Category Archives: Feedback

It’s too easy to get my conscience on my case

FYI, folks, I got this from Randy Page over at SCRG, in response to this earlier post:

Appreciate your selective use of tweets from the SCRG account….

Ouch. I hate it that Randy feels put upon — I think he’s a nice guy and I want him to think I’m a nice guy, too, and all that — but it wasn’t all that selective. I mean, go look at the timeline. You be the judge.

I said the Onion thing reminded me of SOME of SCRG’s Tweets, and I showed you some of the ones I was talking about. And I didn’t have to look hard. (And the ONE Tweet I found saying something positive about schools — “Schools’ Report Cards Improve” — hardly disproves my thesis, since in the same span of time I easily found seven negative ones. Since my post, SCRG has had two new Tweets. Neither was complimentary toward public schools, and one said “South Carolina’s Worst Elementary and Middle Schools.” I’m not holding my breath waiting for that companion Tweet about the BEST schools…)

I don’t see that I did a single wrong thing there. I definitely didn’t misrepresent the overwhelmingly predominate thrust of SCRG’s Tweets. But I still feel bad about it. As Mark Twain wrote (in the voice of Huck Finn):

But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

Uh-oh. Now I’m going to get in trouble with animal lovers. Hey, it was Huck Finn who said it, not me… There’s goes my danged conscience again…

It’s later than you think — 2012 is upon us

Doug Ross observed today, back here:

Let’s not forget that the actual campaigning for 2012 will begin in approximately 10-12 months. The election may be two years away but the jockeying for position will begin much sooner…

To which I responded:

Actually, Doug, it’s a lot worse than you say. The SC primary itself is only 14 months away. The campaigning has begun already, but it will become fairly obvious and public starting early in the New Year.

Almost immediately after the 2002 election (when Mark Sanford was elected) — I mean, like a week or two later — Howard Dean contacted us wanting to come in and talk about his candidacy in the 2004 Democratic primary. I was like “Howard Who?” and “He wants to talk to us about WHAT?” But I agreed to the meeting. (I used to say yes to a lot of meetings I would have said no to later, as our staff shrank.)

If you go back on my old blog, you’ll see that we started getting into full swing on the 2008 presidential election in late spring of 2007, about the time of the GOP debate here on May 15.

My first interview with Barack Obama was conducted via cell phone in June 2007 (we didn’t get far, as we had connection trouble). As the summer wore on, I wrotemore and more about the campaign. The John Edwards column that everyone remembers appeared in early August 2007 — and it really only appeared that late because I had put off writing it for months. It had started with something I hadwritten on the blog on Feb. 8, 2007.

Bottom line, we’re about to get full-tilt into the 2012 election here in SC…

Sorry to break the news to y’all. But as I told Rotary today 2012 is upon us…

When master comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah…

It’s a bit late, but here is something I wish I’d had yesterday for marking Veterans Day. Kathryn Fenner alerted me to these clips of dogs greeting returning troops.

Whether you’re a dog-lover or not, it’s heart-warming. And I don’t give you much heart-warming stuff here, so enjoy it while you can…

The big, gigantic, huge ideological shift of 2010: About 4.76 percent of voters changed their minds

Sometime over the last couple of days I was talking to a Republican friend who insisted that the American people decided to reject Obama and all his works on Tuesday, that the ideological message was clear and unequivocal.

His view was similar to the one express in this Tweet posted by @SCHotline today:

SC Politics 11/5: America to Democrats: Stop what you’re doi…http://conta.cc/cz79tE viahttp://SCHotline.us #scgop #sctweets #scdem

I, of course, disagreed. I believe that elections seldom express clear messages, for one thing. People have many reasons for voting as they do, and it’s almost impossible to classify or quantify them with any degree of certainty, even with exit polls — which necessarily boil motivations down to explanations that can be quantified. Voters could vote against a guy because, deep down, they don’t like the tie he wears — something a pollster is unlikely to capture.

What happened was that a small proportion of the electorate — a minority of us independents in the middle — voted Democratic in 2006 and 2008, but Republican in 2010. And they are just as likely to vote the other way in two or four years. Believe me; these are my people. I’m one of them. It’s a swing voter thing; someone who calls himself a Republican, or a Democrat — something who really believes all that junk they spout — couldn’t possibly understand.

My friend saw the election, for instance, as a clear, unambiguous rejection of Obamacare. Please. The word may poll well (for Republicans), but most voters couldn’t explain to you what the recent health care legislation actually DOES. Neither can I, unless you give me a couple of days to refresh my memory on it. I don’t even understand how it’s going to affect me, much less the country. If you don’t know what it is, how can you possibly know, clearly and unambiguously, that you are against it?

As a measure of how the country FEELS about the president, sure. But as a measure of a clearly defined ideology, no way. Which is good, since I don’t like ideologies.

Anyway, today my friend sent me this piece from The New Republic (hoping I would consider the source favorably, no doubt), headlined “It’s the Ideology, Stupid.” Well, I was offended at the original version of that phrase when the Clinton people used it; I am no more persuaded by this one.

What I DID like about the piece were the stats provided from exit polls. To begin with, they told me that in 2006, “those who voted were 38 percent Democratic, 36 percent Republican, and 28 percent Independent,” and this year the self-identification was 36/36/28. Well, right there I’m not seeing a big ideological shift. But my favorite stats were here:

We get more significant results when we examine the choices Independents made. Although their share of the electorate was virtually unchanged from 2006, their behavior was very different. In 2006, Democrats received 57 percent of the Independent vote, versus only 39 percent for Republicans. In 2010 this margin was reversed: 55 percent Republican, 39 percent Democratic. If Independents had split their vote between the parties this year the way they did in 2006, the Republicans share would have been 4.7 percent lower—a huge difference.

OK, let’s parse that. Independents are 28 percent of the electorate. In 2006, Dems got 57 percent of that segment, while the GOP got 39 percent. This year, they went 55 percent Republican and 39 percent Democratic. So that means roughly 17 percent of independents switched their preference from Democratic to Republican.

Seventeen percent of 28 percent (the percentage of the electorate that is independent) is 4.76 percent. I make no claims to be a statistician, so y’all check my math there. But I think I’m right.

So… instead of “America” sending a clear message to Democrats, or to anyone for that matter, what we have is 4.76 percent of the electorate voting differently from the way it voted in 2006 — for whatever reason.

“America” doesn’t change that much from election to election, folks. A few people in the middle slosh back and forth. And I think my explanation for why they do is as valid as the grand, oversimplified ideological one: People were dissatisfied in 2006 and 2008, so they elected Democrats to fix the things that were making them dissatisfied. Nothing has yet been fixed (even, for instance, if Obamacare will do the trick — which I doubt — it hasn’t accomplished anything yet), so they’re still dissatisfied, so they’re taking their custom to the other shop.

And that’s what happened.

Oh, by the way — the writer in TNR went on to explain his grand theory that it’s all about ideology in the subsequent paragraphs. I found them unpersuasive. At the very most, he quantifies an “ideological shift” of 11 percent — and I don’t think it’s ideological, I think it’s semantics. I think the word “conservative” feels more comfortable to more people this year. But even if he’s right, that’s an ideological shift of 11 percent. And 11 percent ain’t “America.”

Go read it and see what you think.

Worth revisiting: The flaw in tax credit argument

Yesterday I got this kind note from a schoolteacher:

Mr. Warthen,

For years I have quoted an article you wrote for the state newspaper entitled, “Put Parents in Charge isn’t a ‘voucher bill’ it’s something much worse” to my public speaking classes as they begin persuasive arguments and to my friends and family who insist that school choice is fair and responsible. I continually return to your argument that asks, are we a citizen or a consumer?

I searched The State archives today to find a way to link to your article on my FaceBook page. In my ever so humble peon public school teacher opinion, I have never encountered a better argument against vouchers. Public schools are the least discriminatory institution in America—we serve everyone—whether a parent has the money to choose or not, and we are part of the infrastructure of our country.

I hope that you understand…, [but]… I have photocopied your article since its publication in March of 2005. What is a public school teacher in Lexington County to do?? I have used it to make my students see one side of this issue that they may never have been able to see otherwise. With the election of Mick Zais, I am truly frightened that this issue is on the table again and more a reality than ever before. The article, as well as your very logical argument, needs to be resurrected and published again.

She’s got a point. Maybe this would be a good time to revisit some of the basic flaws in the arguments for tax credits (and, for that matter, vouchers). Not because Mick Zais was elected, but because Nikki Haley was. (Think about it: when was the last time you saw a state superintendent lead a significant political fight? The job is ministerial, not political, which is why it should not be elected.) Here’s the column she was looking for. It was published in The State on March 4, 2005:

Put Parents in Charge isn’t a ‘voucher bill’ — it’s something much worse

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

SOUTH CAROLINIANS for Responsible Government, the group advocating Gov. Mark Sanford’s tuition tax credit proposal, criticizes its opponents for repeatedly calling “Put Parents in Charge” a “voucher” proposal.

On this score, the group is absolutely right, and Mr. Sanford’s critics are dead wrong.

This is not a voucher bill. It’s nothing like a voucher bill. It’s something much worse.

It’s worse because of the hole it will blow in state revenues, to be sure. To pass what is essentially a tarted-up tax cut bill without considering its effect on all state services (not just education), would be inexcusable.

But the main way in which a tuition tax credit is worse than a voucher is that it promotes the insidiously false notion that taxes paid for public schools are some sort of user fee.

Whether you agree with me here depends upon your concept of your place in society: Do you see yourself as a consumer, or as a citizen?

If you look upon public schools narrowly as a consumer, and you send your kids to private schools or home-school them, then you might think, “Hey, why should I be paying money to this provider, when I’m buying the service from someone else?” If that’s your view, a tuition tax credit makes perfect sense to you. Why shouldn’t you get a refund?

But if you look at it as a citizen, it makes no sense at all. Public schools have never been about selling a commodity; they have always been about the greatest benefits and highest demands of citizenship.

A citizen understands that parents and their children are not the only “consumers” of public school services — not by a long shot. That individual children and families benefit from education is only one important part of the whole picture of what public schools do for society. The rest of us voters and taxpayers have a huge stake, too.

Public schools exist for the entire community — for people with kids in public schools and private schools, people whose kids are grown, people who’ve never had kids and those who never will. (Note that, by the logic of the tax credit advocates, those last three groups should get tax breaks, too. In fact, if only the one-third or so of households who have children in public schools at a given time paid taxes to support them, we wouldn’t be able to keep the schools open.)

Public schools exist to provide businesses with trained workers, and to attract industries that just won’t locate in a place without good public schools. They exist to give our property value. If you doubt the correlation between good public schools and property values, just ask a Realtor.

They exist to create an informed electorate — a critical ingredient to a successful representative democracy. (In fact, if I were inclined to argue that public schools have failed, I would point out just how many people we have walking around without a clear understanding of their responsibilities as citizens. But I don’t expect public education critics to use that one.)

Public schools exist to make sure we live in a decent society full of people able to live productive lives, instead of roaming the streets with no legitimate means of support. In terms of cost-effectiveness on this score, spending roughly $4,400 per pupil for public schools (the state’s actual share, not the inflated figure the bill’s advocates use, which includes local and federal funds) is quite a bargain set against the $13,000 it costs to keep one young person in prison. And South Carolina has the cheapest prisons in the nation.

Consider the taxes we pay to provide fire protection. It doesn’t matter if we never call the fire department personally. We still benefit (say, by having lower insurance rates) because the fire department exists. More importantly, our neighbors who do have an immediate need for the fire department — as many do each day — depend upon its being there, and being fully funded.

All of us have the obligation to pay the taxes that support public schools, just as we do for roads and law enforcement and the other more essential services that government provides. And remember, those of you who think of “government” as some wicked entity that has nothing to do with you: Government provides only those things that we, acting through our elected representatives, decide it should provide. You might disagree with some of those decisions, but you know, you’re not always going to be in the majority in a democracy.

If, as a consumer, you wish to pay for an alternative form of education for your child, you are free to do that. But that decision does not relieve you of the responsibility as a citizen to support the basic infrastructure of the society in which you live.

Radical libertarians — people who see themselves primarily as consumers, who want to know exactly what they are personally, directly receiving for each dollar that leaves their hands — don’t understand the role of government in society because they simply don’t understand how human beings are interconnected. I’m not just saying that we should be interconnected; I’m saying that we are, whether we like it or not. And if we want society to work so that we have a decent place in which to dwell, we have to adopt policies that recognize that stark fact.

That’s why we have public schools. And that’s why we all are obliged to support them.

A graphic blast or two from the past

Something that Phillip said with regard to his candidates having been shut out Tuesday…

Oh well, life as a liberal in the south. Well, to modify the bumper sticker popular in the mid 2000’s…”H: Still the President.”

… reminded me of a fun little piece of art I created for my old blog, way back when. Remember this?

OK, so maybe you preferred to forget. Sorry.

Oh, and for you Democrats who prefer a different look on your car windows, there was this as well:

This reminds me… I really need to get some merchandising going — sometime after I get around to selling some ads.

Comment on election results HERE…

… and I will do my best to keep up with them and approve them in something close to real time.

Remember, I’ll be on WIS from 7 to 8 tonight, and then again from 11 to midnight, if my voice holds out (I seem to have come down with an untimely cold).

So watch me, watch the returns, comment here, and I’ll try to keep up. I’m not sure what the accommodation will be at WIS for my laptop, but I’ll try to figure out something…

I would discuss this, but I don’t have time

The Juan Williams mess led to a long and provocative thread about normal fears and irrational prejudices, and what we should feel free to express about certain situations in modern life without getting fired for it.

And at some point, I posted the following in that thread, and it was so long I decided to make it into a separate post, even though, once I post it, I really need to move on to other stuff… Anyway, what I said was”

You know, there’s a whole conversation I’d be interested to have here about the way a healthy human brain works that takes this out of the realm of political correctness-vs.-Angry White Males, which is about as deep as we usually go.

But in the last week of an election, when I’m having trouble blogging at all, much less keeping up with all the election-related things I need to be writing about… I don’t have time to set out all my thoughts on the subject.

But to sort of give a hint…

What I’m thinking is this: There are certain things that we decry today, in the name of being a pluralistic society under the rule of law, that are really just commonsense survival strategies, things programmed into us by eons of evolution.

For instance, we sneer at people for being uneasy in certain situations — say, among a group of young males of a different culture or subculture. And we are right to sneer, to a certain extent, because we are enlightened modern people.

But, if our ancestors weren’t uneasy and ready to fight or flee in such a situation, they wouldn’t have lived to reproduce, and we wouldn’t be here. Thousands of years ago, people who felt all warm and fuzzy and wanted to celebrate multiculturalism when in the company of a bunch of guys from the rival tribe got eaten for dinner, and as a result, those people are NOT our ancestors. We inherited our genes from the edgy, suspicious, cranky people — the racists and nativists of their day.

Take that to the next level, and we recognize that such tendencies are atavistic, and that it’s actually advantageous in our modern market economy governed by liberal democracies to be at ease with folks from the other “tribes.” In fact, the more you can work constructively with people who are different, the more successful you will be at trade, etc.

So quite rightly we sneer at those who haven’t made the socio-evolutionary adjustment. They are not going to get the best mates, etc., because chicks don’t dig a guy who’s always itching for a fight. So they’re on the way out, right?

However… the world hasn’t entirely changed as much as we think it has. There are still certain dangers, and the key is to have the right senses to know when you need to be all cool and open and relaxed, and when you need to be suspicious as hell, and ready to take evasive or combative action.

This requires an even higher state of sophistication. Someone who is always suspicious of people who are different is one kind of fool. Someone who is NEVER suspicious of people who are different (and I’m thinking more of people with radically different world views — not Democrats vs. Republicans, but REALLY different — more than I am people wearing funny robes) is another kind of fool.

The key, ultimately, is not to be any kind of fool. The key is to be a thoughtful, flexible survivor who gets along great with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in the airport queue or the Spanish-speakers in the cereals aisle at Walmart, but who is ready to spring into action to deal with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in seat 13A who’s doing something weird with the smoking sole of his shoe (or the Aryan guy doing the same, but my point is that you don’t give the Arab pass in such a situation just to prove how broad-minded you are), or the Spanish-speaking guy wielding an AK-47 over a drug deal…

This may seem common sense, but there are areas in which we will see conflicts between sound common sense and our notions of rigid fairness in a liberal democracy. For instance, I submit that an intelligent person who deals with the world as it is will engage in a certain amount of profiling. I mean, what is profiling, anyway, but a gestalten summation of what you’ve learned about the world in your life, applied to present and future situations? The ability to generalize, and act upon generalizations — without overdoing it — are key life skills.

There are certain traits that put you on guard and make you particularly vigilant under particular circumstances, or you are a fool. If you’re in an airport and you see a group of 20-something Mediterranean-looking males (and young males from ANY culture always bear more watching than anyone else — sorry, guys, but y’all have a long rap sheet) unaccompanied by women or children or old men, and they’re muttering and fidgeting with something in their bags… you’re not very bright if you don’t think, “This bears watching.”

Now of course, knowing this, if I’m a terrorist organization, I’m going to break up that pattern as much as I can. (I’ll have them travel separately, wear western clothes, coach them not to seem furtive, etc. I’ll recruit middle-aged women if I can, although they generally have far too much sense.) So if you’re watching this scene, and you are intelligent, you’re bound to think, “These guys look SO suspicious that they must be innocent, because terrorists aren’t that stupid…” Well, yeah, they can be. Let me submit the evidence of the guy who set his underpants on fire… So there’s such a thing as overthinking the situation. I mean, how bright is a guy who wants to blow himself up to make a point? People who do that ALSO don’t reproduce, so evolution militates against it…

Anyway, I’d go on and on about this, and examine all the implications, and endeavor to challenge the assumptions of people of all political persuasions… but I don’t have time this week.

Sheheen’s restructuring plan

Speaking of Doug Ross — back on a previous post, Doug complains again, and with considerable justice, that Vincent Sheheen is light on details about his advocacy for government reform. Well, he isn’t if you ASK him, but he doesn’t OFFER such explication — probably because he thinks everybody but Brad Warthen is bored by such stuff.

Well, here’s a little something to fill in the gaps (in addition to what I got him to say on “The Brad Show” last week). First, here’s a blog post I wrote at the time he came to pitch his plan to us at The State — long before he started to run for governor.

And here’s his bill on the subject.

In case you have trouble with the link (from my blog post) to his op-ed on the subject (it’s a Word file), here’s what he wrote at the time:

REVAMPING TWO BRANCHES OF OUR GOVERNMENT
Vincent Sheheen
Guest Columnist

For more than a decade, our great state has engaged in a repetitive argument over which branch of government should have more power, the legislative branch or the executive branch. This contentious argument about the balance of power misses the point and too often degenerates into fruitless bickering. The real point is that neither branch effectively fulfills its role in controlling and overseeing government operations and programs. We are trying to run a modern, sovereign government with essentially the same antiquated tools used for more than 100 years.

Our state’s government operation is like a multi-headed hydra, each head having a mind of its own, with little cooperation and no central guiding spirit. Our agencies often pursue their own agendas, operating in separate chimneys with little independent, organized oversight and no outside, regular evaluation of operations, programs or policies.

It is time to fundamentally change and modernize our government’s form, structure and mode of operation to create accountability within both the executive and legislative branches. During the next session of the General Assembly, I will propose the Government Accountability Act of 2008. If enacted, this legislation will transform the General Assembly’s operations, by requiring real oversight of government agencies. It will streamline our executive branch and increase accountability in government operations.

First, the bill requires the Legislature to fulfill its duties as an independent and effective branch of government with an obligation to continually evaluate and examine the operations of state programs and agencies. As currently structured, our Legislature simply passes laws and fails to perform almost any regular oversight of the effectiveness of state government or programs. My proposal provides a framework for the Legislature to fulfill these responsibilities.

The bill will force our General Assembly to move into the modern age by conducting regular oversight hearings on the operations of state government through adaptation of its current committee structure. Each committee will be required to systematically examine the operations of state government that fall within its jurisdictional boundaries, evaluating the real need for existing programs and determining what the future requires. Only then will the General Assembly truly be able to make informed decisions about the needs of our state.

Additionally, the Government Accountability Act will require the General Assembly to change our current budget practices. Right now, our annual appropriations bill is little more than an accounting document, listing out agencies and amounts of money allocated to them. Under my proposal, the Legislature will have to utilize a programmatic budget, requiring that each program have objective performance criteria for legislators to consider as we decide how much money is deserved for a specific program.

The bill will create a more efficient and functional executive branch by reducing the number of statewide elected officials, consolidating offices and devolving more power to the governor’s office. Importantly, the proposal will shift all truly administrative functions away from the Budget and Control Board and vest them in the governor. By making more agencies directly answerable to the governor and consolidating administrative functions, we provide the governor with more authority to fulfill his role as chief executive of the state. With increased authority will come increased responsibility and accountability for our governor to produce results.

To bring even further accountability to government operations, the bill will create an office of inspector general and strengthen protections for civic-minded state employees who report waste and misconduct. The office of inspector general will be charged with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the operations of state government. It is time that South Carolina has an officer whose single-minded purpose is investigating and evaluating such problems.

My bill will also strengthen our currently weak whistleblower law to encourage state employees to blow the whistle on misconduct, inappropriate practices or waste that hinders the proper functioning of our state government.

Empowering our government is not a zero-sum game. No one has to lose. In fact, the proposed Government Accountability Act makes all of South Carolina the winner. We must increase the efficacy of our government by changing the traditional role of the General Assembly to require continuous evaluation of government operations and programs. We must reform our budget process, restructure the executive branch to place more responsibility on the governor and create an inspector general to investigate and prosecute government misconduct.

Increasing power and accountability in one branch without addressing the deficiencies in the other will result in disappointment. The time for change is now; we cannot afford to wait.

Mr. Sheheen is a Camden attorney who represents Chesterfield, Kershaw and Lancaster counties in the state Senate.

If Vincent can get elected governor, he will have enormous leverage to get this passed. Which is one reason that a wonk like me is excited about his candidacy.

Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty

Like a captain desperately busy clawing his ship away from th’ impervious horrors of a lee shore, I am busy today.

Later, I’ll try to post about last night’s debate.

In the meantime, I share this fun ditty that Doug Ross shared with me. It’s a graphic representation of this recent post, I think. Bet you didn’t know I was so artistic, huh?

And no, I can’t run it bigger here without it getting all blurry. You just have to click on it to see it full-size.

About the George Will thing…

Another editor who left The State about when I did cited the second of those two pictures I posted of myself with Vincent Sheheen, and asked:

Brad —
Anybody mistaken you for George Will lately? You could pick up some nice money on the lecture circuit …

To which I replied yeah, I get that sometime. I first heard it at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta in 1988, from one of the delegates. Coming from a Democratic delegate, of course, it wasn’t entirely a compliment.

But no, we were not separated at birth. Nor do I think I look much like him. I mean, you ever see George Will smile? Come on.

I did have lunch with him one time at the Capital City Club, but one could say that about a lot of people.

This reminds me — two of my daughters say they’ve seen a guy at Yesterday’s who looks so much like me that people have gone up to him thinking he IS me. But he isn’t. I sort of want to see this guy, but I sorta don’t. Ever meet someone that everybody thinks looks like you? It’s generally a huge letdown to learn what people, even your loved ones, think you look like.

Anyway, one of my daughters saw the guy at the Italian Festival and pointed him out to my wife, and my wife said he didn’t look like me at all. Which is a relief…

Do YOU fear Sarah Palin?

I was on Keven Cohen’s radio show again yesterday. Sorry I forgot to tell y’all in advance (or did I? I can’t remember; maybe I said something on Twitter…). But the phone lines lit up anyway, and we had a nice, lively discussion. He wants me on the show again before the election; I’ll try to give y’all a heads-up before then.

When I got back to the office, I got this from someone who DID listen in:

Dear Mr. Warthen:

I listened to you on Keven Cohen’s program on WVOC this afternoon and I was just wondering why an endorsement by Sarah Palin to Nikki Haley would embarrass you? Of course, you once said on Kev’s program that you despised Ronald Reagan so, that comment shouldn’t surprise me.

Do you fear Governor Palin because she has more of a spine than you and your other liberals do? Are you jealous of her success? Please don’t tell me that she is a “numbskull” compared to the current occupant of the Oval Office in the White House. She is “head and shoulders” smarter than that community organizer!

Anyway, comments like that are why you are no longer employed by South Carolina’s largest newspaper. One day, THE STATE will complete the trifecta and get rid of Cindi and Warren and replace them with people who don’t toe the Democratic Party line and print their talking points.

Sincerely,

Robert Owens

Lexington

Do you see why I tend to give trolls a lot of rope here on the blog before I give in to community opinion and ban them? I’ve gotten stuff like this my whole career. Par for the course. And unfortunately, being a never-say-die guy, I actually try to reason with them, to wit:

“Fear?” It never occurred to me to FEAR her. I just would be embarrassed to be endorsed by her. That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant.

I think it’s a very great shame that my main man John McCain elevated her to prime time, for which she was most demonstrably not ready. If you’d like to read an elaboration on that point, you should check out my blog post the other day about what one of her former handlers had to say…

My effort to reach across the divide was rewarded thusly:

Well, I think that you do fear her. As far as John McCain goes, as a 20+ year USAF veteran, I respect his military service and what he went through as a prisoner of war; he is an abject failure as a politician. He and Lindsey Graham were totally against a border fence between the US and Mexico a few years ago. When The Maverick figured that he might have a tough time winning the Arizona GOP earlier this year he was all for the fence. I about puked when I saw the commercial of him walking with an Arizona sheriff and he was telling McCain about the problems they were having with illegal immigration and then Big John looking at the camera and saying, “Build the dang fence!” What a damn hypocrite! I held my nose and voted for him in November 2008 because I knew what a disaster the community organizer would be. It would have been so much better if the ticket had been Palin/McCain instead of the other way around though.

Of course, some of these former handlers are going to say stuff about her because she had some ideas to save the campaign and they had no gonads and let the Dems take the election!

You can have McCain, he is a disaster! I hope that the next time that he reaches across the aisle to help the Democrats that he locks arms with Graham, Snowe, and Collins and takes them with him. Also, do you really think that Obama is ready for prime time? What an idiot and our country is paying the price for it. He is still blaming Bush yet when he was running he was The One with all of the answers.

Anyway, here is you to getting a spine someday!

RLO

Lexington, SC

It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to connect with a fan…

A thought-provoking note from SC Citizens for Life

Still catching up with my e-mail…

I got this message from Holly Gatling in response to this post:

Dear Brad,

Do you have a marriage license? A piece of paper you were willing to sign your name to as a statement of commitment?

That’s the difference between Sheheen and Haley. Haley put her name on a statement of the agenda of South Carolina Citizens for Life and Sheheen declined. How sad.

And why is there such hatred across this land for conservative, pro-life, Republican women? The misogyny is grossly apparent. Conservative, pro-life women are the greatest threat in politics today to the abortion industry, the greatest destroyer of human life on the planet.

We’re in this economic crisis because 50 million members of the human family have been wiped out by abortion. That’s 50 million members of a tax-paying workforce and ALL their progeny.

I urge and encourage you to THINK with the body part men and women share equally — the brain.

Committed candidate v. undecided. The choice is clear.

Your friend,

Holly Gatling, Executive Director
South Carolina Citizens for Life

I appreciate my friend Holly — we worked together at the paper years ago — taking the time to respond. Here are some thoughts that her note generates for me:

Regarding the marriage license analogy: It makes the very good point that Vincent does not want to be married to S.C. Citizens for Life — a fact that has nothing to do with his own convictions as a Catholic. Vincent wants to work with everybody — Republicans, pro-choice Democrats, Zoroastrians should any show up at the State House — on issues having nothing to do with abortion. So why should he want to draw a bright line that says I’m one of these good people over here, and you’re one of those bad people over there? Which is the purpose of such endorsements, from the perspective of a Nikki Haley. Nikki wants to make sure everyone knows she’s on THIS side and therefore against THOSE people. And as long as she accomplishes that, she’s happy. As someone who presided for years over an editorial board that was sharply divided on abortion, I never tried to force us to take a position on it, for two reasons: It did not bear upon the issues that were important to moving South Carolina forward (which is what we were about), and it would have been foolish to create ill will on the board that would have spilled over into areas where, if we could achieve consensus, we might be able to make a difference. I wrote a column on the subject once. So I understand Vincent’s position, even if Holly doesn’t.
Who has “hatred” toward “conservative, pro-life, Republican women?” Certainly not I, and I would challenge anyone to demonstrate the opposite. And if they go looking for such women whom I “hate,” they’ll definitely have to look for someone other than Nikki Haley. Yeah, I’ve been pretty appalled at some of the things I’ve learned about her the last few months, but my one big beef is that she’d be disastrous for South Carolina as governor. That could be said about a lot of women — and men — against who I hold no malice. I really don’t know where that statement in the note comes from.
Finally, THINK is exactly what I’m urging people to do in this election. That, in fact, was all I was saying back before the primary in this post (“Don’t vote with your emotions, people. THINK!,” June 6), which some thought was way harsh on Nikki. But all I was saying was, THINK before you vote. Don’t base your vote on such emotional nonsense as being excited that she’s an Indian-American woman (or that she’s a “conservative, pro-life, Republican woman”), any more than you should be excited that Vincent is the first Catholic, and the first Lebanese-American, to win a major-party nomination for governor in this state. Still less should you vote because of the ENTIRELY irrelevant fact that you don’t like Barack Obama, which has absolutely zero to do with who should govern this state. THINK. Please, it’s all I want.

Mind you, in the past I have praised SC Citizens for Life for THINKing rather than going with the emotional flow, such as in this column on Feb. 7, 1996:

The endorsement of Jean Toal by S.C. Citizens for Life last week constituted one of those little epiphanies that have the potential to enlighten public life, if only we would pay attention.

In this case, the lesson to be learned was this:

The terms “liberal” and “conservative,” as they are popularly used today, serve virtually no useful purpose. They help not at all in the increasingly onerous task of meeting the challenges that face us in the political sphere. In fact, they often get in the way.

The Toal endorsement, while making perfect sense to the objective observer, momentarily demolished the world view of self-described “liberals” and “conservatives” as surely as Galileo messed with the heads of the geocentric crowd. “Conservatives” lost their cozy view of there being two kinds of people — Christians and “liberals.” Meanwhile, “liberals” couldn’t quite bring themselves to celebrate the endorsement because having common cause with those “conservative” right-to-lifers makes them queasy.

It’s nice to see nonsense knocked on its rear end.

My purpose at the time was to contrast the good sense demonstrated by Holly’s organization, as opposed to the mindlessness of her frequent allies among “conservative” Republicans who wanted to boot Justice Toal for the sin of being a Democrat (and therefore, in their small minds, a “liberal,” a word they use with all the thoughtfulness, subtlety and understanding of the mob crying “Witch!” in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”).

My point then, as now: THINK.

Tomorrow is the Walk for Life!

Those of you who are joining me, I’ll see you at the appointed place and time.

This post is to thank my team members, who among them have raised $892 for the cause!

Doug Ross
Kathryn Fenner
David Knobeloch
Pat Dixon
Nick Nielsen
Buddy Johnson
Mark Stewart

And especially Doug Ross, who came up with $410 of that on his own! Yep, Doug gives me a hard time here on the blog now and then, but he just earned the right to continue to be contrarian. He’s definitely a made man on this blog.

As are all of my teammates…

Correction (sorta): I was wrong, but I was also right

Last night, Cindi Scoppe, who as long as I’ve known her has NEVER looked at e-mail or the Web on weekends*, shocked me by writing to make an observation on one of my blog posts.

She was writing to set me straight on Act 388, which I mentioned on the penny sales tax post. She said she wasn’t sure that it WAS 388; she thought it might me 488. And she said that it only raised the sales tax one cent, not two.

I wrote back that I was sure that I was right on the name of it, but was going by memory on the two cents; and was she sure?

I had the enormous satisfaction of knowing I was at least half right. It IS 388. But with her extensive files at hand, she was able to say I was dead wrong on the two cents.

So I was wrong. Sorry about that. I’m going to go fix it now…

* This is not to say she doesn’t work all weekend; she does. She takes home long, boring documents to read, the kind of documents that I would rather suffer several pokes in the eye with a sharp stick than read on a weekend.

About God, sex, women, Darwin, fundamental rights and other really deep stuff I just don’t understand

Sometimes I spend enough time typing a comment that if feels like it should be a separate post. So it is with my reply to Bud, on the whole “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” controversy. I had hesitated to put the subject on my Virtual Front yesterday (and sorry there’s not one today; I’ve just gotten tied up late in the day) because I just don’t like these interminable Kulturkampf issues, mainly because few of the pat answers that other people find satisfactory work for me. But it was the biggest story of the day, and that’s that.

So we went around and around on the subject, and finally Bud did something that people occasionally get fed up with me and do — asked me to explain whether I was serious or just being argumentative:

Brad, do you want to retain DADT or are you just being a bit contrarian? There are really 3 issues here:

1. Readiness. The evidence from militaires around the world suggest readiness is unaffected by allowing openly gay men and women into the military. Plus, we are losing highly qualified individuals on account of the current policy. Seems like the readiness issue favors repeal. The old soldiers who resist do so because of tradition. Sometimes traditions need changing.

2. Rights as a citizen. Even though Brad won’t acknowledge this I find it critically important that we allow all citizens to participate in the defense of our country. It’s appalling to me that this aspect can be so cavalierly dismissed.

3. Politics. This concerns Obama. Politically I believe he would enhance his standing with the American people by getting rid of the policy via Executive order. Sure it would be best to do so with the consent of congress but given that a majority in congress just voted for repeal I don’t see how it would be bad politically to support majority rule.

So I answered him as follows…

Bud, I’m inclined to keep DADT, but it’s not a hugely important thing to me. And yeah, I’m being contrarian, because the way we speak about a lot of issues, in flat ways that lead to the polarization of our politics, bugs me.

I push back against libertarians who see a new “right” everywhere they turn because I think it’s an excessive, extreme way of framing an argument. In this country, once you say something is a “right,” you are trying to shut down discussion of other considerations. And the other considerations should be discussed.

For instance, y’all know that I’m for single-payer. But not because I consider health care to be a “right.” I think it’s a rational way to order society. I think it would eliminate a problem — a lot of problems, actually — and that it is a positive good to see that people get good health care if you can figure out how to provide it. I also think it would liberate our economy if people could work at their passions instead of clinging to bad-fit jobs (or merely safe, comfortable jobs) for the benefits.

It simply makes sense to eliminate all the for-profit intermediaries that stand between us and our doctors. It’s not about “rights;” it’s about what makes sense if we want our country to be a good place to live.

Ditto with DADT. If, as Kathryn says, “the brass wants to get rid of DADT,” cool. If they really want to, and it’s not just what one or two generals say when when they’re testifying before Congress with the Secretary of Defense sitting next to them — a situation in which, to use a Tom Wolfe phrase from The Right Stuff, a wise career officer keeps a salute stapled to his forehead.

I don’t know. But it’s not a simple, slam-dunk issue. Nothing about sexuality and how society deals with it is.

For instance, some of my friends here like to believe that embracing the latest right invented by an interest group is a sign of unalloyed progress, a reflection of inevitable movement in a single direction by a species that is consistently evolving toward being better and better all the time.

Uh-uh. It’s not that simple.

Frankly after 56 years of being straight (like a Woody Allen character once confided, I don’t think I HAD a latency period), heterosexuality is still a big mystery to me. I’m astounded by the mechanisms that cause us to have such urges.

Back when I was a kid, quite frankly, I didn’t really believe homosexuality existed. It just seemed so unlikely, so unimaginable. Some guys wanna do WHAT? No way. I thought it was a made-up thing that existed only as an insult for young people already confused and insecure about sexuality to fling at each other. Like “your mother wears Army boots” — you’re not literally making an observation about the other person’s mother’s footwear. Or “Go f___ yourself” — you don’t expect it to actually happen.

But as I grew older and had gay friends, and they communicated in various ways that THEY weren’t kidding; this was for real, I thought about it and realized that HETEROsexuality, as a fundamental force in our characters, seems equally unlikely. I mean, why would I be so attracted to women and their bodies even when I was too young to know anything about what that was all about? How could I want to do something I had never heard of, or thought of?

Actually, I know the answer to WHY — it’s essential to reproduction, whether you think in terms of God’s commandment to go forth and multiply or an evolutionary imperative or both. Organisms with this urge had offspring; those without it did not.

What mystifies me is HOW that works, and all the complexities involved.

Show me a naked woman, and you boggle my mind (and not just for physiological reasons). I behold eternity, and the immediacy of the moment, promised pleasures, guilt, excitement, freedom, responsibility, the irresistible continuum of Life, God and man and Satan and Darwin, Eve, Wisdom and ultimate foolishness, something that is very adult and yet all about little babies. And on and on. It is the very ESSENCE of complexity, and simplicity at the same time.

That is more than enough to puzzle me for the rest of my life; I’m certainly not going to presume to tell you what homosexuality is, because I don’t get that at ALL.

And don’t tell me that society’s ways of dealing with sexuality are simple, that they’re all this way or all that way.

I know better.

GOP (and Dems, don’t forget) hurtling toward madness

Back on a previous post, Bud writes:

… (S)omehow Brad manages time and time again to confuse the idiot GOP with political parties in general. It really is pretty disgusting to have the Dems, who are at least attempting to address the nation’s problems in a meaninful way, with the imbecils who continue to distort, lie and weasel their way to power.

And what do they use this power for? For the good of the American people? Hell no. The bastards are merely trying to rule in order to feather their own nests. The GOP is about wealth creation for the super rich. And it’s worked. The poor and middle class have gotten nowhere for 30 years while the elitists in the GOP fool and fear their way into making the gullible believe there is a boogeyman behind every rock. And, inexplicably, they fool some poor school bus driver into thinking it’s in his best interests to give a billionare’s son his parent’s fortune TAX FREE! Unbeleivable.

But until the press gets it and starts calling the GOP out for the liars and scoundrels that they are we will continue to read about GOP idiocy in the name of political party partisanship. It’s NOT political party partisanship, it’s GOP fear mongering.

Bud, um… I’m pretty sure, without actually setting out the mathematical proof, that the set “political parties in general” DOES include the Republican Party. I’m not confused on this point. In fact, pretty much anyone who compiled a credible list of “Political Parties in the U.S.” would almost certainly list the GOP among the first two. I’m very confident in this assessment.

That’s why it’s such a problem that the GOP seems to have lost its frickin’ mind since Nov. 2008. Sensible Republicans are sort of walking around in shock as the screaming meemies take over.

Any other election, and Sarah Palin would have been relegated to the ranks of “unpersons” on the day after the last election, her name never, ever to been mentioned by any Republican who ever wanted another Republican to speak to him again. Instead, she is THE most mentioned Republican nationally, and it is widely accepted — among Republicans, and others — that her endorsement can make or break candidates running in races that have nothing to do with her. Yes, I’m speaking of the woman who as governor of Alaska repeatedly embarrassed the GOP ticket by how little she had learned from the experiences in her life about world affairs, and who since then has only added to her resume by… well, resigning as governor of Alaska. This is now the party’s queenmaker.

Any other election, and every Republican who ran against Nikki Haley for governor would have meekly lined up behind her on the day after the primary in a show of solidarity, all acting as though she was the one they really wanted to unite behind in the fall all along. This election, the GOP gubernatorial field is nowhere to be seen, with the exception of Henry “Good Soldier” McMaster, who’s doing his best to back her in spite of the vacant, confused look on his face. (He just doesn’t know what hit him, and is sufficiently dazed that he thinks this election is like other elections, and is acting accordingly.)

You may notice that the two examples I just cited describe OPPOSITE phenomena: One describes how the GOP is gravitating TOWARD its loonier, least credible fringes, while the other indicates how they’re moving AWAY from candidates they don’t trust, candidates who are trying to ride the Tea Party’s unfocused resentments right past the GOP into office.

Well, that’s just how crazy things are in the GOP these days. They’re about to win big nationally in November, and yet they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. That is to say, the sensible Republicans, the traditional core of the party, doesn’t know what’s happening. The Jim DeMints of the party know exactly where they’re trying to take the nation, and they keep confidently explaining it to us, but unfortunately what they say makes little sense.

Now you, Bud, may take solace in thinking that there’s a place for sensible people to run to amid the madness — the Democratic Party. I know no such solace, because I know better.

As Bart pointed out this week:

POINT: According to a recent Newsweek poll, “Some people have alleged that Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world. From what you know about Obama, what is your opinion of these allegations?”……52% of Republicans polled think that statement is either “certainly true” or “probably true.”

COUNTERPOINT: According to a Rasmussen poll taken in May 2007, …”Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.”

In other words, BOTH parties are rapidly rushing toward their crazier extremes. People who identify themselves as “Democrats” or “Republicans” have surrendered their abilities to think to their respective sides to such an extent that they no longer stop to ask, “Does this make sense?” If someone who identifies himself as one of THEIRS says it, there must be something to it. And if someone on the other side denies it, well then it MUST be true.

And the members of BOTH factions are being pulled, with increasing acceleration, toward those loony poles as though they were in the grips of the gravitational fields of black holes at opposite ends of the universe. (Yes, I know the universe doesn’t have “ends,” but THEY obviously think it does. Besides, it’s a metaphor. Sheesh.)

The only hope for the country lies, of course, with the UnParty. But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Don’t say I never gave you anything, Doug

Since Doug was such a great sport giving to the critters back here, I’m including this extreme case of gummint waste for his enjoyment:

(CNN) — A worker was paid for 12 years without ever showing up for work at a Norfolk, Virginia, agency funded by federal, state and local money, officials say.

Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim told CNN on Friday that when a new director took over at Norfolk Community Services Board recently, she was “doing her due diligence” when she discovered the hooky-playing employee was on the books. The director, Maureen Womack, then notified the city attorney’s office, Fraim said.

Sandy Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Community Services Board, told CNN Friday that her agency couldn’t comment because of the ongoing investigation.

On behalf of the city attorney’s office, Norfolk city spokeswoman Terry Bishirjian referred to a statement released on Wednesday that said, “The city attorney’s office, with the approval of Womack, took appropriate steps to prevent any further payments to the employee and the employee was terminated.”

They fired her now, huh? I’ll bet that’s a bitter pill for her — if she can stop laughing long enough.

Mistaking feeling for thinking in American politics

I enjoyed reading an op-ed piece in the WSJ this morning headlined “A Muslim Reformer on the Mosque,” with the subhed, “The warriors for tolerance and the antimosque crusaders are both wrong.”

Some bits I particularly liked… this:

Election-year politics, ratings-hungry media and deep personal fear foment raw emotion. In such an environment, “I’m offended” takes on the stature of a substantive argument. Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

And this:

As a proud New Yorker as well as a reformist Muslim, I think, and not just feel, that this would be a fitting salute to the victims of 9/11. It would turn the tables on the freedom-hating culture of al Qaeda. And it would subvert the liberty-lashing culture of offense.

Perhaps you’re noting there’s a certain theme in what I like. Of course, I kind of helped you out by boldfacing the important points.

That first one should be made into a bumper sticker:

Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

Maybe we should streamline it:

Don’t just feel. THINK.

It can be truly said of so very many things. Sure, I can speak from the gut when I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I did it back here. But I was aware that I was doing it. I told you I was doing it. Am I always that self-aware and candid about it? No. We are infallible. I mean, fallible.

But I try to lobby for thinking whenever it occurs to me to do so. That’s what I was doing back here. A few threads back, I was accused by Kathryn of making like a Vulcan. To which I could only respond, “Captain, Kathryn is being illogical.”

Yeah, we need some passion in public life. But we could use a LOT more Spock.

We got a fever in American politics, and the only prescription is more Spock.

bradwarthen.com

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