Category Archives: Ethics

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.

Sheheen camp taking wrong approach on ethics, Haley

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I have a limited patience with discussions of public ethics. It would take more words than I feel like writing today to explain all the reasons why, but here’s the simple explanation: I find that too often, in the political sphere, when we speak of “ethics,” we are not talking about right and wrong; we’re merely talking about appearances.

Cindi Scoppe has always had more patience with ethics discussions than I. That’s fortunate, because her patience and diligence has made her highly knowledgeable about the ways that the topic intersects with SC public life.

But even Cindi has lost patience with the way Vincent Sheheen’s campaign is talking about ethics this week. This excerpt from her column today begins with a quote from a Sheheen release:

“Today, Nikki Haley held a press conference to talk about ethics reform in South Carolina,” a news release from his gubernatorial campaign began. “From covering up the Social Security number hacking scandal to flying with campaign staffers in a state owned plane, Nikki is the last person who should be talking about ethics reform.”

Wow.

I suppose that sort of non sequitur makes some sense from a campaign perspective, as it reminds people of our governor’s ethical imperfections. But from a governing perspective — and one of the things that I’ve always admired about Vincent Sheheen is that he cares about governing, much more than the governor has tended to — it is completely wrong.

It suggests that reform should be pursued only by the pure of heart. In fact, our government, as a creation of human beings, must rely on imperfect vessels….

Cindi’s completely right. And she’s right that, while the ethics bill the governor is pushing has serious flaws, it’s better than no bill at all.

All week, the Sheheen campaign and state Democratic Party (mostly the party, now that I go back and look) have been bombarding my inbox with attacks on Nikki Haley’s suitability as an advocate for ethics reform.

Yep, it’s ironic that she wants to prevent abuses she has committed herself, but hey — at least she knows what she’s talking about.

And yes, the attacks on Sheheen for being a small-town lawyer representing clients before magistrates whom he had recommended for appointment are rather absurd and over-the-top. As the Sheheen campaign notes, he is the sponsor of a bill to place the power for appointing magistrates in the hands of the Supreme Court. There is nothing “scandalous,” to cite one word used by the governor’s staff, about him representing clients openly in magistrate’s court, under the laws currently in place.

I am more disturbed that so much rhetoric out of the Sheheen campaign and its allies is about tearing down the governor.

In other words, Doug, I’m moving to your way of thinking. I have defended Sheheen to Doug, saying that when you’re running against an incumbent, you have an obligation to explain to voters why the incumbent should no longer hold the office. This necessity is less obvious to Doug because his more or less default position is to be anti-incumbent, while I expect a challenger to justify the challenge.

One justifies a challenge in two ways: By explaining what’s wrong with the incumbent, and by telling voters why you, the challenger, would do a better job.

Lately, though, it seems the Sheheen campaign is all about the former, and very light on the latter.

To get back to Cindi’s column:

The email went on: “Our state deserves real ethics reform. And we deserve a governor who doesn’t constantly blur the lines to serve political agendas.”

Those are both very good points. But they address two completely different issues.

The first is about what sort of law the Legislature passes — or doesn’t pass — in the coming session. The second is about whom we elect as governor a year from now.

Personally, I’d like to have both. At this point, I think Mr. Sheheen would make a better choice on the “governor who doesn’t constantly blur the lines” thing. And the ethics plan that Ms. Haley is pushing might be our best shot at real ethics reform. In fact, while Mr. Sheheen wants to focus more on correcting other shortcomings in our ethics law, the main provisions that Ms. Haley is pushing are changes he supports.

One of the things I detest about our two dominant political parties is the way they encourage people to attack good ideas just because they come from the other side. The Sheheen campaign seems to be falling into that habit, and should heed what Cindi said at the end:

Yes, we deserve a lot better than the Senate Judiciary Committee’s reform package. But the way to get better is to join with other reformers to strengthen the bill — not to attack the efforts of the person who’s best able to focus public attention on the need for reform.

Don’t make perfection the enemy of the good (this is cracking Cindi up, because she had to say that so often to me, as I was seldom satisfied with half a loaf). Take a mediocre bill, and work to make it better.

And cut it out with the drip, drip, drip of negativity.

How was that not a campaign trip? And why the secrecy?

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Still scratching my head over the state Ethics Commission fixin’ to slap Nikki Haley’s wrist, then changing its mind:

Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign will not have to repay the state for the cost of a SLED security detail that accompanied her on a trip to North Carolina in June, the State Ethics Commission’s executive director said Wednesday.

Haley attended a late-June N.C. event sponsored by the Renew North Carolina Foundation, a 501(c)4 that supports Republican N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory. Tuesday, reports surfaced the state-owned vehicle Haley was riding in on that trip was involved in a minor car accident June 27. Haley, along with her political adviser and a campaign fundraiser, were passengers in that vehicle, according to a public incident report.

Cathy Hazelwood, the attorney for the state Ethics Commission, said Wednesday morning she had sent a letter to Haley’s campaign asking it to reimburse the state for providing the Republican governor with a security detail on a campaign fundraising trip. “I can’t fathom why you have campaign people in your car and that’s not a campaign event,” Hazelwood said…

But then, the director of the agency said never mind, once he got “the whole story” from one of the governor’s attorneys.

So… what IS the whole story? I mean, what’s with the governor of our state getting in a wreck in another state, and we hear about it months later?

And how was that not a campaign trip?

Who wants ANY kind of watch in 2013, much less a Rolex?

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This news item is a real head-scratcher for me:

A prominent political donor purchased a Rolex watch for Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, according to two people with knowledge of the gift, and the governor did not disclose it in his annual financial filings.

The $6,500 luxury watch was provided by wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the people said. He is the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific and the person who paid for catering at the wedding of the governor’s daughter. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of an ongoing federal investigation into the relationship between Williams and the McDonnell family…

It raises all sorts of questions:

Who needs a watch in 2013? Cell phones (and computers, and tablets, and other devices that surround us) do everything a watch does and so much more, and are perfectly set to Naval Observatory accuracy.

