Category Archives: Advocacy

Come see me make a fool of myself tonight

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Repeating what I said in a comment a few days ago:

By the way, y’all…

Next week at Capstone, we’ll have a debate on issues related to my Brookings piece, sponsored by the Policy Council. I’m on the panel along with our own Lynn Teague, Rick Quinn and Ashley Landess. Charles Bierbauer will moderate.

I was invited to this by Barton Swaim, thusly:

Did you happen to see Ashley’s op-ed in the WSJ on Saturday? If not, here it is: http://on.wsj.com/1DDDHDS

I’m hoping you vehemently disagree with it, because we’re holding a public debate on the topic of whether 501c3 groups like ours should have to disclose their donors and I’m looking for something to take the YES ABSOLUTELY position. You’re the first person I’ve asked, because you take contrary positions on just about everything!

It’s moderated by Charles Bierbauer, and it’s happening on Tuesday, May 19, from 6 to 8 p.m.

I hope some of y’all can come…

Here’s the Eventbrite info on it.

Actually, it turns out that Charles Bierbauer will not be moderating. Bill Rogers of the SC Press Association will take his place.

I agreed to do this even though I don’t have strong opinions on campaign finance law in general. But I do not believe, as the Policy Council appears to do, that spending equals speech. I do not believe that, as Ashley Landess says, it is “burdensome” for an advocacy group to have to disclose where its money comes from if it hopes to affect elections or policy.

And with me, that’s about as far as it goes. I’ve devoted basically no time to studying individual bills addressing the subject, or court cases on related issues. Because, you know, it’s all about money, and you know how money bores me.

But fortunately, I’ll have our own Lynn Teague on my team. The other “side” will be represented by Ms. Landess and Rep. Rick Quinn.

I’m assuming that all three of them know far more about this than I do (I know Lynn does), and will do the heavy lifting when it comes to filling those two hours.

Lynn and I talked the debate over at breakfast this morning. That’s the extent of my preparation, aside from a few emails back and forth with Barton Swaim, who got me into this.

So if you’re interested, come on out, because I’m sure the other three will have interesting things to say. And if I see the opportunity to make one of my 30,000-foot-view points, I will. Of course, I’m likely to misspeak in my ignorance of the minutiae on this issue. Which you might find entertaining, but I won’t…

Courson, McElveen to host conservation confab

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This came in today from the CVSC. I pass it on in case any of you would like to attend:

Conservation Voters:

Let’s get to work! The legislative session starts today and we are ready.

We hope you will join us for the Senate Briefing: Conversations with Conservationists on January 21st at 10:00 am in Room 105 of the Gressette Building. Hosted by Senators Courson and McElveen, this is an opportunity for members and supporters of SC Conservation Coalition to share their legislative priorities with decision makers.

Your presence makes our voice stronger so please join us for the Briefing and for an informal lunch afterwards at 701 Whaley.  You can let us know if you plan to attend: info@cvsc.org or on Facebook.–

Something like this also helps explain, for those confused, why all those Democrats in Shandon keep voting for John Courson…

Hispanic buying power

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Shell Suber over at the Felkel Group has been sending out releases on behalf of a business groups pushing for what President Obama (and his predecessor, and John McCain, and Lindsey Graham) has been pressing for — comprehensive immigration reform.

Here’s the latest:

NEW REPORT SHOWS HISPANICS RESPONSIBLE FOR

$605 BILLION IN ANNUAL U.S. SPENDING POWER,

$190 BILLION IN TAX REVENUE

 

One Out of Every Ten Dollars of

Spending Power in U.S. in 2013 Held by Hispanics

 

COLUMBIA, SC — Yesterday the Partnership for a New American Economy released a new report highlighting the important role that both native and foreign-born Hispanics play as consumers, purchasing goods and services that circulate money through the economy and help to grow and sustain businesses. The report also highlights their contributions to tax revenue, Medicare, and Social Security programs.

 

“In South Carolina, we have known for some time the positive and vital impact Hispanics play in our state’s economy,” said Gustavo Nieves of the South Carolina Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “This report from PNAE vividly quantifies that positive impact. At the SCHCC, we work with Hispanic businesses throughout South Carolina to promote growth, employment, and profitability. This report demonstrates the contributions of Hispanics as both consumers and entrepreneurs in the economic engine of our state and nation.”

 

Report Key Findings

 

  • Hispanic households, both native and foreign-born, account for a large portion of America’s overall spending power. In 2013, Hispanics had an estimated after-tax income of more than $605 billion. That figure is equivalent to almost one out of every 
10 dollars of disposable income held in the United States that year. Foreign-born Hispanic households made up a sizeable portion of that figure: We estimate their spending power totaled $287 billion that year.

