Category Archives: South Carolina

Abortion column

Abortion in America:
the antithesis of consensus

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE SOUTH Carolina General Assembly did a number of important things last week:

A House panel slam-dumped a proposal to keep the Barnwell nuclear waste facility open past 2008, sending a clear, 16-0 signal that our state does not want to be seen as the nation’s trashcan.
The full House dramatically rejected the latest attempt to slip tuition tax credits for the affluent and vouchers for everybody into the new superintendent of education’s public school choice bill.
The House missed a chance to meaningfully reform the state Department of Transportation, passing a bill that leaves an accountability-diffusing commission in the driver’s seat. The Senate did something much worse.
The House sent 4K back to a committee for further consideration. Remember last year, when it seemed we had a consensus that the state had a critical role to play in early education for the neediest children? That’s in danger now.

Lawmakers did other things, such as move toward some improvements in DUI law, ditch the idea of a Confederate Memorial Month, and discussed requiring that women be shown an ultrasound before they get an abortion.
That last one certainly caused a lot of talk. But our editorial board didn’t take a stand on the subject, and probably won’t. Why? We adopt editorial positions on the basis of consensus, and on abortion, our board is like America: We have no consensus. Abortion in America is the antithesis of consensus.
Witness the insanity that Roe v. Wade imposed on our politics: You can’t be a Democratic nominee for president unless you’ll stack the Supreme Court to protect it, and you can’t be a Republican nominee unless you’ll stack the court to overturn it — as though there were nothing else to being president. And hardly anyone pipes up to say the court shouldn’t be stacked.
Even if I believed abortion should be available on demand, I wouldn’t think it worth this price. But I don’t. For me, the only ethical position is that it should not be available at all except in a question of a life for a life.
That doesn’t mean I’m for this bill. Or against it. Logically, it shouldn’t be causing all the fuss it is. But logic is out of bounds in abortion “debates.”
Why do other abortion opponents bother with this? Do they really think the woman seeking an abortion doesn’t know what she seeks to do? Yes, they do.
I’ve heard that said critically by opponents of this measure, which is ironic, because they have no more respect for the woman’s intelligence than advocates do. They not only think these images will give the woman information she doesn’t have, they don’t want her to have it. Feminists can be quite paternalistic.
The measure doesn’t seem to me very likely to produce the effect that advocates seek and opponents fear. The ultrasound, the showing of the pictures, the hour’s wait, and the abortion itself would all occur at the same place — the abortion clinic. I imagine it being treated by all parties present rather like those stupid HIPAA documents we’re required to swear in writing we’ve examined:
“OK, well, you’ve got to sign these — you’re over 18, right? Here are some brochures we have to give you, and some pictures we took you have to see. I’ll be back in an hour and get you to sign some more forms and we’ll be ready.”
The fuss is even less logical when you look at the law being amended. Anyone seeking an abortion already must receive brochures about organizations that offer alternatives to abortion, and then wait an hour. Logically, anybody who wasn’t swayed by that is unlikely to be turned around by fuzzy images. But it’s not about logic, is it? There’s something about pictures.
Given the irrational power of the graven image, it might save some lives, and for that reason I have no particular objection to the bill. I give little credence to arguments that it’s “coercive” or “burdensome.” I would hope that any medical professional about to perform an abortion would want to do an ultrasound anyway, as basic pre-op. If not, maybe “safe, legal and rare” isn’t so much about safe. Or rare. But if an ultrasound is done, why not show the images to the patient? You would with any other kind of procedure.
If it does save a few lives, some will be miserable. If your mom can be persuaded whether you should live or not on the basis of some odd pictures, she’s not likely to be what you’d call a rock-steady nurturer — especially when you give her affection reason to waver, as even the best children do. That can make for a hell of a childhood. It’s no reason to have an abortion — there is a moral emptiness in saying that because a life is likely to be unhappy, that life should not be.
But if you advocate for that life, if you pass a law in a frank bid to save that life, you have a burden of responsibility to do what you can to see that child has a chance for something better.
If the state intervenes to urge that life into being, the state can’t just wait for these kids to show up at its prison gates.
Any lawmaker who advocates this ultrasound measure should therefore be just as strong a proponent of early childhood education. He should beef up child protective services, and increase Medicaid coverage. Etc.
Pro-choicers are so obnoxious when they sneer, “They don’t care about the child after it’s born.” What’s more obnoxious is that it’s so often true. In the second trimester, it’s lawmaker to the rescue; 10 years later, it’s “That’s not my child.”
Why do “bleeding-heart liberals” not care about the most powerless? Why do anti-government types want government intervention at this time and this time only? You would think things would be the other way around.
But nothing about the whole left-vs.-right divide in this country makes any sense. And it hasn’t, for the past three decades.

Confederate Radio

70 Replies

THAT drew you in, didn’t it? And welcome to all our neo-Confederate friends who wouldn’t be here except that they spend their days cruising the Web for stuff they can get indignant about.

Anyway, I thought I’d refer you to the streaming feed from my appearance on Public Radio this morning. The video stutters something fierce, but it you just want to listen to the audio, that works fine.

I spent most of my 10 minutes or so deconstructing David Beasley’s overly rosy memories of his short-lived attempt to get the Confederate battle flag off the dome. While you listen, you might want to read over my last written assessment of ex-Gov. Beasley’s performance on that issue:

THE STATE
THE FLAG IS STILL THERE BECAUSE THE GOVERNOR GAVE UP
Published on: 07/06/1997
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
By BRAD WARTHEN, Editorial Page Editor
There are basically two reasons why a relic of the Civil War still flies in the most ridiculous of places atop the seat of present-day South Carolina government:

* Gov. David Beasley didn’t actually try to move it elsewhere, despite his promise to do so. Oh, he started to try, but then he gave up right at the point when a person who was really trying would have rolled up his sleeves.
* Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, wanted the flag to stay right where it is. And what Glenn McConnell doesn’t want simply counts for more at the State House than what the governor does want. Sen. McConnell knows what he’s about.

