Category Archives: Legislature

The counter-Haley insurgency within the GOP goes mainstream (but sotto voce)

Republicans who are enamored of their gubernatorial nominee can dismiss Cyndi Mosteller (sister of close Sanford ally Chip Campsen) if they like. But they’ll have a bit of trouble shrugging off this missive from their own Speaker of the House:

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ALL REPUBLICANS YOU KNOW.

Dear Friends,

This Election Year there are a lot of accusations flying around and very few facts backing them up. Republicans need to make sure all voters are fully informed before they go to the polls this November and that is why we felt it was so important that we get the real facts out.

Recently, special interest groups in our state have tried to accuse State House Republicans of fighting against reforms that we not only support, but that we have actually voted on and passed. They are even accusing Republican leadership of not supporting the very reforms that we have worked hard to get passed.

The SC House Republican Caucus is a conservative body that has a record of conservative reforms and a clear vision for our state’s future. Over this series of emails, we will tell you the facts about that solid record and share with you our plans to build on that record.

Transparency

The House Republican Caucus supports more transparency in our state government. A more open government makes for a more accountable government. We believe the people should be able to see how their elected officials vote.

FACT: In January 2009, we adopted a Rule in the House of Representatives that was authored by Representative Nikki Haley that put more of our votes on the record. Click here to see the House Rule.

FACT: Just this past session, the House of Representatives unanimously passed Rep. Haley’s bill that would make the House Rule requiring more recorded votes a law. Click here to see the bill we passed.

Even though it passed unanimously and would appear as though it was easy to pass, there were still hurdles we had to overcome to get us there. The House Republican Caucus and I, as the Speaker, worked very hard to get this important rule passed and to get the legislation through the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, this bill never made it through the SC Senate. Because of that, the House Republican Caucus has put Transparency at the top of our election agenda and plan to address this issue again in the next legislative session.

As I said at the beginning of this email, there will be a lot of untrue allegations made during this election season, but facts are facts. The House Republican Caucus, and I as the Speaker, have not only supported more transparency in government, we have backed up the talk with action by passing a House Rule and a House Bill. This is the kind of leadership you expect from Republicans, and I am proud to be able to tell you about it.

Bobby Harrell

Speaker,

South Carolina House of Representatives

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ALL REPUBLICANS YOU KNOW.

A friend sent this to me, noting rightly that “you’re certainly not a Republican, but I thought I’d pass it on anyway.” I’m much obliged.

Whoa. Normally, when a Republican leader starts out a mailing, less than a month from a general election, with “This Election Year there are a lot of accusations flying around and very few facts backing them up,” he’s unloading on the Democratic nominee. Not this time, baby. Not the way I read it, anyway — because I’ve only heard one person try to paint the leadership as opposed to transparency.

Sure, in keeping with Reagan’s 11th Commandment, Bobby didn’t come right out and say “Nikki Haley is a liar!” But even your more comprehension-challenged Repubs ought to be able to understand this message. Right? Or are they thicker than I give them credit for being?

Or… is there something I’m missing?

Don’t miss Cindi’s package comparing Nikki’s & Vincent’s records

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This afternoon, a friend who is an experienced observer of South Carolina politics asked me whether I’d read Cindi Scoppe’s package on today’s editorial page comparing the records of Nikki Haley and Vincent Sheheen.

I said no, but I had glanced at it, which pretty much told me everything I needed to know. Or rather, what I had already known without tallying it all up. But Cindi did that for us, and the result is both superficially telling — because Vincent’s accomplishments take up so much more room on the page — and also substantively so. It tells the tale rather powerfully of who is better qualified to move South Carolina forward — or in any direction you choose. It shows that Vincent Sheheen is far more qualified, and inclined, to take governing seriously.

Of course, as I told my friend, the fact that Nikki has accomplished virtually nothing will be embraced as a positive by her nihilistic followers. They will vote for her for the same reason they voted for Strom Thurmond, and Floyd Spence — because they did very little in office — with the added Sanfordesque twist of blaming the Legislature, rather than herself, for her lack of accomplishments. But the truth is, Nikki simply hasn’t even tried to accomplish much at all.

Basically, what Nikki has done is get elected, introduce very few bills of any kind, gotten almost none of them passed because she doesn’t care about accomplishing anything, then run for governor. That’s Nikki in a nutshell.

Vincent, by contrast, has taken the business of governing as a serious responsibility, one bigger than himself and his personal ambitions.

And there’s much more to it than sheer volume. As Cindi wrote:

The easiest, though not necessarily most useful, way to compare the lists: Ms. Haley has introduced 15 substantive bills, of which one has become law and one has been adopted as a House rule. Mr. Sheheen has introduced 119 substantive bills (98 when you weed out the ones that he has re-introduced in multiple sessions), of which 18 have become statewide law and four have become local law….

What’s most striking about Mr. Sheheen’s list is its sweep, and the extent to which it reflects initiatives that either know no partisan boundaries or that easily cross them. Although his focus has been on giving governors more power to run the executive branch of government and overhauling our tax system, his bills touch on far more — from exempting small churches from some state architectural requirements and prohibiting kids from taking pagers to school to giving tuition breaks to the children of veterans and eliminating loopholes in the state campaign finance law.

This is the body of work of someone who understands what the government does and is interested in working on not just the broad structural and philosophical issues that politicians like to make speeches about but also the real-world problems that arise, from figuring out how to move police from paper to electronic traffic tickets without causing problems to writing a legal definition for “joint custody” so parents will know what to expect when they go to court.

One thing that’s notable in relation to this campaign: Ms. Haley attacks Mr. Sheheen as being anti-business because he does some workers compensation work (although his firm represents both businesses and employees), but he has written only one bill regarding workers compensation — and that was a “pro-business” bill that said employees of horse trainers didn’t have to be covered.

Cindi published this list of Nikki’s legislative record, such as it is, and this list of Vincent’s, in the paper. Vincent’s was obviously far more weighty. But in truth, she couldn’t fit all of the Sheheen record in the paper. Here’s the fuller record, including the ones that Cindi found too boring to put in the paper.

I doubt this will win over anyone, because the kind of people who would vote for Nikki view lack of experience, and the lack of the ability to accomplish anything in government, as virtues. They care about ideology, not pragmatic governance. I just publish this for the sensible, serious folk who see things differently.

Which is sort of the point of my whole blog, come to think of it…

Nikki and the “slush fund:” Belly up to the trough

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Have you seen the latest Nikki Haley ad? As I said in a comment yesterday:

Wow. Did you see that incredibly weak, intelligence-insulting ad that Nikki released attacking Vincent?

It’s all about attacking him as a “liberal,” a “Columbia Insider” and a “trial lawyer.

So there you have it: Vincent criticizes Nikki for things that she — an actual, living, breathing woman actually living in South Carolina — has actually done. (You may have noted that the keyword here is “actual.”)

And her response is to throw some of the less imaginative canned, off-the-shelf, standard-issue GOP epithets at him — because, you know, since he’s a Democrat it must all be true, right?

How utterly pathetic. What total contempt she obviously has for the South Carolina electorate.

The only thing Nikki had to offer as a specific, relevant charge in her weak effort to paint Vincent as a tax-and-spend “liberal” was that he had voted to override the governor on the Orwellian-named “Competitive Grants Program” and Nikki had voted to sustain.

Of course, I take a back seat to no one in my disdain for the grants program. Sure, it’s not much money in the grand scheme, but it’s a textbook example of the wrong way to spend, with no regard for state priorities. The local projects the money tends to go to are sometimes worthwhile, but that money should be raised locally.

So bad on Vincent for going along with the majority on that. But Vincent’s voting with the Republican majority while Nikki voted with the minority says more about the fact that Nikki is one of Mark Sanford’s few reliable allies than it does about who is tighter with a buck.

Especially when you consider the following, which the Sheheen campaign was so thoughtful as to share today:

Nikki Haley’s Slush Fund Hypocrisy

Camden, SC – Nikki Haley’s credibility has taken another hit after she released a misleading advertisement yesterday criticizing Vincent Sheheen for supporting a “legislative slush fund,” a fund that she vigorously supported. Haley requested over $1.5 million in legislative earmarks for her home district from the South Carolina Competitive Grants program but has campaigned boasting of her opposition to the program.

Nikki Haley has been a full-fledged participant in the program, requesting at least $1.5 million in earmarks for special projects in her district and county. She has sponsored at least twenty-four applications for competitive grants including $90,000 for the Lexington Fun Fest.

After she ran for governor, Haley decided that she could score political points by opposing the program, claiming that she objected to state money funding her local Gilbert Peach festival. Yet that same year, 2008, she requested at least $160,000 in other projects.

Kristin Cobb, Communications Director for Sheheen for Governor, had this to say: “Once again Nikki Haley has created an even greater level of hypocrisy with her recent attack ad against Vincent Sheheen. Haley claims she voted against this program but apparently that was because her $1.5 million earmark requests were not approved. She wasn’t against the program, she was just upset she didn’t get her share.”

“The more South Carolinians are learning about Nikki Haley the less they like. If we can’t trust what she says on the campaign trail, how can we trust her to be governor,” Cobb concluded.

Here is a sample of Haley’s Earmark Requests:

West Columbia – Sewer Project $370,600

SC Parents Involved in Education $100,000

SC Office of Rural Health $100,000

West Columbia – Riverwalk Expansion $100,000

Newberry College – Nursing Program $99,000

Lexington County – Web-based Tourism $91,099

Lexington Fun Fest $90,000

Lexington County – Industrial Park $80,000

Lexington County – Clean Water Act $77,700

SC Philharmonic $69,274

Alliance for Women at Columbia College $60,000

Healthy Learners $50,000

Brookland Foundation $50,000

Outdoor Journalist Education Foundation $34,450

Killingsworth $30,000

Lexington Downtown Renovation $26,000

SC Office of Rural Health $25,000

Lexington Fun Fest $25,000

YMCA Adventure Guides Program $24,445

Girl Scout Council of the Congaree $21,520

Lexington County Museum $20,000

Lexington – Video Conferencing System $15,000

Lexington County Museum $10,000

Lexington Community Fun Day $3,500

TOTAL: $1,572,588

They also attached this PDF of supporting documents for your perusal.

That assertion about “She wasn’t against the program, she was just upset she didn’t get her share” reminds me of something. Nikki has a habit of being selectively principled — as in, principled when it serves her ambition. For instance, remember the Tweets Wesley Donehue put out a while back about Nikki’s effort to stop the Senate from passing a roll-call vote bill?

Wesley, who works for the Senate Republicans, was pretty insistent about making sure we knew how hypocritical she was on the subject:

Nikki Haley called me last year angry that the Senate filed a roll call voting bill. about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

Nikki Haley told me that she didn’t want the Senate “stealing my issue.” about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

Let me repeat – Nikk Haley asked me to get the Senators to pull the companion bill from the Senate. about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

I haven’t heard Wesley mention this since the primary — since, that is, she has become his party’s nominee. I’m going to be with him on Pub Politics this evening, and will ask him about it…

Election shocker: The vote is actually tomorrow!

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… if you live in Anton Gunn’s district, where Democrats are picking a nominee to go up against Sheri Few in light of Anton’s sudden decision to take a job with the federal gummint.

I got this today from Boyd Summers and the Richland County Democrats:

Let’s get ready!!!

A major decision will be made tomorrow regarding Rep. Anton Gunn’s seat in Northeast Richland and Kershaw Counties.

As many of you know, Gunn received a Presidential Appointment a few weeks ago to become the Director of Health and Human Services for the southeastern United States. Gunn was a rising force in South Carolina politics and had a proven ability to work on both sides of the aisle to get things done for his district.

The district includes the Sandhills region, the Summit, Lake Carolina, and many neighborhoods throughout Elgin and Lugoff. If you are not sure if you are in the district, check here!

The polls will be open tomorrow from 7am to 7pm.

There will be three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. Check out this article featuring the candidates and their positions:

Mia Butler

Beverly Frierson

Todd Wood

We encourage you to vote in this primary so that we choose a great candidate to run against Tea-Partyist Sheri Few in November.

Also, it is imperative that we get active! We must make calls, knock on doors, and host events for Vincent Sheheen, Matthew Richardson, Ashley Cooper, Rob Miller, Paige George, our House District 79 nominee, and our County Council candidates. We are open for business and will work around your schedule so sign up to VOLUNTEER to bring progress to South Carolina. If you have any questions please call Joey Oppermann at (864) 934-7910 or Stanley Davis at (646) 322-5565.

For information on what’s happening around Richland County stay tuned to www.RichlandCountyDems.com!

I’m glad I don’t live in that Richland-Kershaw district, because I know zip about those candidates. If you DO live there, perhaps the above links will help.

It’s “a great statement” all right, Senator

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I found this photo on thestate.com, courtesy of Thomas C. Hanson. If either The State or Mr. Hanson has a problem with my running it, they should contact me at [email protected]. I just felt it was important to give y'all a chance to discuss it.

Glenn McConnell says the above photo is “a great statement as to how far this state has come.” It certainly is, Senator. It shows that in the past 147 years, South Carolina has advanced at least several days, perhaps even a week, past 1862. I look at this photo, and I know in my bones that in South Carolina, 1863 has finally arrived!

I’ll say one more thing. The issue to me isn’t whether re-enacting or “interpreting” history is a good or bad thing. The issue for me is how into this stuff the senator, who is arguably the most powerful politician in our state, is. He was really pumped, wasn’t he? He really does love dressing the part.

You may have other things to say.

Nikki vs. Vincent, by the ounce

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As I occasionally have to clarify here, I’m about commentary, not reporting. You want reporting, go someplace else. I haven’t been a reporter in 30 years. You want an opinion writer who’s primarily a reporter, see Cindi Scoppe. She’s one of the best. (Her column today is a good example of that quality; I may post separately about that later.) Sure, I “cover” events from time to time, just so I can get my own first-hand impressions. But mainly what I do is make observations based upon the existing body of available information.

Now Corey Hutchins with The Free Times is a reporter. You’ll recall that he was the only media type to go out and track down Alvin Greene before the primary. Too bad more people didn’t read his report at the time.

Now, he has a facts-and-figures report comparing the legislative records of Nikki Haley and Vincent Sheheen. One way to characterize what he found is in this observation he posted on Facebook:

If one were to print out the list of legislative bills in the past five years primarily sponsored by the two lawmakers running for governor in S.C., Dem Sen. Sheheen’s would weigh 9.5 ounces and GOP Rep. Haley’s would clock in at 2.4 give or take a botched staple.

Of course, that doesn’t tell you much. Maybe Vincent is just wordy. You’ll get more to chew on reading his full report headlined, “Legislative Records: Sheheen More Active, Successful Than Haley,” with the subhed, “Since 2004, Sheheen Has Sponsored 96 Bills, Haley 13.”

An excerpt:

There are several ways to detail the disparity, but the easiest might be to look at the number of bills for which each candidate was listed as a primary sponsor and how far along each piece of legislation made it through the sausage maker.

Sheheen was elected to the state senate in 2004, the same year Haley was elected to the House. (Sheheen served in the House for four years before being elected to the Senate.) The difference in their legislative accomplishments since then is staggering.

According to state House and Senate records, during the 2005-2006 session, Sheheen sponsored 35 bills and was able to get eight of them passed. That same session, her first in office, Haley went zero for one.

The following session Sheheen went six for 30. Haley scored one out of seven.

During the latest legislative session that took place from 2009 to 2010, Gov. Mark Sanford signed two out of the 31 bills that Sheheen primarily sponsored. That year, the governor didn’t put pen to paper on any of the five bills backed by Haley.

Given these numbers, it would be hard to overstate the extent to which Sheheen — a Democrat in a Republican-dominated chamber —was able to navigate the legislative process in a more effective fashion than Haley. But from a philosophical standpoint — Haley being a candidate who wants government to do less — her rhetoric is at least somewhat consistent with her legislative record…

That’s a bit simplistic, a measure of Corey’s reportorial wish to be as fair to her as he can. What her record really underlines is the problem that I keep pointing to. In terms of accomplishing ANYTHING in dealing with the people who write the laws of the state (and in a Legislative State like ours, that thought could almost be framed as “accomplish anything, period”), Nikki Haley’s record indicates that, if anything, she’s been less successful even than Mark Sanford. Which is a very low standard indeed.

And remember, Sanford started out with a honeymoon, with a legislative leadership eager to work at long last with a governor of their own party. Those same leaders already know they don’t like Nikki.

Doug, of course, will turn that around into an attack on the legislative leaders themselves, which is satisfying to him but gets us nowhere. When you and I walk into the booth on Nov. 2, for the overwhelming majority of us, those leaders won’t be on the ballot (and the few of us who do live in their districts will find they don’t have viable opposition). What we get to pick is the governor. That’s how we get to affect the future course of our state.

Haley wants to drop one thing Sanford did right

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I’m with Mark Sanford on this one:

Last week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley said she would do away with detailed executive budgets, which were typically ignored due to the acrimony between Sanford and lawmakers. Instead, Haley said, she would set a small list of priorities and work with lawmakers during the process.

In a message sent to Sanford’s campaign e-mail list, the outgoing governor argued his successor should also draft a detailed budget.

“These Executive Budgets have been vital in creating a budget blue print that showed how we could fund core services of government without raising taxes,” Sanford wrote, encouraging recipients to read a Post and Courier editorial on the subject. “They were important in showing the savings that might come from restructuring and consolidating government.”

Sanford does not mention Haley, a political ally who shares many of Sanford’s positions, by name in the e-mail.

Even with our weak-governor system, the governor is the one elected official with the closest thing to a governmentwide perspective — and has the broadest responsibility to voters. He (or she) should at the very least propose a budget setting priorities for spending, which lawmakers are then free to ignore the way they have since Carroll Campbell started the practice a couple of decades back. Campbell was right to go ahead and ACT like a governor, at least in advocacy terms, by submitting a budget, rather than waiting around to actually be put in charge of the executive branch.

Nikki Haley is on the right track looking for ways to antagonize lawmakers less. (Although it’s a bit late for that. Unlike Sanford, who started with a honeymoon, she’s already alienated legislative leaders to such an extent that if elected she would start out in a hole with them, and she knows it, and knows we know it, which is why she’s talking about this.) But this is the wrong item to start with. An executive budget, theoretical as it is, is a useful tool.

And while Mark Sanford went out of his way to alienate lawmakers so that they would ignore his budget proposals, along with the rest of his agenda, he put a lot of work into his budgets. And while they had their flaws, they were worth considering.

So would be Nikki Haley’s, were she elected. And so would Vincent Sheheen’s, which is why I hope he would continue to submit them. We need governors to actually take an interest in governing.

It’s great that Nikki wants to signal that she’d be different from Sanford. But this is the wrong way to start.

Nikki Haley’s ‘limited hangout’ (This is what she means by ‘transparency,’ when it’s applied to her)

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First, for you youngsters who’ve only been alive for five minutes or so, here’s a definition of “limited hangout.” Or perhaps we should refer to what Nikki has done as a “modified limited hangout,” the extra-special version invented by Richard Nixon and his droogs.

In any case, this passage from The State‘s story today pretty much tells you all you need to know about what Nikki means by the word “transparency” when it is applied to her. To be helpful, I’ve boldfaced the most important parts, in this passage and subsequent ones:

Sheheen released his legislative e-mails, copies of his hard drives and campaign receipts two weeks ago in response to identical open records requests The State sent to both campaigns. Haley released her e-mails, but said she would not release any other documents or allow reporters to review her state-issued computer hard drives. A hard drive keeps a permanent record of e-mails.

Then there’s this little elaboration, which I suppose Nikki put out for the benefit of the technological Neanderthals among the electorate:

“I think 10,000 sheets of paper is a lot,” Haley said, referring to the volume of e-mails in defending the decision not to match Sheheen’s disclosure. “I’m comfortable with how transparent we have been. I’m not going to get into this tit for tat about whether that’s enough sheets of paper.”

Ahem. Nikki, if you’d just go ahead and release the hard drives — you know, the public hard drives that belong to us, the taxpayers whom you allegedly love so much — nobody’s asking for so much as ONE “sheet of paper.” This is the 21st century. Give us the frickin’ hard drives, and we’ll have all that we need. Your good faith will have been demonstrated. Those “sheets of paper” you’re touting are the emblem of your refusal to just go ahead and be transparent, the physical manifestations of your selectivity. And you say there are 10,000 of them. Ten thousand documents attesting to your refusal to simply open up access to a public resource.

Then there’s this:

The Haley campaign emphasized she is exempt from state open records laws as a lawmaker, and all compliance is voluntary.

Wow. Yeah, Nikki, lawmakers ARE exempt, because they write the laws, and refuse to abide by the openness they have statutorily imposed on the rest of government, from the governor to the guy who sweeps up in the offices of our bureaucracy. This is an exemption they carved out for themselves, and themselves alone. This is the very cult of stonewalling that someone we know constantly berates her fellow legislators about. That someone’s initials, in the spirit of limited hangout, are N.H. And I’m not talking New Hampshire.

And you want to hide behind THAT? Really?

Amazing.

Show us transparency, Nikki: Release the e-mails

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Did you see the strong editorial in The State Sunday, challenging Nikki “Transparency” Haley for hiding behind a loophole in FOI specifically carved out to protect legislators, and legislators alone, from transparency in order to keep her state-issued e-mail secret?

I was very glad to see it. As the edit pointed out, this isn’t about Will Folks or disgusting sex allegations. Neither The State‘s editorial board nor I expect to find anything about that if we ever see those e-mails. But the fact that this started with such accusations creates a smoke screen that lets Nikki get away with a flagrant flouting of the principles she lets on to hold most dear. From the heart of the editorial:

Ms. Haley, after all, is not just someone who thinks government transparency is a nice thing. Her one claim to fame as a legislator is her crusade to bring sunlight to a legislative process that for too long has protected lawmakers from accountability rather than giving the voters information they deserve. Her entire campaign for governor is built on that push for openness, for letting the public in on the Legislature’s secrets, for eliminating the special perks and privileges legislators give themselves and their friends.

Does that apply only to the direct expenditure of public money?

Does it apply only to other people?

Imagine if the blogger had claimed that he helped Rep. Haley secretly funnel millions of tax dollars into a green-bean museum and steer tens of millions more in cushy no-bid contracts to her campaign donors, and that messages on her government e-mail account would back up his claim. Is there anyone who would not be demanding that she make the correspondence public?

What is she hiding? Why doesn’t she want us to see the messages she has been sending as she juggled her campaign for governor with doing her job as a legislator?

It is not Ms. Haley’s job to disprove unsubstantiated allegations. It is, however, her job to prove that her commitment to ushering in government transparency and ushering out special legislative privileges is sincere — even more since it has been called into question before. She still hasn’t explained what she did to earn more than $40,000 in consulting fees from a government contractor that hired her for her “good contacts.”

If Ms. Haley were governor, we already would have seen her e-mails, because what governors write on their government e-mail accounts is public record. In fact, Gov. Mark Sanford’s attorney saw fit to turn over some e-mails from his personal account, because she determined that he was using it to discuss public business.

If Ms. Haley were the president of the University of South Carolina, we already would have seen her e-mails. Ditto if she were a $30,000-a-year clerk in the bowels of the bureaucracy, because what nearly all state employees write on their government e-mail accounts is public record.

The only reason her public e-mail correspondence has remained hidden is that she is a legislator, and legislators have written themselves a special exemption to the Freedom of Information Act.

This exemption is the very epitome of the secrecy that Ms. Haley vows to eliminate.

I’m glad to see this now. Because at some point, someone was going to point out this obvious inconsistency and raise a stink about it. My concern has been that it would happen in late October, thereby engendering another tidal wave of protective emotion that would sweep Rep. Haley to victory.

The time to address this is now, when there’s time to be calm. Time to see that she cannot possibly have any legitimate excuse not to share these state-sponsored communications.

What is she hiding, indeed? For all I know, absolutely nothing. But then I don’t know, because she’s hiding it, in a stunning display of contempt for the ideals she says she stands for.

Nikki Haley, Vincent Sheheen offer clear choice on Confederate flag

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The contrast between Vincent Sheheen and Nikki Haley will be sharp on a lot of issues, and we’ll get to them over the coming months.

But today, I want to highlight the difference between them on the Confederate flag flying on our State House grounds, as a window into broader differences. (And why that issue today? Because today is the 10th anniversary of the day it moved from the dome to the spot behind the soldier monument.)

Gina Smith in The State provided the following vignettes showing the difference. From Vincent Sheheen:

If elected governor in November, Sheheen said he is open to discussing the removal of the flag from the State House grounds. He was elected to the S.C. House a year after the compromise.

“We must develop an environment that creates jobs,” Sheheen said. “We cannot give up any edge that South Carolina has in attracting a large employer coming to South Carolina. After the last eight years, we must be proactive in creating a positive image of our state to the world.”

Sheheen offers no details, though, including locations where he would consider having the flag relocated.

“I have no predetermined proposal on the flag, but would like to work with legislative leaders, business leaders and community leaders to finally reach consensus. My job as governor will be to bring people together to reach consensus on how best to heal any divisions, including the flag,” he said.

It is unclear whether Sheheen supports the NAACP’s boycott.

And from Nikki Haley:

Haley wasn’t elected to the House until 2004. Haley believes a compromise was reached and the issue resolved.

“It was settled and it has been put away. And I don’t have any intentions of bringing it back up or making it an issue,” she said in a recent interview with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Instead, Haley said her focus is on making state government more transparent and more business-friendly. “If the people aren’t focused on the flag, it’s hard to see why the governor and General Assembly should be,” said Rob Godfrey, Haley’s spokesman.

Haley implied in the Sons of Confederate Veterans interview that she would work with the NAACP and others who want the flag removed from the State House grounds to address the NAACP boycott. “I’m the perfect person to deal with the boycott. Because, as a minority female, I’m going to go and talk to them and I’m going to go and let them know that every state has their traditions. … But we need to talk about business. And we need to talk about having (businesses) come into our state …”

As you see, Vincent understands that the time must come when we stop portraying our state to the world as a haven for neo-Confederate extremists who insist upon continuing to embrace the worst moments of our history. He’s just too diplomatic to put it in quite those terms. If he had the chance, he’d get it down. By the way, his Uncle Bob, the former speaker, had the best idea of all about what to do about the flag: Replace it with a bronze plaque noting that it once flew here. That’s a solution that would enable us to move on. But the GOP leadership refused to seriously consider that or any other reasonable solution on the ONE DAY they allowed for debate before rushing to embrace this “compromise” that settled nothing.

Nikki, however, promises not to touch it, which is the standard South Carolina Republican response. And now that she’s promised it to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, that’s that. Which is a real shame, given that since she wasn’t in the Legislature at the time, no one could legitimately pretend that she is in any way bound by the “compromise” of 2000. She wasn’t a party to it.

She’s come a long way from being the inspiring emblem for tolerance that she truly was when she ran in 2004, when I took up the cudgels for her against the forces of ugly nativism. I’d like to see the national media folks who are SO EXCITED, in their superficial way, that an Indian-American woman might be elected in South Carolina take a moment to consider this. They also might want to watch her cozying up to the neo-Confederates in these video clips. Just something that should go into the calculation…

Note also the HUGE difference in their understanding of the impact of the flag on economic development. Vincent understands that if we want the rest of the world to take us seriously, the flag needs to come down. Nikki thinks the only obstacle to economic development here is the rather sad, ineffective boycott by the NAACP, which is weird on several levels.

Anton Gunn on why B&C Board didn’t need the money

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What do Doug Ross and Anton Gunn have in common? They were both thrilled to see the headline in The State this morning, “Budget Board finds millions to offset cuts” — Doug because he’d predicted all along the money would materialize, and Anton because he had predicted it in detail.

(And what do Anton, Mark Sanford and I all have in common? None of us believe the Budget and Control Board should exist. More on that later…)

Anton and I met Wednesday morning and he went over the spreadsheet below with me, which seems to show the agency had like $60 million lying around that it could plug the $25 million hole in operating funds vetoed by Gov. Sanford. I’ve been looking ever since for a couple of hours to write what he told me, and to try to confirm that the numbers meant what he thought they meant, but haven’t been able to. Every day has been like today … today, I just got out of the Converge SE conference, where I had been since 9:30 this morning. (The conference, by the way, was awesome.)

And as I was typing that paragraph above, my wife called me (I’m at the ADCO office) to say one of the twins split her lip and had to go to the hospital today, so I’m about to run over there right away. So I can’t go into Anton’s explanation.

But here’s his spreadsheet anyway. Some of it will at least seem self-explanatory. There’s an interesting narrative to go with it (if I were still at The State, it would have been my Sunday column), but it will probably be Monday before I can write that. (It’s all about his frustrations with the Board, combined with his frustrations with ever getting useful information about the budget before having to vote on it). And at least Monday before I can get any kind of response regarding what just happened from the B&C Board. (As well as their version of what these numbers mean.)

But here’s the raw material. I’ll be back to this early in the week. Gotta go check on my babies now…

Senate wasting time on voter ID

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While we all wait for the Senate to act on the Sanford vetoes overridden by the House (an override doesn’t stick unless both chambers do it), Mike Fitts reports that they are busy squabbling over a partisan litmus-test issue:

With dozens of vetoes overturned by the House headed to the Senate for consideration, that legislative body was entangled this morning in a Democrat-led filibuster over voter I.D. legislation. Democrats fear the bill would disenfranchise thousands of people, especially the poor, who often do not have drivers’ licenses or easy access to their birth certificates.

Yeah, I know that many people of goodwill on both sides — people I respect — think there is a huge principle involved here, and that the consequences of their losing the fight would be dire. But I remain unpersuaded.

As I’ve written in the past, including one of my very last columns at the paper, I am unpersuaded by both sides. The GOP claims they must stop widespread voter fraud. The Dems claim they are trying to prevent wholesale disenfranchisement. I frankly think any fraud that actually occurs, or people who would even be inconvenienced by voter ID, are few and far between, and not enough to determine the outcome of elections.

But you say, isn’t ONE case of voter fraud an outrage? Isn’t a single person denied the right to vote a sin against democracy?

Look, call me heartless or apathetic, but I take the 30,000-foot view on this. I’m looking at the forest. To me, the staggering numbers of people who vote with NO idea who they are voting for or why is a MUCH greater threat to democracy than these rare phenomena the two parties are obsessing over.

Doubt me? Well, then, I have two words for you: Alvin Greene.

Apparently, the B&C Board has lost the big one

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Looks like maybe the governor won — meaning South Carolina lost — on the big Budget and Control Board $25 million vote, according to James Smith via Twitter this afternoon:

RepJamesSmith

25 million eliminated from B&C Board jeopardizes our AAA credit rating & eliminates 800 MHz radio funding essential for emergency response.

Actually, I wrote this post right after getting that Tweet late this afternoon. But then I got another Tweet from Anton Gunn saying that wasn’t right, and I got confused, and I had to go do “Pub Politics,” so I took this post down. But everything I’ve seen since then indicates James was right the first time: The $25 million veto has been sustained. So this post is back up.

That’s all I know right now. If you’ll recall, this is the veto that Frank Fusco said would key functions of the Board. To quote, he said:

If our General Fund budget is not restored, these areas of the Board would have to virtually cease operation:

• The State Budget Office

• The SCEIS statewide financial system

• The Board of Economic Advisors

• The Office of Human Resources

• The Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum

More when I know more.

But if this report is right, there are essentially no grownups in charge over at the State House.

Folks, just so you know where we all stand: I agree 100 percent with the governor that the Budget and Control Board should not exist. In fact, I’m pretty sure he got the idea from ME.

But until we actually do away with it, it actually performs a lot of vital government tasks (which would be performed by the executive branch in a more rational system, but we don’t have such a system — all we have is the B&C Board). To simply eliminate its funding, thereby making it impossible for it to perform these tasks, is simply insane. It’s anarchistic. It’s nihilistic. It’s appalling. It’s… it’s … South Carolina.

See me on “Pub Politics” today at 6

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Phil Bailey just called to ask me to fill in on the show this evening for Thad Viers, since it looks like the House is going to go into the night on the vetoes (he said they were on No. 46 or something).

Yes, that’s “Pub Politics,” the very show on which Sen. Jake Knotts called certain parties “ragheads,” or so I’m told. Somehow, Phil and Wes (Donehue) have yet to get around to posting that episode where I can see it. (In the paper this morning, it was, oddly enough, referred to as an “Internet radio show.” Maybe things have changed. Both times I was on it, there was video.)

Anyway, this is a special occasion, in that I will be the first and ONLY member of the “Three-Timers Club.” Maybe it’s not as prestigious as the club Steve Martin and Elliott Gould and Paul Simon and Tom Hanks belong to, but I take my honors where I can get them.

You can watch the show here.

House overrides ETV and tech school vetoes

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Went over to the State House after lunch, but when you’re trying to follow something like this all-day march through the governor’s vetoes, you can’t just drop in in the middle and know what’s going on.

Modern irony: As I sat there, listening first to Jerry Govan orate about S.C. State, and then to Glenn McConnell showing off his parliamentary razzle-dazzle, I found that I learned more about what was happening from Twitter than I did from being there, such as this Tweet from James Smith:

Vetoes of ETV, DHEC, tech schools archives have thankfully been overridden – rural health, technology incubator EEDA – sadly sustained.

And this one from Nathan Ballentine:

voted to override 1, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 31,33 (Tech Board, ETV, Library, Museum)

… both of which I reTweeted while I was there.

And then when I got back to my laptop, I saw that my buddy Mike Fitts had put out a comprehensive report of what had happened thus far. From that, and other sources, I learned that the House overrode the governor on:

the technical college system
S.C. ETV
public libraries
the Arts Commission

Mind you, the Senate must ALSO garner two-thirds for the governor to be overridden. I’m not sure where the Senate is on things at the moment. I do know that the House plans to work into the night and not be in session tomorrow, while the Senate will have a Thursday session.

Meanwhile the House has UPHELD the governor’s vetoes of the following, which means the Senate doesn’t have to act, because the governor wins (and, in most cases, South Carolina loses):

The Small Business Center at the University of South Carolina
Innovista research funding
Education programs known as High Schools That Work and Making Middle Grades Work.
the Education and Economic Development Act, which ecodevo types have relied on as a critical tool in readying youth for the working world

How many budget vetoes did they deal with? Zero

Man up, lawmakers: Override those vetoes

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Little left to say, except it’s time for lawmakers of both parties in the House to set aside all the B.S., lay down their insecurities, eschew their customary fecklessness, man up and veto those indefensible vetoes. I’m talking about this veto and this one and this one and most of the others.

I’ve really had it with the argument from the GOP leadership that they just have to sustain most of these vetoes. Kenny denied it the other night when I asked whether Nikki Haley’s strong showing last week had scared the leadership into thinking they have to go along with the Sanford nihilists, even though they’ve slapped him down every other time (even when he had a case, which he doesn’t this time). But I’m convinced that’s the only logical reason to explain this fear to do the right thing. Cindi thinks so, too. And Cindi knows WAY more about the budget process than I do. You’ll note that she gives the governor credit where he deserves it, on fairly marginal issues that don’t involve much money (Cindi has always been much more inclined than I am to reach WAY out to try to find some things to give the governor credit on), but she concludes with this cold bath of common sense:

Most insidious is his repeated implication that by vetoing what he considers frills, he will cause the money to be spent on “core services” of government. Now, I’ll be the first to agree that, as he puts it, “the vast majority of this year’s budget should be directed to core government functions like public safety, education, and health care.” But the facts are that 1) that already is happening and 2) his vetoes do not redirect money from “frills” to “core services”; they simply allow the money to sit in the bank for a year.

I have long believed that the Legislature needs to either increase taxes or else eliminate some programs or agencies altogether (and probably eliminate some even if it does raise taxes). But that’s a decision that needs to be made in an orderly way, by a clear majority in the Legislature — not by a disgraced lame-duck governor with an ax to grind and a third of the members of the House. And perhaps not even by a Legislature that is too frightened of its own shadow to make rational decisions about the responsibilities that come with insisting on operating the government. If lawmakers can’t override most of the governor’s vetoes this week, perhaps they should make arrangements to come back to town later this summer, when emotions have settled down, to consider taking some of the money Mr. Sanford wants to squirrel away and using it to patch critical holes that he has created.

And as for you Democrats: I was much reassured by James Smith telling me yesterday that the Dems would override (with the caveat that while that was the leadership position, Dems don’t do bloc voting), but then I read the paraphrase of Joe Neal in the paper this morning saying Democrats have not decided how they will handle Sanford’s vetoes today and I wonder: Will they stick it out and do the right thing? (And you know what? This is one case in which we actually NEED the Dems to vote as a bloc, because that might embolden the jittery mainstream Republicans.)

If they don’t, and if the Republicans (minus the Sanford loyalists) don’t, then on the whole they are useless.

Fun Post II: Ariail on Roll-Call Voting Bill

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Secondly, we turn to our favorite cartoonist Robert Ariail for a hilarious take on our dear senators and their commitment to transparency.

Yep, this is to a certain extent a pro-Nikki Haley cartoon, since she has made that issue her own (even though she has amply demonstrated her disdain for the Senate version — either because she thought it didn’t do enough or because she didn’t want them “stealing my issue;” take your pick), and I figure Nikki doesn’t need a boost, riding as high as she is right now.

But as well as she’s been doing, I doubt she’s had a good laugh lately. I mean, think about it: It’s not like she can enjoy the Jon Stewart stuff. So this one’s for you, Nikki.

And the rest of us can enjoy it with you.

Fun Post I: Abe Froman tribute

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This promises to be a long and hairy day, with GOP lawmakers in the House poised to knuckle under to a discredited governor’s indefensible vetoes.

So I thought I’d start it with some fun, to give us the strength to bear it all.

I’ll start with this really awesome tribute video I found on YouTube last night. How did I find it? Well, I was posting that item about the death of Jimmy Dean, and I said something about him being the Sausage King of America, which of course was a play on Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, and I went looking for a link to explain that for those of you who are not well schooled in Ferris Bueller, and I ran across this. (And yes, I linked to it yesterday, but y’all don’t always follow links.)

Enjoy.

Why ETV Matters, by Mark Quinn

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Trying to catch up on my e-mail, I ran across this item which also bears upon the Sanford vetoes:

Why ETV matters

For nearly 3 years, my job in public television has forced me to explore many of the crushing effects America’s Great Recession has had on our state. Now, it appears, the economic tsunami which began to wash over the land in 2008, may wipe away 50 years historic and pioneering television produced by ETV. The Great Recession has arrived on ETV’s doorstep, and I am forced to report on what may be the demise in vitality of a treasured state institution.

I work as the host of a weekly radio and television program entitled, The Big Picture. The premise is fairly simple, and almost ancient in its origins. Barry Lopez, the prolific novelist and essayist, summed up my job thusly: “it means to go out there and look and come back and tell us, and say what it is that you saw.” For millennia, this has been an integral part of the human experience. The earliest cave drawings were nothing more than one person’s reporting of the world that existed over the mountain or across the river. And it has always been so.

And while it’s deeply gratifying to travel our state to find the stories that give expression to the lives we lead today, there’s equal satisfaction in being a conduit to help serve another timeless need that we all have, the need to be heard. There is immense power in the connection with ordinary, everyday people and the dignity they claim when they are allowed to tell their story. The brilliance of ETV hasn’t been its coverage of the powerful or the popular, as essential as that may be. It’s been thousands of collective glimpses into the lives of everyday people doing extraordinary things. Or peeks at places you never knew existed. It’s the story of South Carolina.

For me, public television is taking you somewhere you will never go you’re your local newspaper. Nor will you ever go there with your local television station.

For me ETV is sitting in the Sullivan’s Island living room of best-selling author Dorthea Benton Frank, laughing riotously at the random acts of calamity life will throw at you… knowing if you don’t laugh, you will likely cry.

It’s thumbing through a scrapbook and shedding a tear with Dale and Ann Hampton in their Easley home, remembering their daughter Kimberly who was killed in the war in Iraq. This is where divine grace lives.

It’s being completely captivated by the force of nature known as Darla Moore. Her bank account is impressive, but her resolve, wit and determination are much more so. The first woman to conquer Wall Street still lives in Lake City.

It’s sitting down with 5 former first ladies of South Carolina, and hearing what we all assume; that life inside the Governor’s mansion is for most, a pretty grand affair.

It’s Mrs. Iris Campbell, recounting the thick fog of cigar smoke that surrounded the pool of the Governor’s mansion, as her husband hosted a group of German businessmen and wrote out the plan for BMW’s move to South Carolina on a series of cocktail napkins.

It’s the terrible misfortune of Mike Burgess, staggering as best he can through a life that includes a wife who contracted Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 46. Another day when it’s tough not to cry.

It’s spending a day with the resolute Mayor of Marion, Rodney Berry. The city has been in an economic funk for 20 years. It’s on the rebound now thanks to a fierce pride and stubborn resolve to remake its image in the absence of textiles and tobacco.

It’s hiking to see the rare rocky shoals spider lilies on the Catawba River, knowing the river itself has been named America’s most endangered. I’m not a naturalist, but the lilies are regal and captivating.

It might be a boat ride down the Pee Dee River with a group of unlikely activists. They are hunters and fisherman who opposed the building a coal-fired power plant on the river’s banks. They won.

It’s standing in Arlington National Cemetery on a gray, cold November day with Colonel Charles Murray, recipient of the Medal of Honor. He’s a World War II veteran who calls today’s soldiers America’s Greatest Generation.

It’s a long walk through the Harvest Hope Food bank in Columbia with Denise Holland. She saw the Great Recession first. The number of people they serve is up 250%. Denise Holland is scared, but grateful to tell the story of the down and out, and the dispossessed.

It’s 82 year old Laura Spong, now a best-selling artist. Her paintings fetch as much as $10,000. She took up serious art at the age of 62. Anything is possible.

It’s Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, trembling in anger when he produces a small picture of a teen-age boy, shot dead. Mayor Joe wants better supervision of people on probation and parole. Some of his pleas are now being heeded.

It is the absolute decency of former Governor Richard Riley, and his pleas for civil political discourse as we talk about leadership in the 21st century. This one will take some work.

It’s conversations with Dr. Walter Edgar about the complex history of the south, and why it’s meaningful traditions are an endless source of fascination for people all around the world.

And it’s the passion of Charleston chef Sean Brock. His seed-saving campaign to bring back South Carolina grains and vegetables that are almost extinct, is the biggest revolution in lowcountry cooking in a half century.

Chances are, unless you watch ETV, you probably haven’t heard much about any of these stories. And let me be clear, these stories will not be told, will never see the light of day if our institution is starved of its support.

Think about this: the average story on your local television news station is 75 seconds. Imagine that. I worked in that world for many years and can tell you that most all of these stations are truly committed to their communities. But how effectively can they tell you about our collective condition in 75 seconds?

I represent a very small part of the overall efforts of ETV, and its deep connection to the many thousands of people in South Carolina. And yet, I know that my enthusiasm is matched and even exceeded by many of my co-workers. What we do, everyday, is collect the patchwork pieces of stories that make up the fabric of our life here in this state. Public media is an incredibly important resource in a noisy and sometimes polluted information environment.

Bill Moyers, dean of public broadcasters said, “the most important thing that we do is to treat audience as citizens, not just consumers of information. If you look out and see an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience of citizens, you want to share something with them, and there is a difference.”

More than 50 year ago, in the advent of a ground-breaking experiment that came to be known as ETV, the mission of public broadcasting was to create an alternative channel that would be free not only of commercials, but free of commercial values, a broadcasting system that would serve the life of the mind, that would encourage the imagination, that would sponsor the performing arts, documentaries, travel. It was to be an alternative to the commercial broadcasting at that time. And guess what, it worked… and it still works today.

Can South Carolina survive without ETV? Absolutely. Will she be as rich? Not a chance.

What will you do to keep the story going? What will you do to help save ETV?

.

Mark Quinn

Host, The Big Picture

www.scetv.org

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits