Category Archives: The State

Haley suspended mayor who allegedly hired son

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Catching up with e-mail (my inbox is down to 296!), I came across one from several days back, from one of a number of readers who remain puzzled as to why The State still hasn’t published Gina Smith’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t story about Nikki Haley’s daughter getting a job working for an agency she supervises.

I wonder about it myself. But that’s not what this post is about. What it’s about is something else I had missed, and which this reader was attempting to bring to my attention:

The Associated Press

NORWAY, S.C. — The mayor of the Orangeburg County town of Norway has been indicted on charges of misconduct in office and nepotism.

Gov. Nikki Haley has suspended Jim Preacher from office while the charges are pending.

The indictment says Preacher gave himself a raise without the approval of the town council and hired his son at the town’s water treatment department…

There was more to it than that, including a bizarre alleged interaction between the mayor and a state trooper. One senses that more than nepotism brought the mayor to this pass. But what struck me was the irony that the governor has suspended this guy who among other things is charged of providing his son with a job in a department that apparently is under his purview.

Yet, in the story that briefly appeared in the Rock Hill Herald before disappearing, we found this:

State law prohibits public officials from causing the employment of a family member to a position they supervise or manage, according to the State Elections Commission. However, Haley does not supervise the gift shop; she supervises the agency that operates it, making the teen’s summer job permissible, an attorney with the commission said.

Really? So we’re to suppose that the governor’s position had nothing to do with an agency that reports to her deciding to hire a 14-year-old child?

This is a strange little story. To quote Jubal Harshaw, “this has more aspects than a cat has hair.”

Bob Inglis and market-driven environmentalism

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Inglis blowing bubbles during his speech. Yes, he was making a point, but it would take too many words to explain it here. You had to be there.

Don’t know whether you read Bob Inglis’ op-ed piece in The State the other day or not. An excerpt:

There is important work to be done in order to realize the full potential of South Carolina’s advanced-energy sector. We need less government and more free enterprise. Some clean-energy technologies are more cost-effective than fossil fuels, and others are not there yet. But even the most cost-effective clean fuels still routinely lose out to more expensive fossil fuels. Why? Because the energy market is not a free market.

Speaking at the Clean Energy Summit is timely for me because, a few days ago, I launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a national public-engagement campaign to promote conservative solutions to America’s energy challenges. One of our first efforts will be to convene forums around the country, much like the summit, that bring together economists, national-security experts, climate scientists and interested citizens to explore the power of free enterprise to solve our nation’s energy challenges. We’re going to be saying that, given a “true cost” comparison, free enterprise can deliver muscular solutions to our energy and climate challenges — solutions far better than clumsy government mandates and fickle tax incentives…

The day that appeared, he was speaking to the South Carolina Clean Energy Summit at the convention center. I attended the event, which was sponsored, understandably enough, by the South Carolina Clean Energy Business Alliance.

In case you wonder how Inglis gets to being an environmentalist from the perch of a dyed-in-the-wool conservative (which shouldn’t be puzzling — conservatives should by their nature want to conserve the environment, if words have meaning), here’s an example of how it works for him: The problem now, he explained, is that different sources of energy don’t compete on an even, market-driven playing field. For instance, the true cost of gasoline is hidden. If the full costs of our military operations in the Mideast were attached directly to the price of gasoline (as we in the Energy Party think it should be), “we’d beat a path to the Prius dealership.”

Does Nikki maintain her Facebook page herself? I suspect so…

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Someone speculated earlier that Nikki Haley doesn’t maintain her Facebook page herself. I suspect that she does. Or at least that some of the posts, or status updates, or whatever you want to call them (I’m a Twitter man, and get impatient with Facebook) are written by her personally.

They are so emotional. And they are so carelessly written that I hate to think anyone was paid to produce them — unless the rough edges are part of the service being provided, to add authenticity.

For instance, there’s this:

SC Law Enforcement Dir. Chief Keel responding to The State Newspaper: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of info regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 yrs plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a “hands off” approach to in reporting except as released by the elected official’s office.”

First, one wonders what she’s on about. I didn’t see anything in the paper about her daughter before this appears. That sort of airing of a background battle as though everyone knows what’s going on is so off, so unprofessional, that it really feels like it’s coming from her.

Also, it follows her pattern of embarrassing her appointees by enlisting them in her personal political battles. I feel for Mark Keel.

It’s probably a reference to this thing Will Folks wrote about. I suppose The State was working on the story (the MSM have this quaint habit of confirming things with on-the-record sources, which makes them lag the blogosphere), and that freaked Nikki out in a way that Will’s post did not.

There was an earlier post on the same subject that was more emotional, and blasted The State as a worthless, “biased” entity that was persecuting Nikki’s family, and that one really felt like her. Here it is:

Scrutiny of me comes with the territory of being governor. I expect it. But it’s a sad day for journalism in South Carolina when The State newspaper goes after my 14 year old daughter. Public officials have a right to expect that their minor children are off limits from political opponents and even from biased media outlets like The State. Its disgusting. Shame on them.

If a paid staffer wrote that for her, then I’m embarrassed for that person, too.

An example of an op-ed rebuttal: Answering Glenn McConnell in 2007

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During the discussion on a previous post, I noted that “I have been known, on one or two occasions, to allow a source space for a full op-ed piece, even when the piece is almost 100 percent nonsense… and run a piece of my own, right across from it, demolishing it. That way the reader/voter has a chance to see that party’s full case, as well as the arguments against it.”

Bud, quite reasonably, asked, “An example would be good. Sometimes people think they demolish something but it turns out not to be the case. Let the bloggers be the judge.”

Fine. Except I could only think of a couple of cases (as I said, there were “one or two”), but I couldn’t immediately lay my hands on either one of them.

I’ve now located one of my examples. It’s not a perfect one. In this case, for instance, I didn’t rebut the op-ed piece until days later — either because I didn’t have column space until then, or because something that happened later in the week got my dander up, and caused me to recall the previous piece. I don’t know; it’s been almost five years now.

Anyway, the piece that (eventually) set me off was by Glenn McConnell, and I ran it in The State on Friday, Oct. 19, 2007. Here it is:

By Glenn F. McConnell Guest Columnist

South Carolina can only have an orderly, predictable and consistent growth rate in state spending by constitutionally mandating it. It cannot be accomplished on a reliable basis by hanging onto slim majorities in the Legislature and having the right governor. The political pressures are too great unless there is a constitutional bridle on the process.

That is the reason I created a task force to consider a constitutional amendment that would cap the growth in spending by the state. The first meeting of the Senate study committee on constitutionally capping state government spending is scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday in Room 105 of the Gressette Senate office building in Columbia.

There will always be more needs than revenue no matter what the economic times and the amount of available new funds. Government must, therefore, temper its conduct to spend so that over the highs and lows in revenue forecasts, the necessary revenue will be there to fund essential needs without the pressure for new taxes.

When government is flush with money, the spending goes up to fund many new initiatives — some good, some questionable and some not good. In other words, projects get funded not so much out of merit but merely because the money was available. Some one-time expenditures also occur the same way. In the face of a bountiful taxpayer buffet, government cannot control its appetite, so its stomach must be stapled.

At stake is the need to at least control the rate of growth in the recurring base. So I have introduced a constitutional amendment to cap the rate of spending of our state government. Government would be limited to growth at an amount that would not exceed the rate of population growth plus the growth in personal income. Basically, government should not grow any bigger than it needs to be or any faster than people’s ability to pay for it.

I have been an ardent supporter of both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and I believe that government is best which governs least. I also believe that as much money as possible is best left in the hands of people if we are to economically advance. If people keep more, they have greater opportunities to invest and spend so our economy will expand. It is a matter of fairness.

If there are surpluses in Columbia, these should not expand the obligation to fund a growing government but instead should be used to reduce long-term debt and obligations, fund capital projects to avoid issuing costly bonds, cover one-time costs, save and carry forward for a rainy day, and/or fund tax refunds and tax cuts.

The constitutional amendment would foster growth in the private sector, challenge legislators to prioritize spending better, seek better efficiencies in the operation of government and privatize operations where it is in the state’s best interest. This will present new opportunities to create rainy-day funds, to create a more debt-free South Carolina and to replenish trust funds that too often have been tapped in lean times to fuel the insatiable appetite of government created by overspending in good times.

Finally, we all must realize that our state government, just as much as any business, has to be competitive in order to attract and retain jobs. We need to provide essential services, but we need to do it in a way that ensures excellence, efficiency and long-term cost control. Throwing dollars at an agency does not ensure that it will be better. Limiting the growth in spending ensures that the challenge for each budgeting year is to do more with what we have available rather than to spend more to get the job done.

Working together, we can give the people of South Carolina an opportunity to vote on whether they want this limitation on the growth of spending. As I said, the limitation, if adopted, would ensure our future is not one of ups and downs based on political fortunes but instead one of predictability and orderliness in the growth of South Carolina.

Mr. McConnell, a Charleston attorney and businessman, is president pro tempore of the Senate and chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As I said, that ran on Friday, so I’m beginning to see what probably happened. I generally wrote my Sunday columns on Fridays. I would have read the senator’s piece — most likely for the first time — on the page proof Thursday afternoon, so it would have been quite fresh in my mind. I might have even ripped out a few grafs of my response right then, and polished them somewhat the next morning.

You’ll note, though, that my column wasn’t just a response to McConnell. I didn’t even get to him until about halfway through. This column was of a certain type, the type that puts me in mind of a line Mark Twain wrote: “And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I can think of.” I always liked that line because it describes a mood that is very familiar to me.

Here’s my column that ran on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007:
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, WE KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE WRONG THINGS

By Brad Warthen Editorial Page Editor

We always seem to be having the wrong conversations in South Carolina. Sometimes, we don’t even talk at all about the things that cry out for focused, urgent debate.

Look at this joke of a commission that was assigned to examine whether the city of Columbia should ditch its ineffective, unaccountable, “don’t ask me” form of government. It was supposed to report something two years ago. And here we are, still waiting, with a city that can’t even close its books at the end of the year. Whether its that fiscal fiasco, or the failure to justify what it did with millions in special tax revenues, or the rehiring of a cop who was said to be found drunk, naked and armed in public, there is no one who works directly for the voters who has control over those things.

But as bad as it is to have no one to blame, there is no one to look to for a vision of positive action. A city that says it wants to leap forward into the knowledge economy with Innovista really, really needs somebody accountable driving the process.

Columbia needed a strong-mayor form of government yesterday, and what have we done? Sat around two years waiting for a panel that didn’t want to reach that conclusion to start with to come back and tell us so.

It’s worse on the state level.

What does South Carolina need? It needs to get up and off its duff and start catching up with the rest of the country. There are many elements involved in doing that, but one that everybody knows must be included is bringing up the level of educational achievement throughout our population.

There are all sorts of obvious reforms that should be enacted immediately to improve our public schools. Just to name one that no one can mount a credible argument against, and which the Legislature could enact at any time it chooses, we need to eliminate waste and channel expertise by drastically reducing the number of school districts in the state.

So each time the Legislature meets, it debates how to get that done, right? No way. For the last several years, every time any suggestion of any kind for improving our public schools has come up, the General Assembly has been paralyzed by a minority of lawmakers who say no, instead of fixing the public schools, let’s take funding away from them and give it to private schools — you know, the only kind of schools that we can’t possibly hold accountable.

As long as we’re talking about money, take a look at what the most powerful man in the Legislature, Sen. Glenn McConnell, had to say on our op-ed page Friday (to read the full piece, follow the link at the end of this column):

South Carolina can only have an orderly, predictable and consistent growth rate in state spending by constitutionally mandating it. It cannot be accomplished on a reliable basis by hanging onto slim majorities in the Legislature and having the right governor. The political pressures are too great unless there is a constitutional bridle on the process.

The people of South Carolina elect 170 people to the Legislature. In this most legislative of states, those 170 people have complete power to do whatever they want with regard to taxing and spending, with one caveat — they are already prevented by the constitution from spending more than they take in.

But they could raise taxes, right? Only in theory. The State House is filled with people who’d rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than ever raise our taxes, whether it would be a good idea to do so or not.

All of this is true, and of all those 170 people, there is no one with more power to affect the general course of legislation than Glenn McConnell.

And yet he tells us that it’s impossible for him and his colleagues to prevent spending from getting out of hand.

What’s he saying here? He’s saying that he’s afraid that the people of South Carolina may someday elect a majority of legislators who think they need to spend more than Glenn McConnell thinks we ought to spend. Therefore, we should take away the Legislature’s power to make that most fundamental of legislative decisions. We should rig the rules so that spending never exceeds an amount that he and those who agree with him prefer, even if most South Carolinians (and that, by the way, is what “political pressures” means — the will of the voters) disagree.

Is there a problem with how the Legislature spends our money? You betcha. We don’t spend nearly enough on state troopers, prisons, roads or mental health services. And we spend too much on festivals and museums and various other sorts of folderol that help lawmakers get re-elected, but do little for the state overall.

So let’s talk about that. Let’s have a conversation about the fact that South Carolinians aren’t as safe or healthy or well-educated as folks in other parts of the country because lawmakers choose to spend on the wrong things.

But that’s not the kind of conversation we have at our State House. Instead, the people with the bulliest pulpits, from the governor to the most powerful man in the Senate, want most of all to make sure lawmakers spend less than they otherwise might, whether they spend wisely or not.

The McConnell proposal would make sure that approach always wins all future arguments.

For Sen. McConnell, this thing we call representative democracy is just a little too risky. Elections might produce people who disagree with him. And he’s just not willing to put up with that.

As you can see, that was a very South Carolina column. Everything addressed in it, everything that was getting my temper up, was something that one could just as well be said today. Because in South Carolina, very little that ought to change ever changes.

Cindi’s just KILLING me with that ratio of hers

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Haunted by his own rep, always having to look over his shoulder...

You’ve seen the Westerns in which the canny, world-weary, legendary gunslinger is hounded constantly by young punk wannabes, and haunted by the knowledge that sooner or later, one of them will come along who’s a little faster, and that’ll be that.

It’s like that in the Twitterverse.

Here I am, one of the Twitterati, with a follower-to-following ratio of better than 3-to-1 (1,807 to 589), but I can’t just relax. I’ve got to stay on deck and attend to duty, and keep firing them out. You’ve got to keep wowing them, as I did this morning with @absolom, a.k.a. “cgi-bin laden,” who was kind enough to write:

But I still have to keep looking over my shoulder.

There’s this kid out there, this Cindi Scoppe. We used to ride together back in the day, stole a lot of horses together, as they say. But now she’s gunnin’ for me. The kid only started on Twitter a couple of months ago. And she only has 187 followers. Yes, let’s all snort in derision!

But here’s the thing — she’s only following 25! Yes, like movie star follow numbers! Numbers that say, “I don’t have to follow anybody to get followers.” That’s a ratio of almost 7-and-a-half to one! It’s like she’s saying, “I can sweep past you any time I want!”

I had thought these MSM types were washed up. After all, my blog gets five times the traffic of the one I had at the paper — something I attribute in large part to my social media prowess.

But still. I’m hearing footsteps…

The State roundly rejects Kara for the Senate

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Yes, the endorsement of Ronnie Cromer today in The State discussed him and the other two people challenging him as well, but I take interest in what was said about Kara Gormley Meador in particular because I’ve written about her here.

Here’s what the editors said:

Kara Gormley Meador promises to shake up the status quo without the anger that often accompanies such pledges. Yet despite the fact that our state has some of the lowest taxes in the nation and our Legislature has a fixation on tax cuts, “tax reform” in her mind must include cutting taxes. Even after years of budget cuts, she’s convinced we need spending caps. And while she makes a point of saying she wants to strengthen the public schools, every time we asked her for specifics, she turned the conversation back to home schooling and private schools, and the need to excuse parents from paying their taxes if they take their kids out of public schools.

Dang, I really can’t argue with any of that. Right down the line, she advocates some really ill-considered ideas. And I was sort of vaguely aware of that when I wrote about her.

But it’s interesting to me to be reminded how differently I would have seen her if I had been talking with her for the purpose of deciding whether to endorse her — and the words in that editorial seem consistent with what I would have concluded, given the same evidence. But since I hadn’t been trying to judge Kara — since I was writing about her within the context of it just being interesting that this local personality had tried to vote in one district, then had to run in another — the picture didn’t gel in my mind. I even encouraged her to run.

Not that I was blind to her faults. Here’s part of what I wrote before:

Those of you who know me can see some significant disconnects with my own positions on issues. For instance, as an ardent believer in representative democracy, I would neither unduly limit the voters’ ability to elect whom they like (term limits) nor use a mathematical formula to supersede the representative’s powers to write a budget (“cap government growth”).

Further, I see inconsistencies in her vision. Today, she indicated that she believed enough waste could be found in state spending to both fully fund the essential functions of state government (which she correctly describes as currently underfunded) and return enough money to taxpayers to stimulate our economy.

In a state as tax-averse as this one, there’s just not enough money there to have your cake and eat it, too, barring a loaves-and-fishes miracle. (OK, enough with the clashing metaphors.)

But she’s smart, she’s energetic, and she seems to have no axes to grind. I think she’d quickly see that you can’t do it all, and make realistic assessments of what can and should be done. Her disgust with the pointless conflicts of modern politics, and the way they militate against a better future for South Carolina’s people.

Ohmygosh, do you see what I just said? “I think she’d quickly see that you can’t do it all, and make realistic assessments of what can and should be done.” And then later, I wrote, “My impression is that Kara has the character to be a positive force in politics, whatever her current notions of specific policy proposals.” Wow. Those are the same excuses I used to make about a certain other attractive young woman with a lot of energy and a nice smile. You know, the one who never really learned much of anything, and takes pride in the unchanging nature of her mind. The one who is now our governor, if you need me to get specific.

Once again, I’m reminded of the value of the endorsement process, properly done (and my regret that newspapers do so few of them now). Its value to the journalist, and to the reader. In that process, you get past vague impressions and force yourself to ask the questions that help you evaluate your initial impressions more systematically. Which The State did today.

I still like Kara personally, but that has little to do with whether she’d be a better senator than Ronnie Cromer.

Adam uncovers a blast from the past

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Adam Beam of The State Tweeted this over the weekend:

Adam Beam
Adam Beam‏
@adambeam

@BradWarthen Look what I foundpic.twitter.com/7V5M1vlr

Adam must have been spending Saturday at the office going through old drawers in the newsroom. There are a number of these scattered about here and there.

This is the special reprint we did early in 1992 of the Power Failure series that I had spent most of the previous year directing.

Power Failure was something I dreamed up in 1990. As governmental affairs editor that summer, I had been going nuts keeping up with an unbelievable string of scandals in and around state government, the most memorable of which was the Lost Trust investigation, which led to indictments against a tenth of the Legislature.

In the midst of it all, then-executive editor Gil Thelen stopped by my desk one day to wonder, What could we do to give our readers a positive way to respond? What could be done to make state government better, rather than just wallowing in the bad news day after day?

The answer I came up with was a project highlighting all of the deep, structural flaws in South Carolina’s system of government — flaws that set South Carolina apart from every other state. Flaws that made our system particularly resistant to change.

These flaws are difficult to summarize briefly, but all of the problems — the weak executive, weak local governments, centralization of authority, fragmentation of that central authority, almost complete lack of accountability (in terms of anyone being able to hire and fire key officials), and on and on — were vestiges of a constitutional system originally designed to put all authority in the hands of the landed, slaveholding antebellum gentry, and to fragment that power across that whole class of people, so that no one person could make important decisions. For instance, not only did departments that in other states reported to the governor (an official elected by all of the state’s people) report to a separately elected official, or to a board or commission appointed by the Legislature, but even decades after the passage of Home Rule, lawmakers still retained a surprising degree of control over local government services.

As I said, it’s difficult to summarize briefly, although we tried with the tagline, “The Government that Answers to No One.” To explain it, I conceived of a 17-installment series, each installment filling several full pages of newsprint (back in the day when pages were much bigger than they are now), totaling well over 100 articles. Gil and Paula Ellis, then the managing editor, essentially laid the resources of the newsroom at my disposal for most of 1991. Reporters came and went from the project, depending on which subject area we were dealing with at the time.

Were there results? Yes, but nowhere near what we were seeking. A partial restructuring of state government in 1993 put about a third of the executive branch under the governor. That third of a loaf, though, was great success when you consider that huge areas that were just as important — Home Rule, education governance, reducing the number of statewide elected officials — were pretty much ignored.

As for me — I was ruined as a governmental affairs editor, since the project was an unprecedented sort of news/editorial hybrid — for instance, I had written opinion columns advocating all of these changes throughout the series. I spent a couple of years supervising this or that non-political team (although I retained control of the Washington Bureau) until I made the move to editorial at the start of 1994 — where I spent the next 15 years continuing to advocate these reforms. Most of the items I listed in my last column for The State, “South Carolina’s unfinished business,” was to a great extent a recap of Power Failure.

Recently, we saw one tiny piece of the reform picture fall into place, with the legislation putting the governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket advancing. Hoorah for small victories.

It’s been frustrating, but hey, this system had been in place in one form or another for 300 years — and the one great characteristic that it possessed all that time was a profound resistance to change. That is still the hallmark of government in South Carolina.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jeff Wilkinson

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So I was at this presser at midday today, at which Lindsey Graham and Joe Wilson and Steve Benjamin and others had gathered to defend the Pentagon’s budget (more on that when I’ve had a chance to write it) and I was aiming my iPhone around doing what I always do at news events these days — looking for interesting, extremely horizontal images that I could use as a new header image. And as you see at the top of this page, I succeeded. At least, it’s extremely horizontal.

At which point Jeff Wilkinson, who still has a job writing for The State, stuck his face in to say, “What are you doing?”

I showed him, and he said, “You have my permission not to use that on your blog.” Or maybe he said, “You have my permission not to publish that.” Whatever. I’m only sure about the first few words.

Which, I want you to attest, is not the same as saying, “You do not have my permission to use that on your blog.”

And I’m a literal kind of guy.

I’m trying to be very careful with this sort of thing. I don’t want to get into the kind of trouble my fellow blogger is in.

Sorry about the focus, Jeff. But I wasn’t aiming at you…

Cindi cites Her Alleged Majesty for contempt

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As was anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the rule of law, Cindi Scoppe was aghast at our governor’s behavior last week, both when she goaded the state GOP to defy the law in order to help rid her of a troublesome senator, and when her office responded childishly to the State Election Commission’s refusal to play along.

But Cindi wasn’t struck speechless. From her column Sunday:

If the governor had been the one speaking, she might have added, L’etat, c’est moi.

At least when Louis XIV said it, he had a legal basis to do so. He was, after all, an absolute monarch.

When our founding fathers created this nation, they didn’t just reject the British monarch. They rejected the idea of a monarchy. They rejected imperial rule. And nowhere in the fledgling nation was that concept more thoroughly rejected than here in South Carolina.

The governor of South Carolina isn’t even a real governor. Yet this one fancies herself royalty. An autocrat. With the divine right of queens. L’etat, c’est moi.

She had already demonstrated that she was hypocritical. And careless with the truth. And imperious. Now add lawless. And contemptuous.

Actually, it’s the court that needs to add that last one.

Although the Election Commission blocked the party’s effort to defy a court order, that doesn’t change the fact that the party, at the urging of our governor, acted in a way that was “calculated to obstruct, degrade, and undermine the administration of justice.” That’s the definition of contempt of court, which our Supreme Court has said judges should punish in order to “preserve the authority and dignity of their courts.”

The court cannot ignore such blatant disregard for its orders. It needs to find the governor in contempt. And while it’s at it, it should do the same to the state Republican Party, and the Florence County Republican Party. This is about far more than the candidates who have been mistreated by our state. It’s about the authority of the court itself.

But Nikki Haley wouldn’t know anything about that.

The duel that wasn’t (so far as we know)

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It looked like the sort of facetious thing that people say on Twitter and which are quickly forgotten. Yet Katrina Shealy seems to be pinning her hopes for unseating Jake Knotts on the substance of Tweet sent in 2010.

The Tweet in question is reproduced above.

Perhaps there’s more to it, but one couldn’t find it in either the story in The State this morning, or the post by Will Folks that apparently prompted it. (The story in The State seemed to be of that new variety we’re becoming accustomed to — one that the MSM would never have reported in the past without having nailed down all the facts first, but publishes now so as not to appear out of the loop. Neither Jake nor Ms. Shealy was reached before publishing the story, which speaks of a sense of hurry.)

Here are some of the questions that the story raises in my mind:

  • Did Knotts ever say anything to Haddon?
  • Did he actually challenge him to a duel? (Duels, of course, properly constituted, require that both parties be gentlemen. I don’t know Haddon, but Jake has never seemed the dueling sort to me. He’s more of the pick-you-up-and-throw-you-across-the-room kind of guy. Ask Dick Harpootlian.)
  • Is that Tweet Mr. Haddon’s response to the challenge? If so, it is both unclear, and doesn’t seem to follow the accepted forms. It takes more the form of barroom bluster than a formal reply. Perhaps if he would identify his seconds, we could ask them.
  • Has either Mr. Knotts or Mr. Haddon been “out” before (which in the age of dueling meant something different from what it means today)? Who would have the upper hand?
  • If there’s any substance to this, will Jake be barred in the future from conducting classes for those who wish to carry concealed weapons? He has taught such classes in the past. One hopes those classes have not involved standing back-to-back, or pacing off distances.
  • Does Ms. Shealy in any way have standing to be taking legal action in this matter? She thinks she does, because her aim is to bar Sen. Knotts from office. But how does that give her any more standing than any other constituent? It seems that only parties to the alleged duel would have standing. And of course, the Code would (I assume) bar a challenged gentleman from resorting to the courts in order to avoid the Field of Honor.

I, along with you, await answers to all of the above.

Of COURSE state primaries should be in August

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Exaggerating as so many readers do, Rusty DePass (who probably agrees with editors far more often than he thinks) expressed shocked pleasure that he actually agreed with something in an editorial in The State on Sunday.

He was referring to this passage in an edit about the issue of all those candidates disqualified from running in the June primaries:

The Legislature has to fix this problem.

That won’t be easy, but it must be done. And with the primaries just five weeks away, it must be done immediately. It would be difficult to keep the elections on schedule even if every member of the Legislature agreed to a solution. That won’t happen, so part of the solution needs to be delaying the primaries, which we shouldn’t hold until August to begin with…

I assured Rusty that advocating August primaries is a long-standing position of the editorial board. It certainly is of mine.

And it is of Rusty’s. Rusty takes credit for the one time state primaries were held at a rational time in all the years since I moved home to South Carolina — 1992, when a lawsuit over reapportionment delayed the vote.

Rusty tells the story this way: As head of the state election commission (or was the past chairman at this point? I forget now), he wrote to the judge in the remap case asking that the primaries be delayed on account of the legal action. He recalls with satisfaction that all the lawyers he knew were shocked and appalled that he would so address such a view to the judge in the midst of a lawsuit. But the judge read the letter aloud from the bench and said, that’s just what we’ll do.

I had forgotten that part of the story, but I remember how gratifying it was to have the primaries thus separated from the legislative session for once.

Even back when we had loads of reporters and other resources, June primaries were extremely difficult for the newspaper — and other news organizations — to cover adequately. The people who covered legislative and other state elections were the very same people who covered the Legislature. The legislative session didn’t end until the first week in June, and didn’t really, really end until the sine die return session a couple of weeks later.

That lack of coverage, of course, benefited incumbents enormously, because there were fewer opportunities for lesser-known challengers to get their names in the paper. And name recognition is a huge part of the battle.

But the timing benefits incumbents in other, more direct, ways. The reason reporters are so extremely busy in those last weeks of the legislative session is because that’s when almost everything of consequence in the session happens. And those weeks happen to be after the filing deadline for the primaries.

So it is impossible for anyone to decide to run against an incumbent (except as that long shot of long shots, a write-in) on the basis of how that incumbent votes on the most important votes of the session. Aside from the fact that even if the challenger had already filed, he or she will get little coverage.

It’s an absolutely ridiculous problem, which would be completely fixed by always holding the primaries in August, as some other states do (including Tennessee, the “other state” whose politics I have the most experience with).

How are Newt Gingrich and John Edwards alike?

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When The Washington Post posed this question this morning on Twitter:

What do John Edwards and Newt Gingrich have in common?

I thought the answer was obvious, and shared it:

Ummm… Both won SC, but not much else?

Of course, that’s not exactly what the Post had in mind. This is what they were thinking:

Don’t be surprised if you hear the names of John Edwards and Newt Gingrich mentioned on the Senate floor this week.

Senate Democrats plan to consider a measure Tuesday that would extend lower interest rates for some federally subsidized college loans and pay for the extension by ending tax breaks for firms with three or fewer shareholders — commonly referred to as “S-corporations.”

Democrats call these types of tax breaks the “Newt Gingrich/John Edwards loophole,” because both former politicians took advantage of a federal tax law that allows those with high incomes to avoid paying Medicare payroll taxes on earnings by establishing S-corporations and treating only a portion of their total earnings as taxable wages…

Later, Cindi Scoppe (my mind is blown by the fact that Cindi is now on Twitter) weighed in with another answer, from the NYT’s Frank Bruni:

Gingrich and Edwards belong to different parties but are beholden to similar demons, and they have a whole lot more in common than a bounty of hair — white in the Republican’s case, brown in the Democrat’s. They’re the salt and pepper of outsize egos in presidential politics.

And to look at the two of them together, which their recent convergence in the news and on the map encouraged, is to confront some unsettling truths about a kind of person too frequently drawn to high-level office and about traits that often abet his rise and then seal his fall.

Beware the extreme narcissist. Although he may radiate a seductive confidence, he can justify and forgive himself for just about anything, given his belief in his own exalted purpose. He’ll lose sense of the line between boldness and recklessness. And he’ll quit the stage reluctantly, because he can’t bear not to occupy the very center of it…

So I guess the bottom line is that they have a lot in common.

Cindi keeps pushing that ol’ Truth Rock up the hill

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Anyone who would like a refreshing change from the utter nonsense we hear so often from the majority over at the State House should read Cindi Scoppe’s column today.

In it she reiterates irrefutable truths that fly completely in the face of the way so many of our pols describe reality.

Over and over again, we hear the people who call themselves “conservatives” railing against all those awful people who keep wanting to raise your taxes. When of course, raising taxes is the least likely thing one could expect from the General Assembly.

Such folks, in arguing that we should adopt their latest pet plan for doing what SC lawmakers love most to do — cut taxes — frequently make like the choice is between their plan and tax increases. Which is laughable.

Excerpts:

I moved to South Carolina in the fall of 1987, a few months after the Legislature raised the gas tax by 3 cents per gallon. It didn’t raise taxes again the next year. Or the next. Or the next 17 after that.

The Legislature didn’t raise taxes again until 2006, and then only as part of a swap that reduced taxes even more, increasing the sales tax by a penny in order to eliminate homeowner property taxes for school operations. And the extra penny hasn’t generated as much money as lawmakers projected, so next year they’ll have to send an extra $118 million in general tax revenues to the schools to make up for the shortfall. That is, they’ll divert $118 million from other spending in order to pay for the tax cut that was supposed to have been offset by a tax increase.

Lawmakers also have increased various fees and raised court fines — all of which take more money out of taxpayers’ pockets but can be avoided by not breaking the law or using fee-based services.

In 2010, the Legislature increased unemployment-insurance assessments by $150 million a year, to support a program that is by law supposed to be self-sustaining. It wasn’t self-sustaining — the state had borrowed nearly $1 billion to pay out unemployment claims — in large part because the Legislature had slashed businesses’ assessments before the recession. (In 2011, the Legislature appropriated $146 million to essentially pay the businesses’ higher assessments for them; this year the House has appropriated $77 million for the same purpose.)…

Also in 2010, the Legislature increased the cigarette tax from 7 cents to 57 cents per pack. This $115 million tax increase came after a decade-long campaign by public-health advocates such as myself who wanted to decrease teen smoking. Even with the increase, the tax remains the ninth-lowest in the nation. Still, this was a real, honest-to-goodness, raise-more-money tax increase.

The only one our Legislature has passed in the past quarter century.

Over those same 25 years, the Legislature has eliminated the sales tax on groceries, a $400 million-a-year tax cut.

It has eliminated homeowners’ school property taxes. That’s worth about $970 million per year, but the sales tax brings in $550 million a year, so the net tax cut is $420 million per year.

It has increased the homestead exemption for senior citizens’ local government property taxes from $20,000 to $50,000. Another $100 million per year.

It has indexed income tax brackets to inflation, saving taxpayers $390 million per year.

It has eliminated the bottom income tax bracket, reducing individual income taxes for everyone and eliminating them for many. That’s worth $90 million per year.

It has reduced the top income tax rate for most small businesses from 7 percent to 5 percent, saving $130 million per year.

And it has handed out at least 39 more sales tax exemptions — ranging in size from $4,000 to $47 million. And more income tax breaks.

According to the Board of Economic Advisors, the tax cuts enacted just since 1991 were worth $2.3 billion in 2009. The tax increases over that same period totaled either $665 million or $815 million, depending on whether you count the unemployment-insurance increase that businesses haven’t had to pay. That’s a net tax cut of at least $1.5 billion per year.

As a result of all these changes, the portion of our income that South Carolinians pay in sales taxes has dropped from about 2.8 percent when I moved here in 1987 to 2.2 percent today. Even as the sales tax rate was increased from 5 percent to 6 percent. Going from 2.8 percent to 2.2 percent might not sound like much, but it’s a 21 percent reduction…

Actually, you should just go read the whole piece. It’s chock-full of simple, obvious facts of which the people who run our state seem to be completely unaware.

Cindi Scoppe’s long, lonely battle against legislator pensions

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Having brought your attention to the Coble endorsement in the paper today, I am reminded that I meant to point out Cindi Scoppe’s column yesterday. It’s one of the many she has written over the years trying to call attention to the ridiculously generous pensions that South Carolina legislators receive:

If you assume that it’s OK for our part-time legislators to receive a pension — and I don’t, but let’s make the assumption for the sake of simplicity — there still are three problems with the way the special legislative pension system operates:

•  Taxpayers subsidize legislative pensions at more than double the rate we subsidize regular employees’ pensions. For every dollar state legislators put into their system, taxpayers contribute $3.89; for every dollar most state employees contribute, the taxpayers contribute just $1.47.

The result is that, while no one is going to get rich off of a legislative pension, our part-time legislators can draw pensions that are actually larger than the ones received by the average full-time state employee who paid into the system for the same number of years.

•  Legislators are allowed to keep purchasing credit in the system at that same super-subsidized rate even after they leave office — even if voters kicked them out of office.

This is not the same as the program that allows regular state employees to purchase credit for years they worked for other entities in the past, at high rates that will (appropriately) get higher under this legislation. That program also is open to legislators, whose rates likewise will go up — but rarely would legislators want to purchase prior credit, since they get that super deal on future credit.

•  Legislators can elect to stop receiving their salaries and instead collect their pensions while they continue to serve — a benefit that because of that super-subsidy means they can collect a pension of as much as $33,000 instead of a salary of $10,400.

Those first two provisions are unique to the legislative pension system, and they are by far the most generous and most difficult to justify…

Cindi’s been at this for years. Lawmakers give lip service to wanting to do something about it, but somehow that never happens.

Here’s what a Coble endorsement looks like

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Some readers seemed confused earlier as to what an “endorsement” of a candidate looked like. It looks like this, in The State today:

COLUMBIA City Council District 3 runoff opponents Moe Baddourah and Daniel Coble are solid candidates who share common priorities, from focusing on district needs to improving public safety and providing long-term funding for the public bus system.

They also share a common drawback: We fear their strong focus on constituent and district needs could lead them to put those interests ahead of more important citywide issues.

While the two men are pretty even in many ways, Mr. Coble does distinguish himself as the better candidate. His knowledge and understanding of city issues and how government works stood out among all candidates in the just-concluded council races….

Now I can’t say it’s a ringing, unequivocal endorsement. Daniel is The State‘s second choice for the seat. My old colleagues initially endorsed Jenny Isgett, who did not make it into the runoff.

Now if I did endorse someone, it would be Daniel. It so happens that the candidate ADCO is doing work for is the one I would choose were I endorsing. But wait, you say! Isn’t my saying that an endorsement?

Not to me. I’ve spent many years of my life doing endorsements, and I have a very clear idea of what one is. To me, an endorsement involves setting forth a series of arguments as to why someone is the better candidate. As I’ve said thousands of times over the years, the value in an endorsement is the reasons why, not the mere who.

That goes to the core of why newspapers do endorsements (and should do endorsements). It doesn’t matter whether a reader ultimately agrees with the endorsement or not. It is valuable to have considered the arguments, whether you accept them in the end or not. For having spent that time reading a carefully constructed case for a candidate, your own ultimate decision will have been better-considered.

The endorsement in The State today is pretty good. It’s not exactly what I would have written, and were I still the editor I’d have made some changes in the piece, but I generally agree with the points made.

The stunning news about Tom Sponseller

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Last week, I had been set to have lunch with my friend Bob McAlister, but he suddenly had to cancel because of a new client — he was representing the S.C. Hospitality Association in dealing with the media with regard to the disappearance of its CEO, Tom Sponseller.

Today was the day that we’d set for the rain check. We had just sat down with our food from the buffet at the Capital City Club when another diner came over, smartphone in hand, to tell Bob: “They’ve found Tom’s body.” In the parking garage. And Bob had to run out.

Later, on the way back to the office, I saw The State‘s John Monk and Noelle Phillips outside the building on Lady Street that houses the Hospitality Association’s offices. Chief Randy Scott had just given reporters the barest of details, and now the Association’s employees were being told what was known.

I asked John and Noelle the most obvious question: How do you not find a body for 11 days in a parking garage? The reporters told me they had searched the place themselves last week, and that there were several doors opening off the garage that they were unable to enter.

This is what little has been released so far:

The body of missing lobbyist Tom Sponseller has been found, according to Columbia police.

Sponseller killed himself, said Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott. His body was found in a lower level of the parking garage at 1122 Lady Street just before 11 a.m., said Jennifer Timmons, a Columbia Police Department spokeswoman. The S.C. Hospitality Association where Sponseller was chief executive officer has its headquarters at the building.

“It’s very devestating,” said Rick Patel, the vice chairman of the S.C. Hospitality Association.

Investigators found the body in a double enclosed room as they were conducting a follow up check of the building, she said.

Police have searched the building multiple times, including a search with dogs trained to find cadavers, Timmons said.

A 2 p.m. at Columbia police headquarters is planned, Timmons said.

As John and Noelle headed over to the police department for that presser, I left them. I’m sure they will have more to share soon.

One reason I found the reporters out on the street is that they were barred from entering the building where the SC Hospitality Association has its offices.

Congratulations, Robert, on the Verner Award!

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Today, regular contributor Bart sent me a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, which I enjoyed, since that was the best comic strip in the history of cartooning, by far. Neither Peanuts nor Doonesbury nor Bloom County nor Overboard ever came close to Watterson‘s brilliant strip, which combined unbelievably deft and communicative artwork with brilliant, unique ideas and perfect dialogue. Every line he drew was essential, and alive. It was amazing.

This reminds me of Robert Ariail, who would say the same. In fact, one big reason why he and I didn’t follow through on the comic strip we planned for years to do was that Robert didn’t want to do it unless it was going to be as good as Calvin and Hobbes — which I thought a ridiculously high standard.

But perfectionism can pay off, as it has yet again for Robert — he is the 2012 Individual Artist winner of the S.C. Arts Commission’s Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award:

Robert Ariail is a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist based in Camden, S.C. From 1984 to 2009, Ariail wielded pen and ink to capture the mood and viewpoint of the day as the editorial cartoonist for The Statenewspaper. With his entertaining and recognizable style, Ariail provoked thought, fueled controversy and poked a little fun as a satirist, storyteller and critic. He had the knack for channeling the spirit of the state, be it pride or frustration. His art and his satire continue to be available to readers through his work at the Spartanburg Herald-Journal and in more than 600 newspapers across the nation. Ariail has also published three collections of his cartoons.

A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1995 and 2000, Ariail was the first American to win the prestigious United Nations Ranan Lurie Political Cartoon Award, triumphing over a field of more than 1,500 cartoonists from around the world in 2009. A sample of other awards include:

  • The National Headliner Award (1990)
  • The National Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award (1992)
  • The Overseas Press Club’s Thomas Nast Award (1997)
  • The Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award (an eleven-state Southeastern regional competition, 1991, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2007)
  • The South Carolina Press Association Award for Cartooning (2007, 2010)

Says Ariail of his work: “I try to give my readers a chuckle, perhaps even a guffaw on occasion. I’d even settle for a raised eyebrow,” says Ariail. “I don’t take cheap shots, but I like to make a point. I want my cartoons to say something, or at least to show the irony of a situation.”

Full disclosure — I nominated Robert for this. He did all the rest. As always, I am proud to know him, and thankful to have had all those years to work with him.

Don’t forget where the “Southern” comes from

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When I started reading the story on the front page of The State this morning about a proposal to change the name of the denomination from “Southern Baptist,” I assumed that the reason would be the convention’s roots in the pro-slavery cause.

So I was taken aback when the reason given in the AP story was concerns “that their name is too regional and impedes the evangelistic faith’s efforts to spread the Gospel worldwide.” That seemed an awfully vanilla way to put it.

I read on, expecting to find the part that dealt with the convention’s founding in 1845… and it wasn’t there at all. No mention of why Southern Baptists had split from other Baptists.

Then, when I went to find the story online to link to it in this post, I found the missing passage:

The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 when it split with northern Baptists over the question of whether slave owners could be missionaries. Draper said that history has left some people to have negative associations with the name.

Well, yeah.

AP stories are generally written in the “inverted pyramid” style, to make it easy for copy editors to cut from the bottom in making a story fit on a print page. But sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes a copy editor needs to read the whole story and think about what parts the reader can’t do without if he or she is to understand what’s going on. This is one of those cases.

The omission is more startling since someone thought to add a paragraph at the end telling how many Southern Baptists there are in South Carolina.

Of course, the blame doesn’t accrue entirely to the editor or page designer. This was a badly written AP story. The origins of the “Southern” identity should have been up top, rather than in the 14th graf. It was essential to understanding what the story was about.

Now, let me add that I don’t say any of this to condemn the convention, or the independent churches that belong to it. I do not mean to besmirch today’s Southern Baptists. My parents are Southern Baptists; I was baptized in Thomas Memorial Baptist Church.

But to fail to mention where the convention’s name came from in a story about a discussion of changing the name is like writing a history of Spanish Catholicism without mentioning the Inquisition, or the persecution of Jews and Muslims under Their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabela. Actually, you could even say it’s worse than that in terms of relevance, since the story was specifically about the name.

Given The State‘s usual interest in the history of slavery and Jim Crow (particularly during Black History Month), I was surprised by this omission.

SC and the media: They shoot editors, don’t they?

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This morning I was on Tom Finneran’s Boston radio show for the second time this week (Tom is the former speaker of the Massachusetts House; I met him in Key West last week), and was asked what the nation should make of the roar of approval that Newt Gingrich got last night when he blamed the media for bringing to light his second ex-wife’s allegations.

I explained that historically, the media got off light on that one. Playing to resentment to those “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the media is of course an old Republican pasttime across the country. But in South Carolina, it can get you everywhere.

Getting away with asking for an open marriage is nothing. This is a ploy that will enable you to get away with murder.

Literally.

So I regaled the Boston audience with the tale of N.G. Gonzales and James H. Tillman. Most of you know the story, but for those who don’t…

N.G. and his brother founded The State in 1891 for a specific purpose: to oppose the Ben Tillman machine. N.G. wrote the editorials, which lambasted the Tillmanites with a vehemence that would shock most newspaper readers in my lifetime, but which was par for the course in those days.

One of the targets of editorial vitriol was James H. Tillman, Ben’s nephew. James was the lieutenant governor, and aspired to be governor. N.G. wasn’t having it, and criticized him heavily during the 1902 campaign. Tillman lost. Not long after that, on January 15, 1903, N.G. was walking home for lunch. The newspaper office then was on Main St., and Gonzales had to turn the corner of Main and Gervais to get home. As he approached the corner, Tillman headed his way, coming from the Senate side of the State House with a couple of senators.

Tillman went straight up to Gonzales, drew a gun, and shot him in cold blood. He did this in the presence of many witnesses, including a policeman.

As N.G. fell, he cried, “Shoot again, you coward!” As one who inherited his mission of writing editorials for The State, I’ve always been proud of him for that.

He died four days later.

Tillman was arrested and charged with the murder, of course, but the defense obtained a change of venue to the friendlier Lexington County. A strategy of self-defense was attempted, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then,  the defense entered N.G.’s editorials into evidence.

The jury acquitted Tillman. The ostensible reason was self-defense, but since there was nothing to support that — Gonzales was unarmed and not threatening Tillman in any way — it has always been assumed that the jury let him off because the son-of-a-bitch editor had it comin’.

A postscript:

Early in 2003, a number of events were held to mark the centennial of Gonzales’ murder. At one point, Solicitor Donnie Myers, an avid student of the case, was asked to present his popular lecture on the subject to employees of The State. I introduced him, and stood to the side as he enthusiastically launched into it.

At the critical point in the narrative, channeling Tillman, Donnie reached dramatically into his briefcase and, pulling out a .45 automatic pistol, brandished it menacingly in my direction. Me being the editor.

I grinned at him, enjoying his act (I had seen it before). But our then-publisher, Ann Caulkins, who admitted to a greater-than-usual fear of firearms of all sorts, practically gasped aloud. She later admitted that for a split second there, she actually feared the solicitor was going to shoot me.

If that had happened, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

The State’s endorsement of 2nd choice Romney

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I think history was made today. In my memory, anyway, The State has never had occasion to endorse a second choice, in a second editorial, before the actual vote. That’s because an endorsed candidate has never dropped out between the endorsement and the vote.

(We had one or two occasions over the years when a state primary candidate didn’t make it into a runoff, but that was very rare, and in any case is entirely different, since that happened after a public vote.)

Fortunately for The State, the second editorial was easier to arrive at, since the editors had already clearly said in their Jon Huntsman endorsement that Mitt Romney was their second choice — in fact, the only other choice to be seriously considered.

And so it was that the paper endorsed Gov. Romney today. Here’s the critical point in the piece:

But we take comfort in the fact that Mr. Romney always has been less interested in philosophy than in problem-solving. As The Washington Post summarized the views of his friends: “obeisance to ideology would impose a rigidity that would inhibit Romney’s real talent, which is forging new ways to fix old problems.”

In other words, the thing that makes the most extreme Republicans despise him is the one characteristic the editorial board values most.

The endorsement went on to express the hope that Romney would start acting more like that on the campaign trail sooner, rather than waiting for the fall campaign. The paper’s main beef with him, and the reason it preferred Huntsman, was his penchant for stooping to conquer and pandering to ideology.

My favorite part of the endorsement, though, wasn’t the endorsement. It was Cindi’s accompanying column. In it, she did something I’ve done a lot over the years — provide insight into how endorsements are arrived at. While questions about some burning issues of the day are asked, they are only sometimes the core of the process. The really critical questions tend to be the ones meant to discern how the candidate understands the job, and would approach decision-making. You can pick up on that in the column.

But here’s my favorite passage:

Finally, I got this: “It’s not a change, but there are positions I have that are not popular with the conservative base in our party. The most obvious is the health-care plan in Massachusetts. Many advisors told me I needed to abandon my conviction that it was the right thing … and that I should say it was a mistake. … Like you, I’m willing to change my mind if presented with facts that show I’m wrong, but with regard to the health-care plan, I’m steadfast.”

I’d like to hear him stand fast behind what he did for healthcare a bit more boldly. To me, it’s his main relevant accomplishment. His work at Bain, and salvaging a sporting event, seem far less relevant to me.

Too bad that the portion of the electorate that he’s trying hardest to appeal to hates Obamacare too much. It prevents him from putting his best foot forward.