Category Archives: Republicans

Huntsman uncampaign takes aim at Romney

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Tim Miller, who introduced himself to me via email a few days ago as the guy “likely to be doing the media work should Jon Huntsman decide to run for President when he returns from Beijing,” wanted to make sure I saw these two pieces.

The first casts doubt on the viability of Mitt Romney, widely seen as the leading contender among the non-crazy aspirants to the GOP presidential nomination, in South Carolina:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — He may be the presumed national frontrunner, but when he launches his all-but-certain presidential campaign, Mitt Romney figures to be a heavy underdog in the historically decisive South Carolina presidential primary.
During his 2008 run, Romney competed fiercely to win the first-in-the-South primary state, which has voted for the eventual GOP nominee in every contest since 1980. But after more than a year of pouring significant time and money into the state, Romney pulled out his South Carolina resources with 10 days to go before primary day in order to focus on friendlier ground in Michigan and Nevada.
This time around, his South Carolina prospects are not looking much better.
“He finished fourth here last time, and if he hasn’t really done a lot of groundwork, it might be an uphill battle,” said South Carolina State Rep. Nathan Ballentine, who endorsed Romney’s last campaign. “So maybe you focus on New Hampshire and then head up to Nevada and Florida — things like that.”
Ballentine, who is one of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s closest allies in the state legislature, described himself as a “loyal guy” who was inclined to endorse Romney again but had not yet made up his mind. Ballentine was frank in his assessment that the former Massachusetts governor, who tried to convince South Carolinians throughout 2007 that he was a “Yankee governor” with “southern values,” might again have a difficult time connecting with voters here….

The second piece, by our old buddy Peter Hamby, portrays Jon Huntsman as the Mormon more likely to do well here — not to mention, a guy likely to gain the support of those looking for someone who might actually have a chance against President Obama with us swing voters:

Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) – If ambassador to China Jon Huntsman does decide to run for president after returning to the United States in early May, his advisers are planning to make a serious play for South Carolina, the early primary state that traditionally propels Republican candidates to the presidential nomination.

The conservative-leaning state might seem like a curious place to make a stand for a Mormon ex-Obama administration official who supports same-sex civil unions, but his team is confident that South Carolina Republicans are hungry for a fresh face in a lackluster 2012 field.

“If he gets in the race, from everything I’ve heard, his plan would be to plant a flag in South Carolina,” said longtime Columbia-based strategist Richard Quinn, who helped John McCain win the state’s primary in 2008. “I really think we can win here.”

Quinn is working for Horizon PAC, Huntsman’s campaign-in-waiting, and will steer his presidential bid in South Carolina should the ambassador officially enter the race after his China post concludes on April 30.

He said New Hampshire and South Carolina – two of the four early states that allow independents to participate in their presidential primaries – “are ready for the arrival of a major new player.”

“I think moving from New Hampshire to South Carolina, that’s the traditional path,” Quinn said, mapping out Huntsman’s potential path to the nomination. “No disrespect to Iowa, but New Hampshire and South Carolina are two parts of a three part rocket, along with Florida.”

Huntsman, also a former Utah governor, will return to the United States just before the South Carolina Republican Party sponsors the first Republican presidential debate in Greenville on May 5, but his advisers are doubtful that he will participate.

He will, however, have an opportunity to introduce himself to the state when he delivers a May 7 commencement speech at the University of South Carolina.

Make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, Huntsman’s last day on the job in Beijing is Saturday.

Could Obama lose? Well, yeah, but it seems unlikely given current trends

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Saw this this morning on Twitter, from Political Wire:

Yes, Obama could lose… http://pwire.at/hfiOUM

To which I responded, “Yeah, and I could conceivably WIN – anything can happen – but what are the odds?”

ANYTHING can happen over the last 19 months (things that would turn this assessment around 180 degrees), but watching the sluggish “race” for the nomination to run against him — and seeing some of the characters getting the most attention (here’s a question for you conspiracy fans: Is the “liberal media” deliberately overplaying the likes of Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in order to undermine conservative chances?) — it seems extremely dubious.

Dubious to the point that I’d really, really appreciate it if the opposition would stop acting like he’s somehow illegitimate, and seeking to undermine everything he tries to do (like the health care reform the nation so badly needs, as inadequate as his efforts in that regard may be). Because folks, not only did he win the last election, but he’s probably going to win the next one. And I think the stronger potential GOP candidates know that, which is why we’re not seeing much activity from anyone but the extremists.

By the way, did you follow the link on that Tweet, which quoted a Salon article asserting that, if the economy doesn’t get better, “the GOP will be well-positioned to oust Obama in 2012, provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.”

Run that by again: “…provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.” Right now, that looks kind of like a big IF.

In 08, we were blessed by having both parties’ nominees being the less partisan options. It seems unlikely that we’ll be thus blessed in ’12. Unlike Democrats, who are cheering for the GOP extremists because they want to run against them, I hope the GOP does come up with a mainstream, sensible nominee because… as I say, ANYTHING can happen, and I’d like to reduce the chance of a having a nut job in the White House. But will that happen? I actually suspect it will. But I do worry.

Some Bachman, in case you haven’t had enough

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For those of you who may have missed Michele Bachman when she was in SC the last few days, here are some things she has said in the past, which a colleague sent to me today:

“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009

“Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, June 2009
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009

Hmmm. Wait a sec. This post may not be in my interest. Rep. Bachman has already been throwing around advertising money in SC, way out ahead of other prospective candidates. If she sees this, she’s likely to think, a) I’m glad to see that Brad Warthen is spreading my ideas for free, so I don’t need to send HIM any ad bucks; or b) That Brad Warthen is holding me up to ridicule, I’m not about to spend any ad bucks with HIM. Either way, I lose.

This is one reason why not many people, admire me as they might, see me as a good businessman.

Of course, I could have just shared with you what she said while she was here:

BLUFFTON, S.C. — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told a packed tea party gathering she doesn’t think President Barack Obama is “on our side anymore” as she blamed him for a “foolish” war in Libya and high gasoline prices…

Oh, and here’s what she said on the State House steps today:

You recognize that in Washington D.C., your rights are being taken away from you…

… something that I did NOT know, by the way. You?

I’m glad I don’t work for Lindsey Graham

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This came in from Lindsey Graham this afternoon:

Graham To Refuse Pay, Close Offices, Furlough Staff During Government Shutdown

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this announcement on how his Senate office will function, should the Congress and President fail to come to agreement on the federal budget by midnight.  Each Member of Congress is responsible for establishing their procedures for operation during a government shutdown.

  • Senator Graham will refund his salary to the Federal Treasury for the time the government remains shutdown.
  • Senator Graham’s offices in Columbia, Florence, Greenville, Mount Pleasant, Pendleton, Rock Hill, and Washington will be closed during the shutdown.
  • Senator Graham’s staff — both in Washington and South Carolina — will be furloughed and placed on unpaid leave.

“I will refund my salary to the Bureau of the Public Debt within the U.S. Department of Treasury,” said Graham.  “Our brave men and women serving in uniform will not get paid during the shutdown. I believe Members of Congress should think twice about putting their way of life before those who fight to protect it.

“I’m disappointed Democrats in Congress and President Obama have not agreed to our very reasonable requests for spending reductions,” said Graham.  “What we’re seeking is belt-tightening at the federal level, a practice millions of Americans have already gone through.  It’s long past time we get our nation’s fiscal house in order.  The essence of our proposal is to take spending back to 2008 levels plus inflation.  Our proposal is by no means extreme.

“I’m very proud of my staffers who deliver high-quality constituent services to the people of South Carolina,” said Graham.  “It’s a tradition I’ve tried to carry over from Senator Thurmond.  However, I cannot justify having the offices open during a government shutdown when the staff will be unable to meaningfully help people.

“Therefore, my staffers will be furloughed without pay,” said Graham.  “I truly believe with the government shut down, we can’t deliver services to the people of South Carolina in a way to justify the expense.  In light of those facts, closing the office and furloughing the staff is the fiscally-responsible step to take.”

#####

Of course, I went without pay for about nine months not so long ago. I suppose I could tell these folks to buck up, that it’s a character-building experience. But I know better. I know that it’s just a lousy situation. And it’s caused by polticos in Washington acting like children over the budget. (And no, senator; it’s not just the Democrats failing to be “reasonable.”)

I heard some highamuckymuck on the radio today pontificating on the subject, saying that the disagreement came down to one thing: spending.

And I’m like duh, yeah, I guess so — seeing as how it’s the budget we’re talking about here. Congrats on figuring that out, Einstein.

How many SC lawmakers does it take to screw up light bulbs?

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You thought that SC lawmakers had already done everything they could possibly do to emphasize to the world that, if given the slightest excuse, they would secede all over again? Well, you were wrong.

These boys are creative, and they never miss a new way to celebrate the spirit of Nullification. This just in:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina legislators are throwing a lifeline to traditional incandescent light bulbs as they try to trump federal energy standards.

The House on Thursday approved legislation with a 76-20 vote that would allow companies to manufacture the bulbs in South Carolina and sell them here.

The measure needs routine final approval next week before heading to the Senate.

Federal energy standards have manufacturers turning to compact fluorescent, halogen and LED bulbs. Manufacturers phase out traditional 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year.

Proponents say more efficient bulbs cost too much and they don’t like the light they provide.

The Incandescent Light Bulb Freedom Act allows manufacturers to make the traditional bulbs and stamp them as “Made in South Carolina.” They could only be sold in the Palmetto State.

Someone who doesn’t understand South Carolina — someone who thinks the sesquicentennial of secession is a commemoration of the way we were, rather than a celebration of who we ARE — might think that this is just a particularly moronic way of rejecting any kind of concern for the planet as “liberal,” and therefore beyond the pale.

But if you really do understand South Carolina, you realize that yes, it’s that, but it’s also a chance to relive the heady days of 1860, and cock a snook at the federal gummint. Especially that Obama.

So that’s, what? Three birds with one stone? Environmentalism. The Union. And Obama.

These guys aren’t dummies, no matter what you think. They are geniuses at what they do.

They’re going to keep trying until they provoke that Obama enough that he tries to resupply Fort Sumter. They’ll be ready for him, too.

Nikki Haley doing right thing (I think) for wrong reasons

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The other night, I went to a reception for new Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt, my old shipmate at The State. Bobby was near the front door, and we exchanged pleasantries. Standing there with him and Mike Briggs from Central SC Alliance was the head guy from Amazon, whose name escapes me at the moment — and he didn’t have any cards with him, or I’d have it in front of me. (If this were a newspaper, I’d hold this report until I got the name, or rather, got a reporter or editorial writer to get the name for me. But it’s not a newspaper, it’s a blog; and you’re not paying for it, so get outta my face.)

Anyway, having said “Welcome” to Bobby (a bit ironically, since I’ve seen and chatted with him numerous times since he came back to town), I said an even more fervent “Welcome!” to Mr. Amazon, and we, too, exchanged pleasantries. I thought, “I really should ask this guy some questions,” but didn’t have any on me. At that point, I spotted the bar. I needed to be somewhere else in about 20 minutes, so if I were going to have a free beer, it was now or never. So goodbye, Mr. Amazon (Yes, interviewing a source when you have the chance is important, but there are other immemorial traditions of journalism that must be honored as well.)

On the way to the bar, though, I saw Lanier Jones, president of ADCO, and said, “Lanier, you should go over and meet the Amazon guy.” Which he did.

A couple of days later, this came out:

Amazon’s 1,200-job project in jeopardy

Online retailer Amazon.com pressed S.C. lawmakers Wednesday for a sales tax break for the distribution center that it is building near Cayce, amid concern that denying the incentive could jeopardize the $100 million project.

Amazon executives warned refusing the tax break is a deal-breaker for the project, projected to employ 1,249 full time by 2013 and provide up to 2,500 part-time jobs, some legislators and Lexington County officials said.

“The implication is if they don’t get it, they’ll pull out,” said House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington. “That’s clearly an option they will look at if they do not get it.”

That day, Lanier said something about the fact that we knew about that. I didn’t know about it, I said. Lanier said that when he spoke to the guy, Mike said something about a tax problem, and the Amazon guy said, “It’s a dealbreaker.” Lanier figured I’d heard the same.

So maybe I should have hung around a tad longer. I just didn’t know that at the time… Oh, well.

Bottom line, what should SC do about this?

Nikki Haley has chosen, like Pontius Pilate, to call for a basin of water:

Gov. Nikki Haley on Thursday washed her hands of an effort to lure more than 1,000 jobs to Lexington County.

Haley said she does not support a tax incentive designed to entice online retailer Amazon.com to Lexington County, making clear her opposition a day after company officials said they will pull the plug on a planned distribution center unless they get the tax break.

But Haley said that if lawmakers — who are waiting to follow the governor’s lead — approve the tax break, she will not veto it….

So basically, whatever happens, it won’t have her delicate fingerprints on it.

Not that I mean to cast aspersions with the Pontius Pilate thing. Actually, Nikki’s right (I think; I’m still cogitating on this) not to support the tax break. And she’s right (although not what you’d call courageous, or a leader) to recognize that this is a hot potato.

But she opposes (kinda) it for the wrong reasons. She opposes it because of a Policy Council-style ideological objection to using incentives in economic development. Hey, I think a lot of incentives are a bad idea, but not all of them. That’s the problem with ideology; you don’t make distinctions between bad and good, you just always bet on black. Or red. Depending on your ideology.

The actual PROBLEM with the tax break is that businesses should not be allowed to skirt the sales tax. Not only do we have too many exemptions in the sales tax as things stand, but allowing Internet businesses to do that places other SC businesses, such as the proverbial Mom and Pops, at a terrible disadvantage.

Not only that, but it’s unfair to Walmart and others that have asked for such a break, and been turned down. So you have an equal protection problem.

But Nikki Haley isn’t going to put it in those terms. So I did.

All of that said, I don’t relish the idea of turning away those 1,200 jobs. Policy abstractions are one thing; actual jobs for South Carolinians is another.

So I’m a bit torn about it still. As the governor seems to be. So we have that in common.

This is an issue that I would have had a lengthy discussion with the editorial board about, to develop and sharpen my own thoughts before saying anything in the paper.

I don’t have an editorial board now. So what do y’all think?

God bless U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs

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I say that because her ruling kept me, and the other sensible folk who refuse to surrender their ability to think to a party, from being disenfranchised by the SC Republican Party:

A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit by Republicans Wednesday who wanted South Carolina to begin requiring voters to register with a party before voting in a primary.

If Republicans don’t want outsiders to help choose their nominees, they have other options, like picking candidates at a party convention or filling out petitions to get them on the ballot, U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs ruled.

The decision reverberates nationally.

South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary, which has been won by the party’s eventual nominee in each election since 1980, is open to any registered voter in the state, forcing candidates to moderate their message to a wider audience. The Democratic contest is also open.

“It’s a great day for independents. It’s a great day for all voters in South Carolina,” said lawyer Harry Kresky, who argued the case for IndependentVoting.org. “The primary confirms a great deal of legitimacy on a candidate.”

IndependentVoting.org. joined with the state, Tea Party members and black lawmakers in fighting the lawsuit…

Not that all is right with the world. We’re still forced to choose one primary or the other. There is no way I, who live in the most Republican county in South Carolina, where the GOP primary IS the election for most offices, should have been disenfranchised — prevented from having ANY say in local or legislative races — because I chose a Democratic ballot to vote for Vincent Sheheen last June.

But moving to the Louisiana system, as wonderful as that would be, is another battle for another day. For now, I’ll take satisfaction from the fact that the judge prevented the SC Republican Party from further eroding my right to vote for whomever I like.

NYT Mag: “Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, doesn’t care what you think.”

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Of course, we knew that — I’ve noted it before (most recently with regard to the Darla Moore affair). But it’s interesting that any national media have noticed it, given the hagiographic coverage she usually receives outside the state.

The State took note of the New York Times Magazine article several weeks back. They saw the “Comet” headline, and noted her wildly hubristic statement that “I don’t lose.”

But they apparently missed the subhead — probably because whoever was doing The Buzz for that edition looked at the piece online, rather than in print.

And that was the best part.

Above is a shot from a PDF of the print edition, which an alert reader shared.

By the way, that little pun — Haley the Comet — reminds me of something I saw in Oxford during my recent visit.

It seems that when Edmond Halley, famous for having first charted the path of the comet, was at Oxford (The Queen’s College), he decided to knock a hole in the roof of his top-floor flat so that he could watch the stars from there. The landlord was VERY accommodating — even though he wasn’t yet the famous Halley of the Comet — and a little observatory structure was built onto the roof.

At least, that’s the way our guide on the walking tour told it. The story may be apocryphal (a few minutes on Google just now failed to confirm it).

But if it’s true, it occurs to me that Halley didn’t care what people thought, either. With him, it turned out all right in the end. With our own Haley, the Comet… that definitely remains to be seen.

Below is the picture I took on Jan. 4 of the building where Halley lived:

Another middle-aged white guy heard from about Kitzman letter

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And the thing is, this one is one of Eleanor Kitzman‘s bosses — House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, 50.

This came in over the transom yesterday, and I suppose it’s the letter that John O’Connor (oh, and happy birthday today, John) referred to in this story.

Of course, I kid about the “middle-aged white guy” thing, because I find Identity Politics (particularly as practiced by Ms. Kitzman) so wonderfully goofy. But the real issue is how unprofessional it is to play the defensive toady to ONE of your bosses in such a public manner.

So I can see how Rep. Cooper would not approve.

Pretty scathing, huh?

Graham grateful for Obama’s “strong women”

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Check out Political Wire’s Quote of the Day:

“I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by NBC News, on how it was President Obama’s female advisers that prevailed in arguments to take military action in Libya.

Here’s more from the item that came from:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported Saturday night on the internal debate about the decision to go into Libya. “In the end, it became the women foreign policy advisers against the men. Although Hillary Clinton initially resisted the idea of a no-fly zone, she was persuaded at the beginning of this week by the Arab League’s endorsement of military action, and she had intense meetings with the Arab League leaders and a Libyan opposition leader this week. She actually joined U.N. ambassador Susan Rice and two other women in the National Security Council, who had been arguing for some time for more aggressive action in persuading the president on Tuesday. This is a rare instance, by the way, of Clinton going up against Defense Secretary Bob Gates and the National Security Adviser Tom Donilon among other men in the White House who were much more cautious about this.”

To that point, here was more Lindsey Graham on FOX: “I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

Presumably, since he’s for strong women, Lindsey won’t get any overwrought letters from Eleanor Kitzman…

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

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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.

Filling young minds with wisdom (lots and lots and lots of it…)

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Busy day — speaking this morning, speaking tonight. Yakkety-yak. In fact, if you’re the last-minute type, you might want to attend the Politics and Media Conference at The Riley Institute at Furman tonight. I’m on a panel with some media types, followed by another panel with Bob Inglis and Vincent Sheheen. In fact, I’d better run if I’m going to get up there (no Virtual Front Page today, I’m afraid). They’ll feed me if I get there in time. But before I go, about this morning’s appearance…

Kelly Payne, the former state superintendent of education candidate who teaches a “Current Issues” class at Dutch Fork High School, is one of those… intense kinds of teachers you may remember from your own schooldays. A teacher with certain expectations. I remember them, because slackers like me tended to run afoul of them sometimes.

Anyway, Kelly asked me to come out today for a second time to speak to her class, so I guess it went OK the first time. I wanted to go straight to questions and answers, knowing the kids would have questions (I prefer that as a speaker; I don’t have to think as hard), but she asked me to talk for a few minutes first about “SC Politics,” so I started speaking nonstop about why we’re so different, why people say “there’s the South, there’s the Deep South, and there’s South Carolina,” starting with Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper and John Locke and the colonial period an The War and what followed, generally explaining to them in FAR more detail than they want to know why we have some of the problems we have, and why we are SO resistant to changing that fact, and…

… once they were good and glassy-eyed, I asked them to throw their questions at me. Because I knew they had some. In most high school classes I’ve spoken to (admittedly, I don’t do it often; I generally shy away from anything earlier than post-grad, because there’s only so much of that bored-kids look you can take), you can wait awhile for a question.

But not Kelly Payne’s class — because of what I said about intensity, and expectations and such.

I knew there were questions because they were printed out on the lectern in front of me, pages of them, with kids’ names attached. They were to ask them in order. So we got started. Unfortunately, the 90-minute class was over before we could get to all of them. In fact, we only got to the first eight. I like to give thorough answers. Anyway, here are ALL the questions, since they bothered to compile them:

Hailey
1. Explain the difficulties you’ve experienced in transitioning from being a full-time journalist to your current activities.
Horace
2. Since you were last here the media hasn’t made much progress in gaining the public trust. What will it take for it to improve at doing so?
Venisha
3. When you were an editor at the paper, did you have other editors to check your grammar and spelling to keep you from making mistakes?
Hannah Jane
4. How significant a factor are your feelings about a topic when you write a story? If you’re really angry or really happy about a topic do those emotions impair your objectivity?
Jaquarius
5. How can social media be an effective tool in reporting? What social media platforms do you use (e.g., texting, Twitter, Facebook) to deliver news content?
Ruby
6. What do you miss most about your old job at the paper?
Eric
7. Do blogs really move public opinion or do they just provide “some fun” for people in the Echo Chamber to take anonymous shots? Is there any way to assure a little more fairness in blogs?
Taylor
8. What do you think about requiring public officials who hire bloggers to shill for them to disclose those relationships in order to improve transparency and increase public trust?
Katherine
9. If elected officials make blog comments hiding behind assumed names, wouldn’t the publics’ interest in transparency and its desire for more civil conversation be better met by calling on those public officials to “man-up,” take ownership of their comments, and stop hiding behind assumed names?
Kelsi
10. How do you rationalize disagreements between your religious convictions and
your political beliefs? (i.e., gay rights)
Marshall
11. What should the response of the United States be to Gadahfi’s suppression of his own people?
Taylor
12. You’ve criticized the Governor for her appointment on the USC Board of Trustees. Please explain why you don’t believe that election outcomes matter.
Katherine
13. You seem very focused on the need for the Governor and her team to guard against “gender politics” yet your profession admonishes society on the need to be “gender sensitive.” Please explain this dichotomy.
Kelsi
14. Eleanor Kitzman recently spoke to our class and we loved her. Why do you criticize her for defending the Governor’s honor and performance given the Governor selected her for that position?
Lexie
15. Why do you think being loyal to the Governor makes Eleanor Kitzman disloyal to the other four Budget & Control Board members?
Shaun
16. The Governor has talked about more transparency with legislative votes and the Treasurer has talked about “calendar transparency.” Which of these ideas do you think is the most sophomoric?
Christian
17. Given that Senator Sheheen and the Governor are about the same age, why is he more appealing to young people?
Kenneth
18. What do you think should be done to keep deep pockets from having an excessive influence on election outcomes? (i.e., Bloomberg, Schumer, candidates supported by Howard Rich, etc.)
Christie
19. How soon do you think it will be before we see meaningful restructuring in state government?
Ben
20. Which of our Constitutional Officers would it make more sense to appoint? Explain your reasons.
Hailey
21. What’s your opinion of eliminating the Budget & Control Board and replacing it with a Department of Administration reporting to the Governor?
Andrew
22. Give the best reason to support and the best reason to oppose the Voter ID Bill?
Kenneth
23. Please explain the post you recently wrote on daylight savings time.
Evan
24. What is the legacy you hope to leave?
25. What do you think about paying teachers based on classroom outcomes?
26. Why are the two major political parties so segregated along racial lines?
27. How can South Carolina Republicans be so diverse as to have elected two Republican Senators that are so different in their ideology? (Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint….earmarks)
28. I’m optimistic about the next generation of public servants — my fellow classmates and me– who will soon by making decisions that impact our daily lives. What advice can you give us as we move in this direction?

Frankly, with that many questions, I could have talked for a month. But it was great. Been pressed for time, I was really antsy this morning about all I had to do, and ran late and got lost (turns out that Kelly Payne doesn’t teach at Dutch Fork Middle School, which I went to first — they have a nice office — even though I’d been to the right place previously), and I was rattled.

But driving away, I felt nice and relaxed. Ninety minutes of high-speed, non-stop, stream-of-consciousness talking does that for me. It probably doesn’t do all that much for the people listening (so it’s nice when they HAVE to sit there and listen, or get a flunking grade), but I find it… calming. Probably why Freud was such a hit back in the day.

If I don’t hit the road, they won’t feed me in Greenville. As Vincent Sheheen’s Uncle Bob always used to say to bring interviews to a sudden stop: Gottagobye.

And yes, that IS a picture of me, speaking to the class last year, in the upper left-hand corner. Kelly's like that. Very thorough.

Graham’s modest proposal: Let’s be as bold as the French

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This just in from our senior U.S. senator:

Graham Presses Obama Administration to Establish Libyan No-Fly Zone

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement on the establishment of a No-Fly zone over Libya and what United States inaction means for our own national security.  Graham is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“One test in foreign policy – at least be as bold as the French.  Unfortunately, when it comes to Libya we’re failing that test.

“The French and British are right to call for a no-fly zone over Libya, and they are correct to recognize the forces opposing Gaddafi.  I’m very disappointed by the indecisiveness of the Administration in the face of tyranny.  They are allowing the cries of the Libyan people to fall on deaf ears.

“Allowing Gaddafi to regain control over Libya through force – without any meaningful effort to support the Libyan people – will create grave consequences for our own national security.

“The biggest winner of an indecisive America refusing to stand up to dictators who kill their own people, will be the Iranian regime.  The Iranian regime has already used force against their own people when they demanded freedom.  If we allow Gaddafi to regain power through force of arms, it is inconceivable to me that the Iranians will ever take our efforts to control their nuclear desires seriously.

“The world is watching, and time is beginning to run short.  The Obama Administration should join with the international community to form a no-fly zone while it still matters.

“Then-Senator Obama relished the opportunity to label Iraq as President Bush’s war.  If he does not act decisively in Libya, I believe history will show that the Obama Administration owned the results of the Gaddafi regime from 2011 forward.

“Their refusal to act will go down as one of the great mistakes in American foreign policy history, and will have dire consequences for our own national security in the years to come.  I truly fear the decisions they are making today will come back to haunt us.”

#####

Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought the other day, when I saw that the French and the Brits were taking the lead on trying to coordinate an international response to try to stop Qaddafi from continuing to kick the stuffing out of the Libyan people who have risked their lives to fight our enemy for us (and, of course, for themselves and their country).

I don’t know what the right thing to do is — such things are complex — but the no-fly zone certainly seems like a measured response that would carry some likelihood of doing good. Unlike, say, boots on the ground, which Sen. Graham draws the line at.

Let’s get our money down, now: Who will be the first to criticize the senator’s common-sense assertion? An antiwar liberal Democrat, or one of those extremists in his own party who are pleased to trash the “RINO” at every opportunity. Cue the Jeopardy music…

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

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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.

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

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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.

Obama: Ready To Tap Oil Reserve If Needed — which it ISN’T, not by a long shot

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The president at this afternoon's presser. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Well, gasoline prices are rising toward levels that might, just might, cause some of us to face reality and acknowledge that it’s not a good idea at all to be so desperately dependent on cheap oil from crazy-dangerous parts of the world, and what are our elected leaders — Democrats and Republicans — doing?

Why, what they always do — pandering. But there’s pandering, and then there’s pandering.

The GOP is busily blaming Barack “Root of All Evil” Obama. The president himself is responding by saying, at a press conference today, that he’s prepared to tap the strategic oil reserve, if needed.

But that last part is key, and his way out as a rational man. It’s like his promise to “start” withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by a certain date, which in no way commits him to draw down dangerously before it’s wise to do so. Obama’s smart; he’s not going to pander so far that he commits himself to something irresponsible. This is a quality that he has demonstrated time and again, and which has greatly reassured me ever since he beat my (slightly) preferred candidate for the presidency. This is the quality — or one of them — that made me glad to say so often, back in 2008, that for the first time in my editorial career, both major-party candidates for president were ones I felt good about (and both of whom we endorsed, in their respective primaries).

It’s certainly more defensible than Mr. Boehner’s reflexive partisan bashing. And it’s WAY more defensible than Al “Friend of the Earth” Gore asking Bill Clinton to tap the reserve to help him win the 2000 election.

To quote from the report I just saw on the NPR site:

Obama said he’s prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed. But as gas prices climbed toward $4 a gallon, the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.

“We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now. Every few years gas prices go up, politicians pull out the same political playbook, and nothing changes,” Obama said.

“I don’t want to leave this to the next president,” he said.

Some in Congress have been calling on Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And the president made clear Friday that that was an option, although he indicated he wasn’t yet prepared to exercise it. He declined to specify the conditions that would trigger the step, but said it was teed up and could happen quickly if he chooses to call for it….

His threshold, based on what he said, is a Hurricane Katrina, or worse. Personally, I’d raise the bar a bit higher than that, but he’s on the right track, trying to set a high standard. (You make a disruption like Katrina the standard, then next thing you know, you’re tempted to lower it to, say, a BP oil spill — and that’s not the direction you want to go in.)

The key word here is “strategic,” a threshold that I would think wouldn’t be crossed until we have a sustained inability to GET oil to power our economy — something we came close to, in spots, in recent crises. But it seems to me one only turns to such “strategic” options as a last resort. The president should be “prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed” in the same sense he is expected to be prepared to crack open the “football” and activate the codes for going nuclear. OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get where I’m going with this. It’s something we hope and pray never happens, and we do our best to pursue policies that avoid such an eventuality.

By the way, back to that excerpt above. I particularly love “the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.” Earlier today, I disparaged the president for being no Energy Party man. (I was essentially repeating an observation I made about both him and McCain in a July 6, 2008, column.)

But maybe I was wrong. If he keeps saying things like that, he may deserve the Energy nomination in 2012 after all.

They’re not blaming the earthquake on Obama (yet), but…

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The bitter little joke I made earlier about FoxNews not having blamed the earthquake off Japan on President Obama was meant to be funny, but…

This morning, I saw this Tweet:

FrumForum

@FrumForumFrumForum

Boehner Blames Obama for Energy Costs: GOP: Obama to Blame for Higher Energy Costs http://bit.ly/f1cYtQ #tcot

What are you gonna do with people like that?

Of course, he’s got half of a point:

“They’ve canceled new leases for exploration, jeopardized our nuclear energy industry, and imposed a de facto moratorium on future drilling in our country. They’ve even pushed a cap-and-trade energy tax that the president himself admitted would cause the price of energy to skyrocket,” Boehner said.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the administration and congressional Democrats for what they perceive to be a lackluster response to the rapidly rising cost of oil.

… but half a point, in the hands of partisan ideologues, is a very dangerous thing.

I say “half a point” because the president is no more an Energy Party man than the speaker is. Both of them only see the half that their respective ideologies allow. Boehner is for drilling, domestic exploration, nuclear energy and the like. Obama is for alternative energy sources, conservation, and other “green” initiatives. When the truth is, we need to do ALL of those things, and more, to achieve the critically important (economically and strategically) goal of energy independence.

Yet another way that our two-party system prevents our leaders from even considering real, comprehensive solutions to compelling national problems. Which is another reason we MUST not allow them to further strengthen their death grip on our electoral system.

One other thing: I allowed this comment from our persistent gadfly Steven/Michael/Fred/Luke/etc. earlier today:

… so that I could say this: You’re absolutely correct. But callin’ it business as usual don’t make it right, boss. It just makes it twice as wrong.

Vote UnParty.

SC political party does an appalling thing (surprise, surprise!)

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All day, I’ve been trying to find time to fulminate about this, which I learned from Twitter this morning:

State GOP goes to court to close SC primaries

GREENVILLE, SC (AP) – South Carolina Republicans hope a federal judge will set the stage for closed primaries that require voters to register by party.

The Greenville Republican Party and state GOP are pushing for the legal ruling at a Thursday hearing in a Greenville federal courtroom.

A ruling there could change South Carolina’s taxpayer-funded presidential, state and local primaries.

South Carolina’s attorney general has asked that the case be dismissed.

It is also opposed by the Columbia Tea Party, members of the state Legislative Black Caucus, the Independence Party of South Carolina and IndependentVoting.org.

Oh, and before my liberal friends counter that Once again, you’re forcing a false nonpartisan parity by refusing to recognize that only those awful Republicans would do such a thing, and Democrats never would, allow me to remind you that leading Democrats tried to do this very thing (although a different way) in 2006, by requiring that anyone voting in the presidential primary here had to swear to being a Democrat. (Then-chairman Joe Erwin heroically stepped in at the very last minute to stop it, to his everlasting credit.)

At least with the Republicans, it sort of makes a twisted kind of sense for them to try to close primaries, since they see it to their advantage as the majority party. For the Democrats, with their dwindling ranks, it made NO sense to bar independents such as myself from voting in a Democratic primary. Golly, who knows — they might get into the habit!

Anyway… I haven’t seen yet what happened in court today. But this is one time that I’m rooting for the Tea Party (if I understand it rightly and they are opposing the GOP on this — it was a little hard to tell from that brief item; the wording was sketchy.)

You know what I think? I think we ought to do like Louisiana, and let everybody vote in a single primary that candidates of all parties (and nonparties) vote in. That way the citizens, rather than parties, get to decide which two candidates they’ll be choosing from in the fall. When the UnParty takes over, that’s the way it will be here.

UPDATE:

Arguments were heard today, but the judge apparently hasn’t decided the case yet. The update was as sketchy as the original item, unfortunately. I’m hoping to see something more complete, because this deserves a MUCH wider airing.

Yep, I was right — half right, anyway

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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.

Breathtaking euphemism: Cutting health care payments in SC

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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.