Category Archives: Community

It’s still sinking in: We have two-time, back-to-back, National Champions

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Well, it was certainly Famously Hot today. Particularly walking there and back. But worth it. (Actually, as you might be able to tell from the great vantage point and the slight glare/reflection on the window, I watched a good bit of this from the coolness of the Capital City Club. But hey, I did walk there and back.)

It’s a great day for, let’s see… South Carolina, Columbia, the University, and for baseball. Because those young guys showed how the game ought to be played — steadily, honestly, with mastery of all the basics, and as a team. I’m not even going to get into how communitarian (and how very non-Tea Party) that is, because I don’t want to spoil the day with politics.

Great job, boys. You’ll treasure this day for the rest of your lives. So will everybody else around here.

Well, they did it. Again.

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Don’t know what to say, except those boys are just deadly competent. No, way beyond that. They just do it right, play after play. Real baseball. Solid. Constant. Superb.

And we have a national champion again. Or still. Or however you say it. We’ve never had to say this before. That’s OK. We could get used to it.

Actually, I guess we’ll have to, right?

A bloody triumph at the convention center

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Well, once again, I forgot to tell you about a blood drive beforehand so you could participate.

But this time, it didn’t matter. I am happy to report that the American Red Cross’ Famously Hot Blood Drive at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center today was hugely successful.

The goal was 100 donors. Red Cross Donor Recruitment Representative Kelly Moore told me late this afternoon that when it was all over, 160 had given.

You’ll note the row of seated Columbians above waiting their turn. There was another full row behind them, and it was like that much of the day.

Of course, I did my bit (come on, you knew that you wouldn’t get all the way through this post without a little self-aggrandizement from your humble correspondent). I gave double-red cells, because I’m just that sort of overachiever. Also, I think it’s cool the way they take the blood out, remove red cells and put it back (quite literally cool, because it’s not as warm as it was when it went out, having been mixed with a bit of saline to replace volume). I was a little worried that I couldn’t. You know how I occasionally fall short on the iron standard. Well, my ruse of buying some iron pills and taking a double-dose last night, and that much again this morning, worked — I scored a 14 on the test. Yes! Aced it, by cramming.

Anyway, I’ll try to remember to tell y’all ahead of time next time. But this time it worked out great anyway. Congratulations, and thanks, to Red Cross Blood Services, to the Columbia Rotary Club (quite a few members showed up), and to all those other folks who showed up to give.

Doug Nye, and the things we remember…

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A few days ago, I saw on Facebook where a mutual friend had visited Doug Nye, and he wasn’t doing well. And I thought, “I need to check on him,” and now he’s gone. My mom called me last night to say it was announced at the USC baseball game…

It’s funny the things you remember about people. Doug was a great guy to talk to about all sorts of things, and not just westerns. To many people he will be remembered as the Father of the Chicken Curse, in terms of having popularized the concept. There are complex permutations on the Curse beyond what Bill Starr wrote about this morning that I could get into, but that’s not what I remember best about Doug.

Here’s what I remember best, and most fondly: Doug and I had a number of conversations sharing our childhood memories of watching “Spaceship C-8,” a kiddie show on WBTW out of Florence, hosted by the late “Captain Ashby” Ward, who was also the news anchor. I really didn’t have all that many specific memories about the show (Doug, being older, remembered more), despite having spent many an hour watching it during the summers I spent with my grandparents in Bennettsville. (Doug watched it from another end of the coverage area — I want to say Sumter.) But I enjoyed talking about it with Doug on multiple occasions.

It was about way more than one kid’s show; it was about remembering an era, a time before media saturation. A time when WBTW was the only station you could reliably get clearly in B’ville with a home antenna (WIS also came in, depending on the weather). Then, in the late 60s, along came cable to small town America, LONG before it came to cities. That way, you could get all three networks, plus some duplicates from different cities. There was less demand in cities, because they could already get three or four channels.

Consequently, we spent an awful lot of time doing stuff other than watching TV, or engaging any other mass medium. A time that in many ways was about as close as Huck Finn’s fictional existence as it was to what kids experience today.

Odd, I suppose, that the thing I would remember best from knowing the longtime TV writer was talking about days that were practically pre-TV. But that’s what I remember. It won’t really mean anything to you, I suppose, but I’m confident it would make Doug smile.

I remember that, and the fact that, as I said, Doug was a great guy to talk to about anything. Always a ready grin (that’s why I know he’d smile at my trivial remembrance), the kind of naturally affable guy who you took a moment to chat with rather than just rushing past in the course of getting through a day’s deadlines. He stood out among newspapermen that way. Not that newspapermen were so awful; I just mean Doug stood out. Which is why so many will remember him fondly.

How’d YOU make out in the storm? Here’s my car, with the tree on it

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It began, at my house, with a fundamental failure of seamanship that would have disgusted Jack Aubrey. Every sailor knows that when a blow comes up, you take your sails in — or most of them — ASAP. I failed to do so.

My wife had already had dinner while I was writing this blog post. Then, as the lights started flickering, I decided I’d best heat mine while I still had use of the microwave. So I sat down to eat a little after 8:30, I think. Then there was a thump from the back wall — sounded like something in the kitchen cabinets.

Odd, I thought — then went to the window, and saw that the iron table on the deck had blown over. Because the umbrella was still attached, and open. As I rushed to deal with it (thinking all the while of old-time sailors taking in a reef in the topsails with a gale tearing at them) and branches and stuff fell all around, the wind almost carried the umbrella, me and the iron table off the deck. But I finally got it down, and into the house.

Then, the top of an internal doorway — the frame part — between the kitchen and the hall — started steadily leaking water onto the floor. After a few moments, it stopped. I haven’t identified the source yet.

After all the banging and crashing stopped, a neighbor came and knocked on the front door to inform me that a tree had fallen across my car. It missed the truck — falling right alongside it — and my daughter’s car, and my wife’s car, but landed square on the hood of mine. And effectively blocked in all the other vehicles, since mine was in back.

That same neighbor helped me move the tree enough to back out my car this morning, and we pulled it around just enough for my wife to get out.

And now, just a moment ago, my wife called to say that she realized that the light fixture that was smashed on the deck last night (oh, didn’t I mention that?) was right over the dog’s water bowl. Which might have broken glass in it. So now I’ve got to run back home.

How did YOU make out last night?

In the future, Colatown will finally be cool

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EngenuitySC just drew my attention to this, from a forward-looking Brit publication:

Columbia Named a Top “City of the Future”

fDi Magazine, a London-based publication for foreign investors, has named Columbia, SC to its “American Cities of the Future” 2011-12 rankings. Columbia made the top ten lists for both “Small Cities of the Future” and “Small Cities Quality of Life.” Review all the rankings here.

We didn’t make the Top 10 overall, or the Top 10 Major Cities. Nor did we make the Top 10 Latin American cities, in spite of all those illegal immigrants Doug and others keep worrying about. But we did make those two “Small Cities” lists.

We’ve waited so long here in the Midlands. It’s great to know that in the future, we will finally be cool.

More on The Filter Bubble

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If you were interested in this post back here, you might want to check out this review of Eli Pariser’s book, The Filter Bubble. An excerpt:

… Personalization is meant to make Internet users happy: It shows them information that mathematical calculations indicate is more likely than generalized content to be of interest. Google’s personalized search results track dozens of variables to deliver the links that a user is predicted to be most likely to click on. As a result, Google users click on more of the results that they get. That’s good for Google, good for its advertisers, good for other websites and presumably good for the user.

But Mr. Pariser worries that there’s a dark downside to giving people their own custom version of the Internet. “Personalization isn’t just shaping what we buy,” he writes. “Thirty-six percent of Americans under thirty get their news through social networking sites.” As we become increasingly dependent on the Internet for our view of the world, and as the Internet becomes more and more fine-tuned to show us only what we like, the would-be information superhighway risks becoming a land of cul-de-sacs, with each of its users living in an individualized bubble created by automated filters—of which the user is barely aware.

To Mr. Pariser, these well-intended filters pose a serious threat to democracy by undermining political debate. If partisans on either side of the issues seem uninterested in the opposition’s thinking nowadays, wait until Google’s helpful sorters really step up their game….

If you read the book, let me know how it comes out. The review said was strong on identifying a problem, not so hot on solutions. Which I wouldn’t blame on Pariser. No one else knows the answer, either.

Harvest Hope reaches milestone, has a million to go

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Just got this good news from Harvest Hope Food Bank:

Harvest Hope Reaches $300,000 Total to Attain Southeastern Freight Lines Matching Goal

May 19, 2011

COLUMBIA, SC – May 19, 2011 – Harvest Hope Food Bank announces that as of this morning, Thursday May 19 they have raised  $304,455.38 since announcing the Southeastern Freight Lines matching campaign in early April, which qualifies them for SEFL’s $150,000 matching donation for a total of $450,000.

Combined with the $456,293.67 raised during their March matching campaign staked by Mungo Homes, Harvest Hope has now raised $910,749.05 toward their $2 million funding goal announced on March 8th.  Harvest Hope now looks to raise the final $1,089,251 to reach its goal and ensure their ability to meet the growing hunger needs across 20 counties of South Carolina.

Harvest Hope wishes to thank Southeastern Freight Lines and Mungo Homes for their generosity in each staking $150,000 toward the matching campaigns, and urges other members of the business community to follow the examples set by these community leaders and step up to pledge their own matching campaigns.

Lots of progress, but lots of money still to raise to meet the goal, and keep up with the mission.

You and your “filter bubble,” and the impact on society

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This is a fascinating little spoken essay over at TED, and as the site boasts, is indeed an “idea worth spreading.” Actually, a bunch of ideas — ideas and observations I’ve made before — although neatly tied together.

Here are some of the things that it discusses:

  • The idea of the personal “filter bubble,” which is unique to you and yet — and this is critical — not chosen by you. It’s chosen by the algorithms with which you are interacting, based on information that has been gathered about you. I’m not just talking about the obvious ads you see. I’m talking about — to use the example Eli Pariser uses in the video — if you Google “Egypt,” you don’t get the same information that someone else gets when they Google “Egypt.” It’s like you’re in parallel universes.
  • That these algorithms are the things replacing editors like me — the people who made a profession out of filtering the vast amounts of information that is available into something digestible and understandable to a person in the real world with only one set of eyes and 24 hours in the day.
  • That instead of empowering you, though — which is the myth of the Internet, that regular folks have been all liberated from us wicked, manipulating editors controlling what they see and what is published — this new, impersonal mechanism is manipulating you, and doing it in isolation, and in a way that you are unlikely to notice. (As I type that, I start to think more and more of “The Matrix.”) Rather than being more connected to the world, it’s like you are being fed a personalized information flow in your own little solitary confinement cell.
  • There is, in other words, a dark side to the my-this and my-that way that websites are often marketed to you. I’ve always had a visceral, negative response to that stuff, but I always thought it was because of my communitarianism. And the fact that it spelled the death of the mass media in which I made my living, which depended upon a notion of common space, and common concerns. This has given me another reason to be bugged by it.
  • To explore that isolation thing further… back in the 80s, we MSM journalists decried the plethora of specialty magazines that were increasingly popular. People were more and more subscribing to “Left-Handed Gay Bicyclist Journal” rather than publications based in the notion that we’re all in a society together. The Web really exacerbated that tendency. (But that’s not what did in the newspaper industry. What did it in was the business side of that — the fact that businesses started marketing directly to customers and potential customers directly, first through direct mail, then through those little plastic tags on your keychain, then through the Web. That shut out mass media, media aimed at whole communities.) The reason, we kept telling people, that YOU should care was that representative democracy depended upon a sense of shared interests, or at least shared sources of information, to some extent. But at least we thought people were freely choosing this. The fascinating thing about the “filter bubble” is how software is choosing it for you, largely without your full realization.
  • This is like 1915 again. Early in the last century, as people started realizing how important newspapers were to democracy itself, you started to see the development of certain ethics about objectivity and fairness, etc. There started to be an assumption of SOME responsibility by editors, rather than just bulling along being shills for this or that political movement — which is what newspapers had been since the founding of the republic. As imperfect as that system of safeguards was, it was at least something. Now we don’t have it. The Internet is the Wild West. If democracy is to be well served, some sorts of standards also need to emerge on the Web.

Something he doesn’t directly address but I will. What’s going on right now — in a tiny way on this blog, in lots of other ways in thousands of other places — is that people are trying to figure out the new business model for news on the state and local level. The old model has collapsed, but there’s still a strong demand for the information and commentary — as strong as ever. The thing is, the old business model wasn’t related to that demand — newspapers were paid for by advertisers, not readers. I believe in markets enough that I believe a new model for paying for newsgathering in order to meet that demand will emerge. But will it be one that supports an informed electorate, the kind upon which a liberal representative democracy depends?

And by the way, this is not about “that bad Internet.” The message is better summed up in his conclusion:

We really need the internet to be that thing that we all dreamed of it being… and it’s not going to do that, if it leaves us all isolated, in a web of one.

Anyway, that’s enough for me. Y’all are all empowered and everything now. Watch it yourself.

Brookgreen Gardens 1958

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Yes, that headline is mean to evoke “Louisiana 1927,” an awesome song.

I got the photo from our good friend Bud, who wrote:

Here’s a picture of me and my cousins and brother @ Brookgreen Gardens taken in 1958.  I’m the one on the right with the sandals.

… and the dark socks. I suspect that Bud was always a fashion iconoclast. Good for him.

Bud sent that after we discovered that he and I both have a long history of connection to Surfside Beach. (I’m having trouble remembering which post that came up on, or I’d link to it.)

Come to Five Points tonight and help protect cops

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Don’t know about you, but tonight I’ll be at the fountain at Five Points (Greene and Saluda) to support the effort to get better armor for Columbia police officers.

WIS had something about doing this for Midlands officers in general last week:

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – In the wake of the shooting of a Columbia police officer, WIS and local law enforcement officers are teaming up to raise money to help pay for more bulletproof vests for Midlands police officers.

Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott says a ballistics vest saved the life of one of his officers when he was shot by a suspect during a traffic stop early Wednesday morning in the Shandon neighborhood.

Scott said officer Alexander Broder lived because he was following procedure and wearing his department-issued vest. “We’re just very fortunate the round hit him in the bulletproof vest,” said Scott. “That is what saved his life.” Broder had only been on the job for five days.

Scott says each vests costs over $600. “We can’t put a price on that type of safety for our officers,” said Scott. “Every officer that walks in the door is issued a ballistic vest.”

Starting at 5:00 p.m., you will have the chance to donate money to help equip more Midlands officers with bulletproof vests.

Phone lines will be staffed from 5:00pm – 7:30pm. You can call 803-758-1020 or donate online by clicking here.

… and that’s great. But some Five Points merchants wanted to do more specifically for CPD officers.

The event is from 6 to 9 tonight. I had wanted to get more details about how come the city hasn’t bought up-to-date armor for its officers instead of funding arts centers or something, but didn’t have time, and wanted to go ahead and get this up. Because whatever the politics, Columbia’s Finest deserve to have decent protection when they’re going up against people with Kalashnikovs.

As Debbie McDaniel said in telling me about the event, “The vests they have now are older, used and reaching their expiration date. After what happened last week, I think we need to make surer they all have the latest protection.” Absolutely.

See you there.

Scooped by The State on my own danged story

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Our late, lamented AC units, right after the deed was done.

Some of y’all were disparaging The State on a previous post. Well, I’ll say this for them: They just scooped me on my own blasted story.

Of course, I let them. Remember that list of posts I’ve been MEANING to get to, which I wrote about back here? Well, one of them was about copper theft:

Metal fabricator Stanley Bradham delivered two 300-pound concrete slabs to a Pickens Street business Tuesday, then lowered a couple of 2- to 3-ton heating and air-conditioning units on top.

But it is what Bradham did next that theft-weary business and church leaders are hoping will finally slow the alarming rate of vandalism aimed at removing copper wiring – a trend that not only inconveniences victims, but also drives up their insurance rates.

Bradham bolted a lockable, customized, 350-gauge unibody steel cage over each of the units and welded the cages to the cement pads, which are secured by 12-inch anchors in the ground.

“It stops your access to the top of the unit, so you can’t get in,” said Bradham, of the newly formed Carolina Copper Protection company in Hopkins. “For the cost factor, it’s a very visual deterrence.”

That Pickens Street business was ADCO.

This is a story that goes under the heading of the Jerry Ratts dictum, “News is whatever happens to, or interests, an editor.” Or former editor, in this case. Jerry was a bit of a cynic, but he had a point. I mean, you know, this copper theft was a serious problem and all, but it only became dire quite recently, and suddenly…

Several weeks back, copper thieves destroyed both of our AC units to get a few coils of copper. We’re talking $8,000-$10,000 worth of damage for maybe, maybe $400 worth of metal.

Actually, that’s the high estimate. Back right after this happened, when I was in full fury over it, I interviewed Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott about it, and he said it was probably more like between $30 and $100. Which is… mind-boggling to me. I mean, it seems way easier to actually to out and work for that amount of money. I mean, mow a lawn or something — way less risk.

But apparently, it’s not as much trouble as I thought to tear up an AC unit that way. Chief Scott says they’re in and out in 3-5 minutes. Otherwise, he’d catch more of them.

It started with empty or abandoned commercial buildings. Now, he says, they’re hitting everything — churches, law offices, even private homes. Having your unit on a roof is no defense. Thieves destroyed 17 units from the top of the Dream Center at Bible Way Church on Atlas Road. Then, after the units were replaced, they hit again.

In fact, as Roddie Burriss reports:

In 2009, Southern Mutual wrote checks for $365,000 worth of losses due to copper thefts, according to Robert Bates, executive vice president.

In 2010, the company paid $1.2 million in copper theft losses to 174 member churches. Because most of the churches it covers are located in the Palmetto State, 109 of the 174 copper theft claims were in South Carolina, accounting for losses totaling $839,000, Bates said.

Through March 2011, Bates said the company already had paid churches $552,000 in copper loss claims, putting it well on the way to a $2 million payout for the year in these thefts…

I ran into Roddie and photographer Tim Dominick in the alley outside our building yesterday — and realizing they were doing MY story, I lapsed back into editor mode. Let the reporters and photographers do the work, then comment it. It feels natural.

So here’s the commentary part… Obviously, Something Must Be Done about this problem. Back when we were without AC, I had a suggestion, which I posted on Twitter. It was on a particularly warm day last month (I told you I’d been sitting on this for awhile):

Can’t breathe. No air-conditioning all week. Thieves stole copper. We need to bring back flogging. Or keelhauling. Something painful…

Sonny Corleone would say it’s just business, but I was taking it very, very personally. Chief Scott has a more constructive, and constitutional idea than my sweaty rantings: Make it harder to fence the stuff.

