Henry on the border.
Obviously. You just have to think it through.
At first, I was a bit taken aback when I saw this:
Gov. @henrymcmaster is headed Friday-Saturday to the southern border, where he’ll receive briefings and meet with @SCNationalGuard members on the ground. #sctweets https://t.co/thwxLB7gyG
— Maayan Schechter 🔥 (@MaayanSchechter) April 8, 2021
All I could think at first was, “Huh. I didn’t realize that was in any way the governor’s responsibility.”
In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. Nor should it be. Unless I’m looking at the map wrong. I mean, I’m about as sure as I can be that South Carolina doesn’t even come close to bordering on Mexico, so… how does it get to be a state issue? Well, it doesn’t. It isn’t.
Of course, this brings up a festering question: What in the world are South Carolina National Guard troops doing down there, anyway? Were they federalized for this purpose? I vaguely remember something like this happening in the course of one of the many insane nightmares of the past four years, but I guess I had blocked it out. It’s rather startling, in an unpleasant way, to be told they’re still there…
But then I got to thinking further about it, and it suddenly hit me that this was very good news!
Think about it: If Henry’s got time to do this, taking a vacation from his duties and all, it means everything that is actually his job has been taken care of. South Carolina is now perfect. COVID is gone. Everyone has healthcare coverage. Our schools are the best in the country. Racism, which seemed to be making a big comeback, is flat gone. Malfunction Junction? Fixed, without running an Interstate through my front yard.
And Yankees have stopped coming down and overcrowding all our beaches. This must be. Otherwise, everybody in South Carolina would be rising up and saying, “Henry! What the hell are you doing down there? Get back here and fix this mess!”
Awesome! As y’all know, I was for the other guy in 2018. But how was I to know that Henry would SC perfect, in less than three years? I’m just blown away.
And remember, you read the good news here first…
Wait! Is that… is that the Wall? Is Henry posing at the Wall itself? My, my…
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The idea that Henry gives a rip about any migrant is hilarious.
“A 2018 analysis by Bloomberg found that E-Verify enforcement in the eight states (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah) that require private-sector employers to check the legal status of new hires is next to nonexistent.
Only South Carolina conducts audits, asking for lists of hires and proof of verification, according to Bloomberg. The state cited over 1,600 employers from 2013 to 2017 for violations, BUT NONE were punished beyond having to submit quarterly reports for a year.”
I seem to vaguely remember that SC law exempts those areas of employment most likely to use undocumented persons (agricultural and domestic workers) from this kind of oversight.
Ken, I see you got held for moderation again.
I have no idea why. I keep looking at these comments as I approve them, and seeing nothing.
Even weirder, they’re getting held even after I approve one. Even after I approve 10. And it makes no sense.
I don’t know whether to suggest you use another name — one of the ones you’ve used in the past, perhaps — but no… that doesn’t make sense because “Ken” isn’t red-flagged or anything, and it always worked in the past.
I might have to show this to someone who understands WordPress better than I do…
Normally, I can tell why it happens.
For instance, it happened to Mark Huguley today. But right away, I saw why. He included his middle initial in his name. He hadn’t done that before, so the system saw him as someone who had never been approved before, and held him for moderation…
The WordPress software is very literal, and does not intuit.
Remember the way search engines worked about 20 years ago? If you didn’t type it in PERFECTLY, letter for letter, Google or whatever had no idea what you were looking for.
It’s like that. Mark included his middle initial, and the system couldn’t figure out, “Oh, this is Mark…”
You know, I was just cooking along on that post, sure that I knew how things worked and how they didn’t… when it hit me…
DOES Henry now have some kind of direct responsibility over the Guard?
I don’t think so, even though the AG is now appointed rather than elected. We made that change after I left the paper (and after I had pounded on my soap box insisting we should do it for a couple of decades).
But I don’t think it put Henry in the chain of command.
Another thing about this change happening after I left the paper (OK, after I got canned)…
I can’t step to the office next door and ask Cindi, who could tell me what everybody’s responsibilities were under the state constitution, and then I could go back and finish my column with confidence — or, having evaded disaster, go in another direction.
But now, even if I were still at the paper, Cindi’s not there. Nobody’s there, from what I hear.
And now that she doesn’t work for me, I’m not going to bother her about it at this time on a Friday night. (I’d like to tell you I wouldn’t do that if she WERE still working for me, but I don’t want to lie to you.)
I’ll check next week…
I think I’ll go to bed now…
Turns out I WAS wrong, and had to amend the post. See Mark Huguley’s informed comment below….
McMaster has no role in matters involving the border. It is a federal responsibility. That said, the state constitution states: “The Governor shall be Commander in Chief of the organized and unorganized militia of the State.” Being commander-in-chief is important when the National Guard is serving a state mission and functioning as the organized militia of the state. However, deployment to the Mexican border is a federal mission and McMaster’s visit was plainly a political opportunity. How many times have other out of state deployment sites been visited by a governor? If in support of troops abroad during war, it might appropriate. But the border visit was for McMaster, not the troops. Were he to visit National Guard soldiers anywhere in the US other than SC, I would prefer he show solidarity with those who served to restore order in Washington after the insurrection against the government that was caused by Trump.
Thanks, Mark! I hate to learn I was wrong about the “commander-in-chief” thing, but I’d rather find out and fix it than not find out.
Of course, as you say, it’s still a case of Henry demonstrating messed-up priorities, but he does have an excuse for occasionally expressing some interest in the troops. As you say, it would be nice if he’d show interest in those sent to save the nation from insurrection rather than those forced to help advance the agenda of the guy who instigated the insurrection, but if pigs could fly, etc…. That is to say, if Henry stopped embarrassing us, he wouldn’t be Henry…
Dang, I hate that I slipped up on that. Why isn’t Cindi here to stop me from doing stuff like that? It’s just plain foolish to leave me out here on my own like this! It’s almost like people expect me to look stuff up, or even read the state constitution or something…
I’m messing up left and right today. I initially typed “if horses had wings,” instead of “if pigs could fly.”
I was mixing up the pigs expression with “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
I’m turning into Jack Aubrey.
Perhaps my brain is worse than “unremarkable” these days… I need to write a post about that. If I could stop myself from having naps all the time…
Biden administration has quietly decided to continue building Trump’s wall. interesting.
Joe passed the border crisis issue like a hot potato to kamala three weeks ago. She has yet to visit the border (bad photo ops I suppose). I mistakenly thought Biden had spent eight years as Vice President and had some idea of how to handle the border. Turns out he’s just a run of the mill politician who lies his way into office and then does whatever his handlers tell him to do.
So far he’s giving Gerald Ford a run for his money on least effective leader.