 

  • The growing earnings of Hispanic households have made them major contributors to U.S. tax revenue. In 2013, Hispanic households contributed more than $190 billion to U.S. tax revenues as a whole, including almost $67 billion in state and local tax payments. Of this, foreign-born Hispanics contributed more than $86 billion in tax revenues nationwide. That included almost $32 billion in state and local taxes and more than $54 billion in taxes to the federal government.

 

  • In some states, Hispanics now account for a large percentage of spending power and tax revenues overall. In both Texas and California, Hispanic households had more than $100 billion in after-tax income in 2013, accounting for more than one of every five dollars available to spend in each state that year. In Arizona, a state with a rapidly growing Hispanic population, their earnings after taxes accounted for almost one-sixth of the spending power in the state. In Florida, Hispanics contributed more than one out of every six dollars in tax revenue paid by residents of the state.

 

  • Hispanics, and foreign-born Hispanics in particular, play an important role sustaining America’s Medicare and Social Security programs. In 2013, Hispanic households contributed more than $98 billion to Social Security and almost $23 billion to the Medicare’s core trust fund. Foreign-born Hispanics in particular contributed more than $46 billion to Social Security, while paying in more than $10 billion to the Medicare program. Past studies have indicated that in Medicare in particular, immigrants draw down far less than they put in to the trust fund each year, making such tax contributions particularly valuable.

See the full report, “The Power of the Purse: The Contributions of Hispanics to America’s Spending Power and Tax Revenues in 2013.”

About the South Carolina Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

The South Carolina Hispanic Chamber of Commerce promotes the economic growth of Hispanic businesses in South Carolina. We are committed to developing programs and facilitating the resources that help Hispanic businesses reach their full potential. The Chamber is accomplishing its mission in very practical ways. We are committed to making a real, positive impact in the businesses we represent. We accomplish our mission in three ways: Network, Education, Advocate. First, we make sure you have the networking opportunities available to you that help you grow your business. We have also developed a directory for our members as well as a jobs board. Our “Resources” page provides the necessary resources to start, grow, and sustain your business. Our education component is based on the Entrepreneur Empowerment Series. This program gives entrepreneurs the skills necessary to run their business. The EES is offered in English and Spanish throughout the state. You can find the next Empowerment Series event on our “Events” page. Our advocacy initiative starts with our legislative agenda. Each year, the Chamber’s government affairs office meets with local, state and federal elected officials to discuss the issues that affect Hispanic business owners in South Carolina. Learn more at http://schcc.org/.

About the Partnership for a New American Economy

The Partnership for a New American Economy brings together more than 500 Republican, Democratic, and Independent mayors and business leaders who support immigration reforms that will help create jobs for Americans today. The Partnership’s members include mayors of more than 35 million people nationwide and business leaders of companies that generate more than $1.5 trillion and employ more than 4 million people across all sectors of the economy, from Agriculture to Aerospace, Hospitality to High Tech, and Media to Manufacturing. Partnership members understand that immigration is essential to maintaining the productive, diverse, and flexible workforce that America needs to ensure prosperity over the coming generations. Learn more atwww.RenewOurEconomy.org.

 

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Yeah, I know; it’s kind of a non sequitur — this is ALL Hispanics, not just illegals. But I pass it on…

See how Conservation Voters scored SC lawmakers

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header_scorecard_03

This came in this afternoon from Rebecca Haynes with the Conservation Voters of South Carolina:

Conservation Voters,

Do you know who is voting for or against protecting the natural resources that drive South Carolina’s economy? You do now. Check out our interactive 2013-2014 Legislative Scorecard. Based on the Conservation Common Agenda’s legislative priorities for 2013-2014, we score how House and Senate members vote on bills important to the conservation community.

Before the 2013 – 2014 legislative session, CVSC convened conservation groups across the state to agree upon collective priorities for the state legislature over the next two years. Our Conservation Common Agenda included fully funding the Conservation Bank, protecting wetlands and the coastal shoreline, upholding environmental regulations, opposing out-of-state waste and removing barriers to solar energy as the top “to-dos” at the State House.

We organized meetings with elected leaders and constituents and visited editorial boards prior to session. We were at the Capitol from January to June educating legislators across party lines about our priorities and calling upon South Carolinians to communicate support of or opposition to priority bills as they moved through the legislature.

Check out which bills were scored and how your legislator faired on the “Conservation Counts Scorecard” website at www.cvsc.org/scorecard.

Our conservation community is already hard at work on issues that failed to move forward such as surface water withdrawals, ethics and transportation spending reforms.

Here’s the page where you can look up each individual lawmaker’s score, and here’s a graphic about the State House overall.

We don’t need outsiders calling our governor a ‘clown’

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crew

Back in the first few years that I was back here in SC — I want to say it was about the time of the Lost Trust scandal in 1990; in any case, it was a time when we were struggling with some huge problem in Columbia — The Charlotte Observer ran a short, dismissive, truly snotty editorial asking what was up with South Carolina, and comparing us to the Three Stooges.

