Open thread for Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I’ve been singularly uninspired today. There’s news out there, but none of it seems that fascinating to me. And I’m easily fascinated.

So talk amongst yourselves. Maybe I’ll join in…

46 thoughts on “Open thread for Wednesday, July 31, 2013”

  1. Brad Warthen Post author

    I couldn’t even get interested in The Hill’s annual “50 Most Beautiful” people in Washington list. About the only local angle was that Tim Scott made the list. Don’t be surprised — once, they chose Gresham Barrett.

    I don’t know who picks these people. Most of the ladies were quite lovely, of course, but I’ve been to Washington, and I’ve seen women more pulchritudinous than all but a few of those on this list.

    As for the guys — check out this guy. I ask you: Have The Hill’s standards lowered, or what?

    1. Wally Benson

      That’s the best they have in DC? Stroll through the USC horseshoe any fine spring day and you’ll gaze upon WAY better specimens of the female persuasion.

  2. Brad Warthen Post author

    Nor could I get really interested in Ana Marie Cox’s listing of “five crazy things” Lindsey Graham has said. It just wasn’t that good a list.

    I mean, why is it crazy to state a preference for an AR-15 over a shotgun in case of the zombie apocalypse (or some other societal breakdown)? What, it’s crazy to express an opinion? Personally, I’d go for the shotgun, for the knock-down power. But that’s me.

    Of course, the best weapon of all is a crossbow — no noise to attract more walkers, and you can retrieve your ammunition. Ol’ Daryl has the right idea…

  3. C J Watson

    I’m tired of the way Columbia city council treats the water service revenue as a slush fund. I don’t live in the city, so I can’t vote, but I’m not sure that would help because I’ve heard too many candidates say they would stop the practice, only to get elected and vote to siphon more money for their pet festival or project. Rates keep rising and the system still needs repair, but now the city has to pay an EPA fine because they don’t maintain the system as they should. What if a city water users group were formed that had a large enough membership to exert some political pressure or possibly file a law suit to discontinue use of funds for other than system development and maintenance? Could such a group ever possibly wrest control of the water and sewer system from the city and turn it over to an authority that would service (and charge) all customers equally and would take care of the system properly? I don’t have any numbers, but there may be as many or more water users outside the city as inside the city. Am I dreaming or could this be possible?

    1. Kathryn Fenner

      Huh. Your facts are way way off. City Council limited itself to only 3.5% of the revenues, which is a reasonable rate of return for our investment in the system. City residents pay a lot more taxes and get a lot of social problems dumped on us. If you don’t like our water rates, dig a well, or move into the city and gt involved!

      1. Doug Ross

        You use the phrase “return on investment” when it is in fact siphoning off from the principal. Return on investment is the profit gained on the investment. Where is the 3.5% coming from? From the revenues, right?

          1. Silence

            It’s that they’ve been siphoning off revenues while deferring necessary maintenance, resulting in a half billion dollar backlog of required improvements, a secret agreement with the EPA, broken sewers, and huge rate hikes.

          2. Doug Ross

            Huh? What profit? Are they investing the revenues and getting a return of 3.5% which is then passed on to the city or are they skimming 3.5% off from the revenues which are sorely needed to fix the water system?

            Profit would be the amount above the the revenues taken in. Is that the case?

          3. Doug Ross

            If I take in $100, invest it, and at the end of the year have 103.50, my return on investment is $3.50 or 3.5%. If I take in $100, spend 96.50 and give someone
            else $3.50, my return on investment is -3.5%.

            It is a slush fund for paying for pet projects.

          4. Mark Stewart

            Kathryn’s point is the City is taking a pound of flesh out of the out of towner water and sewer users to keep the taxes on the City residents lower.

            Silence’s point is that this is a slush fund diversion as the City has not kept its end of the bargain to first maintain the capital expense needs of the system – but I guess he’s okay with the idea of this were it better executed.

            Doug’s point is more theoretical. Profit’s do not accrue to municipalities – though losses certainly still do.

            CJ’s point is that a metro wide government responsible to all would be an improvement. That’s laudable.

            However, it will only happen if Columbia is dumb enough to let the system fall into ruin, enabling the legislature to strip it from them to create another unelected, crony commission. Unfortunately, that is the path Columbia seems to be on.

            The whole problem with this set-up of services is that it encourages Columbia to act like one of these unelected special purpose entities. Instead of strenghthening the City, however, the opportunity to pillage actually has a corrosive effect on the outlook of City Council toward the it’s responsibilities of representative leadership. I would argue that the City running the water and sewer service for the greater part of Richland County has actually been a net negative loss to the citizens of Columbia. It has enabled and validated a culture of fiscal irresponsibility and moral hazard within City Council. That’s not a good thing for anyone – resident or not.

      2. Silence

        The city does have the right to earn a reasonable rate of return on the Water/Sewer system. However, in order to fund their pet projects they have deferred maintenance and other necessary investments into upkeep and improvement of the system. Now we have a system with an enormous backlog of maintenance and repairs needed, the EPA is breathing down Columbia’s neck, and we are getting saddled with enormous rate increases. Meanwhile, the city is continuing to siphon off revenues to fund other projects around the city.

        Under Mayor Benjamin our debt is way WAY up – General obligation debt, water/sewer system debt, and parking system debt. Technically the budget is “balanced” but it’s being done on the back of increased borrowing. I don’t think that the average voter or ratepayer in Columbia has realized this yet.

        1. Mark Stewart

          “Parking system” – ha! Good one. Instead of letting market forces dictate parking, the City has taken the path of a command economy and gone a bit crazy building parking garages all around downtown. Unlike a command economy though, the City has bonds to repay – and little revenue to show from these well-intentioned but completely misguided missteps.

          Look for some water and sewer siphoning to start covering the parking bonds soon. Then you have a total shell game of irresponsibility.

          My personal favorites are the garages the City built for non-tax paying entities like USC and Palmetto Baptist. And now I see that I can add two more to the list at Bull Street. Build, baby, build!

      3. Silence

        One last comment on the water/sewer system issue – City council has an obligation to be good stewards to the system, a system that they manage for the taxpayers and ratepayers who own the system. They have not been good stewards.

        Imagine you lent someone your brand new $40,000 truck, so that he could start a business. He’s a hard worker after all, and you trust that he’ll be successful. He works hard, every day for a year, going all around hauling stuff in your truck. After a year, he returns the truck to you – he’s put a gajillion miles on it, dinged it up, ripped the seats, and never changed the oil or filters, rotated the tires, or washed and waxed the truck. He then proceeds to tell you how much profit he made this year, and how successful his business was. He’s bought his wife a new mink coat, braces for all the kids, and now they are getting ready to go to the Bahamas for two weeks of vacation. He asks if he can borrow the truck again next year….
        Now you are left with a worthless one year old truck that is all torn up and no longer runs well.

        That’s basically what council did with the water system. They rode it for all it was worth, never maintained it up to a proper standard, and siphoned all the revenue off for other projects. It never really made a profit, because of all the deferred expenses.

  4. Doug Ross

    A good piece today by Cindy Ross-Scoppe on the idiocy of “tax holidays”.

    http://www.thestate.com/2013/08/01/2892455/scoppe-this-holiday-deserves-a.html

    You have to be pretty dumb to think that the tax holiday has any real benefit. Who created this
    public relations scam? Is there a legislator today who will stand up and own it?

    Let’s abolish this immediately. Also abolish the 1% sales tax discount for people over 85. Another piece of legislation used to buy votes.

    2. Brad Warthen

      If I remember correctly, the “tax holiday” was Jim Hodges’ baby. Part of his positioning himself as being all about education. Which is ironic, since he was cutting into a revenue source for the schools.

      1. Silence

        Let’s lump this in with gambling for education. Another ridiculous thing that Hodges saddled us with. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

    3. Rose

      It’s such a ridiculous event, because it does eliminate some of the tax income that funds the schools, and because so much junk has been added to it. Children in South Carolina really don’t need to get ski boots, wet suits, tuxedos, and bridal gowns to go back to school.
      I have a school-age child and I will NOT be heading into the madness this weekend. I paid taxes on his school supplies last weekend.

      1. Silence

        Well, I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so I wouldn’t be passing up shopping on tax free weekend – but there doesn’t seem to be anything (on the list) that we need, so I guess I will pass up shopping.

        1. Rose

          I don’t like shopping and I especially hate shopping in crazy crowded stores. I’ve never participated in Black Friday and I never will.

      1. Doug Ross

        “Second, government employees have exactly as much incentive to follow the rules, as do employees at private companies —”

        No they don’t. They have an incentive to keep their government job approving phones for people who don’t deserve them. Fewer phones = your job may go away.

        It’s a cozy deal created by politicians to kickback money to telephone companies… the same companies that will then donate to those politician’s campaigns.

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          Yeah, I’m sure there weren’t ANY politicians who thought it might be a good idea if unemployed people had a way for prospective employers to get in touch with them.

          You are so amazingly cynical, Doug.

          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            Oh, and employees at private companies have an incentive to keep their phone-company job selling phones to people who may or may not “deserve” them. “Fewer phones = your job may go away.”

          3. Brad Warthen Post author

            The incentives counterbalance each other. Under your cynical, everybody’s-out-for-themselves view, the government employee has an incentive to provide phones who can’t afford them. I would think that the phone company employee has an equal incentive to provide phones to people who CAN’T afford them, just to move more phones.

            And the incentive for both of them NOT to do those things is that there’s trouble if they’re caught.

          4. Brad Warthen Post author

            Silence says, “home phone would work for that.” Yep, and that’s how the program started. Because in Reagan’s day, there were no cell phones.

          5. Doug Ross

            There’s a difference between giving away a phone and getting someone to buy it. If your incentive is to give away as many as you can, you don’t care if the recipients qualify. If your incentive is to sell as many as you can, you have to provide some level of service and value to make the purchase worthwhile. This system is set up without the benefit of the free market to control fraud or provide good service. Same thing happens with Medicare – the system is not set up to control fraud but only to catch the big offenders years down the road.

            And do you REALLY think those free phones are being used by people to get calls about jobs? How many calls would that equal? Two a month? Do you turn in the phone once you get a job? Let’s be serious. The phones are just a giveaway.

            Here’s an easy rule for free phones: If you have cable television, you don’t get a phone. Make a choice. If you drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, no phone. You want something for free? You need to deserve it.

          6. Silence

            Brad, we pay the universal service fund fee to fund people’s copper-wire phone lines, and I expect that in most areas we could probably hook them up with local phone service for about $15/month. The fund itself was created to ensure that people living in small communities, distant rural areas had access to a phone, since commercially it didn’t make sense to run copper out to the boonies to serve a small subscriber base.
            The low income thing has only been around since ’97, I think. What upsets me, and probably most people who are upset about the Obamaphones, is that I pay about $160/month for wireless (2 smart phones, 1 dumb phone, family plan) so why should someone get free local voice, text and long distance, when we could hook up a POTS phone to their residence for $15?

      2. Silence

        Magic Jack is 19.95 for an entire year of service. Why are we giving out cell phones, again?

  6. Doug Ross

    Let’s say you were running The State’s distribution department. Your manager comes in and says there’s a new government program that will pay for every paper that is distributed for free to the homeless people in Columbia.

    How long do you think it would be before we’d see a shanty town with the dwellings made solely of The State newspapers? Why, I bet The State would be thrilled to share the news and let those homeless people find jobs and educate themselves. You want ten papers? Sure, take them. Ka-ching!

    You think the phones are an act of charity for the downtrodden. They aren’t.

      1. Silence

        I like that the “Charlotte’s got a lot” billboard is right outside your office window.

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          Not impressed. And to think, some people don’t like “Famously Hot.”

          That’s the best Charlotte can do? And they think they’re so bigtime.

          There was this great piece in a magazine 15 or 20 years ago (Harper’s, maybe?) about how Charlotte thought it was hot stuff ever since it got professional basketball. The writer, who I think was a native, said the place had been far more appealing and genuine back when the big sport was professional wrestling…

    1. Kathryn Fenner

      Actually day before yesterday’s news. I hope this guy can do a much better job than his predecessor…I wish they had been able to hire Amy Stone! She snagged Mast for Main Street!

Comments are closed.