He’s backing, and testified in favor of, legislation sponsored by Rep. Todd Rutherford that would stiffen penalties (although, I’m sorry to say, no flogging), and make the businesses that buy scrap metal get legitimate ID from the people who sell them copper. Which would seem sort of like a no-brainer. As the chief said, “When you ride up on a bicycle, and you have two air-conditioning coils, you’re probably not a legitimate air-conditioning repair man.”

Chief Scott, and other law enforcement professionals, have enough problems, what with people coming at them with AK-47s. And yet they are spending more and more of their time fighting this rising tide of copper theft, and it’s pretty overwhelming — and not only to the angry, sweaty victims.

During our interview (which, like so many of my interviews, took place at the Capital City Club), the Chief looked out over the city and said, wondering, “Just LOOK at all those air-conditioners…”

Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott: "Just LOOK at all those air-conditioners..."

March for Babies coming up Saturday

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The above video, posted this week by Alan Cooper on his Midlands Biz site, reminds me that the March of Dimes March for Babies is happening at the fairgrounds on Saturday.

I got sort of peripherally involved with this worthwhile endeavor because Geoff Osborne, an attorney at Rogers Townsend & Thomas (the law firm is a client of ADCO) was involved. He has a deep personal commitment to the organization because his twins were born prematurely, making him acutely aware of the importance of the work March of Dimes does, in this community and across the nation.

When Alan showed interest in having someone from the organization on one of his podcasts, I offered to do the interview for him. Alan and I had been talking about my doing that for Midlands Biz at some point — as viewers of “The Brad Show” can attest, I need all the video experience I can get — and this seemed to be a good one to start on. I’ve also done another interview for Alan, which hasn’t aired yet, with Michael Fanning, a comprehensive tax reform advocate. I’ll show you that one when it’s available. (I hope I didn’t do in that one what I did in this one — note that after noting that I was a guest interviewer, I failed to say who I was …)

But all that aside, I wanted to bring the March on Saturday to your attention. You can still register online here, individually or as a team. For that matter, you can just show up by 8 a.m. on Saturday and sign up, according to Jacki Apel, local March of Dimes communications director — although she points out that you might have to wait in line then, so it’s best to sign up now…

Click these links for more information on the March of Dimes, and the March for Babies.

Additionally, here’s a recent report WACH-Fox did publicizing the event:

A few words from Amazon’s local friends

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Well, I’ve gotten my hands on audio of that radio ad I was wondering about last week from the friends of Amazon — and a second one as well. Here’s audio for the first ad, along with the script:

In the elections, politicians promised jobs.

When Amazon announced plans for a distribution facility in Lexington County, it meant 12-hundred and fifty full-time jobs and hundreds of part-time jobs.

Not only that, but millions of tax dollars for our schools.

South Carolina promised Amazon it would work to make this happen.

But Wal-Mart and other retail giants are trying to force the state to break its promise and make Amazon collect taxes from South Carolina customers. The courts say that’s wrong.  If Walmart gets its way, Amazon has said that it would have no choice but to leave.

This isn’t about online sales taxes. That’s for Congress to decide.

It’s about paychecks and healthcare benefits families. Property taxes for schools. And purchasing power for small business.

Call your legislator and Governor Haley now. Ask them to keep South Carolina’s promise to Amazon by extending the Job Creation Act. Say yes to jobs. No to Wal-Mart.

And here’s audio for the second, and that script as well:

The Upstate has BMW and the Low Country Boeing.

Now it’s our turn with Amazon.

Forbes calls Amazon the number one company in America for customer service.

Fortune listed Amazon as one of the world’s most admired companies.

We NEED one of America’s best companies working with one of America’s best regions to grow and prosper.

Call your legislators and Governor Haley. Tell them to pass the Amazon bill because 1200 jobs with benefits are exactly what we need.

Paid for by Save Our Lexington Jobs.

As you see from that first item, a large part of the case being made is that the opposition is Walmart. And indeed, it is a big liability for opponents of Amazon getting the break it seeks — and a huge irony as well. The anti-break faction paints itself as being all about “main street” — and we all know that Walmart has done more to hurt ol’ Mom and Pop than anyone. Which is why that side is quick to point to local business allies.

Both sides are playing on emotion, of course — fairness vs. mean ol’ Walmart. That’s because this is a political battle.

Which is why one seems out of place when one cites dry policy justifications, as my friends at The State did. They were right, of course: we need to be moving TOWARD collecting taxes on online purchases, not away from it. That’s the big picture. Unfortunately, when you’re looking at that many anticipated jobs going away, that “big picture” can seem awfully abstract.

