Category Archives: Mail call

An update from Steve Benjamin

This just came in via e-mail:

Dear friends,

On June 30th, I will stand before the people of Columbia and swear the oath of office to become mayor.

I am thankful for all of your hard work that has led us to this moment and I remain humbled by the faith you’ve placed in me and my vision for our city. I know that I would not be here if it weren’t for you.

That’s why I wanted to take a few minutes to give you an update on everything we have done and are doing leading up to July’s transition.

As you may already know, Mayor Coble and City Council have graciously invited me to attend and participate in all City Council meetings and work sessions. While I do not have a vote, I have accepted his invitation and have already attended several meetings and budget work sessions.

I have regular meetings with the city manager and have met with all assistant city managers and department heads in order to gain a full understanding of all the projects and initiatives currently underway as well as ask for their input on how the city can be run more effectively and efficiently.

We have some truly talented and dedicated public servants working for the City of Columbia and I am honored to be working with them.

I am confident that by working together, we can accomplish anything.

While it is vital to learn the ins and outs of City Hall, I remain convinced that the key to creating real and lasting change in Columbia lies beyond those walls in an honest partnership with our regional neighbors.

With that in mind, I have made it a point to meet with or reach out to every mayor in Richland and Lexington Counties as well as the Chairmen for both County Councils in order to begin fostering the regional cooperation and collaboration I campaigned on.

Whether leading the charge on fiscal accountability and transparency, standing up to support first responders, protecting our natural environment, or promoting the arts; our campaign was fundamentally about bringing people together and creating One Columbia.

Now, with the campaign over, I am reaching across the traditional boundaries that have divided us for too long and pulling together a transition team that represents the best South Carolina has to offer.

I will announce the leadership of the transition team this week and start finalizing dates for a series of community meetings across our city.

The One Columbia Listening Tour will give every citizen from every neighborhood a chance to voice your unfiltered ideas and concerns directly to me. But, more importantly, it will give us all an opportunity to find the common ground we share so that together we can start building the future our families deserve.

Look for more updates to find out how you can help as we move closer to the July 1st transition and beyond.

God Bless you and God Bless the City of Columbia.

Sanford’s letter to Obama

So that you might be fully informed, I pass this on. Can you see me rolling my eyes from where you sit?

You saw the story about Obama's response to the original request, right? The administration told the gov that the stimulus is supposed to be used to save or create jobs. To which it might well have added, "Duh!" Marvelous restraint on the administration's part there.

Anyway, here's the latest letter:

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
MARK SANFORD, GOVERNOR

March 17, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
President
United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I'd first thank you and Director Orszag for your response of March 16 to my letter of the previous week. Likewise, I have to express my disappointment that our substantive dialogue about the best way to adapt this stimulus to the unique situations of states across this country was interrupted by the Democratic National Committee's launching of a petty attack ad against us even before we had received your response.

I've made clear my opposition to using debt to solve a problem created in the first place by too much debt – and I don't believe this to be an unreasonable position. What I find less reasonable is the way this DNC attack ad returns a nation indeed yearning for change back to the same old politics-as-usual. Because I believe you and I share a common desire to escape this worn-out "attack first" mentality, I'd respectfully ask you to immediately condemn and put an end to this unnecessary politicization of a truly important policy discussion.

In the spirit of moving forward, I'd offer the following as a clarification to our using a portion of the stimulus funds to paying down our state's sizable debt. With regard to the Education Stabilization Fund monies (ARRA § 14002(a)(1)) that must be used "for the support of * education," we think it would be consistent with statutory requirements to use this $577 million to pay down the roughly $579 million of principal for State School Facilities Bonds and Research University Infrastructure Bonds over two years. This would immediately free up over $162 million in debt service in the first two years and save roughly $125 million in interest payments over the next 13 years, which could then be directed towards other educational purposes – just as paying off a mortgage early frees up the typical monthly payment for other uses.

Regarding the $125 million in the Fiscal Stabilization Fund (ARRA § 14002(b)(1)) headed to South Carolina, we'd lay out a few options for your consideration: first, paying down debt related to the state's Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund that currently exceeds $200 million and would directly impact those currently out of work in this struggling economy; second, paying down debt related to state retirees, since that would seem to satisfy the statutory requirement that these funds be used for "other government services"; or third, paying down other bonded indebtedness at the state level.

We trust these alternative proposals fit both the statutory requirements and spirit of the stimulus legislation. Thank you again for your response, and we would again appreciate your opinion as soon as possible given that we believe this course of action will do more to ensure South Carolina's long-term economic strength than would other contemplated uses of the funds.

I also await your response on pulling down the attack ads. A good part of your candidacy was fueled by the hope for change in the way political debate is conducted in our country. On this, actions will speak louder than words – words you have been so gifted in delivering – in determining where you really stand, not as a candidate promising to deliver on change, but as a leader now capable of bringing this change. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Mark Sanford

cc: The Honorable Peter R. Orszag, Director
Office of Management and Budget

Just another one of our little secrets

A colleague passes on this reader complaint, with the comment, "What planet does this person live on?":

I would like to know why we don't hear more from SC or Columbia's media about the Governor's inclination to refuse the stimulus monies when SC is in such desparate need. This state ranks about last economically,educationally, yet ranks high on crimes. Shouldn't this money be extremely vital to SC… is the media bias… playing politics or what?

Dang, and after all our efforts to keep the governor's position on this secret…

Differing views on the stimulus

Just to share with you some of the e-mail that I ran through just before leaving the office for the night, here are three views on the stimulus bill that passed the House today.

First, Jim Clyburn really LIKED it:

February 13, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CLYBURN HAILS PASSAGE OF AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT

WASHINGTON, DC – House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn today released the following statement praising House passage of HR 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
    “Our economy is shedding 20,000 jobs a day. Just last month nearly 600,000 jobs were slashed, marking the deepest cut in payrolls in 34 years. The unemployment rate in January reached 7.6 percent, the highest level in more than 16 years. Of the top 20 highest months of job loss in America’s history, five occurred in the last seven months. It’s time to turn those statistics around.
     “The American Recovery and Reinvestment plan is the bold action that President Obama called for. It will create and save 3.5 million jobs, cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers, and strategically transform our economy for years to come.
     “Yesterday we marked the bicentennial anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln and the centennial anniversary of the NAACP. It’s not coincidental the NAACP founded its organization on Lincoln’s birthday. Yesterday, to mark their anniversary, the NAACP celebrated the breaking of glass ceilings, but also admonished us to uplift the grass roots by focusing on economic issues.
     “The last time our country faced an economic crisis of this magnitude, the government’s response in large measure omitted the communities that I represent and for which the NAACP advocates. As we crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we targeted our efforts on traditionally underserved communities and rural communities using census tracks and poverty levels to direct the greatest need. I believe we met the challenge put forward by the NAACP for equity and fairness, and I expect this recovery package to deliver the hand-up that Americans so desperately need.
     “The American Recovery and Reinvestment act makes targeted investments so the children in Sumter, South Carolina will have clean-water, so that children at J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, South Carolina will not have to learn in a 150 year old school, so that the mother in Charleston, South Carolina will not be homeless, so that kids Columbia, South Carolina will have a summer job, so that a teacher in Anderson Primary School in Williamsburg, South Carolina will not lose their job, and so that families in Florence, South Carolina looking for a way-out out this economic recession will not suffer under a Governor’s political ideology.”

-30-

Lindsey Graham really DIDN'T like it:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

February 13,
2009

Graham to
Vote Against Stimulus Package

WASHINGTON

– U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made these statements on
the stimulus package the Senate will vote on later today.

“The stimulus package creates more government than jobs.
The original goal was to work together to create jobs and stimulate our
economy. It’s clear we have failed miserably in that
endeavor.”

Lack of
Bipartisanship:

“There was never a real effort to find common ground.
We’re spending $1.1 trillion over the next ten years and we never had a
thoughtful discussion to figure out how we could come together on something with
bipartisan support. The idea that this is bipartisanship does not meet any
realistic test of bipartisanship.

Lack of Job Creation
Provisions:

“About seventy percent of the jobs in our nation are
created by small business. If our goal was to crate jobs and stimulate the
economy, one of the tests should be how much did we do for small business? Not
much. Less than $3 billion in the entire package is directed to small
business. It’s one of the areas of the bill where the focus missed the target
by a country mile.

Untimely Spending to Create Jobs and
Stimulate the Economy:

“There are so many things in the package completely
unrelated to creating a job in the next 18 months. Only 11 percent of the
appropriated spending will be spent in the first year. In fact, over half of
the money will not be spent until two years from now. We waste money in this
bill that could have gone to shoring up the financial sector and fixing our
housing problems.”

#####

And Columbia Mayor Bob Coble sent out this spreadsheet
with the message:

Here is the final version. Very good for cities!

Reaganism, boiled down to its essence

Being a word guy, I got a kick out of this first paragraph of a letter we ran on our Sunday page:

Government is the problem. Stop it.

Although those two sentences actually make more sense, something about them reminded me of Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You!)"

The temptation was strong to edit the letter so that it stopped there. It would have been perfect, a statement of Reaganism boiled down to its minimalist essence. If Reagan were the coal, this would be the diamond.

But I left the letter alone. Here it is:

Government printing too much money

Government is the problem. Stop it.

It
is printing unprecedented amounts of money. Continuing will lead to
hyper-inflation. Remember the Weimer Republic hyper-inflation, when a
wheelbarrow full of money was needed for a loaf of bread?

It's
simple supply and demand. When the government effectively prints so
many dollars, the value of the dollar will eventually go down,
drastically.

For now, call all members of Congress and urge them to kill the “stimulus” (incredible pork-barrel, not stimulus) bill.

In the longer form, however, the message lacked purity. It gave you things to argue with; you could say, "Hmmm. I seem to recall the Weimar Republic had certain other problems that contributed to the devaluation of the currency, something more than the act itself of printing too much money." Nevertheless, I do love a good historical analogy. My favorite with regard to Weimar inflation is this: The night of the Beer Hall Putsch, until it was time to make their move, one of Hitler's aides bought three beers so the two of them and one other follower could blend in. The beers cost three billion marks. But you know, if I wanted to talk about runaway inflation, I'd probably cite something more immediate: Zimbabwe has to print new denominations every week, because prices double every day. (Then again, though, Zimbabwe has bigger problems that contribute to having to print the money, not vice versa.)

But that first paragraph was very enjoyable, esthetically speaking. It was like haiku or something…

Caterpillar view of ‘Buy American’

Just now got to this e-mail of a letter from two officials with Caterpillar up in Greenville about the "Buy American" provision in Nancy Pelosi's version of the stimulus. All of our pages through Monday are now done, so on the off chance that the letter might get outdated before we could run it, and since the subject has been on my mind, I'll go ahead and run their missive here:

“Buy American” provisions could kill American jobs

Caterpillar is a proud American company. We were born in California, made our home in Illinois and maintained a strong U.S. manufacturing base that serves the global marketplace. Caterpillar laid roots in the Greenville area in 1994, beginning with the Greenville Engine Center (GEC). Our operations now include the GEC, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc., and the Marine Center of Excellence. We are also proud of our global footprint that allows us to compete and support Cat equipment throughout the world. Today more than half of what we produce in the U.S. is exported to markets outside the United States.

We are also a company that will benefit from the infrastructure component of the proposed $825 billion U.S. stimulus package. But there is one element of the stimulus proposal that greatly concerns us — it's the “Buy American” provisions. Why would an American company be against a provision that forces the U.S. government to only buy American products? Our reasons go beyond our confidence that we can compete and win business because of the value of the products we produce.

Today, countries from Asia to Europe are pursuing similar infrastructure packages to stimulate their economies. In some cases, like China, these proposed projects are more ambitious than those in the United States.

This is our concern. Caterpillar would like to sell U.S.-made products to infrastructure projects at home and abroad. But if the U.S. sends the message that regardless of value, countries should only buy locally produced products, Caterpillar's exports, as well as the U.S. jobs they support, will be hurt. In some of our Illinois factories, as much as 70 percent of what we make is sold overseas. Over half of the engines produced in Greenville are for export use including those most recently “in-sourced” from our European factories. That’s not surprising given that 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside our borders, and most infrastructure growth is occurring in the developing world.

It's hard to be against something that sounds as patriotic as "Buying American." But turning inward and embracing protectionism is what turned a bad recession in the 1930s into the Great Depression. Let’s show some political courage and learn lessons from the past. Our country doesn’t need to isolate itself from the international economy. Rather, we need policies that will help us improve competitiveness and grow. For starters we need a "National Export Strategy” that keeps U.S.-made goods in demand globally, U.S.-based companies competitive and U.S. workers employed—including tens of thousands of Caterpillar and supplier employees. The approval of these “provisions”, as they are written, could have a devastating impact on the operations of the Greenville Engine Center, Cat Logistics and the Marine Center of Excellence, as well as the lives of our employees and their families.

John Downey
Facility Manager
Large Power Systems Division
Caterpillar Inc.

Josh Frey
Facility Manager
Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.
Caterpillar Inc.

Amen to letter debunking Reagan tax ‘reform’

Just now remembered that I meant to say a big "Amen!" to the third of these letters that ran on Thursday:

Reagan tax policies began economic slide

I think that if I read one more letter praising Ronald Reagan’s tax policies I will be sick.

I
was in the tax business when his 1986 tax reform act was passed. This
act was revenue-neutral. The cut in the top brackets was accomplished
by cutting numerous deductions that the middle class enjoyed. My own
taxes increased more than $2,500.

The idea, of course, was that
those in the top brackets would create jobs and products. The problem
was the middle class had less money to purchase the products.

From
that point on, the discrepancy in accumulated wealth between the middle
and upper classes began to widen, and the government deficit began to
increase.

If you want real tax reform, I have a suggestion: Allow
those who take the standard deduction also to take their charitable
deductions. This would result in churches and other charities being
able to meet the increasing demands they are facing in this current
economy.

WILLIAM R. GEDDINGS JR.
West Columbia

The first year that tax "reform" took effect was my first year at The State. I had taken a big pay cut to come here from Wichita (I SO wanted to be close to all of y'all and I really, REALLY wanted to get the heck out of Kansas). I mean a big one, like 25 percent. Add to that the fact that I was the first (or at least, the only) editor ever hired from out of state (in our daily meetings, pretty much everyone was a USC grad except for the guy who was ostracized for having gone to Clemson), and there simply did not exist a procedure for compensating such new hires for their moving expenses. My boss fiddled the books (legally, acting within he rightful prerogatives) to give me an extra $1,000 in my first paycheck to help me out with that. I went with the cheapest deal with the movers I could get — we did all the packing, in our own boxes — and we drove a lot of stuff ourselves crammed into our two vehicles like the Clampetts heading for California. With needing to stop for the kids, it took us four days to get here. And the move still cost me $1,500 out of my own pocket, which cleaned out our savings account.

We rented because we couldn't afford to buy, and we kept putting food on the table by my wife taking in other kids to care for them along with our four (our fifth was born here the following year).

And THAT year, thanks to Ronald Reagan's tax "reform," was the first time I EVER had to pay more than had been deducted from my paycheck. In fact, I think it still stands as the ONLY time, but I'm not positive; I'd need to check.

So needless to say, I didn't think much of what the Gipper had done for me. Maybe somebody benefited — Gordon Gekko or somebody — but it was pretty painful for me and mine, hitting me in probably the worst year of my adult life for such an unexpected expense.

Not that we should make tax policy based on how it affects yours truly. I'll leave such arguments as that to my libertarian friends. I'm just saying Mr. Geddings' letter struck a chord with me.

The sheriff’s dilemma

Hey, y'all leave my twin Leon alone. The sheriff's got enough problems without folks giving him a hard time for saying he wants to apply the law equally. (And no, y'all haven't been piling on so much here on the blog, but I keep reading the letters and so forth…)

That said, I find myself wondering: Is there a case here to prosecute? I mean, are there precedents that lead one to think this is a case worth pursuing?

The theory in favor of the sheriff going after Michael Phelps goes like this: A rich, white, international celebrity shouldn't skate for doing something that poor, obscure, black kids do time for. That sounds good. Equality before the law and all that.

But I wonder: How many of those poor, obscure, black kids were put away on the basis of the sheriff having heard that they smoked dope at some time in the past, accompanied by a photo that in and of itself is vague. If the alleged perp weren't admitting it, we wouldn't know that was him, or that he was actually smoking dope through that bong. (Before you scoff, I had a good friend in college — a boy from Clio, as it happens — who had shoulder-length hair, and who liked to use Zig-Zags to roll himself a joint made of pure pipe tobacco. If not for the sweet smell, no one would have believed that wasn't dope. But it wasn't. It takes all kinds to make a world, you know.)

If you make me pick a number, I'd say the number of guys doing time at the Alvin Glenn center, or in the state pen, who were put away on that sort of evidence would be approximately zero. Generally speaking, if you're not holding at the time of arrest, the cops don't bother, right? So how is this equality of the law, speaking in terms of way things actually work in the world?

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the prisons are full of people who were nailed when somebody posted a picture of them apparently toking on MySpace. I'd be quite interested to hear evidence to that effect.

Letter II: Writer gets it about DHEC

While I'm at it, allow me to call your attention to another letter on today's page, which makes a good point worth considering about the crying need to restructure government on the state level:

Aughtry big fan of current DHEC setup

I applaud Bo Aughtry’s call for a discussion on the structure of the Department of Health and Environmental Control (“DHEC professionals, board don’t bend to politics,” Sunday).

But it looks as if he doesn’t want to lead it, since all involved in it are very good and adept at what they do. Everyone is doing their best — considering they don’t get paid (as we’re reminded).

But I was wondering: How would the votes fall when developers are wanting to build, build, build, and taxpayers want to attach conditions to building permits to protect their community? The “home builder/developer,” “the attorney in the land business,” the one in “the land business” and the “real estate developer” might be conflicted — it’s only human. (Remember we are not paying them, so why would they hamper the very industry that is providing them a paycheck?)

I could be accused of being cynical, but it seems that lately those in positions of power and responsibility are simply saying, “Mistakes were made, but don’t quote me.” Who can say, “The buck stops here”?

NELIDA CABALLERO
Columbia

Excellent point about the makeup of that board. Allow me to elaborate: The DHEC board could well be as wonderful and public-spirited and as interested in protecting our health and environment as Mr. Aughtry maintains, in spite of the appearances raised by their lines of work.

But we don't know that. Why? Because we don't know them, and had no role in choosing them, much less any chance to vet them. Quick, name the members of the DHEC board. Yeah, some smart-aleck will do so, either by virtue of being an insider or having cheated by going to the Web site. But most of you don't know, and couldn't begin to tell me or anyone else how they have voted on issues or what overall influence each of them has had on policy, for good or ill.

The fix is to put someone we know and have elected in charge. No, that doesn't guarantee that things will be hunky-dory. But it at least gives the electorate a chance to demand results, and have some hope of being heeded.

Letter I: Riley a stumbling block to reform opponents

One point I'd like to make with regard to this letter on today's page, which takes exception with our advocacy of a strong-mayor system for Columbia, most recently articulated in our Sunday editorial:

City’s government should remain as is

I read
The State’s Sunday editorial, “City should change system, not hire
another manager,” with dismay concerning your recommendation that
Columbia change its form of government.

Choosing a strong-mayor
form over the council-manager system could have dangerous consequences
for the city. These involve the likely emergence of a cult of
personality and abuse of power by individual council members.

Early
in the 20th century, the council-manager system was formulated (some
say for the first time in Sumter) to bring professionalism to city
administration and to distance politics from the daily operation of
municipal functions.

Overall, the hiring of professional managers
to carry out council policy has been successful. Even cities as large
as Dallas have city managers. Philadelphia has a strong-mayor form of
government.

Selecting the strong-mayor form would be ill-advised
because a less-than-stellar mayor (after all, how many Joe Rileys are
there in South Carolina?) could make matters much worse.

Columbia
is now seeking a professional manager and then should work to ensure
that he implements goals of efficient and effective government while
letting council set policy.

JOHN A. HUFFMAN
West Columbia

There is one thing that opponents of strong-mayor always have to confront when they try to dismiss the idea: Joe Riley. They always have to say, "There's only one Joe Riley," or "Joe Rileys don't grow on trees," or "Joe Riley isn't going to move to Columbia."

Why do they have to say that? Because, when they look around for examples to support their point, if they were to say, "Why, look at the only other major city in South Carolina that has a strong mayor," they would immediately have to say, "No, DON'T look at the only other major city in S.C. with a strong mayor," because in that city, the system is a generally acknowledge success. And by generally acknowledged, I mean that Charleston gets all sort of national recognition for being a well-run, well-led city. And while Mr. Riley always has opposition (which you would expect a Democrat to have in a city with so very many Republicans in it), he wins re-election time and again with about three-fourths of the vote.

No, Joe Riley is NOT going to move to Columbia (he decided that for good when he decided not to run for governor in 1998, which was a terrible shame for our state). But let me tell you something just about as certain — if there is another Joe Riley out there, he isn't going to run for mayor of Columbia unless we make the job worth running for. And right now, it isn't.

Yes, folks, I know that council-manager was considered a "reform" when it came along, an alternative to bossism and the like. So was, in its day, the city commission form, which I had the opportunity of studying up close and personal in Jackson, TN, long ago.

But look around you: This system is NOT WORKING, and it has not worked under the last several city managers. The city is a mess, and no one can be held accountable for fixing it. Each member of the council (including the mayor, who has no more say than any other member) can point to the other six and claim, quite truthfully, that he or she lacks the power to do anything without a majority.

So everybody skates when we have the kind of mess we have now, except for the city managers that come and go.

This needs to change. And the first step is putting someone accountable to the voters in charge.

Regarding patience (as a virtue)

Among the things in my electronic IN box this morning was this forwarded message:

—–Original Message—–
From: Tom Fillinger
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:10 AM
To: StateEditor, Columbia
Cc: Warthen, Brad – External Email; Scoppe, Cindi; Bolton, Warren
Subject: Sweet Irony

RE Fuming With Impatience

Brad Warthen's editorial, 01/11/09, p. D2 – Fuming With Impatience.

Food For Thought, 01/11/09, p. D3 – "Patience is the companion of wisdom" – – St. Augustine.

The reader may draw their own conclusions.

In Grace,

Tom Fillinger, CEO
IgniteUS, Inc.

… to which I replied as follows:

Thanks. So far my
wife, Robert Ariail and you have all pointed this out to me. So you're in good
company.

Alone

Assuming I set it up right, if you send me an e-mail this week, you'll get this:

Welcome to my
special Christmas week AUTOMATED MESSAGE.

First, I am
alone in the office this week, and spending all of my time editing and preparing
for publication material left behind by my vacationing colleagues. This is like
doing the work of five jugglers simultaneously, so please bear with
me.

If you intend
for your message to be considered for publication as a LETTER TO THE EDITOR,
please resend it to stateeditor@thestate.com.

If you are
submitting a potential GUEST COLUMN FOR OUR OP-ED PAGE, please resend it
to Cindi Scoppe at cscoppe@thestate.com. This will
NOT be considered until Ms. Scoppe returns on Dec. 29. All local op-ed
columns for this week have already been selected and
edited.

If you wish
to register a comment that is not for publication in the paper, I urge you to
post it on my blog, http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Any messages
requiring a response from me, Brad Warthen: I beg for your patience. I am
extremely unlikely to be able to respond this week. If you MUST have a reply
this week (and we're talking emergency here), leave a phone message at (803)
771-8468, and I will get back to you when I'm able.

— Brad
Warthen

The last couple of weeks of the year have always been a high-wire act, even when we had adequate staffing. It's simply the best time for people to TAKE off, and it's when they WANT to take off, so we try to make that happen as much as possible. But these days, even one person being off one day puts us in emergency mode. This is so far beyond that, it defies description.

Which is my way of saying to YOU, don't look for a lot of blogging from ME this week. The only other person in the editorial offices this week is Randle, who handles letters, and as soon as she has prepared enough letters for publication to get me through the week — sometime Tuesday, we hope — she'll be gone, too.

I'm sort of in Chuck Yeager mode — as I climb into the cockpit alone, my last colleague hands me a sawn-off length of broom handle and says, "Just stick 'is in the handle and WANG it down with yer good arm…"

To which I can only say, "Thanks, Buddy…"

The imperial presidency-elect?

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?

Nikki Haley’s letter

Nikki Haley sent me a copy this morning of a letter she sent out to her fellow lawmakers Wednesday. You remember what happened to Nikki on Wednesday, right? Here it is:

December 3, 2008

Dear Colleagues:
I feel compelled to share with you some events that occurred earlier today.
This morning, I was informed that I had been assigned to serve on the Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee and, honestly, I was a little surprised given the differences the Speaker and I have had recently over "on the record" voting. As I said to you when I took the floor yesterday none of this was personal it was all about policy and to his credit the Speaker set aside those disagreements – or so I had thought.
It is no secret I had intended to run for Chairman of LCI, but given the events of the past few weeks I recognized that I was no longer in a position to achieve that goal. I called Representative Sandifer and the Speaker on Monday night to let them know I was dropping out of the race. This morning, I attended the LCI Committee meeting and closed nominations for committee chair asking that we vote Representative Sandifer by acclamation.
After the meeting, I returned to my office. Within minutes the Speaker’s chief-of-staff hand-delivered a letter to me from the Speaker informing me that I had been reassigned to serve on the Education and Public Works Committee. Needless to say I was disappointed.
The Speaker wanted to send a message and I got it loud and clear. That message is this; if we as individual representatives disagree with the Speaker over policy about which we feel passionately and share those disagreements publicly, we will be punished for doing so. The actions he took today are in direct response to my aggressive pursuit of "on the record" voting. I believe I acted in the best interests of the people I represent and because of my actions I was removed from a committee on which I had served honorably.
The Speaker and other members of House Leadership will undoubtedly take issue with my account of what happened. But, make no mistake, the manner in which I was assigned to LCI and then reassigned to Education and Public Works was intended to embarrass and punish me for working to pass a comprehensive "on the record" voting bill.
I wanted you to know that this punishment handed down by the Speaker will in no way affect the manner in which I go about trying to increase transparency in the Legislature, bringing reform to state government, and working to improve the lives of the people we represent.

Sincerely,
Nikki Haley

And so, to quote the governor, "to be continued…"

I replied to Nikki that I’d put her letter on my blog. Unlike certain other bloggers, I don’t have to worry about what the Speaker will do to me. But you know what — Nathan’s not letting it shut him up, either.

‘Hyperbole’ and Iraq

The last couple of days I’ve broken my rule about not responding substantially to e-mails. In the interests of making the best use of my time for the readers’ benefit, I try to steer people to the blog so that everybody can join in on the conversation. Anyway, when I break my rule I try to do this, which is publish the exchange on the blog. This exchange started, of course, with my Sunday column:

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 4:34 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: hyperbole

Well, Mr. Warthen, isn’t your respect for the language, as the SNL church lady would say, "special?" I guess I’m just another bleeding-heart liberal because I did watch in horror as my country approved torture and suspended habeus corpus for prisoners. And I did watch in horror as people died after Katrina because we had incompetent ideologues in the White House who sat and watched that devastation because they wanted to "reduce the size of government to the point that they could drown it in the bathtub." And I’ve watched in horror as we waged a "war" (otherwise known as an occupation) in which thousands and Americans and even more thousands of Iraqis died because we made a mistake about Saddam’s intentions.

Now if those things don’t fill you with horror, you’re not the man I hoped you were.

Sincerely,
Pat Mohr

On Dec 2, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

The NYT editorial in question wasn’t about the issues you mentioned. That was one of the bizarre things about it. It was about things like unauthorized wiretaps, and the operation of Gitmo. Hardly "horror" stuff.

I know lots of people look upon our involvement in Iraq with "horror." I don’t, but I know other people do. The NYT editorial wasn’t about anything like that.

You want to see what I look upon, with horror, read my blog. http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/12/some-things-tha.html

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 2:24 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Thank you for responding. I understand what you’re saying about the other issues in the NYT editorial, but I do believe that Gitmo is a horror because of the torture that has been sanctioned there (and in other places because of rendition). If this torture was indeed not just the work of some bad apples, and we have some evidence to say that it wasn’t, then it does qualify as a horror. Like many other Americans, i never thought I’d live to see the day that my country sanctioned torture—not for ANY reason!

And I will go look at your blog. One reason is that I’d like to know why you don’t look upon Iraq as a horror. I don’t attribute intent, but I do believe that our government mistakenly believed the boasts of Saddam and ignored/demeaned reports that did not support their preconceptions. Then we refused to wait for the inspectors to go back & look further for WMDs or to go through the UN for assistance, coming up instead with our "coalition of the willing". Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney deliberately conflated 9/11 with Iraq to justify our preemptive invasion. I still see polls that report that something like 40% of evangelicals believe that Iraqis attacked us on 9/11. So I’ll look to see why you don’t believe that the ensuing deaths of thousands was not indeed horrible….

I always read your column because even though I frequently disagree with you, you’re rational and provide reasons for your opinions. This is no small thing in an area of the country infested with ideologues! I’ll always appreciate the work you do!

On Dec 2, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

Thanks for the kind words.

I doubt that I can explain my support for our invasion of Iraq in 2003 to your satisfaction. I can’t explain it to my wife’s satisfaction. I certainly can’t explain it to the satisfaction of people who disagree on my blog.

It has nothing to do with WMD. I realize it did for an awful lot of people, but not for me. So while I saw not finding the WMD (which we all know had been there, because Saddam had used it) as a big setback, it didn’t change anything about why I saw us needing to go in there.

It did have a great deal to do with 9/11, but not in some simplistic way such as you describe, the "hitting back at the people who attacked us" formula. I don’t think in those terms.

Either you look at the situation we had in the world at that time and agree with me, or you don’t. It’s very hard to bridge the gap. I looked at a lot of things, and that’s what it added up to for me. Other people look at the same things and don’t arrive there at all. Part of it is that I am by nature inclined to intervention. I think we were right to intervene in the Balkans, and wrong not to in Rwanda and Darfur. I think we were wrong to leave Somalia in 2003. I believe when you’re the most powerful nation in the world — economically, militarily, just about any other way — you have an obligation to act when people are suffering and being oppressed. Anti-war people think that’s arrogant. I think it’s cold NOT to want to do what we can. And the fact is, if we want to, we can do a great deal.

Here are two of those reasons, which make all the sense in the world to me, but not to antiwar people:
— Until 9/11, the U.S. policy toward the region had been maintaining the status quo. What that had meant was backing current regimes, however horrible — or at least leaving them alone — so as to keep the oil flowing. Don’t rock the boat. The 1991 Gulf War was a perfect example of this old strategy: Saddam had attacked Kuwait and was threatening the much bigger target of Saudi Arabia. We sent an overwhelming force to preserve the status quo ante — pushing Saddam back "where he belonged," and restoring the previous government in Kuwait, and protecting the Saudi regime. We didn’t want to take Baghdad then because that might have created a vacuum into which Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria and Turkey, might flow. That would upset the apple cart, and we didn’t want to do that. (We should have, because at that time we had something we didn’t have 12 years later — overwhelming force, enough to occupy and stabilize Iraq. I understand why we didn’t — but that calculation was based on the old, pre-9/11, policy of preserving the status quo.)
9/11 changed this equation, because it showed us that preserving the status quo — one in which oppressive regimes produced political frustration and encouraged Islamic militantism — was extraordinarily dangerous to us. The 9/11 hijackers were the result of the old policy of supporting the status quo. We needed to begin the process of changing the region, and Iraq was a good place to start. Succeed there (and the problem in Iraq is that so many things were done wrong in the first years that it took far too long to succeed), and you encourage liberalizing, democratizing forces in all middle eastern countries. We saw the beginnings of that in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Libya — although much of it was set back by the increasing violence that was only quelled after the Surge began at the start of 2007. Much of that good effect has yet to be seen, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still happen.

— Iraq was the place to start because we had every reason to go in and take out the regime there. Saddam had violated terms of the 1991 cease fire for 12 years. He was shooting at our planes enforcing the no-fly zone. In 2002, the UN passed the resolution authorizing force unless Saddam met certain conditions — which he failed to meet. Some significant UN members balked at acting upon the resolution — France, Germany, Russia — but plenty of others, including most European powers, actually joined that "coalition of the willing." And why not? Saddam had spent the last decade and more cementing his reputation as an outlaw regime.

Anyway, that’s PART of my thinking on the subject. It doesn’t make sense to people who agree. It DOES make sense to some who do, such as the New York Times’ Tom Friedman.

Hope that helps, but I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t.

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:27 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Hmm, I’ve gone back and read and re-read your rationales for going into Iraq. I’m still thinking—because you’ve made some good points. I do have to tell you, though, that I’m not anti-war; I just think it should be restricted to defense. However, many of your reasons seem to indicate that you truly believe that you are your brothers’ keeper, and that’s morality I share. I too think we should have gone into Darfur and Rwanda. We do have an obligation to help the oppressed—but not only the oppressed with oil under their land. I just don’t think that Iraq should have been singled out, even in the mideast. What about the outrageous treatment of women in Saudi Arabia for example? And how can we be the world’s policemen? How can we ever fix it all?

Moreover, I think our presumptuous invasion has brought us so much international ill will that it will be years before our reputation is restored. And then there’s the billions and billions of dollars that have been squandered in this war. I wonder if Iraqis think it was worth it because I don’t think most Americans do. And now we’re in greater jeopardy in Afghanistan—and we still haven’t found Osama.

All that said, in the light of your comments, I intend to start reading your blog as I continue to think about my position. I like to think that I’m open-minded enough to change my mind given additional evidence. I wish I could come back in fifty years and see what verdict history renders on this war….

Thank you again for engaging in this dialogue with me.

On Dec 3, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

All I can ask for is to get people to think about the points I make, so I thank you for that.

In answer to one point you made, let me point out that we did not have an acceptable rationale for invading Saudi Arabia. Remember the 12 years of defiance of the ceasefire agreement, and all those UN resolutions that gave us authorization to go into Iraq. We had nothing like that in the case of Saudi Arabia, or Iran or anyone else. Just Iraq.

Also, the reference to oil is a non-sequitur. We kicked Saddam out of Kuwait for oil. The policy of supporting the status quo was about oil. Invading Iraq actually endangered the flow of oil by upsetting the status quo.

You might be interested in a column I wrote before the Iraq invasion, about why we needed to go in:

THE STATE
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT WHY WE MAY HAVE TO INVADE IRAQ
Published on: 02/02/2003
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

AMERICA SEES ITSELF, quite admirably, as a nation that doesn’t go around starting fights, but is perfectly willing and able to end them once they start.

Because of that, President Bush has a tall hill to climb when it comes to persuading the American people that, after 10 years of keeping Saddam Hussein in his box, we should now go in after him, guns blazing.

In his State of the Union address, the president gave some pretty good reasons why we need to act in Iraq, but were they good enough? I don’t know. Probably not. It’s likely that no one outside of the choir loft was converted by his preaching on the subject. And that’s a problem. Overall, while there have been moments over the last 16 months when he has set out the situation with remarkable clarity, those times have been too few and far between.

He has my sympathy on this count, though: His efforts have been hampered by the fact that the main reason we may need to invade Iraq is one that the president can’t state too clearly without creating more problems internationally than it would solve. At the same time, it’s a reason that seems so obvious that he shouldn’t have to state it. We should all be able to figure it out.

And yet, it seems, we don’t.

I hear people asking why, after all this time, we want to go after Saddam now. He was always a tyrant, so what’s changed? North Korea is probably closer to a nuclear bomb than he is, they say, so why not go after Kim Jong Il first?

We left him in power a decade ago, they ask, so why the change?

The answer to all of the above is: Sept. 11.

Before that, U.S. policy-makers didn’t want to destabilize the status quo in the Mideast. What we learned on Sept. 11 is that the status quo in the region is unacceptable. It must change.

Change has to start somewhere, and Iraq is the best place to insert the lever, for several reasons – geography, culture, demographics, but most of all because Saddam Hussein has given us all the justification we need to go in and take him out: We stopped shooting in 1991 because he agreed to certain terms, and he has repeatedly thumbed his nose at those agreements.

Iraq may not be the best place in the world to try to nurture a liberal democracy, but it’s the best shot we have in the Mideast.

I’m far from the only one saying this. The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, who has more knowledge of the region in his mustache than I’ll ever have, has said it a number of times, most recently just last week:

"What threatens Western societies today are not the deterrables, like Saddam, but the undeterrables – the boys who did 9/11, who hate us more than they love life. It’s these human missiles of mass destruction that could really destroy our open society. . . . If we don’t help transform these Arab states – which are also experiencing population explosions – to create better governance, to build more open and productive economies, to empower their women and to develop responsible news media that won’t blame all their ills on others, we will never begin to see the political, educational and religious reformations they need to shrink their output of undeterrables."

Journalists can say these things, and some do. But if the president does, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Syrians and just about everybody else in the region will go nuts. In European capitals, and even in certain circles here at home, he will be denounced as the worst sort of imperialist. Osama bin Laden’s followers will seize upon such words as proof that the West has embarked upon another Crusade – not for Christ this time, but for secular Western culture.

None of which changes the fact that the current state of affairs in Arab countries and Iran is a deadly threat to the United States. So we have to do something about it. We’ve seen what doing nothing gets us – Sept. 11. Action is very risky. But we’ve reached the point at which inaction is at least as dangerous.

Should we go in as conquerors, lord it over the people of Iraq and force them to be like us? Absolutely not. It wouldn’t work, anyway. We have to create conditions under which Iraqis – all Iraqis, including women – can choose their own course. We did that in Germany and Japan, and it worked wonderfully (not that Iraq is Germany or Japan, but those are the examples at hand). And no one can say the Germans are under the American thumb.

But that brings us to a problem. The recalcitrance of the Germans, the French and others undermines the international coalition that would be necessary to nation-building in Iraq. It causes another problem as well:

Maybe we could accomplish our goal without invading Iraq – which of course would be preferable. By merely threatening to do so, we could embolden elements within the country to overthrow him, which might provide us with certain opportunities.

But the irony is that people aren’t going to rise up against Saddam as long as Europeans and so many people in this country fail to support the president’s goal of going after him. As long as they see all this dissension, they’ll likely believe (rightly) that Saddam might just hang on yet again.

If the United Nations, or at least the West, presented a united front, the possibility of Saddam collapsing without our firing a shot would be much greater. But for some reason, too many folks in Europe and in this country don’t see that. Or just don’t want to.

Maybe somebody should point it out to them.

Write to Mr. Warthen at P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, S.C. 29202, or bwarthen@thestate.com.

By the way, do you mind if I post our exchange on my blog? Whenever I spend this much time writing about a subject, I try to share it with as wide an audience as possible…

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 11:06 AM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Certainly, you may share it.

That’s it. Join in, if you got this far…

An exchange about macroeconomics

Here’s an e-mail exchange from today, unadorned. Perhaps y’all will take an interest in the discussion:

From: Kathryn Fenner
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:26 AM
To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: a suggestion

Brad–
Upon reading Peter Brown’s comment (the old ‘it’s my money’ whine) in Adam Beam’s excellent front page piece in today’s paper on the possibility of federal "bailout" money coming to Columbia as "investments," I wondered if it might not be helpful for some of your readers if you did a simple primer on Keynesian macroeconomic theory (since Friedman is generally considered discredited outside the Governor’s circle). Maybe if people understood that, instead of directly taxing us, the federal government can print money, which, if it pays for certain things like wages, can actually create wealth (increase the pie) rather than taking money from your pocket, everyone might calm down a bit. Or at least some people might….
A lot of us educated in South Carolina public schools–even the fairly good ones (Aiken) missed out on economics–I only happened to take macroeconomics as an English major at Carolina b/c a friend recommended the professor teaching the honors section (Martin). I would have taken another social science for my requirement for sure otherwise. I also only happened to take an excellent course on the history of the New Deal because it was taught by an excellent professor (John Scott Wilson), whom I had studied under for another course.

Kathryn
—
Kathryn Braun Fenner
Attorney at Law

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Warthen, Brad wrote:
We touched on economics in my senior year, at Radford HS in Honolulu. You know how we did that? We played a game over the course of several days, in which we were supposed to be marooned on a desert island, and we had to make decisions about how to spend our time. Most time was spent obtaining food, but we could also budget time away from food-gathering to make tools to save time, etc. Scads of fun, much like such computer games of latter days such as Sim City — only we did it on paper.
That was about it.
We also read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Barack Obama ALSO read in high school in Hawaii, and found inspirational. Our teacher for that class was Mrs. Nakamura, so we were way multicultural.
That’s about it. I know what Keynesian economics is in this context, very roughly — it’s like, spending to stimulate the economy, right? — but I would not presume to set myself up as an expert. Oh, I know one other thing — his middle name was Maynard, like Maynard G. Krebs, whom you are probably too young to remember.

From: Kathryn Fenner
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 12:43 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: a suggestion
Dobie Gillis was in syndication and played in the afternoons when I got home from school, man. Maynard went on to be Gilligan, a vastly inferior show. I’m only six years younger than you, not that your face gives that away (what is it, a portrait in the attic? Some secret Hawaiian face cream? I mean from reading your columns, you got plenty of sun playing outdoors in the tropics and subtropics)
The game you played was more about microeconomics, which most people probably grasp more intuitively–it’s our household economy, our business. The mess we are in now calls for macroeconomic solutions, which no one in the MSM seems to spell out in a nice graphic for the newbies–how when the government prints money, you get inflation, but you also can get jobs and spending money and ripples through the economy (bottom up works a lot faster–not stimulus in your pocket that you save or pay off credit cards, but jobs for the unemployed who buy groceries and other necessities and thus get the ball rolling again in terms of generating transactions that not only support a civilized lifestyle (as opposed to homelessness or Harvest Hope) but taxable income to repay the "printed money."
Whatever happened to the notion of "from those to whom much is given…."? Rotary is such a great example of the fulfillment of the expectations by the fortunate, but some of the bloggers and Peter Brown and Sanford and his cronies (Joel Sawyer’s letter was way off base) need to step to the plate. Dennis Hiltner said something to me the other day that drew Socialist me up short, "The employers who depend on workers who depend on bus transit should pay them enough to afford the true cost." I sputtered, but then I thought, "Surely Palmetto Health could take $10 per shift from the MDs and give it to the custodial staff?" I guess that’s redistributionist, huh?

My fan mail from the governor’s office

Just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the note of appreciation I received from the governor’s office for my Sunday column. It ran as a letter to the editor today:

Warthen column damages credibility
When the facts aren’t on some people’s side, they try and change them to help win an argument. Unfortunately, that’s a model growing in popularity among this paper’s editorial writers.
I’m writing of Brad Warthen’s latest Sunday rant, in which he lashes out at the governor over a recent column he penned for The Wall Street Journal.
Congress is contemplating spending another $150 billion to $300 billion to “bail out” states. Every penny of that money will have to be borrowed, from places such as Social Security, or our grandkids, or such nations as China (to whom we already owe $500 billion). The governor is arguing that enough is enough, and that we have to quit piling on debt, no matter how well-intentioned the spending may be.
You’d know all of this for yourself had Mr. Warthen possessed the courage to print Gov. Sanford’s column alongside his, and let you judge both pieces for yourself. Not doing so is the latest example of a growing lack of credibility on Mr. Warthen’s part, from endorsing one senator despite noting his history of flouting the law, to, on his blog, likening a school choice supporter to bin Laden.
This editorial page was once respected as a voice for good government. Now, thanks to Brad’s childish screeds, fewer and fewer people are reading.

JOEL SAWYER
Communications Director
Office of the Governor
Columbia

Editor’s note: The State published the governor’s column on the Web. To read it and Mr. Warthen’s column again, go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

This letter put me in an awkward spot. It was sent to Cindi, but she’s out this week, so when he got her autoreply to that effect, Joel sent the letter to me. And the problem was that the letter needed editing, and it’s hard to work with the writer of a critical letter when you are the subject of the criticism. As editor, there were a couple of things I needed to accomplish:

I needed to make sure it was factually correct, so that when he criticized me or the paper for doing XYZ, XYZ was actually what we did. As you can tell from our letters on any given day, we thrive on being criticized. But I draw the line at taking criticism for something we did not DO, because that would give the readers an incorrect impression of what we went to all the trouble of putting into the paper to start with. For instance, when a writer says, "You were wrong to claim that Sen. Hiram Blowhard is a horse thief," but we didn’t say Sen. Blowhard is a horse thief, I’m not running it. If I DID run it, readers would naturally assume, "Well, they wouldn’t have run the letter criticizing them for calling him that if they hadn’t called him that." Unfortunately, the thing that Joel was misrepresenting about us was fuzzier than that. He was trying to make readers think that we had somehow done the governor wrong by not running his column in the dead-tree version of the paper. He was saying this despite the fact that he knows our standard is NOT to use that precious space for guest columns that have run elsewhere (every piece we run like that is another piece that was offered exclusively to us that we CAN’T run). The average Joe on the street could have made the mistake of saying what he said in the letter; he knew better. He also knew that we went to the trouble to publish the governor’s piece online (you’ll recall that in the past I’ve made the point here that our online version is the perfect place for columns by gummint officials — who send us a lot of submissions — that don’t meet our standards for the paper), promoting it from the newspaper on the day it ran, and providing a link to it in the footer of my column about it (why? because I wanted people to go back and read it). But Joel insisted upon accusing us of wrongdoing on this point, so I eventually shrugged and let it go — and resolved to state the fact of the matter in a neutrally-worded editor’s note (knowing, of course, that lots of readers will think publishing on the Web is inadequate; but at least this way they had the facts before them). There were other factual points that were easier to resolve — such as his originally having claimed that we acknowledged Jake Knotts was "a criminal" in endorsing him; I persuaded him to change that wording. But the business of how we had handled the governor’s piece was too central to his point.
Then there was the "courage" thing. I never could persuade him that some other word would make more sense to the reader — "courtesy" would have worked; even "decency" would have worked. I mean, what is the reader supposed to think I was afraid of? I wrote a whole column about the governor’s column, told you how to go read the governor’s column, provided links to it, but I was afraid of it? But I guess he thought I was just trying to censor his criticism of me rather than helping it be a more logical letter. So I let that go, too.

Anyway, we spent so many e-mails going back and forth on those points that I never even got around to such minor things as: When you say "the facts aren’t on some people’s side, they try and change them to help win an argument," and you suggest I did that, what do you have in mind? Name one fact I cited that was wrong. But it wasn’t worth it.

"Courage" is a word that is often misapplied to what I do. Truth be told, there are people who read a column such as the one Joel was criticizing and praise me for having the "courage" to write it — but that is utterly ridiculous. "Courage" doesn’t come into it, either way. I mean, what do I have to fear besides dealing with hassles such as that above? But I’ve heard that about columns I’ve written about governors going all the way back to Carroll Campbell. People seem to think I’m tempting the gods or something criticizing these guys. I don’t know.

What I DO know is that if you want to see courage, read Dr. Ray Greenberg’s piece on Sunday. Finally, we have the heads of major agencies having the guts to speak out about how we’ve hocked our future by failing to invest in the critical infrastructure of our society. State agency heads just don’t write columns like that, but he did.

And of course, the governor came down on him over it. Oh, he did it politely. His response (which Joel sent me in the same e-mail with his letter, and which I ran the same day as his letter, which makes his complaint about our not running the governor’s last column seem even more off-point — but I digress) was of course more polite than Joel’s. It’s too important to the governor to be seen as above the fray to write anything like what Joel did. At the same time, a public university president who dares to write anything like that motivated the governor to take him down a notch personally. Other uppity agency heads will take note. (The governor can’t do anything to Dr. Greenberg or to most agency heads, but that’s not the point — most of them don’t want to get into a spitting match with the gov; better to lay low.)

A couple of quick points about the gov’s piece about Dr. Greenberg (aside from the fact that his overall point was to defend the bankrupt notion of arbitrary spending caps):

His utterly laughable attempt to be condescending to the MUSC president: "I certainly don’t begrudge him that view. Like any agency head, his
role is solely to look out for his corner of state government and the
tax dollars that are coming his way. On the other hand, we in the
governor’s office have a very different role in looking after the
entire state." Go back and read the piece by Dr. Greenberg, who runs an institution of higher learning that employs 11,000. Look at the concerns that the doctor expresses, and compare them to the narrow ideological points espoused by the governor, and judge which of them you believe is really thinking about the good of "the entire state."
Second, the governor cites his favorite misleading statistic. The original text of his piece said, "Government in South Carolina costs about 140 percent of the national average, largely due to an unaccountable and inefficient structure." That is not true. I was able to make it technically (although still very misleadingly) true by the insertion of a single word: "State government in South Carolina costs about 140 percent of the national average, largely due to an unaccountable and inefficient structure." What’s the diff? State government in SC costs more per capita than state government in other states because of our almost unique system of the state performing lots of functions that local governments perform in other states — such as road maintenance, and owning and operating school buses. If you look at government overall, adding in our pathetically anemic local governments, we actually spend less than other states do on state and local government — or at worst, around the average (there are different ways to calculate it; some ways we’re right at the average, some ways we’re well below). A very important distinction, but don’t expect to hear this governor acknowledging it; the fiction that we — the state that won’t maintain its roads or guard its prisons or support its colleges nearly as adequately as other states do — spend too much on government is what he’s all about. Anyway, keep these two facts in mind, as Cindi explained in a recent column: We pay less per capita in state and local taxes than most of the country, and we pay less as a percentage of our income than most of the country.

One last note, and this is one I DO deserve to be kicked for. The governor misspelled Dr. Ray’s name throughout his piece, and I’m just noticing it. Yes, it was the governor’s mistake, but I’m the one who had it last, so it’s my fault for not catching it.

Judge Sanders should have used another historical reference

Alex Sanders is a great guy, but he is a political partisan. He’s someone I like in spite of that fact.

And like most folks who try in good faith to defend partisanship, he was unconvincing in a letter you no doubt saw on page this past Sunday:

Ignoring candidate’s party seldom works
As in every election, I heard people say they always vote for the candidate, not the party. People who think like that go to horse races and bet on the jockey, not the horse. That seldom works out for them.
Incidentally, I wasn’t the first person to express that idea. Winston Churchill was.

ALEX SANDERS
Charleston

It so happens that Churchill provides us with one of history’s most dramatic examples of the madness of putting party ahead of the candidate.

Churchill did as much as any man to save Britain from the Nazis in WWII, and the British people were grateful. But when the war was over they voted him out of office — not because they didn’t want him to be their P.M. any more, but because they chose the Labour Party to rule Parliament.

It was a terrible shame, but that’s the parliamentary system — one that, at least in the case of the executive part of government, makes the individual completely subordinate to party. Thank God we can avoid that in this country, as long as we don’t surrender our ability to think and choose to parties. No matter what Alex Sanders says.

Mayor Bob’s update on bus funding

Just now getting to my weekend e-mails, and I see this one from Bob Coble:

I wanted to give you an update from the City County RTA Committee that met at City Hall last Thursday. City Council members include me, EW Cromartie, and Kirkman Finlay. Belinda Gergel also joined us. County Council members include Damon Jeter, Val Hutchinson, and Joyce Dickerson. Chairman Joe McEachern also attended. The Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce and other groups also were in attendance. The first meeting had four presentations from staff on a variety of background issues. Joe Cronin of the County gave an excellent overview of how our RTA compares to peer cities. I believe that all the Committee members strongly agree on two fundamental points. First that transit is an essential public service that is critical for those who depend on bus service to get to their job and the doctor; an essential environmental tool to prevent non-attainment status and become a green community; and is vital to continuing economic development. Secondly, that the County and the City have the capacity to provide funding currently and it would be unacceptable not to do so.

Frannie Heizer, as the attorney for the RTA, presented the current legal options for funding. She made the following points: First, a sales tax referendum could not be held until November 2010 (Richland County Council could call the referendum now for 2010). Secondly, Frannie believes that the use of hospitality tax for transit would require a change of state law in the 2009 Legislative Session. The County has asked for an Attorney General’s Opinion to see if hospitality tax could be used now without a change in state law. Thirdly, neither City nor County property tax can be used without a referendum and then property tax would be limited by the cap on milage. Fourth, the mass transit fee by the County and the vehicle registration fee by the City and County are available now (both fees are different legally but to the taxpayer are paid in the same way and the same amount).

When we establish a funding plan, other issues that were discussed included the need for other governments and partners to participate in funding the RTA; doing a comprehensive operations analysis; and changing the RTA organizational structure to have advisory members for those governments that are not providing money to the system.

The next meeting will be Friday November 14th at 9:30 am at the RTA headquarters on Lucius Road. We are inviting three members from the Lexington County Council to participate.

Thanks. I will keep you updated.

Kind reader offers me a way to spend some of that ‘free-time’ that I’m just eaten up with

Now that most people have gone home for the day, I can find a few secs to skim through some of my e-mail from the last day or so, and I run across this:

To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: Why is it that the press does not press on for info on the items below?

Missing Obama information…

1. Occidental College records — Not released
2. Columbia College records — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — ‘not available’
4. Harvard College records — Not released
5. Selective Service Registration — Not released
6. Medical records — Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule — ‘not available’
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate — Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth — Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published — None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
13. Your Record of baptism– Not released or ‘not available’
14. Your Illinois State Senate records–‘not available’

Oh hey listen! I know you are busy! Is this too much for you now? I mean tell you what. I will come back tomorrow. Give you some time to get these things together, you know? I mean, I know you are busy, so I will just let myself out. I will be back tomorrow.

To which I can only respond: Yeah, get back to me in about five minutes. I know I’ve got that stuff sitting around here somewhere….

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits