Category Archives: Priorities

Anyone see a good rundown of what Sanford vetoed?

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In the last few days, I’ve run links to a story in The State and another in the Post and Courier giving the 30,000-foot view of Gov. Sanford’s budget line-item vetoes, with all the quotes about political philosophy, descriptions of the state of the political relationship between the governor and lawmakers (somewhat better than in past years, you may be surprised to learn), and rehashes of just how much the governor hates the federal stimulus and is looking forward to saying “I told you so” when the money runs out.

What I have not seen is a good rundown of what he was cutting. And boy, am I missing having Cindi Scoppe working for me. Give her a couple of days of communing with the budget document (which might as well be written in Greek for all the good it does me), and she’d tell me everything I needed to know about it. When it comes to writing about the budget, to paraphrase Blanche Dubois,I have always depended on the kindness of… people who know how to read that stuff.

But a number of things have caused me to wonder in the last couple of days.

For instance:

  • The consternation I picked up on over at ETV studios over the massive cut to their budget. ($5.2 million — that detail was in the P&C report)
  • The call I got from someone yesterday whose girlfriend works at the State Museum, and she was worried because the governor had vetoed the museum’s entire appropriation (which would shut it down if not overridden).
  • An e-mail I got saying the same about the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum. (I say, is nothin’ sacred?) This appears to be part of the governor’s elimination of the entire appropriation for the Budget and Control Board.

To quote from that last:

Yesterday Governor Sanford vetoed the Board’s entire $25.2 million General Fund appropriation for the Budget and Control Board for next year.  This section of the budget includes the entire General Fund operating budget for the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.  If this veto is not overridden, the museum will have to cease operations.
In his veto message to the General Assembly, the Governor stated that he was taking this action because the “Board has sufficient carry-forward and other funds to maintain its operations in this fiscal year.”  This is not correct.  There are not sufficient funds to make up the $25.2 General Fund cut to the Board, which includes $765,000 for the museum.
This veto represents the greatest threat the museum has faced in our 114 years of existence.  If this veto is not overridden we will no longer be able to preserve South Carolina’s proud military legacy.

Now one can have all sorts of debates as to the relative importance of the museum formerly known simply as the Confederate Relic Room (although I can tell you from having visited that it’s much more now), but what’s bugging me is that, with the vote coming up Tuesday, I just don’t have a clear idea of WHAT all is at stake.

Do any of y’all? And if so, please share.

If I were endorsing, I’d endorse Vincent Sheheen

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Ignore what I wrote in that last post. It does Vincent Sheheen a great disservice, by suggesting the reason to pick a Democratic ballot and vote for him tomorrow is simply because of the mere absence of negativity in his campaign.

He deserves a much more positive endorsement than that, for the simple reason that he is far and away the best candidate running for governor in 2010, a year in which we badly need new and visionary leadership in the governor’s office.

Of course, I put myself in a bind a couple of months back, when I sorta kinda decided not to endorse candidates as a blogger. I had all sorts of good reasons not to: No one was paying me to take all that aggravation. No longer representing the voice of the state’s largest newspaper (at least, that’s what it was when I was there), I had no institutional obligation to do it. And while doing it for the newspaper was business, if I did it on my own blog it would be personal, with all the many levels of messiness that entails. Then there was the unstated reason: For the first time ever, I found myself in a situation in which there would be a personal cost of sticking my neck out. A year’s unemployment had shown me how reluctant employers can be to take on someone with as much well-documented baggage as I have (much of it from having taking a stand FOR this powerful person, and AGAINST that one). And I was about to start trying to sell advertising, with the only thing I had to sell being my own brand and how it was perceived — and there is no surer, more infallible way to infuriate close to 50 percent of the public than to choose one candidate over another. Did I not owe it to my family to try to launch this enterprise on a sound footing, and not undermine it by making arrogant (at least, that’s how a lot of people perceive endorsements) pronouncements that would inevitably alienate? After all, I could be honest about what I think about candidates without taking that formal, irrevocable step.

Lots of good, solid, self-interested reasons not to endorse, right?

Well… sometimes one must stand up and be counted, even when one is not being paid to do so. Remember how, when Grace Kelly demanded to know why Gary Cooper had to make a suicidal stand against Frank Miller and his thugs when he wasn’t the marshal any more, he explained “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.“? Full of nuance, that Gary Cooper. Anyway, this is an “I just gotta” moment for me, minus the gunplay (we hope).  There are things more important than my own self-interest, or the good of the blog. One of them is South Carolina’s crying need for new leadership at this point in its history.

Ours is still a poor state. On all sorts of measurements of economic and social and physical well-being, from income to health, we continue to be last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. We continue to have a political culture, and institutional structure, that reinforces that dynamic, and resists change more steadfastly than the government of any other state. Our government was designed by landed slaveholders to preserve the status quo, because that’s what benefited them. Those men are all gone, but the system of government designed to serve them still exists, and holds us back.

We are also held back by a lack of trust of each other, and a lack of faith in the idea that together, we can overcome the challenges that face us. This manifests itself in the phenomenon we see being played out so dramatically in the Republican primary this year, as the candidates — even candidates I would think would know better — compete to see who can be the most negative, the most rabidly anti-government. What does it mean to be anti-government, in this context? It means to deny faith in our ability to get together, people of different attitudes and philosophies, and work through our differences to build a better future to share.

The radical individualism that all of the Republican candidates embody this year — especially Nikki Haley, the front-runner — has been tried in South Carolina, over and over. Our current governor, Mark Sanford, is easily the most ideologically pure manifestation of that philosophy ever to hold that office.

It is painfully clear after eight years of Mark Sanford — whom I enthusiastically endorsed in 2002 — that such an “I, me, mine” approach to governance does not work. One cannot govern effectively when one holds governing in contempt. That should have been obvious then. It’s certainly obvious now.

Vincent Sheheen offers the positive alternative. Not the “big-government, liberal” alternative that the propagandists of the GOP will accuse him of offering (not because of anything he advocates, but because that is their reflexive, automatic reaction to everything), but a sensible, moderate South Carolina-friendly approach unencumbered by radical ideology of any kind. Before he began this campaign, he was pushing his own proposal for restructuring our government to make it effective and accountable for a change. It is a pragmatic approach that would actually have a chance of becoming law if a governor were behind it. Rather than throwing unacceptable ultimatums at the Legislature and reveling in lawmakers’ rejection, Vincent Sheheen would actually work with lawmakers of both parties (he has a proven ability to do so) to make his proposal a reality. Instead of a governor who can’t even work with his own party and doesn’t want to, imagine how wonderful it would be to have one who works amicably with both?

Now, many of these same things can also be said of Jim Rex. He, too, has a positive, teamwork approach. He’s worked across party lines in advancing his public school choice initiatives, and has formed alliances with some of the most conservative Republicans in trying to improve the way schools are funded in South Carolina. But, because it’s been his job, his policy experience in office has been limited to education. And while better education may be the thing South Carolina needs most, it’s not the only thing; Vincent Sheheen’s experience with public policy is broader, despite his youth.

And in this election, when we have such a need for new beginnings, his youth is an advantage.

That I would say that would surprise some people who have worked most closely with me. I was the grumpy eminence grise on the editorial board who would ask a young candidate, “How old ARE you, anyway?” with a tone that suggested they hadn’t lived enough to be ready for the office they were seeking.

But it’s time now for a generational change. And among the 39-year-old Sheheen’s strengths is the fact that he offers us that.

An old friend, sensing I was leaning that way — because I’ve been honest about what I think of candidates, however much I’ve resisted a formal endorsement — asked me several weeks ago why I would choose Vincent over Jim. I answered as follows, after protesting that I was not, repeat, NOT going to endorse:

Now between you and me, I’d go with Vincent. So you inferred correctly.

Several reasons:
1. You know that with me, it’s seldom about the sum of policy positions. I would be hard-pressed to tell you [off the top of my head] what their policy positions are, beyond the fact that nothing has jumped out at me as bad. Rex has a plan for spending cigarette tax money that I’m not sure about, and I know Vincent’s all about restructuring, to cite a couple of differences that jump to mind. And the restructuring is a biggie.
2. So that leaves us with character, and I think the character of both is fine. But I’ve seen Vincent grow during this campaign in terms of his ability to connect with voters, while Rex is still that trustworty elder statesman who I’d be OK with as governor, but who isn’t likely to inspire. Vincent generates a newness, a sense of a new generation taking over from all the nonsense of the past, that is appealing. And he wears it well; he has his head on straight.
3. Vincent could work with the Legislature. He’s one of them, and that helps make up for being a Democrat. He would come in with lawmakers knowing that about him. He could make a difference. Rex is the guy that they’re accustomed to thinking of as “that ONE statewide Democrat,” and they just won’t be as likely to want to engage with him.
4. Vincent could win in November. Normally I wouldn’t mention that, but this year it’s important. The Republicans are all running so hard to the right, trying so hard to convince us that, in varying ways, they will be Mark Sanfords — even Henry, who should know better — that this year I just don’t see anything good coming out of any of them becoming governor. We so desperately need a break from what we have. And that makes it vitally important that the Democratic nominee not only be someone who’d be an improvement over what we have, but who could WIN in the face of the odds, which are always against the Democrat.

Let me stress again the generational factor. South Carolina needs a fresh start, a real break with its recent past. Vincent embodies that the best. This is a decision I’ve come to gradually, in my own holistic, intuitive way, but I’ve tried to spell it out as systematically as I can for you.

To elaborate on that: Rex radiates the aura of a civic-minded retired guy who’s willing to “give back” if there’s no one else to do the job. Vincent wants to build a better South Carolina, the one that he and his young children will live in. Makes a difference.

It occurs to me that I do my readers a disservice by sharing those thoughts privately with one friend, but not openly with them. So there it is. It may seem to be high on intangibles and low on specifics, but that’s because I had already reached the conclusions that on the specifics, I’ve concluded that Vincent is sound. That makes the intangibles — the ability to inspire, the ability to be positive rather than negative — of great importance. We didn’t worry about the intangibles (such as his aloof manner, his sleep-on-the-futon quirkiness, his hermitlike aversion to the company of other Republicans) with Mark Sanford, and look where it got us.

As I’ve explained before, none of the Republicans is offering us anything positive for our future. That puts me in the unaccustomed position of not having a preferred candidate on that side. But there is no doubt that there is a Democrat who stands well above them all, as well as being a stronger candidate than any in his own party.

That candidate is Vincent Sheheen.

At least, that would be what I’d say if I were endorsing.

Anton Gunn, SC Policy Council in agreement

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Just thought I should make note of this alignment of the planets.

Remember how I reported, two days ago, that the S.C. Policy Council was actually advocating for government spending? Well, actually, they were griping about the House and Senate increasing their own budgets while making cuts to worthwhile programs, but still: The Policy Council acknowledging any government spending as worthwhile? It was news.

Well, according to a release I got from him this morning, Anton Gunn is in complete agreement with the Policy Council, and NOT just about the idea that some government spending is worthwhile. He was also with them in getting on the House and Senate for spending on themselves:

The House and Senate Conference Committee has agreed on a $5 billion budget plan that drastically cuts public education, eliminates 74 state jobs and 1,700 jobs in local school districts. The budget also enacts major cuts to rural hospitals and health centers, while reducing access to prescription drugs for poor and disabled children. The budget plan makes drastic cuts to major state agencies yet the proposal also adds $3 million and $7 million to the House & Senate operating budgets.

Rep. Gunn said, “I think it’s immoral to force teachers into layoffs and deny disabled children access to medications but at the same time pad your own budget with extra money.  This budget plan is going in the wrong direction. We need to fix this mess.”

Mind you, this is the same Anton Gunn whom TEA Party fan Sheri Few decries as a socialist.

SC Policy Council advocates spending (in other news, a cold snap in Hades)

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Did a double-take when I read this on The Nerve, the S.C. Policy Council’s online publication that exists to tell us how awful government is:

Although S.C. Senate and House members apparently think nothing of giving their respective chambers a combined $5.4 million budget hike next fiscal year, their fiscal generosity hasn’t extended to victims of domestic violence or drunken driving.

As part of their proposed state budgets for fiscal year 2010-11, which starts July 1, both chambers would eliminate all general funding for prosecution programs for first-offense criminal domestic violence (CDV) and driving-under-the-influence (DUI) cases in the state’s magistrate courts, where most of those cases are heard.

The proposed budget hikes for the House and Senate chambers would more than pay for those programs….

Yep, the S.C. Policy Council is propagating something that at least implies that not spending on a government program is a bad thing.

Even more startling, the piece implies that federal stimulus funds served a useful purpose:

No general funds were appropriated for the programs this fiscal year, though the CDV program received $1.6 million in federal stimulus money, said William Bilton, executive director of the S.C. Commission on Prosecution Coordination, which disperses program money to the state’s 16 judicial circuits. He said his office plans to apply for the same amount of stimulus money for next fiscal year.

“When that runs out, it’s back to square one,” Bilton told The Nerve last week….

I hereby put the area’s animal hospitals on notice: They’re likely to get a rash of cases of dogs coming in with man bites.

Now, to be serious: I agree with the Policy Council that these programs should be funded. Whether it was a bad thing that the House and Senate budgets were increased, I don’t know. The piece, which made the case very well for spending on CDV, didn’t actually explain what the increases in the legislative budgets were for. I assume that if I did know, I’d still agree that the CDV program was a higher priority. But I’m still curious what the case, if any, would be for the legislative spending.

Nicholas Kristof is a traitor to his gender, God bless him

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My wife called my attention to this Nicholas Kristof column the other day. In describing it, she said Kristof had gotten fed up with an unpleasant truth about why aid efforts in poor areas of the world fail to save children: Their fathers blow what little money they earn on booze and prostitutes.

I just got around to reading it a few minutes ago. I expected a rant, an angry diatribe using the kind of slashing language that, well, that I tend to use when I’m fed up about something.

But no, Mr. Kristof was as carefully rational as ever. If anything, I think he undersold his point by being so mild about it. An excerpt:

… Look, I don’t want to be an unctuous party-pooper. But I’ve seen too many children dying of malaria for want of a bed net that the father tells me is unaffordable, even as he spends larger sums on liquor. If we want Mr. Obamza’s children to get an education and sleep under a bed net — well, the simplest option is for their dad to spend fewer evenings in the bar.

Because there’s mounting evidence that mothers are more likely than fathers to spend money educating their kids, one solution is to give women more control over purse strings and more legal title to assets. Some aid groups and U.N. agencies are working on that…

This tracks with what folks who give microloans to the poor in backwards parts of the world have learned: That if they want the loans to go to better the family’s plight, they need to lend the money to the mothers.

Nicholas Kristof, who uses his own bully pulpit to keep us mindful of the plight of the world’s least fortunate — and in doing so shows no respect for the orthodoxies of left or right — has now blown the whistle on guys everywhere. The man is a traitor to his gender. And God bless him for it.

Chief Tandy Carter fired, just like that

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Sometimes things actually do move swiftly in Colatown:

Embattled Columbia Police Chief Tandy Carter was fired this morning, following tensions with City Council over the handling of the April 21 car accident involving Columbia Mayor-elect Steve Benjamin.

Carter held a news conference at police headquarters just before noon today, insisting he acted within the scope of the law — and his personal code of ethics.

“I am a professional police chief,” Carter said. “I am not a puppet police chief.”

Well, now he’s not ANY kind of police chief.

I’m still sort of reeling over this. Tandy Carter was a good police chief. And then, in a situation in which it seemed OBVIOUS that the thing to do was bring in another agency, he dug in his heels and got all defensive. And I just don’t understand that.

I was thinking about it over the weekend, and wondering. When someone says, as I have since the start, that he should call in another agency on the Benjamin wreck, does he actually think that we’re saying we don’t trust him? That’s certainly not what I meant to say. I trusted him completely. But, not having been born yesterday, I clearly understood this as a situation in which lots of OTHER people wouldn’t trust him on it (you who read this blog regularly may have noticed that there are a few cynical people out there when it comes to their views of public officials). And there was no way he needed that heat, or Columbia needed the controversy.

This situation got crazy and went bad fast.

I’m still sort of spinning.

Out of pocket

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Wrote this last night, but saved it in draft form, as I was too spacey to know whether I was making any sense:

Here’s why I haven’t posted today, and probably won’t tomorrow…

Things have been crazy at our house later because we’ve been trying to get our house ready to go on the market (anybody want to buy a house, by the way?). In the midst of all that, my wife — who’s been working on this project pretty much around the clock (around her job), with me trailing along in her wake being occasionally helpful — got some kind of horrible stomach bug last week. Not the flu, but it might as well have been. Wiped her out for most of a week, but she kept going.

Over the weekend, one of the twins got a mild case of it, but quickly recovered. Then yesterday, the other twin got it, and so did her mother, my daughter. My wife went over to try to help with all that last night, leaving me alone to work on a list of things to get ready for the fact that today, a Realtor was planning to show our house.

So I put some stuff on the stove to cook for my dinner, and went upstairs to do some of the things on my punch list. Then, I drifted over to the laptop and started a long response to some of y’all’s comments, and then… the smoke alarm went off downstairs. I had totally lost track of time, and hadn’t heard the kitchen timer go off, and a pot of field peas had run out of water.

The house was immediately, before I could get downstairs and get the pot out into the yard, saturated with smoke. I spent the next three or four hours with the attic fan on and all the doors open, wiping down every surface in the kitchen and cleaning out the hood vent, trying to get rid of the smell. My wife, who had planned to spend the night at my daughter’s house to look after sick folk, came home to help me deal with the mess. I was feeling pretty sheepish by then, I can tell you.

Right after she got home — well after 10 — my son-in-law called to say my daughter had gotten so much sicker that he was going to take her to the hospital. (I won’t go into detail, but she really needed some fluids by IV, and other complications addressed.) He woke up their big sister to watch the twins until I could get there. He ended up spending the night at the hospital and so did my wife. The staff was badly overwhelmed, so the smart thing was for a healthy family member or two to be there.

I spent the night on the couch at the twins’ house. They were fine, although I didn’t sleep much. Then today, I took care of them all day except for a couple of hours in which I grabbed a late breakfast, did some last-minute work on the house, noted with satisfaction that most of the smoke smell was gone, and just to be on the safe side put a frozen apple pie in the oven to get a pleasant smell going (crafty, huh?). And yes, I turned off the oven when it was done.

Then I went back to take care of the twins until about an hour ago, then came home and put some dinner on the stove. It’s cooking now. And yes, this time, I have the laptop in the kitchen. My wife’s spending the night in the hospital with my daughter (who still isn’t in a regular room), my son-in-law is with the babies, and I’m going to cop some Zs at home before going back to take care of the babies in the morning.

It’s 11:12 p.m. My dinner is ready.

Don’t expect me to post tomorrow.

To the most important point: My daughter is better, just not better enough to go home. She was really, really sick.

Since I wrote the above, the night has passed without incident — except that my youngest daughter, the ballet dancer, injured her foot last night and it looks like she might not be able to perform Saturday, which we were looking forward to. Her big sister is still in the hospital, the twins are in the care of my son-in-law, and I’m going to try to get some freelance work done this afternoon. Still probably won’t post before tonight, if then…

What were Richland council members doing in China?

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OK, now that it’s been two weeks since this was in the paper:

With four members on their way home from China, one under the weather and a sixth with a scheduling conflict, Richland County Council couldn’t hold its regular meeting Tuesday.

Chairman Paul Livingston said he couldn’t remember another instance in his 19 years on the council when a meeting was canceled because not enough members showed up.

Absent were Joyce Dickerson, Norman Jackson, Damon Jeter and Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy. They went on a nine-day trip to China with the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce.

Councilman Jim Manning called in sick and Kelvin Washington had to work, Livingston said.

“I know folks can sometimes have a legitimate reason for not attending,” the chairman said, “but, still, it’s embarrassing not to have a quorum.”

After waiting about 20 minutes, he canceled the meeting. The 211-page agenda listed 40 items of business.

… I’ll go ahead and ask the question: What were these four council members (one of whom was voted out of office for an unjustifiable junket to Hawaiit, but was inexplicably returned to the council by voters in the last election) doing in China?

Anybody who knows the answer, please speak up. Maybe the explanation has been published somewhere, and I missed it.

Who CARES whether the balloon thing was a “hoax?”

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You may have noticed that I did not write about the famous missing balloon boy when he was allegedly aloft — or when he was “missing,” or when he was “found.”

That’s because it never struck me as real news (and also because, since I don’t watch TV news and God is merciful, I missed most of it). It was not anything about which you or I needed to make a decision as a voter or a citizen. It did not give any of us “news you can use” — seriously, how many of the suckers who watched that “drama” unfold on the telly took away any useful, cautionary information from it? (“Hey, Martha, before we cut loose that helium-filled balloon in the backyard, let’s make sure none of those pesky neighborhood kids have crawled into it. Boy, am I glad I saw THIS!”)

Yes, weird occurrences are a legitimate (although lesser) form of news. And in a saner day, before 24/7 TV “news,” before “news” outlets maintained small air forces in such markets as Los Angeles, ready to go aloft and stay aloft in a tacky modern mockery of the Strategic Air Command’s mission in the Cold War, all in the mad pursuit of live, but meaningless, video (the O.J. Simpson “chase” being the definitive example of such “news” that told us exactly nothing that we needed to know), such a tale would have been reported — once the facts were in. You might read a news feature on a boy’s terrifying drift into the Wild Blue, if he turned out to have been on board. You might even read of how law enforcement was taken in by a crazy story, as you are now doing. But you would not have had breathless live, real-time coverage of what turned out to be nothing. Or perhaps I’m idealizing a better time that wasn’t really better. Perhaps. (“Why, back in my day we didn’t know when our kids drifted off in balloons, and we LIKED it!…”)

The 24/7 TV “news” culture and its twin, “reality” TV, created the Heenes. People like them could not exist in a world without those media forms. And that same culture, by the way, has infected the “serious news” of politics. Otherwise, the Joe Wilson “You lie!” story would have ended with his apology that night. But instead, his supposed “defiance” went viral, and he pulled in $2.7 million (so far), which made him a whole lot less sorry. And thus another media monster was created.

By all means, charge the Heenes with a crime. But remember that from the beginning, this was a bogus story, whether the Heenes were lying or not.

Go co-op, or remain a lone gunman?

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Back on this post, remy enlarged upon the subject of participation on the blog with this perfectly good suggestion:

Perhaps you should broaden your blog to include entries from others (eg. some of your former colleagues…those who are employed, but would like having a forum without the hassle of creating their own blog (the blogsphere is already splintered enough) and those who are still looking for gainful employment).
It might expand the dialog, and perhaps bring even more readers (who will comment). More readers may lead to an interest from advertisers…

And then I answered him at such length that I decided to make it a separate post:

I’ve thought about it (having co-authors), but I always run into several objections, aside from my own inertia…

– First, my whole orientation toward blogging is toward the personal blog, both as a writer and as a reader. Those co-op blogs out there don’t do much for me. I like a consistent voice, a particular person whom I can picture (at least, in an abstract sort of way, not like actually picturing a face or something) when I read their thoughts. Otherwise, I have that sense of dislocation I’ve gotten in reading an op-ed proof when the person doing page design absent-mindedly put the wrong sig on the column, and I read three-fourths of it, the whole time thinking “this is really a departure for Thomas Friedman,” and sure enough it turns out to be George Will, and finally things fall into place — but I feel almost like I have to read it over again with that in mind.
– (This is actually a continuation of the first bullet, but I felt it was time for a bullet) Also, when I started the blog, it was sort of an alternative form of expression to the cooperative, consensus-based process of publishing an editorial page. Even in my columns, I was very aware of being the editorial page editor and needing to be somewhat consistent with what we said in editorials (not entirely, but somewhat), and part of blogging was to be liberated from that.
– It would be a lot of work, it seems like. Coordinating something with other people is always more complex and energy-consuming than just doing something yourself as the mood strikes you. And as it stands, I always feel like I don’t devote enough to the blog to make it as good as it should be (what with job-hunting, which really IS kind of like having a job, as the cliche has it, in terms of time and energy; and family obligations and such).
– Then there’s the problem of what do I do if I really don’t like what someone has written, at my request, to contribute. No, it’s not as bad as asking someone to write an op-ed and it’s substandard when it comes in, because you’re not dealing with finite space, but still, things are going to come in that I’d prefer not to have. Say, a conventional take on an issue from either a “liberal” or “conservative” viewpoint, when I’d prefer a little outside-the-spectrum detachment, since fostering that is sort of an aim of the blog. It’s not that I have a definite idea of what should go on the blog, but I think I’d react to something from someone else that I DIDN’T want on the blog, because it didn’t have the right feel, and then what do I do? Hurt the feelings of this person who was trying to help? Or let the blog gradually become something else…
– To varying degrees, the other out-of-work journalists who want to publish online are doing so. Robert Ariail’s got his site, and so does Jeffrey Day, to name two such friends. If I started trying to line them up to join MY blog (and I’ve thought of it for the very reason you cite, that it would make it a product more attractive to advertising), I’d feel sort of like the Dan Akroyd character in “Grosse Pointe Blank” — you know, the hit man who wanted to organize all the other hit men — when I’d rather be the John Cusack character (”Loner; lone gunman — get it? That’s the whole point. I like the lifestyle, the image. Look at the way I dress.”).

Now, all of that said, I still might try to do it, but not yet — I hope to have an idea what sort of job I’ll be doing in the future pretty soon, and what I’ll be doing will have an impact on whether I blog at all, or if I do, what sort of blog it is in the future. So why get a lot of people started on something I would just have to drop?

I just listed those bullets to explain why I haven’t done it already…

… and still probably won’t. But the thought is worth airing.

Notes from the Benjamin campaign

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benjamin-notes

Quite literally…

This morning when I met with Steve Benjamin and Jack Van Loan at The Gourmet Shop, Steve started doodling on his legal pad to illustrate benjamin-notes2the problem with Columbia’s current system of government. As you may be able to better see at right in the low-res action photo from my Blackberry, he drew two boxes. The one on top showed how in the current system, forces push from every direction, and the result is you go nowhere. He was suggesting that with a strong mayor system (the box below), you can focus political energy to move forward.

Then later, he stared illustrating all sorts of other concepts. The list to the right center shows what he thinks a leader needs to do in Columbia. At the bottom is a series of questions elaborating on the building and articulating a vision things.

Anyway, always come to bradwarthen.com for the best stolen documents from political campaigns…

OK, the truth: I asked Steve for the page, and he gave it to me. I like to try all sorts of content on the blog…

As usual, Kulturkampf gets us nowhere

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The Henry Louis Gates contretemps last week was a classic case of the kind of thing I studiously ignore — the kind of thing that ideological partisans love to shout at each other about, and which make it all that much harder to constructively discuss subjects that really matter.

But I will pass on this column on the subject in the WSJ, which I thought was good. Of course, I thought it was good; its point is the same one I just made — that this was a destructive distraction. Headlined, “The Gates of Political Distraction: Obama’s mistake was falling for a culture war diversion,” it is written by the Journal‘s iconoclastic house liberal, Thomas Frank. An excerpt:

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”

“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

Frank got that right.

Indeed, the very idea that the president would waste political capital on this at a time when the country needs him to be strong on health care reform is obscene, and a tragic waste.

Netflix guilt

Like I don’t have enough things to worry about, now I’m coping with Netflix Guilt.

It goes like this:

Once, a year or so ago, I put “Bloody Sunday” onto my list, figuring I should take more interest in how the Troubles started. Somehow it wriggles its way to the top of the queue, and comes to my house. I watch a bit of it. It’s shot in a documentary style. I can pick out, early on, characters who are Not Going to Make It. They are, of course, sympathetic characters. I know they represent real people, not fiction. I know there’s nothing I can do the inevitable slide toward this brief orgy of violence. It takes me about five tries to get almost all the way through the movie, and I still haven’t accomplished it, weeks later. I feel like I don’t care enough about violence in Ireland if I don’t watch it to the end, so I haven’t sent it back.

Trying to turn away from “Bloody Sunday,” I order “The Wrestler,” which has gotten all sorts of good reviews. I start watching it. I can see why it got good reviews. Have to wonder, does Mickey Rourke’s body actually look like that, or is that fake. Can see that this character’s “arc” is not upward. Quickly get tired of the seediness, and the character’s sadness, despite early glimpses of Marisa Tomei nearly nude. Feel like I have to watch it to the end, because this is a Serious Movie.

But I don’t want to.

Hence, Netflix Guilt.

I also have “Defiance.” Should I start watching it instead, if I actually get time for movie watching tonight? And… he asks with trepidation — will I like it any better? Will it be any better than the second James Bond movie he did? And if it isn’t, will I still feel like I have to watch it because it’s about a serious historical subject? Probably.

Today’s news that matters

Lately I’ve been missing my Wall Street Journal (the subscription that the paper paid for ran out, and they wanted $299 to renew), particularly the “What’s News” feature on the front page, which provided a nice briefing each day of the news that mattered. If all I had time to do was read that, I at least was aware of everything important that had happened nationally and internationally.

It took me a while to get used to that. For years, I had thought in standard newspaper-front-page language to get my cues on what was big. There is nothing, of course, standard about the WSJ; they do things their own way. The New York Times is typical of the traditional, conventional approach, which as a newspaperman (who was once a front-page editor, many years ago) I appreciate. It’s probably meaningful to you as well, only subconsciously rather than overtly.

It works like this, in part: The most important thing that happens in the world appears in a vertical element on the far right-hand side of the page, usually, but not always, touching the top of the page. In a newspaper with a truly conservative approach such as the NYT (I’m using “conservative” in the true meaning of the word, not in the popular political sense, folks), most days that lede story (that’s the newspaper spelling for “lead,” by the way) will only have a one-column headline. That’s because most days, there is no earth-shattering news. History moves gradually, for the most part.

When the lede hed (newspaperese for headline) gets bigger than two columns, watch out. It could be good news, but it could be really bad. In any case, it’s really something.

A lede-worthy story is several things:

  1. It’s important.
  2. It’s probably interesting, but it doesn’t have to be. Quite often, the most important developments are dull, and your attention naturally drifts to other things on the page. Those highly interesting other things may be more prominently displayed on the page — toward the center top, or left-hand side — and they may have art with them (newspaperese for photos, graphics or anything that’s not plain text).
  3. It happened. It doesn’t advance something that’s going to happen (although there could be rare exceptions, such as a story that builds up to something like a presidential inauguration — but even then, something has to have happened leading toward that). It’s not a trend story — it doesn’t take a step back from the news; it is the news. It’s not analysis.

This may seem all terribly pedantic, especially as it has to do with a dying industry. It may seem like I’m providing a connossieur’s view of horses and buggies. But a lot of you out there are confirmed newspaper readers, and you probably understand these things I’m explaining instinctively. I’m talking here about you true aficionados; the people who not only take The State 7 days, but the NYT or WSJ as well. You are the people who are the most avid editorial page readers, because you are the most committed readers of the paper overall.)

Editors informed by that tradition certainly assumed you did. Buzz Merritt did. Buzz was the executive editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (now known once again merely as The Wichita Eagle) when I was its front-page editor in the mid-80s. Buzz had come up in the business at The Charlotte Observer, which was always of the traditionalist school (I don’t know if it is now or not, because I never see it). He’s the one who drilled those three qualities of a lede, and the permissible ways to present it on the page, into my head.

And Buzz explained that a lede should communicate one thing very clearly to the reader, even the casual reader, whether consciously or not: Is my world safe? Usually, the answer will be yes, at least relatively so, and your eyes will merely brush over that reassuring fact as you move on to dig into news that interests you more. For that reason the lede should often be unobtrusive, occupying the minimal space on that right-hand edge. But when you really need to sit up and take notice (the collapse of credit markets, the USSR moving missiles into Cuba) it needs to be big enough to reach out and grab you.

Most of these subtleties, of course, are lost on you if you read your newspaper online. As useful as the Web versions can be (and the NYT and WSJ are very good at adding value via the Web) that medium just hasn’t developed the same visual and organizational language to convey the same messages about what’s important today. And that’s one reason why, consciously or unconsciously, many of you still cling to your print editions.

Anyway, as an Old School newspaperman, with a traditionalist’s sense of what matters — and one who thinks some of you might be of a similar orientation — let me offer a briefing glimpse at the news that actually mattered this morning. No Britney Spears. No “Idol.” No sports (except, of course, during the World Series or the Final Four, and then just as leavening in what we call “the mix”). Just news that matters.

Here goes:

National/International

U.S. to Regulate Tobacco — A good lede candidate. It happened. It’s historically important, with extremely wide-ranging implications across the country. And it’s also interesting. (From an SC perspective, it’s another step forward on the national front while we can’t even raise our lowest-in-the-nation tax.)

Iran Votes Today — This couldn’t be the lede, because it hadn’t happened yet. But there’s nothing bigger on the horizon today, and demands prominent front-page play. Barring something huge and unexpected overshadowing it, a likely lede candidate for tomorrow (if we know anything about results).

Al Qaeda shifting Out of Pakistan — Not a lede either, but a very important trend story. Seems to have been exclusive to the NYT, although I could be wrong. (Of course, if you’re a paper that subscribes to the NYT news service, you would have had access to this in-cycle.)

TV Finally Goes Digital — This story, after the years of build-up, is pretty ho-hum. But it is happening today. And even though most folks won’t notice the difference, this is a significant milestone that affects, even if unobtrusively in most cases, technology that all of us have in our homes, and that too many of us spend too much time staring at. A small, take-note-of headline on the page.

State/Local

BEA Issues Gloomier Forecast — A good lede candidate for a South Carolina paper (and indeed, that’s how it was played in The State). You might want to run, as a sidebar, this more upbeat indicator: Lowcountry Home Sales Up. There are promising signs, and you need to keep readers apprised of them, while not sugarcoating the situation.

USC Tuition Holds to Inflation — Important consumer news, to be sure. But this also contains currents of several things of strategic importance to the state, addressing as it does economic development, the federal stimulus, the state budget cuts, and accessibility to a college education in a state in which too few adults have one.

I’ll stop there, because that’s enough for a respectable front page with most newspapers.

Anyway, if y’all like this, maybe I’ll do it more often. Like daily.

Way to go, Reggie

Sorry I haven’t posted this earlier; I haven’t been at a computer all day — and I need to run now, too. But I couldn’t let the day go by without thanking Reggie Lloyd for being a voice of sanity on the stimulus issue:

State Law Enforcement Division director Reggie Lloyd on Thursday openly disagreed with his boss — Gov. Mark Sanford — over Sanford’s plan to use federal stimulus money.

Not spending the $700 million as intended by the White House would have “devastating” consequences for state and local law enforcement agencies in South Carolina, the state’s top cop said.

An agitated Lloyd, 42, told The State newspaper in an interview before an afternoon news conference he “didn’t care” if his views get him in trouble with Sanford, who nominated him in January 2008 to lead the state’s premier investigative agency.

“I’ve thought long and hard about it; it’s not personal,” said Lloyd, a former state circuit judge and U.S. attorney for South Carolina. “My professional career has been devoted to … public safety, and I’m not going to sacrifice that for anybody. This means more to me than this job does.”

Mind you, this was Sanford’s “new broom” who went to SLED to run the agency the governor’s way. But obviously he cares more about doing the job and serving the people of South Carolina than about any sense of duty to follow the governor as he tries to lead our state over a cliff.

Halevi on chance to work with Israel

This morning, I read with particular interest the piece in the WSJ headlined, “Bibi and Barack Can Unite on Iran.” That’s because it was written by Yossi Klein Halevi, who made an impression on me when he was here to deliver the Solomon-Tenenbaum Lecture in Jewish Studies in 2002.

Here’s the main thing I remember about him: He said that he had always voted for the winner in Israeli elections. When he was feeling a little Likud, the conservative party won. When he was in more of a lefty mood, Labor won. Therefore, whatever Mr. Halevi is thinking, it’s going to come pretty close to expressing the Israeli mainstream at a given moment. I don’t know whether he voted Likud this time or not, but he speaks like a guy who still believes he has his thumb on his nation’s pulse when he writes:

The Israeli Jewish public that voted overwhelmingly for right-wing parties did so primarily for security reasons. The Israeli right of 2009 is a mood, not an ideology. And Mr. Netanyahu understands the expectations of his voters. During the election campaign, he spoke incessantly about stopping a nuclear Iran and the jihadist threat generally — not about settlement growth. However grudgingly, Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners will likely accept some limitation on settlement building. And the presence of the Labor Party in the coalition will ensure moderation on the settlement issue. Indeed, the small National Union party is the only right-wing party that places massive settlement building at the top of its agenda, and it will not be part of this coalition.

For all their differences over the nature of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, Mr. Netanyahu and Labor leader Ehud Barak have set those aside to focus on the most urgent issue facing the Middle East in the coming months: preventing the emergence of a nuclear Iran and the imposition of an irreversible blackmail on the region. Dealing with that threat will define this Likud-Labor coalition.

Mr. Halevi’s point is that Palestinian statehood and settlements aside, Israel and U.S. need to concentrate on the main strategic issue of the moment — preventing the emergence of a nuclear Iran. He sees the opportunity of working with Egypt and the Saudis, who don’t want Tehran to have that kind of clout, either. He also sees the chance to isolate Iran’s surrogates in the region by building up the economy and “civil society” in the West Bank, which “would present the Palestinians with a stark choice between their two territories: the beginnings of prosperity in a peaceful West Bank, or devastation in a jihadist Gaza.” Which makes sense.

Anyway, I recommend the piece.

Higher education funding in S.C., by the numbers

xxx
By BRAD WARTHEN
brad@bradwarthen.com


For once, let’s start off with some numbers and dates:

· 17 percent – the amount of the University of South Carolina’s funding that now comes from state appropriations. Our state’s major research universities now get less than a fifth of their funding from state appropriations. In recent years, those in the know have stopped calling them “state institutions” and started calling them “state-assisted.” We’ve now reached the point at which even that seems like an overstatement.

· 1st – South Carolina’s ranking in percentage of higher education funding cut last year. South Carolina, before the December and March reductions, had cut 17.7 percent from higher education budgets. (After those cuts, it has slashed higher ed budgets 24 percent.) The second worst state was Alabama, at 10.5 percent.

· 38th – Our state’s ranking for higher ed funding before the past year’s nation-leading cuts.

· 1995 – The last year that state appropriations, as a dollar amount, equaled the current level, before adjusting for inflation.

· 1973 – The year that matches the current level of funding, once you adjust for inflation. (Think for a moment what North Carolina and Georgia have done in higher education since 1973, pulling light years ahead of South Carolina.)

· $29 million – The value of one grant (from the National Institutes of Health) brought in by a single one of the 13 endowed chair holders at the Medical University of South Carolina.

· 25 – New technology companies started by USC faculty in the years since the endowed chairs program started, which places the university 19th among public institutions in the nation in number of start-ups.

· 50,000 – S.C. jobs provided directly or indirectly by USC.

· 11 percent – South Carolina unemployment rate in February.

· 43rd – South Carolina’s national ranking for percentage of adult population with college educations.

Those are a few of the figures I picked up from the presentations that Clemson President James Barker, Medical University of South Carolina President Ray Greenberg and USC President Harris Pastides (joined by Garrison Walters, executive director of the state Commission on Higher Education) made to a joint meeting Wednesday of two Senate panels that deal with higher education funding, such as it is.

They were there to try to stop the bleeding, and to send the message that dealing a further blow to these institutions’ already last-in-the-nation funding by not accepting federal stimulus funds would be beyond insane (my wording, I hope you’ll note, not theirs).

In some cases, they had requests that bore specifically upon their respective institutions. For instance, Dr. Greenberg’s wish listed included a request that if tuition is capped, graduate and professional programs will be exempted. But in keeping with the extraordinary collaboration that has marked the interaction of the three presidents in recent years (which is no less than miraculous, given the petty, wasteful, tit-for-tat competition that characterized the decades that went before), he also cited priorities shared by all: Regulatory relief (which President Barker has explained as minimizing cost by requiring the schools to jump through two or three hoops instead of six every time they make a move); a state bond bill for capital needs; and passing the cigarette tax increase, with a major portion of the revenue going to Medicaid. OK, so maybe that last one has the most immediate effect on the medical university, but its benefits to the entire state are so obvious as to absolve it of parochialism.

And they had a sympathetic audience. “You’re number one in the country,” in budget cuts, Sen. Nikki Setzler noted. “If that isn’t a challenge to this committee to carry forward to the full General Assembly, then shame on us.”

Of course, Sen. Setzler is a Democrat, but that doesn’t count for as much of a difference in the S.C. Senate as it does in some venues. And when it comes to the federal stimulus upon which the GOP leadership is completely dependent for keeping essential state services running, there are only two sides – on one is Gov. Mark Sanford and a few allies to whom ideology is the only reality; on the other the vast majority of lawmakers.

Republicans don’t come more conventionally conservative than Senate Education Chairman John Courson, to whom Ronald Reagan was a demigod. And here’s what he had to say about the stimulus: “If we don’t accept that money, it does not go back to the Treasury; it goes to other states.” Which is just common sense, of course – nothing ideological about it. But this is a moment in South Carolina history when commonsense statements are in pathetically short supply, so every one uttered takes on added value. In an interview later, Sen. Courson explained the rationale adopted by most Republicans whose top priority is not posturing for national media: He opposed the stimulus bill when it was being debated in Washington. There’s a lot in it he doesn’t like; if he had been a member of Congress he would have voted against it. But that’s all over now. It’s a fact, and South Carolinians are going to be paying for it along with everyone else. Therefore, not taking the money makes no sense at all.

Tuition cost was on the senators’ minds, and well it should be, now that the bulk of higher education costs is on students and their families rather than state taxpayers. “I am pledging to keep any tuition increase for next year to a minimum,” said Dr. Pastides. “I’m keenly aware of the burden that a tuition increase would put on students and their families.”

But what happens with tuition depends upon the General Assembly’s actions – and the governor’s. “Will tuition and fees increase next year?” President Barker asked rhetorically. “The answer is: Almost certainly, but the level of increase is very dependent on what happens with state funding. Tuition is Clemson’s last-resort response….”

Mr. Barker pointed out that the effect of stimulus money on tuition is not direct, since he, like the other presidents, would use stimulus money for one-time, not recurring, expenses. But when asked by Sen. Harvey Peeler the expected effect upon the institutions of not accepting the stimulus money, the Clemson president said it “would be devastating.”

Other senators, seizing upon that word, asked other witnesses whether they agreed with it, prompting Dr. Pastides to oblige them by saying for the record, “It will be devastating, and it will have an effect on tuition” if the stimulus is blocked.

Normally, I’m not what you’d call a numbers guy; words are my thing. So I appreciate that the senators were groping for just the right word to describe the situation. But in this case, for once, the numbers impress me more. We are so far behind in our state. And if our governor has his way, we’ll take an additional giant leap backward.

This is my first weekly online-only column after leaving The State. Watch for more here on bradwarthen.com.

Background materials for tomorrow’s column

Being a creature of habit, I’ve written a column for tomorrow. It won’t be in The State, but it will appear here at bradwarthen.com (I hope that makes y’all feel special).

It’s based on the joint meeting of the S.C. Senate Education Committee and the Senate Finance Committee Higher Education Subcommittee on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. The heads of the state’s three research universities and of the CHE testified regarding budget matters.

One of the cool things about being unemployed is that I actually have time to go out and do legwork, which I haven’t been able to do for years. I hadn’t even set foot in the Statehouse complex this year before Wednesday. And it’s been many years (perhaps going back to my reporting days in the late 70s) since I was able to sit all the way through a two-hour public hearing.

It was nice to be able to get that sort of perspective for a change. Anyway, I thought I’d provide y’all with some background material for the column. I don’t have electronic copies of CHE head Garrison Walters’ presentation, because it didn’t occur to me to request it, since I had a hard copy from the meeting. Likewise with MUSC President Ray Greenberg’s remarks, since he gave me his personal copy afterwards. But I did ask for USC President Harris Pastides’ and Clemson President James Barkers’ via e-mail, and here they are:

Let me know if you have any trouble opening those.

Sorensen on my last column

Former USC President Andrew Sorensen had the following to say about my last column in The State:

Dear Brad:

As one who has just embarked on a marked change in professional responsibilities, I wish you well in the next stage of your career, whatever that may be.

Thanks very much for your stimulating op-ed piece of March 22nd.  Although I was tempted to respond to each paragraph as well as the concluding suggestions, in the interest of brevity I’ll comment only on (1) “Improve our schools” and (2) “Let our colleges and universities drive our economy.”

(1)I couldn’t agree more with your recommendation that we “stop talking about nonsensical distraction, and fix the schools.”  We South Carolinians ought to be profoundly embarrassed by the quality of schools in our economically depressed communities.  It is imperative that all South Carolinians have an opportunity for the quality of education afforded at the many first-rate schools throughout our state.  Your suggestions for restructuring, if implemented, would do much to correct our current imbalance in facilities and human resources.

(2)During the past several years, the presidents of USC, MUSC and Clemson have made extraordinary progress in collaborating on the “cutting edge of wealth-creating innovation.” During this period of profound fiscal crisis the temptation is great to hunker down and look upon investment in this area as one of high risk that will yield principally future benefit, and is unlikely to be manifest in the next few weeks or months.  That admission will cause detractors to argue that investing in these programs in the midst of economic stringency is counterintuitive.  But the economic future of our state is heavily dependent on the highly skilled and scientifically sophisticated youth of today who will become the leaders of our state’s economy tomorrow.

All the best to you.

Sincerely,

Andrew A. Sorensen

Sanford’s letter to Obama

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So that you might be fully informed, I pass this on. Can you see me rolling my eyes from where you sit?

You saw the story about Obama's response to the original request, right? The administration told the gov that the stimulus is supposed to be used to save or create jobs. To which it might well have added, "Duh!" Marvelous restraint on the administration's part there.

Anyway, here's the latest letter:

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
MARK SANFORD, GOVERNOR

March 17, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
President
United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest
Washington, D.C.  20500

Dear Mr. President,

I'd first thank you and Director Orszag for your response of March 16 to my letter of the previous week.  Likewise, I have to express my disappointment that our substantive dialogue about the best way to adapt this stimulus to the unique situations of states across this country was interrupted by the Democratic National Committee's launching of a petty attack ad against us even before we had received your response.

I've made clear my opposition to using debt to solve a problem created in the first place by too much debt – and I don't believe this to be an unreasonable position.  What I find less reasonable is the way this DNC attack ad returns a nation indeed yearning for change back to the same old politics-as-usual.  Because I believe you and I share a common desire to escape this worn-out "attack first" mentality, I'd respectfully ask you to immediately condemn and put an end to this unnecessary politicization of a truly important policy discussion.

In the spirit of moving forward, I'd offer the following as a clarification to our using a portion of the stimulus funds to paying down our state's sizable debt.  With regard to the Education Stabilization Fund monies (ARRA § 14002(a)(1)) that must be used "for the support of * education," we think it would be consistent with statutory requirements to use this $577 million to pay down the roughly $579 million of principal for State School Facilities Bonds and Research University Infrastructure Bonds over two years.  This would immediately free up over $162 million in debt service in the first two years and save roughly $125 million in interest payments over the next 13 years, which could then be directed towards other educational purposes – just as paying off a mortgage early frees up the typical monthly payment for other uses.

Regarding the $125 million in the Fiscal Stabilization Fund (ARRA § 14002(b)(1)) headed to South Carolina, we'd lay out a few options for your consideration: first, paying down debt related to the state's Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund that currently exceeds $200 million and would directly impact those currently out of work in this struggling economy; second, paying down debt related to state retirees, since that would seem to satisfy the statutory requirement that these funds be used for "other government services"; or third, paying down other bonded indebtedness at the state level.

We trust these alternative proposals fit both the statutory requirements and spirit of the stimulus legislation.  Thank you again for your response, and we would again appreciate your opinion as soon as possible given that we believe this course of action will do more to ensure South Carolina's long-term economic strength than would other contemplated uses of the funds.

I also await your response on pulling down the attack ads.  A good part of your candidacy was fueled by the hope for change in the way political debate is conducted in our country.  On this, actions will speak louder than words – words you have been so gifted in delivering – in determining where you really stand, not as a candidate promising to deliver on change, but as a leader now capable of bringing this change.  I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Mark Sanford

cc:    The Honorable Peter R. Orszag, Director
    Office of Management and Budget