You know, I quit doing “The Brad Show” — thereby devastating my millions of fans, who had to console themselves with “Game of Thrones” instead — because it just got to be too much of a physical hassle to produce, especially after the guys who used to shoot it for me moved out of the ADCO building.
But lately I’ve been thinking… I still have my iPhone. Why not go back to the kind of guerrilla video reportage for which this blog was once famous — quick-hitting, spur-of-the-moment clips on the news of the day?
So today, I was talking with Sen. Joel Lourie after a Community Relations Council luncheon at which he and Sen. Katrina Shealy had just been honored with CRC’s annual Hyman Rubin Distinguished Service Award, and he happened to mention that the atmosphere in the Senate chamber was as toxic as at any time he could remember. Here’s what he was referring to.
So, thinking with the blinding speed to which my readers are accustomed, I asked whether he wanted to say that on video. He said no. Then he said yes.
Since we spoke briefly about roads, I thought I’d call your attention to Cindi Scoppe’s piece today describing what real roads reform would look like. And of course, it’s a classic with its roots deep in the Power Failure series: Turn the roads over to local governments, and leave the local governments alone to fund them as they see fit. A solution that, of course, strikes right at the heart of the Legislative State, which is why nothing like this has ever come close to happening.
If we’re gonna dream about what really ought to happen, we might as well dream big.
Oh, and on the subject of the budget, which Sen. Lourie also mentioned, here’s another good column from Cindi casting doubt on Joel’s man Hugh Leatherman to deliver on that…
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Wow. Turning thousands of miles of roads over to 46 county and dozens of city jurisdictions to pay for roads. What a terrible idea. Doesn’t it make sense to take advantage of economies of scale and just allow the state DOT to continue handling the road maintenance? They already have the staff, facilities, equipment and experience to handle the job. The only thing missing is $. This is a simple problem really. The gas tax is exceptionally low. Much of that money goes toward matching federal money so that roads can be built with 10 cents on the dollar. With the deluge of needed road projects in a rapidly growing state how can you turn that down? Heck we just found a couple of hundred $million to a heap on a foreign car maker to build a factory that will merely make the road congestion problem worse as they attract people from other states. The net new jobs to current SC residents will be tiny. But I digress.
Let’s quit all this discussion of juggling funds around, giving roads to the counties and, worst of all, restructuring the DOT and just get on with it. After all, the last restructuring gave the governor the ability to appoint the DOT head and what did we get? The first appointee was forced to resign in disgrace when he was caught DUI at 8:00 am. The next appointee lasted about a year and left for reasons that remain unknown. Not good examples of the ability of restructuring to improve things.
A small and affordable gas tax increase aimed at maintenance will fix the problem. The more we mess around the more it will cost. But no. Between the incompetent, Republican state government (now there’s a redundancy) and the out of touch press who provide little useful information to the voter nothing ever happens. Maybe it’s time to get a horse.
“A small and affordable gas tax increase aimed at maintenance will fix the problem. ”
Will you bet your job on that statement?
The atmosphere in the Senate didn’t become toxic because a bad fairy dropped by and sprinkled nasty dust around (no actual senators involved). It didn’t become bad because of Senator Peeler’s comment this week. The problems are much older and broader than that.