Category Archives: Leadership

Do we REALLY need people to be making RVs?

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Yesterday, Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia said President Obama either had been, or would be, invited to address the National Hydrogen Association’s annual conference here in April. The mayor said, rightly, that such would be a great opportunity for the president to demonstrate his seriousness about the "green economy" and energy independence.

I heard the mayor say that yesterday afternoon.

So imagine my surprise to see that the president's first high-profile road trip beyond the Beltway (or one of the first; I'm not really keeping score) was to Elkhart, Indiana, which is suffering double-digit unemployment because…. well, because people aren't buying so many Recreational Vehicles these days.

Now, I consider it to be a BAD thing that all those people are out of work. But as the author of the Energy Party Manifesto, I have to say it's a GOOD thing, in the grand scheme and all that, that fewer people are buying RVs… In other words, I'd like to see all those good people of Elkhart working at good jobs doing something else.

One would think, given the things that he says about green technologies and energy independence, that Obama would think that, too. So I have to puzzle over the choice of Elkhart as a place to go campaign for his stimulus plan that is all about putting people to work AND protecting the environment and making us more energy-independent. It's just an odd setting. I mean, why not choose another town that's hurting, only from people losing their jobs building tubines for windmill farms or something, or printing Bibles or doing something else virtuous.

Obama's speechwriter seems to have been aware of this, so while he empathized with folks and promised jobs, he did NOT promise them jobs making RVs. Nor did he mention, specifically, that they needed to be something OTHER than making RVs, for the good of the country and their own economic future. He finessed it.

But he wouldn't have had to finesse it if he'd just made the speech somewhere else.

Midlands leaders band together to take advantage of stimulus

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This afternoon we were visited by a rather distinguished and diverse group of business, academic and political leaders who have been putting their heads together to see how our various interlocking existing community ecodevo initiatives — Innovista, the 3 rivers greenway, hydrogen and fuel cell efforts, and so forth — can position our community to take advantage of the stimulus funds once they start flowing to achieve some of our existing goals.

As Lee Bussell said when he asked for the meeting:

With the first mention of the stimulus bill we pulled together a working group of about 25 people representing business leaders, USC, the city, counties, Midlands Tech, Central Midlands, The Chamber, Good to Great Foundation, SCRA, Columbia USC Fuel Cell Collaborative and a number of others .
Our purpose was not just to make sure Columbia participated in the creation of jobs through this special program. We identified that for the last 5 years we have been working toward building a sustainable and green community with the creation of an economy based on alternative energy solutions. Sustainability and green jobs have become a central part of our community development strategy.
I am asking on behalf of all of these groups that you consider pulling together a group at the State that we could come meet with next week. We think it’s critical that you understand what we are attempting to accomplish. It could truly enable our regions to find opportunity to not only create jobs, but also to create an everlasting impact on the sustainability of our community and a whole new economic approach.

Lee didn't actually make today's meeting (he's out of the country, I understand) but the following folks did come (starting with left to right in the photo above, from my phone):

  • Paul Livingston of Richland County Council
  • Neil McLean of EngenuitySC
  • John Lumpkin of NAI Avant
  • Columbia Mayor Bob Coble
  • Tameika Isaac Devine, Cola city council
  • USC President Harris Pastides
  • John Parks, USC Innovista
  • Bill Boyd, Waterfront Steering Committee
  • Judith M. Davis of BlueCross BlueShield
  • Jim Gambrell, city of Columbia
  • Ike McLeese, Cola Chamber of Commerce
  • Kyle Michel, Kyle Michel law firm

… and several other folks who I know I must be forgetting as I try to reconstruct who was sitting around the table (or whose names I missed).

Basically these folks represent a lot of different efforts that will be combined and coordinated as the situation warrants to seek funding for things they were going to do anyway, with the goal of long-term economic transformation for the community. As Harris Pastides said, the test of success will be whether, after the construction workers are gone, we still have jobs here that put us on the cutting edge of the nation's move toward a greener economy and greater energy independence.

Toward that end — and with Congress not yet decided toward the final shape of the stimulus — Mayor Bob has set up a War Room in his office at City Hall. Pres. Pastides says he'll be doing the same at USC. The watchwords, says Coble, will be nimbleness, persistence and resources as opportunities are seen to match local projects with stimulus funding streams.

The group was very optimistic that the sorts of things they're working on here in the Midlands are a good match, and at a good point in the pipeline, for matching up with priorities they're seeing in the stimulus, and also with longer-term priorities of the Obama administration.

That's what I recall off the top of my head; I haven't gone back through the recording I made. (Sorry, no video; I took out my camera last night for a family birthday party, and forgot to put it back in my briefcase.) I expect some of the news folks who were there will have something in the paper that will flesh this out a little. I just wanted to go ahead and get my contact report filed…

(And no, in case you're wondering, neither the governor nor any representative of his was there. As Coble said, our governor is seen as an obstacle in this process; whether that obstacle will be surmountable or not remains to be seen, but the folks in the room seemed determined to try…)

One Democrat fed up with tax deadbeats

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So you think all this stuff about Geithner and Daschle and their taxes is a bunch of Republican spin? Well, maybe it is, but I got an earful about it from one ardent Democrat this morning.

Samuel Tenenbaum, key Energy Party think-tanker, dropped by my breakfast table this morning. This is always an occasion for me to find out what is at the top of his mind — which can range from his 55-mph speed limit plan to endowed chairs (which were also his idea) to, well, almost anything. Samuel reads a lot, and cares a lot, about a heap of stuff.

But today he was fed up with Obama over the tax deadbeats he's been choosing for his administration. He was going on about how this was not the Change he had believed in when he supported Obama. At first, I thought he was mad because the new POTUS wasn't cutting these people loose once the news broke about their failure to pay. But no, he blamed Obama for not having sufficiently vetted these guys to begin with.

Paying your taxes is basic and fundamental, he maintained, and there's just no excuse for nominating people who haven't done that.

Anyway, Samuel convinced me of one thing for sure — that I should at the least put up a post to give y'all a chance to sound off on the subject. Yeah, I'm a little late, since Daschle withdrew his name today, but hey, I was out on medical leave yesterday (nothing serious; routine testing).

Joe Riley’s crime initiative

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One day last week I was pleased to run into Charleston Mayor Joe Riley (one of the finest examples of Joe-ness holding office today) on an elevator downtown. He was in town to lobby the Legislature for his crime bill — of which I had to admit I had not heard (how's that for an awkward avoidance of a dangling preposition?). He was joined by Attorney General Henry McMaster and SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd in pushing the legislation.

By the time we had arrived at his floor, he had given me a brief outline of it. Fortunately, he also had a staffer send me this release about it
, since I wasn't taking notes on the elevator. The group was pushing for legislation that would, among other things:

  • Allow law enforcers to search people on probation and parole without warrants.
  • Deny bail for repeat offenders.
  • Forbid convicted felons to possess handguns or assault weapons.
  • Increase the penalty for Assault and Battery With Intent to Kill. (On the elevator, the mayor had said something about S.C. lacking an effective attempted murder statute.)
  • Create a separate offense for possessing a firearm while selling, manufacturing, or possessing drugs for distribution.

The mayor seems to be pushing separately (going by the wording on the release), more resources for courts, Solicitor's offices, Probation and Parole, DJJ, and Corrections. Specifically, on that last point, increase funding for drug rehab in prisons.

Here's a story about it in the Charleston paper.

Most of that stuff makes common sense to me, although as with a lot of things that make sense, I wonder where the money will come from with the state cutting back on everything. Anyway, since I ran into the mayor and he shared these proposals with me, I'm sharing them with you.

An intolerable failure to communicate

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
First, some sobering perspective: Some of you reading this will not have a job next month.
    As bad as things were through November, the bottom really dropped out in December. South Carolina lost another 22,000 jobs that month. Nationally, 2.5 million jobs were lost last year — the most since 1945 — and of those, 524,000 were lost in December alone. To do that math for you, if the rest of the year had been as bad as December, we’d have been down 6.29 million jobs. And to do the same for South Carolina: Our state lost 54,100 jobs in 2008. If the whole year had been as bad as December, we’d have lost 264,000.
    These things have a rippling effect — a business cuts back, more people lose their paychecks, they spend less in their community, so other businesses have to cut back, and so forth. So there is little reason to doubt that January (when we get those figures) will be worse than December, or February worse than January. Just as an early indication of that, the state Employment Security Commission said last week that in January it was paying out $19 million to $20 million a week, up from $13 million to $15 million a week in December.
    One more thing to note, in case you don’t know it: As bad as things are nationally, they are worse here. The national unemployment rate is 7.2 percent; in South Carolina it’s 9.5 percent.
    Got the picture? All right, then; let’s turn from tragedy to low farce — the ongoing spitting match between our governor and the aforementioned Employment Security Commission.
    You know how our Legislature likes to cut taxes? Well, back in the late ’90s, it cut the tax that businesses pay into a trust fund from which unemployment benefits are paid. It made sense at the time, given the fund surplus. But since 2001, the state has been paying out more each year in unemployment benefits than the trust fund has taken in. Only in 2006 was the amount taken in even close to the amount paid.
    So it is that, in light of the unemployment figures cited above, the ESC ran out of money and sought federal help to keep issuing checks. Unfortunately, the agency couldn’t get the money unless the governor signed off on the request. In most states, this would make sense, but in South Carolina — where only a third of the executive branch reports to the elected chief executive, with the ESC not being a part of that third — it can be awkward, especially with this governor.
    Gov. Mark Sanford said he wouldn’t OK the request until the agency provided him with certain information. The ESC didn’t provide the information, and things escalated. The governor claimed the agency was wasteful and incompetent, and demanded an audit. The ESC, absurdly, resisted. Finally, after fighting about this most of the month of December, everyone climbed off their high horses long enough for the governor to OK the request.
    Then, the ESC realized that things were getting worse and it would need even more money. The governor went ballistic. The commission resumed stonewalling him. The governor threatened to fire the commissioners.
    On Thursday, the commissioners — Chairman McKinley Washington, Becky Richardson and Billy McLeod — met with our editorial board, and said they would have 90 percent to 95 percent of what the governor wanted to him by Feb. 9.
    In the course of this interview, I asked: “Have y’all met as a group with the governor?” I got a chorus of simultaneous answers: “No.” “Absolutely not.” “Never.” (You can watch a video clip of this exchange on my blog.) Had they ever sought such a meeting? Oh, certainly, they said.
    “This is the only governor,” said Mr. Washington, “that never met with the Employment Security Commission that I know of; I’ve been there eight years.” Mr. McLeod said the same was true for his 20 years.
    As bizarre as this may sound to anyone not familiar with Mr. Sanford and his ways, it was believable. But Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said the governor had met with them, and he produced a letter, from agency Executive Director Ted Halley, which began, “The Commission and I would thank you and your staff for taking time from your busy schedules recently to meet with us.” It was dated March 25, 2003.
    I asked Mr. Washington on Friday about this. He said that the meeting was actually with Eddie Gunn, then the governor’s deputy chief of staff. He said at one point “The governor stuck his head in the door, said hello… and that was it.” So why the letter? “That was just a courtesy statement, but he did not meet with us.” He added, “You try to be nice.”
    This, ladies and gentlemen, is pathetic. Let’s say the governor’s version of events is true and Mr. Washington’s is wrong: His defense is that he met with the commissioners once, almost six years ago.
    Bottom line: None of this idiocy would be happening if the governor were responsible for this agency, which he should be.
    What! you cry — give this governor what he wants? Never! And indeed, this governor who claims to want greater authority for his office is, by his actions, the worst argument for such change that we have seen in many a year.
    But consider: If he had been responsible for the agency and its mission all along, he never would have been able to play this blame game. As long as the agency is out of his reach, he can snipe at it, and gripe and complain, and blame those people over there, rather than take responsibility. He shouldn’t do that, and most governors wouldn’t. But since this one can, he does, and he gets away with it. (And by being so intransigent and defensive, the agency helps him.)
    Given the growing number of people in this state who rely on this agency to enable them to put food on the table in their hour of greatest need, this absurd failure to communicate is intolerable.

For video and more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Employment Security Commission and Sanford

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You may have noticed that yesterday I mentioned having met with the S.C. Employment Security Commission. Well, I wrote a column for Sunday based in part upon that, and I thought I'd go ahead and post the video that goes with the column.

We talked about plenty of other stuff, but I had terrible luck with catching the good bits on video. Seems like every time they said something interesting, I'd have switched my camera to still photos, and when I went back to video, it was Dullsville. This clip was about the only entire, coherent bit of any interest that I captured in its entirety.

In the wide-ranging discussion, there were high points and low points, for instance:

  • High point — The ESC members, after having been defiant as recently as the day before, promised they'd get the information the governor had been asking for to him — or 90-95 percent of it — by Feb. 9. They said the rest of it is just stuff they don't have because they don't collect that kind of data. Anyway, John O'Connor of our newsroom, who sat in on our meeting, wrote about that in today's paper.
  • Low point — We asked why in the world they have their own TV studio, and the answer wasn't satisfactory — to me, anyway. But then, how could it be? No, it doesn't add up to a lot of money, and it's a bit of a red herring compared to the actual reason why the unemployment benefits trust fund is out of money: Several years ago the Legislature cut the tax that businesses pay into the fund, and we've been paying our more than we take in since at least 2001. That said, the TV studio does sound ridiculous.

But the subject in the video was the thing that grabbed my attention, because it spoke to the problem of the gross failure to communicate between the Commission and the governor. After all this silly back and forth the last couple of months — and it IS silly (of COURSE the Commission needs the money the governor is trying to hold back, as anyone who has seen what's happening in our state can attest, and of COURSE the Commission was being absurdly petulant by trying to hold info back from the gov), not to mention just plain wrong — I had to ask them if they ever sat down to talk to the governor face to face.

I asked that for a couple of reasons. First, people who are sitting down talking to each other don't act the way the governor and the commissioner had been acting. Once you're dealing with someone as an actual person, rather than some faceless opponent out there, you show them more respect than this. Second, I asked because our governor is Mark Sanford. Most governors are interested enough in actually governing that they try to maintain contact and communications with the various parts of government on a regular basis. Not this guy — for him, it's about the press release, the statement, the op-ed piece, the piglets in the lobby; NOT about sitting down with people and reasoning with them.

The commissioners went on at some length about how the governor had never sat down for a meeting with them in his six years in office, and how he had never accepted an invitation to speak to their big annual luncheon — unlike every previous governor they had known. (And that latter bit REALLY rang true, as one thing I've noticed about this governor is that he has little affinity for the rubber-chicken circuit — not that I do myself, but most governors hit all those events they can.)

Anyway, what is NOT on the video is what Joel Sawyer in the governor's office said to Cindi Scoppe the next morning (and I'm copying and pasting some notes Cindi sent me):

We actually found where the gov did indeed meet with them in 2003, and had a letter from ted halley thanking him for meeting with them. he’s also had conversations with all of the commissioners over time.
we looked for more recent requests for meetings, and the only one was I guess a week before they ran out of money. at that point it was just on such short notice that the gov couldn’t attend, but scott english and joe taylor did…

Here's a copy of the 2003 Ted Halley letter
Joel mentioned.

So I called Commissioner McKinley Washington to ask about that, and he said the 2003 "meeting" was one of the incidents they talked about on the video: The commissioners were meeting with Eddie Gunn of the governor's staff, and the governor briefly stuck his head in the door and said hi, and that was about it. It was NOT a meeting with the governor, he said.

Mr. Washington also mentions on the video, and repeated to me Friday, that there was a later incident in which the commissioners were meeting with Chief of Staff Henry White, and the governor — who had apparently changed clothes for a press conference or something, "cracked the door" open long enough to "reach in and grab his denim" so he could change back. And that was it.

So I asked how come ESC executive director Halley sent that note to the governor thanking him for his time back in 2003? "That was just a courtesy statement, but he did not meet with us," said Mr. Washington. "You try to be nice."

Finally, the commissioners said that they tried to meet with the governor at the beginning of the current crisis, but were told he was unavailable, so they met with Scott English (of the governor's staff) and Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor instead (the Sawyer notes above allude to that).

Anyway, more on the subject in my Sunday column…

McCain, Graham support Obama on Gitmo

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FYI, I just got this release from Lindsey Graham's office:

JOINT STATEMENT FROM U.S. SENATORS LINDSEY GRAHAM AND JOHN MCCAIN ON GUANTANAMO EXECUTIVE ORDER

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John McCain (R-Arizona) today issued the following statement regarding the executive order put forth by President Obama calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo:  

“We support President Obama’s decision to close the prison at Guantanamo, reaffirm America’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions, and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees,” said Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain.  “The executive orders issued today constitute an important step in the right direction but leave several major issues unaddressed.”
“Numerous difficult issues remain,” Senator Graham and Senator McCain continued.  “Present at Guantanamo are a number of detainees who have been cleared for release but have found no foreign country willing to accept them.  Other detainees have been deemed too dangerous for release, but the sensitive nature of the evidence makes prosecution difficult.  The military’s proper role in processing detainees held on the battlefield at Bagram, Afghanistan, and other military prisons around the world must be defended, but that is left unresolved.  Also unresolved is the type of judicial process that would replace the military commissions. We believe the military commissions should have been allowed to continue their work.  We look forward to working with the President and his administration on these issues, keeping in mind that the first priority of the U.S. government is to guarantee the security of the American people.”

            ####

… which seems to me an appropriate stance for the loyal opposition. They support their commander in chief because they share his concerns that our nation live up to its highest ideals — which is completely consistent with their advocacy during the Bush administration. (And remember, McCain said that he, too, would have closed the Gitmo facility if elected.) At the same time, they make sure they get on the record the unresolved problems inherent in this move. Smart, principled and appropriate.

Well, at least he was civil about it…

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South Carolina's senators split — again — today on the confirmation of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Guess which one voted against? (Hint: It was NOT the guy Obama's going to be looking to for foreign policy advice.) But he managed to be quite civil about it, saying:

    The memorandum of understanding signed by the foundation leaves a lot of discretion to Senator Clinton.  During her confirmation hearing, Sen. Lugar presented a request for more acceptable disclosures, and Sen. Kerry, as chairman, supported these recommendations. Unfortunately, Sen. Clinton has not agreed to follow even these modest recommendations.    
    For these reasons, I will be voting against the nomination, but I will do so with nothing but sincere hope and goodwill toward our new Secretary of State, and pray for her success as she takes the helm of the State Department.

Meanwhile Lindsey Graham put out this statement:

Graham Supports Clinton for Secretary of State
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement after Hillary Clinton was confirmed as Secretary of State.  The vote in the Senate was 94-2.
    “Hillary Clinton will serve our nation well as Secretary of State.  She understands the enormous domestic and international challenges facing our nation.  In choosing Hillary Clinton, President Obama has selected a person of great substance, skill, and intellect. 
     “President Obama won the election and has earned the right to put his team in place.  The presidential campaign is over but the wars our nation is engaged in are not.  Our young men and women around the world in harms way need an advocate on the world stage.”
            ####

Of course, he and Hillary have always gotten along pretty cordially.

How would I have voted? Well, as you know, I didn't think this was the best call Obama has made. Some other job, yes, but I don't think secretary of state is the best place to put your chief rival. The SecState should be understood as completely subordinate to the president, and that seems a tough role for her.

But in the end, Graham says it well: This is the president's call. If this is who he wants, barring some really compelling reason to reject her, I say get her in place as soon as possible. Yeah, I think the Clinton foundation thing is a problem. But then Bill is always a problem for Hillary. No matter how much disclosure, there would be a problem. Not enough to vote "no" for me, though.

President Obama’s been a very busy bee today

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About midafternoon yesterday, I remarked to someone that by that time, Barack Obama had to be pretty tired — and that was before he and the missus stayed out until 1 a.m. at the parties.

Who could have blamed him if he'd chosen to sleep in today? But that's not his style. Here's what he's done so far today:

{BC-Obama-Day One, 12th Ld-Writethru,1110}
{Obama's Day One: recession, war, ethics}
{Eds: UPDATES with Obama quote from open house; restores dropped} 'billion' in 23rd graf. Moving on general news and financial services. AP Video.
{With BC-Inauguration-Poll, BC-Guantanamo-Sept 11 Trial}
{AP Photo DCJH101, DCCD102, DCJH105, DCJH103, WHRE107, DCSA101,} WHRE108
{By JENNIFER LOVEN}=
{AP White House Correspondent}=
   WASHINGTON (AP) — In a first-day flurry of activity, President Barack Obama set up shop in the Oval Office, summoned advisers to begin dealing with war and recession and ordered new ethics rules for "a clean break from business as usual."
   He also froze salaries for top White House staff members, placed phone calls to Mideast leaders and had aides circulate a draft executive order that would close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay within a year.
   "The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable," Obama said as he unveiled ethics rules that he portrayed as the fulfillment of a major campaign promise. He said the action was necessary "to help restore that faith in government without which we cannot deliver the changes we were sent here to make."
   Devoting swift attention to the Mideast turmoil, Obama prepared to name George Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic leader, a special envoy to the region.
   In his phone calls to Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, Obama emphasized that he would work to consolidate the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, said the new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs.
   Gibbs said Obama expressed "his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term."
   The enormity of Obama's challenge on the economy was evident in the mixed messages coming from Capitol Hill.
   Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, expressed doubt that the currently planned $825 billion economic stimulus package would be enough, calling the proposal "no silver bullet." At the same time, House Republicans requested a meeting with Obama to air their worries that the plan was too big.
   A multi-denominational prayer service at Washington National Cathedral and an open house at the presidential mansion were also on the schedule of the 44th president, taking office on a promise to fix the battered economy and withdraw U.S. troops from the unpopular war in Iraq on a 16-month timetable.
   At the open house, Obama and his wife, Michelle, shook hands with a line of guests streaming through the Blue Room, some of them moved to tears by the experience.
   "Enjoy yourself, roam around," a smiling Obama told one guest as he passed through the room. "Don't break anything."
   The shift in administrations — former President George W. Bush was back home in Texas — was underscored in far-off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a judge granted Obama's request to suspend the war crimes trial of a young Canadian. The judge issued a one-sentence order for the 120-day continuance without so much as a hearing, possibly the beginning of the end for the former administration's system of trials for alleged terrorists.
   A draft executive order made clear the new president intends to go further. It called for closing the facility within a year, releasing some of the 245 detainees still there and transferring others to different sites for trial.
   Pushing back pre-emptively, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the draft order raises difficult questions.
   "The key question is where do you put these terrorists?" he said. "Do you bring them inside our borders? Do you release them back into the battlefield? … Most local communities around America don't want dangerous terrorists imported into their neighborhoods, and I can't blame them."
   Among Obama's executive orders:
   —A freeze on salaries for White House staff earning $100,000 or more — about 100 people in all.
   —New Freedom of Information Act rules, making it harder to keep the workings of government secret.
   —Tighter ethics rules governing when administration officials can work on issues on which they previously lobbied governmental agencies, and banning them from lobbying the Obama administration after leaving government service.
   Obama and first lady Michelle Obama sat in the first row for Wednesday's invitation-only prayer service. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, joined them, as did former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., awaiting confirmation as secretary of state later in the day.
   "Grant to Barack Obama, president of the United States, and to all in authority your grace and good will. Bless them with your heavenly gifts, give them wisdom and strength to know and to do your will," prayed the Rev. Andy Stanley, one of numerous clerics from several religions to speak.
   Obama's first White House meetings as president meshed with quickened efforts in Congress to add top Cabinet officials to the roster of those confirmed on Tuesday and to advance the economic stimulus measure that is a top priority of his administration.
   Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner, appearing before the Senate Finance Committee for a confirmation hearing, said enactment of the new president's economic stimulus was essential. He also said the Senate's decision last week to permit use of the second $350 billion installment of a financial industry bailout "will enable us to take the steps necessary to help get credit flowing."
   He said Obama and he "share your belief that this program needs serious reform."
   Geithner also apologized for his failure to pay personal taxes earlier in the decade, calling the omission a mistake. The taxes were repaid in stages, some after an IRS audit and the rest after a review of his returns late last year by Obama's transition team.
   Obama and his wife arrived at the White House around 1 a.m. after attending 10 official inaugural balls.
   Several hours later he walked into the most famous office in America for the first time as president.
   The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement that Obama spent 10 minutes alone and read a note left for him by Bush that was in an envelope marked "To: 44, From: 43."
   He was then joined by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and, several minutes later, the first lady.
   Wednesday's meeting with economic advisers was coming at a time when 11 million Americans are out of work and millions more feel the loss of savings and face the prospect of foreclosures on their homes.
   Last week, Congress cleared the way for use of the second installment of financial-industry bailout money, a pre-inaugural victory for Obama.
   Democratic leaders hope to have the $825 billion economic stimulus measure to his desk by mid-February.
   The war in Iraq that he has prom
ised to end featured prominently in Obama's first day as well.
   Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, were among those called in for the meeting as the new president assumed the role of commander in chief.
   In his inaugural address on Tuesday, Obama said his goal was to "responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan."

If he were a cubicle worker, the guy in the next cubicle would be saying, "Pace yourself, dude; you're making the rest of us look bad." Think Jon Lovitz in "Big."

But I guess this is one of the advantages to having a young president. Just chock full o' energy.

Hope springs, even in S.C. politics

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
Last week’s column chronicled my rapid descent into a state of fuming impatience over the things that we simply refuse to do in South Carolina even though they would obviously, irrefutably make us healthier, wealthier and wiser. The proximate object of my frustration was our steadfast refusal to save young people’s lives by raising our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average. But I could as well have fulminated about our fragmented, unaccountable governmental structure, or the crying need for comprehensive tax reform, or… well, there’s a long list.
    And if I wanted to shake my fist at our fate a bit more today, I would have no shortage of cause. I could, for instance, dwell on the discouraging hour or so I spent Wednesday listening to our governor talk about his 2009 agenda: Yes, he’ll back a cigarette tax increase — a third of the way to the average — but only if he gets the counterbalancing tax cut he wants. Otherwise, he’ll veto it, again, without compunction. And yeah, he agrees that consolidating some of our smaller and less efficient school districts would be worthwhile, but he won’t spend energy pushing for that; he prefers to waste what little capital he has in the education arena in another debilitating ideological battle over vouchers. And so forth.
    Depressing.
    But that’s not what I want to do today. Today, I want to offer hope, and I’ve got some on hand. This past week, we saw some remarkable instances in which things that just were not ever going to change in South Carolina — not no way, not nohow, as they might say in Oz — suddenly change, and for the better.
    Let’s start with the sudden emerging consensus to place the Department of Health and Environmental Control — one of our biggest and least answerable agencies — under the authority of the governor. Set aside what I just said about this particular governor. The governor — this one or any other — is the elected chief executive, and far more likely and able to see that the agency is run the way we the people want and expect it to be than a largely autonomous, unelected board is.
    This is painfully obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of how politics works, and has been ever since my colleagues and I started pushing for it with all our might back in 1991. At the time, though, we had few allies other than a few wonkish good-government types and the occasional governor who wanted the power, while almost everyone else in a position to do something about it or with a stake in the system was ready and able to resist the change.
    All sorts of people had all sorts of reasons to fight reform. Environmentalists, for instance, knew how to game the complicated system and lay roadblocks to polluters and other adversaries, and feared that a more “efficient” system — especially one run by a governor enamored of economic development at any cost — would make it harder to block permits they opposed.
    And in South Carolina, the status quo always has the upper hand in the Legislature. So I despaired of seeing reform.
    Then one day, just before Christmas I think it was, I ran into Sammy Fretwell — who along with fellow veteran reporter John Monk had been writing a hard-hitting series about DHEC’s failures to do its job well — and he told me a remarkable thing: A key environmental leader who had long opposed making DHEC a Cabinet agency had become a convert to accountability.
    That was wonderful, but it was just the beginning. Other conservationists started working for, rather than against, a bipartisan bill backed by longtime restructuring stalwart Sen. John Courson and Sen. Phil Leventis in the Senate, and a similar bill in the House. The stunner, the coup de grace to my lingering doubts, came in Thursday’s paper: Bo Aughtry, chairman of the DHEC board, the man at the very center of the status quo’s sanctum sanctorum, called for making it a Cabinet agency. And several former board chairs agreed with him.
    Folks, stuff like this doesn’t happen in South Carolina. But it did, and is continuing to happen. And if it happened on this issue, it can happen on others. Such as, say, transparency.
    Remember what happened at the end of 2008 to Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine, two young GOP lawmakers who were innocent enough — and guileless, idealistic and dumb enough — to confront the leadership openly and directly on the need to have roll-call votes on important action? They got crushed, as one would expect. They were handed their heads. Advocates of reform were appalled, but expected nothing different.
    Then, on Wednesday, the House voted, unanimously, to do pretty much what Ms. Haley wanted. And the Senate did much the same. And all of a sudden, it was touted on all hands — by the leadership as well as by the governor and the long-suffering reformers — as just what everyone had wanted all along. And Nikki Haley, rising like a phoenix, is the heroine of the hour.
    Stuff like this doesn’t happen, not like this, not out of nowhere, not out of the mere fact that it’s the right thing to do and there are no good reasons not to do it, not in South Carolina. But it did.
    So now I’m just seeing hope everywhere. Such as in a poll released Wednesday that showed that 74 percent of S.C. voters support raising our cigarette tax to the national average. Sixty percent favor it strongly.
    Here’s the thing about that: As I indicated in last week’s column, the arguments for going all the way to the national average are so strong, and the arguments not to do so are so weak, that only the most perverse sort of resistance to rational change can prevent it from happening.
    In the past, such perversity has been richly abundant in South Carolina. But last week, we seemed to suffer a sudden shortage of it on two surprising fronts.
    So take hope.

For more to be hopeful about, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

In praise of good ideas, starting with school district consolidation

22 Replies

You know, I sort of damned the good news about the growing DHEC consensus with unfairly faint praise earlier today. (Or darned it, at the very least.)

I need to start looking more at the bright side. I don't spend enough time looking at things that way these days. We're all so overwhelmed by the economic situation — and if you are in the newspaper business, you are steeped in it (nothing is more sensitive to a slowing economy than an already-troubled industry that is built on advertising revenues). It's very easy to dwell on such facts as this one that has stuck in my head since last week: That not only did the U.S. economy lose 2.5 million jobs in 2008, the worst since 1945, but 524,000 of those jobs lost were in December alone. To do the math for you, if the whole year had been as bad as the last month, the total would have been over 6.29 million. And there's no particular reason to think January won't be worse than December.

I'm not a big Paul Krugman fan, but stats like that make me worry that he was right in his column, which we ran on Sunday, saying that the Barack Obama stimulus plan, overwhelming huge as it is, won't be nearly big enough.

And these are not cheery thoughts. Nor is it cheery to reflect, as I did in my Sunday column, about how resistant policy makers in South Carolina are to policies that make sense — even the more obvious policies, such as increasing the cigarette tax to the national average, or restructuring government to increase accountability, or comprehensive tax reform.

That's what we do in this business. We harp. Year in, year out. We can be tiresome. We can, as I suggested Sunday, get tired of it ourselves. But little victories such as this emerging consensus on DHEC, or the signs that we saw last year that even some of the stauncher opponents of restructuring in the Black Caucus are coming around on the issue (which is a real sea change) are worth celebrating, and encouraging — like putting extra oxygen on an ember.

So it is that I applaud Cindi today for, instead of doing her usual thing of mocking the stupider ideas among the prefiled bills, giving a boost to the better ideas. There were some good ones on her list.

In fact, I was inspired to do a little followup on one of them:

H.3102 by Reps. Ted Pitts and Joan Brady would shut off state funds to
school districts with fewer than 10,000 students, in an attempt to make
inefficient little districts merge.

Now that's the beginning of a good idea. Like most obviously good ideas, it isn't new. We've been pushing for school district consolidation as long as we've been pushing restructuring and comprehensive tax reform, etc., and with even less success. Everybody says they're for it in the abstract; no one lifts a finger to make it happen. Even Mark Sanford gives lip service to it (but won't work to make it happen, preferring to waste his energy on ideological dead-ends such as vouchers).

So it's encouraging that Ted Pitts and Joan Brady (and Bill Wylie and Dan Hamilton) want to at least set a starting place — a numerical threshold, a line that the state can draw and say, "We won't waste precious resources paying to run districts smaller than this."

Mind you, I'm not sure it's the RIGHT threshold. I've always thought that the most logical goal should get us down from the 85 districts we have now to about one per county — which would be 46. The 10,000 student threshold overshoots that goal, as I discovered today. I asked Jim Foster over at the state department of ed to give me a list of the sizes of districts. The latest list that he had handy that had districts ranked was this spreadsheet
(see the "TABLE 1-N" tab), which showed that as of 2006, only 18 districts in the state had more than 10,000 pupils. One of those — Kershaw County — has since risen over the magic mark, so that makes it 19.

Maybe we should have only 19 districts in the state, although I worry that a district that had to aggregate multiple counties to be big enough might be a little unwieldy.

But hey, it's a starting point for discussion on an actual reform that would help us eliminate ACTUAL waste in our education system, and provide more professional direction to some of our most troubled schools (which tend to be in those rural districts that just aren't big enough to BE districts to start with).

So way to go, Ted and Joan (and Bill and Dan).

I was particularly struck that Ted was willing to put forth an idea that would have an impact in his own county (although perhaps not, I suspected, in his actual district). That's the standard reason why district consolidation gets nowhere — lawmakers balk at messing with their home folks districts, because voters tend to be about this the way they are about other things; a reform is great until if affects them.

I suspected, and Jim's spreadsheet confirmed, that while Lexington 1 and District 5 were big enough to retain state funding under this proposal, Lexington 3 and 4 were not. More than that, Lexington 2 falls below the threshold, and at least part of Ted's district is in Lexington 2. (Unless I'm very mistaken. Ted is MY House member, and my children all attended Lexington 2 schools.) As for Joan Brady — I think her district would be unaffected, as Richland 1 and 2 would be untouched (even though they shouldn't be — they should be merged). But I still applaud her involvement.

Anyway, way to get the ball rolling on this, folks. Let's keep talking about this one.

Video returns: Excerpts from Harrell interview

7 Replies


Have you noticed that it’s been awhile since I posted video? Like, since the election? Well, there’s a simple explanation: As I told you at the time, my laptop was stolen from my truck on election night. That meant I lost both all of my raw video from those last weeks before the election, AND the platform on which I produced the clips for posting.

I got a new laptop (well, it’s new to ME) over the holidays, but was too busy either to shoot or to edit anything, what with folks being on end-of-year time off and such around here.

But we’re back, with this extended clip from the interview with Bobby Harrell Tuesday. It’s from near the end of the interview, when he was defending his record on roll-call voting, and how he treated Reps. Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine in connection with that.

If all you want is the stuff about Nikki and Nathan, it starts about 3 minutes and 18 seconds into the video (it starts with a question from me; you can probably hear the effects of my cold on my voice). Were I a TV “journalist,” that’s all I would have given you — the controversy, the sexy stuff. And admittedly, it IS the more interesting part.

But I decided to be all wonky and include Bobby’s extensive explanation before that of HIS position on transparency in voting, and what he’s tried to do about it. You’ll note, if you watch all of it, that at one point he handed us a document in support of what he was saying. Below you will find a photograph of that document. I hope you can read it OK.

Anyway, video is back. Enjoy.

A visit from the speaker

10 Replies

Well, it's begun.

The Legislature convenes next Tuesday, and in anticipation of that, House Speaker Bobby Harrell came by to see us yesterday afternoon.

On his mind were the following:

  • Number one, the economy. Emphasizing the state's alarming unemployment rate, he said he recently met with Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor to express the speaker's willingness to provide him with whatever tools he needs. After I brought up his past criticism of the agency, Mr. Harrell insisted that we not report him as being critical of Commerce now. The closest he came to anything disparaging was the observation that Commerce had been "scoring points, not winning the game" lately. Other than that, he was Mr. Supportive.
  • Employment Security Commission. You may recall that before Christmas, Mr. Harrell said, "It is inconceivable that Governor Sanford hasn’t already made this
    request of the federal government, and it would be tragic if he allows
    jobless benefits to run out, particularly at this time of year." Now he was at pains to point out that he believes the agency should supply the info the gov wants, and he said he'll sign a letter next week calling for an audit. This is not inconsistent; it's not far from our position — yes, the agency should provide such info readily, no, the governor shouldn't play "chicken" with unemployment benefits.
  • Cigarette tax. As one who once opposed the increase outright, Mr. Harrell now counts himself among those reconciled to its inevitability. The sticking point, as always, is what it should be spent on. (As you now, our position is that whatever you spend it on, it should be passed, because it undoubtedly will reduce teen smoking.) He noted that he supported the governor's veto last year on that score. He would like to see the money (and the federal Medicaid match) spent on making health insurance more available to small businesses. He said Oklahoma has recently shown a way to do that — it would require a waiver from the feds.
  • Education funding formula. My notes were sketchy here, but he was talking about revamping the whole funding system. I'll check with Cindi later to remind me what he said about this; in the meantime consider this a placeholder — I mention it only so that you know it was one of the things that was on his mind. All my notes say is "Education formula… The whole pot… They've been melting… a lot." And I confess that makes little sense to me, much less to you.
  • Roads. He wants more money for road maintenance, but he does not want to raise the gasoline tax, which is how we fund roads in SC. He would instead devote car sales taxes — what little we get in sales tax, given the $300 cap — to roads. He did not specify what he would NOT fund from the general fund to do that.
  • Restructuring. He promised to push for a Dept. of Administration.
  • Tax reform. He said a BRAC-style tax reform commission would be a good idea, but he offered two amendments to what biz leaders have advocated. Rather than have no legislators on the commission, he would have about a fourth of the panel be lawmakers. His reasoning is that lawmakers could school other members as to the feasibility of the ideas (which sounds suspiciously like a way to keep out good ideas the Legislature doesn't like, but maybe that's just me and my suspicious nature). He also said that rather than making it impossible for lawmakers to amend the plan, he would allow for amendment with a big supermajority — say 75 percent. His stated reasoning on that is to prevent some minor technical flaw from sinking the whole plan. He believes the supermajority requirement would eliminate the danger of narrow interests killing the overall plan. One more point on tax reform: He thinks it should be done in two stages — deal with the host of sales tax exemptions first, then the rest of the tax structure.

Those are the main topics he brought up. In answer to questions, he said:

  • A payday lending bill — one to more tightly regulate the industry, but not out of existence — will likely come out of the session.
  • He likes the governor's idea of eliminating the corporate income tax — an idea he traces to Ronald Reagan (at which point all Republicans murmur "Peace Be Upon Him" or something equally reverential). But he doesn't like the idea of eliminating economic incentives.
  • In response to our noting that the governor seems to want to step up his voucher efforts, the Speaker said he's supportive, but doesn't think it will pass.
  • Roll call voting. He defended his rules change to increase transparency, which he believes addresses the "key concerns" — such as spending legislation, the budget overall, anything affecting lawmakers' pay or benefits, ethics or campaign finance and the like. He totally dismissed the idea that his handling of Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine was out of line, or anything personal. As for his not telling Nikki in person he was kicking her off the committee, such has "always been done by sending a letter."
  • Cindi was just starting to ask about the one thing liable to occupy most of the House's energy this year — passing a budget in light of plummeting revenues — when the Speaker said he had to leave for another interview for which he was already late (Keven Cohen's show). Rest assured Cindi will follow up. (If I'd realized how short on time we were, I would have insisted we start on that overriding topic earlier.)

One more thing worthy of note: This was the first time Mr. Harrell asked to come in for a pre-session board meeting. Predecessor David Wilkins did it as a more or less annual ritual, bringing his committee chairs (including Mr. Harrell) along with him.

Graham’s got it right, too

14 Replies

No sooner had I hit "save" on that last post than I saw this release from Lindsey Graham, which actually came in before the DeMint one:


“I’m disappointed with President Bush’s decision in many respects. 
 
“I do not believe it’s appropriate to use the TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery
Program) funds to bail out the automotive companies.  These funds were supposed
to be used to stabilize financial institutions.  The TARP legislation would
certainly not have passed it we had known it was going to be used for this
purpose. 
 
“The plan announced by the President today will not lead to the necessary
reforms which will make these companies profitable.  The only viable solution is
for them to enter Chapter 11 reorganization. 
 
“There the companies would be able to renegotiate their labor and health
costs to make them competitive in the global marketplace.  It would also allow
the reorganization to be accomplished without political considerations. 
Presidential or congressional restructuring will end up being a political
exercise more so than a business exercise to make these companies profitable. 
 
“If we continue down this road, I expect this will be the first of many
government payments to the Big 3 automotive companies.”

Needless to say, I also agree with Graham. I'd like to see a little more indignation from him on this, though.

This is a bad situation we're in, folks. A lame-duck president takes it upon himself to throw $17.4 billion of money that was NOT appropriated for this purpose down a hole (and yes, I think the sudden failure of the Detroit Three is a bad thing to be avoided, but the whole managed bankruptcy thing sounded like a less bad option to me), and the only people who disagree with what he did is members of his party, and they're too loyal to get outraged about it. The Democrats love this, so they won't have a critical word to say.

And I'm too sick and eager to go home and hit the sack to get into it. Again, I recommend the Will column coming up on Sunday — he gives him both barrels.

So when, precisely, do you suppose Inez got cozy with these “teachers’ unions?”

30 Replies

It’s been a busy day, so I’m just now getting back to that bizarre AP story I read this morning about Inez and the Education secretary job. It said, in part,

Teachers’ unions, an influential segment of the party base, want an
advocate for their members, someone like Obama adviser Linda
Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum,
the former state schools chief in South Carolina.

Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.

Say WHAT? Inez is the one who led the nation in implementing accountability. And where on Earth did that stuff about "teachers’ unions" come from?

Something I meant to mention in my Sunday column, but it was just too complicated to get into, was the fact that it’s hard, if not impossible, to place Inez in the simplistic terms that David Brooks used to describe the conversation within the Obama transition over the Education Secretary nomination:

As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms…

He went on to suggest that potential education secretaries are being assessed according to where they fall on that spectrum.

Mind you, I’m not accusing Brooks of being simplistic. Rather, the problem is that NATIONALLY, that’s the way the whole issue of public education plays. And it just has nothing to do with Inez’ experience — or anyone else in South Carolina’s experience — of dealing with public education.

That’s because we don’t have a teachers’ union in South Carolina. In case you hadn’t noticed, teachers don’t engage in collective bargaining here, and that’s a GOOD thing. We don’t hold with
it here. Yes, we have an organization affiliated with the organization
that in other places constitutes a union, and that organization does
wield some influence at the State House. But not being a union takes
some intensity out of the conflict we see elsewhere.

This might doom her chances, for a number of reasons. First, she simply lacks experience dealing with unions, which are such a big factor elsewhere. Also, if Brooks is right, the two camps are each determined to have someone who is ONE or the OTHER (fer or agin the unions). But the fact that she doesn’t fit neatly on that scale speaks to another reason why I’d like to see Inez in that job: Maybe she could change the subject from this titanic ideological battle to one of dealing pragmatically with the challenges facing kids in our public schools.

That’s what Inez would bring: The pragmatism that Obama has sought in his nominees up to this point.

Sure, Inez has some experience dealing with entrenchment in the education establishment — she had to overcome a lot of that in implementing the EAA. But it was less fierce than you might find elsewhere. And in any case, she got the job done.

Also — and my colleague Cindi Scoppe has written about this — when folks in other parts of the country talk about "school choice," they mean charter schools as often as not. Well, we have charter schools in South Carolina. This newspaper has supported them from the start. That is NOT the case with the wacky stuff that "choice" advocates push, with out-of-state money, here. Charter schools are about innovation; vouchers and tax credits are about undermining the entire idea of public schools — accelerating the process of middle class abandonment that began with post-integration white flight. (And before you have a stroke and say you’re for vouchers, and you don’t want that, I’m not talking here about YOUR motivation — I’m talking about what the effect would be.)

So the vocabulary doesn’t really translate. What I’d like to see is a South Carolinian in the main national education pulpit changing the conversation, and therefore the vocabulary, to something that matches the reality that we see in our schools here.

Has Inez been a reformer? You betcha, on the grand scale — she’s the one who implemented the Education Accountability Act, which put us out ahead of most of the country on that point (and then came NCLB, which has been really discouraging because it compares how well South Carolina meets its HIGH standards to how well other states meet their LOW standards, and acts as though they’re the same thing).

Was Inez in the vanguard demanding the EAA? No. It was passed before she entered office. But she was the one who implemented it, and got high marks for how well she did it.

Note that of the three main sorts of reform Brooks mentions above — "merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards" — South Carolina is ahead of the pack on numbers two and three, and Inez has had a lot to do with the accountability one.

Merit pay is one of those things that we haven’t done much on, and we should. In fact, that’s one of the  reforms we keep trying to push here on the editorial board of The State, along with school district consolidation and giving principals greater flexibility and authority to hire and fire.

But we don’t get much traction. Why? Because of this completely unnecessary, incessant battle over vouchers and tax credits, which consumes all the oxygen available for talking about education policy. The "choice" advocates yell so much, and defenders of public education yell back so much, that you can’t hear anything else. And it’s a shame.

Elected officials such as our governor will give lip service to favoring school district consolidation — and then put no appreciable effort into making it happen. And of course, his out-of-state allies who fund voucher campaigns have NO interest in pushing consolidation, because they have no interest in anything that would actually help public education in South Carolina. They don’t want to make our public schools better; they just want to pay people to abandon them, and the whole strategy depends on portraying the schools as being as bad as possible.

So, bottom line: Inez a reformer? Yes. Inez the candidate of "teachers’ unions?" Where did AP get that? Unfortunately, AP isn’t saying. But somebody at AP sure does seem to like Arne Duncan.

The imperial presidency-elect?

23 Replies

Obamaseal2

This letter on today’s page got me to thinking:

New administration may be full of itself

For the past few weeks, I have witnessed our newly elected commander-in-chief and his subordinates on national and local news.

On the podium is a seal that denotes “the office of the president-elect.” Believing I had forgotten much of my ninth-grade civics class, I reread our U.S. Constitution. Described therein were the offices of, requirements for and duties of the president, senators, representatives, et al. Nowhere could I find a definition of the “office of the president-elect.”

How pompous and presumptuous of those so headily and gleefully poised to assume the reins of power. Could be a sign; I don’t know.

JOHN R. CLARK
Hartsville

Obamaseal1
What it got me to thinking was this: This keeps cropping up, and I keep wondering why, because Barack Obama doesn’t strike me as this kind of guy. He is, after all, The Tieless One. These overdone trappings of gonnabe power just don’t seem like him.

Remember how everyone talked about the "Imperial Presidency" during the Nixon administration? Well, who is it on Obama’s team who is so tone-deaf as to want to project an image of an "imperial presidency-elect," or earlier, an imperial candidacy (at right)?

I had noticed the seal, too, and I thought it was pretty weird. But what I don’t know is, whose idea is this? Why does this keep happening? And why doesn’t Obama put a stop to it?

Well, I guess he showed THEM who the big ol’ hairy Speaker is

12 Replies

One day not too long ago, a business-leader type, discussing reform legislation of some sort, said within my hearing that if David Wilkins were Speaker of the S.C. House today, you’d see some action on the bill in question — implying that Bobby Harrell isn’t the Speaker his predecessor was.

Well, I may not be holding my breath to see restructuring, or comprehensive tax reform, or a rise in the cigarette tax to the national average, or anything else we sorely need pass the House, but yesterday Bobby Harrell left no doubt who the big ol’ hairy speaker was — at least, not in the minds of Nikki Haley or Nathan Ballentine, or anyone else who might consider opposing him in any way.

The full AP story:

Date: 12/3/2008 7:51 PM

BC-SC–Speaker-Committee Ousters,2nd Ld-Writethru/682
Eds: UPDATES with quotes, details from House speaker, legislators.
SC House speaker: It’s nothing personal
By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) _ Two Republican House members say GOP House Speaker Bobby Harrell ousted them from committees in reprisal for their push to increase on-the-record voting and open criticism of practices in the lower chamber.

But the Charleston Republican, who won his second full term leading the GOP-dominated chamber Tuesday, said there’s nothing to complaints from Reps. Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine.

"I think everything that I did in these appointments was appropriate," Harrell said.

"What he’s doing is a complete power play," said Ballentine Wednesday after being booted from the House’s Education Committee to the relative backwater of the Democrat-controlled Medical, Military and Municipal Affairs Committee. "Here’s what happens if you try to step out on my watch."

Ballentine and Haley had allied with Gov. Mark Sanford, a frequent Harrell critic, to push for more on-the-record voting.

Harrell derided the effort, noting the House does plenty on the record already. When Sanford, Ballentine and Haley appeared at news conferences promoting the idea, Harrell said he supported more roll-call voting, but more was needed than "just pandering to voters and grabbing for headlines."

"House leadership is sending a message: If you open your mouth, you’re going to get your head chopped off," Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said.

Haley said she crossed Harrell this year by bucking his efforts to scuttle tougher payday lending regulation and irked him again by questioning House practices that allowed approval of a retirement pay increase for legislators on a voice vote earlier this year.

Haley started the week campaigning to be the first chairwoman of the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, a prestigious committee because it handles business legislation, but dropped her bid Monday night.

On Tuesday she tried to head off Harrell backed rules on roll-call voting she said didn’t go far enough. On Wednesday, Harrell appointed her to the LCI committee, but then hours later had his lawyer deliver a letter booting her to the Education Committee.

"I went against the speaker on something he was publicly against: votes on the record. And I was not just demoted, but he attempted to embarrass me and humiliate me in the process," Haley said. "What he proved in these last two days is that he is a speaker who is more concerned about his personal image than he is about policy in this state."

Besides, Harrell said, the "Education Committee is not a demotion. Education is the most important issue facing South Carolina."

Harrell said Haley needed to move because of the chairman’s race. "When you have two people who run for chairman, sometimes it’s easier for one or both of them if they aren’t on the same committee after the chairman’s race is over."

Harrell said he took the same tack two years ago in a competitive race for the Education Committee chairmanship. However, Haley was the only committee member booted after one of the three committee races that were competitive Wednesday

Harrell said Ballentine brought his move from the House Education Committee to the Medical, Military and Municipal Affairs Committee on himself.

Ballentine listed his three choices for new session’s committee assignments as "LCI, LCI, LCI. I couldn’t put him on LCI or believed there are other members who should be on LCI," Harrell said. "He clearly doesn’t like Education, so I moved him from that committee to where we did have a vacancy or a space available and that was 3-M."

But there were openings on the commerce committee. Harrell tapped freshman and fellow Charleston Republican Rep. Tim Scott for one of them.

Ballentine said the last reassignment to the 3-M committee came when a member of the Judiciary Committee got into an altercation with that committee’s chairman a few years ago.

Harrell couldn’t recall a similar move, but said none of it was personal or in retaliation.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Nikki, being a polite South Carolina lady, understated the case when she said, "he attempted to embarrass me and humiliate me in the process." He didn’t attempt. He did it. My good buddy Joel was far closer to the mark when he said, "If you open your mouth, you’re going to get your head chopped off."

Speaking of Joel… Some of y’all think I’m hard on the governor. Well, I can’t hold a candle to Bobby in that regard. Nikki Haley’s "sin" was to associate herself with the governor in his constant posturing — you know, his personal narrative that HE wants to do what’s right, and the legislative leaders don’t. Actually, that’s not what irks them. What irks them is the WAY he does it. Rather than sitting down with them and trying to accomplish his goals, he traipses around the state posing for TV cameras and presenting himself as the Font of Virtue, and everyone else as Part of the Problem.

The thing is, Nikki and the gov are right about the need for more transparency in legislative voting. I’m not 100 percent convinced that EVERY vote needs to be a roll call — there’s an awful lot of them, and most of them are of minor significance — but I appreciate that Nikki has gone beyond the ideological goal of requiring just the spending bills to be by roll call, to include ALL legislation.

And you see what she gets for her trouble. The Speaker appropriates the issue by pushing something that he calls transparency (and she doesn’t), and not only frustrates her wish to be chair of the LCI committee, but removes her from the committee altogether.

There’s an UnParty angle in this, too. There were murmurings among the GOP faithful that Nikki might actually welcome Democratic support in her bid for the chair. Perish the thought! And perish Nikki, as far as they were concerned.

And Nathan Ballentine? As Nikki paid for the sin of consorting with the governor (and maybe even Democrats — gasp!), Nathan’s sin was supporting Nikki.

So Bobby may or may not be able to use his power to do any great good for South Carolina — but he can sure use it to crush anyone who opposes him. He can’t do anything about the governor, but he can do what he wants to Nikki and Nathan. So he did. And believe you me, everyone took note.

Obama and national security: Pragmatism, continuity

36 Replies

Obama_cabinet_wart

Sorry I haven’t posted today — actually, I DID post something, but it blew up when I hit SAVE, and I’m not about to type it again, so there.

Anyway, I thought I’d put up something that would provide a chance for y’all to discuss Obama’s National Security team. I’ve already expressed my concern about Hillary Clinton, and I don’t have a lot to say about the rest. I like that Robert Gates is staying. I’ve always liked Gates. (See my Nov. 10, 2006, column, "The return of the professional")I thought he was a great pick to rescue our military from the screw-ups of Rumsfeld, and he’s generally lived up to that.

But the Gates choice speaks to a larger issue, which is continuity of policy. Obama spoke of his "pragmatism about the use of power and my sense of purpose about America’s role as a leader in the world." Which speaks to something I like about him, and appreciate. I hoped it would have been like this, and he’s not disappointing me.

Some of y’all who know about my support for our national endeavor in Iraq may have wondered how I could have been so wholehearted about endorsing Obama in the primary last year, given that he stressed so much how he was the one guy who would NOT have gone in there. Well, there’s the issue of whether we should have gone in, and the issue of what to do next. And the next president is about what to do next. And I believe Obama will be sensible and pragmatic about what to do next.

Some of his most ardent supporters are likely to be disappointed by the very things that reassure me about Obama and foreign policy. But personally, I don’t think Obama’s going to blow Iraq just to please them. He’s fortunate that the Surge (which he was wrong to oppose) has produced a situation in which an ordered withdrawal of American troops is actually advisable, and no longer reckless. I think he’ll be careful to do it in a rational manner, according to conditions on the ground. I think he’ll see the things that Tom Friedman sees, and wrote about in his Sunday column:

In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from
moderate Iraqi Sunnis against al-Qaida and Iraqi Shiites against
pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq.
There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that
a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt
in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.

That is
the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin
drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long
and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also
an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world
in a different direction.

I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said
during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi
leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to
sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving
tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.

If he can pull
this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats
could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it.
Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national
security credentials than that.

The really miraculous thing that Friedman notes is a sign that an independent judiciary is emerging in Iraq: The high court came down on a member of parliament for trying to persecute a government official for visiting Israel. This is a startling development, almost miraculous, really. I remember several years back listening to Lindsey Graham talk about how very far Iraq was from developing the institutions that support the rule of law. Graham believed we needed to stay there; I believed we needed to stay there, but contemplating how long it would take for such institutional changes to take hold was extremely discouraging.

Now we’re seeing such encouraging signs as this, which is actually as important as the reduction of violence. As Friedman says, "It’s a reminder of the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try
to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of
law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, a region that stands out for
its lack of consensual politics and independent judiciaries." That’s why Friedman was for the Iraq War, and it’s why I was, too. But I didn’t think something like this would happen so fast. As you’ll recall from what I wrote the week we invaded, I really didn’t expect us to be talking realistically about withdrawal this early in the process. But now we can — as long as we don’t screw it up. And keeping Gates at Defense is an important way of maintaining the continuity needed to avoid screwing it up.

I realize that doesn’t fit the hopes of those who thought an Obama administration’s policies would be as different from the Bush administration’s as night and day, and Obama’s going to have to do and say some things to keep those people happy, but I suspect he can do that and still chart a wise course. To them, "continuity" is probably a cuss word. But it’s the wise course, and it will be respected abroad. More than that, it’s what will work.

As David Brooks wrote today, in a column headlined "Continuity We Can Believe In:"

Over the past year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has delivered a
series of remarkable speeches echoing and advancing Rice’s themes. “In
recent years, the lines separating war, peace, diplomacy and
development have become more blurred and no longer fit the neat
organizational charts of the 20th century,” he said in Washington in July.

Gates does not talk about spreading democracy, at least in the short
run. He talks about using integrated federal agencies to help locals
improve the quality and responsiveness of governments in trouble spots
around the world.

He has developed a way of talking about
security and foreign policy that is now the lingua franca in government
and think-tank circles. It owes a lot to the lessons of
counterinsurgency and uses phrases like “full spectrum operations” to
describe multidisciplinary security and development campaigns….

During the campaign, Barack Obama embraced Gates’s language. During his press conference on Monday, he used all the right code words, speaking of integrating and rebalancing the nation’s foreign policy capacities. He nominated Hillary Clinton and James Jones, who have been champions of this approach, and retained Gates. Their cooperation on an integrated strategy might prevent some of the perennial feuding between the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and the National Security Council.

Some of you might not be seeing the change you believe in. But I’m already seeing continuity I can believe in.

And here’s the change that we WILL see, and that will matter: I think Obama can sell this policies, and make them work, better than Bush did. He was a lousy salesman. As I wrote about the Surge when I first heard about it, it was the right strategy, but Bush was the wrong guy to have selling it.

Obama’s the right guy. This is going to be interesting, and I hope gratifying, to watch.

The long knives come out for Ray Greenberg

25 Replies

Remember how, back on this post, I pointed out that Dr. Ray Greenberg was particularly (and singularly) courageous to step out and speak truth in the face of our governor’s campaign to make us think South Carolina spends too much on such things as MUSC?

I suggested that the governor himself has to be all polite and good-coppish in light of such a challenge, while his staffers can take the gloves off a bit if they need to — remember?

Well, I reckoned without ex-staffers, who are totally unrestrained in attacking Dr. Greenberg for daring to speak truth to power.

Stay tuned. There will undoubtedly be more.

Obama and the old white guys

17 Replies

Whiteguys

Several times in the last couple of weeks, various commenters have noted — either with approval or dismay — that Barack Obama is opting for experience in his choice of advisers.

For a sample of what I mean, note this piece from the front of The New York Times‘ Week In Review section Sunday, "Change is Landing in Old Hands:"

AS he sought the presidency for the last two years, Barack Obama liked to say that “change doesn’t come from Washington — change comes to Washington.”

Nearly three weeks after his election, he is testing voters’ understanding of that assertion as he assembles a government whose early selections lean heavily on veterans of the political era he ran to supplant. He showed that in breathtaking fashion by turning to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his bitter primary rival and the wife of the last Democratic president, for the post of secretary of state.

Mr. Obama will bring pieces of Chicago to the White House in the form of longtime advisers like Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod. But even after vowing to turn the page on the polarized politics of the baby boom generation, he’s made clear that service in the Beltway wars of the last 20 years is not only acceptable, but in some cases necessary for his purposes.

Of course, y’all know what I think — experience is a valuable asset. I may object to the Hillary Clinton appointment, but less because she doesn’t represent "change" than the fact that the particular job seems a bad match. I applaud his turning to other Clinton veterans, such as Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers.

Anyway, this discussion reminds me of something. Way back last year, I had lunch with someone from the John Edwards campaign after my "Edwards is a phony" column. She was a strikingly attractive young woman of apparently multiethnic background. At some point in our discussion I asked, "Why Edwards?" (Meaning, "…out of all the Democrats running for president?," not "…since he’s such a phony?")

I was really struck by her answer. She said she had thought about working for Obama, but took a look at all the old white guys around him, and thought she wouldn’t feel at home on that team. Yes, the observation seemed ridiculous in light of all the young folks of multiple backgrounds who had flocked to the Obama banner by that time, but I didn’t say so. Maybe at the start of the campaign, his staff had really looked that way to a young political professional. After all, Ted Sorenson was one of his more prominent early supporters, and surely HE is an Old White Guy? Or maybe she was just rationalizing.

Anyway, I knew Obama was smart, and he’s proving it by choosing smart, experienced people for his team. And not all of them are old, white guys.