That was it. There was no serious analysis of the problem, and no recommendation (that I recall) on how to make it better. Just a setup for comparing South Carolina to the Stooges. Ha-ha.

Something crystallized for me in that moment. I had been a longtime admirer of the Observer before I came to work here. But since my return here in 1987, I had noticed that its coverage of my home state had a certain tone to it — a scornful fascination based in a concept of SC as the other; as a vastly inferior other that existed to make folks in that corner of NC feel good about themselves.

I fully realized what had bothered me as soon as I read that editorial. I felt that the Observer couldn’t care less whether things got better in SC, as long as we provided our betters with entertainment. (If I’m correct on the timing, this was at the time that I was conceiving of the year-long Power Failure project analyzing what was really wrong with SC, and offering a specific path to fixing the problems. So I had a markedly different attitude: I cared.)

Anyway, I was reminded of that Three Stooges moment when Celeste Headlee brought my attention to CREW’s second list of the nation’s worst governors. (CREW, by the way, is the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government.)

For those of you interested in such things, of the 18 governors on the list, only two — Andrew Cuomo and Steven Beshear — are Democrats (Scott Walker makes the list for being anti-union, and accepting contributions from people who are also anti-union — really; those are his “sins”). But I’m less concerned with the fact that CREW doesn’t live up to its self-professed partisan impartiality than the fact that, by publishing a list such as this one, the organization gives the lie to the “responsibility” part of its name.

Of course, our own governor makes the list. And that would be OK, if CREW had some helpful criticism. Here’s what it has to say about Gov. Haley. I won’t bother repeating it since there’s no news in it. She’s been roundly criticized for these things in this space. But I stand today to defend her.

My beef is with the overall way that this list is presented. Someone thought it would be cute to give the list a circus theme. The 18 governors are divided into three groups — the “Ringmasters,” the “Clowns,” and the “Sideshows.”

Nikki Haley is listed among the six “Clowns.”

I’m mystified as to the reasoning behind this equal division into three groups. What, our governor is a “Clown,” but Rick Perry makes “Ringmaster”? Really? If someone forced you to pick one of them as a “Clown,” how could you pick her over him?

Beyond that, there is no evidence provided of her clownishness. I didn’t see anything funny in any of the things said about her. It is simply not a defensible metaphor.

Let me say unequivocally that Nikki Haley is not a clown. She’s a perfectly serious, earnest young woman who governs as well as she can, according to her lights.

She does not deserve to be called a clown.

And if CREW really cared about responsibility in government, it would desist from this kind of immature, dismissive, unhelpful nonsense. This is the kind of destructive thing the political parties do — denigrate and demean and utterly dismiss all with whom they disagree, making it impossible for people wearing different labels to work together toward the common good.

On its About Us page, CREW moans,

Many Americans have given up on our political system, writing off our elected leaders…

Well, you know why? Because (at least in part) of dismissive junk such as this.

If you have something constructive to say, say it. If you have any specific, serious advice to offer the people of South Carolina, we’re all ears — really. Not all of us have “We Don’t CARE How You Did It Up North” bumper stickers on our vehicles (although, admittedly, some of us do). Let’s hear your prescription.

But if you have nothing more helpful to offer than to call our governor a “clown,” then just shut up about it.

Yo! I wanna tap me some a that Bro-surance!

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Just what President Obama and Sec. Sebelius needed to overcome their PR disaster…

Here’s what some folks in Colorado have come up with to try to help Obamacare along:

The ads, which all live on the DoYouGotInsurance.com website, are a collaboration between Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education, and reference the famous “Got Milk?” ads.

In one ad — called “Let’s Get Physical” — characters named “Susie” and “Nate” are described as “hot to trot.” Susie gives a thumbs up while holding a back of birth control pills.

“OMG, he’s hot!” the ad reads. “Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance.”

Somebody was Rocky Mountain high when they came up with this. And while they carried it out, too.

You know, if Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World” (“Party on, Garth!”) had come up with this, even they would have been doing it ironically. (And yeah, I know they’re trying to use irony here, but very, very badly.)

Set aside how offensive this is to constituencies who don’t much like Obamacare to begin with. If were a member of the target audience, I would be especially offended. Because even when I was a college student attending actual keggers, I was more rational, and more articulate, than this:

Not sure how I ended up here perched on top of this keg. I could totally fall, but that’s OK. My budget will stay balanced even if I don’t, because I got insurance.

The language reads like some old fogy’s notion of the way tweens think and speak. (Are kids really saying “gnarly” again?)

My personal nomination for the worst bit in the whole campaign — the text in the “keg stand” ad that says:

“Don’t tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills.”

Oh, no. Wouldn’t want to do that. Heaven forfend.

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AARP survey shows support for entitlements

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I recently said that, of all the advocacy groups that set up shop in the runup to the primaries back in 2007, the only one to return seemed to be ONE.

But another, AARP, has launched its own effort. It’s not as visible as those red T-shirts that Samuel Tenenbaum and his cohorts wore on AARP’s behalf four years ago, but it’s now noticeable. I had meant to listen in on a press conference call the nonprofit was having this morning about a new survey, but didn’t get back to the office from a speaking engagement in time to pull that off. But I can share the release that went with it:

Likely Republican Voters in First-in-the-South South Carolina Primary
Want Social Security, Medicare Protected from Deficit Cuts
AARP Releases Survey and Launches 2012 Republican Caucus and Primary Video Voter’s Guide

Columbia, SC – AARP today released survey results showing that by nearly 3 to 1 (68.5 percent for Social Security, 70.5 percent for Medicare), likely Republican voters in the South Carolina GOP Primary overwhelmingly oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits to reduce the deficit.

AARP’s GOP South Carolina Primary Survey highlights the major disconnect between  Washington  and Republican voters in South Carolina who will be critical in determining the next Republican Presidential nominee. While the Washington  talks about making a deal to cut Medicare and Social Security to meet their budget target, voters say they oppose cuts to the benefits they earned and need.  Almost 600,000 South Carolina seniors received Social Security in 2010 and accounts for nearly 63 percent of the typical older South Carolina residents own income. Over 99 percent of South Carolina seniors are enrolled in Medicare.

“The results demonstrate that strong majorities of supporters for every Republican presidential candidate oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits,” said AARP South Carolina spokesman Patrick Cobb.  “Conservative South Carolina voters and voters who agree with the Tea Party oppose cuts to these programs. The message these voters are sending is clear:  Do not cut the Social Security and Medicare benefits they’ve earned.”

The survey interviewed 400 likely Republican primary voters (age 18+) in South Carolina with the mean age of 64 with 73.5 percent identifying themselves as “Conservative.”  Conducted by GS Strategy Group with funding from AARP, the research has a 4.90 percent margin of error.  Over 88 percent of voters said that Social Security benefits will be important to their monthly income in retirement and nearly all – 92.3 percent – say the strength and solvency of Medicare is essential to seniors’ health care security in retirement. When asked their preference on ways to cut government spending and reduce the deficit, respondents overwhelmingly say they prefer reducing U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan over cutting either Medicare or Social Security with 73.5 percent in favor of troop withdrawls to cut spending v. 8.5 percent preferring Medicare cuts, and 73.5 percent in favor of troop withdrawls v. 6.0 percent preferring Social Security cuts.

Respondents were asked which candidate they would vote for if the primary was held that day. The survey, conducted October 18-19, yielded the following results (by percentage):

·         Cain                            27.8 percent

·         Romney                      27.0 percent

·         Perry                          7.8 percent

·         Gingrich                     7.3 percent

·         Paul                            5.0 percent

·         Bachmann                  3.0 percent

·         Huntsman                  1.5 percent

·         Santorum                   1.3 percent

·         Undecided                  19.5 percent

AARP will provide information to its members and all Americans throughout the election season to help voters understand where the candidates stand on the issues that matter most to them and their families. As part of these efforts, AARP is launching its 2012 Republican Caucus and Primary Video Voters’ Guide on November 13.

The Video Voters’ Guide will feature one-on-one, unedited interviews with four of the top candidates on topics important to older voters, including: jobs and the economy, retirement security, Social Security and Medicare.  The video will be mailed to Republican voters in the five early nominating states and will be available to all AARP members and the general public on www.aarp.org/youearnedit<http://www.aarp.org/youearnedit>, as well as through the AARP Bulletin.

The guide will feature candidates who registered at 5 percent or higher in an average of national polls. They include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Congressman Ron Paul and Texas Governor Rick Perry.  Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain and Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney declined repeated invitations to participate. Mediacom Communications will air the Video Voter Guide in its entirety on Sunday, November 13 at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

For more information on the survey or the Video Voter’s’ Guide, please visit www.aarp.org/youearnedit<http://www.aarp.org/youearnedit>.

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a membership that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to either political campaigns or candidates. We produce AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world’s largest-circulation magazine with nearly 35 million readers; AARP Bulletin, the go-to news source for AARP’s millions of members and Americans 50+; AARP VIVA, the only bilingual U.S. publication dedicated exclusively to the 50+ Hispanic community; and our website, AARP.org. AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity that provides security, protection, and empowerment to older persons in need with support from thousands of volunteers, donors, and sponsors. We have staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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Full disclosure: I am card-carrying member of the AARP, and the organization has advertised on this blog on more than one occasion.