That’s why I get somewhat uncomfortable defending the position that is, in the abstract, completely right. Like when I was talking with Mike Briggs of the Central SC Alliance this morning at breakfast.

To Mike, Amazon was promised this break — which is really about reinstituting a break that existed in state law before. To me, the idea that anyone could consider anything that depended upon action by the SC General Assembly as a promise seems far-fetched. Perhaps legislatures act more predictably in other states where Amazon does business, but they certainly don’t here. A “promise” made by Mark Sanford (who’s he?) to TRY to get something enacted hardly seems binding on anyone currently in office. YES, it could indeed make the job of economic development in the future harder, to the extent that other prospects also see this as having been a promise. But do you really do something you think is bad policy because of that? Maybe you do, if you need the jobs badly enough…

Mike’s stronger point is that this distribution center is hardly the kind of “nexus” that was anticipated in the case that set national precedent on whether businesses were required to collect such taxes. He argues that it was about storefronts, not about administrative facilities. He may be right.

My response is that what we need is national law that would require Web businesses to collect sales taxes regardless of whether they have a local precedent. Web businesses have enough of a competitive advantage over bricks-and-mortar businesses that provide jobs (and, ahem, buy advertising) in our local communities. Government should not allow them another.

Yeah, I get it — that’s  NOT the law now. But apparently, current law DOES hold that Amazon would have to collect the taxes once its facility is built. And granting a specific break to Amazon on this would be a move in the direction AWAY from the kind of law we should have, nationally.

Yeah, I know. Such dry policy considerations about laws we OUGHT to have are cold comfort to someone who was counting on getting a job at Amazon. And I respect that.

Which is why I’m trying to give as much exposure as I can to the pro-Amazon argument. So my readers have all the ammo they need to disagree with me, if they are so inclined. Hey, I try to do that all the time, but in this case I feel particularly obliged.

In that spirit, I call your attention to one other item from the pro-Amazon campaign — this op-ed piece in the Charleston paper, by Lewis F. Gossett, president and CEO of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance. An excerpt:

Debate about extending the Jobs Creation Act for Amazon goes far beyond the Midlands, which stands to gain 1,200 full-time jobs with benefits, hundreds of seasonal jobs, and economic investment nearing $100 million.

How the General Assembly and governor handle this project will affect every county’s ability to compete in the global economy for jobs and investment. If they fail to simply extend a tax provision that has existed for five years, leaving Amazon no choice but to go somewhere else, every state in the nation will have the same message for job creators large and small: If South Carolina will break its word to a world-class company like Amazon, it will do it to you.

Decades of work to make us a global player, from Carroll Campbell to Gov. Haley, and heroic efforts by the General Assembly to make our laws business-friendly will be compromised by a broken promise.

Make no mistake, the outgoing administration promised Amazon reinstatement of a just-expired law that did not require online retailers to collect sales taxes from South Carolina customers. Secretary of Commerce Robert M. Hitt has said so.

Detractors can parse language in the formal agreement all they want, but the fact is that every major deal between the state and private companies contains a lot of formal language, as well as verbal agreements and handshakes. Company officials from well-publicized large projects in the Upstate and in the Charleston area also trusted state leaders to get incentive packages approved by governments at all levels. And it is true for Amazon…

It’s a tough issue. And I find myself on the less-comfortable side of it.

Sad news about the dog I told you about earlier

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Remember this pooch from the other day? One of you (Doug) was even interested in adopting him. Unfortunately, I got sad news about him this morning, from one of the people who found him:

Hi Brad,

Hudson

Thank you for following up with Doug and even more so for taking the time to help find a home for this dog. The kindness and generosity of the many people in Columbia who have tried to help has overwhelmed me.

Unfortunately I have sad news about Hudson. I took him to the vet yesterday for a follow-up appointment and they found that he is in the advanced stages of cancer. The vet expects that he may have about a month left so I have decided to keep him as comfortable and happy as possible for the next few weeks. Thank you so much again for your help.

Emily

Guy

This sort of hits home because over the weekend we found what looked like a tumor of some sort on the back of our dog’s leg. The vet biopsied it yesterday, and there were some bad cells. He’s going to take it off next week and see if it has clear margins…

Guy, our dog, is almost 11. We lost a dog earlier to cancer. I wrote about her back here. Guy still misses her, I think.

Another great opportunity to help Harvest Hope

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Did you see the Steven Mungo op-ed in The State Sunday? In it, he explains why he and his family are such staunch supporters of Harvest Hope Food Bank and its vital mission of feeding the increasing numbers of hungry folks in the Midlands and beyond. And they don’t just do it as a feel-good thing:

We all do this not just because it sounds like a worthwhile cause, but because we believe Harvest Hope gets the job done. It’s efficient and effective.

Harvest Hope is a very lean organization, as I have learned from closely observing it. It actually does better than give a dollar’s worth of aid for a dollar’s donation. If everybody ran their business the way Harvest Hope does, a lot fewer of us would have gotten in trouble when the recession hit.

Don’t know if you heard (even though I was Tweeting it out every day), but the $150,000 match offered by the Mungos was double-matched as of April 1. And that’s a tremendous response by the community. Of course, it gets Harvest Hope less than a fourth of the way to the $2 million it needs.

So it’s great to see that another prominent local business has stepped to the fore to make an offer identical to that of the Mungos:

Harvest Hope Announces New Matching

Campaign by Southeastern Freight Lines

(Columbia) Harvest Hope Food Bank announces the beginning of a new matching campaign sponsored by Southeastern Freight Lines. The generosity of Southeastern Freight Lines will result in a $150,000 contribution to Harvest Hope once the food bank reaches $300,000 in donations.

Southeastern Freight Lines is headquartered in Lexington and has more than 6,600 employees. “Our commitment to employees has enabled the company to build a culture of customer service excellence over our 60-year history, and we are just as committed to the communities we serve,” said Tobin Cassels, president of Southeastern Freight Lines. “We recognize the enormity of Harvest Hope’s mission and want to do our part in making sure hungry families in our community have a safety net to give them hope. We are proud to work with Harvest Hope in an effort to put food on the tables across 20 counties.”

In March Harvest Hope announced that the combination of an increase in service demand and operating costs combined with a decrease in donations had resulted in a financial crisis and they issued an appeal to the public for funding help to raise $2 million.  Almost immediately, Mungo Homes staked a $150,000 matching campaign if Harvest Hope could double that amount in donations.

On Friday, April 1 Harvest Hope’s donations reached $306,293.67 which qualified them for Mungo Home’s $150,000 matching donation. With over $450,000 in donations, Harvest Hope is now almost ¼ of the way toward their $2 million goal.

Harvest Hope wishes to thank Mungo Homes for their continued generosity, and is pleased to announce that Southeastern Freight Lines has stepped up to help them achieve their funding goal. With the completion of Southeastern Freight’s generous matching campaign Harvest Hope will have achieved half of its $2 million dollar funding goal.

About Southeastern Freight Lines

Southeastern Freight Lines, a privately-owned regional less-than-truckload transportation services provider founded in 1950, specializes in next-day service in the Southeast and Southwest and operates 76 service centers in 12 states and Puerto Rico. Southeastern has a network of service partners to ensure transportation services in the remaining 38 states, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Mexico. Southeastern Freight Lines provides more than 99.35% on-time service in next day lanes. A dedication to service quality and a continuous quality improvement process that began in 1985 has been recognized by more than 300 quality awards received from customers and associations. Southeastern Freight Lines subsidiary, Southeastern Logistics Solutions, provides expedited service and multi-modal transportation services across the nation through strategic capacity partnerships. For more information, please visit www.sefl.com.

For more information about Harvest Hope’s mission to feed the hungry in 20 South Carolina counties, visit www.harvesthope.org.

That was announced last week, and since then $42,405 has been contributed toward the $300,000 needed to match. This is good progress, but we as a community have a long way to go to meet the huge need.

For more background on Harvest Hope’s critical need, read my former post on the subject. And going forward, watch my Twitter feed for updates…

Rev. Charles Jackson of Brookland Baptist gives invocation in Congress

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I enjoyed this video, shared by Luther Battiste. Luther is chairman of the board of the Capital City Club, on which Rev. Jackson and I both serve. It’s hard to imagine a better choice Congress could have made than Rev. Jackson. It makes me think better of Congress.

If you watch it past the invocation itself, and the Pledge of Allegiance, you’ll get another treat — or at least it was a treat to me, by UnParty standards — both Joe Wilson and Jim Clyburn agreeing in praising Rev. Jackson and the wonderful witness to the community that Brookland Baptist provides. I’ve long regarded Reps. Wilson and Clyburn as the two most partisan members of the SC delegation. At least, I thought that until the recent election. And in the conventional sense of party, they still may be the most fiercely orthodox Republican and Democratic members. I’m not sure those new Tea Party guys fit in that category.

In any case, even if you say they are just being polite, I enjoy watching and hearing them get together on something.

Everybody wants to talk about nuclear, but who wants to listen?

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Last night I went for the first time to one of EngenuitySC’s Science Cafe sessions at the Capital City Club. I’d been meaning to go to one for quite some time, and I finally made it to this one.

So did a lot of people. When I called at the last minute to RSVP, the session was full. But I was told to come anyway, as there were usually no-shows.

So I showed up. And while there were a few empty seats as the session was starting, I stood at first in case a latecomer needed one of the seats. Otherwise, SRO.

Neil McLean, Executive Director of EngenuitySC, began the evening with a somewhat wary welcome to the crowd, noting that this was the biggest turnout ever, and that he saw quite a few… new faces… in the audience. He then expressed his hope that the interaction would be civil.

The topic? “Sustainable Nuclear Power: Perspectives on Risk and External Costs.” The speaker was Travis W. Knight, the acting director of USC’s Nuclear Engineering Graduate Program.

He didn’t have an easy night of it. As I tweeted at the time,

Nuclear skeptics in crowd won’t let speaker at Science Cafe get on with his presentation; one keeps interrupting to read from The Economist.

and later…

Neil McLean of EngenuitySC has to change rules — 1 question per person — to let Science Cafe speaker continue with nuclear presentation.

When Mary Pat Baldauf, sustainability facilitator for the city of Columbia, wrote back to say it sounded like she was missing a good one, I told her she was “You’re missing humdinger. Speaker fairly rattled by crowd’s hostile interruptions. No way to have a debate, much less a lecture.”

In retrospect — and things really did settle down after Neil imposed that rule, and the speaker began to hit his stride a bit better — maybe I made it sound more dramatic than it was.

But judge for yourself. Here’s a recording from the first few minutes of the lecture. You’ll note that there are three interruptions during the 3 minutes and 25 seconds on the recording, including one from the Economist reader.

For my part, I found the lecture informative. But I went away thinking, with what is happening in Japan, everybody wants to talk about nuclear power. But how many people want to listen?

Mutt seeks home; will love you forever for food

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My good friend Samuel Tenenbaum has a VERY soft heart for critters, and occasionally sends out pics of strays seeking a home. He and Inez have taken in quite a few themselves over the years, with their menagerie often numbering in the double digits.

Here’s the latest he’s trying to help with, and here’s the original message he passed along from the folks who found him:

Mark and I were walking around a car dealership and found a dog in the parking lot. He looks to be about 5-6 years old, spaniel mix. He’s as sweet as he can be, very gentle and well-tempered.  We’re going to keep him in the backyard in the shade for a couple of days but just can’t keep him any longer with the other animals. I have contacted a few shelters and no one seems to have room right now (although I’ll put him on waiting lists). I wondered if you would mind to pass this along to anyone you might think would be interested. Also, I wondered if it might be possible to send this to Sam Tenenbaum to see if there is anything that he could do to help?
I really want to find a home or a no-kill shelter for him, but I’m afraid that if it takes any longer than a few days we’ll have nowhere to go besides the pound. L
Any help would be appreciated – thank you so much and hope you’re having a good weekend!! (Picture attached)

Samuel is one of the founders of the organization FORMERLY known as Project Pet, and now known as Pawmetto Lifeline. It’s the outfit building that state-of-the-art no-kill facility out in the Harbison area.

Some recent media accounts have mistakenly called the group by its former name. But that’s not right, folks. It’s Pawmetto Lifeline. There’s an official website and everything. (I know, because I wrote some of the copy for it.) Got that?

Anyway, if any of y’all are interested in saving this dog, I’ll be glad to pass on your contact info.

Congratulations, Innovista, on landing Ann Marie!

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A little earlier, I sent an e-mail to Ann Marie Stieritz congratulating her on her new job:

Ann Marie Stieritz has been named director of business solutions for Innovista at the University of South Carolina.

Stieritz has worked in the S.C. Technical College System for the past four years, most recently as vice president for economic development and workforce competitiveness.

Her responsibilities will include recruiting high-tech businesses to the Midlands and serving as the liaison between USC’s researchers and the business community.

Don Herriott, director of Innovista partnerships, said, “I have worked with Ann Marie on various boards and projects. She has demonstrated exceptional capability and leadership in her role at the South Carolina Technical College System, especially in her economic development and workforce development programs. I am confident that she will provide the industry connectivity that Innovista needs.”

Stieritz has a background in education, workforce and economic development. At the S.C. Technical College System, she has overseen the system’s two nationally recognized economic and workforce development programs, as well as other statewide initiatives that have enhanced the state’s competitiveness through education and training, USC said.

She is former statewide coordinator for 12 Regional Education Centers, which coordinate education, workforce and economic development with business and industry initiatives to develop education and workforce readiness strategies…

But then I realized that I had it all wrong! Congratulating Ann Marie was as wrong-headed, as déclassé, as congratulating the bride on her engagement.

Actually the congratulations are due to Innovista. So, Innovista, I give you joy of your new hire.

Don Herriott was a good call. He did what he should, immediately shifting the conversation about a couple of buildings to the much, much broader concept about what the juxtaposition of an urban research university and all this undeveloped land overlooking a river can add up to.

So is this. Ann Marie’s intelligence and drive will be just what Innovista needs for this movement to take off. I look forward to watching her make that happen.