Category Archives: South Carolina

Why can’t we be smart like our sister?

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THINK OF South Carolina as a restless schoolboy. He doesn’t test well, but he’s got loads of potential; everybody says so. He’s a well-meaning kid, but has an attention-deficit problem. There he sits, as far to the back of the class as he can get away with. As the teacher drones on about science and stuff, he wonders whether he can get away with spending his lunch money on candy again. Then, just as he’s turned to calculating the number of days left until school is out and he can go to the beach (he’s very good at this sort of math), his reverie is rudely interrupted.
The teacher stands over him, her eyes just boring into him over the glasses on the end of her nose. She speaks directly to him, demanding to know, “Why can’t you be smart like your sister?”
The poor kid hears that a lot.
My own rather feckless, aimless mind (I was born here, you know) has been running along these lines all week, as I’ve been repeatedly reminded of how well our smart sister has applied herself. Not my sister, personally, but South Carolina’s. Her name is Queensland, and she’s our sister state in Australia.
Her former premier, Peter Beattie, spoke at my Rotary meeting Monday, although I didn’t realize it at the time because I slipped out of the meeting early (I’m telling you, I am that boy). Mr. Beattie is the one who suggested the whole “sister-state” economic development relationship when he was in office back in the ’90s. He got the idea after a visit here in 1996. He had come to study how our state had taken advantage of the Atlanta Olympics, serving as a training site and hosting the women’s marathon trials. He hoped his state could do the same with the Sydney games.
As things turned out, though, our “sister” would go on to do some things we should emulate. As premier, he pushed a strategy that would lead to Australia’s “Sunshine State” getting a new alias: “The Smart State.”
During a week when the S.C. Senate Finance Committee was reacting to tough fiscal times by cutting back on the endowed chairs program and letting K-12 funding slide backward, I kept getting my nose rubbed in the smartness of our sister despite my best efforts to miss the point. On Wednesday, someone sent me a copy of remarks Mr. Beattie — who has been lecturing at USC’s Walker
Institute of International & Area Studies recently — had prepared for a speech this coming Tuesday to the Global Business Forum in Columbia. I skimmed over what he had written…

Twenty years ago, Queensland was a traditional rocks-and-crops economy where education was not regarded as a priority. But with increasing globalisation, my government knew this was not enough to compete with the new emerging markets of China and India…. We publicly said innovate or stagnate were our choices.
As a result we developed a strategy called Smart State. This involved a major overhaul of our education and training systems… the cutting edge of developments in biotechnology, energy, information and communications…
The result has been… Queensland’s lowest unemployment rate in three decades… budget surpluses and a AAA credit rating. Our economic growth has outperformed the nation’s growth for 10 consecutive years and was done on the back of competitive state taxes. Our focus has been long-term and education reform was central.
Since 1998, the Queensland Government has invested almost $3 billion to boost innovation and R&D infrastructure…

… but I didn’t have time to read it all just then. Being that unfocused boy, I did find time to write a pointless post on my blog about how “For some reason, Queensland keeps coming up a lot this week for me….” That night, I was attending a lecture by Salman Rushdie, who had been brought here by Janette Turner Hospital, the novelist and USC professor, who as it happens grew up in Queensland.
So guess who I ran into at the reception that night for Mr. Rushdie? Yep — Peter Beattie. (The coincidences were starting to get as weird and mystical as something out of a novel by, well, Salman Rushdie.)
Cooperating with the inevitable, I introduced myself, and he told me eagerly about the exciting high-tech opportunities he saw here in South Carolina, what with the endowed chairs and Innovista, and our state’s advantages in the fields of hydrogen power, clean coal technology and biotech.
Biotech, by the way, has been a big one for Queensland, employing 3,200 people, generating $4 billion a year in revenues, and leading to such concrete advances as Ian Fraser’s new human papillomavirus vaccine, which is now protecting 13 million women worldwide from cervical cancer — just so you know it’s not all pie in the sky.
When I asked him about some of the less-than-visionary (in my view, not his) decisions being made by S.C. political leaders as we spoke, he insisted that was not his place: “I’m a guest here,” he said in that wonderful Down Under accent. “Queensland is like South Carolina. Manners are important.”
He spoke instead about the opportunities we had in common, and about the fact that places such as Queensland and South Carolina “have to innovate or be left behind.”
South Carolina, so used to lagging behind the other kids, truly does possess the potential to be a “smart state” like our sister. But too many easily distracted boys over at the State House keep staring out the classroom window…

Happy 30th, Yesterday’s!

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Last night we dropped in to Yesterday’s to help Duncan and Scotty McRae and the gang celebrate 30 years in the heart of Five Points. To drag in the ultimate of journalistic cliches, a good time was had by all.

Jack Van Loan was there with wife Linda. Jack is the one who first introduced me to Duncan (whom you can see at the very center of the photo above) years ago. We saw other friends, and met new ones. Our booth was popular because we’d brought along my daughter’s roommate Laura, a longtime Yesterday’s waitress who has been out for awhile recovering from surgery, and everybody was glad to see her.

Yesterdayscowboy
One of those who stopped by was the Yesterday’s cowboy himself, who had been missing from the bathtub over the front door during the last weeks of the countdown to the anniversary. (My apologies for the quality of the photos; I didn’t have my camera, and shot these with my phone.)

But guess who else we met? Frequent blog commenter James D McCallister, whose recent comments you can find on this post, and on this one as well.

There was live music by a man with a guitar immediately behind where I was sitting. His first number, of course, was "Yesterday."

Anyway, it was a fine party, and I wish the folks at Yesterday’s 30 more good years…

Yesterdaysneon

D.J. Carson, S.C. House 77

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Wednesday, noon — The departure of Rep. John Scott (who is running for a seat being vacated by a senator who has worked his posterior down to nothing) has opened up a three-way competition in the Democratic primary for S.C. House District 77 in Columbia.

The first of those candidates — indeed, the first candidate of the season — to interview with our editorial board was D.J. Carson, a political newcomer. I mentioned earlier that he was coming in.

Mr. Carson grew up in Columbia and Forest Acres, and graduated from Richland Northeast High School. He lived in Brooklyn while studying law on Long Island, and returned home. He worked as an aide to Rep. Todd Rutherford before becoming an assistant solicitor in the 5th Circuit, starting in August of last year. He has mostly prosecuted drug cases, and cites that experience as valuable in helping him understand critical issues in our state, from lack of education to youth gangs.

Mr. Carson’s platform is pretty straightforward: He says he’s running as an advocate for public education, and to oppose vouchers and tax credits. He would increase state spending on education, to increase teacher pay and turn around the Corridor of Shame.

He talks briefly about other subjects — economic development, health care — but keeps coming back to K-12 education. And when he comes back to education, he usually talks about the need for more funding. He mentioned, for instance, that he’d heard Corrections chief Jon Ozmint had predicted the need for two new prisons, and he said we should spend that $100 million on schools instead.

As we do in these interviews, we had a number of other things we asked him about, such as:

Tax policy: He says he favors increasing the cigarette tax, and vows that he will not advocate for any tax cut: "I’m not an advocate for cutting taxes because I’m not an advocate for cutting services."
Party loyalty: "Like-minded people hang around like-minded people," and he wanted voters in the district that his would be a distinctively Democratic voice. "Party affiliation is important." But he said he could also work across the lines, and that it was "more important to speak to people, not to speak to party."
Home Rule: He said he agreed that the Legislature should not be "micromanaging" local affairs.
Restructuring: He declined to offer an opinion, saying "I don’t want to speculate," and would need to study the issues involved first.

Mr. Carson is facing Benjamin Byrd and Richland County Councilman Joe McEachern in the primary.

Summers chairs Richland Democrats

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Back when Boyd Summers wrote us an op-ed criticizing the Bar exam mess that benefited the daughter of his ex-opponent, another blog speculated this meant he’d be going after Jim Harrison again.

Not so. Turns out that Boyd has other stuff on his political plate now. As he wrote via e-mail this week:

Hope you are doing well. I wanted to mention to you that I was elected to succeed Steve [Benjamin] as Richland County Democratic Party Chair at the County Convention in March.

If I can ever help you with anything, please let me know. I will miss candidate interviews this year, but perhaps when it slows down I could meet with you guys to discuss County Party activities.

I wrote back to make sure I was understanding him right, and he said back:

That’s correct, I have not filed to run for the SC House or any other office this year.

I will be working to get other folks elected who have the same vision that I share to move my home state forward in a progressive manner.

Their is certainly a lot of work to be done.

I hope we will have the opportunity to get together soon.

Boyd

Jim Harrison, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was to have general election opposition this year — Democrat Tige Watts, who I’m told (see below) has dropped out. If that’s right, then Mr. Harrison will have a free ride now. Of course, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, there’s nothing unusual about incumbents having no opposition in the fall. But at least there are a few primary choices — in districts other than this one.

A little blog trivia for you: Messrs. Summers and Harrison were the first legislative candidates I ever posted video on…

House backs up on lawmakers’ pension COLA

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Maybe it’s a good thing I used Cindi’s column in my usual Sunday slot.

Today, the House took action that will at least ALLOW the provision slipping in a cost-of-living increase on lawmakers’ ridiculously generous pension plan to be removed from the larger bill. Cindi explains what happened as follows:

An explainer: For procedural reasons, it would have been all but impossible for the House to remove the legislative cola from the bill today. So its only options were to 1) give the bill 3rd reading as is; 2) kill the bill; or 3) recommit the bill to committee so that the committee could remove the legislative cola (or not, if it so chose) and send it back to the House for debate. The third option was, in my opinion, the only responsible one. And that’s what the House did.

And hey, how often does the House move to do something that will please both the newspaper AND the governor? Here’s what Mark Sanford had to say:

"I want to thank everyone in the House – and in particular Mick Mulvaney who made the recommit motion – who agreed that this issue of backdoor pay increases needed to be revisited," Gov. Sanford said. "As this bill goes back through the committee process, we believe the first order of business should be to strip out this legislative pay perk. While we still have a number of concerns about the rest of this bill as well, today’s vote showed that a majority in the House have enough respect for taxpayers to put the breaks on this terrible idea. If this provision does, however, somehow survive the committee process again, we believe that at a minimum House members need to take a recorded vote on the matter so that taxpayers can hold them accountable for their actions."

The mysterious Queensland connection

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For some reason, Queensland keeps coming up a lot this week for me.

First, some visitors from there were introduced at my Rotary meeting Monday afternoon (at which I had to do the Health and Happiness presentation). Queensland is South Carolina’s official Australian sister state for economic development purposes, a fact that comes up frequently at Rotary, it seems.
Monday night, I sat in on Janette Turner Hospital‘s lecture on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, then I was the moderator of a panel discussion that followed about religion and culture and politics and how they come together in the whole Rushdie fatwa thing. Why Janette and Gordon Smith asked me, I’m still not clear. Anyway, Janette grew up in Queensland, and went to university there.
Then today, Samuel Tenenbaum, in keeping with his never-ending battle to save the endowed chairs program (a battle that gets tougher every day), sent me an article by Peter Beattie, the former premier of Queensland, who is now teaching at USC Moore School of Business.

Somehow, this series of coincidences seem almost like the sort of mystical stuff you’d find in a Rushdie novel (either that, or like something from "I ♥ Huckabees," depending on how high- or lowbrow your cultural associations may be). Which reminds me… tonight I’m going to Mr. Rushdie’s lecture at USC, and might meet him afterward at a reception. If so, I’ll tell you about it.

Anyway, the article Samuel sent me was about how "Queensland took the view that brain power and the encouragement of innovation are our future," and the resulting "Smart State" program took Queensland from a "traditional rocks and crops economy" to the point that it attracted some of the most sophisticated research facilities in the world, and now has about 90 knowledge-economy firms employing over 1,900 people. The whole "Smart State" thing has really caught on there, leading observers around the world to ask South Carolinians, "Why can’t you be smart like your sister?" OK, I made that last part up, but it’s not an unfair representation of how we are received, which is why folks like Samuel (and I) believe we need to maintain our commitment to endowed chairs.

Samuel wants me to consider the piece for op-ed, and perhaps I shall. If not, I’ll post it here.

Legislative interviews begin today

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Late last week, I forwarded this release to Cindi:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 28, 2008
Contact:       Kerry Abel

MEDIA ADVISORY

Carson Announces for SC House
A New Generation for District 77

COLUMBIA, SC – Local attorney DJ Carson announced today his candidacy in the June 10th Democratic primary for SC House seat 77.
"I grew up right here in this community," Carson said. "This is my home, and it deserves
fresh, energetic leadership that looks beyond the daunting circumstances of what is and into the possibilities of what could be."
Though this is Carson’s first run for public office, he is no stranger to politics. He spent 2000 as a grassroots organizer for the Democratic Party’s Coordinated Campaign and has also served as an aide to Rep. J. Todd Rutherford.
   Combined with his work as a Richland County Prosecutor, these experiences have given Carson a unique perspective on some of the most challenging issues facing us today.
   "I see how much drugs, guns, and gang violence costs this community every day and I’m ready to take that fight to the next level," Carson said. "I’ve been in the trenches and now I’m ready to lead the charge."
   "The time for excuses has past. The time for change has come. The future is now!"

            ###

Cindi responded thusly:

And we get to meet
him on Wednesday, at noon.

Ohmigosh, and here it is Wednesday at 11:21. And so it begins. I haven’t counted yet myself, but Warren said he counted up the candidates running in Midlands legislative and county primaries, and we will have 52 interviews between now and June. He also noted that we will have far more interviews for primaries than we will for general elections in the fall. Such is the domination of reapportionment by incumbents and political parties.

And Mr. Carson, who will be competing with Joe McEachern & Benjamin Byrd for an open seat currently held by Rep. John Scott (who is seeking a Senate seat), will be the first.

A senator explains the logic of the legislative pension plan

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A reader apparently took me up on my suggestion that he contact his lawmakers about their pension plan. He shared this with Cindi, who shared it with me:

I want the same retirement plan the legislature is voting for themselves. I will work my a** off untill God knows when to pay for health ins & a retirement I can live on. It is no wonder you guys try so hard to keep getting elected.

Kenny rowland
Blythewood Sc

And this, he said, was his reply:

Mr. Roland:

For 77 years I’ve worked my ass-off for every damn thing that I own–which ain’t much! And I sure-as-hell don’t need smart-ass-remarks from people lilke you & that’s why I’m going home in June! In conclusion, if you want the same retirement plan like mine, then get elected like I did, spend 34 years in & retire!

Kay Patterson

Legislators about to sweeten their perk (quietly)

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As the week drew to an end, it became more and more apparent that, tied up as I was getting the Saturday Opinion Extra thing done, any column that I did was going to be a rush job and probably not worthy of a Sunday.

Fortunately, Cindi Scoppe already had a column done that was better than either of the ideas I was kicking around (one would have been about the continuing dialogue we’ve had here about the cognitive divide between black and white over the Rev. Wright, the other would have been a look at the Pennsylvania primary, leading with an anecdote from when I was up there recently).

Cindi had written again about the absurdly generous pensions that S.C. lawmakers provide for themselves out of our pockets. More particularly, it was about the fact that they are about to vote themselves an increase in those pensions without so much as a debate.

But the House is poised not only to approve the plan this week, but to do so without a bit of debate. That would have happened on Thursday, but for a procedural delay. And the Senate might not be far behind.
Representatives are poised to act without so much as acknowledging what they’re doing. That means some legislators won’t realize what they’re doing — and with a few exceptions, those who do realize what they’re doing can get away with claiming ignorance.
Or rather they could have. The purpose of this column is to make sure everybody — not just voters, but legislators as well — knows what’s happening, so there can be no claims of innocence.

Follow the link to read the rest of it. Along with the column was this informative box:

How generous is it?
• For every dollar state employees contribute to their pensions, the taxpayers kick in $1.27; for every dollar legislators pay into their system, taxpayers pay $3.91.
• The average pension for career state employees is $17,536 — 53 percent of their final salary. The average pension for our part-time legislators is $18,218 — or 102 percent of their pay.
• Former legislators can buy “service credit” at the same super-subsidized rate after they leave office. A legislator who leaves office after eight years can buy credit for $2,280 a year for the next 22 years, and then collect an annual pension of $32,980. He will recoup his “investment” in three years, and clear $33,000 a year in profit for the rest of his life.
State employees get no subsidy if they buy additional credit after they quit working.
• Former legislators can start drawing a full pension at age 60. That means an extra $91,000, on average.

It occurs to me that after reading this stuff, you might want to contact your representatives in the Legislature. To find out how to do that, go to www.scstatehouse.net and select “Find your legislator” on the left. Or call 1-888-VOTE-SMART.

No, it’s an AWESOME job!

More good news: Cigarette tax hike takes leap forward

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First the smoking ban thing, now this…

A little bird just called to tell me that the Senate Finance Committee just voted, 14-11, to increase the state cigarette tax by 50 per pack, taking us to 57 cents (yes, currently it is only 7 cents, the lowest in the nation).

The vote followed three hours of debate, but the only person who actually seemed to be against the increase itself was Greg Ryberg. So what did they argue about all that time? Well, they argued about what lawmakers tend to really care about — how to spend the money. Of the $158 million the increase will raise per year, $5 million will go to smoking cessation efforts, the rest to Medicaid (which means getting a federal match). The spending decision was on a vote of 12-11.

Two important things to add:

This is indexed to inflation (which the old tax wasn’t), so as cigarettes go up in price, so will the tax.
The tax will also apply to those little "cigars," which are really just brown cigarettes. So no more loophole there.

If this gets full Senate approval, it will have to be reconciled with the 35-cent hike the House passed last year. The House plan was to spend the money on eliminating the sales tax on groceries, but that idea is now moot, since that happened last year anyway, without the cigarette tax increase.

You know, between this and the S.C. Supreme Court’s decision yesterday that it’s actually OK for local governments to respond to their citizens and pass smoking bans, it’s almost as though South Carolina leadership has suddenly made a consensus decision to behave in a rational manner toward tobacco. Two branches of gummint, that is — we have yet to hear from our governor. But let’s just pretend that first the full Senate, then the governor, will act like a sensible people about the health of South Carolinians, too. I’m not going to have my day ruined by thinking otherwise (even if Sen. Ryberg is a reliable indicator of the governor’s thinking, more often than not).

And no, this is not an elaborate April Fool’s Day gag. This good stuff is really happening.

Graham slaps down Sanford again — politely

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You’ll recall Lindsey Graham’s rebuke to his old friend Mark Sanford last week over the governor’s continuing efforts to divide the Republican Party.

As you can see on the video, he was polite and used mild language, but the rebuke was fairly firm nonetheless. Obviously, the Senator had decided it was time for someone to act like a party leader rather than an insurgent.

Well, he’s done it again, this time over the South Carolina reaction to Real ID. This release came in late Monday:

March 31, 2008

Graham on REAL ID and South Carolina
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement on South Carolina and REAL ID.
Graham said:
“I am pleased South Carolina has been granted an extension by Secretary Chertoff regarding REAL ID compliance. The decision was more than justified.
“The Governor has done an excellent job in explaining his concerns to federal officials, many of which I share. Our state already meets 16 of the 18 compliance benchmarks – about 90 percent — called for in REAL ID. Governor Sanford’s efforts to reform our state drivers’ license program has made the system more secure and efficient.
“REAL ID grew out of recommendations made by the 9-11 Commission over the need for more secure forms of identification. It was viewed as an effective means of cracking down on the use of fraudulent documents like those used by the 9/11 hijackers. In addition, REAL ID would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain employment by tightening acceptable forms of identification.
“I will do my part to help ensure the federal government addresses the unfunded mandate burden imposed on the states by REAL ID. Governors and state legislatures across the country are rightfully concerned about these requirements.
“However, in this age of international terrorism we must secure the homeland. We need better identification to protect air travel, access to federal buildings, institutions, and other high value terrorist targets.
“I believe we can accommodate the legitimate national security needs of our nation with the concerns raised by Governor Sanford and the state legislature.”

#####

As he said, there’s no excuse for unfunded mandates. At the same time, we need a better identification system for citizens, both for national security and immigration control reasons.

He points out that for all the hollering, South Carolina is already most of the way to compliance.

And as he concludes, we can address these important matters without all the ideological posturing and brinksmanship. We just have to act like grownups.

Those gutless feds

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We shouldn’t be a bit surprised that the feds caved in response to our governor’s libertarian snit-fit over Real ID. After what they’d done with Montana and New Hampshire, they couldn’t go all regulation on SC.

Of course, I suspect the governor was counting on that. However much the anti-government rebel he may want to seem, he tends to make his most dramatic gestures when there is somebody ready to break the fall. He knew the Legislature wouldn’t let him veto the budget. He knew somebody else (Will Folks?) was there to clean up the piglet poop. And he knew Michael Chertoff wouldn’t really inconvenience South Carolinians, which would have made 4 million people really ticked off at Mark Sanford.

Yes, unfunded mandates are bad. And yes, reasonable people can present arguments that Real ID has problems beyond that. (Gordon Hirsch presented a strong set of arguments back on this comment thread.)

But this little anticlimactic confrontation wasn’t about those things. It was about political theater, and everybody played his part. The Federal Government appeared in the role of The Wimp.

And don’t you just love the way they caved — pretending to give South Carolina the waiver that the governor petulantly refused to ask for?

The Department of Homeland Security isn’t even willing to stand its ground against political tantrums on the home front. Do you really think it’s prepared to do what it takes to defend the country?

Great news on smoking bans (I think)!

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The S.C. Supreme Court says Greenville’s smoking ban is OK after all — as in, NOT pre-empted by the usual legislative attempts to prevent local governments from governing as local folks see fit:

By MEG KINNARD – Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Cities and towns have the power to ban indoor smoking in public places, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday in a decision that anti-smoking advocates predicted will spawn more rules against where people may light up in South Carolina.
The ruling upheld a ban against indoor, public smoking that the city of Greenville imposed last year. Dozens of bars and restaurants had sued, claiming their business would suffer. A judge then quashed the ban, ruling that local governments had to let the state lead the way when it comes to smoking bans.
In the justices’ unanimous decision Monday, the high court said local governments can impose more stringent regulations…

So, does this mean that Columbia can finally pull the trigger on its prospective ban on smoking in restaurants (but, unfortunately, not bars). It would appear so, since the ban supposedly waited only on a court ruling. A number of other communities had gone ahead with bans of their own. Here’s a list.

The jury’s still out on a statewide ban. But as long as the Legislature doesn’t move to make SURE locals can’t do it (and don’t put it past them for a second; they HATE the governments closest to the people), at least the will of local communities can now be acted upon, and relied upon to stick.

Tom Davis predicting Rod Shealy attack

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A reader yesterday asked what I thought about the smear job, reportedly engineered by Rod Shealy, that hit Tom Davis this week at the outset of his attempt to unseat Sen. Catherine Ceips.

When I read about it, I just nodded. Tom, the subject of my column this past Sunday, indicated last week that he expected something of the kind, and that it would probably be worse than even he expected:

I hadn’t even thought about that, to be honest with you… I hadn’t even thought about what it’s gonna be like having a guy who wakes up in the morning who just wants to strip the bark off me. I mean, and that’s what Rod Shealy’s gonna wanna do… I’ve never been through a campaign. I’ve been told just to expect, whatever it is about you that you don’t want people to know, expect it to be known.

Tom thought it would be about something true about him — such as the fact that he was a Democrat when he was young — instead of this illegal-alien nonsense. But that’s Tom’s great liability in this race: He’s a Mr. Smith type. He’s a very open, candid, straightforward, sincere kind of guy (I would have added "thrifty, brave, clean and reverent," but you get the idea), so he figured whatever he was hit with would be something real.

So he was right: He hadn’t really thought through what it would be like with Rod Shealy after him. That’s because Tom Davis is incapable of thinking like Rod Shealy.

It’s a helluva thing, isn’t it, when honest people have to fear running for public office because of sleazy stuff that will be done to them that has nothing to do with their suitability for office?

Oh, but wait! Rod Shealy is reformed! It’s got to be true… PBS said so…

Anyway, in the video above, you’ll see and hear Tom talking about this subject.

Did Hunter Howard just substantiate the rumor?

Graham on Sanford, S.C. politics

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Sen. Lindsey Graham made headlines today by rather dramatically breaking with his friend and fellow Republican Mark Sanford. Far from having a "list" of Republican lawmakers he’d like to get rid of, Sen. Graham gave a thumbs-up to the whole GOP field of officeholders in South Carolina.

So when he came by today to talk about Iraq, Iran, Europe and nuclear proliferation, before he left we inevitably got into S.C. politics, starting with a question from reporter John O’Connor about to what extent Mark Sanford is actually a veep contender.

Mr. Graham was careful only to say positive things about the governor, he did say something about himself that drew a contrast between the two of them. He said he was backing Republicans, regardless of whether he agreed with them totally or not, is because "I’m a party leader." Which of course suggests that certain other people are not, but he wasn’t going to say so.

He was much more forceful and articulate when talking geopolitics, of course. I plan to go back through the more substantive parts of the interview and see if I can can pull out a clip or two from those parts later. For now, I thought I’d share the part that dealt with today’s news story.

Lea Walker responds

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Just now I finally got caught up with yesterday’s e-mail, and found this message:

Dear Sirs and Madam:

Your editorial today endorsed Runyon, and your
comments are not fair to me, nor to the city. My international background will
bring unique and broader vision and solutions to our City. I’m not motivated by
the zoning issue, but by my urge to contribute and get involved. The city
council should be diversified/open-minded, and not to be self-absorbed and not
to treat the minorities as invisibles.

The most important issues for this campaign
should get our city council think out of the box, but not just to get another
one who thinks alike. To me, all the other candidates talked about the same
issues, and suggested the same remedies.

Lea Walker, President
(US) Chinese Culture Center

Ms. Walker (pictured above) is one of the four candidates running for the at-large seat on Columbia City Council. I still hope to get around to posting something from our meeting with her before this thing’s over. If you’ll notice, I haven’t posted anything on our meeting with the guy we endorsed, either. I did put up something from our meeting with Daniel Rickenmann, but it wasn’t nearly as complete as what I’ve done on Brian Boyer and Belinda Gergel.

Unfortunately, those kinds of posts are very time-consuming (I stayed very late doing the Rickenmann and Gergel ones), and when things get busy around here, putting out the editorial pages comes first.

What is the useful role of CHE?

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As foreshadowed in a previous post, we met this afternoon with Garrison Walters, the new (new to us, anyway) head of the state Commission on Higher Education.

Once upon a time, that post was filled by Fred Sheheen — Vincent’s Daddy, for those keeping up with political genealogy — who had an active, aggressive notion of the role the CHE should play in marshaling this poor state’s limited higher education resources to greatest effect. The powers that be, such as those who revere the prerogatives of the godlike boards of trustees of the respective institutions, did not like his style. They moved not only to get rid of him, but to restructure the CHE to make it kinder, gentler and less likely to say "nay" to anything they wished to do — or to have any authority even if it did say so.

Since then, the organization has been a lot more studious and polite — content with a "coordinating" rather than "governing" role. Mr. Walters is aware that our board has long favored a Board of Regents that would treat our collection of public, post-secondary institutions as a system rather than islands. He maintains, as do many who cast doubt on our restructuring fervor (say, the Senate on doing away with the "long ballot," or defenders of the council-manager system in Columbia), that some states with such boards do well, and others do not, while some states without overall governance do fine (he cites Michigan, Illinois and Texas).

My position, as always, is that given a choice between a structure intended to facilitate efficiency and accountability on the one hand, and a structure that one can succeed in those regards in spite of, I prefer the former.

As previously noted, of course, we temporarily have a condition in which our three research institutions, motivated in part by such inducements as the endowed chairs, are pulling at their oars as though they understand that we’re all in the same boat. Mr. Walters made note of that. Our position is to applaud our current state, but to worry about what happens when the current individuals in leadership move on, as Andrew Sorensen is about to do. Below that level cooperation and coordination is less evident, although there are encouraging exceptions to that trend.

Anyway, Mr. Walters held out hope that once a study committee finishes its work in September, we might see a new focus and purpose toward focusing our higher ed efforts. Let’s hope he’s right. In the meantime, I provide a video clip in which I ask our guest what he thinks it will take for South Carolina to get where it needs to go, and what CHE’s role is in that…

South Carolina just got a little smarter

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This morning I had the honor of meeting Martin Morad, who plans "to develop the world’s first pacemaker made from living tissue," and to do it right here in South Carolina. He’s the latest extraordinary individual that the endowed chairs program has brought here. (That’s him with Larry Wilson and Harris Pastides above. I think those are Ray Greenberg’s arms folded at left; I don’t know the lady in the background.)

There are a lot of things I could say about this guy, and I hope to come back here and say them later (right now, I’m stealing time from other things that need doing today in order to write this — as usual). For now, read the story that was on today’s front page.

I’ll just mention one thing that may seem small to you, but which marks a huge step in my mind…

If there is one thing that holds South Carolina back economically, politically, socially and in every other way more than anything else, it’s fragmentation. Our government is completely dysfunctional thanks to the fragmentation of authority and accountability in the executive branch. On the local level, you see fractals reflecting the same pattern — Columbia as an economic entity can’t get its act together because it’s split into about a dozen municipalities, two counties, seven school districts, various special purpose districts, etc. Even when you distill it down to the tiny political entity that is technically Columbia, political power is fragmented across a seven-member council with no one, elected individual in a position to be responsible for the big picture.

In the realm of higher education, fragmentation has taken us into some amazingly stupid realms in our recent history. First, there is the fact that each of our colleges and semi-colleges is a political entity unto itself, answerable to no one but each institution’s respective board of trustees, each member of which is elected by the 170 members of the General Assembly. This has led to such things as the battle over supercomputers in the late 80s, right after I came back to SC to work at this newspaper — if USC was going to get a supercomputer, then the political "logic" of this state was what Clemson had to have one, too.

We have the charade of a coordinating body — the Commission on Higher Education — which is, by legislative decree, toothless. (Coincidentally, the new head of the CHE is coming to meet the editorial board this afternoon, which puts this even more immediately in mind.) But there is nothing like, say, a board of regents with real power to assign missions, coordinate and focus resources and avoid duplication.

In the last few years, we have been fortunate in that the three presidents of our research institutions — Andrew Sorensen, Ray Greenberg and James Barker — have formed an alliance to work together on a variety of fronts to accomplish some of the things that a unified, rational system of public higher education was accomplished. One of the greatest factors encouraging this relationship to flourish — giving it an undeniable economic impetus — is the endowed chairs program.

Anyway, here’s the thing about Dr. Morad that is in its way as remarkable for South Carolina as, say, developing a living pacemaker: He is the first faculty member in the history of the state to be simultaneously hired by all three research universities at once. (Why? Because it took all three institutions to come up with the talent he needs to make his project happen — which suggests that maybe we should start referring to the three, and governing them, as one institution; put them together, and you’ve got something impressive.) Therefore he embodies the combination of our resources to achieve great things that our petty divisions have kept us from accomplishing in the past. He is the New South Carolinian, the Adam in our new-tech Garden of Eden.

I’ll stop with the metaphors now. Suffice it to say, his arrival in this, his new home, is a big deal for South Carolina.

bradwarthen.com

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