Category Archives: The State

Also, there’s the fundamental issue of accountability

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I’ve always been in favor of charter schools, and so has the editorial board at The State. (Some would think those two points are redundant, and some of my former colleagues would say the same, but I continue to insist that the board under my leadership operated by consensus and was not an autocracy. So my opinion and the board’s during that period were not the same thing. And that’s the way it was, because I say so, speaking ex cathedra. None may say me nay.)

Today’s editorial explaining why local districts shouldn’t fund state-chartered schools made me go “huh?” for a second, because I hadn’t really thought about that aspect of it (and I guess I missed when the issue came up).

But only for a second. Once I thought about whether such funding should come from DISTRICTS, I could think of all sorts of reasons why that was a bad approach to an otherwise good idea.

And many of those reasons were set out ably in the editorial. An excerpt:

What’s not reasonable is the plan before the House to force school districts to take local property tax money away from the schools they are responsible for and give it to charter schools that are completely independent of the districts. Unlike district-sponsored charter schools, many state-sponsored schools were set up over the objections of the local districts, and they do not receive local property tax funding.

The idea of forcing local schools to subsidize the state charters is particularly unreasonable today, when we are calling on districts to make difficult choices to reduce their costs. Consider what happened last week: The day after Lexington 2 Superintendent Venus Holland recommended closing one of the district’s 10 elementary schools to save money, the House Education Committee voted to make her district — and the rest of the state’s districts — spend money to keep the doors opened at a dozen schools over which it has no control. Although the timing isn’t so dramatic, the situation is even more absurd in Abbeville, where the legislation would force the district to pay for a school that opened in a high school that the district had shut down to save money.

In addition to the districts’ need to make these sorts of difficult decisions, there’s this very practical problem: Property taxes are set based on the number of students the districts expect to have in the schools they operate — not in the schools over which they have no say and whose enrollment they have no way of guessing.

In defending the plan to make local districts fund state-chartered schools, House Education Chairman Phil Owens claimed it “creates parity and equality.” But it does no such thing: To the contrary, it highlights the “parity and equality” problem we have throughout our public schools, because it requires each district to contribute whatever amount of money it spends per student for each local student who attends one of these schools. That varies widely from district to district, based on how wealthy each is and how much the people who live there value public education…

But the one main, critical, essential, fundamental reason why it was a bad idea was left out, or only implied, and it is this: As stewards of taxpayers’ money, districts shouldn’t have to fund something that they can’t hold accountable.

The districts run the schools under their jurisdiction, holding them accountable — with varying degrees of success — for the appropriations provided. That’s the essence of responsible government: You elect people to make decisions about raising and spending tax money (as well as other essentials of government). Taxes are levied on the local level specifically for the purpose of running those schools.

The whole idea behind charter schools is that they are free from being held accountable by that local district structure. There’s no way that local districts should be allocating any portion of the finite, limited funds (a demagogue would throw in, “taxpayers’ hard-earned money”) to any entity that is not answerable to that body for what it does.

The state charters these schools, and should be responsible for any funding that comes from public sources.

To elaborate… the editorial also made the very important point that ultimately, school funding is a state responsibility. And it is. And eventually, we need to get to the point where schools are not dependent on taxes raised locally — a practice that only exacerbates the gross inequities in quality of education available statewide.

This issue — the local funding and governance of schools — is one on which my opinion has changed over time. As one who believes in the principle of subsidiarity, my general tendency is toward pushing governmental responsibilities down to the smallest, most local level (the federal government should do far less than it does, and states should leave more up to local governments — in South Carolina, that means the Legislature getting off the necks of local governments and letting them serve their citizens unhampered).

That’s in general. But subsidiarity holds that functions should be performed by the smallest possible entity competent to perform them. And increasingly, I’ve started to think in recent years that the state (or at the very least, the county) is about as small an entity that can both fund and administer schools competently. Mind you, I think the SCHOOLS should enjoy more autonomy than they do, in terms of principals being more free to run them — particularly in terms of freedom to hire and fire. But to the extent that there has to be administration above the school level, that doesn’t have to be nearly as local as it is, and there are a number of reasons why it shouldn’t be (including the fact that while school boards are elected, the overwhelming majority of voters don’t have the slightest idea who’s running for school board, or which would do a better job, and you often get the kind of governance you would expect from that — and there is NO WAY these little-known entities should be levying taxes, as they do in some districts). A good start in making that less local is what I’ve advocated strenuously for 20 years: Consolidate school districts. But the ultimate goal, perhaps (I’m not 100 percent on this yet), should be statewide administration.

But I’m getting off the subject. Bottom line: Charter schools are a state creation (and it’s a good thing the state has created them, I continue to think). The state should pay for them, to the extent that they should be publicly funded. Legislators should deal with that, rather than trying to dump the problem on the overstressed districts.

The irony in the Lexington Medical/Duke deal

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Something about this development perplexes me:

Now after a 10-year struggle to receive a certificate of need from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to provide heart surgeries, Lexington Medical has signed an agreement with Duke Medicine to provide cardiovascular services at the hospital.

Lexington Medical Center will affiliate with Duke’s internationally recognized heart program to begin procedures including open heart surgery and elective angioplasty at Lexington Medical Center in 2011.

Through its affiliation, Lexington Medical will benefit from Duke’s clinical expertise and services to build a comprehensive heart program. Duke University Hospital, recognized as one of the top 10 heart hospitals in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, will help recruit cardiovascular surgeons and cardiac anesthesiologists to work at Lexington Medical Center.

Duke will assist with the recruitment and training of nurses and staff, design of the open heart surgery operating room, implementation of policies and procedures as well as comprehensive oversight of quality and development for all cardiovascular services at Lexington Medical.

Marti Taylor, associate vice president of cardiovascular serviced at Duke University Health System, said Duke had been in discussions with Lexington for about six months. It currently has affiliations with 11 other hospitals from Florida to Virginia.

She said Duke comes into a collaboration with three objectives: to expand its cardiovascular services; expand the Duke brand; and to provide patients access to tertiary services available at university hospitals.