If you were so atavistic as to feel the need for a watch in this century, why would you ever shell out more than $10 for one? As I recall, back when I was still aware of the price of watches (back in the day when, as Douglas Adams would say, we were so amazingly primitive that we still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea), that’s more than what a little LCD digital from the grocery checkout line would cost, and it would get the job done.

Assuming you received a watch as a gift, and it was an ostentatiously expensive watch, why on Earth would you keep it, if you were in politics? Your natural reaction, if you had half a brain, would have been to quote Bo Diddley in “Trading Places,” saying, “Man, that watch is so hot, it’s smokin’.”

It’s just astounding.

Part of my problem is that I really don’t get the appeal of jewelry. Jewelry for men, that is. I mean, honestly, I don’t understand jewelry for women, either, but I’m willing to accept that women like the stuff based on the fact that men and women are just different, and vive la différence.

I don’t get it at all. I see these professional ballplayers with gold chains around their necks, and I think, “Did they just run out of stuff to spend all that money on?”

And it seems to me that the only way to explain wearing a watch in 2013 is to say that it just appeals to some people as jewelry.

I just know that, if someone gave me a Rolex, and it was ethical and legal for me to accept the gift, I would immediately run out and sell it and spend the money on something practical, something either I or someone else could actually use.

But not everybody is like me, I’ve noticed. More’s the pity…

Ethics Schmethics II, or, ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’

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The story this morning about the SC Senate killing ethics legislation for the year was filled with the kind of nonsense that we’ve come to expect from this institution:

COLUMBIA — The state Senate polices its members just fine, senators said Wednesday, refusing to pass an ethics bill – Gov. Nikki Haley’s top priority for the year – that would end lawmakers’ practice of investigating ethics complaints against legislators.

But senators were pointed in their criticism of the GOP-controlled House’s ethics process, questioning its investigation last year of Republican Haley and its slowness to take up charges against Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston.

The Senate proved last week it should retain that responsibility when it investigated Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, on charges that he broke the law by spending campaign money on himself, said Senate Ethics chairman Luke Rankin, R-Horry. Facing ouster from the Senate, Ford resigned and now faces a State Law Enforcement Division investigation.

“Is (the state’s current ethics law) broken in the Senate? I think last week was the perfect and the best evidence to show, flatly, no,” Rankin said late Wednesday as the Senate debated the bill…

Really? Because one senator decided to resign in the midst of an ethics proceeding, the system is working? How do you figure? What if he hadn’t resigned? Then we would have seen whether the system works. What Ford did in resigning was abort the process.

Or do you think this is the process? Is your plan that, the next time a senator is investigated, y’all will just say to him, a few weeks into the process, OK, this is the part where you resign and save us all a lot of trouble…?

And if you think it’s not working in the House, or with the governor, why on Earth wouldn’t you change the law in order to address that problem? Instead of just saying, We’re OK here in the Senate, so everything’s hunky-dory.

You know, you’re not elected to pass laws according to how they affect you; you’re supposed to pass them for the good of the state as a whole. Maybe that’s a radical concept for you, but that’s actually the way it’s supposed to be.

It’s not about how senators feel about themselves or about each other. It just isn’t.

But what am I saying? Who’s in the dreamworld here? Obviously, it is all about y’all…

No, Obama isn’t Nixon, much less worse. It’s not even close

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It’s getting to where I find Peggy Noonan more and more tiresome, but keep reading, hoping for flashes of the grace and thoughtfulness I used to admire.

Her column over the weekend was a typical sad example. An excerpt:

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service. Elite opinion in the press and in Washington doesn’t fully understand this. Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.

Those who aren’t deeply distressed about the IRS suffer from a reluctance or inability to make distinctions, and a lack of civic imagination.

An inability to make distinctions: “It’s always been like this.” “Presidents are always siccing the IRS on their enemies.” There’s truth in that. We’ve all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, “Look into this guy,” Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment.

But this scandal is different and distinctive. The abuse was systemic—from the sheer number of targets and the extent of each targeting we know many workers had to be involved, many higher-ups, multiple offices. It was ideological and partisan—only those presumed to be of one political view were targeted. It has a single unifying pattern: The most vivid abuses took place in the years leading up to the president’s 2012 re-election effort. And in the end several were trying to cover it all up, including the head of the IRS, who lied to Congress about it, and the head of the tax-exempt unit, Lois Lerner, who managed to lie even in her public acknowledgment of impropriety.

It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a president losing his temper with some steel executives. There was no enemies list, unless you consider half the country to be your enemies.

Let’s just list a few of the things wrong with those few paragraphs:

  • “The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking…” I’m not yet persuaded that “Benghazi” actually is a scandal, despite the efforts of people I respect, such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, to portray it as such. Much less that it is widely accepted among others, outside of certain Republican circles. Much, much less that it is not only a scandal, but a shocking one. Yet she begins her column throwing it out there as something that doesn’t even need discussion, as an established fact on the way to what she really wants to talk about. It’s like she’s gotten into the habit of writing only for people on the right. She assumes all her readers think Benghazi is a shocking scandal, and she goes ahead and acknowledges that out of hand. It’s like there are no other kinds of readers out there looking at her column. And if she keeps writing like this, she’ll be right in that assumption.
  • “Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.” Really? Tell me again which ox was gored. “Gore” means to deliver a serious, perhaps fatal, wound. Did any of these “patriotic little groups,” a characterization we could debate all day, lose their ability to do what they do? Were they indeed “gored”?
  • Richard Nixon is mentioned, followed by “But this scandal is different and distinctive.” As in, she implies, worse.

What Richard Nixon did with regard to the IRS was indeed an article of impeachment. Because of the abuses of power that he, Richard Nixon, carried out.

Excuse me, but I have yet to see the evidence that indicates, even remotely, that Barack Obama was involved in this mess over at the IRS. (Please give me a link if I’ve missed it.)

And this particular scandal has been proceeding how long? A month or so? (Actually, the first press reports were in March 2012.) I seem to recall that the Watergate scandal connected directly to the White House on Day One. Reporter Bob Woodward, then a nobody, was assigned to go cover the arraignment of some guys caught breaking into Democratic headquarters, and that day found that one of them worked in the White House.

Yeah, pretty different, all right.

Oh, and by the way, I should probably say for the benefit of Steven Davis and others who labor under the delusion that I’m a Democrat or something: I don’t say “Barack Obama isn’t Nixon” because I think Obama is so awesome and Nixon was pure evil.

If I’d been old enough to vote in 1968, I’d have voted for Nixon, without hesitation. For that matter, I was solidly for him in 1960, although you may discount that because I was only 7 years old. I would have voted for him in 1972, the first time I ever voted, if not for Watergate. I pulled the lever for McGovern after standing and debating with myself in the booth for about 10 minutes. I firmly believed that Nixon was the better president — in fact, I was convinced that McGovern would be a disaster. But I was also convinced that the Democrat had zero chance, so this seemed like a safe way to register my concerns about Watergate.

(I did the same thing, only with the parties reversed, in 1996. I respected Bob Dole more as a man than I did Bill Clinton. But Dole had run such a horrendous campaign that I doubted his ability to be a good president. I actually thought Clinton better suited to the job. But I had a lot of problems with Clinton by this time and, knowing that Dole had no chance of winning, I pulled the lever for him as a protest.)

Nixon was in a number of important ways a pretty good president, on the big things. Probably better than Obama in a number of ways (although I haven’t thought deeply about that, and it’s difficult to compare, since the challenges facing them are so different). But his abuse of power on stupid, petty things did him in. And I’ve seen no evidence so far Barack Obama has done anything of that kind.

So no — Obama’s not as bad as Nixon in this regard, much less worse. It’s not even close.

Sheheen was wrong to blame Republicans, embarrass Hayes

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A Tweet this morning from Wes Hayes, the Republican senator from York County, brought my attention to this statement he had put out on Facebook:

It has come to my attention that a press release circulated by South Carolina Democrats today makes potentially misleading claims on my position and motivations for co-authoring an Op-Ed with Senate colleague Vince Sheheen calling for bipartisan efforts in the Senate to pass ethics reform.

All my years in the State Senate, I have sought to work both sides of the aisle to deliver reforms to make our state stronger; today’s Op-Ed is simply a continuation of my willingness to put partisanship aside to benefit our citizens.

The fact is that Governor Nikki Haley has been a champion for passing meaningful ethics reform and has worked closely with the legislature to ensure real reform is accomplished to rebuild the public’s trust in their elected officials. Even in the wake of partisan gamesmanship, she has led the collective efforts to get this passed. Governor Haley is to be applauded for her efforts, not attacked. It’s time to move forward in the Senate and pass this important legislation.

Please read the OpEd I co-authored with Senator Sheheen here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/30/2792454/hayes-sheheen-ethics-reform-all.html

Sen. Hayes has my sympathy for apparently getting in trouble for doing the right thing. I’m not sure what “press release circulated by South Carolina Democrats” made “potentially misleading claims” about his position. I had seen a release from Kristin Sosanie over at SCDP, which forwarded a message sent out by Phil Bailey of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

All Ms. Sosanie had said was:

ICYMI – Sen. Sheheen teamed up with GOP Senator and “Dean of Ethics” Wes Hayes in an op-ed in The State this morning calling on elected officials to put politics aside and finally pass ethics reform for South Carolina.

Which I thought was rather nice. I almost commented on it yesterday, it’s so unusual for one of the parties to refer to a member of the opposite party in such laudatory terms as “Dean of Ethics.”

That comment from Ms. Sosanie led into the forwarded email from Phil Bailey, which said:

Sheheen & Hayes urge electeds to put politics aside, stop delaying ethics reform in bipartisan op-ed

Columbia, SC- Today, Sen Vincent Sheheen penned an op-ed with Republican Sen Wes Hayes, calling for the Senate to put politics aside and immediately pass ethics reform in order for SC government to regain public trust. Sen Sheheen also released this statement:

“For the past seven years, I have fought for government restructuring and ethics reform. For the last three weeks, I have worked across the aisle to improve the House’s watered-down ethics bill so that it will actually reform ethics laws. For the past two days, I have voted and spoken up for the need to pass ethics reform. It’s time for the Governor, her Republican leadership in the legislature and members on both sides of the aisle to come together and finally pass real reform.  The partisan bickering has to stop.  The naked self-interest of the governor and other officials has to stop.  We need real ethics reform, now.

“For months now, members of both parties have talked about the need for ethics reform. But action hasn’t followed. I am disappointed that for the past several days the Senate has delayed taking up ethics reform. Enough is enough. The Senate needs to move on ethics reform today, and the legislature should not adjourn until all its work is completed and that means we have reformed our ethics laws.”

Read Sen Sheheen’s bipartisan op-ed with Sen Hayes in today’s State newspaper:
http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/30/2792454/hayes-sheheen-ethics-reform-all.html

That was followed by the text of the op-ed.

Maybe it was another release, but if it was that one, well… it doesn’t characterize Sen. Hayes position or motivation in any way, other than to say that he and Sheheen “urge electeds to put politics aside, stop delaying ethics reform.” And the op-ed did indeed conclude:

Together, we can effect real change, but those who are holding this effort up must start by putting politics aside and putting the interest of the people of South Carolina first.

So what was misleading? Nothing — technically. But only technically.

If this was indeed the release in question, all I can conclude was that Hayes was blamed by some fellow Republicans for the language attributed in the release to Sheheen, specifically:

It’s time for the Governor, her Republican leadership in the legislature and members on both sides of the aisle to come together and finally pass real reform.  The partisan bickering has to stop.  The naked self-interest of the governor and other officials has to stop.  We need real ethics reform, now….

I have two things to say about that:

  1. First, someone in the GOP caucus needs to work on his reading comprehension skills. But that’s a minor point.
  2. More importantly, Vincent Sheheen did the wrong thing in putting out that statement. And Phil, and whoever else was in a position to advise him not to should have spoken up. But the responsibility lies with Sheheen.

This was wrong for Sheheen to do on several levels. There he was, fixed firmly on the high road with his joint op-ed with Hayes, and he has to come out with a statement the next day blaming the governor and the Republicans?

Did Sen. Sheheen not notice that only seven Republicans voted against putting the ethics bill on special order Wednesday, while 13 Democrats did? And at least the Republicans had an excuse — namely, that some of them are certifiable, and trying to revive nullification.

The Democrats who voted against didn’t have a coherent excuse — not even a loony one.

Finally, it was completely inappropriate to embarrass Sen. Hayes by associating him, however indirectly, with such a comment. No, no one said that Hayes had said these things — you have an airtight defense there. But it was wrong to go on the defensive against the governor and her party within the context of talking about the op-ed — especially since the Democrats have so much more to answer for on this issue.

It was even against Sheheen’s own self-interest to do this. This was a leadership opportunity for him, a chance to impress independents and even some Republicans with statesmanship. What he should have done was chew out his fellow Democratic senators who had voted the wrong way.

Wes Hayes was doing the right thing. I’m sorry if it got him in hot water. This is the kind of mess that keeps people from stepping out from behind their parties and leading.

I hope Vincent Sheheen is sorry about it, too.

Robert Ford quits SC Senate

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Thanks to Doug for bringing my attention to this:

COLUMBIA S.C. Sen. Robert Ford resigned “effective immediately” from the S.C. Senate, said Sen. John Courson Friday at an ethics hearing on alleged ethics violations against Ford.0606818109

Courson said Ford submitted his resignation in a letter.

Ford, a Charleston Democrat, did not attend the second of two days of Senate Ethics Committee hearings Friday on eight alleged violations of state ethics laws against him.

Ford was admitted to Baptist Hospital Thursday evening with chest pains, William Runyon, Ford’s attorney said Friday. Ford was released sometime Friday morning, but advised by his doctor to return to Charleston, Runyon said.

Ford, a Charleston Democrat, is accused of depositing campaign donations into personal bank accounts, and spending campaign money on personal medical expenses, gym memberships and purchases from adult stores, according to a state Senate Ethics Committee complaint…

First, I’m sorry about his chest pains, and I hope he’s OK.

But the upshot for the rest of us is that South Carolina is better off without Robert Ford in the Senate.

So for once, a worthwhile result was produced under our current ethics laws. But they still need improvement.

Ethics, schmethics — what on Earth is really going on?

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First, the good news is that maybe, just maybe, ethics reform did NOT die in the SC Senate yesterday.

And, on the whole, that’s a good thing. Because while the bill is far from perfect, it’s better than no ethics reform at all.

Vincent Sheheen and Wes Hayes made the bipartisan case for ethics reform in an op-ed today. It was more in the vein of why we need reform, period, than why we need this particular bill. For more of a breakdown on the good and bad qualities of both the House and Senate bills, see this piece by Cindi Scoppe from Sunday before last. After discussing inadequacies in the Senate bill, it concluded:

The good news is that there’s still a chance to add the missing provisions to the bill and shore up the shortcomings, and at least give us a fighting chance of a strong bill coming out of the final conference committee. But there’s a lot of work to be done. And the clock is ticking.

Oh, if only senators were as conscientious as Cindi, and I, and most sensible people, would like them to be.

Rather than worrying about whether the ethics bill had everything in it that it should have, half of the Senate (which is all it took) engaged yesterday in a bipartisan effort to kill such legislation altogether.

I had a terrible time figuring out why they were doing this, from the story in the paper this morning. This was not the reporter’s fault. The problem was that the senators had no reasons that made sense.

The Republicans of the Tea Party wing who voted against putting the bill on special order had a stated reason. But it was just “reason” as motive, not “reason” as logic. It was, in fact, completely batty. They said they didn’t want to spend the time on ethics reform because they wanted to spend it on their 1830s-style bill to nullify Obamacare. Really.

A big reason the bill WAS put on special order today, reversing yesterday’s vote, was because the more sensible Republicans agreed to go along with the demand that the nullification bill be considered, too. Again, really.

But at least there was a certain clarity to the Republicans’ lunacy. Here are the stated Democratic “reasons”:

State Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, said there is no urgency in passing the bill, adding its passage by the GOP-controlled House, only four weeks ago, left the Senate with too little time to consider ethics reform.

State Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said Democrats still have concerns about the proposal that need to be worked out, including the composition of the committee that would oversee ethics complaints against lawmakers. Hutto held up getting to the ethics bill Wednesday by debating a bill that would direct money left over from the state’s budget year that ends June 30 to different projects.

Hutto criticized Haley and other lawmakers for saying that protecting taxpayers against the theft of their personal information — such as the hacking incident that happened last year at the state Department of Revenue — was a top priority when little, he said, has been done to address the problem…

Also, they don’t like the way Nikki Haley spells her name. And they don’t like to put bills on special order on days of the week that start with “W.” OK, I made those last two up, but they make about as much sense, in terms of relevance.

This caused me to dream up reasons. I thought that maybe this was some of the Democrats’ way of hurting Nikki Haley and helping Vincent Sheheen, whether he wants such help or not. (Sheheen was one of the four Democrats voting for special order yesterday.) The idea being to block Nikki Haley’s bid to get credit for ethics reform (in spite of, or perhaps because of, being a poster child for why we need ethics reform), while Vincent’s out there voting for it and writing op-eds in favor of it.

But that theory is a little over-elaborate. It requires voters to blame Nikki for something Democrats did. And even if that worked, they’d have to kill the bill next year, too.

I’m afraid the more likely explanation is simply that these guys are opposed to ethics reform. That’s the Occam’s razor version, and probably the right one.

Anyway, today’s action offers reform a chance this year. We’ll see.

Dueling videos, opening shots in 2014 campaign

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James Smith’s comments about Nikki Haley and “corruption” should also be taken within the context of the above ad from the Democratic Governor’s Association.

Meanwhile, with the video below, Haley supporters show that they want to run against Barack Obama again. But at least this ad mentions Sheheen, which is something.

How do the ads strike me? As I indicated earlier, I’m a little leery of the word “corruption.” Yeah, Nikki Haley has a serious transparency problem, she’s not very good at paying her taxes on time, and that $40k she got from Wilbur Smith when she was in the House raises a questions that have not yet been answered. But “corruption” is a word I tend to use for something more overt, more red-handed. Early in my career, back in Tennessee, I saw out-and-out corruption — Gov. Ray Blanton selling pardons. He went to prison for it. Maybe that made me overly fussy. The things the DGA are citing here are real problems, and they provide us with plenty of reason not to vote for Nikki Haley; I’m just quibbling over the word.

The Sheheen/Obamacare ad is just disgraceful. But then, so is the governor’s position of refusing to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid, so I see it entirely in that context. For me, her position is indefensible, so the ad is as well. Then there’s that additional ugliness of playing to the fact that “Obama” is the boogeyman to so many white voters in South Carolina. “Obamacare” is used as an incantation, with the operative ingredient being “Obama,” not the “care.” The issue is secondary to the fact that that awful Obama person is associated with it.

James Smith gets way harsh on Nikki Haley

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From Rep. James Smith’s Facebook page:

If SC had seen genuine ethics reform previously and had an ethics committee with any teeth, Nikki Haley would likely have been forced out of the House and never would have made it to the Governor’s office. Her actions and the culture of corruption continue to bring shame on SC and the people of our state deserve better.

Coming from such a nice, easygoing, mild-talking guy as James Smith, that is way harsh. Especially that last sentence.

That’s the kind of stuff his neighbor Mia McLeod would say. We can see this, I suppose, as a heating-up of rhetoric as James’ friend Vincent Sheheen prepares to take on the governor. But I think it’s also a measure of the degree to which James, mild-mannered as he is, is fed up.

Anyway, for context, here’s this morning’s story in The State about the ethics bill.

Sheheen decries decriminalization of ethics violations

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Got this release a few minutes ago from Vincent Sheheen:

Sheheen on Ethics Reform: GOP efforts & Governor’s back-seat approach the “good-old-boys-and-girls network at its worst”

Columbia – Today, state Representatives Beth Bernstein and James Smith stood up to call for real ethics reform and urged Governor Haley for leadership instead of hiding behind yet another bureaucratic commission while her followers do the dirty work of decriminalizing some of the most common ethics violations – many of which she was accused of herself. State Senator Vincent Sheheen released this statement:

“I thank Representatives Bernstein and Smith for joining me in the revolt against the status quo and the efforts to move South Carolina forward by returning common sense and ethics to our leadership. The Republican effort at ‘ethics reform’ is the good-old-boys–and-girls network in politics at its worst. We need real leadership to clean up the government, not just a study or report while members of the Governor’s own party decrease the punishment on ethics violations that she has been charged with.

“For too long, South Carolina has struggled to meet its potential under the guidance of leaders who get detoured by putting their self-interest before the interests of the people.  We need to change the way we do business and leave the politics of ideology and personal ambition behind to get the state back on track.”

###

I just wish he wouldn’t use that overworked “good ol’ boys” construction. That got tired back when Carroll Campbell was using it. I don’t think anybody really knows what it means, aside from having a rough impression that it’s bad.

Here’s a column I wrote musing about the phrase years ago…

And here’s a column Cindi Scoppe wrote on this “ethics” legislation. An excerpt:

After failing for more than half the session even to introduce their proposal on legislators’ top to-do item, House leaders rolled out a place-holder bill on April 11 that contained nothing but the bill title. They scheduled a subcommittee meeting for the next legislative day, last Tuesday, where House Republican Leader Bruce Bannister, who chairs the Constitutional Law Subcommittee, handed members of his panel a summary and a 100-page amendment that would become the bill.

Panel members discussed the items on the summary — decriminalization was not on the list — made some changes and approved the bill before they had a chance to read it. (It took me nearly three hours to do what I consider a cursory reading.) The process repeated the next day in the full Judiciary Committee, whose members also made changes without having time to read the bill. The text of the bill wasn’t posted online until Thursday evening, seven hours after the committee formally reported it to the House.

Although it’s common for the amended version of a bill not to be available until the next step in the process, I can’t recall a bill ever making it to full committee, much less the full House, before some version was available.

The process was so confusing that Rep. James Smith, a Democrat who serves on the subcommittee, told me Thursday morning that the bill increased penalties for the worst ethics violations. The next day, he called to say he was outraged to discover he was wrong — and to promise to lead a fight to restore them. GOP Rep. Rick Quinn, who also serves on the subcommittee, emailed me an amendment he planned to offer that would do what both men had thought the bill did — increase the current criminal penalties…

Yeah, I had spoken with James, last Tuesday night I think it was, when he was fresh from the meeting alluded to above, and he thought it was a good bill. It’s a good thing that he recognized his mistake…

The greatest commandments, reduced to a bumper sticker

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sticker

Saw this bumper sticker on the road, and was intrigued by the degree to which its creator reduced the two greatest commandments to the briefest possible expression. Here’s the previous record-holder for brevity:

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I’ve gotta say, I prefer Matthew. But I give the maker of the bumper sticker points for effort.

There can be a drawback to suggesting that voters make their own signs about your campaign for Congress

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mark sign

We all know about Mark Sanford’s bizarre campaign signs. You know, that he’s encouraging people to take scraps of cast-away plywood and crudely letter them with the message, “Sanford saves tax $.” Signs like this one.

Sanford thinks this is terribly clever, and sends out a terrific message about him in his bid for the GOP nomination for the 1st Congressional District. Me, I think it just reminds us what a startlingly cheap so-and-so he is, and not in a good way at all. More like this way:

In her 2010 memoir, former first lady Jenny Sanford tells her own stories — most of them unflattering — of his frugality. In one, Mark Sanford bought her a diamond necklace for her birthday. He ultimately made her give back the beloved gift after deciding he’d paid too much for it…

Anyway, an alert reader sent me the above image, which the reader reports was found “near Ravenel Bridge in Charleston.” This is what the sign refers to, in case you’ve forgotten.

So sometimes you might just want to go ahead and have official signs run up, and put them out yourself. It’s easier to stay on message that way…

‘What It Feels Like To Be Photographed In A Moment Of Grief’

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Here’s something for us all to ponder in these days when journalism is more and more about emotion…

On the night of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., a woman named Aline Marie attended a prayer vigil at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, which was packed with local residents and the media. After about 45 minutes, Marie saw the statue of Mary and knelt down to pray.

“I sat there in a moment of devastation with my hands in prayer pose asking for peace and healing in the hearts of men,” she recalls. “I was having such a strong moment and my heart was open, and I started to cry.”

Her mood changed abruptly, she says, when “all of a sudden I hear ‘clickclickclickclickclick’ all over the place. And there are people in the bushes, all around me, and they are photographing me, and now I’m pissed. I felt like a zoo animal.”

What particularly troubles her, she says, is “no one came up to me and said ‘Hi, I’m from this paper and I took your photograph.’ No one introduced themselves. I felt violated. And yes, it was a lovely photograph, but there is a sense of privacy in a moment like that, and they didn’t ask.”…

Here is the picture in question. NPR goes on to pose this question:

What are your thoughts? Should photographers interact with their subjects in moments of grief, or is it more respectful to leave them alone?

Which is a good one.

I’m old school on this. Way old school. Recently, in a comment on another thread, I told this anecdote about an experience that deeply affected the way I look at this sort of thing:

One of my first assignments as a reporter, back in the 70s, was to go interview a family that had lost some children in a fire. It was one of those awful situations of a family that lived in a rural shack heated by a wood-or-coal-burning stove, and some coals got out of the stove and caused the house to burn like kindling.

The photographer and I found the home where the survivors were staying with relatives. It was a house just like the one that had burned, way out in the country. The parents of the dead children were at the funeral home making arrangements. The family that lived in the home let us in, and then left us to wait in the front room while they congregated back in the kitchen. There was no conversation between us.

The photographer — much older and more experienced than I was — and I sat on the edges of our chairs, feeling EXTREMELY awkward, intensely feeling how much we were intruding, and unwelcome. But I guess maybe those poor folks didn’t feel empowered to turn us away.

We glanced at each other uncomfortably every few moments, and stared around the room the rest of the time.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood-burning stove in the center of the room. There were burned spots in the battered linoleum floor all around it. Another imminent tragedy, staring me in the face.

We just sat there, waiting to pester those poor bereaved parents, dreading their return, for about an hour.

Finally, one of us — I think it was Bob, the photog — said “Let’s get out of here.” And we did.

Here’s the upshot of the story. Although it became more and more common over the years for news organizations to harass bereaved families in their grief and demand to know how they felt — I even worked with some people who maintained that it gave families a welcome catharsis — I resolved that day that if I were ever an editor, I would never send anyone on such an assignment.

As it turns out, I was an editor a couple of years later, and for the rest of my career. And I never forgot that resolution. Reporters can attest that I sent them on a lot of awkward, unpleasant assignments over the years, but I never sent anyone out on one like that.

Now, having declared myself entirely against this sort of thing, I can offer some defense of the photographer in this case. First, this doesn’t appear to have been the worst sort of intrusion, as there is no indication that the subject of the photo was a bereaved family member. Second, if you are going to take pictures like this — and that is to me debatable — then it’s disingenuous to demand that the subject be asked first. The journalistic version of the Observer Effect kicks in. You can’t get a picture like that — an honest, real one — after you’ve made the subject aware of your presence. And really, do you even want a picture of someone who would say “yes,” and then strike a pose for you? I think not. Such a photo would not only be ethically compromised, it would be downright creepy.

Thoughts? Or feelings, considering the topic?

Bernstein files maiden bill, having to do with ethics reform

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Not much time for blogging today, but at least I can pass on press releases as I get them.

You just saw one from the Senate Republicans. Here’s one from the other side of the aisle, and indeed the other chamber:

Rep. Beth Bernstein Files Ethics Reform Bill
 
Columbia, SC – Newly elected State Representative Beth Bernstein (D-78) filed her first piece of legislation as a member of the House of Representatives on Wednesday. The “South Carolina Ethics & Accountability Act of 2013” was read across the desk on Wednesday and referred to the Judiciary Committee. The bill is the most comprehensive ethics reform package that has been introduced in recent history. Modeled after the ethics package Bernstein released during her campaign, the bill calls for five fundamental changes in South Carolina ethics law. It is as follows:
1) Prohibits Leadership PACs.
2) Implements a new five-year waiting period for public officials to become lobbyists. (Current law only requires a one-year waiting period)
3) Proposes a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the House and Senate Ethics Committees, giving the State Ethics Commission full authority.
4) Requires all candidates to produce receipts for all campaign expenditures.
5) Eliminates “blackout period” by requiring candidates to disclose any contribution received in the month of October within five days of receipt.
Representative Bernstein released the following statement in response:
“During my campaign, I promised voters that, if elected, I would do my best to clean up the culture of corruption at the State House and provide real solutions to bring more accountability to the General Assembly. I’m happy to say that by filing this important piece of legislation, I’m keeping my promise to voters. The hard truth is that people no longer trust public officials. I was elected to restore the trust and confidence in our elected officials. This bill makes state government and its elected leaders more accountable and transparent, while also making it harder for public officials to use their office for private gain. Simply put, it’s time to stop talking about ethics reform and start doing it.”

Thomas Jefferson as unrepentant slaveholder

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The usual take on the man best known for writing that “All men are created equal” has been that he owned slaves, but… after which you choose your excuse:

  • He was really conflicted about it.
  • He just didn’t think freeing them would be practical.
  • He was a particularly benevolent master.
  • It’s not fair to judge someone who was born into that system, and knew no other, by modern ethical standards.

The excuses may bear revisiting in light of a new book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, byHenry Wiencek. Here’s an excerpt from a review of the book this morning in The Wall Street Journal:

The strongest sections of the book track Mr. Wiencek’s close reading of Jefferson’s estate records, where he found a coldblooded taskmaster who ruthlessly exploited child labor and overworked his slaves as a matter of course. Jefferson sometimes countenanced brutal punishment, including the whipping of boys as young as 10 or 11 in his highly profitable nail factory, “whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills,” Mr. Wiencek writes. Despite Jefferson’s occasional assertions that slavery would one day wither away, he never lifted a finger to weaken it as an institution, even when implored to do so by friends and allies who regarded slavery as an affront to the values for which patriots had fought the Revolutionary War.

In his youth, Jefferson did hold antislavery convictions. And in his earliest draft of the Declaration of Independence, he may well have had slaves in mind when he declared that all men were created equal.(Southerners were sufficiently worried that they tried unsuccessfully to have the word “men” changed to “freemen.”) By 1784, however, in “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he expressed in graceful but cringe-inducing prose a deep personal distaste for blacks, who, he asserted, smelled wrong, copulated with apes in Africa, and were incapable of intellectual achievement.

Whatever moral ambivalence he may have felt toward the institution of slavery he overcame when he sat down and did the numbers for Monticello. In 1792, he calculated precisely what his slaves were worth. Mr. Wiencek writes: “What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved children were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest.” To intimates, Jefferson described slavery matter-of-factly as a good investment strategy, advising one friend that if his family had cash to spare, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes.”…

Actually, I was a bit surprised that Jefferson even handled the books for his estate. I supposed he followed the practice of the landed gentry of having a “man of business” deal with all that. I had supposed he was detached from the enterprises that gave him his wealth, devoting all his time to politics, science and music. I had read that he was a terrible money manager, embodying the Southern planter’s typical indifference to debt, spending above his means on books, scientific instruments and other things that scratched his intellectual itch.

I supposed that, to paraphrase John Travolta (on being a loan shark) in “Get Shorty,” he was never that into it. But supposing he remained above the details of running his estate was just my way of offering him another excuse, I guess.

Mr. Wiencek’s premise seems to be that he was not only his own man of business, but a particularly hard-eyed one, especially on the subject of slavery.

Not that I was ever prepared to give him a pass on that. There are a number of reasons why, among the Founders, I have always preferred John Adams to Jefferson, and have resented that Jefferson was in their day, and still is, more celebrated and revered. One of those reasons was that Adams was adamantly opposed to slavery, while Jefferson, high-minded words aside, was a major practitioner of that evil.

This book should give us all, including those of you who admire Mr. Jefferson more than I do, something new to consider.

SC Senate’s “first-ever serious (ethics) fine”

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In her column Sunday, Cindi Scoppe reported on the SC Senate Ethics Committee’s second public reprimand (the one of Jake Knotts was the first), and “its first-ever serious fine:”

A forgiving law isn’t precisely the problem in the case of Sen. Kent Williams, but his public reprimand points to another significant shortcoming in our ethics and campaign finance law that isn’t getting much attention. Left uncorrected, it could greatly diminish the value of any new reporting requirements the Legislature passes, leaving them dependent on the honesty of the candidates filing the reports.

According to the Senate Ethics Committee, Mr. Williams accepted 15 contributions in excess of the legal maximum of $1,000 for this year’s election. It ordered him to return the extra $12,801 and pay a $5,390.05 fine. The Marion County Democrat, who is running unopposed for his third term, did not contest the charges.

Ten of the illegal contributions were straightforward violations that anyone who looked closely at his campaign reports would have noticed, and probably the result of bad record keeping. But in five cases, Mr. Williams reported that he received two $1,000 checks on the same day from the same donors — one for the 2012 race and one to pay down a 2008 campaign debt — but used all the money for his 2012 campaign. The panel called these “deliberate attempts to mislead the public,” noting that to anyone looking at those reports, “it appears” that the donations were legal.

It’s Mr. Williams’ apparent compliance with the law that makes this case so worrisome. The Ethics Committee discovered the ruse because its attorney noticed that the senator wasn’t reporting enough outstanding debt to justify the repayments; he asked for bank records, which showed the payments hadn’t been made.

It was similar serendipity that led to the reprimand against Mr. Knotts for accepting illegally large donations, misreporting the identities of some donors and not reporting others, and not reporting some expenditures. In that case, it was what appeared to be, but wasn’t, excessive interest income that raised the attorney’s suspicions, leading him to ask for the bank records that revealed unrelated violations…

Cindi suggests random audits to overcome the weakness that the Williams case exposed — that weakness being the assumption that what is put on disclosures is accurate.

The news story that was (in part) about itself

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You may or may not have seen that the finished version of the story about the ramifications of Nikki Haley’s daughter getting a PRT job finally appeared in The State today. Of course, it was far more involved and complete than the “draft” version that appeared inadvertently on the web pages of The Rock Hill Herald and (so I’m told) The Charlotte Observer last week.

In the end, the story turned out to be almost as much about itself as about the suggestion of nepotism.

While nothing can really erase the embarrassment for the newspaper of readers knowing about the story for a week before it appeared, the editors did everything they possibly could to make up for it. Most importantly, they thoroughly explored the ridiculous “controversy,” generated by the governor herself, about whether it should be published.

I particularly like the sidebar box that lists all the perfectly rational, professional questions that the newspaper had been asking the governor’s office from the beginning of this silly saga, followed by the immature, petulant, emotional statement from the governor’s office, refusing to answer those questions — all of which a public official who actually does believe in transparency would have answered immediately. Let’s quote that sidebar in full:

Questions, but no answers

Emailed questions sent by a State reporter to the governor’s office on Monday, July 16. (The State has removed the name of the governor’s daughter in the email exchange below.)

Here are my questions about (NAME REMOVED) Haley working at the State House gift shop:

When was she hired? When she did she start work? Will she continue to work at the shop after school starts?

What are her duties?

How many hours a week does she work?

How much is she paid?

Is this her first job?

Who does she report to? How many people work at the shop?

Was this job posted to the public? (If so, can I see a copy of the posting?)

Was the job budgeted? (If not, how was this job added and funded?)

Were work hours of shop employees adjusted to accommodate (NAME REMOVED)?

Why did her parents choose the gift shop as a place to work?

Some people might not think it’s fair for (NAME REMOVED) to have a job tied to a state agency where the director is appointed by her mother (PRT). Response?

If the governor’s office has concerns about (NAME REMOVED)’s safety, about the public knowing where she works, why does she have a job at one the state’s most-prominent and most-visited historical sites?

Would she have needed additional security if she got a job outside the State House?

The governor’s office response

Sent on Tuesday, June 17

What follows constitutes our office’s response for any story you plan to write regarding (NAME REMOVED) Haley.

Quote from Rob Godfrey, Haley spokesman: “The State newspaper – the reporter who wrote it, editors who approved it, and ownership who published it – should be ashamed for printing details of a fourteen year old’s life and whereabouts, against the wishes of her parents and the request of the Chief of SLED, who is ultimately responsible for her security. We have nothing more to say.”

Quote from South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of information regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 years-plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a ‘hands off’ approach to in reporting except as officially released by the elected official’s office.”

Did the newspaper manage to convey to you that it was going out of its way not to name the child, or do you need to get hammered over the head with (NAME REMOVED) a couple more times? No? OK, good, we’ll move on…

The story was unaccompanied by editorial comment (unless you count Mark Lett’s statement of the newsroom’s thinking on publishing the story), but for anyone able to put two and two together, the lesson to be learned here is obvious: This governor, when backed into a corner, will use hypocritical obfuscation in an effort to manipulate an emotional backlash reaction from her base so that she can hide behind it, rather than give straight answers.

Most telling on that score was the fact that Gov. Haley herself has consistently disclosed information about her children and their doings, even to providing the name of her daughter’s orthodontist — and yet has the nerve to (apparently) induce the head of SLED to say, absurdly, that disclosing that her daughter has a job that is just outside the governor’s office and protected by more than one layer of security somehow threatens her safety. Yes, any information published about any person’s whereabouts could, conceivably, make that person marginally less safe. So maybe the governor will think about that in the future when she posts on Facebook.

Substantively, in terms of the bare bones of the original story, what this story contained that last week’s draft did not were some basic facts that Nikki provided to the Charleston paper after refusing to answer The State (more petulance): such as her daughter’s hours, and what she was being paid. (Actually, the Charleston story turned out to be less about the governor, and more about the continuing, puzzling absence of the story from The State.)

No one who brought the draft story to my attention ever mentioned the one significant fact that was missing from it: What the child was being paid, or even whether she was being paid. This seems to be what held up the story. I think that’s a lousy excuse to hold the story– I would simply have written, we don’t know whether she’s being paid because the officials who should tell us refuse to — but it does seem to explain the delay. As soon as it had that information, from the third party, the paper ran the story.

Nikki Haley will continue, to the extent she acknowledges this story’s subject, to try to dupe her base into rage that the paper intruded on her child’s privacy.

But to anyone with even a rudimentary capacity for reason, it should be obvious that this story, now that it has finally appeared, is not about a child. It’s about the governor’s childishness.

Haley suspended mayor who allegedly hired son

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Catching up with e-mail (my inbox is down to 296!), I came across one from several days back, from one of a number of readers who remain puzzled as to why The State still hasn’t published Gina Smith’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t story about Nikki Haley’s daughter getting a job working for an agency she supervises.

I wonder about it myself. But that’s not what this post is about. What it’s about is something else I had missed, and which this reader was attempting to bring to my attention:

The Associated Press

NORWAY, S.C. — The mayor of the Orangeburg County town of Norway has been indicted on charges of misconduct in office and nepotism.

Gov. Nikki Haley has suspended Jim Preacher from office while the charges are pending.

The indictment says Preacher gave himself a raise without the approval of the town council and hired his son at the town’s water treatment department…

There was more to it than that, including a bizarre alleged interaction between the mayor and a state trooper. One senses that more than nepotism brought the mayor to this pass. But what struck me was the irony that the governor has suspended this guy who among other things is charged of providing his son with a job in a department that apparently is under his purview.

Yet, in the story that briefly appeared in the Rock Hill Herald before disappearing, we found this:

State law prohibits public officials from causing the employment of a family member to a position they supervise or manage, according to the State Elections Commission. However, Haley does not supervise the gift shop; she supervises the agency that operates it, making the teen’s summer job permissible, an attorney with the commission said.

Really? So we’re to suppose that the governor’s position had nothing to do with an agency that reports to her deciding to hire a 14-year-old child?

This is a strange little story. To quote Jubal Harshaw, “this has more aspects than a cat has hair.”