There was a time, in late 1996, when it looked as if the governor was serious about this. At least he said he was, and just saying he was cost him so much political capital that he might as well have seen it through. To have kept going and succeeded would have been to achieve a measure of greatness. To have kept going and failed would at least have earned him respect.
But instead, he ran into resistance and simply gave up. He did this after getting virtually all of the state’s living former governors to stand up with him to call for moving the flag. He did this after getting hundreds of ordained ministers of all faiths to stand up and endorse this historic bid for reconciliation. He did it after creating a rift within his own political party, one that could only be healed by hard work toward a mutually agreeable solution. He did it after getting the Palmetto Business Forum and others to contribute thousands to the ad hoc organization that was going to push this whole thing from a grass-roots level. (That group now has $100,000 that was never spent).
Most of all, he did it after a poll showed that for the first time, most voters wanted to move the flag. Legislators, elected from districts that are artificially polarized by race, are a different matter. That’s why it is so incumbent upon the governor, elected by the whole state, to show leadership.
When Mr. Beasley said he was going to take this on, a lot of us praised him for his courage. But what really took gall was getting everybody stirred up on this issue and then leaving them hanging. A lot of people are never going to forget that.
Many wondered what caused the governor to suddenly take an interest in the battle flag last year: What political angle was he trying to play? Count me among those who believe it was a genuine, road-to-Damascus experience, born of true concern about race relations in this state. What puzzles me is not why he started, but why he quit. I think he was sincere. I just think he had no idea how to make it happen. It’s as if, after being struck blind, the would-be Apostle Paul had simply gone wandering off into the desert, scratching his head. The governor, a veteran of the House, was apparently taken by surprise that leaders of the lower chamber resented being the last to know about his plans – even though they were the ones who would have to do the dirty work to make it happen. They were so peeved that early in the session they passed a measure to hold a public referendum – not to ask what people thought about the compromise plan to move the flag to the State House grounds, but to force them to choose between extremes (fly the flag, yes or no).
Despite a lot of silly "that’s the end of that" rhetoric in the House, this move was widely recognized as a sort of opening gambit. It was expected that the Senate would come back with something far more reasonable, and eventually the House would agree to something that would allow everyone to save face, and perhaps even do some good for the people of the state along the way.
The House vote on the referendum was on Jan. 23. The legislative session wouldn’t end until June. And yet, as far as the governor was concerned, the effort to move the flag was over. For all practical purposes, the governor would not be heard from on this issue again – except for one time. On March 4, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, a staunch advocate for moving the flag, announced he would not run for governor. Four days later, Gov. Beasley signaled that the flag effort was over. He had not even waited to see a bill introduced in the Senate. There were still three months left in the legislative session.
It’s not that the governor dropped off the face of the Earth. He could still be seen here and there, playing golf in charity tournaments, dressing in colorful costumes and riding motorcycles with celebrities at the beach. But somehow he never found time to bring up the flag.
The issue just never came up in the Senate – not because the Heritage Act didn’t have support. It did. And not because anyone was afraid things would get as ugly in the Senate as they had in the House. It’s just that everyone knew Glenn McConnell didn’t want the flag to move – at least, not under any terms but his own absurdly unrealistic ones. And no one wanted to be so rude as to wound the senator from Charleston’s delicate sensibilities on this matter by even bringing up the subject.
The senator is widely respected for his intimate knowledge of all things Confederate. More to the point, he knows how to get his way in the Senate better than anybody. He always knows what he wants and how to bring it about. He’s even better at stopping what others want if it doesn’t suit him. He does not shrink from pressing his point until he succeeds. For this, he is respected by many and feared by some.
Gov. Beasley, who likes to be liked, probably would not enjoy having such a reputation. Fortunately for him, after his performance on the flag, he’s in no such danger.

More on defeat of vouchers

167 Replies

Here’s the AP story on what happened. As I said before, dramatic stuff. It was truly a case of Capt. Smith of the 218th Brigade to the rescue of public schools:

{BC-SOU-XGR-Legislator-Guardsman, 1st Ld-Writethru,0321}
{SC legislator, Guardsman on leave from training casts key vote}
{Eds: Will be updated.}
{AP Photos SCMC101-103}
{By SEANNA ADCOX}=
{Associated Press Writer}=
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – A proposal that would help parents pay for private school tuition with public money was defeated Thursday by South Carolina lawmakers, the third consecutive year the idea has failed.
The effort to defeat the plan was energized by a House legislator who flew home from Army National Guard training to argue against the proposal.
Army Capt. James Smith, on leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, told colleagues that voters decided in November they didn’t want school vouchers when they elected a Democrat to head the Education Department.
Smith, a Democrat, is set to deploy to Afghanistan in a couple of months.
"I’m here solely for the voucher vote," he said.
Smith said he told his battalion commander Lt. Col. John Nagl that it was an important vote and was granted a day’s leave.
"He said he didn’t want to stand in the way of Democracy," Smith said at the Statehouse, where he was flanked by his 11-year-old son, Thomas.
House Minority Leader Harry Ott said he called Smith on Wednesday after Republicans proposed a plan that would allow students to transfer to private schools. The idea came as legislators debated a proposal to let parents enroll their children in any public school regardless of attendance lines.
"I said, ‘Get home. We need your vote,"’ Ott, D-St. Matthews, said he told Smith.
Smith told colleagues that when voters chose Education Superintendent Jim Rex – the only Democrat elected to statewide office – it showed they did not want public money going to private schools. Rex wants to give parents more choice by allowing them to send their student to any public school.
Advocates of private school choice thought they had the votes Wednesday night, but Smith’s presence likely renewed Democrats’ efforts, said Denver Merrill, spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
"We’re inching along, and we’re not going anywhere," Merrill said.

The libertarian impulse doesn’t stand up all that well in the face of a
man so willing to lay his life on the line for the greater good. That’s
just a little too much moral force, I guess.

Vouchers dead, too — for now

11 Replies

Apparently, efforts to use our tax funds for private schooling have failed again, in a dramatic series of events this morning. I don’t have all the facts yet, but it seems that the following have happened:

The amendments to the open enrollment bill that would have created vouchers for ALL kids (not just the poor) and tax credits for the well-off were defeated in the House.
Capt. James Smith, in the midsts of intensive training in Kansas for his mission in Afghanistan, flew back here for the debate, and spoke for 10 minutes on the floor.
Instead of the anti-public school amendments being added, the entire Jim Rex public school choice bill was added to open enrollment, and passed.

A lot of big-time good news happening very quickly. More as I’m able to get to it.

‘Reform’ still an elusive term

1 Reply

The Coastal Conservation League’s Patty Pierce answered my message from yesterday thusly:

Brad,
Brian White tried to do the same amendment that you are referring to at the Committee level because the staff drafted the bill incorrectly according to him. Representative Lucas liked it this way, so he may have been the last legislator to speak to the staff when this section was drafted. Nevertheless, Rep. White tried to get this corrected at the Committee level, but the Committee was tired and didn’t feel like talking about it that late night when they were trying to wrap things up on this bill, so he said he’d just do the amendment during the floor debate. Everyone knew it was coming, and there was agreement on it.
Personally, I think once the priorities are adopted that they should not be changed at all until the next time the priorities are supposed to be adopted by the Commission again. Also, setting the priorities should also be the Commission’s job completely and not the Secretary of Transportation’s in the House bill, so I thought this was a good amendment. It kept the duties separated. It didn’t make sense for the Secretary of Transportation to be able to reach across to the Commission and ask that the priorities be changed. The Secretary is supposed to run the day to day operations of the DOT in the House bill. The Commission should set the transportation priorities. I don’t like the 2/3rds vote to be able to change the transportation priorities, but I can sometimes see when I cannot be effective in changing the minds of some legislators, so I stayed out of this fight.
I’m copying Elizabeth on this note to keep her in the loop.
Send any other questions that you may have my way. I’ll be glad to give you background material if it helps.

patty

We may be miscommunicating here. I realize about what happened in committee. What I don’t understand is why, after working so hard to get sound priority-setting criteria in place, the League would go along with letting the commission — a commission, of all things, the very root of the current problem — toss the priorities any time 2/3 of them wanted to. At the very least, you would want them to have to wait until some other party — in this case, the secretary, who would supervise the people who actually have the wherewithal to set priorities on the basis of objective criteria rather than mere political whim — suggests the changes.

By eliminating that check, you place the commission just as much in the driver’s seat as it is now, setting all your vaunted reform at naught. And for this the league cast aside any thought of actual structural, fundamental reform?

Eliminating the commission — in any way, shape or form — is essential to accountability at this most unaccountable of agencies. Keep the commission, and you can kiss any other reforms you’ve worked for goodbye, because they won’t be around very long — especially if you agree to make it autonomous from the beginning.

The Dump is Dead, or at least it WILL be

5 Replies

Every once in a while, something good happens over at the State House, and in an overwhelmingly good way. The sort of thing that keeps us trying on all the frustrating issues where it’s hard to make progress.

The House Agriculture and Environmental Affairs Committee voted 16-0 NOT to extend the life of the Barnwell "low-level" nuclear waste dump.

The bill’s sponsor, who abstained from voting in the face of such a huge defeat at the hands of his own committee (he’s the chairman), was resigned, saying this was "democracy in action."

It certainly is. And no, I don’t think the dump presented a huge health threat to South Carolinians. Folks defending it have always acted like their opposition was based in a Luddite fear of technology and scientific ignorance.

The true objection to the dump’s remaining open — mine, anyway — has been based in the fact that this state decided a couple of decades back that it no longer wanted to be seen as the country’s nuclear wastebasket (we have enough image problems without that), and the fact that a political consensus has existed all this time to get our state OUT of the business, whatever it took.

As near as I recall at the moment, we would have been out of it long ago, if not for two factors:

North Carolina kept backing away from its long-standing deal with us.
The industry has managed to get pliable politicians to keep extending the dump’s life, time and time again.

Anyway, if you want to read more about it, here’s the AP story:

AP-SC XGR NUCLEAR WASTE LANDFILL
SC legislators say no to keeping nuclear landfill open to nation
By SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA,
S.C. (AP) – South Carolina lawmakers defeated a proposal Wednesday to
keep a nuclear waste landfill open to the nation’s low-level
radioactive materials from hospitals and power plants.

A House
panel voted unanimously against the plan, which would have allowed
Chem-Nuclear to stay open to the nation until 2023. State law says
starting next year, the site can accept waste only from South Carolina,
New Jersey and Connecticut.

"I think we’ve put the issue to
rest," said Rep. Billy Witherspoon, who sponsored the bill. "It’s not
an environmental issue as so many people indicated. It’s an economic
issue."

Local officials fought to keep the 235-acre site open
to the rest of the nation, saying the landfill’s taxes, fees and
high-paying jobs are vital to the local economy. The site provides
roughly 10 percent of the county’s overall budget and pumps $1 million
a year into local schools. A portion of its disposal fees also has
contributed more than $430 million for school building projects
statewide.

Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, praised the committee’s decision, saying the state needed to stick to its 2000 agreement.

"We
think this provides us with an important opportunity to move away from
economic development based on nuclear waste disposal, not just for
Barnwell but for the state as a whole," the governor said in a
statement.

Barnwell County Council Chairman Keith Sloan
compared the decision to the state telling the Charleston port, "’You
can accept freight from Japan but nowhere else.’"

"The lack of honesty and integrity and courage demonstrated with that vote is appalling," Sloan said.

Environmentalists have worried the site pollutes the underground rivers below.

The
landfill was last cited by state environmental regulators in 1983, for
improperly unloading a shipment. State officials test the soil, air,
surface and ground water four times a year, inspect shipments daily and
show up unannounced for semiannual inspections.

While tritium
has been found in groundwater, it has been far below regulatory limits,
according to the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Sloan expected significant local budget cuts.

Ann
Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South
Carolina, said the county was addicted to the landfill’s money.

"We didn’t view it as a vote against Barnwell but a vote for the citizens of South Carolina," she said.

Reform in dazzled eyes of beholder

11 Replies

Last night, the lobbyist for the Coastal Conservation League and its allies sent out this note to supporters about the House passage of the DOT plan that coalition had been pushing:

After
four hours of debate and consideration of 39 amendments, finally, the House
overwhelmingly approved the great DOT Reform bill,
H.3575, crafted by Representative Young and her AdHoc Transportation Committee by a vote of 104-3.

H.3575
has ALL 5 of our
DOT Coalition’s DOT Reform Priorities thanks to Representative
John Scott (D-Richland) Annette Young (R-Dorchester) and Christopher Hart
(D-Richland) who sponsored one final amendment this evening to require the DOT
to consider “reasonable transportation alternatives” prior to initiating new
construction of road and bridge projects. H.3575 also requires transportation projects to be justified and
prioritized according to engineering criteria, economic benefits, and
environmental impacts. Maintenance
funding is provided annually to address our $3 billion maintenance needs across
the state, and public hearings are required on large transportation
projects. WOW!

I’ll
set up a thank you note from our capwiz site, so we
can be sure to let House members know how much we appreciate their making reform
of the DOT a top priority this year. Please also help me thank Representative Young in particular for her
terrific leadership on this most important issue. I am certain that we would never have achieved
the goals we set for DOT Reform without her constant efforts to push DOT Reform
forward every step of the way.

Thank
you Coalition members for all of your hard work on this issue and your support
through this rigorous process. Our
Coalition could not have come this far without you!

Tomorrow
afternoon the Senate will continue debate on S.355, its
DOT Reform Bill. I am feeling very
hopeful about the Senate debate. I understand that amendments will be offered to
strengthen our Coalition’s priorities in S.355, and it seems Senators are
pulling together. I’ll write again by
the end of the week with an update on the Senate’s progress.

Great
Job Everyone!

Patty
Pierce
League
Lobbyist
pattyp@scccl.org

Here’s my concern about that (aside from the fact that the coalition’s idea of great reform falls short of mine):

But Patty,
didn’t they do a last-minute amendment that stripped out something that was
important to you? My understanding is that the amendment fixed it so that the
commission could change the priority list WITHOUT the recommendation of the
secretary. (This is something that apparently escaped notice in newspaper
reports.)

It seems that
would pretty much undo the reforms y’all are seeking — not to mention not even
attempting to do what I see as essential. Even though it would take a 2/3 vote,
the commission would still be in the driver’s seat as to whether to continue
applying the reform y’all have worked so hard for.
That’s the
trouble with these overly elaborate, fragmented governing structures — the
slightest change undoes all your efforts to change the way the agency does
business. That stuff is harder to hide with a Cabinet. That’s why structural
reform is, and has always been, the FIRST step — so you can enact deeper
changes with some hope that they will stick.

I wrote a note to Patty along those lines, copying it to Elizabeth Hagood. I haven’t heard back from them yet. For their sake, I’m hoping I heard wrong, or that they have a good reason to think it’s OK anyway (and aren’t just whistling in the dark).

I think what the House came up with was bad enough without the coalition’s agenda getting shafted, too. But that would be par for the course for the Legislative State.

REAL reform, but not really

3 Replies

Meanwhile, the House has also been jockeying about with DOT reform. It’s a little harder to tell the good guys from the bad with the game-playing going on in that chamber.

Rep. Tracy Edge (the main guy pushing the latest incarnation of PPIC today), put up an amendment Tuesday to abolish the transportation commission and make the DOT a Cabinet agency. He spent only a couple of minutes arguing for the amendment, and it certainly sounded cynical: If we’re going to reform the department, let’s have REAL reform. This is, after all, the man who recently told The Sun News "I have a hard time seeing that the system was bad for Horry County, so why change it?" And his amendment was offered right after he and others lost their attempt to let local legislators continue to select commissioners, rather than letting the full Legislature select them.

One other note: The amendment was inartfully drawn; it does not make clear that the governor can remove the secretary, although that is strongly implied. That probably wasn’t deliberate — merely a reflection of the author’s insincerity.

No one felt threatened enough by the amendment even to ask a question, much less speak against it. Rep. Cooper merely moved to table it, and the House complied. The vote is below, from the Journal.

Rep. EDGE explained the amendment.
Rep. COOPER moved to table the amendment.
Rep. EDGE demanded the yeas and nays which were taken, resulting as follows:

Yeas 71; Nays 36
Those who voted in the affirmative are:

Agnew                Alexander             Anthony
Bannister             Battle                Bowen
Bowers                Branham             Breeland
R. Brown             Cato                Chalk
Chellis             Clyburn             Cobb-Hunter
Cooper                Crawford             Dantzler
Frye                Funderburk          Govan
Gullick             Hamilton             Harrell
Hart                Hinson                Hiott
Hosey                Howard                Huggins
Jefferson             Kelly                Kirsh
Leach                Limehouse             Littlejohn
Loftis                Lowe                Lucas
Mack                Mahaffey             McLeod
Miller                Moss                J. H. Neal
J. M. Neal          Owens                Parks
Perry                Pinson                E. H. Pitts
Rutherford          Scarborough          Scott
Sellers             Shoopman             Simrill
Skelton             D. C. Smith          G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith          Spires                Taylor
Thompson             Umphlett             Walker
Whipper             White                Whitmire
Williams             Young
Total–71

Those who voted in the negative are:
Anderson             Bales                Ballentine
Barfield             Bedingfield          Bingham
Brady                Brantley             Ceips
Clemmons             Cotty                Davenport
Delleney             Duncan                Edge
Hagood                Haley                Hardwick
Harrison             Hayes                Herbkersman
Hodges                Jennings             Kennedy
Knight                Merrill             Mulvaney
Neilson             Ott                   G. M. Smith
Stavrinakis          Toole                Vick
Viers                Weeks                Witherspoon

Total–36

Sure sign that they’re coming this way

12 Replies

You know there must be some presidential primaries coming up when national media types start calling. And we’ve been getting some of that. This came in over the weekend:

Brad,

I’m Neil Simon. I produce national
stories for the fox affiliates all over the country. I’ll be coming down there
May 12ish for the fox-broadcast Republican debate.

I’d like to talk to you at some
point about your thoughts on the energy about the primaries down there and
whether Republican primary voters needed any sort of ‘awakening’ after having
the 2004 primary cycle off.. how the crowded field plays into the leading staff
people down there..

In the meantime, are there any SC
political experts I should be sure to talk to before the trip? I will want to
interview them (and you if you want) for stories we will run the day or two
before the debate to introduce viewers to SC politics (and of course shamelessly
promote the debate).

Take
care.

-Neil

Neil Simon

Field Producer | Fox News
Edge

I answered as follows:

Let me know
when you’re coming.

There would
be no "awakening" necessary. The only thing GOP voters had "off" from was
presidential. They had plenty of hotly contested primaries for governor, U.S.
senator, and a host of legislative and other offices in 2002, 2004, 2006. The
GOP electoral machinery always seems to be running. I think Democrats got more
of an energy boost from 2004 that Republicans get from presidential primaries;
they tend to have fewer seriously contested statewide
primaries.

What sort of
political experts? People in politics, consultants, media, political scientists?
And sure, I’ll talk with you if you’d like.

By the way, I
enjoyed "Biloxi Blues."

Sorry. I’m
sure you get that all the time…

So now you’ve witnessed an official meeting of the grand national media conspiracy…

Response to Rushmore

3 Replies

I very much appreciate the insights provided by new correspondent Rushmore, who, based on intimate knowledge with the subject, begs to differ with some of my observations.

I have a few things to say in response to his/her last remarks on this post, and they’re sufficiently involved that I decided to make it a separate post, to raise the profile of this debate at a critical moment (DOT reform comes back up in the Senate Tuesday).

First, I want to say to Rushmore that I’m sorry if I seemed dismissive. I’m just extremely impatient because after all these years, we have a good chance to change, fundamentally, the relationship between this agency and the people of South Carolina for the better.

To toss aside that chance for the sake of promises that whoever runs it, it will make better decisions in a particular operational area is to miss the opportunity, and they don’t come around that often.

One can push new criteria for setting road priorities ANY time. It’s a highly worthwhile procedural reform, but it doesn’t have nearly the potential for sweeping, positive change that fundamental restructuring has.

The problem may lie in our metaphors. I’ve only met Elizabeth Hagood once, and was quite favorably impressed. Very smart lady. But she and I have gone back and forth on the suitability of her "fix the car" metaphor. As she put it in the video I posted:

If you’ve got a car that’s not working, and you change drivers, you’ve still got a car that’s not working.

She considers restructuring to be the equivalent of changing the driver. I don’t. I say that restructuring is a fundamental change in the kind of vehicle you have — as basic as shift from the internal combustion engine to electric (just to plug another of my videos).

By contrast, implementing new priority-setting protocols is more like deciding what sort of map you’re going to use in determining where the car is going to go. That’s very important, no doubt — no point in having a car if it doesn’t take you where you want to go.

But if I’ve got a chance to get a new car, a better car, that will better suit what a car should be — say, if I could trade in my ’97 Buick for a new Toyota Hybrid Camry (slobber) … well, I’m going to grab that chance, and talk about what sort of map to use and where I want to go after I leave the showroom.

The League and its allies determined early that they would, in Rushmore‘s terms…

… stay out of the debate over DOT’s
management restructuring because addressing this issue would place
conservation groups right in the middle of the eternal and ridiculous
turf war between the Senate and the Governor

That misses the point. The choice in restructuring isn’t between the Legislature and the governor and what they want. It’s between good government and bad, between an agency that is accountable to the people of South Carolina and one that isn’t. The idea that getting the structure of government right is "ridiculous" would be a terrible shock to James Madison.

Anyway, my great hope is that the folks in that coalition, and other reformers such as Vincent Sheheen, will give John Courson’s proposal — which now includes all the things the coalition has worked hard for — a serious look when he presents it again tomorrow.

Let’s not look a gift car in the mouth. Or grill. Or whatever.

Randy runs the stats for us

13 Replies

Our own Randy Ewart took a spreadsheet that I made available to y’all earlier and crunched the numbers for us a couple of different ways, helping us dig a little more deeply into the "Competitive Grants Program."

His first spreadsheet sorts the grants by awarded amounts over 100k, then by awarded amounts 100k or less. As Randy says, "This makes it easier to see all the awarded amounts."
He then sorts them by individual lawmaker, so you can more easily see who got what.

Thanks, Randy! We appreciate your time, and your expertise.

DOT reform column

17 Replies

Would-be DOT reformers
need to start pulling together

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE GOOD GUYS really need to pull in the same direction if we’re to get anything that even the most easy-going person in the world would call “reform” at the S.C. Department of Transportation.
That hasn’t been happening:
Last week, Sen. John Courson proposed an amendment that would simply have done the right thing: Courson
Put this executive agency in the governor’s Cabinet, making it directly accountable, without any frustrating filters or buffers of any kind, to the chief executive elected by the people of our state.
He proposed “a clean, a very clear, a very simple bill.” It would have fixed the thing that is wrong with DOT — its commission — by doing away with it.
If you try to run an agency through a group, a committee, a commission, you will once again get what we have: an entity with multiple entry and exit points for decision-making, so that you can’t track how something happened or didn’t happen and do something about it. Lawmakers who want this agency to continue to be their personal candy store are dead set on keeping this structure, preferably appointed by them. They might let the governor appoint the commissioners, as long as he can’t remove them.
A commission can’t turn efficiently when it’s on a bad course. The inertial center of the General Assembly dreads changing direction more than anything.
The House, and Senate committees, have tinkered and argued over the best way to continue to keep a commission and make it look like reform.
Sen. Courson said to forget all that and make the agency accountable. Setzler_2
Twelve senators voted with him: Kevin Bryant, Chip Campsen, Ronnie Cromer, Mike Fair, Larry Grooms, Wes Hayes, Larry Martin, Harvey Peeler, Jim Ritchie, Greg Ryberg, Nikki Setzler and Lewis Vaughn — all Republicans except Sen. Setzler.
That means the proposal was defeated, 26-13. Hayes

Sen. Courson says he’ll try again Tuesday. Unless more reform-minded people work with him, the status quo will win.
Sen. Vincent Sheheen wants reform. He is a sincere advocate of good government who comes from a line of good-government advocates. But he voted against the Courson proposal.
“I try to approach government in a very pragmatic fashion,” he said. “Not in terms of what would be ideal.” He’s had the chance to observe South Carolina government his whole life, and he knows what an alien concept “ideal” can be to our state’s decision-makers.
Besides, he’s not convinced that a Cabinet is “ideal.” If you make it too easy to change the agency, he believes it will lose “stability” and professionalism. He envisions a parade of political appointees passing through the director’s job.
He would keep the commission for continuity’s sake, but let the governor both appoint commissioners and fire them at will.
I tried to get him to convince me that you can’t have a parade of hacks with a commission, with the added problem of not knowing whose hacks they were, and I’m afraid he didn’t succeed.
We agreed on one thing, though: “There are a lot of people who’d like to see nothing happen.” There are more of them than there are people like him. In fact, more people voted for the Courson plan than there are people like Vincent Sheheen.
Patty Pierce lobbies for the Coastal Conservation League, which has taken a lead role in a broad coalition of groups “calling for real reform, including: making the agency accountable to the public, requiring that road projects meet a real public need and making sure that the most important projects are funded first.”
That’s a lot to try to get at once, so the league and its allies have concentrated more on the public-need-and-priority stuff than on pushing an accountable structure.
They would keep a commission, but insist on rational procedures for setting road priorities.
These good people have worked hard at this — through the House and Senate committees and now out onto the floor — and they were much taken aback by Sen. Courson.
“His amendment completely struck the bill that we had been working on for four months,” said Ms. Pierce.
As one who’s pushed the Cabinet approach for 16 years, I started asking why she thought any priority-setting criteria that they were promised would ever last past next legislative session, and various other cynical questions, so she referred me to Elizabeth Hagood, the league’s director of conservation programs.
Hagood_005
She said it’s less a matter of the four months of work, and more a matter of the coalition having decided early to stay out of the politically divisive issue of who runs the agency, and concentrate instead on how it’s run.
That seemed a shaky approach to me. If you have the wrong who, you’re much less likely to get the how that you are seeking. Wouldn’t a Cabinet appointee be far more likely actually to implement and stick to a rational set of priority-setting procedures? Isn’t it much easier for good-government types to nag, argue and embarrass a governor into doing the right thing? You can’t embarrass a commission.
“I understand what you’re saying,” said Ms. Hagood. “Personally, I agree with what you’re saying.”
Unfortunately, the league’s coalition consists of too many diverse partners who have agreed upon the course they are on: “We’re not set up to change direction in the 11th hour.”
In other words… dramatic pause here… the league can’t change its direction and support the right plan because it’s run by a commission.
I rest my case.

Elizabeth Hagood on DOT reform

Who GOT the pork? Here’s who…

17 Replies

A good question was posed by bud on this last post. He asked for names. Well, at first I was at a loss, because if you want to know whom to blame for the "Competitive Grants" boondoggle, you pretty much need to blame the whole Legislature. They passed it. As for whose idea it was to start with, I still don’t know.

However, I can tell you which lawmakers were sponsors for each of these individual grants. When I set out to do this, I thought it would be hard. I thought I’d have to sift through individual grant applications to find the sponsors. I was prepared to do that.

But when I asked Michael Sponhour over at the Budget and Control Board how I might track down the info, he wrote back 11 minutes later to say,

Brad,

Here is an excel spreadsheet with all competitive grant
applications and awards with sponsors.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Mike

So that wasn’t so hard. Enjoy perusing.

The pork list

18 Replies

At Doug Ross’ request, here’s a link to the list (it’s a PDF file) of pork handed out through the Competitive Grants Program.

You can find it at the Budget and Control Board site, so it’s not hidden, but it’s not exactly advertised to the world, either. Trouble is, we sort of had to know it existed to look for it. We sort of had to piece this together from some oblique references made by lawmakers over the last couple of weeks.

And if you’re like this other guy and want to bid for YOUR piece of the pie, here’s the main page. But here’s hoping we can shut this down before you get your money.

Happy reading. Or unhappy reading, as the case may be.

By the way, Doug — Cindi’s now done two columns on
this grant thing, there’s an editorial written and scheduled to run, and news has
done two articles, including today’s lead front-page story. I don’t know about news, but that’s more work than any of us in editorial ever did on any one outrage of Andre’s.

Anyway, thanks for raising the question about the list.

Keeping us safe from common sense

19 Replies

Vigilant S.C. lawmakers keep
us safe from common sense

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
IF YOU THINK lawmakers are going to do the sensible thing and ban smoking in restaurants statewide, you must not have lived in South Carolina very long.
OK, but surely they’ll at least get out of the way of local governments and let them respond to the great majority of voters who want to dine smoke-free, and deliver waitresses, cooks and bottle-washers from having poisonous gases crammed down their lungs in their workplaces?
You think they’d at least do that much, right?
Where are you from, boy? Russia? London? New York City? I never heard such innocent foolishness. Let me lay some facts of life and slow, lingering death on you. I should start by debunking a myth or two.
First, this absolute refusal to use common sense and protect the public from a ubiquitous carcinogen is not a Southern thing. It’s a South Carolina thing.
I discovered this detective-style, which is always the best way. I went into a Longhorn Steakhouse in Savannah last month and asked for a seat in the nonsmoking section. The hostess brushed off my request with a dismissive, “There’s no smoking in Georgia, silly.” All right, she didn’t actually say “silly,” but she was probably just too busy, or trying to be nice, or something.
It seems that back in 2005, Georgia lawmakers decided that kids who get dragged to restaurants by their parents, which for kids is enough of a bummer, shouldn’t also have to die of lung disease. So the state banned smoking in public venues that serve children. (At least one joint responded by banning children, but you’ll always have a few like that.)
The proposal was introduced by a state senator who also happened to be a family physician, and he told everybody breathing smoke was bad for kids’ health. That seemed to do the trick.
That would never sway our lawmakers, who are made of sterner stuff. Secession was bad for kids’ health, too, but what was that compared to our iron determination that nobody was going to tell a South Carolina white man what he could do with his property. No sir, not ever.
FYI, you can’t smoke in restaurants in Arkansas, Florida or Kentucky, either, or in 18 other states, according to the Web site of Smoke Free USA.
Our lawmakers aren’t going to let that happen here, though — not even on the micro level. They made sure of that more than a decade ago, when Spartanburg had the temerity to ban smoking in its restaurants.
They knew they would never give in to common sense, but with the Spartanburg example out there, those other weak-kneed local governments, being so close to the people and all, would start caving left and right, giving votgers what they wanted.
So they passed a law that said henceforth cities would not be allowed to ban smoking. Stupid and evil as it may be, you’ve got to admit this move was forward-looking, given the rash of attempted bans recently.
Why don’t they want people to be allowed to ban smoking in their own communities? Is it self-interest; is it greed for the tobacco lobby’s money or anything like that? No, that’s another myth.
Rep. Ralph Davenport, R-Spartanburg, showed how selfless backers of the pre-emption were when he indicated at the time (1995) that even though his asthmatic daughter was “crippled” any time she so much as walked through smoke, he saw no reason to be “eroding the free enterprise system.”
You see, in South Carolina, smokers and business owners have rights; employees and other nonsmokers don’t. Never mind that there are a lot more employees than business owners, and three times as many nonsmokers as smokers. Think about it: If South Carolina started handing out rights to just anybody — such as duly elected local governments trying to protect the public health — there’s no telling where it would stop.
But prophetic vision isn’t quite enough if one is going to keep protecting the prerogatives of a privileged minority — and if the Legislature knows how to do anything, it knows how to do that. You also need eternal vigilance.
A couple of weeks back, a really wild and crazy thing happened — wild and crazy by Palmetto State standards, I mean. Sen. Vincent Sheheen, an idealist who, despite his youth, has been around enough to know the futility of such gestures, nevertheless proposed to revoke pre-emption. He proposed, as an amendment to a bill banning smoking on school grounds, the following:

Notwithstanding any other provision of state law, a county or municipality may enact ordinances prohibiting or restricting smoking in businesses or establishments open to the general public.

It didn’t ban smoking, or tell anybody to ban smoking. It merely got state government out of the way so that Greenville, Columbia, Sullivan’s Island and all those other communities could do what they have been trying so hard to do in response to demand from their citizens.
The wild and crazy thing was that the amendment actually passed. But that was a moment of weakness by the rank and file. Before final passage of the overall bill, Senate leaders — and we call them that without a shred of irony, because the rest of the state follows where they lead — let it be known that the overall bill would be doomed if the amendment stayed. So it went away.
What do you do with people like this? They not only won’t act in the public interest; they take extraordinary steps to make sure nobody else does so.
In South Carolina, what we do with them is keep electing them. But I can’t tell you why.

Cash? Where? How can I get some?

5 Replies

One might have expected any number of responses, ranging from outrage to indifference, to Cindi’s recent columns about the outrageous way that lawmakers came up with to dole out millions in pork without the least chance of veto or any other form of accountability.

But I didn’t expect this response, even though I suppose I should have.

Cindi got an email this morning from an enterprising individual in the private sector, posing the following question:

Is it too late to
submit an application for the grants you mentioned in today’s paper? If not,
how do I find out how to apply for one?

I am not making this up. Of course, you are now thinking, this is just somebody being ironic, right? Well, Cindi treated it as a serious question, responding:

I think I remember
that the application period is still open. If you go to the Budget and Control
Board page on the sc.gov homepage (http://www.bcb.sc.gov/BCB/BCB-index.phtm),
there’s a link to "competitive grants" at the top of the rail on the
left.

We’re all about providing news you can use around here. She was, of course, curious to see what the guy would say next. His response:

Thanks and
I appreciate the quick response.

Now maybe he was just staying in character and keeping the gag going. But there are a lot of people in this world upon whom irony is utterly lost. If you don’t believe me, look at a lot of the feedback I get on this blog.

Tax cuts for the right sort of people

21 Replies

You might have assumed, after reading fellow blogger Joshua Gross’ op-ed in Tuesday’s paper, that the Ways and Means budget he praised as one that "actually resembles a responsible document" (that’s high praise, coming from him) devoted a lot more money to tax cuts than the current year’s budget.

An excerpt:

When the budget was debated last year the appropriators, flush with $1.1 billion in new
revenues, decided to spend the vast bulk of the money, much of it on pet projects, while reserving a small fraction of the new funds for a property tax reduction that had a negligible impact on job creation in our state. The final budget was a monstrosity so bad the governor chose to veto it in its entirety, knowing full well that the Legislature would still override his veto and spend the money.

Those nasty, monstrous Republican legislative leaders! What were they thinking? But wait! The facts get in the way of Joshua’s interpretation.

This year’s Ways and Means proposal, which the House is debating this week, devotes $81 million to an income tax cut.
Last year’s budget, so horrible, so monstrous that the governor had to veto it, devoted $92 million to a sales tax cut on groceries and a second sales tax holiday.

That’s right, the bordering-on-responsible budget devotes $11 million less in new revenue to tax cuts than the toss-it-in-the-rubbish, big-government’s-gonna-eat-your-children current budget.

Granted, $14 million of last year’s tax-cut money was a one-time tax reduction, for the silly after-Thanksgiving sales tax holiday that we will not have again this year. But even if you discount that, last year’s budget still included a permanent tax cut of $77 million.

Now I understand that supply-siders don’t like to cut the taxes that ordinary people pay. But let’s at least give a nod to reality here.

The budget they’re debating over there this week is $600 million bigger than the one we’re operating under now (or maybe $1 billion more if you use Sanford math). This money thing is not my forte, but that seems to suggest that even if you ignore the $14 million sales tax holiday, the wild-and-crazy budget from last year actually devoted a nearly identical portion (not to mention amount) of money to new tax cuts as the almost-responsible one on the table right now.

But give my buddy Joshua a break; his piece is accurate in one respect: It’s an accurate representation of the Club for Growth world view.

The virtues of Virtual Schools

46 Replies

South Carolina now has it’s very own version of the stem-cell debate — unfortunately.

The stem-cell fight, as we all know, isn’t about stem cells; it’s about abortion. Similarly, the virtual school fight has morphed into a surrogate for the "school choice" debate.

Consequently, the virtues, or lack thereof, of virtual pedagogy have been pushed to the back burner. But that’s what I’d like to talk about.

I have my suspicions about the efficacy of the whole idea. I think offering long-distance classes to kids who might not otherwise have access to such pedagogy sounds very good — after all, the greatest challenge in public education in this state is what to do about the kids who live in poor, rural, thinly populated districts that have trouble offering the quality found in the affluent suburbs.

At the same time, after about 25 years of witnessing the limits of electronic communication, I have my doubts. That’s about how long I’ve been dealing with e-mail in one way or another. I’ve also had some experience with teleconferencing, which is a tool of dubious value.

Yet I’m torn about it.

I know virtual schooling can’t be as good as being face-to-face with a teacher. At the same time, it sounds better than no access at all, which is the option many kids are stuck with. Question is, should finite resources be devoted to this approach, or would they be better spent on other priorities? I’m not sure.

We had a long discussion about it in yesterday’s editorial board meeting, and it was inconclusive. We’ll have to return to it to decide what to say. Of course, we discussed other aspects as well. We’re all over the place on the culture-war aspect (to what extent kids not in the public system should have access), but I’d like to address here the underlying question of whether this is a good approach to begin with.

We’ve all experienced the misunderstandings that can occur in what was once called Cyberspace; this blog serves often as a monument to that effect. Of course, some of the misunderstanding is willfully obtuse, but plenty of it is honest miscommunication between people who would be much more likely to have a meeting of the minds if they actually met.

You sit two people who’ve been speaking at cross-purposes down together — as when Randy Page and I had lunch recently — and you’re somewhat more likely to communicate effectively. Similarly, if the problem is that a given subject, or a given child, is hard to teach, do you do any good giving him or her a "virtual" teacher?

Of course, if you want to address the choice aspect, go ahead — but know that I’m not staking out a position on that myself, not yet. If you can get private school and home-school kids in without pushing some public school kids out, I’m for it. It depends on how limited the device is in terms of accessibility. I need to know more about the program, and one of my colleagues is looking into that.

I’m hopeful that we can have a debate here that we can all learn from each other. On this recent post, Randy and LexWolf gave indications of a willingness to carry on real dialogue about this and possibly other education issues. That sounds great to me. Let’s see how we do.

Rudy Can’t Fail? Sure he can

60 Replies

Robert Ariail had an idea for a cartoon for today that would have shown the GOP going off and leaving John McCain behind.

I asked him to explain it, and as is so often the case, he said it had something to do with reports that were all over television — which he watches, and I don’t. If I were to start watching TV news, I would do it as much as anything so that I could raise myself in Robert’s estimation. He tends to respect my opinion on cartoons except when I say, "What’s that about," and he throws up his arms and says "Everybody’s talking about this." To which I sniff and say if it’s a national story and it wasn’t on the front of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, it must not be very important. But I’m just covering up for my own insecurity. We all triage our time. One way I do is to avoid television.

In this case, I talked him out of that particular idea on other grounds. But I later saw what he had been talking about. I went to the credit union and the tellers had FoxNews on a tube behind the counter. It was going on about a poll showing Rudy Giuliani substantially ahead. (And yeah, I probably should have seen that in the WSJ, but I didn’t.)

I was unimpressed, not least because even if they had been trying to predict a particular primary within days before the vote itself, such results are notoriously unreliable. Primary voters are more difficult to predict than general.

But I think I know something about primary voters after all these years, and while I might prefer Giuliani to some seeking the GOP nomination, I don’t see much chance that the partisans who turn out for these affairs will.

I want them to pick McCain, of course, but I realize they might not. One thing I feel pretty sure about, though, is that if they pick someone other than McCain, it won’t be Rudy.

I don’t always agree with the views touted by National Review, but its latest cover story, by Ramesh Ponnuru, makes a great deal of sense to me. An excerpt:

Actually, McCain’s campaign is doing better than it seems to be. It is true that the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and specifically of the surge he has long advocated, is dragging his poll numbers down. It is true as well that in many polls he is now behind Rudolph Giuliani.
But Giuliani is a useful opponent for McCain. The good news of the senator’s season is that another rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has so far failed to unite the Right behind him. In a McCain-Romney race, Romney would have most conservatives and portions of the party establishment behind him — and might win the nomination.
Giuliani is a different story. He supports taxpayer funding of abortion, sued gunmakers for selling guns, and went to court to keep New York City from giving the names of illegal immigrants to the federal government. Polls show that many Republican voters are unaware of these aspects of the former mayor’s record. It is hard to see how he wins the nomination once they learn about them. In a three-way race, some people who prefer Romney to McCain will nonetheless back McCain to head off Giuliani. This year, then, a real threat to McCain has failed to materialize — and a fake one has replaced it.
McCain’s apostasies from conservatism, unlike Giuliani’s, are well known. The mayor’s polls form a ceiling. McCain’s could be a floor, if conservatives are willing to reconsider their view of him. If they do, then the current Giuliani moment will be succeeded by a McCain moment. I think conservatives will give him a second look — as they should.

Do you think he’s right? Or do you think the GOP is actually more likely to go for Rudy?

Giuliani02

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits