Category Archives: Feedback

Lindsey walks right into it

37 Replies

Not to stir up another round of "you’re a coward;" "no, you are," but this was an interesting tidbit in
The Washington Post yesterday:

Some Loaded Comments at ‘Abu Ghraib’ ScreeningKarpinski
    When the lights go up after most documentary screenings, you usually can expect a politely snoozy lovefest at the "panel discussion to follow." So the folks who turned out for the preview of HBO’s "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at the Ronald Reagan Building last night were unusually lucky.
    Among the VIPs on hand to discuss the Rory Kennedy project (set to air Feb. 22) were Uncle Ted Kennedy and Sen. Lindsey Graham. The latter livened things up in a big way when he denounced Army Col. Janis Karpinski, who was demoted from brigadier general after the prison torture scandal.
    "Karpinski should have been court-martialed," said the South Carolina Republican, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. "She was not a good commander."
    Awkward! For who was in the audience but Karpinski herself. "I consider you as cowardly as [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez or [Donald] Rumsfeld or [former Guantanamo Bay commander Geoffrey] Miller," she shot back. "You’re saying I should be court-martialed — they didn’t want me in a courtroom because I would tell" the truth. Graham sputtered clumsily until moderator Jeffrey Toobin jumped in.
    Afterward, Karpinski told our colleague Michael Cavna: "Ninety-nine percent of the story is still covered up. . . . Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld should be in those cells" with the Army guards who were found guilty.

Maybe Lindsey Graham has gotten a little too accustomed to speaking frankly on "Meet the Press," and neglected to consider the possibility that at a live speaking event, the person you’re talking about just might be there.

I don’t know who’s right here (although I’ve always blamed Rumsfeld), but I know I don’t want to make Col. Karpinski mad at me. I’m just going by her pictures (although she is smiling in this one, bless her heart). She looks like somebody you’d rather have on your side, or just avoid. Perhaps that’s her misfortune; her rather severe habitual expression makes her a convenient scapegoat (the "evil lady torturer" from Central Casting). Or perhaps she’s just as culpable as Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld and the Army guards who were convicted. There were probably no angels anywhere near the situation.

I just don’t know. But it would have been interesting, and perhaps enlightening, to have her testify.

Questions for DeMint and Graham

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DemintformalCongress is taking a break, so both Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham will meet with the editorial board
next week — DeMint on Monday, Graham on Tuesday.

Their offices asked for the meetings, so I haven’t thought much yet about what we’ll be talking about — not that there’s ever a shortage of topics on such occasions. I suspect that with DeMint, we’ll be talking (among other things) about his recent work with the new Democratic majority to curtail earmarks, something of which he has reason to be proud. With Graham, Grahamformalit’s likely to be Iraq, Iran, North Korea and such. For that matter, DeMint is likely to have something to say on Iraq as well.

Presidential politics will probably be mentioned, with DeMint backing Mitt Romney while Graham, as ever, will be helping his friend and ally John McCain.

It occurs to me y’all might have suggestions for other topics, or particular questions.

As Dr. Frasier Crane might say, I’m listening…

Worst recent war movies

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Tell you what: To relieve the tension a bit (there’s a lot of angry back-and-forth in the last few days, and poor Mary keeps reposting her deleted posts, and is increasingly COMMUNICATING IN SHOUT MODE), let’s take a frivolous digression.

bud attaches great importance to Joe Lieberman having been seen cheering and pumping his fist when the Americans strike a blow against the Serbs in "Behind Enemy Lines." He sees this as reflective of a deep character defect.

Rather than our getting into a really angry back-and-forth about whether one should cheer for Americans or not (I come down on the "yes" side of that), I’m looking for common ground. bud says I don’t see flaws in my heroes. I say that cheering at any part of a movie as bad as "Behind Enemy Lines" is at least indicative of lousy cinematic taste.

Unlike the characters in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity; I don’t consider tastes unlike my own to reflect a deep character defect.
But I do unconsciously give extra points to people who appreciate the "good" stuff — "good" as define by my own proclivities.

So let’s make like Rob, Dick and Barry and construct a Top Five Worst War Movies (post-Vietnam era only, just to limit the field):

  1. "Behind Enemy Lines" — This was done so very much better in "BAT*21," so you know we can’t blame Gene Hackman, since he was in both of them. I was about to blame John Woo, but he didn’t direct this one. It just looks cheesy enough to be one of his.
  2. "The Thin Red Line" — Such a horrible disappointment, by comparison with James Jones’ novel, that I wrote a whole column
    about it.
  3. "The Great Raid" — Another disappointment from a perfectly good book. Hollywood tried to turn a remarkable, true story about rescuing hundreds of Allied POWs from the murderous abuses of the Japanese into a sappy romance. Why, I don’t know, but it failed on all levels.
  4. "Pearl Harbor" — More sappy romance, but that wasn’t the worst thing (you want romance done right, see "From Here to Eternity"). The worst thing was the use of special effects for special effects’ sake. In fact, it seemed the entire excuse for the film. Worst moment: When two fighter aircraft, locked in a dog fight, fly between two one-story buildings, turning onto their wingtips to negotiate the narrow alleyway.
  5. "Enemy at the Gates" — This one almost didn’t make the list, but it did for a reason it has in common with Nos. 2, 3 and 4: Sheer disappointment. Finally, I thought, Hollywood was going to pay proper, respectful acknowledgement to the horrors of the Great Patriotic War. Up until then, you’d have thought the Americans and British won the war by themselves; talk about ethnocentric. But the titanic, genocidal struggle between Teutons and Slavs that was the Siege of Stalingrad was reduced to the level of a personal feud between Ed Harris and Jude Law (Jude Law! As the emblematic New Soviet Man!) Really, really disappointing.

Bartender’s had it

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I‘ve just typed my last good-faith response to someone who refuses to deal with me — or the rest of y’all — in good faith.

As I explained before, we are going to have a serious, grown-up conversation about Energy, whatever it takes. And yet I found myself actually trying seriously to answer this comment from "Doug:"

    And by "we" you mean everyone else, right?
    Still waiting for a response on whether you plan to take your "tax
the SUV" idea to the automobile dealers who advertise in The State…
or to lobby your bosses for The State to reject advertising for gas
guzzlers.
    Also waiting for a response on what kind of cars your family drives…

"Doug" didn’t deserve it — he was being an ad hominem jerk — but I tried to answer him patiently and frankly, without animus. In over 30 years in the news business, I’ve dealt with a lot of jerks, and I’ve told myself to treat them far better than they treat me. I still try to do that, and do it fairly well, with lapses. I have a responsibility as an officer of the company to represent the newspaper in a civil manner.

But this is MY blog, and my patience is at an end.

Anyway, I started out very low-key, and morphed into fed up. To wit:

    What kinds of cars do we drive? Old ones. That’s what we can afford. I drive a Buick that was a hand-me-down from my parents. We bought our last NEW car in 1986.
    You’re corresponding here with a guy who, until our fourth child was
born, drove a VW Rabbit. My wife drove a Mazda GLC. (Thanks to the lack
of public transit, we had to have two cars for me to get to work and
her to take the kids where they needed to be — but only after they started
school; before that, we made do with just the Rabbit.)
    As long as there were just three kids, we could just barely get them
into either vehicle when the whole family went anywhere — two car
seats, and one jammed in the middle. When the fourth came along, we had
to give up the Mazda for a mid-size station wagon. A four-cylinder
mid-size station wagon, which, let me tell you, doesn’t work very well.
That was our last new car.
    What I want, and badly, is a Camry Hybrid. I go out to the Toyota place occasionally and lust after them. Trouble is, they cost about four times what I last spent on a car (and more than twice as much as the most I’ve EVER paid for a car), and it’s hard for me to make even my much-lower payments on used cars.
    I actually thought we might have been able to come up with enough down payment for one our first new car in two decades (it would have to be new, since they just came out for the 2007 model year). It would be for my wife, as I want her driving something dependable (at the time, I was still driving my ’89 Ford Ranger, which several months ago spontaneously caught fire on the Interstate and died; hence the Buick).
    But the one-time infusion of cash I was counting on for that didn’t materialize, for complex reasons that are none of your business.
    Come to think of it, none of this is your business.
    Something I really don’t understand about the Blogosphere is people who, instead of engaging ideas, waste their typing energy exhibiting very PERSONAL hostility.
    There is not a single proposal that I set forth that I would be exempt from. And if you think my income somehow exempts me from the pain, you are nuts. But once again, the necessary information to refute your presumption is none of your business. That’s convenient to your purposes, but it doesn’t benefit the world or our country in the slightest…

At that point, this ceased to be a comment response, and I turned it into this separate post.

What this site is supposed to be about is ideas, not whom you like or dislike. The difficulty in getting people to carry on grownup conversations has brought me very close to dropping the blog altogether as a waste of my and everyone’s time — something that is even scarcer for me than money.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll carry on. But if I’m close to quitting, there is one thing you will see me do first — start eliminating ALL messages that don’t discuss issues and ideas on their actual merits, without all this childish personal animus. THAT might make this a more worthwhile enterprise.

I’ve held off on doing that, and instead tried to make an instructive example of "Mary" by unpublishing "her" most egregious offenses, and explaining to all what I’m doing and why. I don’t mind deleting "Mary" because "she" possibly doesn’t even live in South Carolina (she certainly has no interest in our state, beyond deriding it), hides behind a phony name, and most likely a phony gender — therefore making herself irrelevant to the conversation I’m trying to have with newspaper readers and other who care about our community. One who deals with the world in such bad faith and with such deception does not deserve the courtesies I extend to others who can sometimes be just as hostile and pointless. I would just block ALL "Rosh" comments, except I believe in rewarding good behavior — or behavior that is "good" for "Mary."

But the bartender’s getting fed up. I like it that y’all want to drink what I serve, and have been pleased by the readership numbers. But the rowdiness is still chasing off the respectable folks — and riff-raff like me, too. And I’m not going to let that happen. I’d rather have three or four thoughtful readers than hundreds like Mary.

For that reason, I’m going to start examining every comment with a mind to whether to extend the "Mary" rule to everyone — which I probably will do. I haven’t started yet, though. As soon as I delete anyone but "her," I’ll let you know.

Mary Unroshed

30 Replies

You know, Mary is so close to making a positive contribution to this blog. I’m going to show you how.

As I’ve made clear when I posted this, I intend to have a serious, grownup discussion about energy — without the pointless partisanship, rancid ideology, and ad hominem childishness that has plagued this blog, and held it back from broader participation, since the beginning.

So I made an example of "Mary Rosh," unpublishing two of her comments. I hesitated to do it, because she was actually on topic, although her ideas… well, I’ll let you decide how constructive they are. But since they had violated the higher standard of civility I had set for this post, in the hope that some of our more serious and fastidious participants would warm up to it, they had to go.

But here they are, translated into normal, sane, grownup language (and Doug or anybody else who wants them — I’ll still e-mail you the originals). Glean from them what you will.

These thoughts were posted on Friday (in slightly different form):

I think it’s time to get realistic.  It’s just not going to be that easy to replace Middle Eastern oil that can be gotten out of the ground for $3.00 per barrel.  There’s a lot going on right not with respect to conservation and alternative energy sources, but all these crash course, consequences-be-damned proposals (are in vain).

… For example, build nuclear power plants as fast as safely possible.  First, that’s been done.  No nuclear power plant has been put on line since the Three Mile Island accident, and that, as it happens, is as fast as is safely possible.  Second, electricity generation mostly doesn’t use oil.

Drilling in ANWR wouldn’t get a significant amount of oil…

Light rail is just (impractical) unless the population is dense enough, which it isn’t in most cities in the U.S.

The $2 per gallon gasoline tax wouldn’t bother me much, but it would be economically crippling to a lot of people, especially in a place like South Carolina, where there aren’t too many alternatives to passenger cars, and where the incomes aren’t that high….

That was it, boiled down to basic concepts. Here’s the one from today (Saturday):

1.  The nuclear energy idea is (unwise), because

a) the plants are dangerous and expensive. 
b) electricity generation uses relatively little oil.  TWO PERCENT of U.S. electric generation in 2001 was oil-fired.

So (we would) waste vast sums of money and … expose the population to considerable danger, and create waste that will last for hundreds of centuries, without saving any oil to speak of.

2.  The light rail idea is … too expensive and too inconvenient unless the population is pretty dense, which is not true in most American cities.  Imagine light rail in South Carolina, for example.  You have to get people from their houses to the station, and you have to get them from the station to their destination.  That’s a huge pain, requiring bus transfers at both ends, unless the population around the train station is dense enough to support the train, and the workplaces and other destinations at the other end of the line are clustered around closely enough.

3.  The $2.00 per gallon gasoline tax wouldn’t bother me, but it would devastate a lot of people, particularly in South Carolina and other conservative states where the income isn’t that high.  It would create an insurmountable hardship for millions of people, and be borne by those who could least afford it.

4.  Drilling in ANWR wouldn’t supply a significant percentage of our needs….

5.  … Any energy policy should be analyzed in terms of what our needs are and what is the best way to supply our needs.

6.  I don’t object on principle to the idea of developing new technologies, including hydrogen.  The main problem with hydrogen, though, is probably distribution.  And it’s vitally important not to use technological initiatives simply as mechanisms to transfer federal money.  For example, any hydrogen fuel initiative carried out in South Carolina is likely to amount to nothing more than a simple transfer of federal money to South Carolina, because South Carolina doesn’t have the educated population necessary to carry such an initiative through to success. [Editor’s note: Even if Mary tried another pseudonym and stopped the sore-thumb practice of calling me "Warthen," we would know her by this signature obsession. It’s like a nervous tic. But despite the implied insult to 4 million people, it doesn’t really break the rules.]

7.  It’s not going to be easy to develop an economical way to replace 100% of the oil that lies under sand and costs $3.00 per barrel to get out of the ground.  We need to concentrate first on managing our demand so that we avoid shortages that drive the price way up.  Sometimes shaving 2% or 3% off of our demand will do that.  There’s no need to lurch into some crash program to replace 100% of our imported energy, without considering the alternatives and consequences of doing so.

8.  … There are, of course, plenty of ways for us to provide for our security without trying to change the Middle East by military force, or by devoting excessive resource or accepting excessive negative consequences in order to achieve an arbitrarily set goal of complete energy independence. Using diplomacy, for example. For example, when Iran offered in 2001 to help us pursue al Qaeda, and offered numerous other overtures of friendship and assistance, we could have talked to them instead of making threats.

That’s it. Oh, one other thing. Just for fun, I’ll give you an edited version of a still-published comment from Mary. Weirdly, it was one in which she was trying, in spite of herself, to give positive feedback, however ironic — but it just stuck in her craw. Here’s the cleaned-up version (see how much time she could save, if she dropped the hostility):

Actually, it’s not that bad an idea….

Of course, there’s the distinct likelihood that she meant NOTHING positive at all — in other words, that the insult was the point, rather than a cover-up for her embarrassment at saying something positive. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

By the way, did any of y’all get ANYTHING out of all those releases I posted? If not, I’ll drop the practice right away, and feel relieved. (I was a little manic yesterday, wasn’t I?)

Paul! Laurin!

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Demarco07

Once again, we run into our intrepid correspondent, Dr. Paul DeMarco, at a political event (in this case, Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies).

But Paul wasn’t just slumming. As usual, he had come down from Marion on a mission to help South Carolina. He had just attended the last meeting of Jim Rex’s transition team. I asked him to write us something about the experience — either for the paper or the blog — and I think he will.

Meanwhile, I had the privilege of meeting our good friend Laurin Manning for the first and second times Wednesday. She introduced herself at a post inaugural reception for 2nd-term Attorney General Henry McMaster. Then, that night, I ran into her again at the governor’s barbecue. That’s her friend Rebecca Dulin with her at the party. These two lovely young ladies will be featured in my barbecue video, which is in post-production, and which you can expect to see tonight, or tomorrow, or sometime between now and Sunday. I’m going to go get dinner now…

Laurin

Empty seats

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2ndsanford_003

Back in this comment, Dave noted that the inaugural ceremony looked sparsely attended in my little teaser video.

That’s very perceptive on his part, because that particular little clip showed the most crowded part of the assembly — the choice seats up front.

Here’s what it looked like from the back. (And no, this is not from before or after the event — I shot this 12 minutes and 42 seconds after the even had begun, according to my camera, which means this is probably the peak of attendance.) I have never been to an event on the Statehouse grounds — certainly not an inauguration — that had this many empty seats. It was a very subdued event (relatively speaking), as was the barbecue that night.

In fairness, I must say that I didn’t get to the barbecue until late — after 8 or so — but the fact that the crowd was thin at that point in the evening is telling.

It wasn’t anything like that four years ago. There was an air of excited anticipation. I mean, it was considerably more sedate than the SERIOUS party that Samuel Tenenbaum had thrown for Jim Hodges four years earlier (Democrats were SO thrilled to be back in power that night), but it was upbeat, and pretty much everybody was there.

Last night was a letdown by comparison.

By the way, here’s the closest I can come to a picture from the 2002 inaugural to compare to what I have above. It’s not the same angle, but it conveys pretty much what I remember: Standing room only:

Inaugurationtd04

Who should vote?

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Vote1

The debate in the comments on this last post got into some back-and-forth on one of my favorite "what-ifs" — what if we only let veterans vote?

I’d like to explore that more deeply, but right now, I want to raise a tangential question. The appeal for me in the "franchise only for veterans" idea is that people should demonstrate some commitment to the country, the state, the community — however you define the constituency in a given instance — in order to have a say in how it’s run.

Let’s do a sidestep on that, to a question that bothered me for years.

We’re always writing editorials urging people to go vote. But if you have to URGE somebody to vote — if they need to be poked with a stick to get them to stir — do you really want them making such a crucial decision as who our leaders are going to be? Don’t you want people who have taken a serious interest in the issues, and studied and worried and thought about it at length, voting? Why is it that name recognition is such a good indicator of political viability? Because too many voters go no deeper than that! And those are the people who vote now. Do we really want people with even less commitment to public life pulling levers?

If you’re reading this, you’re not among the people I’m concerned about. But I have to wonder, to what extent does it help the country to make it easier and more convenient to vote, and to go around prodding people who don’t care enough to go do it on their own to participate in such decisions?

And yes, I realize this is a very old question; I’ve discussed it with various people a thousand times. But we’ve never discussed it here, I don’t think. So let’s.

Thoughts?

World Premiere: “Election Day 2006”

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Roll out the red carpet! You are invited to be among the first to view a brand-new, ground-breaking documentary from the studios of bradwarthensblog productions.

The facade is ripped away from a mediocre election, as your host reveals shockingly low turnouts and stunning personal stories from the mean streets of Rosewood.

Enjoy…

How’s YOUR turnout?

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Turnout1

How’s the turnout at your precinct?

It was pretty light at mine around 9 a.m. (See above). I had one guy in front of me, and that’s only because my last initial is "W."

I made this happen, you know. Yesterday was a perfectly clear day, and then when I stopped for gas on my way home last night, I decided to opt for a car wash, too — like the second time in my life I’ve ever done that.

Anyway, I offer my apologies to all the Democrats out there that we endorsed. Sorry to damage your turnout. As for you Democrats we didn’t endorse, tough. Better luck next time. (I’m going, of course, by the old saw about how Republicans turn out no matter what the weather. I’m still not sure that’s true.)

As for our favored Republicans who are benefiting (in theory) — you don’t have to thank me. The car needed washing anyway.

Turnout2

“A-minus?!?” What does it take to get an “A?”

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Harry Harris of Sumter sent in a piece too long to be a letter, but it did not get selected as an op-ed. So here’s the next best thing — I’m putting his piece on my blog.

Obviously, I was interested because he was grading a debate in which I took part. Here’s his assessment:

GRADING THE EDUCATION CANDIDATES

After watching the ETV debate between the candidates
for State Superintendent of Education, my mind switched to my days of
being in school and teaching students.  I just had to give them a
grade. I want to make it clear what those grades mean by explaining the
criteria used. 

I rate Karen Floyd’s effort a D plus after adding and
subtracting the key points covered. Her presentation rated an A-.  She
is well rehearsed and makes a good first impression. The main detractor
was her uncomfortable demeanor when pressed to give straight answers to
some clear questions. 

On substance, I grant a C, based on a broad look at
issues and preparation for debating them.  She had a noticeable
fall-off in content after a good start.  The content of her proposals
and answers were, however, mostly based on business-model ideology and
risky, costly proposals.  She offered nothing but "competition" and
outsourcing as solutions for students left-behind in struggling
schools.  Her comments about public schools were framed with
negativity, and selectively repeated ad nauseam the two areas where
South Carolina lags furthest behind – SAT scores and dropout rate.

Her failing areas were clarity and trustworthiness.
In addition to evasive answers that sounded much like a lawyer who is
familiar with the weaknesses of her case, she sometimes forced the
questioners to ask what she really meant by some of her statements.
She left an impression that she is not willing to say in public what
she really thinks or intends to do.  Her evasiveness on voucher
questions leaves a deep uneasiness that she may still believe what she
touted to Republican Party and business groups in her pre-primary
rounds but is unwilling to honestly admit it.  Are we to believe she
made no promises to outside-the-state voucher proponents who have given
over half of the non-borrowed money for her campaign? How honest can
one be and ignore top ratings given the state on curriculum standards,
teacher standards, national testing results (NAEP), SAT and ACT score
improvements.  F on trustworthiness! 

Dr. Rex earned a B+ from me.  His presentation was a
B level effort.  His remarks seemed less refined – and somewhat less
rehearsed.  He handled the tougher issues and questions without
grasping for wiggle-words and seemed quite straightforward.  It did not
seem to bother him to explain that current political conditions – a
certain Governor – caused rethinking and modification of his views on
electing the State Superintendent.  He didn’t even wince at being
called a bureaucrat.

On substance, the ideas he included in his answers
and remarks gained a B plus after subtracting for what he did not
include. (I’m a hard grader.)  While citing his innovative efforts in
building-up the teaching profession in South Carolina through the
Teacher Cadets and alternative certification, he failed to adequately
point out the damage done to the profession and the demoralization of
working educators brought about by the Sanford/Floyd philosophy.
Though he outlined the need for change and innovation informed by
experience, he did not include a reminder of the damage, morale drain,
and test score decline under Ms. Floyd’s supporter, Barbara Nielson.
Nor did he adequately highlight the reversal of that decline under Inez
Tennenbaum who led reform without attacking her own troops.  His reform
plans seem grounded in experience and sound fiscal judgment.

In clarity and substance, Dr. Rex stood out.  Is
there any doubt where he stands on vouchers?  He was clear about the
kinds of choice he thinks show promise.  He did not filibuster or evade
tough questions.   He was honest and forthright about where he wants to
lead – and about needing to comprehensively address the difficult
issues – whether taxes, funding, or the failure of some schools.  He
seems trustworthy and clear.

Solid A. 

I was forced to subtract some extra points from Jim
Rex’s overall score for being too uncritical of Ms. Floyd’s
assertions.  Her remark about a position paper she "wrote" would have
drawn a quick F in my classroom.  After reading the paper referenced on
her website months ago, I found a strangely similar paper at the
Manhattan Institute website.  Footnotes have since been added to "her"
paper on her website.  They cite the Manhatten Institute, The Heritage
Foundation, The Center for Education Reform, The Home School Legal
Defense Association, and Jay P. Greene – a chief writer for the
Manhatten Institute.  Each is an opponent of public schools and a
voucher proponent.  Good scholarship, Ms. Floyd. 

He also did not mention the large loans taken out by
the Floyd campaign – over $181,000 just this quarter.  This gives her
lots of money to have a large campaign voice, but who will pay back
this money after the campaign? I suspect it will be largely those
out-of-state sham companies that are her largest contributors to date –
the ones to whom she owes nothing – right?  Dr. Rex was a true
gentleman as he stated.  It cost him 5 points on my scale.

The debate panelists ran a good debate.  They asked
good questions, and gave good opportunity to respond, but did not allow
empty or evasive responses.  A -.

Harry Harris

Sumter

 

Perhaps after I call his attention to this star billing, Mr. Harris will just come straight here with his offerings the next time my buddy Mike Fitts turns him down for print.

Credit where it’s due

14 Replies

Was just looking back at some stuff from last week, and I think once again that if we were to give out prizes for blog comments, Emile DeFelice would walk away with this month’s award. I refer to the comment containing this line:

I grew canard for awhile a few years ago, and my customers can tell you that fresh local canard is much better than frozen foreign canard. 

I think that’s the best, wittiest bit of self-satire I’ve seen from a political candidate in — well, just about ever.

I know we didn’t endorse him, but this is the great thing about being an Unpartisan — you can like and admire people you don’t endorse. Democrats and Republicans can’t do that. Some of the nicer ones would like to, but it’s like a physical law or something that they can’t. I don’t know.

Anyway, Emile is definitely money. He is so money, and he doesn’t even know it.

(OK, I admit I was just rewatching "Swingers.")

Is what Eckstrom did legal?

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I see that even after the last time I weighed in on this string, Chris W was still exercised about Cindi Scoppe saying in a column that Rich Eckstrom’s foolishness with the state van was actually illegal.

A sample of Chris W’s commentary:

You say something is illegal. The officials say it is not. You stand
behind your statements as if there were no burden of proof. You offer
no proof, just a claim.

Well, I made the mistake of asking Cindi if she’d mind sending me a note walking me through the basis of her opinion that Mr. Eckstrom appeared to have committed a misdemeanor, so I could post it for Chris W and anybody else who was curious. She said OK. I expected a paragraph. Cindi being Cindi, this is what I got:

Here’s the statute Mr. Eckstrom points to to argue that his use of the state van was legal:

SECTION 1-11-270. Division of Motor Vehicle Management; establishment of criteria for individual assignment of motor vehicles.

(A) The board shall establish criteria for individual assignment of motor vehicles based on the functional requirements of the job, which shall reduce the assignment to situations clearly beneficial to the State. Only the Governor, statewide elected officials, and agency heads are provided a state-owned vehicle based on their position.

(B) Law enforcement officers, as defined by the agency head, may be permanently assigned state-owned vehicles by their respective agency head. Agency heads may assign a state-owned vehicle to an employee when the vehicle carries or is equipped with special equipment needed to perform duties directly related to the employee’s job, and the employee is either in an emergency response capacity after normal working hours or for logistical reasons it is determined to be in the agency’s interest for the vehicle to remain with the employee. No other employee may be permanently assigned to a state-owned vehicle, unless the assignment is cost advantageous to the State under guidelines developed by the State Fleet Manager. Statewide elected officials, law enforcement officers, and those employees who have been assigned vehicles because they are in an emergency response capacity after normal working hours are exempt from reimbursing the State for commuting miles. Other employees operating a permanently assigned vehicle must reimburse the State for commuting between home and work.

(C) All persons, except the Governor and statewide elected officials, permanently assigned with automobiles shall log all trips on a log form approved by the board, specifying beginning and ending mileage and job function performed. However, trip logs must not be maintained for vehicles whose gross vehicle weight is greater than ten thousand pounds nor for vehicles assigned to full-time line law enforcement officers. Agency directors and commissioners permanently assigned state vehicles may utilize exceptions on a report denoting only official and commuting mileage in lieu of the aforementioned trip logs.

     Note that this law does NOT say vehicle use is unlimited. It merely says that 1) constitutional officers can have a vehicle permanently assigned to them without first meeting the test of demonstrating that the state saves money by assigning them a vehicle and 2) constitutional officers are allowed to COMMUTE to and from work without reimbursing the state for that expense.
    Additionally, as one prosecutor put it, the language allowing constitutional officers to use the vehicle for commuting IMPLIES that any other personal use is outlawed.
    Beyond that, though, two other laws, below, make it even clearer that personal use of state vehicles that is not specifically authorized is prohibited.

    Here’s the provision contained in this year’s budget (and in every year’s budget going back at least to 1993) that says state employees don’t get extra perks except for those specifically spelled out in the proviso; note that the proviso does NOT include unlimited use of a state vehicle as an excepted perk. (A budget proviso has the force of law.)  A 1993 attorney general’s ruling on the question of constitutional officers’ use of state vehicles cited this provision as an additional basis for saying that the use of the vehicles was restricted:

72.19. (GP: Allowance for Residences & Compensation Restrictions) That salaries paid to officers and employees of the State, including its several boards, commissions, and institutions shall be in full for all services rendered, and no perquisites of office or of employment shall be allowed in addition thereto, but such perquisites, commodities, services or other benefits shall be charged for at the prevailing local value and without the purpose or effect of increasing the compensation of said officer or employee. The charge for these items may be payroll deducted at the discretion of the Comptroller General or the chief financial officer at each agency maintaining its own payroll system. This shall not apply to the Governor’s Mansion, nor for department-owned housing used for recruitment and training of Mental Health Professionals, nor to guards at any of the state’s penal institutions and nurses and attendants at the Department of Mental Health, and the Department of Disabilities & Special Needs, and registered nurses providing clinical care at the MUSC Medical Center, nor to the Superintendent and staff of John de la Howe School, nor to the cottage parents and staff of Wil Lou Gray Opportunity School, nor to full-time or part-time staff who work after regular working hours in the SLED Communications Center or Maintenance Area, nor to adult staff at the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics who are required to stay on campus by the institution because of job requirements or program participation. The presidents of those state institutions of higher learning authorized to provide on-campus residential facilities for students may be permitted to occupy residences on the grounds of such institutions without charge

Here’s the provision in the Ethics Act that applies here, followed by the definition in that same act of the operative term, "economic interest":

SECTION 8-13-700. Use of official position or office for financial gain; disclosure of potential conflict of interest.

(A) No public official, public member, or public employee may knowingly use his official office, membership, or employment to obtain an economic interest for himself, a member of his immediate family, an individual with whom he is associated, or a business with which he is associated. This prohibition does not extend to the incidental use of public materials, personnel, or equipment, subject to or available for a public official’s, public member’s, or public employee’s use which does not result in additional public expense.

SECTION 8-13-100. Definitions.
(11)(a) "Economic interest" means an interest distinct from that of the general public in a purchase, sale, lease, contract, option, or other transaction or arrangement involving property or services in which a public official, public member, or public employee may gain an economic benefit of fifty dollars or more.

Additionally, the state constitution has this provision on the private use of public funds, which the courts have held to be a prohibition on the private use of public funds or resources:

ARTICLE VI., SECTION 8. Suspension and prosecution of officers accused of crime.

Whenever it appears to the satisfaction of the Governor that probable cause exists to charge any officer of the State or its political subdivisions who has the custody of public or trust funds with embezzlement or the appropriation of public or trust funds to private use, then the Governor shall direct his immediate prosecution by the proper officer, and upon indictment by a grand jury or, upon the waiver of such indictment if permitted by law, the Governor shall suspend such officer and appoint one in his stead, until he shall have been acquitted. In case of conviction, the position shall be declared vacant and the vacancy filled as may be provided by law.

Finally, I don’t have the cite for this, but I know that … either state law or the constitution or both says that all public employees have a fiduciary duty to avoid even the appearance of improper conduct, and to use public resources for private or personal purposes would certainly apply. As one prosecutor put it, "That’d be like using the wildlife boats to go out and take your family on a fishing expedition."

Cindi Ross Scoppe
Associate Editor
The State newspaper
(803) 771 8571

 
 

Anyway, that either satisfies you or not. She has her opinion; you have yours. Hers is based upon the above.

Hey, I LIKE Mark Sanford…

83 Replies

A couple of replies to the comment by Chris on the last post. Chris, when you say this…

The problem with editorial endorsements is that it alerts readers to
thought processes and reasoning of those making them…

…you point to the precise reason that my colleagues and I on the board write columns — to elaborate on the reasons we endorse, to give readers additional insight into our thinking so that they have more information upon which to base a judgment of our decision, whatever they choose to make of it. The point of my doing the blog is to go even a little deeper into all that, to give you the chance (if you’re at all interested) to know even more about how the editorial page editor ticks, so that you might have even more insight into the editorials. It’s so you don’t have to guess.

The whole point of an endorsement editorial, as I’ve said a thousand times, is not the WHO, but the WHY — the "thought processes and reasoning" behind the decision. It’s really hard to get that message across, because it’s counterintuitive for a lot of folks. It’s not personal, as a Corleone would say. The fact is that — in this case — one of these two men is going to be governor. The purpose of an endorsement is to say, knowing what we know (and in part, what we know is based on dealing with these men repeatedly over the course of years), which way we would go if we just have to vote for one of them.

Our reasons, and the reasons behind our reasons, are all we have to offer you. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about whose side we’re on, or who we "like." If we went on the basis of who we like, I’d probably have gone with Sanford. I know him, and I personally like him. I really have to force myself to look at what he’s doing (and not doing) as governor and shove aside the fact that I like the guy.

I can’t say the same for Tommy Moore, which is not to run him down. I just don’t know him as well. I’ve known him at a distance for almost two decades — much longer than Sanford. But I knew him as an editor dealing with the information that reporters (usually Cindi Scoppe, back in her reporting days) brought to me about him. Mark Sanford I’ve dealt with directly, ever since he was in Congress, because his political career began about the same time I joined the editorial board.

I’ve also dealt with him more because he’s a wonk like us. He’s more into talking about issues than he is about doing anything. I’ve had the impression that he’d rather pick up the phone to chat with me for 45 minutes about some political theory than sit down and wheedle lawmakers to turn ideas into laws. (At least, he was inclined to do that until a few months ago. I don’t think I’ve heard from him at all since my column about his veto of the budget.)

Sen. Moore has never spent much time talking to editorial types — at least, not to me. He was over in the State House, getting stuff done. Since he wasn’t trying to accomplish abstract goals, he had nothing to chat about with perpetual talkers. So I don’t know him that well. I don’t think he’s figured us out, either. To him, I’m that guy who wrote that he didn’t have the "fire in the belly," and he knows he didn’t like that.

So why did we not endorse Mark Sanford? Read the endorsement. Then read my column. Then read other columns. Then read everything you can get your hands on, and talk to everyone you know who might know more about these guys and the issues than you do. Then go out and vote any way you think is best.

If you do that, having made our endorsement even a small part of your own process — even if it’s only to tick you off and make you want to do the opposite, and to work harder to find reasons why we’re wrong — then I will have done my job.

Oops. There I go. Revealing thought processes and reasoning again. Sorry. (Not.)

(One other thing, though, Chris — your comment sort of loses me when you jump from editorial to news coverage, as though there were a connection. If you’re suggesting that what we do has anything to do with what the news department does, you are confused. Reporters, and their editors, would likely laugh their heads off at the idea that they agree with our conclusions. That is, they would if so many people, including sometimes candidates, didn’t make the same assumption you do, which is a major professional pain for them. I think most news people would just as soon the editorial page go away, as it causes them little but grief. Good thing there’s a high wall between our separate divisions to protect us — there are a lot more of them than there are of us.)

Another canard bites the dust

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The capacity of people to hang onto canards that favor their world view is really impressive. Take this one, which I encounter everywhere and which persists in spite of the published, confirmable, objective facts.

I’ll just let our own LexWolf, who most recently asserted it, put this popular bit of absurdity in his own words:

… the State has a fairly dismal record with its preferred candidates
(that’s not necessarily the candidates they wind up endorsing in the
end but the ones they started out with in Spring).

Fortunately for us all, most voters make up their own minds instead
of voting according to what The State‘s editors and columnists think
they should want.

Yep, voters make up their own minds. And 75 percent of the time over the last 12 years, they have made the same decision we did.

In general elections, of course. You talk about primaries, and I would assume our preferred candidates’ record wouldn’t be as good. Of course, I’ve never gone back and done a 12-year count on primaries. That would be a lot more time-consuming. I only did the count on the general because I had to give a primer on endorsements to employees at The State, and I thought such a count might be useful (I had no idea what I’d find before I did it).

But since you raise the issue, I stopped just now and did a count on the primaries we just had in June — I was able to find a complete list of endorsements in a convenient place for that one.

You can count them yourself, but the record for our candidates was that 13 won, and 9 lost. That’s essentially a 60-40 split (59.09 to 40.9, to be more precise). That’s well into landslide territory.

Does that surprise you? It surprises me. Since primaries are dominated by partisans, and we are adamantly anti-partisan (I’m constantly railing at the quality of candidates that the parties force us to choose between in the fall), it seems like we would differ with the party-line voters more often. All I can say is that this year at least, there was a high correlation between the stronger candidate and the one that even partisans could see was stronger.

You can’t bet on that always happening. I sure wouldn’t. Of course, maybe the trend continues over time. Maybe sometime when I’m a lot less busy, I’ll do the sifting through moldy tearsheets necessary to finding out.

But here’s the bottom line: We don’t consider whether a candidate is going to win, in terms of whether we endorse that person or not. If we did, we would never have endorsed, say, Joe Lieberman in the 2004 Democratic primary. We go for the person who, among the choices offered, would in our considered opinion be the best person for the job.

It just so happens that our considered opinion matches that of South Carolinians quite a bit more often than it doesn’t. We don’t do that on purpose, but it happens.

The gloves go back on

10 Replies

If you click on the first link on my last post now, you’ll find nothing but, "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria."

That’s because after I posted it, the Rex campaign took down the item in question about Karen Floyd. (See the comment from campaign aide Zeke Stokes.)

Apparently, the Rex campaign is sensitive to y’all’s good opinion. But is it too late for that?

Hail Mary (Rosh)

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I‘m going to have to go to confession to this one, but I was much intrigued by something Doug Ross’ said. After ironically noting that he had "sinned" against Randy Ewart, he announced that "As penance, I shall say 10 Hail Mary Rosh’s."

Well, that got me to thinking. If I decide I need to amend my new civility policy, that might be a suitable punishment for transgressors that would fall short of deletion or banishment. Say, if someone who uses his or her full name goes a bit too far in exercising the license that identification allows, we could assign 10 Mary Roshes as a penance, after which blogsolution would be granted.

As a serious Catholic myself, I’m not sure how awful it is to be publishing this. But the fact is, my brain started working on it right away at Doug "The Serpent" Ross’ prompting, and I did "entertain" the thought. So I suppose that sharing it here is my way of confessing to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, through what I have done, and what I have failed to do (my work). If my fellow Catholics out there think it’s just too awful (maybe somebody should run this by Andrew Sullivan), I’ll take it down.

Anyway, here is how I think one would say a "Hail Mary Rosh:"

Hail Mary, full of Rosh, the bile is with thee;
angry art thou among women (?),
and worthless is the fruit of thy rant, Venom.

Pseudo Mary, mother of trolls,
prey on us retards now,
and call us garbage with thy breath,
Oh, men!

HE brought it up, not me

120 Replies

Responding to popular demand, I have not mentioned the "C" word for several posts now. But our own Mike C has, over on his blog, so I thought I’d let y’all know in case anyone is still interested (or just masochistic).

By the way, I notice SGM (ret.) — who has announced he is boycotting this blog — has been commenting over on that one. If you see him, please tell him we miss him, and would welcome his return.

It’s going to be all right…

6 Replies

A number of people evinced considerable uneasiness about the new blog policy when I foreshadowed it on Friday. Understandable. It’s new; it’s different.

But it’s not going to be so bad.

Anyway, in the interest of giving my blog readers that little something extra, I refer you to the two rough drafts that precede the column, which precedes this. You can see how I hashed this out.

To see more deeply into it, go back to this post, this one, and this one. Peruse the comments in particular. You’ll find that a number of people suggested that the problem was anonymity; others said it was up to me to screen the comments and throw out malefactors.

Basically, I found a way (I hope) to meld the better qualities of both ideas.

Of course, there are some who didn’t want me to modify the site’s accessibility in any way. Well, I did it their way for 15 months. But I got tired of the complaints — some of them from respondents I greatly respect — about the ad hominem stuff, and about the tail chasing left-right exchanges of cant that led nowhere.

I finally decided to listen to them for once, and try to do something. Ultimately, all of y’all will decide whether this succeeds.