Category Archives: Leadership

Nikki Haley dumps Darla Moore: A plain case of old-fashioned naked patronage

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It’s really hard to keep up with all the petty outrages (both “petty” and “outrageous” — yes, that seems about right) that our new young governor keeps pumping out.

I’m a busy guy — working, blogging, trying to grab a little sleep at night — and sometimes find myself momentarily out of the loop. Particularly when there are so many far more important things going on in the world. Let’s see, the Japan earthquake, Qaddafi (I’ve gotten to where I just spell his name with the first combination of letters that my fingers hit, so I hope that suits) moving to crush the rebellion while the world is distracted with Japan, Saudis intervening in Bahrain and people getting killed… And sometimes you have to put even that aside, and do other stuff…

So when I finish my Virtual Front Page and close the laptop, I sometimes don’t see any new developments until 7ish the next morning. Which is why I was taken aback at the very first Tweet I saw this morning:

Nettie Britts @nettie_bNettie Britts

Explain Darla Moore to me.

I replied, “Well, she’s this rich lady from South Carolina who tries to give back to her home state. That’s the Twitter version, I guess…” And I went on to breakfast. There, the grill room at the Capital City Club was buzzing with what I didn’t know about, since I hadn’t sat down to read the paper yet (don’t ask me why it wasn’t on thestate.com when I was doing the Virtual Front Page yesterday; maybe it was and I just missed it). The state and community leaders weren’t going, “Did you hear about Darla?” It was more like, “What do you think of the news?” Period.

Yep, this stuff happens to me, too. Not often, but sometimes.

So I sat down, and I read the paper. And I Tweeted this out:

Brad Warthen

@BradWarthen Brad Warthen

Nikki Haley dumping Darla Moore is classic case of naked, arbitrary exercise of patronage power….http://tinyurl.com/4nu4of8

You can congratulate me later for having gotten a link, an editorial point, “Nikki Haley,” “Darla Moore,” and “naked” into the Twitter format (with 14 characters of room left!). Let’s move on to the substance.

And the substance is… well, what I just said. It just doesn’t get any more blatant, plain, slap-in-the-face, I-don’t-care-what-you’ve-done-for-our-state-or-this-institution-I’ve-got-my-own-guy than this. Just bald, plain, take-it-for-what-it-is. Although I do have to hand it to Haley staffer Rob Godfrey for managing to twist the knife a bit with this bit of sarcastic insouciance:

Asked why the appointment was not announced, he said: “Given that there are over 1,000 appointments to boards and commissions the governor can make, we never intended to have a press conference for each one.”

Because, you know, Darla Moore isn’t any more important than that.

At the Cap City Club this morning, one of the regular movers and shakers made a rather naive and innocent remark (sometimes movers and shakers can surprise you that way), honestly asking, “How do you just brush aside someone who’s given $100 million to South Carolina?” (Yeah, I know she’s only pledged $70 million to USC and $10 million to Clemson, according to the story, but I guess he was rounding.)

I replied, patiently, here’s what Nikki Haley would say to that (were she brutally honest, of course): “She didn’t give ME a hundred million dollars. Tommy over here gave me $3,500. I don’t understand the question.” That’s Tommy Cofield, by the way, a Lexington attorney.

People who are not movers and shakers (and who in fact have a sort of visceral aversion to movers and shakers) can say some naive things, too. Over in a previous comment, our own Doug said “Are we assuming that Sheheen wouldn’t have replaced anyone he didn’t like?”

To that, I responded once again with the painfully obvious: “No, Vincent would not have replaced Darla Moore with an unknown, minor campaign contributor in such a prestigious post. If that’s what you’re asking.” Of course, I should have added, “without a reason.” By that, I would mean a valid reason, one that takes South Carolina’s and USC’s legitimate interests into account, one that is not just arbitrary.

Oh she GAVE what I suppose some folks (probably including Doug, believing as he does that there is nothing so deleterious to society as experience and commitment to the public weal) will regard as a reason: “As is the case with many of our appointees, the governor looked for a fresh set of eyes to put in a critical leadership position…”

That’s it.

And if you are one of the people who takes Nikki Haley at face value, as her supporters tend to do, and you don’t know or care about Darla Moore or the University of South Carolina — you just like to cheer on your Nikki — that will suffice. In with the new, out with the old. She will feel in no way obligated to explain what was wrong with Darla Moore’s service on the board, or to cite any of the exciting new ideas that her appointee brings to the table that were previously missing. No one will expect that of her; it probably wouldn’t even occur to her to think about it. The governor will skate on this with these people — this is something that is core to her whole approach to politics ever since she transformed herself into the darling of the Tea Party in preparation for her run for this office for which she was so unprepared.

This WORKS for her. She skates on this, just as — with the voters she cares about — she will skate on apparently having told a prospective employer in 2007 that she was making $125,000 a year when she was telling the IRS that she made $22,000. This will matter not. People are just picking at her. The nasty, powerful, status quo people — those people who hang out at the Capital City Club! — are picking at Nikki because they’re mean, you see. (By the way, on the “petty” vs. “outrageous” spectrum, the thing on the job application is more the typical “petty” violation of her alleged principles that we have come to expect; the Darla Moore thing, dealing as it does with the leadership of such an important state institution, is more of an “outrage.” If you’re keeping score.)

She will not only skate, but her supporters — or at least, this is what the governor banks on — will continue, in spite of all evidence, to see her as a champion of transparency, a reformer, a nemesis of “politics as usual” and patron saint of Good Government. Which just, you know, boggles the mind if you’re the sensible sort who thinks about things.

That’s the plan, anyway. And that’s why she did this, and really doesn’t care if you, or the university, or the business community, or Darla Moore don’t like it.

Interesting letter from Eleanor Kitzman today

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I don’t read the letters to the editor as closely as I used to. OK, to be perfectly honest, I hardly read them at ALL now that I’m not paid to do so, unless someone brings one to my attention.

Today was an exception, though. As my eye ran over the page, something in the last letter jumped out at me. I saw the words, “As a former Democratic candidate for state superintendent of education,” and scanned to the bottom to see the writer’s name was “Carlos W. Gibbons.” Hmmm. I do not know a Carlos W. Gibbons, which made me curious, and I sent out an e-mail to someone who knows stuff I don’t know, and learned that apparently he is a veteran educator who ran for the office in the early 1970s — and the father of Leeza Gibbons of TV fame.

In any case, he was right to advocate that the state superintendent post be appointed by the governor.

But it turns out that, until a few minutes ago, I had missed today’s really interesting letter — the one at the top of the stack. Alert reader “Tim” brought it to my attention moments ago. I’m just going to go ahead and put the whole thing here, and hope I don’t run afoul of Fair Use. Because this was an unusual letter:

Keep ignoring reality, governor

I have known Gov. Haley for many years, and she is one of my five bosses on the Budget and Control Board. If the governor is ignoring reality as Roger Hawkins contends (“Haley can’t continue to ignore realities,” March 3), my advice to her is to keep it up; it has served her well.

Moreover, I’d suggest that others follow her excellent example. Rather than ignoring reality, however, I believe Gov. Haley has wisely rejected the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority.

There’s never any shortage of people telling you that you can’t do something.

Perhaps more insidious are those who maintain that we need their “help” to overcome adversity because not everyone has the governor’s abilities to plow through the impediments of life or navigate around diversity issues. I couldn’t disagree more and would ask why not.

We may not all become governors, but we can achieve our goals if we stop seeing ourselves as victims.

We must be fearless and willing to work hard, make good choices and, most importantly, never give up in pursuit of a dream. (Don’t even get me started on yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works to an ethnic woman.)

Eleanor Kitzman

Columbia

Now, the thing that was unusual about this may not be immediately apparent to you. But if you had known any of Ms. Kitzman’s predecessors as chief of the Budget and Control Board, you’d know. It’s sort of hard to imagine — actually, impossible to imagine — Frank Fusco, or Fred Carter, writing (or even thinking) words that would be anything like those that Ms. Kitzman put in that letter. Whether you think of them as faceless bureaucrats, or as the very models of professional discretion that they were, it’s difficult to imagine them expressing their views in such a manner.

If you don’t know those guys, and don’t have that background, my reaction to Ms. Kitzman’s letter probably won’t make much sense to you.

Under those guys, the B&C Board (which should not exist at all, but you know that once I get started on that subject I can be all day) was a lot of things, but one thing it was not was a forum for expressing personal sentiments about particular politicians — the governor, or anyone else. There was a reason for that — the director worked for five bosses with five different egos and agendas. What was the point of being too closely identified with any of them?

I mean, forgive me for sounding like “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works,” but gee whiz, folks… (I thought, as exclamations do, that “gee whiz” sounded appropriately whitebread and old fashioned, didn’t you? I’m trying to play my assigned part as well as I can, and these small touches mean so much.)

The letter was so… emotional. So indignant. So partisan, in the sense of taking one person’s side against another. There are other terms I could use, but you know what? I just keep coming back to emotional — which I suppose will just expose me to, um, passionate condemnation for gender stereotyping, but hey, leave gender out of it (isn’t that what the brutes always say — “leave gender out of it?” the cads…). Think that I’m saying it the way Lee Marvin said it to Robert Ryan, “I owe you an apology, Colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight lipped officer. But you’re really … quite emotional. Aren’t you?” (The way I look at it, you can’t get any further away from gender politics than by quoting “The Dirty Dozen.” Am I right or am I right?)

I read something like that, and I think, what possessed her to write that? Yes, she owes her $174,000-a-year position to the governor as a matter of political fact, but why call attention to that in such a dramatic way? Did the governor know she was writing that letter? Does the governor approve of her having written that letter? She certainly didn’t need such a defense; she would have been fine without it.

For my part, I hadn’t even read the piece she was referring to (remember, I’m no longer paid to), but I can bet you I went and read it after seeing that letter. It was… unremarkable, really. Kind of unfocused. Seemed like the writer was trying to make some strong points, but trying to be kind and gentle with it, and swinging back and forth between commending the governor for being a determined “don’t let anything stand in your way” type and admonishing her for engaging in “magical thinking.”

Was the op-ed from this Hawkins fella somehow an example of White Male Oppressor insensitivity? Did he show a lack of appreciation for the governor’s inspiring story of ethnic pluck that we’ve heard so… much… about…? Was he trying to brutally impose on her “the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority?” Hardly. He had, on his own initiative, shown due deference to the obligatory talking points in that regard. In fact, he went on about it as much as Ms. Kitzman did:

Haley’s success to this point in her life has been built around navigating diversity, not letting it get in her way or positioning herself as just a diversity hire. She was born into Sikhism, an Indian religion that adopts elements from both Hinduism and Islam, and later converted to the Methodist faith.

Haley earned a degree in accounting — a profession dominated by men — and began her career at a waste-management and recycling company. Throughout her formative years, she never interacted with large numbers of people who looked like her. Her political career is also based on being an outsider. She recently told an audience that Sanford told her the state wasn’t ready for a female governor.

OK, wait a minute; here’s the trouble. Seems Mr. Hawkins was, rather than being too indifferent, a bit too CONCERNED about matters of Identity Politics, for he had just said:

What Haley has done that is troubling is appoint nine white men, three white women and one African-American woman to her Cabinet. None of her 16 executive staff members is African-American.

Hey, you know what I think about all that I.D. stuff — if you wanted a “diverse” Cabinet and staff in the superficial demographic sense, you should have elected the White Guy. (And if you ARE someone who cares deeply about such things, you probably DID vote for the White Guy, and Nikki Haley knows that, so quit your bellyaching. Whoops, I’m being insensitive again…) But this guy apparently DID care about it, and said so. And for this, he’s condemned as… what was it again… “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works….” Yeah, that was it — no wait, I forgot the part about “to an ethnic woman.” Mustn’t leave that off.

Anyway, it just wasn’t the kind of letter I’m used to reading from B&C Board chiefs. This is going to be interesting going forward, folks.

Just to say something you don’t hear all that often

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The quixotic demonstration at the State House yesterday by citizens sick of seeing our state’s infrastructure rapidly eroding under the stewardship of shortsighted politicians was of course an exercise in futility.

But I’m no stranger to that. A few minutes ago, looking for a link for a previous post that needed one, I went back to the last week of posts on my old blog I had at the paper, and ran across this forgotten item — which, as it happens, was day after the post in which I announced that I had been laid off:

Good job rejecting the tuition caps

This might sound strange coming from a guy who was already counting pennies (or quarters, anyway — I miscounted how many I had this morning in my truck, and ended up with a parking ticket because I didn’t have enough for the meter), with my two youngest daughters still in college. And now I’m about to be unemployed.

But I’m glad the House rejected tuition caps at S.C. colleges and universities. I have an anecdote to share about that.

Remember the recent day when college students wandered the State House lobbying lawmakers on behalf of their institutions. They wanted the state to invest in higher education the way North Carolina and Georgia have. Either that day, or the day after, I had lunch with Clemson President James Barker, and he told me an anecdote he had witnessed: He said the students were pressing a lawmaker NOT to support the tuition caps, because they were worried about their institutions being even more underfunded — they hardly get anything from the state — some are down below 20 percent funding by the state, and the rest has to come from such sources as tuition, federal research grants and private gifts. Eliminate the ability to raise tuition, and the institution’s ability to provide an excellent education is significantly curtailed. If we want lower tuitions, the state should go back to funding higher percentages of the schools’ budgets, the way our neighboring states with better higher ed systems do.

The lawmaker listened to the kids, and then said with great condescension, maybe you kids don’t care if tuition goes up, but I’ll bet your parents would like a cap. He thought he had them there, but the kids set him straight: None of their parents were paying the bills. These kids were working their way through schools and paying for it all themselves. And they didn’t want to see the quality of what they were working so hard to pay for be degraded by an artificial cap on tuition. The lawmaker had not counted on getting that answer.

I wish I had been there to see it, because I’ve been in a similar place before. Back in 95 or 96, Speaker Wilkins had brought his committee chairs to see us, and I started challenging the wisdom of their massive rollback of property taxes paid for school.One of them allowed as how he bet I was glad to get that couple of hundred dollars I didn’t have to pay. And I answered him that I was ashamed that I was paying so little through my property tax to support schools that I knew needed more resources. He said smugly that he was sure I wouldn’t want to give it back. I told him I didn’t see as how there was any channel for doing that, but if he could point me to the right person who would take my money and see it gets to the right place, I would pay the difference. He didn’t have a good answer for that.

It would be great if our lawmakers would stop assuming that all of us in South Carolina are so greedily shortsighted that we can’t see past our personal desire to pay less money, and that we are corruptible by a scheme to starve colleges of reasonable support.

Reading that now, with all that’s happened since — the rise of the Tea Party, the eagerness of Republicans, demoralized after their 2008 defeat, to embrace destructive extremism (and of course, what happens to the Republican Party as happens to South Carolina, which it dominates), the election of Nikki Haley over more experienced, less extreme candidates of both parties — it reads like thoughts from another century. And, of course, another place.

Imagine, even dreaming of our state caring enough about education to invest in it the way our neighboring states have, much less suggesting that we do so. How anachronistic can one get? All that’s happened since then is that South Carolina has run, faster every day, in the opposite direction — with out elected leaders firmly convinced that that is not only the right direction in which to run, but the only one.

Sheheen (and Knotts — yeah, Jake) going after “leadership PACs”)

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Got this yesterday, thought I’d pass it on:

Dear Brad —

People say that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

It seems that no matter how many rules we put into place to regulate the flood of money and influence in our elections, politicians too often find ways around these rules.  Here in South Carolina, one vehicle for getting around campaign contribution limits imposed by law is through entities called leadership political action committees or “leadership PACs.”  Some politicians operate “leadership PACs,” which enable them to accept larger contributions from their cronies and then, in turn, dole out money to other candidates.  This creates a culture of politicians whose coffers are flush with money being able to exert influence over others through their “leadership PACs.”

The end result?  Corruption and unfair influence.  I’m writing today to for your help in putting a stop to this practice.

It has not been the custom in the South Carolina Senate for members to operate “leadership PACs,” but recently Sen. Jake Knotts and I proposed and passed a new rule explicitly banning the practice among senators.  We are hoping that this will put pressure on our colleagues in the South Carolina House of Representatives to follow suit.

I’ve sponsored a bill this session that, if passed, would ban PACs organized by or on behalf of any statewide officeholder or member of the General Assembly.

Will you call or email your legislators today and urge them to support S. 633? You can look up your members of the South Carolina House and Senate by clicking here.

The editorial board of The State newspaper published an editorial this week urging members of the legislature to pass this bill.  I’ve included this editorial below.

Not sure how the Sheheen/Knotts team-up happened. I guess it’s just a coalition of the willing. In any case, 38 other senators have signed on. Of course, as Cindi noted in the edit, that’s probably because “leadership PACs” are a House, not a Senate, phenomenon. You probably know that historically, the divide between House and Senate has been much sharper than that between Democrat and Republican. As the edit noted:

For the record, the only ones we’re aware of are controlled by House Speaker Bobby Harrell, House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, House Labor, Commerce and Industry Chairman Bill Sandifer, House Democratic Leader Harry Ott and Reps. Jim Merrill, Alan Clemmons and Gilda Cobb-Hunter.

Obama: Ready To Tap Oil Reserve If Needed — which it ISN’T, not by a long shot

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The president at this afternoon's presser. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Well, gasoline prices are rising toward levels that might, just might, cause some of us to face reality and acknowledge that it’s not a good idea at all to be so desperately dependent on cheap oil from crazy-dangerous parts of the world, and what are our elected leaders — Democrats and Republicans — doing?

Why, what they always do — pandering. But there’s pandering, and then there’s pandering.

The GOP is busily blaming Barack “Root of All Evil” Obama. The president himself is responding by saying, at a press conference today, that he’s prepared to tap the strategic oil reserve, if needed.

But that last part is key, and his way out as a rational man. It’s like his promise to “start” withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by a certain date, which in no way commits him to draw down dangerously before it’s wise to do so. Obama’s smart; he’s not going to pander so far that he commits himself to something irresponsible. This is a quality that he has demonstrated time and again, and which has greatly reassured me ever since he beat my (slightly) preferred candidate for the presidency. This is the quality — or one of them — that made me glad to say so often, back in 2008, that for the first time in my editorial career, both major-party candidates for president were ones I felt good about (and both of whom we endorsed, in their respective primaries).

It’s certainly more defensible than Mr. Boehner’s reflexive partisan bashing. And it’s WAY more defensible than Al “Friend of the Earth” Gore asking Bill Clinton to tap the reserve to help him win the 2000 election.

To quote from the report I just saw on the NPR site:

Obama said he’s prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed. But as gas prices climbed toward $4 a gallon, the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.

“We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now. Every few years gas prices go up, politicians pull out the same political playbook, and nothing changes,” Obama said.

“I don’t want to leave this to the next president,” he said.

Some in Congress have been calling on Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And the president made clear Friday that that was an option, although he indicated he wasn’t yet prepared to exercise it. He declined to specify the conditions that would trigger the step, but said it was teed up and could happen quickly if he chooses to call for it….

His threshold, based on what he said, is a Hurricane Katrina, or worse. Personally, I’d raise the bar a bit higher than that, but he’s on the right track, trying to set a high standard. (You make a disruption like Katrina the standard, then next thing you know, you’re tempted to lower it to, say, a BP oil spill — and that’s not the direction you want to go in.)

The key word here is “strategic,” a threshold that I would think wouldn’t be crossed until we have a sustained inability to GET oil to power our economy — something we came close to, in spots, in recent crises. But it seems to me one only turns to such “strategic” options as a last resort. The president should be “prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed” in the same sense he is expected to be prepared to crack open the “football” and activate the codes for going nuclear. OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get where I’m going with this. It’s something we hope and pray never happens, and we do our best to pursue policies that avoid such an eventuality.

By the way, back to that excerpt above. I particularly love “the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.” Earlier today, I disparaged the president for being no Energy Party man. (I was essentially repeating an observation I made about both him and McCain in a July 6, 2008, column.)

But maybe I was wrong. If he keeps saying things like that, he may deserve the Energy nomination in 2012 after all.

S.C. Border Patrol? Can anyone POSSIBLY think of anything more absurd for a state that can’t afford basic services?

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Well, I sort of said it all in the headline, didn’t I? In fact, I already did on Twitter early this morning; I’m just repeating myself here because not ALL my readers follow me on Twitter (even though they should). Also, this is a better place for your comments.

But here’s the report that inspired it:

The S.C. General Assembly would have to find money in its already strapped budget to pay for its version of a border patrol if the latest version of the state’s proposed immigration law wins approval.

The Illegal Immigration Enforcement Unit would fall under the supervision of the S.C. Department of Public Safety, according to a provision added Wednesday by Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington. The unit would have its own insignia, uniforms and cars, and the Department of Public Safety would have to create it as a separate entity from the S.C. Highway Patrol, which already faces a shortage of troopers.

The bill passed the Senate after a session that stretched past midnight and into Thursday morning. Senate leaders and the bill’s sponsors were determined to push immigration legislation through its chambers before the schedule gets filled with budget debates and the task of drawing new legislative districts…

Maybe this is a good thing, though. Maybe this way — authorize it, but don’t fund it — they get all this stuff out of their system so they can move on to significant issues facing the state. On the other hand, given the way they’ve approached some of the critical issues lately, maybe not.

This stuff just astounds me. The “small-gummint” people who are trashing critical services left and right, and seeing that as a GOOD thing rather than a bitter necessity, because their ideology blinds them to the realities in the world, want to create a whole new government apparatus — something that is CLEARLY a federal function, under any rational understanding of levels of government, under the principle of subsidiarity or whatever you choose to apply — to scratch this one irrational itch.

Stuff like this just makes me feel… well, perhaps Billy Jack said it best (apologies for the paraphrase, Billy):

Bernard, I want you to know… that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and noncynical like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see garbage like this… the absurdity of this idiotic moment of yours… I just go BERSERK!

Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds (and it’s kinda freaking me out)

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Been feeling the need to write this ever since I read the paper early this morning. I haven’t had time before now…

Nikki Haley kind of blew my mind on three fronts this morning, which caused me to go on a bit of a rant at breakfast (Wesley isn’t the only ranter in Columbia), along these lines:

  1. “Haley to grade legislators.” Did you see that headline this morning? I normally eschew text-speak, but WTF? None of the lawmakers quite came out and said this, but I’ll tell you what they were thinking: “This little girl couldn’t even get called on when she raised her hand at the back of the class a year ago, and now she’s going to grade US?” This would be followed by the aforementioned “WTF?” Yep, lawmakers really think like that, the insensitive brutes. Now, before you think this is just a question of whom you like — with reactions divided between Haley fans who cheer, “Go get ’em, Nikki!” and the harrumphers who do not and never will be Haley fans — allow me to point something out to you. It would be presumptuous for anyone to do this. Back when I worked in Tennessee, some writers at one of the Nashville papers would grade all the legislators at the end of the session each year. I thought it presumptuous as all get-out, but… it was still within the bounds of acceptable commentary. And it would certainly be permissible for me to do something like that on my blog, although you would be equally free to tell me to what extent I was full of it. Just an exchange of views among citizens. But here’s the problem with Nikki doing it, in case you didn’t make it through Civics 101: She’s the governor, which means she’s the closest thing to a head of the executive branch that we’ve got (in another state, she’d be the head of the executive branch, but this is South Carolina). For the chief executive to use whatever political influence she has to harass and bully and threaten lawmakers, even in as silly a manner as this (do my will, or I’ll give you a bad grade!), smacks of bossism. Ben Tillman would have loved a device like that for keeping lawmakers in line, and Boss Crump as well. Folks, the best virtue Nikki Haley has going for her is that she advocates restructuring that would make the executive branch more accountable to the governor (and in fact, it’s their positions on reforms like that that she plans to “grade” lawmakers on). But this kind of behavior gives executive power a bad name, and gives lawmakers — who don’t want to give the governor power anyway — an excuse to blow her off, just as Mark Sanford did with his defecating piglets. And that’s what takes this beyond silly, practically to the realm of outrage. The very modest restructuring legislation that just passed the House will have tough-enough sledding in the Senate (where all such reforms go to die) without this nonsense.
  2. “Governor takes aim at state employee benefits.” Wow. Poor Nikki. Last year, she was the darling of the national media (which is how she won the election), making the cover of Newsweek twice. Now, she feels forgotten. Through the lens of this story, you can see the little wheels turning in her head: Look at all the attention that governor in Wisconsin is getting! That’s so unfair? What’s he doing? Oh, he’s trying to take away state employees collective bargaining power. What an awesome idea! I’ll do that too, and then I can get some attention? What? Oh, drat! We don’t HAVE public employee unions in South Carolina, so I can’t strike dramatic poses fighting against them! That’s really, REALLY unfair! What, oh what am I going to do? There must be SOMETHING I can do to state employees here that will draw attention… but what? I know! I’ll go after their BENEFITS…
  3. “The mystery man on Haley’s staff.” THIS one is so weird, that I suspect there’s a typo in it somewhere. So… Nikki has a guy on her staff who supposedly is only being paid $1 a year. He’s supposedly a government-efficiency expert who’s gonna help the gov straighten out waste and inefficiency in our gummint. He uprooted his family and moved here from Pennsylvania for the job — for the $1-a-year job. OK, this causes a lot of people to suspect there’s something else going on, and speculate that he’s waiting around for a real job that could come open soon. This he denies, or at least says he hasn’t been promised anything. But that wouldn’t be my theory anyway, given those facts. MY theory is that he’s being paid by one of those national ideological groups that flock around the Mark Sanfords of the world. Howie Rich, or Grover Norquist or some such. But he says no, that he’s living off his state employee pension from Pennsylvania. Got that? OK… The story also says he’s 32 years old. Twice. In the main body of the story, and in a graphic. After someone suggested it was a double-typo, I Tweeted John O’Connor to ask him. He Tweeted back that “No, that’s his age according to the governor’s office.” So maybe the governor’s office is wrong about his age. But if not — this guy’s able to live on a state pension (and I went back to look again, and yes, the only jobs listed in the published summary of his resume sound like state jobs) at the age of 32 — and he’s here as an expert on government efficiency? That ought to make state employees breath a sigh of relief. No way he’ll have the nerve to urge the governor to reduce their pensions, huh? Unless he’s the nerviest guy in two states. Somewhere, there’s gotta be something inaccurate in this picture, because the “facts” we have definitely don’t add up.

OK, I got all that off my chest. Now, to shift gears on you, and praise our governor for her pushiness — in that same story about state employee benefits, she promised to present lawmakers with a comprehensive tax reform plan. THAT’S the kind of presumption I can cheer for. But I’m going to hold my applause until I see whether it’s comprehensive, and whether it’s reform. The first sign will be whether she steps up and proposes to undo the execrable Act 388.

And… now that I’m cooled down a bit… I’ll go further in that backtracking direction: I still haven’t made up my mind about what I think of the bill I wrote about earlier that would do essentially what Nikki’s saying with state pensions. (Mainly because I haven’t yet seen enough about it — on something that complex and that financial, I sort of need some broad input to make up my mind.) But the truth is, I read items 2 and 3 right after reading item 1 this morning, so it all looked bad while I was in that mood.

And now that I’m looking at them again before hitting “Publish,” I’m still kinda freaked out…

Breathtaking euphemism: Cutting health care payments in SC

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Catching up on my e-mail, I ran across this release from our friend Wesley over with the Senate Republicans:

Senate passes bill giving DHHS budget flexibility

The state Department of Health and Human Services needs to crawl out of a $228 million hole for this fiscal year, alone. Next year, deficit estimates top $500 million. But, it doesn’t have to stay this way. That’s why Senate Republicans led the fight today to pass S. 434 — it removes budgetary constraints on the actions of agency director Tony Keck and gives him and his department more flexibility as it comes to this fiscal crisis.

The legislation, chief sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler and cosponsored by Senators Kevin Bryant and Lee Bright, requires the ability to purchase generic drugs instead of more expensive name brands. Most importantly, it repeals part of a proviso that stopped any DHHS director from modifying the schedule by which doctors and hospitals were paid through the state’s administration of Medicaid.

“This bill is all about untying Mr. Keck’s hands and allowing him to do his job as effectively as he can,” Peeler said following the vote. “That doesn’t mean he has to cut programs, it means he can cut. With such a huge deficit, we need Keck to be running his own agency, not micromanaged by the legislature.”

The bill’s passage is also seen as a win for Gov. Nikki Haley. It both invests more power to an executive branch agency and hands those reigns over to one of her recent appointments. The budgetary problems within DHHS — and Medicaid in particular — have been high on issues to address for both the governor and the legislature as they entered this session.

Keck has said that he’s looking at making health care providers modify their staffing ratios, increasing patient co-pays and taking a hard line in favor medical tort reform. Senate Republicans are ready to help him in any way possible fix the agency’s financial problems.

“Flexibility.” I like that. It reminds me of when people who want to increase taxes call what they’re doing “revenue enhancements.” When conservatives in SC want to cut spending on life-and-death essentials, they call it “flexibility.” As euphemisms go, it’s sort of breathtaking.

I especially liked this part, so I’ll repeat it:

“This bill is all about untying Mr. Keck’s hands and allowing him to do his job as effectively as he can,” Peeler said following the vote. “That doesn’t mean he has to cut programs, it means he can cut. With such a huge deficit, we need Keck to be running his own agency, not micromanaged by the legislature.”

Translation: We’re going to flat make these cuts, but we are not going to take the responsibility. That’s what the governor hired Mr. Keck to do. Interesting how sometimes, the Senate sees granting power to the executive as a good thing. Take note, boys and girls. Take pictures, and remember so you can tell your own children, because this doesn’t happen often. Normally, as Cindi wrote on Wednesday, or Legislature is “fixated… on micromanaging the most mundane minutiae of state government…”

But flexibility — that’s a good thing, right? Sounds good, anyway.

Here’s the way what the Senate did was described by a neutral party (which is why we have the MSM):

The S.C. Senate gave key approval Thursday to a bill allowing immediate cuts in state payments to doctors and hospitals that treat patients in the state-run health care program for the poor and disabled.

Gov. Nikki Haley and the Department of Health and Human Services have sought to cut those payments in order to make up part of a $225 million deficit at the state’s Medicaid agency. Agency director Tony Keck said the state could save $2.4 million between now and June 30 for every percentage point that it cuts those payments.

The bill also requires HIV, AIDS, cancer and mental-health patients to use generic drugs or get prior approval from the state’s health agency to use more expensive, non-generic drugs.

So you’ve seen it described two ways — by the perpetrators and by the news media. Now, here’s the assessment of someone at the other end of the spectrum. Samuel Tenenbaum, the head of Palmetto Health Foundation, came to my table at breakfast to make sure I knew what was going on from the perspective of health care providers. He said it’s not a fiscal issue, but a moral issue, for this reason: Cut back on payments for care, and “people will die.”

This, of course, will be dismissed by folks at the first end of the spectrum who will describe Samuel as a bleeding-heart liberal Democrat whose ox is being gored. They’ll tell him to get out there and work harder raising money for the hospital, if he’s so concerned. But you know, I don’t distrust the judgments of people who are actually involved in the complex business of paying for health care. I tend to think that they, the involved parties, more than anyone else, may actually understand the situation. Call me crazy.

Later in the day, Samuel sent me this set of more formal talking points, elaborating on his stark assessment at breakfast:

• The Problem
Former Governor Mark Sanford originally requested $659 million to fund the Medicaid program for fiscal year 2011-12. Governor Nikki Haley and her Medicaid director Tony Keck reduced that request by over $200 million. More than half of that reduction would be made up by reducing Medicaid payments to hospitals, physicians and other healthcare
providers.
• South Carolina Hospital Association Proposal
SCHA member hospitals support a temporary increase in the $264 million hospital contribution to the state’s Medicaid fund as opposed to a cut in hospital provider rates.
• Why contribute rather than cut?
• A 10 percent reduction in the rate paid to hospitals will “save” $47 million in state funds but “cost” the state almost $170 million in federal matching funds. As Mr. Beaman has stated, a 10 percent cut for Palmetto Health will result in a $22 million loss to our system.
• Over 2600 South Carolina hospital jobs will be put in jeopardy.

So there you have it, a sort of Three Bears approach — perspectives on the issue from both ends and the middle. See what you think.

Mark Stewart and The State both have it right on the port of Charleston

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Sometimes my readers spend time thinking about an issue at some length, and write me a note about it, and suggest I write about it on the blog — and I realize it will be days before I find time to think about it as much as they have (if I ever do), so… why not just post that reader’s thoughts? Sort of what I did with Kathryn’s contribution the other day… although I solicited that; this one just came in over the transom.

Anyway, here’s what Mark Stewart thought yesterday after reading an editorial on the subject in The State:

Brad,

I read The State editorial this morning and thought that they came close but missed the boat on a few key points that might make for an interesting discussion on your blog.

After education, I believe that the Port of Charleston is perhaps the most important driver for economic prosperity across the state over the next fifty years.  I don’t normally grandstand on words like this, but I would argue that this issue may be one of EPIC proportions for South Carolina.  As happened with airline hubs, the emergence of a new shipping paradigm, the 50’ depth for super-container ships, will render obsolescent most of the remaining American ports as far as international trade goes.  Only a few of the ports will be viable in this new world.  This will lead to an even greater consolidation of economic activity.

The clear winners will be Los Angeles/Long Beach; New York/NJ; Norfolk, VA and Seattle.  But there will likely be a few others.  One of those might be a Southeastern port.  At present Savannah is the nation’s fourth-largest container port.  But it has a serious issue – it is 35 miles up a river which is now only 42 feet deep.  As Charleston did in the 1830’s when it drove the first Southern railroad to Augusta, The Port of Charleston has the opportunity now to seize back the economy of North Georgia from Savannah.  With a mega port, South Carolina would have the opportunity to become the hub of the Southeast and parts of the Midwest, funneling the economies of Atlanta and Charlotte along the way – and possibly also of Florida.

Georgia recognizes this need/opportunity in a way that South Carolina does not.  And yet, the Obama administration did not support Savannah’s request to begin the dredging process just as it did not provide funds to Charleston.  I believe this is because, unlike with New York and Norfolk, it is not clear who the winner will or should be in the Southeast.

That’s an opportunity.

But here is where The State’s editorial missed the entire picture.  Simply dredging Charleston is not the answer.  The real problem is on the land.  The thing that will hobble South Carolina’s future is the current lack of a robust port to railroad connection.   What is the point of dredging the harbor channels to a depth of 50 feet if the intermodel connections to move freight throughout the state and region efficiently are not there?  Now trucks clog I-26 and the local roadways in North Charleston and yet that city continues to fight more complete rail access to the Port terminals.  Worse still, the largest container terminal is on Mt. Pleasant and not even near a rail line.  So the issue really isn’t whether all politicians support the allocation of federal funds for dredging, it’s does the State of South Carolina support the creation of the landside infrastructure that would make the decision to dredge deeper a rational one?

The second point that the editorial touched on, but did not hammer home is this:  Sen. DeMint wants to promote legislation to have the Corps of Engineers be the party ultimately responsible for selecting which of America’s ports are dredged to the new trade standard.  What he seems not to understand is that this is not a scientific process of comparing variables.  It is instead a political knife-fight.  Yes, items such as channel depths, distances to open water, intermodel connections, and port terminals are critically important in advocating one’s position.  But what we are really talking about is the economic future of our state.  It’s not just that there will be winners and losers; it is that the winners will see compounding economic growth.  If Sen. DeMint does not understand that this is an issue of politics and that the U.S. Congress will be the ultimate battleground, then maybe national politics isn’t the right place for him.  We are not talking about philosophical viewpoints on the issue of earmarks; we are talking about representing the State of South Carolina in the most important battle for our long-term economic vitality and growth.  Senator DeMint is not showing any sort of leadership on this issue – in fact, it appears that he does not even realize what the issue is or that the fight is already on.

Do I agree with Mark on this (as I do on most thing, although not all)? Well, really, I agree with him and The State both. And I’ll add that, like The State, I’m a little more sympathetic than Mark seems to be toward Sen. DeMint’s desire to have the Corps decide. I think that’s a solid, Good Government 101 approach, and I hesitate to endorse Mark’s approach of saying we just need to squeeze all the political advantage for SC that we can out of this situation.

Again, I like The State‘s approach — concede the rightness of the senator’s original intent, but point out in no uncertain terms that such laudable original intents do NOT excuse his subsequent boneheaded behavior on the issue. Here’s what I mean:

Mr. DeMint says he’s focused on convincing the Congress to change the law so that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can use its own judgment to decide which projects to pursue, rather than abiding by the political dictates of the president and the Congress. It’s a wonderful idea, and not just because any honest evaluation of our nation’s ports needs would conclude that the Charleston harbor is a better investment of federal dollars than other ports whose deepening is being funded. But there is no realistic chance that it’s going to pass, which means that he has an obligation to work on Plans B and C as well. (If Mr. Wilson or any of our four new members of Congress have any plans for getting the port deepened absent a presidential request or a congressional earmark, they’re keeping them to themselves.)

Would their signatures have guaranteed that President Obama included the funding in his budget? No. In fact, Mr. DeMint might well be correct when he says that it would have made no difference. But he might not be, and the need is so great, and the cost to him and Mr. Wilson so low that it is simply incomprehensible that they would refuse to lend their names to a letter. Their refusal is akin to a mother whose child needs a life-saving operation she can’t afford refusing to sign a letter that her husband wrote to a charity asking for help simply because the charity’s director roots for a different ball team than she does.

One more thought, on one facet of this issue: At some point, South Carolina has to make a decision which it’s going to respect more: the desires of the rich Yankees who move to Charleston (and rich neoConfederates allied with them) and don’t want any nasty commerce spoiling the quaintness they paid for, or the desperate need of this whole state for economic development. Or maybe South Carolina has already decided, and decided wrong. In which case, it’s time to think again.

And finally, I want to thank Mark for getting me to address this important issue. And I addressed it in the best possible way, in the mind of an old assigning editor: I got somebody else to do all the work. Cindi Scoppe and many others who worked for me as reporters will recognize my modus operandi.

Who are your Top Five Presidents?

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Salon is SO predictable. For President’s Day, they post a piece posing the question, “Who’s the worst president of them all?” And of course, since that site is totally in the grip of Bush Derangement Syndrome (still), it boils down to a choice between George W. Bush and someone else. In this case, Buchanan.

Of course, being Salon, that’s why they ran it. But you know where they would go before you clicked on the link, right? So partisan. So parochial. So lacking in historical perspective.

Yawn.

Me, I’m not interested in a worst, or a worst list, because that just doesn’t seem in the spirit of Presidents’ Day, which is about celebrating rather than tearing down. So, who are your Top Five, All Time, Desert-Island presidents?

Oh, and if you include Barack Obama, which to me would be the flip side of picking W. as the worst, as if you can’t think outside your own 21st century chauvinism, I’ll just quote Barry at you:

Couldn’t you make it any more obvious than that? What about the Beatles? What about the Rolling Stones? What about…Beethoven? Track one side one of the Fifth Symphony?…

(You sort of have to know Barry to get that. And if you don’t, I definitely recommend that you read High Fidelity, which is where I got this mania for Top Five Lists. The movie’s fine, but read the book.)

My own list is a little shaky, but I’ll just throw some out there to get this started:

  1. Abraham Lincoln — The guy who held us together at the fulcrum of our history, and did it with heroic force of will and epic strength of character while at the same time maintaining his own instinctive humility. He seemed at times to stand alone, politically, in his insistence on holding the nation together (and thank God he did). No one outdoes him in rising above finger-in-the-wind politics to embody leadership; only Washington and FDR come close. That brooding statue at the memorial is the visual evocation of what I’m talking about, which is what makes it so iconic. Of course, if you’re of pacifist tendencies, you have to note that no one person in our history was more singlehandedly responsible for the shedding of more American blood — without his force of will, the nation likely wouldn’t have stayed the course that long. But then, you have to ask yourself, was it worth it? Unfortunately, we’re still fighting over that in SC.
  2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Again, almost superhuman leadership through crises of such scope and sweep that they stagger the mind. Argue all you want about the effectiveness of the New Deal, I think it was this cripple’s ebullient refusal to be a cripple, or let his country wallow in its troubles, that pulled us through the Depression more than anything. As for the Second World War — the nation was right to feel panicky when he died just before we’d finished winning it; his leadership was that critical on an abstract, spiritual level. The fact that we went ahead and won it quickly is a testament to what he’d already done, but also, it should be said, proof that the nation’s greatness and strength exceeds that of one man, however great the man. You could say that anybody who was president through those crises would be deemed great after they ended successfully. But I would say the nation was very fortunate to have this particular man at that time. And the people of this country knew it, which is why they elected him four times.
  3. John Adams — OK, he’s not necessarily the greatest AS president (in fact, that was one of the low points of his career), and sure, there’s that business where he let the more partisan Federalists maneuver him into the Alien and Sedition Acts. It’s just that, if you take his whole life — and his whole adult life pretty much was devoted to getting this country started, being the most eloquent advocate for independence, getting backing from abroad (the French, the Dutch) for the revolution, suggesting Washington to head the Continental Army, (and suggesting Jefferson do the final writing on the Declaration), and on and on — it’s hard to imagine one guy contributing so much to a new country. But he did. I guess I’m putting him on here as a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award.
  4. George Washington — Back when I was in college, it wasn’t fashionable to emphasize Washington as much as some of the other Founders. You know, because he was so obvious, it was uncool. (We were like Barry, in other words.) I tended to focus on the idea guys — Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton. But over time, I’ve come to understand better the importance of his leadership — both in terms of being an inspirational leader that the country could rally around (something he cultivated consciously, which would make some dismiss him, but I think he saw what the country needed and provided it), and in terms of his self-effacing refusal to become a king or a facsimile of one. In other words, my understanding and appreciation has progressed beyond the cherry-tree myth.
  5. Theodore Roosevelt — I used to think that Teddy was on Mount Rushmore for the same reason that people tend to put W. and Obama on their best and worst lists (depending on their inclinations): He was the president at the time, so they put him up there. But having read the first book in Edmund Morris’ trilogy (I need to get to the second; it’s sitting on my bookshelf waiting), I’m far more convinced of the role he played in transitioning the nation from what had been since 1776 and taking it to what it would be in the 20th century. His building up of the Navy would have been enough to get him on a Top Ten list. But then you look at his Progressive initiatives, his passion for reform, and that takes you much further. A lot of detractors would dismiss his imperialism, but I think that’s another sort of temporal chauvinism — applying today’s standards to a man of another time. I would look at the positive side of that — he saw the importance of the United States taking its place alongside the “Great Nations of Europe,” and saw aggressive posture as essential to that. In other words, you can take his “Bully!” a couple of ways. But in my book, as you know, I think the world is better off with the United States in the leading role, rather than some of those “Great Nations,” as they were then. And I worry about a future time when a nation that would never, ever produce a TR is in that role. Roosevelt personified American vigor, optimism, innovation and industry, making him a sort of archetype, an embodiment of the nation at that point in history — much the way JFK did later.

Wow. Barry would really be dismissive of MY list. It’s like, Mount Rushmore minus Jefferson, plus two. But I can’t help it; the “name” presidents do tend to be among the best, if you’re honest about it. (And I was going to put Jefferson on there, crediting him for the Louisiana Purchase and dealing with the Barbary Pirates — both flying in the face of his own ideology, and I love it when politicians rise above their party lines — but I wanted the other five on there more.

Go ahead, argue with me.

Who, if anyone, is the grownup in the governor’s office? (Hint: It SHOULD be the governor)

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Have you seen Kevin Fisher’s column about the Nikki Haley/WACH thing? It’s pretty good; you should check it out.

For my part, this bit reminded me of something I wanted to share:

Haley made the post late on a Sunday evening, presumably in the privacy of the governor’s mansion. Would she have done so the next morning after talking it over with advisers while sitting in the governor’s office? I doubt it. She strikes me as too smart to have made a mistake like this upon reflection, and certainly her communications staff would have advised against it (or if not, she should move quickly to get new communications people).

Last night on “Pub Politics” (which was a good show, with an excellent studio audience filling up The Whig — Shop Tart was there! so was Laurin!), Wesley Donehue made a related point, but in a far more outrageous way.

In defending Nikki — or trying to — he basically tried to excuse her immature and inappropriate published insult of WACH on the fact that it was spontaneous, and of course she wouldn’t have said something like that if she had consulted with her staff first. (I forget his exact words, but I’ll post the whole show when he sends me the embed code, by tomorrow probably.)

This set me off.

OK, I said, I can dig that Wesley and Phil Bailey might think it’s OK to say something like that, because after all, they themselves are unelected political operatives hired by elected officials. Professional pride, if nothing else, might lead to such thinking.

But folks, the governor is the governor. The governor is the boss of those people, the one who should be the grownup in the room, checking and correcting her subordinates, not the other way around. The governor is the one who was ELECTED by the people, the one who is accountable to them.

Yes, I realize we have a governor who was nowhere near ready, someone seriously lacking in the kinds of professional and life experiences that prepare one to be the boss (and a politically accountable boss, which is an even more demanding job requirement). We have someone in the office who a year ago was a very junior, very green back-bencher, suddenly thrust into leadership.

It happens. (The unfortunate thing about this situation is that she has no one on her staff to BE that grownup for her, to make up for her own lack. Mark Sanford had Fred Carter, but unfortunately failed to listen to him, and ran him off. Who can play that role for Nikki? Not her chief of staff — he doesn’t even know the system or the players; he’s a political operative from out of state. A mature type like Fred Carter who was from out of state, a real pro from Dover, could make up for his lack of local knowledge with pure, transferable professionalism, the knowledge that in ANY state, there are things you do and say and things you don’t. But as we saw with the Curtis Loftis incident, Tim Pearson is not that guy. Or at least, he hasn’t shown us that guy yet. But I digress. Of course, that’s what parentheticals are for.)

But SHE was the one who decided to go off half-cocked on Facebook. And even if she’d done it on advice of staff, SHE would be the one responsible for it.

NC disses SC as the obvious path NOT to follow (and who can blame them for seeing us that way?)

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Thought y’all might find the above interesting. Samuel Tenenbaum sent it to me.

It hurts, but NC has room to talk. They’ve invested, while we’ve wallowed in self-destructive ideological wrangling — an argument that we, the people of South Carolina, have been on the losing end of, every time. While NC pulled farther and farther ahead of us.

In case you have trouble with the embed, here’s a link to the site of the group that did the video.

Cheese it! The speaker’s following us!

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Maybe it’s the exclamation point. Whenever I get a message such as the one that came into my IN box an hour ago:

Bobby Harrell is now following you on Twitter!

Bobby Harrell (@SpeakerHarrell) is now following your tweets (@BradWarthen) on Twitter.

… I always feel like it’s meant to be a warning of some kind. WATCH OUT!

Maybe I feel that way particularly because I spent a couple of hours today listening to Barbara Seymour, the Deputy Disciplinary Counsel to the Supreme Court of South Carolina (author, for instance, of “Eight Simple Ways to Lose Your Law License by Email“), speak eloquently, cogently and in great detail about how dangerous social media can be.

Of course, she was speaking specifically to the dangers (ethically, professionally, etc.) of social media to lawyers and their firms — this was a meeting of the SC chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators (I was there because ADCO works with a number of law firms) — but it was still pretty scary. I might write a post about it later — or rather, a post about a long-standing topic of interest to me: What does it mean to be a “friend” on Facebook? How “social” are these media? What are the implications (social as well as legal and ethical) of the connections thus formed, and how should one express oneself in such venues? Etc.

Interesting stuff (to me). But I digress.

What are you trying to say, Wesley?

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The other day I ran into Wesley Donehue at Starbucks (see that, Starbucks? yet another product placement you’re not paying for), and we talked briefly about my appearing on “Pub Politics” again, which would make me a member of the Five-Timer Club. I’m totally up for it, particularly since I’d like to discuss this aptly titled “rant” on Wesley’s blog.

I think I want to argue with him about it, but first I have to get him to explain more clearly what he’s on about.

I say “rant” is apt because it seems to come straight from the gut, without any sorting or organization from the higher parts of his cortex — and Wesley is a smart guy. The problem I have is that his thought, or emotions, or impulses or whatever, don’t add up. They just don’t hang together.

He makes the following unconnected points:

  1. Where does the media get off making like it’s a champion of transparency?
  2. How dare WACH-Fox defend itself from a slur leveled at it by Gov. Nikki Haley on Facebook?
  3. The media are just lashing out, because they are becoming irrelevant in the new media age, when politicos can go straight to the people.
  4. “Transparency” doesn’t mean going through the MSM, so the media have no legitimate excuse to criticize the gov.
  5. Any problems the media have are their own damn’ fault, for failing to be relevant and keep up with the times.

Did that cover everything? I may have missed an unrelated point or two.

Here, respectively, are my problems with his points:

1. Golly, Wesley, the MSM may be guilty of a host of sins, but suggesting they are somehow an illegitimate, insincere, incredible or inappropriate advocate for transparency is most illogical. They’re kinda obsessive about it, and this might be a shock, but they were into it a LONG time before Nikki Haley ever heard of it. Finally, the media are the one industry in society that actually have a vested, selfish interest in transparency (unlike certain politicians who TALK about it, but belie their commitment to it with their actions) — they kinda rely on it in order to do what they do — so I’ve just gotta believe they really mean it.

1a. Furthermore, what does this have to do with the ongoing talk about the gov’s failures to be transparent? What did I miss? This seems to me to be about the TV station defending itself from the governor’s insult. The transparency issue — the one that I hear folks in the media talk about, anyway — has to do with everything from Nikki not wanting to disclose questionable sources of income and refusing to release her e-mails back during the campaign, all the way up to meeting with two other Budget and Control Board members while excluding the others. I’m missing the connection in other words, between this incident and your complaint that the media are going on inappropriately about transparency.

2. Well, let’s see. The governor wrote “WACH FOX 57 is a tabloid news station and has no concept of journalism.” Wesley, I don’t care whether the governor said that on Facebook, or through an interview with the MSM, or in a campaign ad or by use of skywriting. The choice of medium does not take away from the fact that that was an extraordinary thing for a governor to PUBLISH (and that’s what she did; if governors and other empowered “ordinary” folks are going to take it upon themselves to communicate directly with the people without the offices of the MSM, perhaps they need to take a little seminar on the difference in significance between merely muttering something to your friends, and publishing it). Next — are you really suggesting that WACH or any other business does not have the right to defend itself when maligned by the governor? I assert that they have that right under the 1st Amendment, whether they are Joe Blow’s Used Cars or the MSM.

3. This one’s really interesting. I’ll grant you, WACH looks pretty lame technologically when it fails to provide a direct link to the FB post with which it is disagreeing. (Here you go, by the way.) But beyond that, let’s talk about the new rules. Here’s the kind of thing that happens in this wonderful, marvelous new world in which anyone can publish their thoughts and don’t have to go through the stuffy ol’ MSM. In the old, benighted days, a former employee of the governor (and of the last governor) might go around muttering about having had an illicit personal relationship with the governor, but he would have been ignored. Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology that you extol, he can publish it himself with practically zero effort or investment. So it’s out there — because, you know, those bad old editors can’t keep it away from the people. And then it starts affecting the political campaign, and therefore becomes news. Now, let me ask you — when that same blogger follows that up by publishing salacious details related to his allegation, having already caused it to be a news story, what are the media supposed to do? Well, I don’t know, and others aren’t sure either. Me? I ignored it. WACH made the call that it made. Did the governor have the right to get ticked and trash WACH because of it? Yes, she did. (Although it was, as I say, pretty extraordinary for a sitting governor to say something like that about a business in her state.) Did WACH — that poor, pathetic institution that’s falling apart as you say, have the right to defend itself? Of course it did.

4. Who said it did? I missed that. Maybe you have a link to it; I’d be interested to read/hear that argument.

5. The problems that the media have result from a massive restructuring of the way businesses — the ones they relied upon for the advertising revenue that underwrote the gathering of the news — market themselves to the public. The long-term trend has been away from mass-media advertising on the local level, and to more targeted approaches. Nothing about what the media have reported or not reported, or positions they have taken, have anything to do with it. The public is lapping up news and commentary more hungrily than ever — from the MSM as well as other sources. But the business model that supported newsgathering — the model that’s falling apart — has nothing to do with that; it’s a whole separate transaction from the one between a medium and its readers/viewers/listeners. So you’re way off base there.

Anyway, have me on the show and we’ll talk further. Keep the beer cold.

My uncomfortable “yeah, but…” about Nikki’s (apparently) illegal meeting

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I started my career in a state with a real Sunshine Law… Tennessee.

The expectation was clear there, back in the heady post-Watergate 1970s, that the people’s business would be done in public, and that government documents belonged to the people as well.

This led to a lot of awkwardness. For instance… I well remember a school board meeting I attended in Humboldt when I was covering several rural counties for The Jackson Sun. Humboldt was the closest sizable town to Jackson, and I knew my predecessor (who was now my editor) had regularly covered that body’s meetings. Trouble was, they were regularly scheduled on the same night as several other important public bodies’ meetings in my coverage area, and for the first few months I was on that beat, they always had something going on that demanded my attention.

Mondays were brutal. There were regularly several meetings I needed to go to across two or three counties, plus other breaking news. It was not unusual for me to start work early Monday morning, work through regular day hours, cover two or three meetings that night, spend the whole night writing five or six or more stories, get some final questions answered in the morning, make calls on another breaking story or two, and then file my copy at midmorning. Actually, I had a secretary in my Trenton office who laboriously transmitted each of my stories, a character at a time, on an ancient teletype machine while I finished the next story. If I was lucky, I could grab a nap in the afternoon. But Tuesdays were often busy as well.

I think the Humboldt school board meetings were on a Monday, but perhaps my memory fails me.

Anyway, I finally managed to make it to one of their meetings — and almost felt apologetic for not having been before. I sort of hated for the good folks of Humboldt to think the Gibson County Bureau Chief didn’t think them important. I didn’t know what was on the agenda; I had just been meaning to come, and finally, here I was.

Often, when I’d show up to cover meetings in these small towns, the chair would recognize me in a gracious manner, which tended to embarrass me. I mean, I wasn’t their house guest, I was a hard-bitten newspaper reporter there to keep a jaded eye on them. Of course, this graciousness was also a handy way of the chair warning all present that there was a reporter in the room.

But at this one, it would have been nicer to be formally welcomed than to experience what happened.

It was a singularly boring meeting — I kept wanting to kick myself for having chosen THIS one to finally make an appearance. They were approving annual contracts for teachers (you know, the kind of thing reporters would be excluded from in SC, as a “personnel matter”), one at a time, and it went on and on and on. There was NOTHING at the meeting worth reporting, and as I rose to leave I was regretting the waste of time.

Then this one member comes up to me with a swagger, and I smiled and started to introduce myself, and with a tone dripping vitriol, he sneered, “Bet you’re sorry you came to this meeting. We didn’t give you any controversy for you to splash all over the paper.” I mean, I’d never met this guy, and he frickin’ HATED me for some reason I could not imagine. What the hell? I thought: I come to your stupid boring meeting, sit all the way through it, and this is the reward I get? I didn’t know what to say to the guy.

It took me a day or so to figure out that the year before, my predecessor had covered a nasty fight over a teacher’s contract — one I had either not focused on or forgotten, since that wasn’t my turf then. It had been a HUGE deal in that town, and left a lot of raw feelings — many of them caused by board members’ deep resentment of having to have personnel discussions in public. This bitter guy assumed that the only reason I had come to the meeting, when I usually didn’t, was because teacher contracts were being discussed. When, in actuality, if I’d known it, I’d have found something to do that night in another county.

But I digress.

All that is to say, I came up with certain expectations of openness in government. Which means I was in for a shock when I came home to South Carolina to lead the governmental affairs team at The State. Barriers everywhere. An FOI law full of exceptions. A Legislature that cherished its right to go into executive session at will. Anything but a culture of openness.

I’m afraid I was rather insufferable toward Jay Bender — the newspaper’s lawyer and advocate for press issues before the Legislature — the first time he met me back in 1987. He had come to brief editors on the improvements he had helped get in state law in the recent session. My reaction to his presentation was “WHAT? You call that an Open Meetings law? You settled for THAT?” I was like that.

And I saw it as my job to fight all that, and crack things open at every opportunity. I was sometimes a bit insufferable about it. One day, I went to the State House (I was an unusual sort of assigning editor in that I escaped from my desk into the field as often as possible) to check on things, and learned that there was a committee meeting going on somewhere that wasn’t being covered (there are a LOT of those these days). I thought it was behind a closed door leading off the lobby. I charged, ostentatiously (I was going to show these complacent folks how a real newspaper ripped aside the veil of secrecy), with a photographer in tow, and reached resolutely for the doorknob.

One of the many folks loitering in the lobby — many of whom had turned to watch my bold assault on that door — said, “There’s a meeting going on in there,” in an admonitory tone. I said, right out loud for all to hear, “I know there is. That’s why I’m going in there.”

And I threw open the door, and there were two people sitting having a quiet conversation, suddenly staring at me in considerable surprise. No meeting. No quorum of anything. I murmured something like “excuse me; I thought this was something else” and backed out — to the considerable enjoyment of the small crowd outside.

Anyway, I take a backseat to no one when it comes to championing open government, and so it is that I say that Nikki Haley should not have met with two fellow members of the Budget and Control Board without the participation or knowledge of the other two officials. Curtis Loftis was right to protest, and Nikki’s chief of staff was entirely out of line to scoff at his protest.

That said, I had to nod my head when my colleagues at The State said this about the breach:

But here’s the thing: This was a meeting, and a conversation, that we want Ms. Haley to have with Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman and House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper. After what we’ve been through for the past eight years, having these three officials even on speaking terms, much less meeting to talk through our budget problems, is a breath of fresh air.

Amen. That was indeed my first reaction: Nikki’s having a heart-to-heart with some key lawmakers? Good. At least, it offers me hope.

Maybe it wasn’t kosher. OK, it wasn’t, period. Totally against the rules as I understand them. And yeah, it’s easy to characterize it as hypocritical for Ms. Transparency to do something like this. But hey, Nikki persuaded me some time ago that she wasn’t serious about transparency when applied to her. That was a huge part of my discomfort with her as a candidate, and no shock now. But… at least MAYBE she made some progress toward overcoming another serious deficit in her qualifications to lead our state — her penchant for going out of her way not to get along with the leadership.

Maybe. I don’t know; I wasn’t in the room — which brings us back to the problem with closed meetings. Which is why I oppose them. But you know, the older I get, the more certain I am that stuff like that is way more complicated than it seemed when I was a young reporter.

Cindi’s column on our epic struggle for accountable, rational government in SC

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“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the RIGHT way — and it’s the regular way. And there ain’t no OTHER way, that ever I heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife — and not through dirt, mind you; generly it’s through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was HE at it, you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”
“Well, guess.”
“I don’t know. A month and a half.”
“THIRTY-SEVEN YEAR — and he come out in China. THAT’S the kind. I wish the bottom of THIS fortress was solid rock.”

For some reason, I thought of that exchange between Tom Sawyer (the first speaker) and Huck Finn when I read Cindi Scoppe’s column Sunday about our long, Sisyphean struggle to get our state to adopt a more rational, accountable form of government.

Actually, it wasn’t a column exactly, but a repurposing of remarks she delivered upon accepting Governing magazine’s Hal Hovey-Peter Harkness Award for public service journalism. Remember, I mentioned this the other day.

Whatever you call the piece, it summarized our TWENTY-YEAR effort to change South Carolina government — one in which we’ve made some progress, although it would be pretty fair to say it’s the kind of progress you’d expect to make, digging your way out of a stone dungeon with a case-knife.

One thing I liked about the piece was that Cindi took the trouble to list the bad craziness that was going on in that summer of 1990, when it all started:

Twenty years ago, I had been out of college less than five years, and covering the S.C. Legislature as a reporter for less than two years, when my colleagues and I realized that we were in the midst of a governmental crisis:

•  A tenth of the Legislature was or soon would be under indictment on federal corruption charges.

•  Among the dozen other officials under investigation was the governor’s closest political ally.

•  A separate FBI investigation was looking into bid-rigging at the Highway Department.

•  The director of that agency had forced underlings to cover up a wreck he had in his state vehicle — and his bosses gave him only a gentle reprimand.

•  That same director had himself refused to fire the Highway Patrol commander for personally intervening to get the top FBI official in the state out of a DUI charge.

•  The larger-than-life president of the state’s flagship university had used public funds to secretly purchase lavish gifts for legislators for years while university trustees looked the other way.

I was the governmental affairs editor at the time, and I’ve told the story of what led us to do Power Failure over and over, but I always have trouble remembering all that stuff that was going on. All of those scandals were on my team’s turf, and we were doing a great job of staying ahead of the competition on all of them that summer (going nuts doing it, but still doing it), when one day Gil Thelen, doing his management-by-walking-around thing, plopped into a chair next to my desk and asked a blue-sky question about what it all meant? Was there a way to explain it all to readers, and give them some hope that the underlying problems could be reached. I said I didn’t know, but I’d think about it.

The result was the Power Failure series. The central insight was that NO ONE was in charge. And the thing that caused me to pull it all together was a series of three op-ed pieces written by Walter Edgar and Blease Graham. After reading that, I could see the direction we would need to take in explaining it to readers — something that eventually took well over 100 stories split into 17 installments in 1991.

Of all the reporters I had working with me on that opus, Cindi was the one who took it most to heart and was most dedicated to the ideas the project set out. Which was a large reason why I brought her up to editorial in 1997 — so we could continue the mission.

Cindi’s boiled-down version of the project’s conclusions:

•  Consolidate agencies, and let the governor control them.

•  Write real ethics laws.

•  Dismantle the special purpose districts, and empower local governments.

•  Release the judiciary from its legislative stranglehold.

•  Adopt a rational budgeting process.

•  And make the government more open to the public.

I enjoyed Cindi’s ending, which to me was reminiscent of the last graf of the introductory piece I wrote for the project. Here’s Cindi’s ending:

There’s a little state down South where we’re experts at putting the “dys” into dysfunctional government, and there’s an editorial writer down there who’s been struggling for practically her entire career to get people to buy into a few simple and obvious reforms. And she’s not gonna stop until they do it.

And here’s mine, from the spring of 1991:

South Carolina is becoming less like its old self. An increasingly wary public is tired of being ripped off. Things that weren’t expected to happen under the old way of doing things — such as judges and senators getting indicted — are happening, because law enforcement agencies won’t play ball anymore.

And neither will the newspapers.

What makes them alike? That braggadocio, that personal statement of “I’m on your case now, and I’m not backing down.” (in my mind, I wanted something that would sound to the readers’ ear like the schwing! of a sword being drawn from a scabbard.) Some of the old hands at The State took exception to that language, and other stuff I wrote at about that time, seeing it as too “arrogant.” Yeah, well — I felt like it was time somebody got out of their comfort zone. I felt like it was going to take a lot to blast the state loose from the deathgrip of the status quo.

And I was right.

Sanford continues to exert strange and mysterious power over world’s topography

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Very strange, indeed, as was noted in The State over the weekend:

Shortly before then-Gov. Mark Sanford left office this month, The State asked the two-term Republican what his immediate plans were.

Sanford said he was going to jump on I-26 and head east to the coast, where his sons live with his former wife.

It turns out that I-26 runs through Uruguay. Photos taken shortly after Sanford’s departure from office show him basking in the sun in Punte Del Este with soul mate, Maria Belen Chapur.

The two certainly look in love in the photos, one of which shows Chapur leaning out of her beach chair to kiss Sanford, who is sitting in a hole in the sand.

First, he bends the Appalachian Trail to run through Argentina. Now this.

My first reaction to this is, why does he always feel the need to lie? To his staff (and through them, to South Carolina) in the first instance, and to all of us through the MSM this time.

But then I thought, well, maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe he did spend a day or two with the kids before heading south of the border. And I-26 does run to some airports that go that way.

But still. Never mind whether it’s lying or not. Since he’s not governor any more, why couldn’t he just not say anything about his plans? It’s truly none of our business now. Even if asked, I would think he would say, Well, that’s my business. Why construct a false trail? I don’t get it. But then, I still don’t get the “soulmate” interviews. It makes no kind of sense.

Well, maybe it’s the last we’ll hear about all this… Yeah, I know. But I can dream, can’t I?

Rotten, stinking attitudes in the SC delegation

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Here’s what Mick Mulvaney had to say about the laudable decision of Joe Wilson and others to sit with members of the opposite party during the State of the State:

“If you’re looking for empty symbolism, where one sits at the State of the Union (address) might be at the top of the list.”

Translation:

If you’re looking for obvious examples of giving the people of this country the finger, the refusal to do such a simple thing as sit without regard to party might be at the top of the list.

Of course it’s a small thing. Just like, say, taking down the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse grounds — which you will also hear state lawmakers dismissed because they have so many more important things to do and think about.

And of course, they DO have many more important (or at least, less embarrassing) things to deal with. The problem is that they’ll never make progress on the things that really matter when they have such a powerful mental block against doing something so small as taking the flag down. Or, in the case of Congress, ending the egregious practice of sitting by party during the presidential address.

Simple, yes. But there is no one thing lawmakers could do that would be as easy, but say so much, as taking this action.

I’ll get back to the flag, but about this seating arrangements thing: The problem is that these guys are to entirely stuck in the rut of this abominable practice of sitting by party that it doesn’t occur to them, ever, that it is an abomination. You and I may think they were elected to represent us and to serve the nation. But THEY obviously think that they are there to serve their respective parties. They say this in the most obvious of ways — by only sitting with members of their party, by only caring what their party wants them to do or say, by thinking party first, last and always. Serving the party is SO automatic with them, that it doesn’t even occur to them that it’s a problem. They are even offended by the suggestion that it might be. Which tells you an awful lot about these guys.

This is, as I say, an abomination, and inexcusable. And so easy to address.

Which brings me back to the flag. What do these two issues have in common? The fact that they would be so easy to accomplish. Yes, I know state lawmakers think it would be really hard. But all that is needed to accomplish it is the same, simple thing it would take to end the execrable practice of sitting by party in Congress (and not only on the night of the State of the Union, but every day): All that have to do is GROW UP, and gain a sense of perspective. And then it’s easy.

A few thoughts on the State of the State

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Watch the full episode. See more SCETV Specials.

EDITOR’S NOTE: THERE IS A SERIOUS ERROR BELOW, WHICH I HAVE NOW CORRECTED. PLEASE SEE THE CORRECTION POST.

Been trying all day to get to Nikki Haley’s speech last night. Here are a few quick observations:

  • First, the style: Nikki is a WAY better speaker than Mark Sanford. She, at least, can read a speech that’s right in front of her (and do it in a fairly engaging way). Her predecessor could not, or would not. Every year, I’d get my copy of the speech over lunch on the day of. I’d read it, mark it up, and ask questions about it. I would have completely digested it by the time of the speech itself. Then came speech time, which I generally watched from the comfort of my office on the tube. And then I had to suffer through his hems and haws, and “I would says” and “at the end of the days,” and flat-out off-script digressions, all of them awkward, pausing to search for words, ignoring the speech in front of him. Nikki, with her teleprompter, was MUCH better. But I expected no less.
  • This is not to say that her style is without its irritating characteristics. There’s her prim, smug, I’m-the-girl-with-the-most-gold-stars-in-the-class tone that she too often affects. Watch, for instance, when she extols the blessings of having “a chief executive willing to lead the charge and make the tough decisions” — speaking, of course, of herself. I guess someone who came from the back bench to governor in a year is bound to be a bit self-congratulatory. Human nature. But she could tone it down a bit. And often, she does.
  • Do you know why she can only suggest $120 million worth of cuts toward the $719 million shortfall? Because she hasn’t suggested anything that her political base might object to. And it’s hard to come up with cuts that deep and still do that. She hit programs for those worthless, lazy poor people, of course. And when she got to the middle class, she only went after the stuff that those wicked, decadent liberals like — such as ETV. But the truth is, everybody will have reason to gripe when all the cuts are in. Because believe me, this state’s leaders will never pull an Illinois. Not that they should; I’m just assuring you that they won’t. It’s going to be cuts all the way. And that has nothing to do with Nikki Haley; that’s just the way our State House does things.
  • The ETV thing, of course, is nothing new. Back during the GOP runoff last year, I went over to tape an interview at ETV. They had already talked with Gresham Barrett for the same show. But Nikki wasn’t even calling them back. Scuttlebutt in the ETV corridors was that she didn’t want to talk to them because she was going to back Mark Sanford’s veto of their entire budget. Don’t know whether they were right, but I could see how they’d get that impression.
  • Don’t you love the way she blithely suggests that if you kill ETV (excuse me, “When you release government from the things it should not be responsible for…”), it has this miraculous effect: “you allow the private sector to be more creative and cost efficient.” Remarkable, the things these ideologues will say as though they believed them. Love or hate ETV — and I see it as what it is, one of those few things that South Carolina can point to as something it has done as well as, or better than, other parts of the country (at least in past years) — the notion that the private sector will fill the gap is laughable. You know, this private sector… (Remember when Bravo was known for high-quality arts programming. Not anymore, baby.)
  • I’m definitely with her on asking for quick confirmation of her appointees. She’s made some good picks, and they deserve the opportunity to get to work. Advise, consent, but let’s do it quickly.
  • That little nonsensical (to all but Tea Party ideologues) lecture about how federal funding is inherently a BAD thing was painful to listen to. See, the trouble with the feds sending us money to fund services is that “federal money comes strings, and with those strings come limitations.” The alternative, of course, in South Carolina is that those needs don’t get funded at all. But they’re not really needs, are they? Say that often enough, and you start to believe it. Apparently. In my book, it’s offensive nonsense to say “my cabinet will stop the practice of working the system to get increases in federal funding simply for the sake of expanding our budgets” — as if agencies have sought such funding for any other reason that to fund important services — services they are charged with providing — that the state won’t fund. But yeah, I get it: Her base believes government shouldn’t do such things anyway.
  • I love, love, love that she’s starting out asking for ending the separate election of constitutional officers. Of course, I’m disappointed that she’s only pushing to do two of them — Gov Lite and superintendent of education. But it’s a start, and maybe that’s the smart way: Isolate a couple, so lawmakers can’t hide their votes to kill them. Then do the others later. Remember what they did last time there were votes on the whole shebang? The senators swapped votes, with just enough voting against putting each constitutional change on the ballot to kill it, but each senator being able to say he voted for some (or most) of them. So in this case, maybe piecemeal is smart. And, we hope, a substantive move toward the greater accountability Nikki says she wants to foster.
  • NOTE: THIS BULLET POINT IS COMPLETELY WRONG. I MISREAD WHAT THE GOVERNOR SAID. IN FACT, I THINK WHAT SHE SAID WAS PRAISEWORTHY. I’VE WRITTEN A SEPARATE POST TO SAY SO, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. How’d you like this part? “The state of South Carolina pays more than $16,000 annually to incarcerate a single prisoner. We spend more each year on a prisoner than we do on a student. Think of the savings we’ll realize if we aren’t constantly welcoming back behind bars those prisoners who finish out their initial terms.” Usually, when a politician says that, he or she is suggesting that we need to do more to make sure kids get a good education so they don’t end up in prison, which IS more expensive. Nikki says it to justify spending less than our current lowest-in-the-nation amount per prisoner. One way she’d do this? Well, we’re already spending rock-bottom per meal, so we’ll just serve fewer meals. If you think this is a great idea, there’s nothing I can say to you. Except that there is a danger to all of us in running undermanned, underguarded prisons full of starved prisoners. But let’s move on.
  • I very much like that she’s started off her tenure on the Budget and Control Board by helping it work well together. She’s right to be smug about that. I like even better that she sound MORE determined last night than she has to insisting that the board be replaced with something more answerable to the governor. For years, lawmakers were able to shrug off this reform (and cling illegitimately to executive power) by saying you just couldn’t work with that Mark Sanford (which was true, but it was still just an excuse). Now, with the cooperative tone she’s set, they can’t say that. Let’s see some action. Stay on them on this, and keep pouring on the honey — since vinegar didn’t work.
  • This morning, I saw tweets from SCRG touting her speech. But there was no getting around the fact that she did not mention their signature issue — diverting funding from public education to private schools. Good for her. That was a welcome relief from the distracting nonsense of recent years.

Finally, a bit of a digression of my own: On the day that the U.S. House engaged in one of the most offensive partisan gestures I’ve seen in many a year — their farcical “repeal” of health care reform, demonstrating yet again that these yahoos who have taken over the GOP don’t give a damn about health care in America, they just want to cock a snook at Barack Obama at every opportunity — it was just as offensive to see the governor of our state take ANY time in a 34-minute speech to say that HER Cabinet will do all it can to opt out of that same reform. Because, you know, we don’t want South Carolina reaping any benefits that might accrue. If she hadn’t done that, I might have been able to take the fact that she wants to make the lion’s share of her cuts to Medicaid. But paired with that ideological statement, there was no way to put a positive spin on the cuts to care for the poor. Together, those gestures said, “We’re not going to help these people get health care, and we won’t let anyone else do it, either.”

There was good and bad in this brief, brisk, well-delivered speech. But that one thing kind of cast a pall over it all for me. Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if not for what the House had done that day. After all, while she couched it in ideological language (which is the only way to say the things she was saying, since pragmatism doesn’t enter into such an equation), and while her 1860-flavored digression about the rights of states to resist federal initiatives was kinda creepy amid the celebrations (as opposed to mere observances) we’re seeing related to that period, was downright creepy… still, I was pleased with the respectful, nonpartisan way she described her interaction with the president. But in the end creepy is creepy. And playing ideological games with the lives of sick people is inexcusable. No, we can’t pay for everything we’d like. And no, that federal legislation is far, FAR from perfect. But it’s the only live preserver that’s been thrown, and our governor has no business trying to yank it away.

It just seems to me that we have enough challenges here in South Carolina, more than enough for the governor to say grace over. I can see NO good reason to use any of our limited time, energy or resources mixing into these national partisan fights — especially if we don’t have a better plan for accomplishing what the feds are trying to accomplish.

For real accountability in higher ed, here’s the first number Haley should look at: 10.9 percent

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Just read this item over at thestate.com:

Gov. Nikki Haley and higher education leaders said today they are working together on ways to objectively measure the performance of South Carolina’s public colleges and universities.

School officials said Tuesday they will provide the governor with data including class sizes, the number of in-state and out-of-state students, classroom spending and their economic development impact. The goal, Haley said, is to determine which schools were getting the best results from their budgets.

State spending on higher education has been cut in recent years, and, with the state facing an $830 million budget deficit, public colleges likely face more cuts…

College officials said they welcomed the opportunity to show their value.

“Accountability and transparency and quality can all coexist,” said Clemson University president James Barker.

Barker said he had not had a similar meeting with former Gov. Mark Sanford, who targeted rising higher education costs.

“It felt very different,” Barker said.

I’m with President Barker on this: It’s great that Nikki Haley even cares enough to talk to the public higher ed institutions. Her predecessor’s lack of interest was deafening.

But as she presumes to decide the institution’s fiscal fate (suddenly, I’m flashing on Rowan and Martin: the Fickle Finger of Fiscal Fate), there’s one number I hope she absorbs before any other: 10.9 percent.

That’s how much of the USC system’s total budget is provided by state appropriations. For USC Columbia, it’s 10.3 percent. (I don’t have the numbers for the other institutions in front of me at the moment.) It used to be more like 90.

The college administrators are too polite, and too politic to say it (personally, I’d be tempted to say to everybody at the State House, “Yeah, and I’m going to care about you and your opinion of what I’m doing, oh, about 10.9 percent.”), and I suspect they are truly pleased that Nikki wants to work with them at all. It’s a nice change. But it would be good if politicos who want to call the tune for these institutions were a little more cognizant of just how little they are paying to the piper.