
I also read Cracked, but I felt like it was a poor substitute for Mad. Oddly enough, Cracked has a robust online presence with lots of funny articles nowadays.
My older cousin had some copies of National Lampoon, but they were too raunchy for me at the time.
I think you should start a Mad Fold-in feature on your blog…
If we are banning harmful books – let’s start with the bible.