Category Archives: Midlands

How did you vote in the District 5 referendum, and why?

Let’s have a little real-time civic discussion here.

I notice that interest seems high in my posts from yesterday on the subject, here, here and here.

Now that the voting is actually going on, let’s analyze it, and let’s not do it the bogus, TV-style, talking-heads-guessing way. Let’s hear from real people who have voted today:

How did you vote in the District 5 referendum, and why?

I’ll do my best to keep up with approving comments, to keep this as current as possible. Now, let’s see what happens.

Video: What’s different about THIS referendum?


O
ne last word on the subject of the District 5 referendum. Now, on the eve of the vote, is a good time to revisit my video clip in which the unanimous board explains, in their words, what’s different about this bond proposal, as opposed to the ones in the past that divided the trustees.

Message from District 5 superintendent

Here’s a handy tip for the future — don’t send me e-mail on Friday and expect me to see it before the next week! I just don’t have time to read the messages on that day.

That said, here’s one more item relating to the District 5 referendum tomorrow. It’s an e-mail sent to me … on Friday… by district Supt. Scott Andersen:

Brad –

Below is a letter I would like you to consider publishing pertaining to D5’s referendum this Tuesday. 

    I have thought long and hard about what I should write this week as we lead up to our very important bond referendum vote on Tuesday, November 6.  I have wondered if there was one piece of information that would help theDist5_007
District Five community best decide the course we should take on that day. The impression that I have received is that our community members have been inundated with numbers, facts and a wide variety of opinions.
    Therefore, I am going to share a true story that happened to one of my co-workers.  It has a message that is appropriate for our District Five community at this important juncture in our history.
    He walked into a local restaurant recently with his wife and two children.  As soon as he entered, he heard music playing over the intercom system.  After noticing the music, he saw an elderly couple sitting at a table and eating their burgers and fries while “getting into” the music.  As he approached the counter to place his order, he noticed that the lady working the counter was helping the customers while also “getting into” the music.  As he looked past the lady at the counter, he saw that the gentleman cooking the hamburgers was doing so while moving with the music.  Then as he walked back to the table where his family was sitting, he saw a young father carrying drinks back to his table while singing the song that was playing on the intercom.  Finally, when my friend made it back to his family, he noticed that they too were tapping and moving to the song that was playing.
    After seeing all of this, he paused and thought for a moment.  In that restaurant, at that moment in time, everyone was “tapping their feet” to the same song at the same time.
    And now I ask, what would it be like if, as a community, we all “tapped our feet” for a few brief moments to the same “song” for our children?  Imagine what we could accomplish.
    Imagine what could happen if we agreed as a community that regardless of where a child goes to school in our district, they had a great facility that supports teaching and learning.  Imagine if every student, regardless of where they go to school, and if every teacher, regardless of where they work, had access to technology that truly supported teaching and learning.
    Imagine if we did not have to put our students and staff in unsafe, educationally inappropriate, and fiscally irresponsible classroom portables every day.
    Imagine if we reinvested in our existing facilities throughout Irmo, Dutch Fork and in Chapin so that our neighborhoods had terrific schools that helped keep property values high and businesses prosperous.
    Imagine if we addressed the needs of all of our students by providing them the much needed Career and Technology classes at every high school to ensure that they have a bright and productive future.
    Imagine the opportunity to make all of that happen November 6.

Big Lie deployed against District 5 referendum

OK, we screwed up, as we acknowledged in Saturday’s paper. Here’s the correction we ran:

If Lexington-Richland District 5 voters approve a $256.5 million bond issue Tuesday, the owner of a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would pay an estimated $39.60 annually over 20 years to pay back that loan. The amount a homeowner would pay was wrong in a Friday editorial.

What we had said was that the annual cost to that theoretical homeowner would be $235.60, so we’re talking big difference. Our position had been that even if the cost HAD been that much, the acute need in the district would have been worth it. As it happens, the actual cost was so small as to be hardly noticed on most folks’ bills.

We felt bad about the embarrassing mistake, as we do about any error. In fact, when a reader wrote to us to suggest…

You guys really should address this "correction" in a more meaningful way given the gravity of the misinformation.

… I asked my colleagues for ideas on how we might go about doing that. You’ll see the result of that discussion on tomorrow’s editorial page.

We were spurred to take this extra corrective measure by the fact that some of the anti-district forces had done a pretty disgusting thing. Despite our correction, they conducted an e-mail campaign that repeated our error as though it were fact. Under the bizarrely punctuated heading, "Vote No on November, 6th!", this faction said …

As you are probably aware District 5’s $256.5 million tax increase referendum is
just 4 days away and the momentum is clearly on our side!   There is much to
report in today’s edition of The
State
;  It was reported what the true size of the debt service tax
increase will be – $235.60 annually
for the next 20 years and that’s just on a $100,000
home!

 

This is something the developers and builders pushing
this referendum do NOT want you to know!

That’s right — they don’t want you to "know" something that is a big, fat lie.

Anyway, this will be addressed on tomorrow’s page. Beyond that, all we can do is hope that it’s just as big a lie when the anti-school forces say the momentum is on their side.

There is probably no school board as well stocked with spending skeptics as the District 5 board, which has been bitterly divided in the past over bond referenda. That board is unanimously and enthusiastically supporting this bond proposal. There’s really nothing else that an objective observer needs to know about this issue. If there were anything wrong with this plan, one of those folks would have been against it.

There’s only one way to go on this — Vote YES.

The terror of having to let our kids out of our sight

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
No man could have missed her. Dressed, if you want to call it that, in a hot little “nurse” costume — snug white dress covering not a bit of her long legs, pert little cap pinned atop blonde head, high-heeled white boots — she caught my eye from a block away.
    “Somebody’s got her Halloween costume on,” I started saying to my wife with the least-interested tone I could muster. But something was wrong. The girl was teetering in a way that went beyond the impracticality of her boots. She barely made it across Main Street to the northwest corner of Main and Blossom, where a temporary tunnel guides pedestrians past high-rise construction.
    As she disappeared into the tunnel, my wife said, “Pull over.” My first chance to do so was beyond the construction, almost to Assembly. My wife hopped out and headed back, in full Mom-to-the-rescue mode.
    She found the girl with her dress hiked up to her waist, panties fully exposed, looking for a place to relieve herself.
    “No!” my wife ordered, reaching out her hand. “Honey, you just can’t do this. You cannot walk down the street staggering in a little nurse uniform in Columbia, South Carolina. I’m going to take you home.”
    The girl obediently dropped her skirt, took my wife’s hand and cried, “Oh, thank you, thank you for helping me!”
    Seconds later, I glanced in the rearview mirror to see my wife marching that statuesque woman-child by the hand toward the car as though she were a preschooler who had wandered away from the group. I reached back to clear space for her on the back seat. She got in, my wife got in, and I pulled back into the traffic on Blossom, moving toward the river.
    I asked the “nurse” whether she had been headed to one of the nearby sorority houses. No, she slurred, her dorm was beyond the Greek Village. I pondered that in confusion. My wife got her to tell us the name of her dorm — which was three or four blocks back, at the heart of the campus, 180 degrees from the direction in which she had been staggering. I did a U-turn at my first opportunity.
    “I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, alternating between that and “Thank you, thank you so much!” She was extremely grateful. She had been one lost little girl, and she knew it. She was a freshman, just weeks away from home.
    “All my friends are older, though,” she offered as an explanation of her condition. She said something vague about guys making assumptions, which seemed to be her way of accounting for being alone.
    My wife, determined to have the girl learn something from this experience, pointed out that young girls have disappeared from the streets of Columbia. “Oh, I know! I’m so sorry,” she repeated, adding plaintively:
    “I’m trying to be a responsible freshman!” She was so earnest that we didn’t laugh, not until later, after we had deposited her back at her dorm and could feel like maybe, for tonight at least, the child was safe.
    But it was only a feeling. She wasn’t safe, in the way a parent would define it. Just before we let her out, she was on her cell phone trying to tell a friend how to come to her dorm — the place she couldn’t find herself. Despite having just been so lost and frightened, despite being so grateful for her deliverance, somewhere in her besotted mind floated the idea that the night was young.
    Once they leave home, we never can tell ourselves that they are safe, can we?
    That same night, six of the “nurse’s” fellow USC students, and another from Clemson, would die in a beach house fire in North Carolina.
    That may seem a wrenching transition, from seriocomic little episode that ended well (we hope) to a tragedy that has consumed our community for a week and touched hearts across the nation, but to a father, the two things have an awful lot in common. They both evoke the constant, gnawing fear that comes when your children are no longer in your sight, no longer under your protection.
    That “nurse” was exactly the age of the youngest of my five children, who is off on her own and far away. Just over a month ago, our daughter’s boyfriend — her only close friend in the entire state of Pennsylvania — was killed in a car wreck. He was a passenger in a car with three other boys. It was broad daylight, and they were moving safely and legally down a quiet, Shandon-like residential street when another car ran a stop sign and hit them broadside. David was thrown from the vehicle.
    When the third of my five kids was 3 or 4 years old, he had a maddening habit of slipping away on little adventures. But after mere moments of sheer terror, we’d find him and scoop him into our arms, and the universe would resume its proper shape.
    It’s so easy when they’re little. It’s when they get tall, when they take on a deceptive semblance of being men and women — like the “woman” I thought I saw in the nurse costume — that it gets really tough. It’s when they have every excuse to be out of your sight, and everybody tells you that you have to let them go, that the real terror begins.
    My mother used to have a quotation cut out and taped to her kitchen cabinet, to the effect that having a child was “forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
    That is exactly true, and of course it is impossible to go on living like that. But we do. I don’t know how. God somehow suspends the physical laws governing the universe to make it possible for us to get up, put one foot in front of the other, walk on ice thinner than an eggshell, and keep doing it as though we actually believe what we’re doing is within the realm of possibility.
    And most of the time, it works. It worked that night, for two parents somewhere in the Upstate. That little “nurse” was going to be picked up by somebody, because she was never getting home on her own. Why did she take my wife’s hand? Is it because she recognized her as a Mom? I hope so. On behalf of her real parents, out there walking on their own thin ice, I sincerely hope so.

Ron Paul, live at the Vista West!

A reader and sometime letter-writer has sent me this invitation to see Ron Paul tomorrow evening, more or less on my way home from the office:

Dear Mr. Warthen,
    I want to personally invite you to join folks from
across the state and beyond to hear Congressman
Ron Paul speak this Friday night, Nov 2nd at the
West Columbia Riverwalk Amphitheater, 121
Alexander Street at 7:00 PM. Find out why people
all over the country have awakened from their
political apathy and passionately support this
candidate. In addition, he will appear at the
Grand Opening of the Columbia Headquarters, 1911
Hampton Street, on Saturday at 8:30 AM.
    I sincerely hope you can join us for either or
both of these events and see for yourself the
extraordinary support Ron Paul has in our state.

Respectfully,
Jackie Fowler

I may go out of curiosity — to see the crowd, if nothing else. Of course, it will require being able to get away from the office earlier than usual. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Fridays are pretty horrific around here. We get done when we get done, and there’s no walking out before that for either Mike Fitts or me (we’re the only ones able to produce pages with QuarkXpress). Too bad it will be kind of late for video.

Here’s an ethical question for you: By thus giving publicity to someone I consider to be a fringe candidate, am I distorting the event? I think not, in this case. Ron Paul has no chance to win this primary, but the support he does have is obviously passionate, and he’ll probably fill the amphitheater without too much trouble.

In fact — what do you want to bet he draws a better crowd than Rudy Giuliani (a putative front-runner) did the time I went to check him out at the convention center?

Columbia leader to Malcolm X: ‘You’d better leave.’

   

Here’s video of Anthony Hurley — one of the co-counders of the Columbia Urban League — talking about his encounter with Malcolm X long ago.

Warren Bolton’s column today tells of this exchange, so I thought I’d provide this clip as a supplement.

The Urban League, of course, has stood for a very different approach to race relations than that which Malcolm X embodied before his hajj. It’s always been about working with people to effect positive change, rather than destructive confrontation.

That’s one reason why I was proud to serve on the board of the Columbia Urban League for a decade, and why I will be happy to help the organization celebrate its 40th anniversary at its annual Equal Opportunity Day dinner tonight.

Words fail

Beach_house_fire_wart

You may have noticed that I haven’t had anything to say about the kids who died in the fire. That’s because I don’t know what to say, beyond the fact that it’s awful.

More importantly, we haven’t said anything editorially. At least, we haven’t said anything that’s been published. We forced ourselves to do an editorial for tomorrow’s paper. Warren Bolton, God bless him, volunteered to write it after Cindi and I (remember, Mike’s out) both said we didn’t think we were up to it.

Part of this is that Cindi and I are not the world’s best empathizers. Of those currently on the board, Warren (who is almost, but not quite yet, an ordained AME minister), is the best. At times such as this, we really miss Claudia Brinson, who was really good at it. She said the right thing, and said it beautifully. Back when she and John Monk were on the board, they were always the first to say we needed to say something about something like this. I would agree with them; I just wouldn’t know what to say about something like this — something that everyone was talking about, but which did not have an obvious editorial point. No matter of policy or anything like that, which of course is the usual province of editorials. (The term we use under such circumstances is that we just need to "resonate" to the news, something I’m not that great at.)

But there’s more to it than that, at least for me. As I said in our meeting this morning, I don’t even know what to say in a case like this when I’m intimately involved with it. When my youngest daughter’s boyfriend died a month back, I drove up to Pennsylvania to be with her, and was there for the visitation and funeral, and I still didn’t know what to say — to his mother, his friends, even to my daughter. Warren says that sometimes you don’t have to say anything; you just need to be there. And that’s true, which is why I drove up there. But there’s still a moment that demands something be said — such as when I was introduced to David’s mother at the funeral home — and I am struck dumb.

I continue to want to comfort my daughter over the phone, but I continue to be at a loss. I just tell her a lot that I love her.

Pretty lame, huh? I’m at no loss for words when it comes to total B.S. — such as chatting with a celebrity about nothing, in the "Seinfeld" sense of nothing — but wordless when it comes to the things that matter most.

Anyway, we have an editorial for tomorrow — a short editorial, fleshed out with a photo, because there are just so many words you can come up with even when you’re trying hard. Warren wrote it, and I tried to improve it in the editing, but I just finally had to let go and put it on the page, dissatisfied.

Words are just so inadequate.

I do have a column rattling around that is peripherally related to this tragedy, but I think it’s one that would be better a few days from now, so I’m saving it for Sunday. A column is easier than an editorial under such circumstance. An editorial demands authoritative pronouncements; a column allows for vagueness and uncertainty. But I’m going to let that one gestate.

In the meantime, if you have words — perhaps there are some Claudias out there among you, who possess the words I lack — you may put them here. Or better yet, go to this page at thestate.com. That would be more respectful. A blog just seems like an awfully frivolous, useless thing at a time like this.

Urban League 40th anniversary

Urban_league_028

T
hursday night, the Columbia Urban League will be celebrating 40 years of service at its annual Equal Opportunity Day dinner. As a former board member, I will be there, among others sitting at The State’s table at the event.

Today, President J.T. McLawhorn (above), Board Chairman Tony Grant (right), board member Cindy Cox and co-founder of the chapter Anthony Hurley (bottom) came to see our editorial board to talk about the past 40 years.

Some of the points covered:

  • Our guests talked about the particular niche the CUL carved out in the community, which was lessUrban_league_005
    confrontational than other civil rights organizations. The Urban League and J.T. have taken flak for that over the years. Many who might otherwise support the organization griped when former Gov. David Beasley spoke to one of the EOD dinners. Why was a Republican invited, they wanted to know? The answer was simple — the Urban League was about working with everybody, and building relationships across the board. (This year’s speaker will be Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell, who will probably be a candidate for governor in 2010.)
  • Mr. Hurley told of having to soothe apprehensions in the community when he and his wife helped start the chapter in the 1960s. He knew at least of a model he did not want to follow — he told of Malcolm X coming into his office to seek his support in getting his organization established in Columbia, and Mr. Hurley asked him to leave.
  • J.T. and Tony talked about all the people in the community who can trace their success to the organization’s summer jobs program, which has taught many young people how to live productive lives.

Urban_league_018

Emile DeFelice to Colbert: Put Your State on Your Neck

Colbert_062

We all know that Emile DeFelice, hog farmer and sloganmeister extraordinaire (when I told him I had missed his twice-monthly alternative farmers market yesterday because we were having a garage sale, he responded "Put your Junk in your Trunk"), is a real consciousness-raiser when it comes to putting S.C. first.

Here, he takes advantage of Stephen Colbert‘s having mentioned South Carolina peaches to present the South Carolinian comedian/presidential candidate with neckwear more appropriate to his surroundings. (Note the slogan Emile put on the box the tie came in, below.)

Candidate Colbert, ever ready to pander, immediately effected a change, without pausing in his patter.

Colbert_048

Midlands environmentalists gird for battle

This just in from Bob Wislinski:

Conservation organizations from
across the state will gather in Columbia Thursday, October 25, 11 AM in the SC Wildlife Federation conference room at Middleburg
Office Plaza (Kittrell Bldg. –
directions attached)
to announce opposition to Santee Cooper’s proposed coal plant in
Kingsburg.

Several weeks ago, the SC Electric
Cooperatives released new studies showing conservation and renewable energy
savings possible within their systems over the next 10 years. The Electric Coops
are state-owned utility Santee Cooper’s largest customers. Last week and in the
face of mounting criticism of their Pee
Dee
coal plant proposal, Santee-Cooper
announced new internal long-term energy conservation programs too.

Yet Santee-Cooper still insists that
its controversial 1320 MW Pee Dee pulverized coal plant is needed.

The
studies by the cooperatives contradict Santee-Cooper’s assertions about the
essential need for the coal plant. This comparative and statistically valid case
against the coal plant has never been publicly presented in this
fashion.

Groups represented at the Conference
will include: Coastal Conservation League, Environmental Defense, Conservation
Voters of South Carolina, SC Sierra Club, SC Wildlife Federation,
Southern
Alliance
for Clean Energy and Southern
Environmental Law Center.

… which reminds me. The co-ops came in to see us Monday about their studies, and I haven’t posted anything yet, because it was a lot of stuff to digest. I’ll get to it soon.

 

Honoring fallen heroes

Folks, this came in from the McCain campaign:

Dear Friends in South Carolina,

Please join Senator John McCain at 5:00pm on Friday, November
2nd, 2007 in honoring the memory of Lance Corporal Joshua L. Torrence, USMC. 
Joshua graduated from White Knoll High School in Lexington, SC where he made a
name for himself both in the classroom and on the football field.  He was the
epitome of a leader and a true team player.  Following his graduation in 2003,
Joshua selflessly answered the call to duty.  He enlisted in the United States
Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq.  As those who knew Joshua will tell you,
it was no surprise that he volunteered to be transferred to Fallujah, where some
of the fiercest fighting of the war was taking place.  Sadly, he lost his life
while on patrol on March 14, 2005.

Because of their love of Joshua and their gratitude for his
service and sacrifice, members of the White Knoll High School community have
united in a remarkable way.  They have organized a massive grassroots campaign
in order to raise the $150,000 necessary to name the high school’s new field
house in Joshua’s honor.  Senator McCain will be attending the November 2nd
ceremony which will take place prior to the White Knoll vs. Lexington football
game.  Additionally, four of the 9/11 FDNY firefighters, who also play on the
FDNY football team, are flying to South Carolina to help honor Joshua’s
service.

Please join Senator McCain in supporting this
wonderful cause.
  Your financial support is much appreciated.  This
event is non-political and 100% of the proceeds will go directly towards the
memorial field house.  To learn more about Joshua and how to help the community
accomplish their goal, please visit the following:

News coverage about the effort:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9AshUXXQoQw

Lance Corporal Joshua L. Torrence Memorial Field House
Committee Website:
https://www.edline.net/pages/White_Knoll_High_School/_LCPL_Joshua_Torrence_Memorial

Which reminds me that I had meant to bring your attention to this editorial in the WSJ yesterday. ItMichael_p_murphyltusn
was an editorial about the awarding of the third Medal of Honor in the war. It was presented to the family of Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. An excerpt:

    The SEALs were at a tactical disadvantage and became pinned down in a ravine. Lt. Murphy, already wounded, moved out from behind cover, seeking open air for a radio signal to place a rescue call. He was shot several more times in the back. He dropped the transmitter, picked it back up and completed the call, and then rejoined the fight.

Only one of the four SEALS in the team would get out alive. Lt. Murphy was not one of them. The Journal’s conclusion:

    In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is almost spoiled for choice when it comes to such instances of heroism and sacrifice. It is regrettable that these volunteers are too often rewarded with indifference by the U.S. political culture, where "supporting the troops" becomes nothing more than a slogan when there is a score to settle. The representative men in this war are soldiers like Lt. Murphy.

Thank God for Lt. Murphy and those like him. And may God send solace and strength to his family. Those are his parents, Maureen and Daniel, below, with Navy Secretary Donald Winter at left.

Medal_of_honorii

Last day of the fair

Yesterday, I mentioned something about having a religiously diverse family — Catholic, Jewish, evangelical and mainline protestant — but added "no Muslims yet, though."

That wasn’t exactly right. I had forgotten about the Bantu.

My wife was, before going up to Pennsylvania for the past year, the leader of our church’s team that worked with the Somali Bantu family that St. Peter’s sponsors. In those days, she spent a huge amount of time becoming as close to them as though they were family. Others took up that mantle while she was away, but she has started helping out again, tutoring one of the children during the week.

This morning, she and some other members of the volunteer team took several of the children to the Fair. I joined them in the afternoon, after Mass (my wife had gone to an earlier service).

After rides and pizza, I proposed we go check out the livestock. I thought they would get into that, because I knew how much their mother prized goat as an cherished part of their diet (my wife used to regularly score them a goat from a local butcher) — and there were some big ones to be seen. I thought vaguely that it would be an echo of their people’s pastoral past — which is another way of saying I wasn’t thinking. America changes immigrants, and in any case, these kids were far too young to remember any semblance of normal life before the refugee camps. You know what they seemed to dig the most? The heavy machinery from Joe Blanchard’s company that was on display out toward the horse show arena. The little boys especially, but also the one young girl in her robes and headscarf, really enjoyed climbing up and pretending to operate them.

For my part, I got what I go to the Fair for — Fiske fries, and a bag of cotton candy. Not exactly health food, but it only comes round once a year.

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):

    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.

What else does a naked man need?

Things have been busy around here, and somehow I had failed to read all the way to the bottom of any of the stories about the rehired (now resigned) cop who the sheriff’s deputies say they found drunk and naked in public — until now.

Two Richland County Sheriff’s deputies said they found Paige naked and
intoxicated in a parking lot on Longcreek Drive in the St. Andrews area
about 11 p.m. Nov. 6, according to a department news release. An
alcoholic drink, a handgun and a plastic bag containing two pairs of
women’s underwear were found in Paige’s truck after he tried to drive
away, according to an incident report.

An
alcoholic drink, a handgun and a plastic bag containing two pairs of
women’s underwear?
Sounds like they’re saying that ol’ boy was only naked in a technical sense. Anybody who’s got all that stuff with him is fully equipped, and ready for anything.

Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity, and this Lenard Paige is getting the blame for what was actually the miraculous return of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

The Meter Philanthropist

Perhaps today will be a good day; it started out well.

Columbians all know the mathematics of parking downtown. In the early morning, if one stops for breakfast, there is a calculation to be made: Will I still be parked here at 9 a.m., and will the meter be checked between then and the time I return? (There’s no charge before 9.) If I arrive at 8:30, I generally end up putting in three quarters to allow myself an hour, thereby paying for half an hour more than I actually will owe. My sense of injustice at this is tempered by the knowledge of all the times I didn’t put money in at that time (for lack of change, let’s say), and yet did not get a $7 ticket.

There’s a second calculation: How long will I be? Will I have a second cup of coffee? A third? Will someone interesting join me at my table, and will the time fly? How long should I pay for?

When I’m feeling generous, I’ll put in a quarter more than my best guess. If I don’t take that long, then I’ve made a gift of 20 free minutes to the one who parks behind me. I feel most philanthropic.

But I’m a mere piker. This morning, as I stood before the meter and dug into my pocket for the coins, a changing digit on the meter caught my eye. The meter had just ticked down from 1:54 to 1:53. A free hour and fifty-three minutes!

As I crossed the street, I calculated my good fortune: Someone had put in an extra $1.50 in coins — or at the very least, $1.40. How long had that person been gone? Had he arrived for a long meeting, then realized he had to go home for something? Had an emergency come up?

My favorite theory is that some October Santa Claus, some person overflowing with loving kindness for his fellow man, had walked that block of Assembly with a sack full of quarters, filling each meter to the brim, chuckling softly to himself all the while, thinking what joy he would bring.

I could have gone back to walk up and down and check the other meters, but I didn’t. I like to leave that image intact.

When I came back, there was an hour and 20 minutes left. I smile to think of the next person to park there, and the pleasant surprise he or she will encounter.

Cameron Runyan, city council candidate

This morning I ran into a young man planning to run — actually, I guess he’s already running — for one of the two at-large seats on Columbia City Council in next April’s election.

Runyancameron_2
Cameron A. Runyan is seeking the seat currently held by Daniel Rickenmann. Come to think of it, he sort of looks like Daniel Rickenmann — or is it just that really young white guys look alike to me? (And I’m not the one who chopped the left side of his face off. The image was like that when I grabbed it off his Web site.)

Anyway, he was having breakfast with Samuel Tenenbaum, and all I did was stop and shake hands on my way past the table.

That’s all I have to say about that. Presumably you can learn more at the Web site. And I’m sure you’ll read more here about Mr. Runyan and others between now and April.

Fred Thompson’s values mantra, and more!

Thompson_047

This morning, when I said something about going to Doc’s Barbecue today to see what Fred Thompson had to say, a colleague tried to save me the trouble by telling me ahead of time: "I’m for good things, and against bad things."

Sure enough, it was just about that broad and elemental. Ol’ Fred trotted out everything but Mom and Apple Pie. Not a lot of specifics, mind you, but a whole lot of empathizin’ with the folks on stuff that may not be all that fancy or original, but dadgummit, just needs to be said again and again, with fierce conviction. And he’s just the fella to say it.

The video below features the following values mantra, plus another snippet or two that give you the flavor of the kind of skate-by-on-good-feelings-and-free-media campaign that ol’ Fred is apparently gonna run just as long as we’ll all let him. Nobody asking hard questions, such as exactly how these statements separate him from the rest of the GOP pack.

But before the nit-picking begins, enjoy Fred Thompson at what I suspect is going to be his campaignin’ best. I’m glad I was there for it, even though I had to park my pickup — my actual pickup that is my actual primary means of transportation, not a lease — far enough away that I should have just walked over…

And here’s the Mantra in text so you can listen to it again, and follow along:

talkin’ about the value of being pro-life
talkin’ about the value of standing strong for the second amendment
talkin’ about the rule of law
talkin’ about the value and the rightness of lower taxes
talkin’ about a market economy; talking about the ingenuity and the inventiveness of the American people and the value of competitiveness and how we would fare well in the international marketplace. We do more things better than anybody in the world, and it works for us.

We’re talking about first principles, things this country was founded upon
the idea that there’s some things in this changing world that don’t change.
Certain things,
certain things such as human nature
and the wisdom of the Ages that led us to the declaration of independence
and led us to the Constitution of the United States,
and they are not outmoded documents to be cast aside

The Declaration reminds us that our basic rights come from God
and not from government.
The constitution of the United States tells us that government ought to be set up with divided power,
not too much power any way
not just at the federal level,
between the federal and the state level;
it’s called Federalism,
and it’s the idea that not every answer comes from Washington, D.C.

It’s all based on the concept of that universal principle and desire on which we were founded,
and that is,
Free People.
Free Markets.
and the appreciation of the things that made us great,
and the understanding that a government powerful enough to give everything to yuh,
is powerful enough to take anything from yuh.

Thank yuh. Thank yuh very much. Now go get yerself some barbecue whilst we turn up the Johnny Cash on the loudspeakers…

District 5: Good schools equal high property value

Sorry, Doug, but I have to dig back into my video to rebut something you said in a comment back here:

It was the school board member/real estate agent in the video who
talked about lake real estate (including his own) appreciating. The
appreciation has nothing to do with the quality of schools… it has to
do with the limited supply of lake property.

There’s no way for you to know this, but in editing my hour or so of video down to less than five minutes to fit it on YouTube, I left out this elaboration by Jerry Fowler:

Clearly, he believes — as do most Realtors, from what I’ve seen — that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between good schools and rising property values.

With a unanimous District 5 board, anything is possible

   “When that board stood up and voted seven-oh for this, boy, did that send shock waves through our community…. It really woke people up.”
        — District 5 Superintendent Scott Andersen

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
FEEL SORRY for the folks who work with me every day; their job just got tougher.
    In our daily meetings, discussing what to say about such matters as, say, just how far our Legislature can be pushed to reform with mere rhetoric, they constantly exhort me to face facts as they are, to be realistic in my expectations or risk being irrelevant. I tell them that reality can and frequently does change; they sigh and groan.
    They’ll probably escalate to wailing and gnashing their teeth now, for last week we witnessed miraculous proof that anything is possible: All seven members of the Lexington-Richland District 5 school board came in to tell us about their unanimous support for the district’s capital plan, which will be presented to voters in November.
    We’re talking about spending $256 million in the district where the “they’re not my kids” variety of taxpayer resistance is a defining feature of community culture, like tall buildings in New York and surfboards in Hawaii.
    This is the district that my distant cousin, TEC Dowling, tried to serve as interim superintendent not so long ago. He found the job maddening, and — being kin to me as he is — he was not one to suffer in silence.
    “I have never been involved in such a climate of mistrust and disrespect for management decisions and operations,” he declared early in 2006.
    This built a fire under the board: They went right out and hired a new superintendent. And they did it unanimously, which now looks like the start of a habit. Cousin TEC said trustees “made the right choice” in Scott Andersen. Of course, by that time TEC might have defined “the right choice” as anyone but him.Andersenscott

    But to see and hear Mr. Andersen making the case for the building plan last week, with all seven board members nodding and chiming in with agreement and approbation, it was hard to escape the conclusion that they did make the right choice.
    Or perhaps, two right choices — hiring Mr. Andersen, and deciding to work together.
    The great irony is that while the Irmo/Chapin district is thought of as the second most contentious school board in South Carolina (first place goes to Allendale County, where one trustee pulled a knife on another not so many years ago), it has presided over one of the finest academic reputations in the state.
    But that reputation has fueled growth, setting up bitter conflict between those who want to stay the course and those who blame the district for everything from sprawl to higher taxes.
    Unanimity about anything was a faraway dream in the early part of this decade. Last week, after the board left smiling together, I looked back over columns former Associate Editor Nina Brook wrote in 2003 and 2004, during the turbulent tenure of then-Superintendent Dennis McMahon. Here are some of the headlines:

  • “District 5 board backs McMahon, but conflicts will continue”
  • “Get ready to ignore any mudslinging in District 5”
  • “Discourse is a good thing, as long as not sprinkled with dirty tricks”

    Some of the trouble could be laid at the feet of Mr. McMahon, whose management style did little to settle ruffled feathers. But as Nina wrote at one point, “it is difficult to see how even the most skilled conciliator could make everyone in District 5 happy.”
    In 2005, the superintendent was fired on a 5-2 vote. Voting to sack him were trustees Jerry Fowler,Ganttrobert
Ellen Baumgardner, Carol Sloop and Paula Hite. On the opposite side were Robert Gantt and Ed White.
But last week all six of them, plus Roberta Ferrell, sat there with Mr. Andersen, basking in the glow of perfect harmony.
    “We’re all here now to move forward,” said Ms. Hite. That said, neither she nor her fellows in the choir think opposition in the community has vanished. They know they face a challenge. “The core group’s still there that are going to oppose this, and they’re gonna oppose any plan we come up with,” said Mr. White.
    Still, trustees cite several reasons to be optimistic about the bond proposal’s chances:

  • Dissenting factions were represented on citizen panels that helped come up with the plan.
  • Older schools will be upgraded along with new school construction, addressing a complaint about previous such proposals.
  • Plans for new and revamped schools are more specific than in previous proposals; voters can see where the money will go.
  • The appearance of portable classrooms at high schools has driven the need home to many who didn’t believe in it before.
  • The massive shift by the Legislature of school operating costs from homeowner taxes to the sales tax will eliminate one of the greatest political barriers to school construction.

    “Are we somehow facilitating growth or encouraging growth?” said Mr. White, anticipating an opposing argument. “The answer is no, we’re responding to it, and we have to respond to it. That’s our role and that’s our function.
    Mr. Fowler summed up the unified board’s position this way: “Unless we make sure we stay number one, it’s not going to happen.

    For video from our meeting with the school board and more, go to Brad Warthen’s Blog.

Districtfive