Category Archives: Leadership

Nikki and the HPV vaccine

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If you’ll recall, Nikki Haley got into trouble for sorta, kinda, trying to do the right thing: Save girls’ lives by getting them vaccinated against the papillomavirus that causes most cervical cancers. Until she realized it might not be a popular move with political extremists.

Here’s CNN’s recap:

Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) — As the debate over Texas Gov. Rick Perry mandating the HPV vaccine continues between Republican presidential candidates, a woman whose endorsement is coveted by all them, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has her own complicated history on the issue.

In 2007, shortly before Perry issued an executive order requiring that schoolgirls be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes most cervical cancers, Haley was throwing her support behind a similar bill in South Carolina. At the time she was in her second term as a state representative.

State Rep. Joan Brady introduced the Cervical Cancer Prevention Act in South Carolina, and the Republican corralled more than 60 legislators, including Haley, to sponsor the bill. Unlike the executive order for which Perry is taking heat, this legislative mandate did not include a provision for parents to opt out of inoculating their daughters.

Within months, fierce opposition mounted, and legislative records back up accounts from sources who recall sponsors “dropping like flies” before a unanimous vote killed the bill on April 18, 2007.

More than a dozen legislators formally requested to be removed as sponsors from the bill, but the future governor of South Carolina was not one of them…

[State Rep. Kris] Crawford, a Republican, said he is not so sure.

“There are exactly two groups of people who can claim they were against this giant overreaching of government — those who never sponsored the bill and those who were sponsors but subsequently removed their names from the bill when it was explained to be a boondoggle mandating vaccination of little 12-year-old girls against a sexually transmitted disease,” Crawford said. “Everyone else was either for the bill or riding the fence trying to claim victory regardless of outcome.”…

This is a pattern we’ve seen, of course — one in which our young governor blunders into a situation, can’t decide which is the safest political course for her, hunkers down and hopes to survive it, whatever happens to everybody else. By being on both sides, she hopes eventually to be on the winning side, and have some credit splash on her. It’s worked for her so far. As you’ll note, CNN is still calling her a “rising star.” Really.

But even some of the national media are starting to notice things.

On Jim Clyburn, earmarks, race, and representing a poor district

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I’ve never liked one thing that traditionally has been core to the makeup of members of Congress: bringing home the bacon.

Yes, I know it’s a particularly honored tradition in South Carolina, from Mendel Rivers through Strom Thurmond and on and on. This state was devastated in The Recent Unpleasantness, and it was sort of natural in subsequent generations for folks to want their elected representatives to bring home Yankee bacon whenever possible.

Doesn’t mean that’s the right way to run a government. The federal government should look at the entire country and decide where it needs to build military bases or roads or bridges or place programs of any sort, according to which locations best suit the needs of the whole nation. Or where the greatest need for a particular service might be at a given time — such as disaster services. Largess should not flow according to which lawmakers has the most pull.

Congress has been so bad about this that when we decided we needed to close some military bases the nation no longer needed, we had to set up BRAC to prevent interference by individual members of Congress. It’s been a successful process, but the need for it testifies to a painful failure of our basic system of government.

Congressional pull is not the way to set priorities for our government. This is particularly obvious to a lot of people when we look at spending, but I’ve always been concerned that it’s just a bad policy all-around for making effective decisions for the country. And it disenfranchises Americans whose representatives have less pull.

So it is that I’ve been pleased (in general) with Jim DeMint’s efforts to stop earmarks (which are actually only a small part of the problem), and have never been much of a fan of Jim Clyburn’s more traditional bring-home-the-bacon approach.

But I’m not without sympathy for Clyburn. To explain why, I’ll share a story that at first may seem unrelated. I did not witness this, but I’ve heard about it.

A large part of why Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, as you will recall, was that he proposed to clean up government. No more Watergates. He promised, although we didn’t yet use this word for it back then, transparency. It was a huge deal; he was never going to lie to us. So after the election, there was a meeting in Columbia of people who had worked in his campaign in South Carolina. Probably a pretty big meeting, since back in those days, we actually had some Democrats in this state. And the Carter guy who was conducting the meeting told them that they shouldn’t expect any inside track on getting positions in the new administration. Everything was going to be open and aboveboard and a level playing field, and there was to be no smoke-filled room patronage.

One of the campaign supporters in the room, a local black leader who was then quite young (I’d want to talk to him and refresh my memory of the story’s details before using his name), protested, “But we just got into the room, and we just started smoking.”

Which was true enough. And more than once have I heard such protests from black politicians — now that we have some political influence, you want to weed such influence out of government.

Well, yes, I do. And I’m sorry some folks just got into the room, but we’ve had enough of that kind of politics.

Nevertheless, I am sympathetic to Jim Clyburn’s desire to get some federal investment into parts of the state that were bypassed when white politicians were grabbing federal resources for South Carolina. This isn’t about unsavory practices; this is about funds that will be distributed somewhere, so why not in your neglected district? Perfectly understandable. Even admirable. So while I am against, for instance, the bridge he wants to build between Lone Star and Rimini, I understand his desire to get some infrastructure into that area that might help economic development flow in behind it.

Against this background, I was interested in Warren Bolton’s column in The State today. I had actually missed it in a cursory skim through the paper this morning (I was conversing with several people while perusing), so I’m glad that my attention was called back to it by a release from, quite naturally, Jim Clyburn’s office. It was headlined, “Earmarks saving grace for Clyburn’s district.” An excerpt:

Frankly, I think the free-wheeling system that has allowed members of Congress to target pet projects for funding is too loosely monitored and arbitrary and, therefore, can be wasteful. But I don’t think that earmarks in general are bad; they can be used to make sure worthwhile projects are funded. In addition to a lack of transparency, the big problem is that the system doesn’t ensure that those important things get done.