Dr. Peter Smith, professor and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Duke University, is charged with getting the heart program up and running. He has been involved with opening six other heart surgery programs, he said…

That sounds great and all, and I wish everyone concerned the best, but I can’t help remembering… all those years that LexMed was arguing, fussing and fighting with Providence, Palmetto Health, DHEC and the editorial board of The State over whether it would be allowed to do open-heart, there was a consistent refrain we heard from folks in Lexington County, which went something like this:

Lexington Medical is a great hospital. We have the expertise to do open-heart. We’re ready to do open-heart. You people on the other side of the river are acting like we in Lexington County aren’t good enough, or smart enough, to run a heart hospital. You’re dissing us, and we’ve had enough of it.

This sentiment, oft expressed, packed the full weight of the painful identity divide that runs down the middle of our community.

Of course, we were doing nothing of the kind. We (at the newspaper, anyway, and I had no indications anyone else thought anything different) that LexMed was indeed a wonderful hospital. It wasn’t about good enough or smart enough or being ready. It was about the fact that with such procedures, a team needs to be able to do a certain number of them to be and stay proficient, and if open-heart got spread and scattered across THREE local hospitals (when it really shouldn’t even have been spread across two), NONE of those facilities are likely to be doing enough procedures to be as good as they should be.

So now that Providence quit fighting this, now that LexMed is poised to move forward… it has to call in the Pros from Dover to take the next steps?

Very ironic, it seems to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

•  Consolidate agencies, and let the governor control them.

•  Write real ethics laws.

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

•  Release the judiciary from its legislative stranglehold.

•  Adopt a rational budgeting process.

•  And make the government more open to the public.

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

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

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

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

And neither will the newspapers.

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

And I was right.

Congratulations, Cindi!

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Just wanted to make sure y’all saw that Cindi Scoppe got another award:

Associate editor Scoppe received the eighth annual Hovey-Harkness award from Governing magazine for “journalistic coverage of state and local government.” The magazine cited her “insightful analysis and commentary” on South Carolina’s state government in her editorials and columns on the editorial pages of The State newspaper and thestate.com. The award is named for the late Hal Hovey, a reporter and public official, and Peter Harkness, founding editor and publisher of the magazine.

The magazine said: “Scoppe has been a dogged advocate for the restructuring of government in the state of South Carolina. Her ability to explain in clear language complex state policy issues has given her columns broad-based appeal. She has written with candor about the need to strengthen ethics in the South Carolina State House and is not afraid to point out certain inconvenient truths that are glossed over by the rhetoric of politicians.”

Scoppe was presented the award Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Obviously, The State was pleased with this award — the last time anyone on the editorial board (and that was me) went to Washington on the company dime was 1998, near as I can recall. But they’re not as pleased as I am to see Cindi get this well-deserved recognition.

I mean, congratulations to Sammy Fretwell and Ron Morris and all, but I single out Cindi because I feel responsible for her. She started working for me when she was 23 and more or less fresh out of UNC, so I taught her everything she knows. Or some of it. OK, maybe some of the bits she’d rather forget. But I’m sure I had some impact.

Whoever deserves the credit, there is none better at understanding and explaining South Carolina government and politics. And that counts for a lot in a state that badly needs more good analysis of what goes on at the State House. Governing magazine agrees:

Scoppe is being honored for her insightful analysis and commentary about South Carolina’s state government.

Scoppe has been a dogged advocate for the restructuring of government. Her ability to explain, in clear language, complex state policy issues has given her columns broad-based appeal. She writes with consistency and candor about the need to strengthen ethics in the South Carolina statehouse and is not afraid to point out certain inconvenient truths that are often glossed over by the rhetoric of politicians. In a recent column about the politics of government waste, Scoppe pointed out that cutting government waste has become “a rallying cry for politicians who don’t have a clue how to reduce spending and don’t want to make hard choices.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make mine a Yuengling. Robert’s, too

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Just to keep y’all up to date on the hep doings of the In Crowd — Robert Ariail and I gathered last evening in the official Warthen/Ariail Memorial Booth at Yesterday’s, which is one of Five Points’ greatest attractions. Or should be.

We covered such burning topics as:

  • What we’re charging these days for freelance gigs (my prices are lower than his, but then I’m not Robert Ariail).
  • My upcoming trip to England, where I hope to find a pub as homey and welcoming as Yesterday’s. (I’m not sure this tops my wife’s list of priorities for the trip, but it’s high on mine.) A booth named for me is not a prerequisite.
  • Social media, which Robert’s not into, so I tried to engage his interest by showing him this. He still wasn’t sold. So then I Tweeted this out and showed it to him — “Having a pint with Robert Ariail at Yesterday’s, in the official memorial Warthen/Ariail booth. Not everyone can do that…” — and he still wasn’t impressed.
  • Why it’s the “Warthen/Ariail” booth instead of “Ariail/Warthen.” (Guess who raised that question?)
  • How, take it all around — price, flavor, what have you — you really can’t beat a pint of Yuengling. Oldest brewery in America, you know.

Hey, Mr. Yuengling distributor, take note: Don’t you think it’s about time you took out an ad on the blog? Like Yesterday’s?

Bobby Hitt at Commerce

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Pretty much everyone who follows such things has said Nikki Haley’s first big test would be choosing her Commerce Secretary. And now we see how she has chosen. And it is very… interesting.

For the last couple of hours, since I heard that she had picked Bobby Hitt, I’ve been thinking back over my long association with him and wondering what I can legitimately say that is relevant to the situation.

You see, I know Bobby Hitt. I’ve known him for years. I served with Bobby Hitt. And you, senator, are no…

Wait, wrong tape loop…

Here’s the thing: Bobby Hitt used to be my boss, back when he was managing editor of The State and I was the gummint affairs editor. We worked together in a tumultuous time, as newsroom management was in transition from the old, family-owned regime to a new breed that, for lack of a better term, I’ll call the Knight Ridder editors. Bobby was a leading light of the first category, I was the vanguard of the second (I was the first editor in the newsroom from a KR paper — in fact, I think, the first who had ever been an editor outside South Carolina — after KR bought The State). I didn’t feel like an interloper or a spy — as a native South Carolinian, I just felt like a guy who had come home — but a lot of people regarded me as such. And Bobby was the new generation of the old guard. Some sparks were inevitable.

When I came to work at The State in 1987, Bobby was away doing a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, which sorta told me he was no dummy. When he came back in ’88, he was elevated to managing editor of The State (he had headed The Columbia Record before that). In 1990, Gil Thelen replaced my good friend and Bobby’s mentor, Tom McLean, as executive editor. About a year later, Bobby left the paper. What happened in between is a bit of a whirl in my memory, as it was the year of the Lost Trust scandal, the departure of Jim Holderman from USC, and about a dozen other scandals that had my staff running like crazy to stay ahead of them. (A time Cindi Scoppe alluded to in her column about me when I left the paper.)

Working with Bobby was … interesting. Bobby is a character and a half. He’s intense, and has a manner that works well with folks who think, “This guy will flat get some things done,” and very much rubs others the wrong way.

Bobby went to work for Nelson Mullins when he left the paper, and when BMW came into the state and hired that law firm to represent it, Bobby was delegated to help the Germans negotiate the complexities and peculiarities of public and governmental relations. They were so impressed by the job he did that they hired him away from Nelson Mullins, and he’s been up in Greer ever since, playing a key role at the operation that still stands as the big ecodevo success of the last two or three decades.

His intimate knowledge of the workings of such a business and what they’re looking for in a home should stand him in good stead, and no doubt was a huge factor in Nikki Haley picking him for this job. (An anecdote Bobby told me a few years ago about why BMW picked SC… Two reasons: First, our storied tech school system, which they relied upon to train their workers. Second — a BMW exec went on a driving tour of residential neighborhoods in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. He approvingly noted the neat houses and well-kept yards, and decided that people who took care of their property and community like that were people they could work with. The first is an ecodevo asset we understand and are happy to exploit. The second was intriguingly intangible.) The BMW name is political magic, and she’s no doubt hoping some of that magic will rub off on Commerce.

Oh, one other thing of interest: I can’t really tell you for sure what Bobby’s politics might be. News people didn’t speak to each other about such things. But I know he’s Rob Miller’s uncle. Assuming Nikki knew that, kudos to her for not letting that get in the way.

I’m going to be listening with interest the next few days to what business leaders say about this pick. Not what they’re quoted as saying in the paper, but what they say more informally. They’ve mostly been VERY anxious for a new approach to ecodevo in both the governor’s office and Commerce, which is why a lot of them supported Vincent Sheheen against the Sanfordista candidate. Nikki knows that, and knowing it, she has made a rather bold and unconventional pick.

Bobby is a unique individual, from his thick Charleston accent to that slightly mad, conspiratorial, insinuating grin that explodes out of his scruffy red beard at the least provocation. He’s certainly not the standard-issue CEO type that one expects in the Commerce job. No man in the gray flannel suit is he. I feel confident he’ll grab ‘hold of Commerce with both hands, and make something happen or bust a gut in the attempt. His uniqueness will either blow up in Gov.-to-be Haley’s face, or pay off big time. I hope, for South Carolina’s sake, that the latter is the case. I’ll be rooting for Bobby (and Nikki for that matter — she’s the only governor we’ve got), and if I can ever help him get the job done, I’ll be glad to do what I can. We need a win. We need a bunch of ’em.

You’ve seen the movement; now wear the boot

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Nikki Haley and the Tea Party are inseparable, right? So what’s next?

Nikki Tea, the boot.

That’s right. It’s an actual product produces by Clarks. I learned about it from the Dillard’s ad on Page A10 of today’s paper. Or rather, my wife did. When she read it out to me, I thought she meant “Nickie T,” or something, but she said, no, Nikki like Haley and T-E-A like Tea Party.

Pretty freaky. Especially seeing as how I can’t imagine Nikki wearing anything that looked like that. Of course, before this year, I couldn’t have imagined her turning into a populist demagogue to win an election, so what do I know?

I would love to know how they came up with that name, or why they thought it described that boot. But I do know it’s pretty weird.

How Haley Won (the short version)

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On Sunday I had too much going on to read the paper, but I didn’t feel like I was missing much, because the lede headline was, “How Haley beat Sheheen.”

That would have to be shortest analysis story yet, since the entire explanation can be expressed thusly:

“She ran as a Republican in 2010.”

It’s so obvious from the outcome that, since Vincent Sheheen garnered a larger percentage of the vote than any other Democrat running in South Carolina, Nikki Haley didn’t do anything else to contribute to her success. In fact, the numbers indicate that everything else that happened in the fall campaign must have worked against her.

So, a very short story. (And yet my colleague John O’Connor squeezed 2,000 words out of it. My hat is off to him. Editors don’t give reporters that kind of room often, so when they do, any writer worth his salt makes the most of it.)

Now, if you want to talk about how she won the nomination — her transition into the darling of the Tea Party — that might take some verbiage. But there’s not much to say about her victory in the general. She hit her crescendo in June, but the air gradually leaked out of her campaign until she barely squeaked by on Election Day. But being a Republican guaranteed that she could afford to blow a big lead, and still win. So she did.

Worth revisiting: The flaw in tax credit argument

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Yesterday I got this kind note from a schoolteacher:

Mr. Warthen,

For years I have quoted an article you wrote for the state newspaper entitled, “Put Parents in Charge isn’t a ‘voucher bill’ it’s something much worse” to my public speaking classes as they begin persuasive arguments and to my friends and family who insist that school choice is fair and responsible.  I continually return to your argument that asks, are we a citizen or a consumer?

I searched The State archives today to find a way to link to your article on my FaceBook page.  In my ever so humble peon public school teacher opinion, I have never encountered a better argument against vouchers.  Public schools are the least discriminatory institution in America—we serve everyone—whether a parent has the money to choose or not, and we are part of the infrastructure of our country.

I hope that you understand…, [but]… I have photocopied your article since its publication in March of 2005.  What is a public school teacher in Lexington County to do??  I have used it to make my students see one side of this issue that they may never have been able to see otherwise.  With the election of Mick Zais, I am truly frightened that this issue is on the table again and more a reality than ever before.  The article, as well as your very logical argument, needs to be resurrected and published again.

She’s got a point. Maybe this would be a good time to revisit some of the basic flaws in the arguments for tax credits (and, for that matter, vouchers). Not because Mick Zais was elected, but because Nikki Haley was. (Think about it: when was the last time you saw a state superintendent lead a significant political fight? The job is ministerial, not political, which is why it should not be elected.) Here’s the column she was looking for. It was published in The State on March 4, 2005:

Put Parents in Charge isn’t a ‘voucher bill’ — it’s something much worse

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

SOUTH CAROLINIANS for Responsible Government, the group advocating Gov. Mark Sanford’s tuition tax credit proposal, criticizes its opponents for repeatedly calling “Put Parents in Charge” a “voucher” proposal.

On this score, the group is absolutely right, and Mr. Sanford’s critics are dead wrong.

This is not a voucher bill. It’s nothing like a voucher bill. It’s something much worse.

It’s worse because of the hole it will blow in state revenues, to be sure. To pass what is essentially a tarted-up tax cut bill without considering its effect on all state services (not just education), would be inexcusable.

But the main way in which a tuition tax credit is worse than a voucher is that it promotes the insidiously false notion that taxes paid for public schools are some sort of user fee.

Whether you agree with me here depends upon your concept of your place in society: Do you see yourself as a consumer, or as a citizen?

If you look upon public schools narrowly as a consumer, and you send your kids to private schools or home-school them, then you might think, “Hey, why should I be paying money to this provider, when I’m buying the service from someone else?” If that’s your view, a tuition tax credit makes perfect sense to you. Why shouldn’t you get a refund?

But if you look at it as a citizen, it makes no sense at all. Public schools have never been about selling a commodity; they have always been about the greatest benefits and highest demands of citizenship.

A citizen understands that parents and their children are not the only “consumers” of public school services — not by a long shot. That individual children and families benefit from education is only one important part of the whole picture of what public schools do for society. The rest of us voters and taxpayers have a huge stake, too.

Public schools exist for the entire community — for people with kids in public schools and private schools, people whose kids are grown, people who’ve never had kids and those who never will. (Note that, by the logic of the tax credit advocates, those last three groups should get tax breaks, too. In fact, if only the one-third or so of households who have children in public schools at a given time paid taxes to support them, we wouldn’t be able to keep the schools open.)

Public schools exist to provide businesses with trained workers, and to attract industries that just won’t locate in a place without good public schools. They exist to give our property value. If you doubt the correlation between good public schools and property values, just ask a Realtor.

They exist to create an informed electorate — a critical ingredient to a successful representative democracy. (In fact, if I were inclined to argue that public schools have failed, I would point out just how many people we have walking around without a clear understanding of their responsibilities as citizens. But I don’t expect public education critics to use that one.)

Public schools exist to make sure we live in a decent society full of people able to live productive lives, instead of roaming the streets with no legitimate means of support. In terms of cost-effectiveness on this score, spending roughly $4,400 per pupil for public schools (the state’s actual share, not the inflated figure the bill’s advocates use, which includes local and federal funds) is quite a bargain set against the $13,000 it costs to keep one young person in prison. And South Carolina has the cheapest prisons in the nation.

Consider the taxes we pay to provide fire protection. It doesn’t matter if we never call the fire department personally. We still benefit (say, by having lower insurance rates) because the fire department exists. More importantly, our neighbors who do have an immediate need for the fire department — as many do each day — depend upon its being there, and being fully funded.

All of us have the obligation to pay the taxes that support public schools, just as we do for roads and law enforcement and the other more essential services that government provides. And remember, those of you who think of “government” as some wicked entity that has nothing to do with you: Government provides only those things that we, acting through our elected representatives, decide it should provide. You might disagree with some of those decisions, but you know, you’re not always going to be in the majority in a democracy.

If, as a consumer, you wish to pay for an alternative form of education for your child, you are free to do that. But that decision does not relieve you of the responsibility as a citizen to support the basic infrastructure of the society in which you live.

Radical libertarians — people who see themselves primarily as consumers, who want to know exactly what they are personally, directly receiving for each dollar that leaves their hands — don’t understand the role of government in society because they simply don’t understand how human beings are interconnected. I’m not just saying that we should be interconnected; I’m saying that we are, whether we like it or not. And if we want society to work so that we have a decent place in which to dwell, we have to adopt policies that recognize that stark fact.

That’s why we have public schools. And that’s why we all are obliged to support them.

Another stand-alone governor? Let’s hope not

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Photo by Gerry Melendez/The State

In the newspaper biz, a “stand-alone” is a picture that has no story with it. I’m still looking back at Tuesday night, and pondering a photo that embodies another sense of “stand-alone”…

As we were waiting… and waiting, and waiting… for Nikki Haley’s victory speech that night, someone in the WIS studio wondered aloud why Henry McMaster was the one killing time at the podium (actually, he was introducing her, but we didn’t realize that at first). Well, who else would it have been? said I. He was the only member of the GOP establishment to have embraced her — her only primary opponent to play a positive, prominent role in her campaign. That’s Henry; he’s Old School. If it’s his party’s nominee, he’s behind her, 100 percent.

So who else would introduce her?

And then I thought no more about it. My mind turned to how low-energy and off-key her subsequent speech was. (Something Cindi Scoppe apparently disagrees with, since she wrote, “She made a good start with her victory speech.“)

It was only when I looked at the photos later (and these photos are from The State, where you can find both a Nikki victory gallery and a Sheheen concession gallery) that I thought about the extreme contrast. There was Vincent, with a broad array of people loyally, warmly supporter him in his hour of defeat — while aside from Henry, Nikki stood alone (I’m not counting family; both candidates had that).

First the delay. Then she comes out alone, without political allies, then she delivers that less-than-enthusiastic speech. What was going on?

I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t stay like this. We’ve had 8 years of a stand-alone governor, and a governor standing alone can’t accomplish anything in this state, for good or for ill.

We’d all be better off if more people were willing to stand with our governor. Of course, it would help if she acted like she wanted them to. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The sort of person with whom more people are willing to stand, and who is willing to stand with more people, is the sort of person that, well, more people want to stand with. That made me dizzy. Let me read it again — yep, that’s what I meant to say…

Photo by C. Aluka Berry/The State

Sheheen wins endorsement tally, 7-2

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Back in 2008 when we endorsed John McCain, some of you pointed out how much of an outlier we were, since most papers across the country went with Obama. You were right to do so, because that was meaningful.

I realize that it’s axiomatic among the kinds of people who will turn out in enthusiastic droves tomorrow that newspapers, being “liberal,” always go with the Democrat. I know better. While newsrooms may be full of folks who usually vote Democratic, if they vote, editorial boards tend to be more centrist. And in South Carolina, they mostly lean right of center, to the extent that such a term in meaningful.

So it is that, even when I disagree with their conclusions, I give weight to the considered opinions of editorial boards, particularly when I see a consensus emerging.

We have such a consensus in South Carolina:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Voters will decide Tuesday on South Carolina’s next governor, but the editors of the state’s larger daily newspapers have cast their ballots in their opinion pages.

The editorial boards of seven newspapers chose Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen and the boards of two Lowcountry newspapers chose Republican state Rep. Nikki Haley.

The Post and Courier of Charleston applauded Haley’s views on government streamlining and reduced government spending.

“South Carolina could benefit from a governor who is committed to being an ‘ambassador, for business growth,” the editorial writers said.

The Greenville News, located in the center of the state’s most Republican and conservative region, said Sheheen is the best candidate to reverse the loss of authority and respect the office has experienced under Gov. Mark Sanford.

“Sheheen seems to best understand how to use the limited power given to the governor in South Carolina to put together teams and work for the common good,” The News’ editorial said…

Haley’s campaign also was endorsed by the joint editorial board of The Island Packet of Hilton Head and The Beaufort Gazette.

Sheheen’s campaign also received endorsements from the Aiken Standard, The State of Columbia, The Morning News of Florence, The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, The Herald of Rock Hill and the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg.

Note that the only paper of any size — generally, although not always, an indicator of greater professionalism — going for Nikki Haley is the Charleston paper, which has been head-over-heels for Mark Sanford since Day One. They love the guy, and are bound to love his designated successor.

Meanwhile, newspapers that would usually go for the Republican are unequivocally for Sheheen.

That’s because if serious people who have to stand behind and justify their opinions take a close, thoughtful look at these two candidates, the inevitable conclusion is obvious. At least, that tends to be the case 7 out of 9 times.

The State decides it, too, is 55 percent for the sales tax referendum

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A couple of days ago, I was talking with a good friend — a very conservative Republican leader, a longtime close ally of Mark Sanford — about politics and mentioned the proposed penny sales tax increase for transportation in Richland County. He said, derisively (but in a friendly way), something along the lines of, “And you just think that would be GREAT, don’t you?”

Well, no. As I explained to him, I’m probably about 45 percent against it. But I’m more than 50 percent for it, when all is weighed and measured. So I’ve gone out of my way to help support the effort to pass it — now that I’m not a newspaper editor any more, and am in more of a position to stand up for things I believe in instead of just writing about them.

But I know that I SEEM like a pro-tax guy to someone who is strongly anti-tax and has powerful feelings on the subject. The thing is, I’m about as neutral as a guy can get on taxes. I look at a particular tax in a particular situation, and I look for logical reasons to take a particular position on it — raise it, lower it, eliminate it, place or remove restrictions on it, whatever.

At no point does any sort of personal FEELING about taxes enter into it. I guess because I never really feel personally put-upon, but look at it from 30,000 feet in terms of whether it makes sense as policy. (In fact, one reason I like this tax is that I, as a Lexington Countian who doesn’t pay Richland County property taxes but spends most of my waking ours in Columbia, taking advantage of the amenities here, would have to pay my share of it. That’s fair.) Sometimes I decide a tax proposal doesn’t make good policy sense. Sometimes I decide it does. The penny sales tax on Tuesday’s ballot in Richland County is one case that, when you balance all the pros and cons, makes sense under the circumstances.

My primary concern here is making sure we have a transportation system for folks who can’t afford to own a car (which is sort of the definition of poverty in this country). I don’t like that the mechanism is a sales tax (except for the part about people like me, from outside the county, paying it), but until someone waves a magic wand or does a brain transplant on the Legislature (just don’t use the one from that “Abby Normal” guy!), we are going to have an overburdened sales tax.

You know why that is? It’s because of some of the ANTI-tax people. In this state, anti-tax sentiment has tended to center on property taxes and to some extent the income tax. So basically we’ve pushed down on those (especially the property tax, and most especially the tax on owner-occupied homes), creating upward pressure on sales taxes.

Which is just fine with certain elements of the anti-tax movement in SC, because there’s a line of thought followed by a lot (although certainly not all) of its adherents: “Government is a thing that is hostile to people like me (white, middle-class people). Government exists to do one thing: take money away from people like me, and give it to undeserving people (usually black, poor people), either through direct payments (welfare as we knew it) or services for THEM and not for ME. A property tax is unfair because it penalizes me for working hard and sacrificing to buy a home. A sales tax is fair because THOSE PEOPLE have to pay it, too (never mind that the taxes on rental property are higher and are passed on as part of rent).”

So you end up with essential services, from school operations to transportation infrastructure, being paid for by the overburdened and unstable sales tax.

That’s not good, for a host of reasons. But that’s the way things are, and that is the reality that Richland County has to deal with. This is the option it has.

As you know, I continue to advocate strongly for comprehensive tax reform. This state badly needs to get on a sounder, fairer, better-balanced fiscal footing. (One of the great ironies of politics in SC is that we’ve now gotten to where EVERYBODY, including Vincent Sheheen and Nikki Haley, are for comprehensive tax reform — but we still haven’t gotten it.) But I understand that Richland County does not have the power to make that happen, and has to deal with the situation before it.

And this sales tax is a sound, practical way to get the job done.

But I know all the arguments against it. And BECAUSE I know all those arguments, and I know my former colleagues at The State, I did not expect the paper to endorse the referendum.

It was looking like the paper wouldn’t endorse either way — with only Cindi and Warren left writing for the page, the number of endorsements overall have been curtailed dramatically — but it if did, it might be against. I had read Warren’s columns setting out the arguments for AND against, and figured that would be that. And I knew Cindi — her inclinations would set her against it. (She, even more than I, has had a “no tax increases until comprehensive tax reform” attitude that colors such decisions.)

But Friday, I was pleased to see the paper DID take the plunge on an issue it was truly torn over. And it ended up where I did — not crazy about it, but ultimately for it.

Here’s an excerpt from the endorsement, “Say ‘yes’ to transportation sales tax:”

We have multiple concerns about the plan on Tuesday’s ballot: The volatile sales tax already is being relied on too heavily — in our community and across the state. It’s already 9 cents on some items in Richland County. It’s difficult to swallow raising it even more in this down economy. Moreover, most of the billion-plus dollars the tax would raise won’t be used to fund our primary need — the bus system; two-thirds would be spent on road improvements and building sidewalks, bike paths and greenways.

Despite these concerns, we have reluctantly concluded that on balance it is in the best interest of this community, its quality of life and its economy. We believe voters should approve the sales tax, and also allow the county to borrow $200 million, which would be repaid using the tax, in order to get work started as soon as possible.

One appealing aspect of this plan is that people from outside the county would pay a projected 40 percent of the tax. But two things in particular tipped the balance for us. The first is the overriding need for a vibrant bus system to serve those whose lives and livelihoods depend on it, support the economy and provide a transportation option that helps reduce congestion, pollution and gas use.

The second is the broad support the plan has received. Thirty-nine well-respected citizens, including Columbia College President Caroline Whitson and Columbia Urban League President J.T. McLawhorn, sat on the commission whose study formed the basis of this proposal; many have been vocal in their support of the increase. In addition, a number of influential business people have galvanized behind this effort. These include some of this community’s more conservative leaders…

By the way, I had accompanied a delegation of referendum supporters — J.T. McLawhorn, Ted Speth and several others — when they went and made their pitch to the editorial board. That was a personal milestone, the very first time I’ve been in that room since leaving the paper, and my first time ever on that side of the equation. The full board was there (Cindi, Warren, Mark Lett and Henry Haitz). One of my fellow guests asked me, “Was Obama in this room?” I said yes, in the seat being occupied by Lee Bussell (another member of our delegation). John McCain had sat there, too, more than once. And Joe Biden, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman. George W. Bush. Ted Sorensen. Plenty of others had been in the room, but not in that particular chair like those. Lots of memories.

I didn’t say much. And the board didn’t ask many questions. I really didn’t feel it had gone that well, since I had reason to believe the odds were against us, and the meeting just didn’t feel (based on my long experience) like a game-changer. But then, I had never been in that position.

Afterward, Cindi and Warren gave me a tour of their new digs. They’ve moved out of our top-floor suite of offices (editorial is no longer a separate division reporting to the publisher, but under news chief Mark Lett) and are now in the part of the newsroom that used to be the morgue — library, I suppose I should say (“morgue” is a term that dates to the old days in newspapers, before that building was built). They’ve turned the area into offices, plus a little conference room, by making walls out of tall bookcases and cabinets. It’s nicer than I thought it would be.

Anyway, they didn’t say anything to indicate how they thought the meeting had gone. Until Friday, I had thought they had decided not to take a stand on it either way. (And in fact, I worried that the board meeting might have pushed them to take a stand, and the stand would be against. It was that much of a near thing.) So the Friday endorsement was a nice, welcome surprise.

Like me, my former colleagues don’t consider the plan one to jump for joy over. But all things considered, the right answer is “yes.”

How Nikki Haley charmed me

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That was my compromise headline, by the way. My first thought was “How Nikki Haley seduced me,” and boy, that would have driven my traffic up and helped me sell some ads. It would have been a perfectly fine use of figurative language. But I decided against it. I’m not THAT anxious to sell ads (if I were, I’d spend some time on the phone selling, and you’d see more of them). Then I thought of, “How Nikki Haley fooled me,” but that would have been TOO prosaic. So I went with the compromise.

And what it means is this: Folks, I know how attractive (as a candidate, I mean) Nikki Haley can be. I mean, she had me at “I’m running against Larry Koon” way back in 2002, and she totally pulled me into her orbit when she told me of how his redneck supporters were attacking her ethnicity, causing me to write an impassioned defense of her and condemnation of them. (I have this atavistic impulse toward knight errantry. It’s what causes me to have a notion that the United States should ride about the world slaying ogres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and the like. And if I can actually, literally defend a lady in distress — well, all the better.)

Being on Nikki’s side made us feel good about ourselves. She came across as an absolute paragon of political virtue taking on the entrenched interests, and she did it well. At the time, we didn’t know that as she was advocating “running government like a business,” she was failing to pay taxes on time for the business for which she was the accountant. We didn’t know she was parlaying her support of Lexington Medical Center getting an open-heart center into a $110,000-a-year job that didn’t require her to show up.

And most of all, we did not know that she — who chaired a subcommittee charged with coming up with regulations for the payday lending industry — would tap that industry for contributions to her employer’s cause.

Now that I do know those things, I’ve thought back a number of times to the portion of my last extended interview with her when she spoke of how she was stymied by her leadership and prevented from passing meaningful reform of payday lending. You will hear her speak knowledgeably and energetically about how her committee carefully researched the issue and came up with a bill she was proud of (one that would regulate, not eliminate, such lenders), only to see it cavalierly deep-sixed by her leadership.

It was, in retrospect, quite a performance, and I believed in it entirely. I believe in it now as I watch it. You probably will, too. Look at her face as I ask her to clarify — was it Harry Cato who killed your bill. Yes, she nods, with wide eyes, evincing reluctance at seeming to tell tales, then smiling winningly.

The thing is, it’s so convincing that I still believe that she was sincere. I mean, look at her. But that sincere young woman who spoke of how much she was learning as a novice legislator has been very little in evidence since she found “the power of her voice” as a Sarah-Palin-style demagogue who despises experience and nuance, and speaks almost entirely in bumper stickers.

The Nikki Haley on the video was … smarter than the one we hear today. And more believable. She was almost… wonkish. Definitely our kind of gal, the sort we’d be sure to have an editorial crush on.

And I still marvel over how she’s changed.

Bottom line… I have a lot of experience observing Nikki Haley. So when I tell people who just recently discovered her that she isn’t all that she seems, and that it would be a bad idea to elect her to higher office, my assessment has very deep roots. It took me a LONG time to realize just how problematic Nikki Haley was. And voters just haven’t had enough time with her. It’s like being a pilot — I’ve got a couple of thousand hours with this particular aircraft, and it’s hard to explain all that I’ve learned about her idiosyncracies to anyone who’s had less than a hundred.

Which is why I wish Election Day were a little farther off. Eventually, I believe everybody will see all the sides of Nikki Haley. But after Tuesday, it will be too late to help our state.

Obviously, I need to work on my image

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O wad some Power the giftie gie us…

Check out what I learned about myself today…

The new Twitter format now features something on the “Followers” and “Following” pages headlined “Similar to You.” And here’s what followed that on my account:

Similar to You

Yikes! Similar to me! Based on what? I mean, Adam doesn’t even do TPS reports any more, with or without the new cover sheets!

Not willing to accept that verdict, I refreshed, and got:

Similar to You

I refreshed again, and got:

Similar to You

Dang! It gets worse, when you note what the constants are — the two, unshakable constants…

This is how Twitter sees me? What can I do about this? Whatever it is, I’ll get started right away…

Sheheen’s restructuring plan

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Speaking of Doug Ross — back on a previous post, Doug complains again, and with considerable justice, that Vincent Sheheen is light on details about his advocacy for government reform. Well, he isn’t if you ASK him, but he doesn’t OFFER such explication — probably because he thinks everybody but Brad Warthen is bored by such stuff.

Well, here’s a little something to fill in the gaps (in addition to what I got him to say on “The Brad Show” last week). First, here’s a blog post I wrote at the time he came to pitch his plan to us at The State — long before he started to run for governor.

And here’s his bill on the subject.

In case you have trouble with the link (from my blog post) to his op-ed on the subject (it’s a Word file), here’s what he wrote at the time:

REVAMPING TWO BRANCHES OF OUR GOVERNMENT
Vincent Sheheen
Guest Columnist

For more than a decade, our great state has engaged in a repetitive argument over which branch of government should have more power, the legislative branch or the executive branch. This contentious argument about the balance of power misses the point and too often degenerates into fruitless bickering. The real point is that neither branch effectively fulfills its role in controlling and overseeing government operations and programs. We are trying to run a modern, sovereign government with essentially the same antiquated tools used for more than 100 years.

Our state’s government operation is like a multi-headed hydra, each head having a mind of its own, with little cooperation and no central guiding spirit. Our agencies often pursue their own agendas, operating in separate chimneys with little independent, organized oversight and no outside, regular evaluation of operations, programs or policies.

It is time to fundamentally change and modernize our government’s form, structure and mode of operation to create accountability within both the executive and legislative branches. During the next session of the General Assembly, I will propose the Government Accountability Act of 2008. If enacted, this legislation will transform the General Assembly’s operations, by requiring real oversight of government agencies. It will streamline our executive branch and increase accountability in government operations.

First, the bill requires the Legislature to fulfill its duties as an independent and effective branch of government with an obligation to continually evaluate and examine the operations of state programs and agencies. As currently structured, our Legislature simply passes laws and fails to perform almost any regular oversight of the effectiveness of state government or programs. My proposal provides a framework for the Legislature to fulfill these responsibilities.

The bill will force our General Assembly to move into the modern age by conducting regular oversight hearings on the operations of state government through adaptation of its current committee structure. Each committee will be required to systematically examine the operations of state government that fall within its jurisdictional boundaries, evaluating the real need for existing programs and determining what the future requires. Only then will the General Assembly truly be able to make informed decisions about the needs of our state.

Additionally, the Government Accountability Act will require the General Assembly to change our current budget practices. Right now, our annual appropriations bill is little more than an accounting document, listing out agencies and amounts of money allocated to them. Under my proposal, the Legislature will have to utilize a programmatic budget, requiring that each program have objective performance criteria for legislators to consider as we decide how much money is deserved for a specific program.

The bill will create a more efficient and functional executive branch by reducing the number of statewide elected officials, consolidating offices and devolving more power to the governor’s office. Importantly, the proposal will shift all truly administrative functions away from the Budget and Control Board and vest them in the governor. By making more agencies directly answerable to the governor and consolidating administrative functions, we provide the governor with more authority to fulfill his role as chief executive of the state. With increased authority will come increased responsibility and accountability for our governor to produce results.

To bring even further accountability to government operations, the bill will create an office of inspector general and strengthen protections for civic-minded state employees who report waste and misconduct. The office of inspector general will be charged with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the operations of state government. It is time that South Carolina has an officer whose single-minded purpose is investigating and evaluating such problems.

My bill will also strengthen our currently weak whistleblower law to encourage state employees to blow the whistle on misconduct, inappropriate practices or waste that hinders the proper functioning of our state government.

Empowering our government is not a zero-sum game. No one has to lose. In fact, the proposed Government Accountability Act makes all of South Carolina the winner. We must increase the efficacy of our government by changing the traditional role of the General Assembly to require continuous evaluation of government operations and programs. We must reform our budget process, restructure the executive branch to place more responsibility on the governor and create an inspector general to investigate and prosecute government misconduct.

Increasing power and accountability in one branch without addressing the deficiencies in the other will result in disappointment. The time for change is now; we cannot afford to wait.

Mr. Sheheen is a Camden attorney who represents Chesterfield, Kershaw and Lancaster counties in the state Senate.

If Vincent can get elected governor, he will have enormous leverage to get this passed. Which is one reason that a wonk like me is excited about his candidacy.

“Conservative,” that surprisingly malleable word

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This morning as I parked on Assembly preparing to go in for breakfast, I ran into my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum, who was just leaving. He was agitated, as he often is. He and Patrick Cobb from AARP had just been commiserating about the general decline of our society, what Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviance downward.”

And he couldn’t even get the first few words out without being interrupted by a beat-up car with a massive sound system, pulling up at the light right next to us, drowned his words. In frustration, he raised his voice higher to say that was just the kind of thing they were talking about — look at that guy; he’s not even embarrassed! Indeed not. He had his windows part way down, the better for us to hear the obnoxious sounds emanating from within (although not enough for us to see the darkened interior).

Of course, this was just part of the picture, the triumph of low and tacky that washes over us like a tsunami, from Sarah Palin (and such maids-in-waiting as Nikki Haley and Christine O’Donnell) to reality TV. I nodded and agreed that these were parlous, tacky times. (Oh, and no fair throwing that last post at me in this regard.) I tried to pull the conversation AWAY from booming basses, lest Samuel draw gunfire from the guy in the car. You never know.

What Samuel was exhibiting, of course, was a quality that people with a respect for the language would term “conservatism,” in the purest sense — decrying change, longing for a better time when people respected each other more. This may shock those who think of Samuel, with some justice, as one of the few actual liberal Democrats in South Carolina. But that’s what it was. Samuel was being as conservative as all get-out.

This brings me to something I read in the paper this morning:

House Republicans have a simple 2010 election agenda for S.C. voters — boost their Republican majority to 75 members, then watch conservative reform take hold.

Note the lack of quotations around the oddly oxymoronic phrase, “conservative reform.” Irony is often lost on news people, who have to play it deadpan. But what interested me is how a phrase that I remember hearing for the first time this year (it first jumped out at me back here) — I remember it because it struck me as odd — has now entered the lexicon so completely that an experienced reporter like Roddie Burris would use it, straight-faced, without attribution. And that his editors would go along.

My hat is off to the Tea Party and its allies, because a result like this would make any propagandist, even the propagators of Newspeak, envious. Causing people to adopt one’s own linguistic restylings is to propaganda what the hole-in-one is to golf, or the 300 game to bowling.

My problem with the phrase, of course, is that conservatism, rightly understood, is a resistance to change — not advocacy of it, whether the change is termed “reform” or not. If a conservative wants change, then he wants to change back to the way things once were, and then the term is no longer “conservative,” but “reactionary.” Properly understood.

Yes, I get that people want to reform the government in ways that they maintain are in keeping with “conservative” principles. And that’s not inherently oxymoronic, however much it might sound that way. For instance, the kind of restructuring of state government that I and Nikki Haley and (most effectively) Vincent Sheheen advocate would introduce such “conservative” values as accountability to entities and processes that now answer to no one.

My problems is that a lot of people call themselves “conservative” when they are not, according to any traditional meaning of the term. Nikki Haley, for one, whose politics would rightly be termed populist demagoguery (nobody ever called Huey Long “conservative”), and whose personal and business financial accounts exhibit anything but conservative accountability. But one can see why a politician would call herself “conservative” in a state that worships the word. And how he or she would term his or her ideas “reform” whether they are (and sometimes they are) or not.

All perfectly understandable, and perfectly within the honored traditions of political rhetoric.

What surprises me, though, is when I see the rest of us going along with the terminology. I say this not to pick on Roddie or The State. I think they are reflecting the fact that the term has entered the mainstream. I’m just surprised that it has.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial in The State explains Wilson ethics case well

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I’m going to shock my ex-colleagues at The State by saying “nice job” on today’s lede editorial, “Joe Wilson’s goblets.”

This would be a shock because, as former military writer Dave Moniz (who now works at the Pentagon) once observed when I was his editor in the early 90s, praise from me doesn’t go higher than “pretty good.” (Dave’s on my mind because, not knowing my current situation, he passed on a tip about a Defense-related job this week, a gesture which I appreciate.)

But this was better than that. The piece accomplished several things:

  • Gave a clear sense of what little is known about the investigation, which was handy to have. I feel I have a slightly better grasp of what we’re talking about now.
  • Called Wilson to task, in no uncertain terms (essentially saying him, “You lie!” but without the shouting), for his bogus response and misrepresentation.
  • Called Rob Miller to task for his equally bogus and untrue assertions in trying to capitalize on the case.
  • Explained clearly just what is wrong with Joe Wilson in general, not just in this case: He sees EVERYTHING in the universe as a partisan struggle against “liberals.” Nancy Pelosi is his Great White Whale. And I’m sorry, Ahab, but that Unified Field Theory simply does not always apply.
  • Showed just how irrelevant such a worldview is to this situation, since the ethics panel investigating him is “composed entirely of people outside the Congress, four Republicans and four Democrats,” in in this particular case is investigating two Republicans (Joe being one) and three Democrats. Of course, we knew that latter part, but I had not yet seen a clear explanation of the Office of Congressional Ethics. After reading this, one can only be outraged by Wilson’s attempt to play on voters’ ignorance by claiming this is a a partisan, personal attack on him for being a self-styled hero of the angry right.

And while it was sort of an afterthought, I particularly appreciated this summary of just how totally screwed we, the voters, are in this situation:

Unfortunately, these two are the choices voters in the 2nd Congressional District have in November. Oh how we wish that were a lie.

Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could?

Read Cindi’s latest column about Nikki’s “whoppers”

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Since I griped about the lede headline in The State today (and I wasn’t picking on John there, it was just the headline that got me), I want to direct you, with my warm approval, to Cindi Scoppe’s latest today.

The subject: Nikki Haley’s habit of misleading, and just generally saying stuff that isn’t true. After taking Vincent Sheheen to task for HIS misleading question, “When will she release her tax returns?,” when she sorta kinda had, Cindi went on to demonstrate how such misstatements are a regular thing with his opponent.

I’ll excerpt here the last few grafs of the column:

The day after her WLTX interview, Ms. Haley appeared on Greta Van Sustern’s cable talk show and stepped up her usual attack on Mr. Sheheen for “making $400,000 as a trial lawyer” by calling him “a trial lawyer that makes $400,000 a year off the state.”

It’s pretty audacious, in a state with a median household income of $42,000, for someone who made $196,282 last year to castigate someone else for making $372,509. But the more serious sin here is the total fabrication about where Mr. Sheheen’s money came from.

Contrary to what you’d think if you listened to the Republicans’ drumbeat for Mr. Sheheen to reveal the sources of his income, legislators already have to report all the money they receive from state and local governments. In addition, attorneys must report the money they receive representing clients before the Workers Compensation Commission and other state boards.

As our news department noted on Sunday, last year Mr. Sheheen reported receiving $29,000 in salary and expenses as a senator, and his law firm received $13,000 from the Kershaw County Medical Center, $4,700 from the Cassatt Water Co. and $2,400 from the S.C. Guardian Ad Litem Program. That’s a total of $49,100 “off the state.” I suppose it’s possible that he made money that he didn’t report on his economic disclosure statement — you know, like that $40,000 in consulting fees that Ms. Haley didn’t report from a state government contractor who hired her for her “good contacts.” But since there’s no gray area in state law about reporting government income, I seriously doubt it.

Mr. Sheheen also reported that his law firm made about $170,000 in workers comp fees last year. Now, I would like more details about where the rest of his income came from, and I think he probably could provide them without violating legal ethics, say by telling us how much he received in contingency-fee awards, in retainers, in hourly fees. But it’s more than a little misleading for Ms. Haley to demand more transparency from the candidate who has been far, far more transparent than she has about his income as well as his communications on the taxpayers’ computers and e-mail accounts. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is becoming commonplace.

Cindi, by the way, is about the last person in the MSM you’ll ever see mistake feeling for thought. Always has been. Here, she has demonstrated that laudable trait once again.

By the way, you may want to read her previous column, which she links from this one, on the disturbing Jekyll and Hyde quality Mrs. Haley has demonstrated over time.