Category Archives: Nikki Haley

Surging sea of rage (not): The ‘Reinstate Darla Moore’ rally

15 Replies

Well, that was a bust. As I Tweeted when I arrived at the “Reinstate Darla Moore” rally at the State House on this sunny day:

Brad Warthen @BradWarthen
Brad Warthen

The big protest over Darla Moore being unceremoniously dumped by Nikki Haley looks like a bit of a bust so far. They DID say noon, right?

As I said again at 12:43, it was still a bust. Which is a shame. Because Nikki Haley insulted all of the 30,000 or so students on the Columbia campus alone with her petty patronage move — not to mention the way she dissed the other 4 million of us who have a right to expect a governor to exercise some modicum of responsible stewardship at our most important state institutions. Instead of, you know, what she did.

Old New Left Activist Tom Turnipseed grumbled about these kids today who don’t know how to stage a protest: They think they do something with social media, and it’s done, he says. Well, yes — the “We Support Darla Moore” Facebook page has attracted 4,703 people who probably think they’ve made a statement by “liking” it.

But that doesn’t mean that Martha Susan Morris, the 22-year-old economic and poli sci senior who started the “Students for the Reinstatement of Miss Darla Moore” FB page, lacks seriousness in her convictions.

After all, she showed up, and spoke at the rally — once it finally got around to getting started. And she understood why she should be there, and why thousands of others should have been there with her:

Gov. Haley cited that her main reason for replacing Mrs. Moore with Mr. Cofield was the fact that Mr. Cofield’s vision was more clearly aligned with her own.

Martha Susan Morris

And we the students ask ‘What vision?’ What vision is not aligning with Gov. Haley…?… Mrs. Moore’s vision for years has been one of high expectations, increased educational funding, and increased standards for universities, research and development in our state…. and we could not be more grateful to her…

Our university is on the upswing, and we want her to be a part of it. She’s been an amazing benefactor… since she was appointed to the board in 1999…

Amen to that, Martha Susan. She said afterward that she started the FB page at 4 a.m. after having hearing about Ms. Moore being dumped. When she next looked at the page later that morning, there were 400 fans. There are now 2,495.

Too bad more of them didn’t show up. Because although we know Nikki Haley loves her some Facebook, she’d have been a tad more impressed to look out her window and see some folks show up to protest her action. Not that she’d have changed her mind, but it would have made an impression.

One of the people I chatted with before leaving was Candace Romero, communications director of the South Carolina House Democratic Caucus, who observed how much of the crowd were media types, and she complained that that there was no media turnout like that for the “Rally for a Moral Budget” back on March 12. (I asked her, and her Senate counterpart Phil Bailey, whether they were in any way involved in this rally. No, and no. They had just dropped by. That’s the answer I got from all the usual suspect-types I found.)

Well. As one who didn’t even thinking about going downtown on a Saturday for that particular quixotic gesture, I must accept service. But I will add that good-government-type rallies tend not to draw multitudes. Have it about something people get passionate about,  such as the Confederate flag, and you can get a crowd (5,000 or so if it’s pro, as many as 60,000 if it’s anti).

Which is a shame. Today’s rally was for good government — or at least, against grossly irresponsible government. (I enjoyed hearing  a speaker who followed Martha Susan say he and his fellow protesters were there to “change the usual business of government.” You know, what Nikki Haley is always saying she wants to do — right before she does something as old-line political Business-As-Usual as dumping a highly respected board member in favor of someone whose only known qualification is having contributed to her campaign.)

But it was a bust.

Oh, one more thing — it was announced, late in the rally, that Darla Moore herself will address students “in a town-hall meeting at 12:15 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in the Russell House.”

I wonder whether that will be better-attended.

Is Gov. Haley doing something responsible on health care? (If so, ssshhhh! I don’t want to get her into trouble with her base!)

4 Replies

Down in this story about how Jim DeMint is putting hurting Barack Obama ahead of good health care or saving millions of dollars (and is it supposed to be news that DeMint places ideology over sound policy?), was this bit:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has shared DeMint’s national spotlight in opposing health care reform, challenging President Obama, first, to repeal the legislation and, later, to speed up a judicial review of its constitutionality.

Outside the spotlight, Haley also is using a $1 million federal grant to see how South Carolina might enact the law if it has to.

Wait, run that by me again? She’s doing what?

But even as she pushes against the health care law, Haley has instructed key agency heads to get ready for its implementation.

“We don’t know what the outcome will be, but for the citizens of South Carolina, we have to be prepared for whatever happens,” said Tony Keck, Haley’s new director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“Right now, the law of the land is health care reform,” Keck said. “Although we’re fighting it and looking to produce our own alternatives, we also have to prepare to implement it to meet the deadlines. The risk of not preparing for any eventuality is simply too high in the form of penalties from the federal government and interruption to care.”

The state is using a $1 million grant under the law to evaluate whether it will set up and run its own health insurance exchange or turn that function over to Washington, an option under the law.

Keck and new S.C. Insurance Commissioner David Black are heading up a task force, formed by a Haley executive order and to include members chosen by the General Assembly.

With its first meeting scheduled for April 15, the panel will call in experts from states that already have insurance exchanges, among them California, Massachusetts and Utah….

Normally, this would not be news, either. Away from the TV cameras, most elected officials — regardless of the wacky ideological stuff they may crank out publicly — quietly go about their duty, obeying the law and administering the government as responsibly as they are able.

It’s just that with Nikki Haley, she has gone so far out of her way to irresponsible that are NOT consistent with good stewardship — the Darla Moore fiasco comes to mind — that I find this tidbit reassuring. It may not be much, but I take comfort where I can.

Good for you, governor…

The “polls” (such as they are) run against Nikki’s “idiotic” move to replace Darla

17 Replies

First and foremost, a thing where you go online and click “yes” or “no” to a current-events question is not a POLL, in any meaningful sense. It has no statistical significance. If you don’t have a properly constructed sample, with the right elements of randomness and screening questions (“are you the head of household, etc.”), you cannot extrapolate that the result you obtain indicates what you would get if the entire population, or electorate, answered the question.

A self-selected sample doesn’t cut it, not by a long shot. It’s a great way to invite readers/viewers to sound off — they like that — but it doesn’t generally give you much, if anything, to base conclusions on.

Still… my eyebrows raised when I saw this “poll” result over at the WLTX Facebook page:

Yeah, I know — 244 respondents, which makes a self-selected survey even MORE meaningless. But it still surprised me. Because for the last few days, any time someone says “This is going to cost her,” I say they are totally wrong, that Nikki made the calculation that her base wouldn’t care (or would even applaud, being so anti-elitist), and therefore she’s fine — from her perspective (certainly not from South Carolina’s).

It’s one thing for all the folks I run into at the Capital City Club to be shocked and appalled. One expects that, and Nikki Haley couldn’t care less. But this kind of populist thing should draw out the Haley fan club. For that matter, particularly with such low participation, it would be so easy to stack (which is the biggest reason you don’t regard self-selected “polls” as serious).

This result has NO statistical significance, but it’s SO lopsided. At the very least, it indicates a lack of eagerness on the part of her peeps to jump out and defend her. (I mean, did even ardent fan Eleanor Kitzman vote?) The way they rushed to back her on the WACH-Fox thing. What happened to that default mode of “If the elites and the media say it about our gal, it’s WRONG! And we’re gonna run out and shout it!”?

By the way, for what it’s worth… the latest WLTX nonpoll asked, “Should the U.S. have used force in Libya?” So far, this is how it’s going:

Yep, a dead heat. So far. And I figured that would be a blowout on the “yes” side. Because, you know, that’s something it looked like we had some consensus on before we went in. Of course, that consensus was among elites — including leading liberals who might otherwise oppose military action — and this is far from that. But that’s the factor that I thought would help Nikki on such a “poll” — at least to even things out for her. And it didn’t.

Once again, you can throw all of this out and you will have lost nothing of value — no methodology, tiny numbers. But it DID strike me as interesting, because it was such a blowout. And that’s all it is — interesting.

So I greeted this item from Columbia Regional Business Report in much the same spirit:

Staff Report
Published March 21, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley made a grave misstep by removing philanthropist Darla Moore from the University of South Carolina’s board of trustees, said a vast majority of the people who responded to a two-day poll on the Daily Report.

Haley had few supporters of her move with only 7.1% saying they approve of her decision to replace Moore with Lexington attorney Tommy Cofield, who financially supported Haley’s campaign.

However, 78.8% want Moore back on the board; 44.2% of the respondents said Haley needs to admit her mistake and reinstate Moore, while 34.6% said the General Assembly should rectify the situation and by electing Moore to the board.

The remaining 14.1% asked who Tommy Cofield is.

Comments were fairly consistent, with the majority saying the move was “idiotic.”…

There was no methodology mentioned, so I figured this was an informal survey. I double-checked with CRBR Publisher Bob Bouyea, and he confirmed, “Informal poll.” Of course. No one in SC media has money to run real polls on the spur of the moment these days.

But I did find some of the comments interesting. Of course, they were fairly typical of what I’ve been hearing among the business movers and shakers, which is the same circle CRBR moves in.

As I say, interesting. Thought you might find it all interesting, too.

Nikki Haley dumps Darla Moore: A plain case of old-fashioned naked patronage

60 Replies

It’s really hard to keep up with all the petty outrages (both “petty” and “outrageous” — yes, that seems about right) that our new young governor keeps pumping out.

I’m a busy guy — working, blogging, trying to grab a little sleep at night — and sometimes find myself momentarily out of the loop. Particularly when there are so many far more important things going on in the world. Let’s see, the Japan earthquake, Qaddafi (I’ve gotten to where I just spell his name with the first combination of letters that my fingers hit, so I hope that suits) moving to crush the rebellion while the world is distracted with Japan, Saudis intervening in Bahrain and people getting killed… And sometimes you have to put even that aside, and do other stuff…

So when I finish my Virtual Front Page and close the laptop, I sometimes don’t see any new developments until 7ish the next morning. Which is why I was taken aback at the very first Tweet I saw this morning:

Nettie Britts @nettie_bNettie Britts

Explain Darla Moore to me.

I replied, “Well, she’s this rich lady from South Carolina who tries to give back to her home state. That’s the Twitter version, I guess…” And I went on to breakfast. There, the grill room at the Capital City Club was buzzing with what I didn’t know about, since I hadn’t sat down to read the paper yet (don’t ask me why it wasn’t on thestate.com when I was doing the Virtual Front Page yesterday; maybe it was and I just missed it). The state and community leaders weren’t going, “Did you hear about Darla?” It was more like, “What do you think of the news?” Period.

Yep, this stuff happens to me, too. Not often, but sometimes.

So I sat down, and I read the paper. And I Tweeted this out:

Brad Warthen

@BradWarthen Brad Warthen

Nikki Haley dumping Darla Moore is classic case of naked, arbitrary exercise of patronage power….http://tinyurl.com/4nu4of8

You can congratulate me later for having gotten a link, an editorial point, “Nikki Haley,” “Darla Moore,” and “naked” into the Twitter format (with 14 characters of room left!). Let’s move on to the substance.

And the substance is… well, what I just said. It just doesn’t get any more blatant, plain, slap-in-the-face, I-don’t-care-what-you’ve-done-for-our-state-or-this-institution-I’ve-got-my-own-guy than this. Just bald, plain, take-it-for-what-it-is. Although I do have to hand it to Haley staffer Rob Godfrey for managing to twist the knife a bit with this bit of sarcastic insouciance:

Asked why the appointment was not announced, he said: “Given that there are over 1,000 appointments to boards and commissions the governor can make, we never intended to have a press conference for each one.”

Because, you know, Darla Moore isn’t any more important than that.

At the Cap City Club this morning, one of the regular movers and shakers made a rather naive and innocent remark (sometimes movers and shakers can surprise you that way), honestly asking, “How do you just brush aside someone who’s given $100 million to South Carolina?” (Yeah, I know she’s only pledged $70 million to USC and $10 million to Clemson, according to the story, but I guess he was rounding.)

I replied, patiently, here’s what Nikki Haley would say to that (were she brutally honest, of course): “She didn’t give ME a hundred million dollars. Tommy over here gave me $3,500. I don’t understand the question.” That’s Tommy Cofield, by the way, a Lexington attorney.

People who are not movers and shakers (and who in fact have a sort of visceral aversion to movers and shakers) can say some naive things, too. Over in a previous comment, our own Doug said “Are we assuming that Sheheen wouldn’t have replaced anyone he didn’t like?”

To that, I responded once again with the painfully obvious: “No, Vincent would not have replaced Darla Moore with an unknown, minor campaign contributor in such a prestigious post. If that’s what you’re asking.” Of course, I should have added, “without a reason.” By that, I would mean a valid reason, one that takes South Carolina’s and USC’s legitimate interests into account, one that is not just arbitrary.

Oh she GAVE what I suppose some folks (probably including Doug, believing as he does that there is nothing so deleterious to society as experience and commitment to the public weal) will regard as a reason: “As is the case with many of our appointees, the governor looked for a fresh set of eyes to put in a critical leadership position…”

That’s it.

And if you are one of the people who takes Nikki Haley at face value, as her supporters tend to do, and you don’t know or care about Darla Moore or the University of South Carolina — you just like to cheer on your Nikki — that will suffice. In with the new, out with the old. She will feel in no way obligated to explain what was wrong with Darla Moore’s service on the board, or to cite any of the exciting new ideas that her appointee brings to the table that were previously missing. No one will expect that of her; it probably wouldn’t even occur to her to think about it. The governor will skate on this with these people — this is something that is core to her whole approach to politics ever since she transformed herself into the darling of the Tea Party in preparation for her run for this office for which she was so unprepared.

This WORKS for her. She skates on this, just as — with the voters she cares about — she will skate on apparently having told a prospective employer in 2007 that she was making $125,000 a year when she was telling the IRS that she made $22,000. This will matter not. People are just picking at her. The nasty, powerful, status quo people — those people who hang out at the Capital City Club! — are picking at Nikki because they’re mean, you see. (By the way, on the “petty” vs. “outrageous” spectrum, the thing on the job application is more the typical “petty” violation of her alleged principles that we have come to expect; the Darla Moore thing, dealing as it does with the leadership of such an important state institution, is more of an “outrage.” If you’re keeping score.)

She will not only skate, but her supporters — or at least, this is what the governor banks on — will continue, in spite of all evidence, to see her as a champion of transparency, a reformer, a nemesis of “politics as usual” and patron saint of Good Government. Which just, you know, boggles the mind if you’re the sensible sort who thinks about things.

That’s the plan, anyway. And that’s why she did this, and really doesn’t care if you, or the university, or the business community, or Darla Moore don’t like it.

Interesting letter from Eleanor Kitzman today

14 Replies

I don’t read the letters to the editor as closely as I used to. OK, to be perfectly honest, I hardly read them at ALL now that I’m not paid to do so, unless someone brings one to my attention.

Today was an exception, though. As my eye ran over the page, something in the last letter jumped out at me. I saw the words, “As a former Democratic candidate for state superintendent of education,” and scanned to the bottom to see the writer’s name was “Carlos W. Gibbons.” Hmmm. I do not know a Carlos W. Gibbons, which made me curious, and I sent out an e-mail to someone who knows stuff I don’t know, and learned that apparently he is a veteran educator who ran for the office in the early 1970s — and the father of Leeza Gibbons of TV fame.

In any case, he was right to advocate that the state superintendent post be appointed by the governor.

But it turns out that, until a few minutes ago, I had missed today’s really interesting letter — the one at the top of the stack. Alert reader “Tim” brought it to my attention moments ago. I’m just going to go ahead and put the whole thing here, and hope I don’t run afoul of Fair Use. Because this was an unusual letter:

Keep ignoring reality, governor

I have known Gov. Haley for many years, and she is one of my five bosses on the Budget and Control Board. If the governor is ignoring reality as Roger Hawkins contends (“Haley can’t continue to ignore realities,” March 3), my advice to her is to keep it up; it has served her well.

Moreover, I’d suggest that others follow her excellent example. Rather than ignoring reality, however, I believe Gov. Haley has wisely rejected the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority.

There’s never any shortage of people telling you that you can’t do something.

Perhaps more insidious are those who maintain that we need their “help” to overcome adversity because not everyone has the governor’s abilities to plow through the impediments of life or navigate around diversity issues. I couldn’t disagree more and would ask why not.

We may not all become governors, but we can achieve our goals if we stop seeing ourselves as victims.

We must be fearless and willing to work hard, make good choices and, most importantly, never give up in pursuit of a dream. (Don’t even get me started on yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works to an ethnic woman.)

Eleanor Kitzman

Columbia

Now, the thing that was unusual about this may not be immediately apparent to you. But if you had known any of Ms. Kitzman’s predecessors as chief of the Budget and Control Board, you’d know. It’s sort of hard to imagine — actually, impossible to imagine — Frank Fusco, or Fred Carter, writing (or even thinking) words that would be anything like those that Ms. Kitzman put in that letter. Whether you think of them as faceless bureaucrats, or as the very models of professional discretion that they were, it’s difficult to imagine them expressing their views in such a manner.

If you don’t know those guys, and don’t have that background, my reaction to Ms. Kitzman’s letter probably won’t make much sense to you.

Under those guys, the B&C Board (which should not exist at all, but you know that once I get started on that subject I can be all day) was a lot of things, but one thing it was not was a forum for expressing personal sentiments about particular politicians — the governor, or anyone else. There was a reason for that — the director worked for five bosses with five different egos and agendas. What was the point of being too closely identified with any of them?

I mean, forgive me for sounding like “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works,” but gee whiz, folks… (I thought, as exclamations do, that “gee whiz” sounded appropriately whitebread and old fashioned, didn’t you? I’m trying to play my assigned part as well as I can, and these small touches mean so much.)

The letter was so… emotional. So indignant. So partisan, in the sense of taking one person’s side against another. There are other terms I could use, but you know what? I just keep coming back to emotional — which I suppose will just expose me to, um, passionate condemnation for gender stereotyping, but hey, leave gender out of it (isn’t that what the brutes always say — “leave gender out of it?” the cads…). Think that I’m saying it the way Lee Marvin said it to Robert Ryan, “I owe you an apology, Colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight lipped officer. But you’re really … quite emotional. Aren’t you?” (The way I look at it, you can’t get any further away from gender politics than by quoting “The Dirty Dozen.” Am I right or am I right?)

I read something like that, and I think, what possessed her to write that? Yes, she owes her $174,000-a-year position to the governor as a matter of political fact, but why call attention to that in such a dramatic way? Did the governor know she was writing that letter? Does the governor approve of her having written that letter? She certainly didn’t need such a defense; she would have been fine without it.

For my part, I hadn’t even read the piece she was referring to (remember, I’m no longer paid to), but I can bet you I went and read it after seeing that letter. It was… unremarkable, really. Kind of unfocused. Seemed like the writer was trying to make some strong points, but trying to be kind and gentle with it, and swinging back and forth between commending the governor for being a determined “don’t let anything stand in your way” type and admonishing her for engaging in “magical thinking.”

Was the op-ed from this Hawkins fella somehow an example of White Male Oppressor insensitivity? Did he show a lack of appreciation for the governor’s inspiring story of ethnic pluck that we’ve heard so… much… about…? Was he trying to brutally impose on her “the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority?” Hardly. He had, on his own initiative, shown due deference to the obligatory talking points in that regard. In fact, he went on about it as much as Ms. Kitzman did:

Haley’s success to this point in her life has been built around navigating diversity, not letting it get in her way or positioning herself as just a diversity hire. She was born into Sikhism, an Indian religion that adopts elements from both Hinduism and Islam, and later converted to the Methodist faith.

Haley earned a degree in accounting — a profession dominated by men — and began her career at a waste-management and recycling company. Throughout her formative years, she never interacted with large numbers of people who looked like her. Her political career is also based on being an outsider. She recently told an audience that Sanford told her the state wasn’t ready for a female governor.

OK, wait a minute; here’s the trouble. Seems Mr. Hawkins was, rather than being too indifferent, a bit too CONCERNED about matters of Identity Politics, for he had just said:

What Haley has done that is troubling is appoint nine white men, three white women and one African-American woman to her Cabinet. None of her 16 executive staff members is African-American.

Hey, you know what I think about all that I.D. stuff — if you wanted a “diverse” Cabinet and staff in the superficial demographic sense, you should have elected the White Guy. (And if you ARE someone who cares deeply about such things, you probably DID vote for the White Guy, and Nikki Haley knows that, so quit your bellyaching. Whoops, I’m being insensitive again…) But this guy apparently DID care about it, and said so. And for this, he’s condemned as… what was it again… “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works….” Yeah, that was it — no wait, I forgot the part about “to an ethnic woman.” Mustn’t leave that off.

Anyway, it just wasn’t the kind of letter I’m used to reading from B&C Board chiefs. This is going to be interesting going forward, folks.

Never fear, our gov is on the job

19 Replies

Not sure what to make of our governor appearing on Season 5, Episode 2 of “Army Wives” last night, except to say that she certainly stays busy, writing memoirs, pestering the president about health care, appearing on TV shows, and… probably other highly relevant governing-South Carolina stuff, too, but I just can’t keep up.

No word yet (unless I just missed it) on what this appearance means in terms of the governor’s position on this actual state issue:

The show’s producers say it contributed more than $120 million to the local economy when they threatened last year to move production elsewhere if economic incentives for filmmakers were not renewed by state lawmakers.

No, wait — there’s this from Politico:

Though Biden’s “Army Wives” cameo came and went last August without controversy, Haley’s appearance is causing some buzz. As a South Carolina state rep, Haley voted against taxpayer-funded incentives for the film industry. Incentives were put into place in 2005, and since “Army Wives” began filming in the Palmetto State, the show has contributed more than $120 million to the local economy, according to producers.

Despite then-Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto, which Haley supported, South Carolina lawmakers voted in June to keep the film incentives program intact.

Still, according to Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey, the governor was happy to appear on the show. He told the AP, “The governor absolutely enjoyed the opportunity—any chance to showcase our great state and highlight military families is a reason to get excited.”

OK, so I still don’t know where she stands on the incentives — now. Perhaps that will be forthcoming…

No, hold on… it looks like The Post and Courier approached this as an actual news story, and had the following:

Haley’s Press Secretary Rob Godfrey said the governor was happy to make the appearance. She was not paid for the cameo, which was filmed in Charleston on Jan. 7 before she was sworn in as governor.

“The governor absolutely enjoyed the opportunity to appear on Army Wives — as she would any chance to showcase our great state and highlight our military families on national television,” Godfrey said in an e-mail. “The governor has said she will do whatever she can to showcase the great things going on in our state, especially those things that aren’t and shouldn’t be on the public dime.

“As is the case in any economic development situation, the governor will always look at film incentives from a cost-benefit perspective. If incentives going forward cost the state more than they bring in — as they have in the past — then she won’t support them.”

Phil Bailey, spokesman for the Senate Democratic Caucus, said Haley’s appearance on the show is an example of her “hypocrisy.”

“She votes against the economic incentive package to keep this show here in South Carolina — which is a vote against the show — but then she makes an appearance on the show,” Bailey said. “It’s obviously only an attempt to increase her own celebrity.”

Yep, that’s the Phil Bailey from Pub Politics. I mean, that’s what’s important, right — our media profiles? Oh, I saw her on TV; I think I’ll vote for her…

No word as yet on whether Phil Bailey will appear on “Army Wives,” but I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

But really, what DO you say?

5 Replies

Trav Robertson, as we saw him during the 2010 campaign.

Still sort of reeling from this discombobulation called Daylight Savings, and having had three glasses of sweet tea with my lunch at Seawell’s — to no noticeably helpful effect — I decided to do a wide swing through Five Points to get some REAL caffeine at Starbucks on my way back to the office.

So I got my tall Pike, and once again impressed the baristas with my fancy gift card from across the sea (thanks, Mr. Darcy!), and on my way out ran into Trav Robertson, whom I hadn’t seen since the election. Trav, if you’ll recall, managed Vincent Sheheen’s almost, but not quite, campaign for governor last year.

We chatted for a moment, mainly about the state of news media today and how it relates to politics (he said one of the toughest things he found to adjust to in the campaign was this newfangled notion that the story changes at least four times in the course of what we once so quaintly called a “news cycle”), and we parted, and as I walked back toward my truck, who was coming up the steps from Saluda but Larry Marchant. He smiled and we shook hands, and turning back to see Trav standing at the coffee shop door, I said, “Well, here’s you, and here’s Trav Robertson — we’ve just got everybody here, Democrats and Republicans…” as I moved on toward my vehicle.

Which is a pretty stupid and meaningless thing to say, but what DOES one say in such a social situation? I mean, I’m not gonna say, “Well, lookee here, we’ve got Trav, whose candidate lost a close election to a woman you claimed to the world to have slept with, and I last saw you being made fun of by Jon Stewart….”

No, I don’t think so.

And really, I suppose it’s not all that cool to say it here on the blog, either, but… it seems to me there’s a social commentary in here somewhere, having to do with Moynihan’s concept of Defining Deviance Down or whatever. And when I say “deviance,” I’m not picking on Larry or anybody else, but talking about us, the people who are the consumers of such “news.”

I mean, how does one conduct himself in polite society — or any society — in which such things are discussed, disclosed, dissected and displayed publicly? Actually, “publicly” isn’t quite the word, is it? Doesn’t quite state the case. Way more intense than that.

If you’re Jon Stewart, life is simple. You make a tasteless joke or two, get your audience to laugh, and move on to the next gag. But what do you say if you’re just a regular person out here in the real world, and you run into the real people about whom these jokes are made?

Whatever the right thing is, I haven’t figured it out, so today I just fell back on the time-honored stratagem of ignoring any weirdness inherent in the situation, and saying something insipid. Which, in this polite state of ours, still works.

As for Trav and Larry — did they speak after I left? Do they even know each other? If they spoke, what did they speak about? I have no idea. I retreated to the office with my coffee.

Larry Marchant, as we saw him during the 2010 campaign.

Just to say something you don’t hear all that often

6 Replies

The quixotic demonstration at the State House yesterday by citizens sick of seeing our state’s infrastructure rapidly eroding under the stewardship of shortsighted politicians was of course an exercise in futility.

But I’m no stranger to that. A few minutes ago, looking for a link for a previous post that needed one, I went back to the last week of posts on my old blog I had at the paper, and ran across this forgotten item — which, as it happens, was day after the post in which I announced that I had been laid off:

Good job rejecting the tuition caps

This might sound strange coming from a guy who was already counting pennies (or quarters, anyway — I miscounted how many I had this morning in my truck, and ended up with a parking ticket because I didn’t have enough for the meter), with my two youngest daughters still in college. And now I’m about to be unemployed.

But I’m glad the House rejected tuition caps at S.C. colleges and universities. I have an anecdote to share about that.

Remember the recent day when college students wandered the State House lobbying lawmakers on behalf of their institutions. They wanted the state to invest in higher education the way North Carolina and Georgia have. Either that day, or the day after, I had lunch with Clemson President James Barker, and he told me an anecdote he had witnessed: He said the students were pressing a lawmaker NOT to support the tuition caps, because they were worried about their institutions being even more underfunded — they hardly get anything from the state — some are down below 20 percent funding by the state, and the rest has to come from such sources as tuition, federal research grants and private gifts. Eliminate the ability to raise tuition, and the institution’s ability to provide an excellent education is significantly curtailed. If we want lower tuitions, the state should go back to funding higher percentages of the schools’ budgets, the way our neighboring states with better higher ed systems do.

The lawmaker listened to the kids, and then said with great condescension, maybe you kids don’t care if tuition goes up, but I’ll bet your parents would like a cap. He thought he had them there, but the kids set him straight: None of their parents were paying the bills. These kids were working their way through schools and paying for it all themselves. And they didn’t want to see the quality of what they were working so hard to pay for be degraded by an artificial cap on tuition. The lawmaker had not counted on getting that answer.

I wish I had been there to see it, because I’ve been in a similar place before. Back in 95 or 96, Speaker Wilkins had brought his committee chairs to see us, and I started challenging the wisdom of their massive rollback of property taxes paid for school.One of them allowed as how he bet I was glad to get that couple of hundred dollars I didn’t have to pay. And I answered him that I was ashamed that I was paying so little through my property tax to support schools that I knew needed more resources. He said smugly that he was sure I wouldn’t want to give it back. I told him I didn’t see as how there was any channel for doing that, but if he could point me to the right person who would take my money and see it gets to the right place, I would pay the difference. He didn’t have a good answer for that.

It would be great if our lawmakers would stop assuming that all of us in South Carolina are so greedily shortsighted that we can’t see past our personal desire to pay less money, and that we are corruptible by a scheme to starve colleges of reasonable support.

Reading that now, with all that’s happened since — the rise of the Tea Party, the eagerness of Republicans, demoralized after their 2008 defeat, to embrace destructive extremism (and of course, what happens to the Republican Party as happens to South Carolina, which it dominates), the election of Nikki Haley over more experienced, less extreme candidates of both parties — it reads like thoughts from another century. And, of course, another place.

Imagine, even dreaming of our state caring enough about education to invest in it the way our neighboring states have, much less suggesting that we do so. How anachronistic can one get? All that’s happened since then is that South Carolina has run, faster every day, in the opposite direction — with out elected leaders firmly convinced that that is not only the right direction in which to run, but the only one.

I know where the governor got the idea for THAT

2 Replies

Meant to say something about this Tweet a couple of days ago, but forgot until now:

Palmetto Family@palmettofamilyPalmetto Family
Gov. Haley’s SC Prayer Breakfast text: Jeremiah 29:11. #fb

Betcha I know where the gov got the idea for that!

That happens to be a favorite passage of her friend and mine, Nathan Ballentine.

If you’ll recall, the prophet Nathan brought that verse to my attention back when I first got laid off two years ago (has it been that long?):

Anyway, my point is to share what Nathan sent me. He e-mailed me to say I should consult Jeremiah 29:11. Which I did:

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.

Just the right words, the ones I needed to hear. In this context I also love to read Matthew 7:7-11. (Look it up.) But I already knew that one. Nathan pointed me to a source of inspiration I had missed, and for that I am very grateful. I bookmarked it on my Blackberry, and take heart from it each day.

I also very much appreciate the verses that precede it, which I recently cited in my “Stand in the place where you live” post (1/17/11):

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease. Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.

I’m sorry I missed the prayer breakfast. I would have liked to have heard that.

You’ve got to be kidding me

29 Replies

Just saw this — significantly, while I saw it on thestate.com, it’s being reported out of The Associated Press’ New York office — and I’m thoroughly boggled yet again:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is writing memoir

By HILLEL ITALIE – AP National Writer

NEW YORK — Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has been busy trying to close her state’s $700 million budget gap, but she has found time for a more personal project, jotting down thoughts and memories during quiet moments in the early morning, late at night and on weekends.

She is writing a memoir.

“I will tell you that since the election it was amazing the number of people of people who wanted to know my story, about the challenges of growing up and the challenges of running for office and what got me through it,” the 39-year-old Republican, the nation’s youngest governor, told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview….

Note that last bit: “the nation’s youngest governor.”

Indeed. She hasn’t done anything yet, and she’s writing a memoir!?!?!? Of what?!?!? I’ve known her for years, and nothing worth writing a book about has happened during that time. Maybe there’s a lot of fascinating stuff that happened before then, that I haven’t heard about — or heard her say over and over again on the stump. (You know the drill: “I’m the daughter of…,” etc.)

Of course, you know why she’s doing this, and why it’s being revealed through a national medium. For the same reason Mike Huckabee is doing a book tour, and Sarah Palin before him.

I hate even to write the words, but she thinks she’s presidential timber. There’s one thing that DOES set her apart, of course, and would be worth exploring in the book: She holds the record among SC governors for having her head turned by White House hubris. Our last four governors (each of them with less justification than his precedessor) all harbored presidential ambitions. But they, at least, waited until the got elected governor before contemplating such things. Not our Nikki. In her mind, she had already skipped over the whole being-governor thing about six months, and started looking beyond it, before she was elected.

I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. Remember my post the other day, listing three examples illustrating how “Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds?” Well, add this to the list.

A memoir. Sheesh.

OK, so maybe he IS just 32

8 Replies

A friend this morning alerted me to the fact that on his LinkedIn page, Christian Soura — the governor’s mysterious dollar-a-year man — does look young enough to be 32. (His job, on that same profile, is listed as “Executive Director at South Carolina Center for Transforming Government.” The governor’s office is not mentioned. Hey, if the gov were only paying me a buck a year, I wouldn’t mention her, either.)

OK, so that still leaves us wondering how he was receiving a state pension from Pennsylvania.

Yes, I know they’re much more into what our governor would term Big Government in Pennsylvania. The taxes are higher, and they have taxes yet unthought-of in SC. Pause for an anecdote…

Fred Mott used to be publisher at The State. He’s the publisher who made me the editorial page editor, which tells you that he’s a great guy to work for, and a splendid judge of character. But boy, did we used to have some arguments over politics at editorial board meetings. And a constant course of disagreement was Fred’s insistence that taxes were relatively high in South Carolina. I’d give him stats to the contrary, and he’d just give his patented dismissive wave and keep on believing what he believed. (The “emotional center” — to use a favorite phrase of an editor I once worked with — of this for Fred, I believe, was that he had previously lived in Florida and there was no state income tax in Florida, and there was one in SC, so taxes in SC were therefore higher…)

Then Fred left here and went to work in Philadelphia. He lived in the ‘burbs, but worked in the city. I will always cherish the first phone conversation I had with Fred after he moved up there. He said, “I’ll never again say that taxes are high in South Carolina.” The emotional center of this change of mind was that he was required to pay a tax for living outside the city but working inside it, which really rankled.

Anyway, they have more and higher taxes, and they provide services that we don’t even think about here. (They are also proud — and this is hard to take in for a South Carolinian — of having been in the forefront of the public-employee union movement that the governor of Wisconsin is trying to roll back.) So maybe they do have retirement benefits so awesome that you can start getting them at 32.

But this still seems a little unlikely. There’s still a puzzle here. I look forward to learning more.

Yep, I was right — half right, anyway

20 Replies

Did y’all see the followup this morning in The State about Nikki Haley’s dollar-a-year guy?

An efficiency adviser for Gov. Nikki Haley has set up a nonprofit group to research and advocate the best ways for government to operate.

Christian Soura, a former secretary of administration for the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, quietly agreed to work for Haley for $1 a year in January. Soura said Thursday he was living off his Pennsylvania pension and the sale of his Harrisburg home while making that $1 salary.

However, Soura, 32, said Friday that he also plans to raise money for — and be paid by — the newly minted South Carolina Center for Transforming Government.

Critics of the governor responded by charging her with yet more hypocrisy, saying she wants to know where legislators earn their money but is not forthcoming about her own staff’s income and its sources.

Soura said his organization has no donors or commitments yet. It would act as a think tank for ideas about reducing state government’s administrative and operating costs. The paperwork creating the non-profit was filed with the S.C. secretary of state on Feb. 24…

So it turns out I was right in my initial guess, that this guy was actually going to be paid by some sort of ideological advocacy group allied with the Mark Sanfords of the world (a category that includes our current governor).

And OK, so it wasn’t a national group (so far as we know — it will still be interesting to see where its money comes from), which makes me only half right. And it wasn’t an existing group, as he had to set it up himself. (Enterprising young man — very New Normal.)

But half right isn’t bad for total conjecture.

Also, you’ll note that this guy being a 32-year-old who had been living on a PA state pension (plus money from selling his house in Harrisburg) is still the operative story. So the weirdest part of the tale is still the official version.

Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds (and it’s kinda freaking me out)

20 Replies

Been feeling the need to write this ever since I read the paper early this morning. I haven’t had time before now…

Nikki Haley kind of blew my mind on three fronts this morning, which caused me to go on a bit of a rant at breakfast (Wesley isn’t the only ranter in Columbia), along these lines:

  1. “Haley to grade legislators.” Did you see that headline this morning? I normally eschew text-speak, but WTF? None of the lawmakers quite came out and said this, but I’ll tell you what they were thinking: “This little girl couldn’t even get called on when she raised her hand at the back of the class a year ago, and now she’s going to grade US?” This would be followed by the aforementioned “WTF?” Yep, lawmakers really think like that, the insensitive brutes. Now, before you think this is just a question of whom you like — with reactions divided between Haley fans who cheer, “Go get ’em, Nikki!” and the harrumphers who do not and never will be Haley fans — allow me to point something out to you. It would be presumptuous for anyone to do this. Back when I worked in Tennessee, some writers at one of the Nashville papers would grade all the legislators at the end of the session each year. I thought it presumptuous as all get-out, but… it was still within the bounds of acceptable commentary. And it would certainly be permissible for me to do something like that on my blog, although you would be equally free to tell me to what extent I was full of it. Just an exchange of views among citizens. But here’s the problem with Nikki doing it, in case you didn’t make it through Civics 101: She’s the governor, which means she’s the closest thing to a head of the executive branch that we’ve got (in another state, she’d be the head of the executive branch, but this is South Carolina). For the chief executive to use whatever political influence she has to harass and bully and threaten lawmakers, even in as silly a manner as this (do my will, or I’ll give you a bad grade!), smacks of bossism. Ben Tillman would have loved a device like that for keeping lawmakers in line, and Boss Crump as well. Folks, the best virtue Nikki Haley has going for her is that she advocates restructuring that would make the executive branch more accountable to the governor (and in fact, it’s their positions on reforms like that that she plans to “grade” lawmakers on). But this kind of behavior gives executive power a bad name, and gives lawmakers — who don’t want to give the governor power anyway — an excuse to blow her off, just as Mark Sanford did with his defecating piglets. And that’s what takes this beyond silly, practically to the realm of outrage. The very modest restructuring legislation that just passed the House will have tough-enough sledding in the Senate (where all such reforms go to die) without this nonsense.
  2. “Governor takes aim at state employee benefits.” Wow. Poor Nikki. Last year, she was the darling of the national media (which is how she won the election), making the cover of Newsweek twice. Now, she feels forgotten. Through the lens of this story, you can see the little wheels turning in her head: Look at all the attention that governor in Wisconsin is getting! That’s so unfair? What’s he doing? Oh, he’s trying to take away state employees collective bargaining power. What an awesome idea! I’ll do that too, and then I can get some attention? What? Oh, drat! We don’t HAVE public employee unions in South Carolina, so I can’t strike dramatic poses fighting against them! That’s really, REALLY unfair! What, oh what am I going to do? There must be SOMETHING I can do to state employees here that will draw attention… but what? I know! I’ll go after their BENEFITS…
  3. “The mystery man on Haley’s staff.” THIS one is so weird, that I suspect there’s a typo in it somewhere. So… Nikki has a guy on her staff who supposedly is only being paid $1 a year. He’s supposedly a government-efficiency expert who’s gonna help the gov straighten out waste and inefficiency in our gummint. He uprooted his family and moved here from Pennsylvania for the job — for the $1-a-year job. OK, this causes a lot of people to suspect there’s something else going on, and speculate that he’s waiting around for a real job that could come open soon. This he denies, or at least says he hasn’t been promised anything. But that wouldn’t be my theory anyway, given those facts. MY theory is that he’s being paid by one of those national ideological groups that flock around the Mark Sanfords of the world. Howie Rich, or Grover Norquist or some such. But he says no, that he’s living off his state employee pension from Pennsylvania. Got that? OK… The story also says he’s 32 years old. Twice. In the main body of the story, and in a graphic. After someone suggested it was a double-typo, I Tweeted John O’Connor to ask him. He Tweeted back that “No, that’s his age according to the governor’s office.” So maybe the governor’s office is wrong about his age. But if not — this guy’s able to live on a state pension (and I went back to look again, and yes, the only jobs listed in the published summary of his resume sound like state jobs) at the age of 32 — and he’s here as an expert on government efficiency? That ought to make state employees breath a sigh of relief. No way he’ll have the nerve to urge the governor to reduce their pensions, huh? Unless he’s the nerviest guy in two states. Somewhere, there’s gotta be something inaccurate in this picture, because the “facts” we have definitely don’t add up.

OK, I got all that off my chest. Now, to shift gears on you, and praise our governor for her pushiness — in that same story about state employee benefits, she promised to present lawmakers with a comprehensive tax reform plan. THAT’S the kind of presumption I can cheer for. But I’m going to hold my applause until I see whether it’s comprehensive, and whether it’s reform. The first sign will be whether she steps up and proposes to undo the execrable Act 388.

And… now that I’m cooled down a bit… I’ll go further in that backtracking direction: I still haven’t made up my mind about what I think of the bill I wrote about earlier that would do essentially what Nikki’s saying with state pensions. (Mainly because I haven’t yet seen enough about it — on something that complex and that financial, I sort of need some broad input to make up my mind.) But the truth is, I read items 2 and 3 right after reading item 1 this morning, so it all looked bad while I was in that mood.

And now that I’m looking at them again before hitting “Publish,” I’m still kinda freaked out…

Breathtaking euphemism: Cutting health care payments in SC

14 Replies

Catching up on my e-mail, I ran across this release from our friend Wesley over with the Senate Republicans:

Senate passes bill giving DHHS budget flexibility

The state Department of Health and Human Services needs to crawl out of a $228 million hole for this fiscal year, alone. Next year, deficit estimates top $500 million. But, it doesn’t have to stay this way. That’s why Senate Republicans led the fight today to pass S. 434 — it removes budgetary constraints on the actions of agency director Tony Keck and gives him and his department more flexibility as it comes to this fiscal crisis.

The legislation, chief sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler and cosponsored by Senators Kevin Bryant and Lee Bright, requires the ability to purchase generic drugs instead of more expensive name brands. Most importantly, it repeals part of a proviso that stopped any DHHS director from modifying the schedule by which doctors and hospitals were paid through the state’s administration of Medicaid.

“This bill is all about untying Mr. Keck’s hands and allowing him to do his job as effectively as he can,” Peeler said following the vote. “That doesn’t mean he has to cut programs, it means he can cut. With such a huge deficit, we need Keck to be running his own agency, not micromanaged by the legislature.”

The bill’s passage is also seen as a win for Gov. Nikki Haley. It both invests more power to an executive branch agency and hands those reigns over to one of her recent appointments. The budgetary problems within DHHS — and Medicaid in particular — have been high on issues to address for both the governor and the legislature as they entered this session.

Keck has said that he’s looking at making health care providers modify their staffing ratios, increasing patient co-pays and taking a hard line in favor medical tort reform. Senate Republicans are ready to help him in any way possible fix the agency’s financial problems.

“Flexibility.” I like that. It reminds me of when people who want to increase taxes call what they’re doing “revenue enhancements.” When conservatives in SC want to cut spending on life-and-death essentials, they call it “flexibility.” As euphemisms go, it’s sort of breathtaking.

I especially liked this part, so I’ll repeat it:

“This bill is all about untying Mr. Keck’s hands and allowing him to do his job as effectively as he can,” Peeler said following the vote. “That doesn’t mean he has to cut programs, it means he can cut. With such a huge deficit, we need Keck to be running his own agency, not micromanaged by the legislature.”

Translation: We’re going to flat make these cuts, but we are not going to take the responsibility. That’s what the governor hired Mr. Keck to do. Interesting how sometimes, the Senate sees granting power to the executive as a good thing. Take note, boys and girls. Take pictures, and remember so you can tell your own children, because this doesn’t happen often. Normally, as Cindi wrote on Wednesday, or Legislature is “fixated… on micromanaging the most mundane minutiae of state government…”

But flexibility — that’s a good thing, right? Sounds good, anyway.

Here’s the way what the Senate did was described by a neutral party (which is why we have the MSM):

The S.C. Senate gave key approval Thursday to a bill allowing immediate cuts in state payments to doctors and hospitals that treat patients in the state-run health care program for the poor and disabled.

Gov. Nikki Haley and the Department of Health and Human Services have sought to cut those payments in order to make up part of a $225 million deficit at the state’s Medicaid agency. Agency director Tony Keck said the state could save $2.4 million between now and June 30 for every percentage point that it cuts those payments.

The bill also requires HIV, AIDS, cancer and mental-health patients to use generic drugs or get prior approval from the state’s health agency to use more expensive, non-generic drugs.

So you’ve seen it described two ways — by the perpetrators and by the news media. Now, here’s the assessment of someone at the other end of the spectrum. Samuel Tenenbaum, the head of Palmetto Health Foundation, came to my table at breakfast to make sure I knew what was going on from the perspective of health care providers. He said it’s not a fiscal issue, but a moral issue, for this reason: Cut back on payments for care, and “people will die.”

This, of course, will be dismissed by folks at the first end of the spectrum who will describe Samuel as a bleeding-heart liberal Democrat whose ox is being gored. They’ll tell him to get out there and work harder raising money for the hospital, if he’s so concerned. But you know, I don’t distrust the judgments of people who are actually involved in the complex business of paying for health care. I tend to think that they, the involved parties, more than anyone else, may actually understand the situation. Call me crazy.

Later in the day, Samuel sent me this set of more formal talking points, elaborating on his stark assessment at breakfast:

• The Problem
Former Governor Mark Sanford originally requested $659 million to fund the Medicaid program for fiscal year 2011-12. Governor Nikki Haley and her Medicaid director Tony Keck reduced that request by over $200 million. More than half of that reduction would be made up by reducing Medicaid payments to hospitals, physicians and other healthcare
providers.
• South Carolina Hospital Association Proposal
SCHA member hospitals support a temporary increase in the $264 million hospital contribution to the state’s Medicaid fund as opposed to a cut in hospital provider rates.
• Why contribute rather than cut?
• A 10 percent reduction in the rate paid to hospitals will “save” $47 million in state funds but “cost” the state almost $170 million in federal matching funds. As Mr. Beaman has stated, a 10 percent cut for Palmetto Health will result in a $22 million loss to our system.
• Over 2600 South Carolina hospital jobs will be put in jeopardy.

So there you have it, a sort of Three Bears approach — perspectives on the issue from both ends and the middle. See what you think.

I become a five-timer on Pub Politics (no, excuse me — THE five-timer)

12 Replies

Pub Politics Episode 45: Subterranean Night, Part 2 from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

Here, finally (not that I’m complaining, Wesley), is the video from my record-setting appearance as the first five-time guest on “Pub Politics.” This episode was taped in front of a sizable and enthusiastic studio audience (with whom you’ll see us interact a bit, even though, alas, you can’t see them) at The Whig last Wednesday night, Feb. 16, 2011.

Here is Wesley’s blurb on the show, or rather this segment of it:

The boys of Pub Politics meet up in the basement bar known in Columbia as The Whig for a subterranean night. Political blogger and former journalist Brad Warthen and WACH Fox news director Bryan Cox jump on for segment 2 to the intersection of the Internet and journalism.

Join Brad Warthen online at bradwarthen.com.

Visit WACH Fox online at midlandsconnect.com.

A HUGE thank you to The Whig for hosting us. Visit them at thewhig.org.

And of course we were talking about this, which is why Bryan and I were there.

Who, if anyone, is the grownup in the governor’s office? (Hint: It SHOULD be the governor)

15 Replies

Have you seen Kevin Fisher’s column about the Nikki Haley/WACH thing? It’s pretty good; you should check it out.

For my part, this bit reminded me of something I wanted to share:

Haley made the post late on a Sunday evening, presumably in the privacy of the governor’s mansion. Would she have done so the next morning after talking it over with advisers while sitting in the governor’s office? I doubt it. She strikes me as too smart to have made a mistake like this upon reflection, and certainly her communications staff would have advised against it (or if not, she should move quickly to get new communications people).

Last night on “Pub Politics” (which was a good show, with an excellent studio audience filling up The Whig — Shop Tart was there! so was Laurin!), Wesley Donehue made a related point, but in a far more outrageous way.

In defending Nikki — or trying to — he basically tried to excuse her immature and inappropriate published insult of WACH on the fact that it was spontaneous, and of course she wouldn’t have said something like that if she had consulted with her staff first. (I forget his exact words, but I’ll post the whole show when he sends me the embed code, by tomorrow probably.)

This set me off.

OK, I said, I can dig that Wesley and Phil Bailey might think it’s OK to say something like that, because after all, they themselves are unelected political operatives hired by elected officials. Professional pride, if nothing else, might lead to such thinking.

But folks, the governor is the governor. The governor is the boss of those people, the one who should be the grownup in the room, checking and correcting her subordinates, not the other way around. The governor is the one who was ELECTED by the people, the one who is accountable to them.

Yes, I realize we have a governor who was nowhere near ready, someone seriously lacking in the kinds of professional and life experiences that prepare one to be the boss (and a politically accountable boss, which is an even more demanding job requirement). We have someone in the office who a year ago was a very junior, very green back-bencher, suddenly thrust into leadership.

It happens. (The unfortunate thing about this situation is that she has no one on her staff to BE that grownup for her, to make up for her own lack. Mark Sanford had Fred Carter, but unfortunately failed to listen to him, and ran him off. Who can play that role for Nikki? Not her chief of staff — he doesn’t even know the system or the players; he’s a political operative from out of state. A mature type like Fred Carter who was from out of state, a real pro from Dover, could make up for his lack of local knowledge with pure, transferable professionalism, the knowledge that in ANY state, there are things you do and say and things you don’t. But as we saw with the Curtis Loftis incident, Tim Pearson is not that guy. Or at least, he hasn’t shown us that guy yet. But I digress. Of course, that’s what parentheticals are for.)

But SHE was the one who decided to go off half-cocked on Facebook. And even if she’d done it on advice of staff, SHE would be the one responsible for it.

If SC “opts out” of Obamacare, you will definitely have stepped over the line

32 Replies

I say that because, between the two of them — him and Nikki Haley — I figure he’s the one more likely to listen to reason. At least, I would normally think that, although his recent behavior on this subject injects a large measure of doubt.

Here’s what I’m on about:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Nikki Haley on Monday opened the S.C. front in the Republican Party’s battle to roll back health care legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama last year.

At a State House news conference, Graham and Haley took turns blasting the law as an expensive federal takeover of the nation’s health care system. Graham said the law, which won 60 votes in the 100-member U.S. Senate, was passed through a “sleazy” process that offered no opportunity for GOP input.

Graham also said he has introduced legislation to allow South Carolina and other states to “opt out” of the law, which is being challenged in federal courts.

“I’m confident that, if given the chance, a large number of states would opt out of the provisions regarding the individual mandate, employer mandate and expansion of Medicaid,” Graham said, referring to requirements in the law that individuals buy insurance, companies offer it and Medicaid be expanded to cover those without insurance. “As more states opt out, it will have the effect of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

Last time, I was sort of seriocomic in warning Sen. Graham that he was goin’ to messin’, with my “Lindsey, fill yer hands; I’m a callin’ you out” post.

It’s not funny any more.

In fact, this is the one thing that leading Republicans (or anyone else who got such a notion) could do that would be totally beyond the pale, truly unforgivable.

Look, I get it: You don’t like Obama. No, scratch that: What I get is that your constituents don’t like Obama (in some cases for reasons that don’t bear a lot of scrutiny), so you’re playing to that. I doubt Nikki has any strong feelings toward the president one way or the other (she never even had occasion to think about him until she decided to become the Tea Party’s Dream Girl last year) and for his part Lindsey is perfectly happy to work with him in a collegial manner. But they’re trying to stay in the game with Jim “Waterloo” DeMint, and this leads to trying to fake the symptoms of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

I fully get the fact that since the defeat of November 2008 (when, it you’ll recall, I endorsed both John McCain and Lindsey Graham), the Republican Party has gone stark, raving mad, having concluded that its problem in ’08 was that it wasn’t extreme enough, not wacky enough, causing it, as it wandered lost in the post-apocalyptic landscape, to embrace the Tea Party in its lonely desperation. I get all that.

But that is a disgusting, absurd, inexcusable, disgustingly irresponsible reason to try to prevent the people of South Carolina — who have perhaps more need for health care reform than people in any other state — from deriving any benefit that might accrue from the federal health care legislation.

No, the thing dubbed “Obamacare” doesn’t accomplish much; it’s a bit of a Frankenstein of a bill. But it actually would do SOME people SOME good. And it at least has the one essential element that one would have to have in any attempt to address the crisis in paying for health care in this country, the national mandate — which, absurdly, is the ONE thing you object to most vehemently. (We’ve discussed in the past how there’s no point in talking about “reform” unless you start with the premise that everybody has to be in the game for it to work, so I won’t go on and on about it now.)

Yep, Obamacare is pretty inadequate. But you have NOTHING to replace it with, nothing in the wings (with any chance of passing, or any chance of doing any good if it DID pass) to do what little good Obamacare will do.

So trying to tear it down is nothing but an act of pure destruction. And the thing you’re destroying is the ONE thing that’s been done lately to address the one greatest domestic need in this country.

I expect this kind of nonsense from Nikki Haley (the Tea Party Nikki Haley that is, not the promising young House member I used to know). But Lindsey Graham is fully smart enough to know better.

Fine, have your little press conferences and make your symbolic gestures. But if you actually start to make this “opt-out” thing a reality, that will be unforgivable.

Ought to be the shortest show EVER…

1 Reply

Had to smile when I saw this Tweet from Teow0nna Clifton:

Teowonna Clifton

@ThatTeowonnaTeowonna Clifton
Diversity in the Governor’s Cabinet Pt.2 on OnPointX will air 02/15.http://tobtr.com/s/1549521#BlogTalkRadio

First thought: Diversity in the governor’s Cabinet? There’s so little of that that I’m surprised you could get one show out of it, much less two…

Script for the show:

— Hi, we’re here to talk about diversity in the Haley administration.

— OK, let’s do. What ABOUT diversity in the Haley administration?

— Well, the governor herself is Indian-American?

— And?

— And she named one black nominee to her Cabinet. But that nominee withdrew. So she named another black nominee to take her place.

— And?

— And that’s the end of our show! Thanks for being with us…

Dang. Wish I’d had that a little earlier, for Health and Happiness…