But Mr. Clyburn didn’t invent this system. It was in place eons before he even arrived in Congress. Given that those in his district have grave needs that aren’t being met by the state, which has yet to come up with an effective way to address rural challenges that can’t be met by cash-poor local governments, he’s doing what he can.

It’s amazing to me how so many in this state can criticize Mr. Clyburn’s actions when they should be familiar with the challenge of rural South Carolina. While we get many letters to the editor from writers taking issue with Mr. Clyburn on legitimately debatable grounds, such as his positions on issues, his philosophy and even his use of earmarks, many others make statements and accusations that are just plain unfair, false and — quite frankly — racist….

I, like Warren, have fielded some of those calls — and emails, and letters, and blog comments. And while I may often agree with the person commenting that a particular spending proposal is a bad idea, it is disturbing to hear the undertone, the emotion that underlies the complaining. And Warren is right to use what he calls “the ‘R’ word” to describe this thing we hear. It’s the same undertone that I so often hear in the constant attacks on the very idea of public schools, or of government in general — because so many whites in our state, and in other parts of the country as well, have gotten it into their heads that government exists to take money away from honest, hard-working, moral, thrifty, sensible white people and give it, outright, to lazy, shiftless, no-good black people.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Anyway, I’ve probably given you enough to discuss, but I’d like to point out another passage in Warren’s column:

I get lots of letters and calls from people who try to suggest that Mr. Clyburn can be a big spender and favor increasing taxes on the rich because he is insulated by voters in his “gerrymandered” majority-black district; some all but suggest that the congressman configured the 6th District himself.

But the truth is that Republicans in the S.C. State House gerrymandered the district in an effort to pack as many of the state’s black people together as possible so they could get as many Republicans as possible elected to Congress. That meant creating a majority-black district that has lots of rural areas that are heavily poor, undereducated and undeveloped. They’re areas that lack infrastructure such as water, sewer and roads — or libraries, theaters and bowling allies.

Amen to that Warren, and I’m glad to see you writing that, since I’m not at the paper to do it anymore.

I would amend his characterization of what happened slightly, though. I recall particularly what happened in the early ’90s in the Legislature: Republicans worked with black Democrats to draft a plan, over the resistance of the white Democrats who ran the SC House, that created several more majority-black districts.

Black lawmakers were frustrated with Speaker Bob Sheheen and other Democratic leaders because they were not willing to draw as many “majority-minority” districts as possible. The motivation of the Republicans was less direct. They had figured out that for every district you make majority black, you remove black voters from several other districts, thereby making those seats safe for Republicans, and unsafe for Democrats of any color. So, a tiny gain for those who wanted a few more black lawmakers, but a HUGE, strategic victory for Republicans who wanted to take over South Carolina.

Once that reapportionment plan was in place, the way to power was paved for the GOP. It put them in striking distance. They had big gains in the 1994 election. That, plus some key defections by white Democrats after the election (indeed, the earlier defection of David Beasley to the GOP had given them the head of their ticket), and we saw the Republicans take over the House in January 1995.

But I’ve reminisced enough. Time for y’all to have your say.

Disregard for facts, contempt for the jobless

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SusanG brought this to my attention Friday, but what with the “little girl” flap, and the non-apology, I’d sort of had my fill of Nikki Haley gaffes that day before I got to it. In case you still haven’t seen was Susan was talking about, here’s an excerpt:

Nikki Haley’s Jobless Drug Test Claim Exaggerated

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) wants thejobless to pass a drug test before they can receive benefits, but she seems to have an exaggerated sense of drug use among the unemployed…

Haley said scads of job applicants flunked a drug test at the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation along the Savannah River.

“Down on River Site, they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked to them — this was back before the campaign — when we sat down and talked to them, they said of everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50 percent, the other half couldn’t read and write properly,” Haley said….

Jim Giusti, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the River Site, told HuffPost he had no idea what Haley was talking about with regard to applicants flunking a drug test.

“Half the people who applied for a job last year or year 2009 did not fail the drug test,” Giusti said. “At the peak of hiring under the Recovery Act we had less than 1 percent of those hired test positive.”

The River Site doesn’t even test applicants. “We only test them when they have been accepted,” Giusti said.

A spokesman for Gov. Haley did not respond to requests for comment…

That’s some good reporting by HuffPo, although the headline was weak. If the body type was right, this was more than an “exaggeration.” Also, I’ve never heard SRS referred to on second reference as “River Site,” but whatever.

Gee, maybe if I’d given up some of those really heavy-duty drugs, I wouldn’t have been out of work for most of 2009, huh?

I’m really more than fed up with this stuff. You?

Here’s how our governor apologizes: It’s HER fault!

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Earlier today, I passed on a headline on the WIS site that said, “SC Gov Haley says she regrets ‘little girl’ remark.”

WIS later took down that headline because they realized what I did when I read their story. There was nothing supporting the implication of the headline, which was that the governor had apologized.

Later in the day, Gina Smith over at The State explained what had actually happened. Here’s the operative paragraph:

“The story painted a grossly inaccurate picture and was unprofessionally done,” Haley said in a statement. “But my ‘little girl’ comment was inappropriate and I regret that. Everyone can have a bad day. I’ll forgive her bad story, if she’ll forgive my poor choice of words.”

Yep. In her expression of “regret,” she went further in trying to insult the reporter.

That’s our governor. If she does something she shouldn’t obviously it’s someone else’s fault.

