Category Archives: In case you wondered

Occupy Columbia got press releases!

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Not sure whether this represents a significant stage of evolution, but now I’m getting press releases from “Occupy Columbia:”

Occupy Charleston to Join Occupy Columbia at the State House

Sunday, October 23rd at 6:00pm

Last night, Occupy Columbia sent a small team to travel the state and connect with the other Occupy groups. We have just been informed by these emissaries that Occupy Charleston voted this morning to join us at the State House, beginning Sunday at 6:00pm. Here is a picture of their vote:
With Solidarity,

– Will with Occupy Columbia, a member of the 99%

The end (almost) of violence

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In my previous post, I referred to the “peaceful times” in which we live. That’s counterintuitive for many people, for two reasons: First, modern communications make them aware of far more, and more widely spread, instances of violence than they would have known of in previous eras. And second, those things grab our attention — indeed, they are reported in the first place — because they stand out as exceptions to the peaceful rule.

There’s a very good piece in The Wall Street Journal today (there are always so many wonderful pieces in that paper on Saturdays — the only day I take now, after my subscription price more than doubled) taking the long view, and explaining why “we may be living in the most peaceable era in human existence.” None of what it says is surprising or new — except perhaps for the statistics — but it’s nice when someone takes a moment and pulls it all together.

In “Violence Vanquished,” Steven Pinker describes six major declines in violence through human history. The first is one that our friends who believe that government is the worst plague ever visited upon mankind should contemplate:

The first was a process of pacification: the transition from the anarchy of the hunting, gathering and horticultural societies in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history to the first agricultural civilizations, with cities and governments, starting about 5,000 years ago.

For centuries, social theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau speculated from their armchairs about what life was like in a “state of nature.” Nowadays we can do better. Forensic archeology—a kind of “CSI: Paleolithic”—can estimate rates of violence from the proportion of skeletons in ancient sites with bashed-in skulls, decapitations or arrowheads embedded in bones. And ethnographers can tally the causes of death in tribal peoples that have recently lived outside of state control.

These investigations show that, on average, about 15% of people in prestate eras died violently, compared to about 3% of the citizens of the earliest states. Tribal violence commonly subsides when a state or empire imposes control over a territory, leading to the various “paxes” (Romana, Islamica, Brittanica and so on) that are familiar to readers of history…

Since those days, violent death has shrunk to less than 1 percent, even if you factor in war-caused disease and famine. Oh, and we’re not just talking about good or benevolent government. Even the plunder economy of the Romans had its positive effect:

It’s not that the first kings had a benevolent interest in the welfare of their citizens. Just as a farmer tries to prevent his livestock from killing one another, so a ruler will try to keep his subjects from cycles of raiding and feuding. From his point of view, such squabbling is a dead loss—forgone opportunities to extract taxes, tributes, soldiers and slaves…

And this is not just about pointing out how wrong the Tea Party is (although deeply wrong it certainly is). Some of our other friends on the left view commerce as though the taking of profit itself were inherently evil and destructive to mankind. Quite  the contrary; it is a civilizing force just as is a well-ordered government (which is why the haters of government and the socialists are both wrong):

Another pacifying force has been commerce, a game in which everybody can win. As technological progress allows the exchange of goods and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of trading partners, other people become more valuable alive than dead. They switch from being targets of demonization and dehumanization to potential partners in reciprocal altruism.

Finally, back to that matter of perception. If you wish to be simplistic, you can say it’s “the media’s fault,” for always telling you about the bad things rather than the good. If you ever spent, say, a month having to make decisions for a media outlet, you would realize how foolish that is. Even when times were flush, a newspaper’s or television station’s resources, and claim on your time, were finite. If you’re a town crier, your job is to tell people about the one house that’s on fire, so they can rise up and do something about it. You are useless if you instead say, “99.9 percent of the houses in the village are fine.”

That’s not to say I don’t decry the effect. In the grand scheme, media have had a devastating effect on society simply by playing their rightful role as government watchdogs. Over time, readers have come to the shockingly erroneous conclusion that government is nothing but crooks and waste, and the ability of government to be that civilizing force has been seriously weakened. As for violence — one of the most distressing developments of recent years in media is the rise of 24/7 TV news, which creates unlimited time that has to be filled. Consequently, violent crimes that would have been purely local stories 30 years ago are now thrown in the faces of the world constantly. There’s always something bad happening somewhere. This type of coverage creates the impression that it’s happening everywhere all the time.

If you can gain access to the full piece, it’s worth reading. So might be Mr. Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Did she move and change her name, or what?

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Somehow, on a previous post, we got onto a tangent about persistent Democratic claims that Al  Gore actually won the 2000 election, which he didn’t, as media recounts after the court case demonstrated.

Anyway, in trying to find that link above, I went to Wikipedia, and ran across the name of Katherine Harris, and suddenly pictured her in my mind, and thought, Hey, wait a minute…

I’ve been thinking since she emerged on the scene that Michele Bachmann looked familiar, like someone I hadn’t seen since…

And now the mystery is solved. For me, anyway.

What do you think?

Why’d y’all come to the blog so much last month? (Not that I’m complaining, mind…)

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I hadn’t looked at my blog stats for awhile, and then I saw to my surprise that I had 230,000 page views last month. And the last six months have averaged more than 200,000. (It’s been more than half a million “hits” a month, but I don’t put stock in those.)

That’s my second-highest ever, so I have to ask — what gives? There were no really hot news stories running then. No election, and the Legislature was out of town, and it was really, really hot.

Only thing I can guess is that this is the groundswell that occurs as we build toward a presidential primary. And it’s still building. If you look at the average daily “pages” up there, you’ll see that we’re on pace this month to exceed 240,000, without anything remarkable happening to break up the Dog Days. (The highest ever was over 250,000 in June 2010 — but that was because of the freakish confluence of the rise of Nikki Haley, and that of Alvin Greene.)

My peak on my old blog was January 2008, the month of both the highly-contested Republican and Democratic primaries here, which drew a good bit of national and international attention to the blog. The total was something between 80,000 and 90,000 (I don’t have the numbers in front of me.) A typical month in the year following that was more like 40,000 (which was still higher than in years before). So you see, my traffic has increased fivefold without the benefit of having my name in the paper every day. Go figure.

All I can say is, keep on reading…

Rorschach test: The new congressional districts

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Until this morning, I had not had a chance to look at the congressional districts as passed by the Legislature on Tuesday. All that hoo-hah over the new 7th District distracted the coverage from what I, and others who live in the Midlands, wanted to know: What do the 2nd and the 6th look like?

But The Post and Courier has obliged me, and I urge you to go there to see the graphic full-sized.

This was brought to my attention this morning by a friend who presented it as a political Rorschach test: Look at the images, and then state which of them you think is the more gerrymandered, the old or the new?

Not to prejudice your opinion, but to me it’s fairly obvious that the new is less gerrymandered. Certainly the 2nd — no more of that reaching-down-to-Beaufort nonsense. And the new 7th is nicely blocky — no spider legs there.

Of course, the 6th still looks ridiculous coming into Richland only to cut the heart out of it, leaving the rest to Joe Wilson.

And of course, there’s the beef for Democrats — the 6th has WAY more Black Voting Age Population than Jim Clyburn wants or needs. It is the dumping ground for black voters, so that the Republicans don’t have to deal with them in the other six districts.

But don’t look for Dick Harpootlian’s threatened lawsuit to materialize. Or if it does, don’t look for a court to give it the time of day. The Legislature passed this; there was no impasse. The Dems just lost the argument. Their interest in it is clearly partisan.

It is of course inherently racist to gather up as many black voters and stuff them into one district. But Republicans will point to Tim Scott and go their merry way.

The rambling monument

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By the way, if you were surprised when I told you back here that the Confederate monument has not always been in the most prominent location in Columbia, you might be interested to read this excerpt from a column I wrote for July 2, 2000 — the day after the flag moved from the dome to the monument:

Well, here’s a fun fact to know and tell: The state’s official monument to Confederate soldiers was not always in that location. In fact, that isn’t even the original monument.

I had heard this in the past but just read some confirmation of it this past week, in a column written in 1971 by a former State editor. When I called Charles Wickenberg, who is now retired, to ask where he got his facts, he wasn’t sure after all these years. But the folks at the S.C. Department of Archives and History were able to confirm the story for me. It goes like this:

The original monument , in fact, wasn’t even on the State House grounds. It was initially erected on Arsenal Hill, but a problem developed – it was sitting on quicksand. So it was moved to the top of a hill at the entrance of Elmwood cemetery.

The monument finally made it to the State House grounds in 1879. But it didn’t go where it is now. It was placed instead “near the eastern end of the building, about 60 feet from the front wall and 100 feet from the present site,” Mr. Wickenberg wrote.

But another problem developed: The monument kept getting struck by lightning. “The last stroke” hit on June 22, 1882, and demolished the stone figure.

At this point, if I were one of the folks in charge of this monument , I might have started to wonder about the whole enterprise. But folks back then were made of sterner stuff, and they soldiered on, so to speak.

At this point a new base was obtained, with stirring words inscribed upon it, and “a new statue, chiseled in Italy,” placed at the top. On May 9, 1884, the new monument was unveiled and dedicated in the same location in which we find it today.

Of course, my purpose in writing that was to suggest, The thing doesn’t have to stay there! There were, and are, plenty of other places for it — places that seemed quite suitable to the generation that actually experienced the War.

Now read THIS: Columbia makes the top 20

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Our new friends at Amazon — and I’ll have something to say about the compromise later (for starters, I think it’s good) — have checked to see which cities in the U.S. are the best-read.

And we made the top 20!

I must confess, I haven’t helped much lately. I mean, I do read at least a couple of papers a day, but as far as books are concerned, I’m mostly just been reading the same novels over and over, when I find the time for book-reading.

So congratulations to the rest of you, for making us look good.

Oh, and hey, Atlanta — not to mention Charleston or Greenville or Charlotte, which are nowhere to be seen — why don’t you pick up a book sometime? Sheesh!

Keep a clean nose; watch the plainclothes…

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Cindi Scoppe — who, to my memory, doesn’t cite popular song lyrics all that often herself — liked this NPR item and shared it with me, and I share it with y’all:

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

How many times can a judge cite a song to adorn some obscure point of law? And how many times can a lawyer cite songs for the client he’s arguing for? Yes, and what if the song is a Bob Dylan song? Could it be a hundred times or more? Well, the answer, my friend, was 186 times. The answer was 186 times.

That is how often Bob Dylan lyrics were quoted in court filings and scholarly legal publications according to a study in 2007 by University of Tennessee law professor Alex Long, who joins us now from Knoxville.

You should go check it out. Apparently, neither the Beatles nor Springsteen nor anyone else comes close to Dylan, in terms of the number of times cited in legal documents. Apparently, the California court of appeals says “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” so often “that it’s almost boilerplate.”

The Rolling Stones come in sixth. You can probably guess what that would be. Yep. Because it’s true, in the law as in life: You can’t always get what you want.

Tweets from GOP convention Saturday

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Y’all don’t seem terribly interested in this, since I didn’t get a single comment when I urged y’all to follow my Tweets from the GOP convention at the Columbia convention center Saturday. But I’m going to to ahead and give you all the Tweets here anyway. Because that WAS my report on the event. So there.

Somehow I’d like to figure out how to integrate Twitter more fully into the blog. I used to have a Twitter feeder on the right-hand side of my blog page, but it was always several hours behind, which sort of defeated the purpose. Ideally, I’d like to post things on Twitter, and have them appear here in a format in which y’all could easily react and start a discussion without having to wait for me to get to my laptop and create a blog post — which is tedious, and pretty boring. For me, anyway, posting the same thing twice.

The Twitter strategy was successful Saturday in that people WERE reacting in real time — but via Twitter, or Facebook, not on the blog. You see, I have Twitter set up so that everything I put there automatically posts to Facebook. And I put the headlines and links to all my blog posts on Twitter. So… I have this weird phenomenon whereby people will see a link to a blog post on Facebook, follow it to my blog, read it, then go BACK to Facebook to leave a comment. Which is frustrating, because I’d rather they do it here, where the rest of our discussions take place. Oh, well.

Anyway, here are all my Tweets from just before I went to the convention (when Nikki Haley addressed the gathering) through the second ballot for a chairman, after which I left. This process took longer than the chairman election the Dems had had the previous week, because that one had been such a foregone conclusion.

Note that photography was a bit of a challenge at this one, because they had non-delegates at the back of the room. Hope Butch Bowers isn’t too insulted I thought he was someone else, but look at that picture above. You can hardly see the table, much less who’s sitting at it.

Anyway, here’s my feed, including things I reTweeted from others, and replies from others:

  • RETWEET: wesleydonehue Wesley Donehue: For the record, I did not kill the lights on @nikkihaley because she was bashing consultants.
  • BradWarthen:@wesleydonehue @nikkihaley Bashing consultants? Who’s she talking about, her senior staff?
  • RETWEET: SCTRUTH: Haley just said that she is her worst critic. Last Saturday she said that she didn’t make any mistakes in her first 100 days
  • BradWarthen: @SCTRUTH Well… Obviously, she’s not her BEST critic. Certainly not the most discerning…
  • michaelrentiers: Looks like the loons are going to try and run the asylum at #SCGOPconvention. Rules will be our friend today.
  • BradWarthen: I haven’t even gotten there yet, & it looks like there’s a good bit of dissension, & even (gasp!) IRONY @ the GOP convention…
  • BradWarthen: Is that Bob Inglis up there seated on the podium? Can’t tell… Too far away to see. How’m I gonna take pics with my iPhone?
  • BradWarthen: Alan Wilson ranting about Obamacare, etc. “Attacking our Constitution…” Always thought he was more mildly reasonable than this…
  • LeeCoLibrary: @BradWarthen Is there any live coverage of the GOP convention or just the twitter feed. Which, by the way, is pretty funny!!
  • BradWarthen: @LeeCoLibrary Dunno. Hey, TV doesn’t even cover the NATIONAL conventions any more…
  • BradWarthen: Eckstrom says you have to go after our enemy “where he lives & plans.” But he’s praising Bush, not mentioning Obama. When did he write this?
  • BradWarthen: Speaker after speaker going on repetitively about taking on that awful Obama fellow. Little mention of SC…
  • BradWarthen: Mark Hammond actually DID mention some SC issues. Good for him…
  • BradWarthen: Bobby Harrell, introducing Mick Zais, says we’re closer than ever to education “reform.” Can’t wait to hear what that looks like…
  • BradWarthen: Oh, I see… No. 1, Zais says, is “choice”…
  • BradWarthen: Zais wants to run schools “like a business”… I need to go check his bio again… He IS a retired military officer, right?”
  • ragley Jay W. Ragley: @BradWarthen Newberry College is a business.
  • RETWEET: PoliticalTicker CNN Political Ticker: Huntsman makes debut as possible White House candidatehttp://bit.ly/k7DdQr
  • BradWarthen: Got to get closer if I’m going to get decent pictures of GOP convention… yfrog.com/gzn8xxdj
  • johnroconnor John O’Connor: @BradWarthen not Inglis, Butch Bowers I think
  • dphamilton Dan Hamilton: @johnroconnor @bradwarthen that’s Butch Bowers, separated at birth from his twin Bob Inglis.
  • BradWarthen: Boy, do I feel like a dummy. That’s Butch Bowers way up there. I did think it rather unlikely it was Bob Inglis…
  • BradWarthen: Chatter at the back has mostly ceased. Candidates for chairman about to speak…
  • BradWarthen: @dphamilton @johnroconnor Yeah, I figured that out. It would nice to be closer. Butch is a friend. Embarrassing …
  • BradWarthen: When this convention is over, don’t anyone say “conservative” to me for a year. My brain cells that process that word are bruised & frayed.
  • nettie_b Nettie Britts: @BradWarthen Obama or Osama?
  • BradWarthen: @nettie_b Don’t tell me I mixed up “Obama” & “Osama” again…
  • BradWarthen: Connor leading with his strong suit. Last speaker said he’d been a county chair. Whoopee. Connor was out fighting the Taliban.
  • BradWarthen: Connor promises to take on Harpootlian aggressively, as a “warrior.”
  • BradWarthen: Ashley Byrd of SCRN just asked whether I was “having fun.” Let’s not get carried away. This is, after all, a political party event…
  • BradWarthen: SC Republicans now voting on “red ballots,” Kevin Hall keeps saying. I suppose blue ballots would give them cooties…
  • scott_english: @BradWarthen Overly snarky doesn’t work either, Brad.
  • BradWarthen: This young man, Eric Miller of Chapin, is passing out Donald Trump literature. He likes his “common sense philosophy”…yfrog.com/gyxv9onj
  • BradWarthen: @scott_english What was that about? The “conservative” thing? You know I can’t stand that bumper-sticker stuff…
  • scott_english: @BradWarthen Well, your snark is disproportionate in general. I was referring to the red ballot. That’s an effort at ballot integrity.
  • BradWarthen: @scott_english Aw, that was FUNNY. betcha Kevin Hall would laugh if you show it to him…
  • BradWarthen: @scott_english As I recall, your old boss Mark Sanford was also inspired to irony by GOP conventions. Always liked that about him…
  • scott_english: @BradWarthen I don’t think it was limited to the GOP conventions. That might be why I’m not there today though.
  • BradWarthen: Florence County chair (I think) referred gratuitously to “that scoundrel Clyburn.” Crowd went “ooooohhh.” Not what you’d call a cheer…
  • BradWarthen: John was keeping count: “@johnroconnor: Connelly tally is Connelly 46%, Brown 30%, Connor 24%”
  • BradWarthen: Ran into Ray Moore earlier, and he updated me on how his campaign to shut down the public schools is going. He’s encouraged…
  • RETWEET: AlbertBrooks: Sitting in airport waiting to fly Virgin America. There’s a 72 Virgin America joke here but security is watching.
  • RETWEET: You must be serving beer… “@donnareedshow: Next- interview w Dem Caucus Leader @PhilBaileySC on @donnareedshow on @560WVOC”
  • BradWarthen: Just had a nice chat w/ Alan Wilson, who STILL seems like a mild, sensible young man, in spite of that red-meat speech…
  • RETWEET: jimdavenport_ap Jim Davenport: AP – Huntsman takes on Obama role in first SC speech:http://apne.ws/iqok36
  • RETWEET: Not today, I hope… “@jimdavenport_ap: AP – Videos show bin Laden watching himself on TV: apne.ws/lOnvTU”
  • AshleyLandess: That was pretty funny, Brad! @BradWarthen @jimdavenport_ap
  • BradWarthen: Kevin’s getting tough; he just used the gavel…
  • BradWarthen: There’ll be a 2nd ballot w/ all three candidates staying in (which I don’t get). Crowd booed, which doesn’t bode well for 3rd place Connor.
  • BradWarthen: Kevin repeatedly says 2nd ballot will be on “the white ballots.” I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke…
  • RETWEET: johnroconnor John O’Connor: First ballot results: Connelly 399.5, Brown 247, 194.5. All three stay in for second ballot. Crowd boos.
  • BradWarthen: I need to get close enough to get a picture of that Connelly fellow. Don’t think the one I got of Connor is going to do me much good…
  • BradWarthen: On 2nd ballot, only one county spokesman has tried to give a cute speech about his county. Kevin called him up VERY short…
  • BradWarthen: Sounds like Connelly might make it this time, bringing the process mercifully to a close…
  • TylerMJones: @BradWarthen Can we get a diversity update from inside the convention? Just for kicks.
  • BradWarthen: @TylerMJones From where I stand, I see 2 black guys, but really can’t make out most of the delegates from here…
  • BradWarthen: @TylerMJones Earlier, a speaker bragged on Tim Scott, got a nice hand. They’re right proud of him, and by extension themselves…
  • johnroconnor: Unofficial Connelly count: Connelly 55%, Brown 33%, Connor 12%. Waiting on official result.
  • BradWarthen: Just chatted with Katon Dawson, who calls me “Rolling Stone” (old joke). He’s going to be helping Gingrich, expects race to get lively…
  • BradWarthen: Chad Connelly promises to be Dick Harpootlian’s “worst nightmare”…
  • BradWarthen: Gotta be the signs that did it… yfrog.com/h8bg1cij
  • dphamilton: @BradWarthen @tylermjones thanks for keeping it on the “content of character”…
  • BradWarthen: @dphamilton @tylermjones Hey, all I did was answer the question…
  • lianaorr: @BradWarthen @TylerMJones I’m proud of Tim Scott bc he’s a true conservative & statesman. And his motion just made this conv a lot shorter.

I don’t know what motion she meant. I was gone by then.

Yeah, that was me on the radio again

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The last couple of days, I’ve been getting compliments about my performance on Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?” over the weekend — two or three people at Rotary yesterday mentioned it, and I just got a Facebook message from Bill Day in Memphis.

Thing is, that was a rerun — from April 2009. This is the third time they’ve run it, and I haven’t heard it on the radio yet (although I have listened to parts of it online).

That would be sort of interesting to hear again. I might go back and listen online sometime. That was in the first weeks after I was laid off, during the period that Mark Sanford was trying to deny South Carolina the stimulus money we would all be eventually paying for (and before he went to Argentina), and as I recall we talked about those things. I imagine that now it would sound kind of like a time capsule.

Anyway, I had a good time doing it.

Sad news about the dog I told you about earlier

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

Hi Brad,

Hudson

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

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

Emily

Guy

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

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

The gov tries to explain her (more or less correct) position on Amazon

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Here’s a video Nikki Haley is touting in which she tries to explain her action/inaction on the Amazon issue.

As I said before, she’s sort of groping toward trying to do the right thing. She just has trouble articulating it.

But I agree with her that she’s in a tough spot, and Mark Sanford put her there. Hey, I can identify.

Well, we did it — we have the nation’s lowest taxes. Can we stop now?

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Cindi Scoppe continues in her lonely quest to inject some reason, and actual facts, into state tax policy. Today, she cites the Tax Foundation, the group that dreamed up the silly “Tax Freedom Day,” in reporting that what our lawmakers have so long sought is now fact — we have the lowest taxes in the nation:

THE TAX Foundation’s latest rankings of state taxes are out, and we’re No. 50. As in, no state collects less in taxes per resident than South Carolina does.

If that surprises you, then you’ve come to the right place. Much of what we think we know about taxes in our state is simply wrong. And while people are entitled to whatever opinion they want about whether taxes are too high or too low or just right, those opinions ought to be based on facts.

Of course, No. 50 isn’t the whole story. Anyone who tries to tell you that a single number sums up tax rankings is misleading you. This particular ranking, for instance, doesn’t include taxes collected by local government, which makes it not quite but nearly meaningless, since the division between state and local duties varies so much from state to state.

In the more useful ranking, which counts both state and local taxes, we’re No. 49.

And both of those rankings just compare total taxes collected to the state’s population. That means they are telling us as much about how poor we are as about how low our taxes are.

Our tax rate — which is the percentage of our total income that we pay in taxes — ranks 43rd. That means seven states have a lower tax rate than we do. (Our income, by the way, is $33,954 per capita, which ranks 46th nationally. Not something to celebrate no matter what you think about taxes.)…

So, all that constant ratcheting-down of taxes over the past couple of decades “worked” — if having the lowest taxes was the goal.

Now, could we stop, please? And stop also having the most poorly funded essential services in the nation? And stop lagging behind the nation in pretty much every measure of economic health you can name? Please?

As we say in the Grownup Party — enough, already.

The “polls” (such as they are) run against Nikki’s “idiotic” move to replace Darla

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First and foremost, a thing where you go online and click “yes” or “no” to a current-events question is not a POLL, in any meaningful sense. It has no statistical significance. If you don’t have a properly constructed sample, with the right elements of randomness and screening questions (“are you the head of household, etc.”), you cannot extrapolate that the result you obtain indicates what you would get if the entire population, or electorate, answered the question.

A self-selected sample doesn’t cut it, not by a long shot. It’s a great way to invite readers/viewers to sound off — they like that — but it doesn’t generally give you much, if anything, to base conclusions on.

Still… my eyebrows raised when I saw this “poll” result over at the WLTX Facebook page:

Yeah, I know — 244 respondents, which makes a self-selected survey even MORE meaningless. But it still surprised me. Because for the last few days, any time someone says “This is going to cost her,” I say they are totally wrong, that Nikki made the calculation that her base wouldn’t care (or would even applaud, being so anti-elitist), and therefore she’s fine — from her perspective (certainly not from South Carolina’s).

It’s one thing for all the folks I run into at the Capital City Club to be shocked and appalled. One expects that, and Nikki Haley couldn’t care less. But this kind of populist thing should draw out the Haley fan club. For that matter, particularly with such low participation, it would be so easy to stack (which is the biggest reason you don’t regard self-selected “polls” as serious).

This result has NO statistical significance, but it’s SO lopsided. At the very least, it indicates a lack of eagerness on the part of her peeps to jump out and defend her. (I mean, did even ardent fan Eleanor Kitzman vote?) The way they rushed to back her on the WACH-Fox thing. What happened to that default mode of “If the elites and the media say it about our gal, it’s WRONG! And we’re gonna run out and shout it!”?

By the way, for what it’s worth… the latest WLTX nonpoll asked, “Should the U.S. have used force in Libya?” So far, this is how it’s going:

Yep, a dead heat. So far. And I figured that would be a blowout on the “yes” side. Because, you know, that’s something it looked like we had some consensus on before we went in. Of course, that consensus was among elites — including leading liberals who might otherwise oppose military action — and this is far from that. But that’s the factor that I thought would help Nikki on such a “poll” — at least to even things out for her. And it didn’t.

Once again, you can throw all of this out and you will have lost nothing of value — no methodology, tiny numbers. But it DID strike me as interesting, because it was such a blowout. And that’s all it is — interesting.

So I greeted this item from Columbia Regional Business Report in much the same spirit:

Staff Report
Published March 21, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley made a grave misstep by removing philanthropist Darla Moore from the University of South Carolina’s board of trustees, said a vast majority of the people who responded to a two-day poll on the Daily Report.

Haley had few supporters of her move with only 7.1% saying they approve of her decision to replace Moore with Lexington attorney Tommy Cofield, who financially supported Haley’s campaign.

However, 78.8% want Moore back on the board; 44.2% of the respondents said Haley needs to admit her mistake and reinstate Moore, while 34.6% said the General Assembly should rectify the situation and by electing Moore to the board.

The remaining 14.1% asked who Tommy Cofield is.

Comments were fairly consistent, with the majority saying the move was “idiotic.”…

There was no methodology mentioned, so I figured this was an informal survey. I double-checked with CRBR Publisher Bob Bouyea, and he confirmed, “Informal poll.” Of course. No one in SC media has money to run real polls on the spur of the moment these days.

But I did find some of the comments interesting. Of course, they were fairly typical of what I’ve been hearing among the business movers and shakers, which is the same circle CRBR moves in.

As I say, interesting. Thought you might find it all interesting, too.

You pays your money and you takes your choice

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Sorta kinda conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan says “You don’t have to be a flaming Marxist to see that there’s something askew here.” He apparently got the chart from The Daily Kos, which cited “The Christian Left.” (Which I’m guessing is a reference to this group.) The Kos context apparently had something to do with defending public unions in Wisconsin, although the connection makes no sense to me — I guess you have to be a class warrior to get it. The Kos post was later updated to point to the Center for American Progress as the original source. That link, at any rate, cites sources for the numbers.

It was Sullivan’s “Chart of the Day II” on Friday.

Anyway, interesting comparisons. After The Christian Left, Kos, and Sullivan, the link in the chain that brought it to my attention was alert reader Laura Hart, who observed:

“We” chose to enact a bunch of tax breaks, so now “we” have to tighten our belts and make shared sacrifices.  Not that all tax breaks are bad, but can’t we be honest about what is happening?  A similar chart could be compiled for South Carolina.

Sounds like an interesting experiment. Anyone want to take that on — someone, that is, more skilled with spreadsheets and such than I am?

OK, so maybe he IS just 32

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A friend this morning alerted me to the fact that on his LinkedIn page, Christian Soura — the governor’s mysterious dollar-a-year man — does look young enough to be 32. (His job, on that same profile, is listed as “Executive Director at South Carolina Center for Transforming Government.” The governor’s office is not mentioned. Hey, if the gov were only paying me a buck a year, I wouldn’t mention her, either.)

OK, so that still leaves us wondering how he was receiving a state pension from Pennsylvania.

Yes, I know they’re much more into what our governor would term Big Government in Pennsylvania. The taxes are higher, and they have taxes yet unthought-of in SC. Pause for an anecdote…

Fred Mott used to be publisher at The State. He’s the publisher who made me the editorial page editor, which tells you that he’s a great guy to work for, and a splendid judge of character. But boy, did we used to have some arguments over politics at editorial board meetings. And a constant course of disagreement was Fred’s insistence that taxes were relatively high in South Carolina. I’d give him stats to the contrary, and he’d just give his patented dismissive wave and keep on believing what he believed. (The “emotional center” — to use a favorite phrase of an editor I once worked with — of this for Fred, I believe, was that he had previously lived in Florida and there was no state income tax in Florida, and there was one in SC, so taxes in SC were therefore higher…)

Then Fred left here and went to work in Philadelphia. He lived in the ‘burbs, but worked in the city. I will always cherish the first phone conversation I had with Fred after he moved up there. He said, “I’ll never again say that taxes are high in South Carolina.” The emotional center of this change of mind was that he was required to pay a tax for living outside the city but working inside it, which really rankled.

Anyway, they have more and higher taxes, and they provide services that we don’t even think about here. (They are also proud — and this is hard to take in for a South Carolinian — of having been in the forefront of the public-employee union movement that the governor of Wisconsin is trying to roll back.) So maybe they do have retirement benefits so awesome that you can start getting them at 32.

But this still seems a little unlikely. There’s still a puzzle here. I look forward to learning more.

112 ways to spell ‘Gadhafi,’ or whatever that goofball’s name is

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I’m almost positive that in the early years of my career, the Associated Press spelled the last name of the dictator of Libya with a “K.” (Or was it a “Q?” It’s been a long time.) Then, at some point the AP Stylebook switched to “Gadhafi.” I sorta kinda remember this because back in the 80s my responsibilities as news editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (since simplified back to The Wichita Eagle) included supervising the national desk (which dealt with national and international news), as well as the copy desk (the final arbiters of how things were spelled in the paper).

And every paper I’ve ever worked at conformed, more or less (there were sometimes local exceptions), to AP style. But some larger news organizations, just to be different and arrogant, have maintained their own, separate style bibles. And it sometimes seems that every one of them asserts its individuality by spelling Col. Moammar’s name a different way.

Me, I’ve been spelling it any way I have felt like spelling it at any given moment here on the blog. Because, after 35 years of following arbitrary rules invented to establish uniformity, I can do whatever I want now. (Freedom, Baby!) My only obligation to you, the reader, is to ensure that you know about whom I’m writing. And there are various ways to communicate that, mostly having to do with context.

And why not do whatever feels right, when there is no consensus among the MSM?

For instance:

As mentioned, the AP spells it “Gadhafi.” Now, anyway. (It’s frustrating that my Google searches have not yet produced the old spelling.)

The New York Times, with its usual “this is the way WE do it, so that, by God, is the way it’s done” manner, spells it “Muammar el-Qaddafi.” Note that they don’t even do the first name the usual way. On subsequent references, they drop the “el-” and go with “Colonel Qaddafi.”

The Times (as in the real Times, of London), spells it “Muammar Gaddafi.” The Jerusalem Post agrees. So, amazingly, does the BBC (an emerging consensus, where I thought there was none?).

The Washington Post agrees with The Times on the last name, but not the first: “Moammar Gaddafi.”

NPR, which isn’t a print medium anyway, sticks to AP style, apparently: “Moammar Gadhafi.”

But folks, that’s just the beginning. ABC, apparently aiming to make print media look ridiculous (which isn’t hard when it comes to something like this), has compiled a list of 112 ways to spell the guy’s name. I’ll give you a few of them, and you can go to the story on the web for the rest:

  • Qaddafi, Muammar
  • Al-Gathafi, Muammar
  • al-Qadhafi, Muammar
  • Al Qathafi, Mu’ammar
  • Al Qathafi, Muammar
  • El Gaddafi, Moamar
  • El Kadhafi, Moammar
  • El Kazzafi, Moamer
  • El Qathafi, Mu’Ammar
  • Gadafi, Muammar
  • Gaddafi, Moamar
  • Gadhafi, Mo’ammar
  • Gathafi, Muammar
  • Ghadafi, Muammar
  • Ghaddafi, Muammar
  • Ghaddafy, Muammar
  • Gheddafi, Muammar
  • Gheddafi, Muhammar
  • Kadaffi, Momar
  • Kad’afi, Mu`amar al- 20
  • Kaddafi, Muamar
  • Kaddafi, Muammar
  • Kadhafi, Moammar
  • Kadhafi, Mouammar
  • Kazzafi, Moammar
  • Khadafy, Moammar
  • Khaddafi, Muammar
  • Moamar al-Gaddafi
  • Moamar el Gaddafi
  • Moamar El Kadhafi
  • Moamar Gaddafi
  • Moamer El Kazzafi
  • Mo’ammar el-Gadhafi
  • Moammar El Kadhafi
  • Mo’ammar Gadhafi
  • Moammar Kadhafi
  • Moammar Khadafy…

That last one, before I stopped to keep myself out of Fair Use trouble, is awfully close to the way I think the AP used to do it. But I can’t say for sure.

So now you know. That is to say, you know that nobody knows.

3D Politics: And that puts the UnParty… smack dab in the middle, more squarely than ever

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As you know, I strenuously resist any attempt to place me along America’s left-right political spectrum, even to the extent of being in the middle. Personally, I just don’t feel comfortable anywhere on that line, and “middle” suggests always being somewhere between the two extremes (or, to use another paradigm I reject, between the two parties), which I most certainly am not. Depending on the issue, sometimes I’m in the middle, sometimes I agree with Democrats, sometimes with Republicans, and sometimes I’m out beyond either of them on their respective “wings.”

That’s because I think about each issue and the various factors bearing upon it, rather than buying a prefab set of values selected by someone else to appeal to some variation on the lowest common denominator. I passionately believe that that’s an inadequate, and intellectually dishonest, way to approach important public issues.

Considering all of that, I was intrigued by a chart Herb Brasher shared with me, which was compiled by his son, a teaching fellow in political science at Indiana University.

Here’s the description. The chart itself is above:

I’ve been thinking about messing around with a 3-dimensional model of partisan ideology for a while. Usually we only talk of right vs. left, although some political science literature works with two dimensions. While somewhat difficult to display for an artistically challenged person like me, I make a rough shot at placing European, Canadian, and American parties in a more complex political spectrum. Any thoughts, suggestions?
1) Parties / Party Families
a) SOC: European socialists
b) SOD: European Social Democrats and some socialists; British labour; Canadian NDP;
c) Green: Greens/environmental parties
d) CD: European Christian Democrats
e) DEM: American Democrats
f) CON: European and Canadian conservatives
g) LIB: European liberals
h) CLIB: Canadian Liberals
i) REP: American Republicans
j) TEA: American Tea-party
2) Partisan Ideology Dimensions:
a) Some assumptions:
i. Instead of the common left-right model, or even two-dimensional one in some political science literature, a three-dimensional one; added complexity, but also better representation of reality?
ii. Note: all parties fit within the liberal democratic framework – I’m not including parties that want to get rid of democratic regime form
b) Dimensions
i. Free vs. social market – degree to which party advocates government involvement in the economy, and social welfare policies
ii. Environment vs. Growth – degree to which party advocates environmental protection, quality of life vs. growth of economy (particularly jobs) – this is separate from the
above issue – strong interventionist parties, like the social democrats, are not traditionally known as pro-environment (blue-collar jobs, etc.)
iii. Secular-Religious – degree to which party/party family either rhetorically or programmatically promotes traditional vs. progressive values; or situates itself as a secularizing force, or protective of religion, etc.
3) Interpreting Party Position
a) Position: I place the parties in the figure based on a quick and dirty assessment of its ideological positioning vis-à-vis each of these dimensions
b) Size: I’m assuming that each party ‘box’ is the same size; however, in order to get a 3D effect, the bigger the box appears in the figure (and the bigger the font), the closer it is to the front, and the smaller, the further back it is. In this case, since the secular-religious dimension is the third dimension, the more secular a given party/party family is, the further up front it is, the further back, the more religious.

Unfortunately, this did not help place me, really — except, if you assume that these are the three axes that must be considered, to put me right in the middle, even in three dimensions. Here’s why:

  • Free vs. Social Market — This just doesn’t cause a flutter in my heart either way. The libertarians on the blog will cry, “He’s a statist!,” but I’m not. I sound like it sometime because the prevailing wind in South Carolina is radically libertarian, libertarian to a harmful degree, and I resist it strenuously in an effort to pull the conversation toward a neutral middle ground. I believe there is nothing inherently superior about either the public or the private sector (which is why I’m always arguing with people who believe, ideologically, that the private is inherently better — I never run into anyone on the opposite side of that equation to argue with). There are simply issues that are better solved one way, and others that are better solved another.
  • Environment vs. Growth — I’ve cared deeply about the Earth since before the first Earth Day, when I was in high school. But I think some people take some really ridiculous, harmful positions in the name of love of the Earth. I reject those who reflexively reject nuclear power, for instance. And of course we should drill in the ANWR and offshore — taking care to do so safely. In fact, my whole Energy Party Manifesto sits squarely along the center of this axis. Or perhaps I should say, borrows from various points along it. And one of the reasons why is that I think the country’s strategic position in the world is tied up with, and just as important as, the two issues on this axis. That affects the way I look at both.
  • Secular-Religious — No question that I endorse the First Amendment and the liberal democracy it makes possible. I also think secularists are off their trolleys with their oversensitivity about religion in public life, seeing every small expression — a nativity, a blue law, a public prayer — as some sort of establishment of a theocracy. So again, I can’t be comfortable in either camp.

    • The thing is, I think a lot more than those three factors are involved, and I try to take all the other factors into account as well. So does the UnParty, bless them.

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

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    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…