Way to go, guys: You made the Top Ten!

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This just recently in from The Wall Street Journal:

Today’s rout ranks as the sixth-largest point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in history. Here is a list of the top 10:

Date and decline

9/29/2008 — 777.68 points

10/15/2008  — 733.08 points

9/17/2001 — 684.81 points

12/1/2008 — 679.95 points

8/8/2011 — 634.76 points

4/14/2000 –617.78 points

10/27/1997 — 554.27 points

10/22/2008 — 514.45 points

8/4/2011 — 512.76 points

I just want everybody involved in this achievement to get credit. So when I say, “Way to go, guys,” I’m including everyone. The SC5 and their spiritual brethren, of course — couldn’t have done it without you. No one played a bigger immediate role in recent days. But let’s have a big hand for Speaker Boehner and the Establishment crowd, for not standing up to them and keeping their caucus in line. And to President Obama for, I don’t know, for failing to magically make people come to the table. Or for the stimulus that didn’t help enough. Or whatever. And W. for creating the new prescription drug benefit without paying for it. And LBJ, I guess, for giving him the idea by creating Medicare.

And let’s not neglect the private sector, the engine of America’s lack of prosperity: There are, of course, all those scared-of-their-shadow investors. And all the corporations and others who have been sitting on cash and refusing to take the risk of investing it throughout this four-year crisis. And the American consumer for failing since 2008 to keep the economy afloat by spending like it’s going out of style, the way they did for the few years before that. (I did MY part, right up until this past weekend.)

Everybody give everybody a great big hand…

“We must stand strong! Now, please tell me what to do!”

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I’ve gotten a few responses this morning to this Tweet:

It’s sad, embarrassing to see veteran Joe Wilson follow the lead of four know-nothing freshmen…

It’s pathetic, really. Here we have these immature ideologues running about, and a six-term congressman following their lead like a puppy.

Actually, he’s willing to follow any lead he can find, as you can see from this email he sent out before the vote yesterday:

Dear Subscriber,

Last week, I, along with the rest of the SC GOP delegation, voted “NO” for more reckless spending and bigger government.  I voted against the debt ceiling compromise because it is time for bold and decisive action.  It is clear to all involved that we cannot continue down the path we are on.  If we kick the can down the road, future generations will bear the burden of failing to act in this critical situation.

Yesterday, leadership from both parties came to an agreement on the framework for a debt deal, and I expect that the vote will happen later today.  Throughout the discussion of this issue, I have heard many people convey their wish for a compromise.  While I don’t believe that compromise is necessarily a bad thing, it should only be invoked if it means coming together to forge a solution to a problem.

So far the only solution I have seen that makes a significant proposal to solving our nation’s spending addiction is the bill titled, “Cut, Cap, and Balance”.  This is the only plan that addresses the need to stop America’s spending addiction and implements a long overdue Balanced Budget Amendment.

We must now demand the federal government live within its means just as the rest of the American people do everyday.  We have compromised on this issue for far too long now.

As the vote draws near I’m asking for your input.  Please go to my Facebook pageor visit my website on your mobile phone to voice your thoughts.  What is your opinion on the proposed debt agreement deal?

Sincerely,

Joe Wilson
U.S. Congressman

That is a REALLY strange juxtaposition…  strutting about, going on about the need to be “bold” and “strong,” and then, instead of informing the world of the strong, bold thing you’re about to do, beg everyone to tell you what to do.

That’s our Joe, I guess. Nice guy. But not the bold or strong type.

Equal time for Robert E. Lee

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Since I did a post about Grant (sort of), I thought I’d share with you this article that Stan Dubinsky brought to my attention this morning:

How Did Robert E. Lee Become an American Icon?

After President Dwight D. Eisenhower revealed on national television that one of the four “great Americans” whose pictures hung in his office was none other than Robert E. Lee, a thoroughly perplexed New York dentist reminded him that Lee had devoted “his best efforts to the destruction of the United States government” and confessed that since he could not see “how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.” Eisenhower replied personally and without hesitation, explaining that Lee was, “in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. … selfless almost to a fault … noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history. From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities … we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”

The piece goes on to explain in detail why Lee became a revered memory, without trying, while others such as Jefferson Davis who so avidly sought justification failed.
It’s interesting. I actually haven’t finished it yet. Y’all can read it while I do.

All right. OK. Here’s a post about the stupid debt “debate”

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Kept hoping — against hope, of course — this debt thing would get resolved before I had to say something about it. I’ve had observations to make about it along the way, but just haven’t wanted to get into it. I hate the subject; it bores me to tears. But it also makes me angry. Part of the anger is over the substance, of course. But part of it is that they’re making me think about this stuff. This is why we have representative democracy, you see. We elect people to go off and handle this stuff and make sure they don’t drive the country onto the rocks — and NOT bother us with the excruciating details.

They’re not getting the job done. Part of the reason, of course, is that there are a bunch of people in the House — the Tea Party guys — who don’t get what the responsibility of public office is all about. They think their bumper stickers slogans, the things that got them elected, are reality, and don’t understand that the world is more complicated than the concepts that got them elected. Unfortunately, they also have a certain cognitive block from ever learning they are wrong. Most people go into elective office with all sorts of misconceptions and foolish ideas. Most, whether they are “liberal” or “conservative,” realize with experience that there are broader responsibilities to the country (and in this case, to the entire world, since the already-weakened worldwide economy is poised to go over the brink with us). It’s not just about how they and their constituents feel about things, and unfortunately they have very powerful resistance to learning, ever, how wrong they are.

Part of the problem is that a significant part of their ideology involves rejection of the idea that experience is valuable. This is a common populist fallacy, of course, but it’s particularly malignant in this case, in terms of its effect on the world. People who go to Washington — or Columbia, or wherever — and study issues and come to understandings different from the prejudices they had originally… are considered sellouts, under this ideology. Such people who embrace larger responsibilities are not wiser in this view; they are corrupted.

Another obstacle is that this ideology is particularly nihilistic toward what happens to the world at large, as long as the ideology is served.

This makes it very dangerous for people with such a worldview to hold office. Oh, it’s not so bad to have one or two of these anti-Mr. Smiths at the table (Mr. Smith went to Washington to make the world a better place; these guys go to Washington to tell the world to go to hell). Unfortunately, the party that now holds a momentary (and at my age, I consider two-year cycles to be “momentary”) majority in the House knows that it holds that tenuous power because of the knot of such people in its midst. And is held hostage by it.

Speaking of “hostage,” did you see that performance by Boehner last night? He was like the prisoner forced to recite the propaganda with an AK-47 pointed at his head just off-camera. The only think lacking in his performance was the blinked Morse code (or maybe it was there; I don’t read Morse) saying “I don’t really believe this stuff; I just have to say it.” But his tone and body language did that. The performance brought to mind all those meetings I read about in which Boehner was the Soviet commanding officer caught in the middle, trying to do the right thing, and Eric Cantor was the sneering zampolit, ready to report him to the Central Committee for the slightest lack of revolutionary zeal.

Obama, by contrast, was more convincing last night. Part of that was pure talent. I’m not accustomed to watching Boehner, but I doubt that he’s nearly the orator Obama is. Almost no one is, particularly at communicating sober conviction.

I heard some commentary on the radio (NPR) this morning that said neither man gave America what it wanted last night — a way out — but simply acted as apologist for his own side’s position.

I suppose that’s true. But Obama’s position is the defensible one. He wants cuts and revenue increases, which is what a rational person who is not blinded by ideology would choose. Neither is what said rational person would want. Until the economy is ticking along a lot more strongly, both spending cuts and tax increases could have a chilling effect.

But here’s the thing: NOT getting control of our mounting debt, under these circumstances, would have a much worse effect. It’s not just about raising the debt ceiling. If you do that, and don’t reduce the gap between spending and revenue, we’re still likely to have a devastating downgrade of the nation’s credit rating. And we can’t afford that.

To let one’s natural reluctance to cut spending or raise taxes get in the way of dealing with that would be unconscionable. And letting a narrow ideology (particularly one that holds that it is ALWAYS right to do one and NEVER right to do the other, regardless of circumstances, which is the height of foolishness — but I guess that’s a workable definition of ideology) get in the way is much, much worse.

How furious was Kenny Bingham? See for yourself

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I wasn’t there when S.C. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham tore into Nikki Haley on June 29, claiming her office misled lawmakers on the budget. But I had heard it was really something. After all, it got Kenny a standing ovation, which sort of tells you where our governor stands in the estimation of that Republican-dominated body.

Somehow, it didn’t occur to me to look for the speech on YouTube until someone mentioned it this week. I urge you to watch it.

By the way, for a fuller explanation of what happened, read Cindi Scoppe’s column of July 3.

Cindi Scoppe explains the state budget

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A couple of weeks ago, in response to some outrageous statement about the state budget put out by someone over at the Policy Council via Twitter — I forget now who it was, or what it was he or she said, but I think it was something like “this is the biggest budget ever” — I got worked up enough to go out and get some numbers showing what total nonsense that was. Because I knew we hadn’t caught up to pre-crash spending levels.

And I got the numbers, covering the last few years. And there were supporting documents, which are hard to link on WordPress (I usually go back and use TypePad on my old blog to link a file, then copy the code over here, which is tedious), and then there was the post itself to write talking about the numbers, and somewhere in the middle of it I fell asleep or something.

Oh, wait, I know — I sent Ashley Landess a Tweet asking her something about the numbers they had used, and while she answered my initial question, she didn’t (unless I missed it) answer a follow-up, and I used waiting for that response as an excuse to just let the whole thing drift, because I had satisfied my own curiosity and justified my own outrage (this is not, of course, the biggest budget ever), and it’s hard for me to maintain interest in numbers for very long. (By the way, I’m not blaming Ashley for not answering me a second time. In fact, maybe she did and it got lost in the ether. Nobody can watch that stuff all day, or read all of it, even when alerted to it.)

Then, a few days ago, Doug got on this kick of throwing HIS favorite numbers at us (similar to the Policy Council numbers, including federal spending and probably lottery money and the kitchen sink and all kinds of stuff that the Legislature has no control over, even though what we were talking about was the budget the Legislature was voting on), and did his usual thing of “Where are YOUR numbers?” and thumping his chest and all, and I thought about going back and digging up the real numbers and answering him, but I was then filled with ennui, because I knew it wouldn’t make any difference, and I just wasn’t interested enough.

Because I know how bogus the whole conversation is. I experience state government. I follow what’s happening. I see the cuts, year after year. After all, we have 8,000 fewer state employees than in 1994, as Cindi Scoppe notes today (see, I just threw number at you, but I didn’t have to spend time digging them up, which is what matters to me)…

In fact, that is my purpose in posting on this subject. Cindi never gets bored looking at the budget, and she understands it better than most people, certainly better than most of the people who get to vote on it. Consider her an enabler of my fecklessness on the subject. I had her to worry about the budget for me for most of 22 years.

And she’s still doing it. In her column headlined “The fable of the spendthrift Legislature,” she summed it up pretty well. (It would have been a wonder if she hadn’t. The freaking thing was 30 inches long. But as I told her, “It read like 18.” Old editor joke.)

It’s worth a read. It puts things into perspective. It explains why it’s so bogus for Nikki Haley to perpetuate the myth (as did Mark Sanford) that the lawmakers are a bunch of spendthrifts out there “growing government” at a rate that exceeds the kind of bogus arbitrary caps that those two governors AND House leaders are always on about.

By the way, while the Senate won’t go along with arbitrary caps (thank goodness; they still believe in representative democracy instead of government by formula), in recent years we’ve stayed well within that population-plus-inflation formulation. The average annual increase in the general fund has been 2.4 percent since 1994 (the year the Republicans took over), including the non-recurring portion. The recurring part has grown by 1.8 percent a year.

And lawmakers are still appropriating less than they did five years ago. So these are not the biggest budgets ever.

Man, this is boring…

It’s just not hip and edgy to criticize Nikki Haley any more. What am I going to do now?

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Back in 2008 (when this was taken), before she reinvented herself and started running for offices for which she was completely unqualified, I used to write supportive things about Nikki Haley. Could I do so again?

I’m going to have to start sticking up for Nikki Haley. If I can possibly rationalize a way to do so.

The thing is, everybody — except the people on her staff who are paid to say otherwise — is criticizing her. Especially, of course, Republicans. Just as with Mark Sanford.

That makes criticizing Nikki Haley, well… popular. Like Reality TV. Like, you know, “The Situation.” This is disturbing. It is so uncool. So unhip.

More to the point, what’s the use of sitting down at a laptop to say critical things if everyone is doing it? It’s just… redundant. If you don’t have anything new or original to say, why write?

I mean, speaking of “The Situation,” look at this one:

  • The “Wide Chasm:” Kenny Bingham — the House Majority Leader, from Lexington County no less — got a standing ovation when he stood up to light into her in the House the other day, furious that GOP lawmakers had done what they thought she wanted, only to have her veto it. If senators had been there, they’d have applauded too. It’s taken Nikki WAY less time to alienate the State House than it took her predecessor.
  • The Departing SLED Chief: Reggie Lloyd says he totally blew off the gov’s effort to get him to refuse raises to hard-working, lower-ranking agents.
  • Michael Haley’s list: The SLED chief also said the “first man” presented him with a list of people he wanted Lloyd to hire as agents.
  • He can’t hold it back any more: After trying to hold it in for a year, Wesley Donehue has taken to expressing typical Republican frustration with the gov via Twitter: “Very proud of the SC General Assembly for overriding Gov Haley’s presidential primary veto today. Great work team!” And especially with her campaign manager… I mean, chief of staff: “This is what happens when your Chief of Staff isn’t from South Carolina. Everyone say THANK YOU TIM PEARSON!” Poor Wesley. He’s been trying to control himself for so long.

This creates a dilemma. Every once in a while, Nikki does something right. Should I just not mention her at all until those occasions arise?

Or maybe I should just try a little harder, and find ways to explain the problems with her leadership in original terms, ones that others aren’t thinking of. That could work…

B-minus?!?!?!? Well, that’s just so SC; we’re too polite to be honest

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Did you see this in The State today?

Legislators give Haley ‘B-‘ grade for first session

You’re kidding me, right? You want me to believe that the honest assessment of “legislators” is that Nikki Haley’s performance as governor is worthy of a B-minus? There’s just no way.

Yeah, I realize people who don’t know the State House, and who get their notions of such things from watching national TV news, will say, “That’s understandable — most of them are Republicans, right?” The majority of Republicans would seem to be the last people who would think Nikki Haley — or her predecessor — was worthy of a passing grade. Much less a B-minus. I mean — these people just sued her (successfully) for trying to boss them around. Or McConnell did, which amounts to the same thing. And that was not the low point of the relationship.

Yeah, I know how they are. It’s just the first session. At this point, they were trying to give Mark Sanford every chance, too.

But a grade — a grade isn’t supposed to be a tool of diplomacy, or an expression of future hopes (“Maybe she’ll get better…”)

A grade should be an honest assessment of actual performance. It should confront uncomfortable truths. An honest teacher says, “I know you’re trying hard, and nothing personal, but you flunked the course.”

But we don’t do that in South Carolina, do we? And it’s why we don’t move forward as a state; it’s why we lag behind. We’re so busy being polite and worrying about offending anyone that we never state the case, analyse the problem, and move to fix it.

We can be so pathetic.

I don’t even want to know how The State chose the lawmakers it interviewed. In any case, it was only 20 percent of the General Assembly. I wonder what an actual poll of the whole legislative branch, with secret ballots, would have produced. Probably something much closer to what The State‘s readership came up with. Yeah, the readers who responded were heavily Richland County. But that Democratic bias would have been balanced, in a real survey of the General Assembly, by the fact that those officeholders know her, which should make them just as likely to be negative as Democrats…

Making use of the “women are grownups” argument

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A couple of days back, in the midst of an argument about something else, I started griping about a piece I’d read somewhere by a feminist of the “men and women are just alike and don’t you dare say otherwise” variety (there are all sorts of feminism, and that is but one type), suggesting that there’s nothing to the idea that male politicians are inherently more likely to engage in sexual misbehavior than are female politicians.

I begged to differ, citing my oft-asserted belief that, in general, women are more likely than men to be actual grownups. To elaborate:

You know me; I hate Identity Politics. I don’t care whether our legislative bodies are all male, or all female, or all white or all black, as long as we get the best candidates (which we don’t, but don’t stop me; I’m on a roll). I’m not for electing women qua women. But there’s a side benefit apart from the IP one: Elect more women, you get more grownups.

Yes there are exceptions. And we could have a debate, if you’d like, about whether the problem with Nikki Haley is that she “governs like a guy.” But in general, the principle holds….

Well, I’m not the only one thinking that way. The Southern Institute for Women in Politics is pushing the same line:

Retrospective on scandal

Lessons learned from the likes of Anthony Weiner

Comedians will regret the loss of great material provided by Anthony Weiner’s denial and later admission of lewd electronic behavior. Weiner’s Congressional colleagues will be relieved by his resignation so they can return to business. But Weiner’s sad tale of self-destructive and testosterone-induced behavior is just one in a growing list of elected men (of both political parties) that tells a bigger story to tell: In 2011, U.S. politics is still a boys’ club.

When we’re all finished clucking our collective tongues, we need to get focused and recognize that this is a call to action for women – including women in South Carolina.

Research points to a substantial gender gap in the way women and men approach running for office. Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw – all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected.

“The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.”

So, it’s time for more of us to step up to the plate.

Not everyone needs to be a candidate, but all women need to be more informed, more involved, in politics at every level. At a minimum, we need to vote – cast a ballot for everything from who runs our children’s schools to who sets the tax rate for our towns – have a say in who gets to make these decisions that affect our lives.

We desperately need good women to run for office. We can’t win the game unless you play, so come on ladies, let’s get moving.

How you can help clean the political house:

So, friends, let’s learn some lessons from Anthony Weiner (and Elliott Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc., etc., etc.) and make 2012 the year we run and elect more women to office in South Carolina than ever before.

Read news that directs our lessons

Weiner Scandal: A Victory for Women Leaders?
The mentality has to change. The world is half men and half women. The government has to >>

In political scandals, girls won’t be boys
“I’m telling you,” said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., “every time one of these sex scandals goes, we just look at each other, like>>

More Women Needed in Politics
The story of U.S. Rep. Anthony and his Weiner is more disappointing than surprising.Another male>>

Women are better investors, and here’s why
Call it the Weiner principle: men self-destruct. Anthony Weiner has put men in a pickle.Here’s why>>

How about Dan Adams’ new book?
Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else. Read more>>

Welcome to the team, girls. I mean, ladies. I mean — aw, I’d never make a good feminist anyway…

And I take exception to the beer taster thing.

Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?

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This is something I’ve been thinking about the last few days, and I haven’t written about it because it’s complicated and I haven’t had time to do something pulling all the threads together. But when I saw this development, I decided I’d better go ahead and throw out the general idea and get the discussion started:

Obama Says War Powers Act Doesn’t Apply to Libya Mission

White House maintains that the president doesn’t need lawmakers’ permission for U.S. role in NATO-led effort.

The White House on Wednesday told skeptical lawmakers that President Obama doesn’t need their permission to continue the nation’s involvement in the NATO-led mission in Libya because U.S. forces are playing only a supporting role there.

Administration lawyers made their case as part of a larger report sent to Congress responding to complaints that the president had yet to provide a sufficient rationale for continuing the Libya campaign, the New York Times reports.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” State Department lawyer Harold Koh told the paper. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”…

OK, digest that. Here’s the NYT version, and here’s the WashPost. And then consider some of the other things I’ve been noticing lately:

  • The fact that, in the GOP debate the other night, we heard some Republicans moving more toward the “get out of Afghanistan ASAP” line. Ron Paul, treated as an outcast for saying such things four years ago, got cheered by the Fox News crowd.
  • The bold way Obama decided to go in and GET bin Laden, without any of that multilateral consult-the-allies (as in, tell the Pakistanis we’re attacking in the heart of their country) touchy-feely stuff. No fooling around.
  • The way the administration is playing on having stunned the world with the bin Laden thing to get its way elsewhere. That prompted me to write that the difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush was Sonny, while Obama is the far-deadlier (that is, more effective) Michael.
  • The way Obama is taking advantage of chaos in Yemen to just GO AFTER terrorists there, without asking Congress or the UN, or presenting arguments about the War Powers Act, or anything like that. Read this, and this.

This has been building ever since the election, with a lot of Obama’s antiwar base feeling pretty disoriented (wait — is this who we elected?), and people like me being reassured by his steady pragmatism.

But lately, the process has seemed to be accelerating. Obama still talks a good war-as-last-resort, multilateral, we-don’t-want-to-be-a-bully line for the base… but watch what happens. (And how about the way he threw everybody off-balance on Libya, letting the FRENCH of all people take the lead, while still managing to get in there and go after the bad guys? That enabled him to have it both ways. The allies couldn’t do it without us, but it came across looking like we were a reluctant junior partner, which bought Obama some support for the move among liberals.)

And I find myself wondering, is anyone else noticing? I mean, while the Republicans get more timid about the U.S. role abroad (in some ways) and obsess more and more about domestic issues (because that’s what the Tea Party cares about), Obama is out there going all JFK and LBJ. He’s going Old School. He’s defining Democratic presidential leadership back to where it was before Vietnam.

Are the parties moving toward switching places?

This is a fascinating development. I think it has the potential to completely realign the country politically, and on more than national security.

Anybody else noticing this?

It’s OK, Mr. President; you don’t have to have a position on this — in fact, please don’t

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Just got this little email update from the WashPost:

—————————————-
Politics News Alert: White House calls Rep. Weiner’s actions a ‘distraction’
June 13, 2011 11:32:22 AM
—————————————-

The White House says President Obama believes Rep. Anthony Weiner’s actions have been “inappropriate” and a “distraction.”

But spokesman Jay Carney wouldn’t say whether the president thinks the New York Democrat should resign — something other Democratic leaders have called for.

Wow…

I’ve been bemoaning for years the degradation of the presidency to the point where we expect the president to take a position on EVERYTHING that happens, whether it bears on his job responsibilities or not. I think the moment where it first hit me how bad it got was when I was watching a guy on a cable news station standing outside the White House with a microphone on the night of the Columbine shootings. This guy kept coming back on to assure us that the president would soon have a statement. And I’m like WTF? In what sense is a shooting at a high school in Colorado the responsibility of the president of the United States? Why on Earth would I expect him to say anything about it, or care what he said? I wrote a column about this at the time.

By comparison, though, Bill Clinton making sure to vibrate to the correct emotions over Columbine was the height of relevant leadership, compared to the White House being expected to have a position on some wanker who sends dirty pictures to women. We’ve really sunk low now.

If you have trouble seeing this, try for just a moment to look at the world the way I do, instead of the way the Beltway media does. To me, being the “leader of his party” is NOT a role I expect or want my president to play. To me, playing that role is actually inimical to the one that he is paid to perform.

So please, Mr. President: Don’t have an opinion on this. Ignore it. It’s beneath you personally, and certainly beneath the dignity of your office. Stick with the “inappropriate” and “distraction” thing, if you must say anything. Those characterizations are at least accurate.

Talk about being Ms. Bossypants…

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One of the women in my household took it back to the library, so I didn’t get far enough in Tina Fey’s Bossypants to find out what happened after she hit puberty, but that’s cool. The part I did read was pretty funny.

What is not funny is the Gov. Bossypants we have over at the State House, who did this today:

Gov. Nikki Haley ordered lawmakers back to Columbia next week after they failed to pass a key piece of her legislative agenda on the legislative session’s last day, sparking dissention among legislative Republicans and howls from Democrats.

Haley wants lawmakers to return at 10 a.m. Tuesday to consider bills creating a Department of Administration, allowing the governor and lieutenant governor to run as a ticket, allow the governor to appoint the secretary of education and a bill merging the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole into the Department of Corrections.

“Pick any two,” Haley said, asking lawmakers to voluntarily forfeit the $250 daily pay they are due, a total of $42,500 a day….

In other words, Do my will, and don’t get paid for doing it.

What a supreme mix of autocratic egoism and faux populism. The perfect Tea Party mix, steeped so as to make the maximum Palin-style impression.

Of course, she did allow them to pick two out of four, which I suppose Her Bossiness would consider to be magnanimity.

Here’s the problem with that: I would gladly vote for three out of the four (if her Bossiness could deign to condescend to do so, I would, were I a lawmaker, have to ask her to explain the virtues of combining the D of PP&P with Corrections). You know why? Because I am one of South Carolina’s most monotonously persistent advocates of giving the executive branch the ability to effectively administer the executive branch and be accountable for it.

But this kind of presumption of dictating to the legislative branch plays straight into the hands of those lawmakers who want to mischaracterize such proposals as a case of executive overreaching: See? She’s trying to FORCE lawmakers to pass the laws she wants. She should advocate strenuously for her positions, but there is a world of difference between advocating that a coequal branch of government do something, and using the power of one’s own branch to FORCE an issue that is the prerogative of that other branch.

The latter is not cool. Which, to turn full circle, brings us back to Tina Fey — a standing prop of her comedy is that she is not cool, not by a long shot.

But when Gov. Haley does the Bossypants routine, it’s just not as funny.

The free market at work in the SC General Assembly

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A couple of weeks ago, I appeared on Cynthia Hardy’s TV show to talk about tort reform. Because I was asked. Which just goes to show, if asked, I will talk about pretty much anything. Seriously, though… I forgot to mention it to y’all at the time, but as far as my comments are concerned, you didn’t miss much. My position on the issue is what it’s been for years — I’m not convinced on caps, and I think punitive damages (that is to say, those damages above and beyond what it takes to make the winning plaintiff whole) should go to the state — just like other punitive fines for criminal offenses. Basically, you would actually punish people who might otherwise write off lesser damages as the cost of doing business, but you remove the incentive for individuals and their attorneys to use the tort system as some sort of lottery.

For more, you can look at The State‘s editorial from earlier this year, and Cindi’s column from last year. I generally agree.

Beyond that, I’ve sort of lost track of the debate this year. I do that sometimes when neither side is pushing the position I would go for, and I have other things to do.

Seems that, according to Wesley Donehue (who works for the Senate Republicans) things are coming to a head today:

Wesley Donehue
Watching the trial lawyers in the SC Senate block tort reform.

36 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone

Hmmm. Well, I don’t suppose anyone can argue with that. I mean, it’s the free market at work, with each individual selfishly protecting his own economic interests. The Tea Party types and Sanfordistas should be thrilled. And the trial lawyers should certainly be happy.

But come to think of it, not too great for the Chamber of Commerce, or the legislative leadership. Or for the rest of us. But then, unless the legislation has changed considerably since the last time I looked at it, I’m not sure our interests would have been all that well served either way…

Bush was Sonny; Obama is more like Michael

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I said this as a comment back on a previous post, and liked it enough to say more prominently…

After reading that quote I cited in the WSJ about how the Obama administration is, ever so quietly, without saying anything overt, taking advantage of its stunning effectiveness in taking out bin Laden:

This month’s military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool — akin to, don’t make us do that again — with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking…

… I got to thinking how this was similar to the effect that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had on thugs like Moamar Qaddafi — for a very brief time, before everybody around the world figured out that (given our internal dispute over that invasion) W. wasn’t likely to get the chance to do that ever again…

And then it hit me: In terms of the politics of projecting a credible threat that gets others to do what you want (an idea that I realize makes a lot of us squirm), George W. Bush was like Sonny Corleone. The blusterer, the guy you just know is going to jump in the car and come after you in a mad, blind rage if you touch his sister. The guy who doesn’t want to negotiate; he just wants Sollozzo dead. And ultimately, the guy who has trouble achieving all his goals.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is more like Michael. The clean-cut college kid who was never involved in the muscle end of the business, who held himself aloof from that, even expressed distaste for it. The guy who was supposed to be “Senator Corleone, President Corleone,” and not a wartime don. The guy who speaks softly and reasonably, and never utters a threat. The guy who takes out the heads of the other four New York families in one stunning stroke, right when you’ve forgotten about the bad blood. The guy who keeps on speaking reasonably after that, but nevertheless everybody respects him now, in the uomo di rispetto sense…

Not that, you know, I’m saying either president is a criminal. Far from it. I’m just using very familiar fictional characters in order to draw a comparison…

Resonating, rather than governing

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Here’s an example of the kind of thing we see in a country in which democratic habits have overtaken republican ones. (And remember, I’m using those words according to the generic, original definitions, not referring to the execrable parties that go by those names.)

Just got this email from Joe Wilson:

Dear Subscriber:

This Congress, my main goal has been to bring jobs to South Carolina. Since January, I have actively encouraged job growth in South Carolina while removing barriers for job creation.  I am proud to say we are close to having 2,000 more full time jobs come to South Carolina. This week, the South Carolina House brought these jobs one step closer by voting in favor of the new Amazon amendment. This legislation would allow for Amazon to invest $125 million in a distribution facility in the Midlands. I supported this creation of jobs back in December. I stood firm on the steps of the State House supporting it on Tuesday. And even today, I am urging the State Senate to follow the lead of the State House of Representatives and pass this legislation! The Second District wants these jobs!

With Amazon coming to the Midlands, more local companies will be able to expand as a result of working with Amazon. This means more hiring across the state for small businesses. It also means new and higher-paying jobs for residents of our state. Finally, it means more dollars will be spent locally in our neighborhoods, our shopping malls, and our communities.

I am thankful for your support! As many of you know, progress is made from the bottom-up. By being vocal, we were able to get our state government to change its position 180 degrees in a matter of a few weeks. You and I both know government rarely moves that quickly. It’s a testament to your hard work and effort that we now have thousands of jobs and investment on the verge of coming to our community.

However, the bill still needs to be approved by the S.C. Senate. Please go to myFacebook page and vote in the poll to let me know how you feel.

Sincerely,

Joe Wilson
U.S. Congressman

P.S. To visit my Facebook page, please click here now.

You see, Joe has determined that in the core of his constituency, being FOR the Amazon break is a winner. Never mind that it has NOTHING to do with his job as a congressman. Unless, of course, he’d like to tell us how he’s working on a national solution to the internet shopping/sales tax issue, as both I and Amazon would like to see someone  in Congress do. Which he doesn’t mention.

Instead, he asks us to come to his Facebook page and tell him how we FEEL about this S.C. legislative issue.

This is sort of the kind of thing I was on about earlier.

Some thoughts on the president’s Mideast speech

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Coverage of President Obama’s speech today is concentrating on one big item related to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians: “Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal.” Plenty is being said about that.

Setting that aside, here are my favorite parts of his speech today:

He didn’t sugarcoat the way people have been manipulated in the region for too long: “In the face of these challenges, too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills, a half century after the end of colonialism. Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression. Divisions of tribe, ethnicity and religious sect were manipulated as a means of holding on to power, or taking it away from somebody else.”

He made sure no one could doubt where we stand on the change sweeping the region (while specific responses to specific situations may, and should, vary): “Not every country will follow our particular form of representative democracy, and there will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region. But we can – and will – speak out for a set of core principles – principles that have guided our response to the events over the past six months:

“The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region.
“We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran.
“And finally, we support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.”
When he WAS specific, he was generally right: “The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition, or get out of the way. The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests; release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests; allow human rights monitors to have access to cities like Dara’a; and start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition. Otherwise, President Assad and his regime will continue to be challenged from within and isolated abroad.”
Finally, he committed us to the most empowering thing we can do for people in the region, and for ourselves — help them bring something other than oil to the world economy: “Fourth, the United States will launch a comprehensive Trade and Investment Partnership Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa. If you take out oil exports, this region of over 400 million people exports roughly the same amount as Switzerland. So we will work with the EU to facilitate more trade within the region, build on existing agreements to promote integration with U.S. and European markets, and open the door for those countries who adopt high standards of reform and trade liberalization to construct a regional trade arrangement. Just as EU membership served as an incentive for reform in Europe, so should the vision of a modern and prosperous economy create a powerful force for reform in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Were there weaknesses? Yes, from my perspective. I could have done without another ritualistic slap at our decision to go into Iraq, which took this form: “…we have learned from our experience in Iraq just how costly and difficult it is to impose regime change by force – no matter how well-intended it may be.”
But I don’t think he meant it quite as negatively as that sounded at first, as I determined upon rereading it. I realized that after I heard this strong endorsement of what has been achieved there: “In Iraq, we see the promise of a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process, even as they have taken full responsibility for their own security. Like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. As they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner.” None of which would have happened, of course, with Saddam Hussein still in power.
On the whole, a speech that hit the right notes, and was a coherent and appropriate American response to a complex web of events and issues of critical importance to the world.
Good job.