Category Archives: South Carolina

The ‘Scoop on Scoppe’

37 Replies

Scoppe_1Oops. I almost forgot that my colleague Cindi Scoppe’s column today promised that you could find, right here on my blog, the item that the anti-tax folks were circulating about her. Here it is, as e-mailed to her (be sure not to miss the real knee-slapper about how these folks "have not noticed her complaining about
the unmentioned tax
on the poor, the lottery."):

Chairman’s
Opinion –
February 1, 2006

The hypocritical scoop on Scoppe

    The battle to secure and preserve true home ownership for the citizens of South Carolina has proven itself to be long, and hard.   
    My ten year concern over this matter – based first on the simple concept that we should not have to “rent” our homes from government – has grown far beyond my original basis of conviction.  Because property taxes levied collectively upon South Carolina’s homes have virtually doubled within three years, my initial point of principle now pales in comparison to the financial hardships that have surmounted tens of thousands of homeowners in South Carolina.
    Quite honestly, this effort illustrates the struggle of South Carolina’s lawmakers as they continuously try to balance the will and voting ramifications of their districts against the campaign-funding lobbyists and special interests.
    The latter-mentioned forces are more than enough to place the underfunded citizens groups at a disadvantage.  But there is another force with which we must also do battle:  the liberal news media.
    From Greenville to Charleston to Florence to Aiken, they aid and abet the effort to maintain the property tax status quo.  Borne in the left-leaning colleges of journalism and promulgating their views of a “correct society” for South Carolina, they spin their webs to protect their beloved big government bureaucracies.
    Out of this journalistic jungle stands one above the others.  Her one woman crusade against real home ownership has been a sight to behold.  She is none other than that editorialist extraordinaire of The State newspaper, Cindi Scoppe.
     Were her idea of journalistic achievement the infuriation of the masses, she should cautiously be satisfied with self.
     It is one thing to share an opinion in this land of (diminishing) freedoms, but to compromise one’s viewpoints with innate, blatant hypocrisy is an exercise in self relegation.
    One of the most often used mantras of those who oppose a (in this case revenue neutral) tax swap is the argument that the poor will suffer disproportionately.   Rolling down the grocery tax was a tactic of equalization that negated that argument. Habitually leaving that component out of the equation, perhaps Ms. Scoppe should look to the idea’s point of origin – the citizens group that formulated what became that unmentionable touchstone, Senate Bill 880.
     Relying on reports from liberal-minded and left-leaning think tanks is another sure way to set up oneself for compromise.   To begin with, the reports from her revered Holly Ulbrich, self-proclaimed tax expert and writer of tax papers that are swallowed as gospel by bureaucrats alike, are nowhere guaranteed to be entirely rock solid. 
    Case in point is the fact that Ms. Ulbrich has of late had a somewhat difficult time defending some of her stances when challenged by certain, knowledgeable citizens.  More revealing, Ulbrich’s statements are made as a member of the Strom Thurmond Institute.  We have recently learned that just because she states opinion, that is not necessarily the majority opinion within The Institute.  However, based on public delivery, one would never guess, would they?  Lesson for Cindi – don’t hang on Holly’s every word.  Her years of working within bureaucracy might just have skewed her vision.
    While seizing upon such data as included in the Miley Report, she did get one thing right, and subsequently proved one of our long thought contentions.  Such reports, sponsored by those like the SC Chamber of Commerce, habitually come out in favor of that group’s prior stances.   No different here.
    Amongst all Ms. Scoppe’s favorite reports and studies, the McCall Study is absent.  It shows, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and The Census which includes (southeastern) average family spending data, a household with a property tax bill of $499 (BLS average) with income of $19,187 would have a 2.4% advantage gain, while a household with a property tax bill of  $1,618 and income of $62, 986 would have a lesser percentage gain of 2.2%.   Comparing the latter income to the median South Carolina household income, so much for the “rich” advantage.
    I am not aware of Ms. Scoppe railing on behalf of the lower class against higher gas prices.  Nor the increased cost in food, clothing, medicine, utilities, or especially, property taxes on the poor.  I have not noticed her complaining about the unmentioned tax on the poor, the lottery.  Disagree on that one?   Then just look at who buys the most tickets of chance (while heaven forbid, subsidizing scholarships for the children of the wealthy).
    And I could mention several more points, but space doesn’t allow.
    However, we must visit the street of Ms. Scoppe’s personal residence.  According to public county tax records, Ms. Scoppe is receiving a chunk of tax relief herself.  In addition to her state tax relief of $460, she gets an additional $869 tax credit.   Being true to her stated beliefs, maybe she returns the $869 to the county, or gives it to the poor.
    For by what means does she get the $869 worth of relief?  According to her tax bill – it is from none other than that dreaded tax on the poor – an additional one cent sales tax, by local option. 
    Being the defender of the lower class that she is, how can she abide this travesty?   Why, this is 50 percent of the amount she has determined will send the poor over the edge, and it did not even roll down the grocery tax in the county by one cent to make the sixth cent less regressive!  Even worse, it did nothing toward permanent, constitutional removal of property tax from their homes.  In the words of the Hindenburg reporter, “where is the humanity?”
     Did she editorialize zealously against the local option sales tax before its imposition?  I haven’t had the time to research that, but if not, only one word applies:  shame.
     Lastly, if permanent and meaningful property tax reform fails, we know exactly who to blame.   Should the status quo remain intact, and the trends of the property tax cancer continue to grow, thousands upon thousands of hard working South Carolinians will be forced from their homes. 
     So perhaps not that far in the future, the newly homeless can occupy all the grand school buildings (although those three story atriums relate more to HVAC capacity than to people capacity).  Some might settle for the plush offices of the county and city councils and their thousands of bureaucratic peripherals.  By then the Rutledge Building will be antiquated and abandoned – having been replaced with forty nine (guess why) stories named the Tenenbaum Tower of  Education) – so there is another option. 
     Fling open your eight foot high office doors, Association of Counties, SC Municipal Association, and Chambers of Commerce all across the state.  Your new residents can enjoy their new digs all the while thanking you for forcing them to move in with you. 
    And Ms. Scoppe, hope you have plenty of room down at The State.  Since the newspaper industry will still be profiting from its sweetheart sales tax exemptions, we know you’ll overlook the inconvenience.
Dan Harvell

OK, my turn on the Folks op-ed

7 Replies

OK, now that the comments on the Will Folks op-ed have reached critical mass of 34 comments and rising (including two from Mr. Folks himself), I will take a few moments to address some of the points raised by readers.

First, though, let me give you a brief summary of my thinking as it went before the piece ran — before the storm, as it were.

When the proof landed on my desk, I saw Will’s mug and thought, "Oh, man — what, again?" Then I remembered the earlier conversation in which it had been mentioned that this piece was in the pipeline. A board member responded by asking, "Is it something we would run if someone else wrote it?" That’s pretty much our standard response whenever the question arises whether we should give this person or that person space on our pages — what if it were from someone else? If the answer is "yes," we generally go with it. The answer was "yes."

So I read the piece on the page and agreed with my colleague who had put it there that yes, if this had been from some other similarly situated advocate on that side of the debate, we would have run it. But note that qualification of "similarly situated": It probably NOT have run if it had come in from someone who had never been a player of some kind in the debate. I say that because the arguments were pretty weak, and persuasive only to someone who already believes all this stuff, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Coming from Will Folks, its weakness was interesting in and of itself. Coming from someone unknown to the readers, it would have had little value.

To elaborate on that, some folks have asked why we would "give a platform" to someone who pleaded guilty to criminal domestic violence. Well, we wouldn’t. But we would "give a platform" to someone who is writing on a subject that is important and timely and who:

  • Was the spokesman, until quite recently, of the current governor.
  • Demonstrated his temperamental unsuitability for the job a number of
    times during the four years he spoke for the governor, but continued to
    hold the position until, as I just said, quite recently.
  • Is still advocating, as hard as he can, policies that are priorities for that governor.
  • Writes with a tone and style that is much the same as the way he spoke when he was in the governor’s office — lashing out, dismissive toward those who disagree, etc.
  • Brings to the surface, in a particularly stark manner, something that has been hinted at more subtly up to now — the growing tension between the governor and those who think like him and an increasingly unified business leadership.

My friend Samuel Tenenbaum said "Shame!" over our having run this piece. But I feel no shame. Well, I will admit that one thing about the
decision to run this does nag at my conscience just a bit: the fact that the piece was so
weak in its arguments that it undermined Mr. Folks’ point of view, with which
I disagree. So should I have waited for a stronger piece expressing that
point of view to come in? Well, if I had, I’d still be waiting. It’s not like we had a strong piece and this one, and picked this one. This is what we had.

Another respondent says critics are attacking Mr. Folks, but dodging the substance of what he said. Well, let’s discuss two or three points of that substance:

  • Will dismisses the financial acumen of some of the heaviest business hitters in South Carolina (or as he puts it, "prominent leaders of the so-called ‘business community’"), and does so in a way that takes for granted that HE and the governor know better than they do what is good for business in South Carolina. He sneers at the "left-leaning S.C. Chamber of Commerce" (note to Hunter Howard — better quit wearing those Che T-shirts around the State House). He calls Darla Moore and Mack Whittle "self-appointed dilettantes." To provide a little perspective, as the governor said to me awhile back about his having hired Will in the first place, "You take someone who was playing bass guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band and you give him a chance." Yeah, OK, let’s see — to whom would I go for credible financial advice? Darla Moore, or Will Folks? Mack Whittle, or Will Folks? Harris DeLoach, or Will Folks? Don Herriott, or Will Folks? Ooh, that’s a toughie.
  • While the governor can be said to have more experience in business than his former protege, to suggest that he is someone whose credentials suggest more real-world experience in financial dealings than the people Mr. Folks dismisses is ludicrous. Mr. Sanford’s record in the private sector before he took up politics is by comparison to these people — and this is charitably understating the case — less than impressive.

Actually, I’m going to stop there, and not get into his strong suggestion that ONLY the kind of tax cut the governor wants could possibly help our economy, or his indulgence in yet another gratuitous slap at public schools ("unquestionably the nation’s worst") or his mentioning that "state spending jumping another 9.1 percent" without noting by how much it had been cut in the several preceding years (some agencies, such as the Corrections Department, by more than 20 percent during that period). Basically, I’m tired of typing.

But before I go, let me address a few reader comments specifically:

  • Scott Barrow says "you’re giving him credibility and helping him restore his bad name by printing his columns." I don’t see how.  If anything, I’m hurting the cause he advocates by running a piece from him (I already addressed the fact that my conscience nags at me about that, even though my conscience, yaller dog that it is, doesn’t know what it’s talking about).
  • Uncle Elmer asks, "Does Mr. Sanford really need cool-headed, articulate friends like this?" Well, no, he doesn’t. In fact, the last time
    we ran a piece by Mr. Folks, the governor’s office called to question our having done so.
  • Honesty says, "The fact that you found the need to edit his previous editorial due to
    his apparent dishonesty while deeming him worthy of now being published
    as a guest editorialist borders on bizarre." Well, not really. We edit everybody, and a lot of what we edit out are unsupportable statements that are wrongly presented as fact. Sometimes we miss such mistakes and instances of outright attempts to mislead, but we try.
  • Will Folks himself complained that "Just once… it would be nice to submit an article and actually
    have folks debate its merits instead of venting their spleens with all
    this anonymous speculation regarding a domestic situation they didn’t
    witness and don’t possess the slightest bit of insight into." Well, once again, Will, I tried. I refer you to the above.
  • Finally, Don Williams raised a broader complaint "about the plethora of conservative local columnists which have been given platform" on our pages. Well, first, I wouldn’t call Will Folks a "conservative." I think that term refers far better to the "left-leaning" Chamber of Commerce than to him. And Mr. Williams lumps him in with Bob McAlister and Mike Cakora as being three who "arrive at the same conclusions time after time." Well, Bob works for those "dilettantes" over at the Palmetto Institute, and is therefore pushing very different views from Mr. Folks on these issues. Mr. McAlister is also a very conservative Southern Baptist, while last I read, Mr. Cakora was an atheist. I have no idea where Mr. Cakora (whom I met once, about six years ago — a fact I thought I’d throw in for Mark Whittington‘s benefit) stands on the tax issue (maybe you can find out on his blog). Beyond that, we usually get complaints about running too many liberals. I don’t know whether we do or not. I particularly don’t know on local columns. Basically, we generally take what we’re sent, and choose between them based on quality and relevance (and whether they’ve been published somewhere else, which is generally a disqualifier). Mr. McAlister sends us far more columns than probably any other local contributor — more than we actually run, I would point out. Joe Darby — who is no one’s definition of a conservative — probably comes in a distant second (we hear from him less since he moved to Charleston). Tom Turnipseed? I would say he submits columns less often that Mr. McAlister, but more often than than Mr. Darby. (Mr. Turnipseed is also regularly published elsewhere). We run letters from him more often, including a short one on Dec. 18.

As for nationally syndicated columnists, here’s a blog by a fairly nonpartisan guy who takes the trouble to rate columnists according to how much they lean either Democratic or Republican. Of the ones on his list we run regularly, he sees five as Dems and only one as GOP. But then, he lists George Will, of all people, as being slightly Democratic, so… Also, he doesn’t include some of our conservative regulars, such as Charles Krauthammer and Cal Thomas. I guess "left" and "right" are pretty much in the eyes of the beholder, which is one reason I hate using the terms.

That’s all I have to say about that. For now.

USC/Clemson column

57 Replies

Gamecock, Tiger team up against caps
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WEEK BEFORE last, I ran into USC President Andrew Sorensen as he was on his way to an “unprecedented” meeting with House Speaker Bobby Harrell. They were going to talk budgets.
    What was so new about that?
    “Carolina and Clemson are talking to him at the same time,” Dr. Sorensen said. “And we’re using the same numbers.” To those who remember the old days of tigers and chickens fighting like… well, like cats and birds, over funding, this was remarkable. Mr. Harrell was so “overwhelmed,” Dr.Bobby_presidents_1 Sorensen later said, he sent for a photographer to record the event.
    “Jim and I have become increasingly close in terms of… what we want to do and how we want to do it,” Dr. Sorensen said when he and Clemson President James Barker visited the editorial board last week.
    Mr. Barker stressed that this new level of cooperation was “not because of the governor’s ‘tax.’ ”
    In his latest executive budget, Gov. Mark Sanford proposed “a one percent reduction for Clemson, USC, and MUSC that will result in savings of $3,232,091 in general funds to encourage such further collaboration.”
    “Yes,” said Dr. Sorensen, “he takes away a million from each of us to stimulate us to collaborate…. if you can understand the logic in that, please explain it to me.”
    This is not the only area in which the two presidents agreed with each other and disagreed with the governor.
    For instance, there is the governor’s proposed cap on tuition increases. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It would help me out, with my fourth child now in college.
    And I like the governor’s stated goal, which is to force consolidation and reorganization of the state’s non-system of public higher education.
    But are caps a good idea for the state of South Carolina? No, and not just because this isn’t going to convince lawmakers to cut the number of institutions.
    Tuition started shooting up when the Legislature decided to cut back on direct funding of colleges, and give middle-class voters scholarship checks paid for by poor folks suckered into playing the lottery.
    South Carolina’s public colleges have experienced a larger percentage decrease in state funding than those of any other Southern Regional Education Board state over the last decade — a period in which most SREB states increased funding.
    Of the 16 states, only West Virginia funded its colleges at a lower percentage of the regional average last year. South Carolina was at 72.45 percent of that average. North Carolina was at the top end, at 136.95 percent.
    Higher state funding means lower tuition. Not coincidentally, Kiplinger’s recently listed UNC-Chapel Hill as the best deal in the country, measured by quality compared to cost. Out of 130 public colleges listed, Clemson was 24th, and USC 31st — in spite of those tuition increases.
    Or perhaps because of them. The money to improve academics had to come from somewhere. And since the General Assembly has seen fit to turn the money over to the students, via scholarships, that’s where the institutions have turned for funding.
    At USC, said Dr. Sorensen, 96 percent of entering freshmen get “one of the lottery-funded scholarships.” At Clemson, it’s 99 percent. In fact, said Mr. Barker, “At Clemson, not one freshman from South Carolina paid full tuition” this year.
    OK, so the heads of the schools don’t want tuition caps. Big surprise. What about the students? I don’t know about all of them, but some student government leaders at USC sent a letter
to the governor last week asking for a meeting “to make you aware of our concerns with these proposals, as we feel they do not completely address the desires of students.”
    One of the signers, student body Treasurer Tommy Preston, was diplomatic about the governor’s plan when I asked about it, saying that it was “our opinion that there’s just not enough information” to know, but it seemed the caps “potentially could be harmful in the future.”
    Never mind what the treasurer thinks. What does Tommy think?
    “Personally,” he said, “I think our state has a bigger problem with higher education funding.”
    Smart kid, that Tommy.

About Will Folks…

43 Replies

I just wrote this long piece asking what y’all thought about Will Folks’ op-ed today — not the content, but the fact that we ran it at all. I’ve gotten a lot of flak about that today.

And just as I went to save, TYPEPAD BLEW UP ON ME!!!!

Just as well — I had written down MY thoughts on the question, and it’s probably best to see what y’all think first, and then answer you.

So, what do you think?

Outsourcing the republic

14 Replies

Outsourcing the deliberative process
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE POSITION we take in the above editorial is an uncomfortable one. I say that not because using a “BRAC” approach to consolidate school districts is a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great one. But it shouldn’t be.
    Our system of representative democracy is all about the deliberative process: We, the people, elect representatives to go to Congress or the Legislature and study complex issues in detail, debate them, make tough decisions for the sake of the whole nation or state, and then come back and face the voters.
    This proposal sidesteps that process: It empowers a separate body — not directly elected — to address a long-neglected statewide problem. The members of that body do all the studying and work out all the details — that is, the actual discernment. Then they hand the whole package to the elected body for a simple “yes” or “no.”
    The tragedy is that this is apparently the only way that our small state can do away with the shameful waste of having 85 school districts — some of them incredibly tiny, each with its own separate administration.
    Why? Because elected representatives won’t touch it. Why? Because they’re elected.
    Anyone with common sense looking objectively at this can see that it would be insane not to consolidate districts. But any representative who advocates shuttering a local district faces the danger
of not getting re-elected.
    So we find ourselves in a situation in which the most effective approach is to outsource the deliberative process. And school consolidation isn’t the only tough state issue that our delegates may choose to sub-contract.
    S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell is proposing the same approach on tax reform. He would have a special panel draw up a list of sales tax exemptions to eliminate. Why? Because elected representatives don’t have the guts to face the narrow constituencies (from auto dealers to newspapers) whose tax breaks such a plan might eliminate.
    The truth nowadays is that on some issues, our republic’s deliberative process freezes up and dies like a car engine without a drop of oil in it.
    That’s how “BRAC” — for Base Realignment and Closure — entered the language to start with. It was impossible for Congress to achieve savings and efficiencies by closing and consolidating domestic military bases. Why? Because every member of Congress had to have one. Or two, or more.
    Instead of an objective comparison of the relative merits of this or that military facility, followed by tough but smart decisions, the only sort of “debate” that occurred before BRAC went like this: “You keep my base open, and I’ll scratch your back, too.”
    Our system is dysfunctional — at least on issues that involve sacred cows — not because representatives are out of touch, but because they are never out of touch with home long enough to collaborate seriously with their colleagues for the greater good.
    Most advocates of term limits say lawmakers get “corrupted” by Washington or Columbia to the point that they forget the wishes of the folks back home. Hardly.
    Syndicated columnist George Will has advocated term limits for the opposite reason. He says the only way lawmakers will stop listening to the folks back home long enough to think is if they cannot run for re-election.
    I oppose term limits for various reasons, including the fact that I’d rather have laws made by people with some experience at it. But we’ve got to find some way to make critical decisions that politicians with their eyes on the next election refuse to face.
    One good thing about a BRAC is that it can be seen as representative democracy the way it was intended to work: A group is delegated to study the issues with few distractions and deliberate until a rational plan emerges.
    This may be the only way our elected representatives ever vote on a proposal that takes the whole state’s interest into account. A plan that makes the tough calls would probably never make it to the floor otherwise.
    I like to think our system is timeless. But that reckons without technology: In the days before the 24-hour news cycle, blogs, cell phones and mass e-mails, representatives had a chance to concentrate constructively on issues and make decisions accordingly. The cacophony of modern communications makes that nearly impossible.
    Some look at this situation and come up with a whole other way: skirting the republican system entirely. Gov. Mark Sanford would ask voters to curtail the Legislature’s power to appropriate, by setting an arbitrary constitutional limit on spending growth.
    His reasoning sounds a bit like ours: The system isn’t working. When I asked how he could advocate undermining “small-R” republican ideals, he said: “You need to be more aware of the political environment that you’re operating in — be less, you know, idealistic, less, uh, you know, high and lofty, and just get down into the gears of how our government system actually works.”
    Talk about being disillusioned. Of course, I can identify. But there’s a difference. While the BRAC idea reflects a lack of faith in the Legislature’s deliberative fortitude, it does not abandon faith in deliberation
itself. In fact, it gives the General Assembly a little help in that area.
    The contrast between such a careful, studious process of objective decision-making and what the governor is proposing — a quick Election Day show of hands, yes or no, on an unfathomably complex fiscal question — could hardly be greater.
    I’m still not thrilled about having to institute a “work-around” to set policy, but comparing a “BRAC” to setting future budgets in a single plebiscite makes me feel a lot better about it.

Hey! Leave those kids alone

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The job of editorial page editor — the way I choose to do it, anyway — involves a curious mix of leadership and collaboration.

As I frequently tell readers, our editorial board makes decisions by consensus, meaning that even if not everyone in the room buys into the position completely, it has been shaped to the point that each member can live with having the editorial appear beneath his or her name (which, while editorials are by definition not signed — only columns have bylines — is always up there on the masthead with the rest of our names for all the world to see. For an illustration, zoom in on the upper left-hand corner of this page.)

My colleagues occasionally say I’m not being entirely candid when I say that because we don’t always reach consensus, and sometimes we take a certain position only because I insist , despite the lingering objections of one or more members. True, there are times when I consider it necessary to take a position, and a consensus proves impossible — on some political endorsements, for instance. Unlike other issues, an endorsement picks one candidate or another, yes or no — leaving no room for the compromises that make consensus possible. And I firmly believe that failing to endorse — when one of these people will be elected — is a copout.

My response to this gentle remonstration is that just as often (if not more so), I give in and go along with the consensus. An example is today’s lead editorial. Personally, I’d like to see summer vacation start at Memorial Day and end after Labor Day. I sympathize with those who want their kids to enjoy the same sort of three-month idylls that I remember
from my own youth. And while I’m a big advocate of standards in the schools, I personally fail to understand what is magical about 180 days of instruction. I seem to recall many thousands of hours that I spent in school as being superfluous. I believe what I learned between kindergarten and 12th grade could have been taught in half the time.

But my colleagues pretty much unanimously insist that I’m completely WRONG on this, and since I have to confess that to some extent my position is based in sentimentality rather than evidence and logic (and I tend to treat positions based in "feelings" rather than thought with contempt), I’ve gone along with them.

But I only go along so far, and the copy has to get by me to get on the page. An example — a paragraph in today’s editorial originally read like this:

On a practical level, the bill approved Wednesday by the House Education Committee isn’t quite as bad as some previous attempts to set local school calendars: It allows schools to start back as early as the third Monday of August, rather than holding them to the agrarian, post-Labor Day schedule that the businesses on the beach seem to think will benefit them. But then, if you want to talk practicalities, the whole notion that starting school in August somehow shortens the summer vacation is nutty: An early start means kids get out of school by the end of May instead of mid-June. The actual length of summer vacation is the same no matter when it starts and stops.

I was willing to go along with all but one word of that. I paused in the editing process to send an instant message to the writer:

A couple of points re this…
1. Summer vacation IS shorter than it used to be. Kids didn’t get off in mid-June; they got off around Memorial Day.
2. August is more summery than June. It’s hotter. In June, the ocean water is sometimes still cold. Most of June occurs in the spring. All of August (and most of September) occur during the summer.
I guess what I’m saying here is, I object to "nutty." "Unconvincing," perhaps — at least, to a consensus of our board.

So, being the editor, I changed the word, and the writer did not protest. But she still thinks it’s nutty.

So happy together

2 Replies

Also today, I ran into USC President Andrew Sorensen on an elevator. In contrast to my cluelessness on my last two posts, I did manage during the short ride to determine what he was up to.

He was on his way over to what he termed an "unprecedented" meeting with Speaker Bobby Harrell.

What was so new about this? "Carolina and Clemson are talking to him at the same time," Dr. Sorensen said. "And we’re using the same numbers." Basically, he was talking budget requests.

To those of us who remember the old days of tigers and chickens fighting like
… well, like cats and birds — in the General Assembly over funds, we have already seen a remarkable degree of cooperation between the state’s three research universities (counting MUSC) in recent years.

But this sort of coordination does sound new. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.

Beyond that, what’s up with Andre and Democrats, period?

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At lunch today, I ran into former Gov. Jim Hodges. And I went up to him to say hi, and we were both perfectly civil. Really, we were — I even introduced him to my boss, Publisher Ann Caulkins. He was most cordial. Ad man Kevin Fisher, with whom Ann and I were meeting (more about that later), even remarked upon it.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you about was what happened a few minutes after that. Mr. Hodges was seated at a round table with several other people at the Capital City Club. Eventually, he was joined by Andre Bauer. He made a joke to Andre — something about asking for his help with Medicare. I know it was a joke for three reasons. First, everyone at the table laughed. Second, Jim Hodges is younger than I am (even though his hair is much whiter now than in this picture). Third — and this is the really funny part — the Legislature not long ago placed the state Office on Aging under the lieutenant governor’s office, for reasons that remain unclear in spite of Sen. Jackson’s oped. The senator wrote that my colleague Cindi Scoppe was wrong to call that move "nonsensical," but still didn’t explain why lawmakers saw fit to take that function away from the governor and give it to the gov lite.

Anyway, this is an interesting juxtaposition of events. First the op-ed from Sen. Jackson. Now, we see the lieutenant governor getting all convivial with the former governor over lunch.

I knew that Andre was a determined and hardworking campaigner who would pursue anyone’s vote, but this is taking it to a whole new level.

What’s up with Darrell and Andre?

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We had another knotty question come up before the editorial board this morning that we just couldn’t settle, so we had to move on. It was this:

Why is Darrell Jackson going out of his way to praise Andre Bauer, even to the point that Sen. Jackson, a Democrat, says he will support the Republican for re-election?

We don’t have a clue. Of course, next time I see Darrell I’ll ask him (I did see Andre today, but I don’t think he’s the right one to ask). And if this were a column instead of a blog tidbit, I’d bother to call him. But just sitting around wondering, we couldn’t figure it out. The reasons he gives in his op-ed piece don’t answer the question; they are insufficient to explain a phenomenon as unusual as this.

(Some who don’t understand how we work might ask, How come you ran it if you don’t know what motivated it? My answer would be, Duh. It was interesting. And it disagreed with something we had written, and pieces like that — when interesting — have a certain priority. What’s odd here is that the motivation is usually obvious to us, and this time I’m mystified.)

I mean, set aside the party differences. Senators don’t go out of their way to praise lieutenant governors — Andre or anybody else. When they take notice of them at all, it’s usually to take away one or more of the few powers the rather useless office possesses. A lot of people don’t understand this, but to South Carolina state senators, there is no office above them. Not the governor, and certainly not the gov lite. One of the shocks of recent years has been the deference Glenn McConnell — who in the past has seemed affronted any time a governor presumed to exert any kind of influence on the governing process — has shown toward Mark Sanford.

And now this.

Anyway, if you have a workable theory about it, share it with me. And if it makes sense, when I next see Sen. Jackson, I’ll ask him whether you’re right.

What else did he say?

1 Reply

My first version of today’s column originally started out with a summary of what Gov. Sanford considered to be most important in his State of the State speech. But I took so many words setting up that list, and then had so much trouble deciding where to go after listing those items, that I scrapped it and started over with what you see on today’s page.

Here is that first rough draft/outline, as far as I took it, anyway:

     One of the great challenges in making the most of the governor’s annual pre-State of the State briefing luncheon for editorial page editors is that you don’t get a copy of the speech until you get there.

    So you find yourself trying to eat, read the speech (which is on your lap with your notebook, there being no room on the table), ask the governor questions about it as you’re reading it, hear other people’s questions, and take notes simultaneously.

    (By the way, this is not a complaint aimed at our current governor; it was ever thus. Or at least, ever since I started going to these in 1994.)

    So after a lot of scattershot questions based on things haphazardly gleaned from the text on the run last Wednesday, Charleston Post and Courier Editor Barbara Williams had the good sense to make this request: You tell us what you consider to be the main points of your speech, governor.

    His answer, as near as I could write down while trying to get some salad into my mouth, was as follows:

  • Workers compensation
  • Restructuring
  • Holding the line on spending, and paying back trust funds.
  • Leverage private-sector investment in rural South Carolina (broadband access).
  • Education.

    On education, he said he had three main points to stress:

  • Early childhood.
  • Charter schools, for the in-between-aged kids.
  • Tuition caps at the higher-education level.

That’s as far as I got. Anyway, I thought you might find this helpful if you try to wade through the speech itself. Or maybe you won’t. Anyway, there it is.

No commies here

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Mark Sanford is not a communistSanford_state_2
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
‘I DON’T want people to lose sight of who they’re talking to, and I sound like a half communist by the time I’ve laid out all these different options,” said Gov. Mark Sanford at a pre-speech briefing on his State of the State address Wednesday.
    “… which I’m obviously not,” he added with an easy laugh, the same laugh he uses when he calls me a “socialist,” which he does with some frequency.
    I should add some context.
    First, the governor isn’t any kind of communist — half, quarter or full. Nor am I a socialist; he just says that because he’s such a thoroughgoing libertarian, and I’m not. I’m sort of in the middle on the whole small-government-versus-big-government thing. Government should be as big or small as we the people, acting through our elected representatives, decide it should be, and whether taxes rise or fall should depend upon the situation.
    The governor was mock-concerned about being perceived as a demi-Marxist because in his speech, he was actually taking a more pragmatic view of the whole tax-and-spend thing. While insisting that if lawmakers swap a sales tax increase for a property tax reduction it must be revenue-neutral or even an overall decrease, he went on to speak about the need to consider other aspects of our overall tax system. In other words, he was to an extent embracing our position that tax reform must be comprehensive.
    He spoke positively of impact fees to transfer the cost of growth to new development, and proposed to “take the opportunity to look at (sales tax) exemptions that are not serving their purpose.”
    Mr. Sanford tiptoed repeatedly around the question of whether he considers property tax relief — which conventional wisdom holds is Job One in this election year — really needs to happen in 2006.
His fancy footwork on that went over the heads of many legislators — the first time they interrupted him with applause for a policy statement was on page 21 of a 24-page speech, when he said, “We think this can be the year of property tax relief….”
    The solons clapped like crazy, and I had to wonder why.
    Can be? Not will be? What did he mean by that? Back at that luncheon briefing with editorial page editors, Charleston Post and Courier Editor Barbara Williams tried for several minutes to pin him down on that. Finally, with a somewhat exasperated tone, she said: “Are you pushing for it this year? This is what I’m asking. Are you going to be one of those who says we’ve got to absolutely do something this year?”
    “Do you see that written in here?” the governor asked.
    “No,” she said.
    After a grunt that sort of sounds like “Yeah” on my recording, he concluded, “But that’s as much as I’m going to say.”
    But even though he refuses to declare himself clearly as part of this headlong rush to placate angry homeowners before November, the governor need not fear that anyone will erect a bust of him alongside Lenin’s (assuming anyone still has a bust of Lenin).
    Never mind that he has stopped saying overtly dismissive things about public education. Nor should you attach much importance to the fact that he keeps saying things like, “This is not about some philosophical jihad that says government is bad and the private sector is good.”
    Make no mistake: Mark Sanford is still a libertarian to his core. It’s hard-wired into his reflexive responses, even while he’s trying to reach out to folks to the “left” of him by repeatedly citing Thomas Friedman.
    Check out the one most radical proposal in his speech.
    This is a man who ran for office on a plan to restructure South Carolina’s government so that each branch can exercise its separate, enumerated powers, with proper checks and balances. So you’d think he’d understand the way the system should work.
    And yet, he proposes to undermine the central deliberative principle underlying the republican form of government devised by our nation’s Founders. He would do this by asking voters to approve a change in the state constitution that would set a specific formula for future spending growth, regardless of what future needs might be.
    Does that sound good to you? Well, fortunately, George Washington and James Madison and Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton et al. realized that you couldn’t conduct the complex business of running a government — even one firmly rooted in the consent of the governed — through simple, up-or-down plebiscites. They knew that we would need to delegate the business of deciding what needed to be done through government, how much it would cost, and how to pay for it. And that if we didn’t like the decisions delegates made, we could elect somebody else.
    If you ask most people, without context, whether they want to limit government spending — yes or no, no in-between — they will of course say “yes.” If you ask me that, I’ll say yes, and mean it.
    But if you ask me whether I think this state is adequately meeting its duty to, for instance, keep our highways safe, I’ll say “no.” And if you ask me whether insufficient funds might be a factor in that failure, I’ll say “yes.” And if you ask me whether I have the slightest idea what percentage of our state economy the General Assembly would need to devote to that purpose to get the job done in future years, I’d have to say, “Of course not.”
    And yet that is the kind of arbitrary judgment that the governor would have us make this fall — and lock into our constitution — with his proposed “Taxpayer Empowerment Amendment” plebiscite.
So never fear: Mark Sanford is still Mark Sanford, and he’s certainly no commie.
    If Mark Sanford were not still the supply-side, privatizing, anti-tax, anti-spending guy we’ve all come to know over the past four years, I’d be disappointed in him. I’ve always res
pected his honesty and consistency. And those are definitely still intact.

In the interest of fairness

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OK, now that I’ve filed a post criticizing the governor’s rhetorical style (but not his substance, please note, Lee‘s non sequitur about my reviewing his speech in advance notwithstanding), let’s detail some of my own gaffes in the course of this day preceding the State of the State. (I’d go ahead and tell you something of the substance of the speech, but it’s embargoed.)

How many ways can one man screw up in one day? Let us count them. Or some of them — I’ll let myself off the hook on a few things:

— I was late for the annual pre-speech briefing for editorial page editors. Not my fault, but then you have enough such incidents that "aren’t your fault" and you develop a certain kind of reputation anyway. I have one of those reputations. In fact, my boss, the publisher, has mandated that I have a weekly session with our VP for human resources, one of the most organized people I have ever met, in an effort to straighten myself out. At our last meeting, my coach said my assignment for the next meeting would be to think about what I want to get out of these meetings. This caused me to make a note to myself not to spend the next meeting free-associating.

— Anyway, I comforted myself with the thoughts that the luncheon was set for 11:30, and no one would actually start eating that early, and in the past these things have featured 20 or so minutes of standing about with drinks (generally soft in recent years, despite the guest list) before getting down to business. Also, I recalled that at the first such meeting after his election, lunch had been buffet-style, which gave me a little more wiggle-room. I was wrong, as you’ll see in a moment.

— An aside: I should count myself lucky that the guard outside let me pull my disreputable ’89 Ranger through the gates at all. I’ve come to appreciate the mere fact of actually getting into the governor’s mansion ever since one evening in 2002, just before the election. I was at the time a member of the Columbia Urban League board. It was the night of the CUL’s biggest event of the year, and as a minor part of the festivities I was to be honored with the organization’s John H. Whiteman Award for "outstanding leadership" as a board member (sort of a nice going-away present, really, since I was about to cycle off the board). Gov. Hodges had agreed to hold a reception at his place before the banquet out at Seawell’s. The guards looked at my invitation, heard my name, and said I wasn’t on the list, so I couldn’t come in. I remonstrated, and they made a phone call, and told me I definitely was not to be let in, and that I could take it up with the governor’s office in the morning, if I were so inclined. Worse, they wouldn’t let Warren Bolton in, either, apparently because he was with me. Well, I was cool and mature about it. I decided we should stand just outside the gate, and give a straight answer to any arriving or departing guests who asked us why we were standing there. They all shook their heads in apparent disbelief. It didn’t stop them from going in, though, as I recall.

— Anyway, after I pulled into the grounds, another guy in a Smokey the Bear hat waved me into a space. I hopped out and headed in. He said, "Your license plate is expired." I said, "What?… Oh… yeah… I think that sticker’s at the house somewhere." He told me he didn’t mean anything bad by telling me: "I’m just trying to save you fifty bucks." OK, uh, thanks, I said as I kept going toward the front door, but then I slowed down as it occurred to me that it was an ethical violation on my part to accept such a discretionary reprieve when I was a guest of the governor. I was about to turn around when I remembered: These governor’s Protective Detail guys dress like Highway Patrolmen, but they’re not actually troopers, and don’t have powers to enforce highway laws anyway. That is, I don’t think they do. I went in. I was late enough.

— And even though I couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes late, I’m sure, they were
already well into the salad course — everyone seated at the formal
dining table — and in mid-conversation regarding the governor’s
agenda. The only good thing was that I slipped in quietly enough that
the governor didn’t notice me until I had asked my first question, well
into the main course.

— Of course, my question turned into one of those mini-debates with the governor, which went on an embarrassingly long time before I could make myself stop arguing with his answers. Meanwhile, everyone else sat quietly waiting to ask their questions, and probably thinking about what an ass I was making of myself at their expense. I don’t know why I do that, but I do it everywhere I go. I can’t just make like a reporter, write down the answer, and shut up. But I should. Sometimes I should.

— I almost left the digital recorder I had turned on and slid down the table, but the governor called out, "Somebody leave a recorder out here?" Mine. Thanks. At a previous such lunch during the Hodges administration (before I was barred from the grounds), I had left my recorder. I never saw it again. This one was its replacement.

— To make up for my performance inside, I decided to make friends with the governor’s dogs on the way out. One consented to be petted; the other stood off and regarded me with healthy suspicion. Warren and Cindi Scoppe, who had come in a separate car in order to be on time, waited for me. I finally realized they were waiting because we needed to have a quick huddle to decide what, if anything, we wanted to say about the speech for the next day (to avoid interfering with the production of the news pages, our pages need to be done well before time for the speech), and they knew I was planning to go to Harry Lightsey’s funeral at 2:30. I told them I had time to meet them back at the office and discuss it there before heading for Trinity Cathedral. Then I stepped over to my truck, and realized I didn’t have my keys.

— Warren and Cindi waited while I barged back into the mansion without knocking (the faux pas just keep piling up, don’t they?) and searched around under the dining room table while the staff was clearing it. They said they hadn’t found anything. I guessed the answer to the mystery on my way back to the truck. Yep, my keys were in the ignition. Don’t even ask why I had thought it necessary to lock my truck
inside these well guarded grounds, because I don’t have an answer.

— Fortunately, Warren and Cindi were still waiting — they know me well — and we had the opportunity to fully discuss the next day’s editorial while I rode in Warren’s back seat back to the office. I had explained the situation to the guard at the gate, and he said it would be OK to get the truck later. I knew there was an extra set of keys in my desk.

— What I also knew, but forgot until we got all the way back to the office, was that I also carry yet another spare key to the truck’s doors in my wallet, for just such emergencies. Sure enough, as I found standing stupidly back in my office and rummaging around through credit cards, there it was. In my pocket all the time. Great. No one would have ever had to know, if I had just remembered that.

— So I had to ask my boss, the publisher,…

Oops, just realized that if I don’t run home NOW, I’m going to miss the State of the State itself. I have to watch to make sure he actually delivers the speech we’re commenting on tomorrow. Have to finish this tale of serial humiliation later…

Exploring new depths

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It was kind of scary to read this quote from Jim Merrill in this morning’s paper, regarding the governor‘s State of the State speech tonight:

"It could maybe be a little less erudite and a little more grass-roots."

Less erudite? How is that possible?

I mean, the governor’s a smart guy and all that, but he’s a pretty lame public speaker. Well, at least he’s pretty lame when he has a speech to read. His past SOS efforts have been kind of painful to listen to.

The odd thing is, he’s fine talking to a group without notes. He tends to repeat the sameSanford_budget_1 catchphrases a lot, but then, what politician doesn’t? The odd thing is how badly he stumbles through a speech he has prepared in advance.

Even odder than that is that this is one of the few things he has in common with predecessor David Beasley. Mr. Beasley was fine getting up in front of a crowd and connecting with them, but his speeches were unbearable. But for a different reason. Mr. Beasley always seemed phony in prepared addresses, as though he had over-rehearsed. Gov. Sanford seems like he’s never seen these words before in his life, and isn’t at all comfortable with them.

Well, we’ll see how it goes tonight.

Oh, you want to know the substance, instead of just the style? Well, I don’t know much about that, although I suppose I’ll know more after a briefing over at the governor’s place in — well, in about 40 minutes. I guess I’d better stop and move that copy for tomorrow’s page…

Let’s talk tax reform

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That’s right, I didn’t have a column today. Not out of laziness, I assure you — as plausible as that explanation may sound — but because I thought it worth making room for our full-page editorial overview of the main issues that should be considered as the state embarks upon tax reform.

Comprehensive tax reform, of course, has long been one of our favorite hobby horses, right up there with government restructuring. But here we put most of the main principles involved in one place. I urge you to peruse it, and use this post as a forum for sharing your thoughts on the subject. Or better yet, write us a letter to the editor.

Or best of all, write or call your lawmakers, and urge them to carefully consider the good of the whole state in changing our tax laws for the better.

Lake rising column

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First, take action to make
the whole lake rise
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
POLITICAL NOSTRUMS often become obnoxious with excessive application. Some simply start out that way.
    For me, one that has always fit in the latter category is “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
    I’ve never denied that there’s truth in it. At least, I intuit that there’s truth in it. I’m no economist, but it’s always made sense that if you pump more wealth into a reasonably fair and open economic system, many people’s boats — if not most people’s — should float somewhat higher. Not all boats, of course, what with the poor always being with us, but there was logic in the saying.
    I still didn’t like it. It was too devil-may-care: Don’t worry about whether everybody’s boat is seaworthy; just don’t impede the tide, and assume everything will be copacetic. It’s like something one would say over drinks at the 19th hole, followed by: “I’m fine. Aren’t you fine? Well, then everybody must be fine.”
    Oh, and don’t give me a bunch of guff about “class warfare.” I enjoy a round of golf as much as the next man. That doesn’t mean I have to adopt an air of insouciance toward society’s have-nots. So the “rising tide” metaphor always left me a little cold.
    At least, it did until last week, when I heard it put another way: “The whole lake has got to rise for my boat to rise.” That implies a sense of responsibility for raising the water.
    Harris DeLoach — chairman, president and chief executive officer of Sonoco Products — said that Wednesday, when he and other state business leaders presented their “Competitiveness Agenda” for the 2006 legislative session, which starts Tuesday.
    This is an agenda with considerable juice behind it, since it is being promoted in common by the state Chamber of Commerce, the Palmetto Institute, the S.C. Council on Competitiveness and the Palmetto Business Forum.
    The groups banded together last year to push successfully for tort reform, retirement system restructuring, a measure to encourage high school students to choose “career clusters” that help them see the point of staying in school, and “innovation centers” to connect university-based research to the marketplace.
    They had less success advocating adequate funding for highways and health care, but overall, the stratagem showed what could happen when state business leaders combine their clout and let lawmakers know they’re truly serious about some issues.
    “This time last year, I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive,” said Chamber President Hunter Howard, who has carried water for his organization in the State House lobby for many a session. But once he tried a “whole new approach… going after the Legislature with really a stick kind of approach — but in a nice way,” he was pleased with the results.
    There will no doubt be those who detect an odor of self-interest whenever business people push for anything. And there’s truth in that, too. Mr. DeLoach does want his boat to rise, after all. But the encouraging thing is that he and the others leading this coalition understand that for that to happen, the water has to rise for everyone. Rather than simply saying “I’ve got mine” and being satisfied, they are pursuing policies that — whether you think they’re smartly crafted or not — acknowledge the truth that we’re all in this together: If the least of these in South Carolina are left back, so are we all.
    Take tax reform, for instance. As my colleague Cindi Scoppe noted in a recent column, the business sector is determined not to be outsqueaked by homeowners to the extent that businesses bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
    But there’s good in that. Lawmakers are coming back to town this week all in a sweat to get angry residential property taxpayers off their backs, which creates the danger of overreacting yet again with little regard for the stability, fairness and efficacy of the overall tax system.
    Basically, the business honchos are saying what this editorial board has said for years — that however much emotion swirls around property taxes or some other outrage of the moment, the goal should be “comprehensive tax system reform.”
    Of course, the biz types have a few things on their wish list that most of us would never think to ask for, such as workers’ compensation “reform.” (I put that in quotes because I haven’t decided whether it’s reform or not.)
    But I’m still struck by the extent to which these business leaders seem more interested than many of our politicians in doing, as Mr. DeLoach put it, “what’s good for the whole state,” seeing that as the way to benefit them all.
    Those who reflexively distrust the private sector see it as wanting nothing more from government than to cut its taxes and leave it alone. But too many aspects of this agenda give the lie to that.
    In fact, “We’re referred to as the group that wants to raise taxes,” said Carolina First Bank CEO Mack Whittle. “Well, we’re the businesses that pay the taxes” (about 43 percent of the total, asserts the Palmetto Institute’s Jim Fields). “We have to look at the road system; we have to look at education. And if it does take more revenue, then so be it.”
    So it is that you see the business community leading the charge for kindergarten for all 4-year-olds who need it.
    It is, in large part, the kind of agenda that reflects what real pro-business conservatives — the kind who have a proven ability to meet a payroll, and a realistic grasp of what it would take to provide better paychecks for all South Carolinians — see as the state’s real needs.
    What they come up with differs necessarily from what professional “conservatives” who are all theory and no practice tend to advocate. You know, the Grover Norquists, and those w
ho would play along with them.
    Am I endorsing this whole agenda? Of course not. I haven’t begun to make up my mind about significant portions of it. Others I know I’m against. For instance, while I welcome these groups to the comprehensive tax reform cause, my colleagues and I staunchly oppose some of the particulars they advocate under that umbrella — such as imposing spending caps on local government. And we disagree with their position on the powers of the Ports Authority.
    But I do like the stated attitude that underlies much of this approach. Like Mr. DeLoach, I want to see the whole lake rise.

Relative family values

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Paul DeMarco, a potential charter member of the Unparty from Marion County, had the following to say in response to this post:

I do agree that more fairly allocating funds to poor districts like ours will help…

But there is no amount of money that can repair the disintegration
of the family. Many students in our district enter K-4 or K-5 already
so far behind they will never catch up and the most important single
factor holding them back is lack of a stable two parent family. If a
child spends his pre-school years in a single parent home he has been
handicapped in a way that is very difficult to overcome. My hat goes
off to the single parents who are doing their best to make it work but
we all know that two parents paddling in the same direction will take a
child farther than one.

This issue (the disintegration of the family, particularly in the black community) seems to be the elephant in the living room….

Why are we not focused on this issue? Is is something that people feel
is inevitable or simply too overwhelming to address comprehensively?

Later, Dave wrote:

Paul, You hit the nail right on the head but you will never see the
State publish (in print) what you just wrote. We all know that one of
the reasons, if not the main reason, that this problem cannot be solved
is that if someone acknowledges the true problem, then you will be
attacked by the race-baiters. As a result, we as a society peck away at
symptoms of the problem, while politely ignoring the cultural
dysfunction inherent in many black families. Keep in mind there is a
major political party, called Democrats, who give lip service to fixing
the problem, but in reality it is in the Democrats interest to have a
huge voting block living on the welfare plantation….

Paul, demonstrating the sort of lively debate we’d be likely to have at Unparty meetings, came back with:

Brad,

How do you respond to Dave’s complaint that the State is too timid
about identifying single-parent families as a major source of society’s
woes.
Also, it seems to me that on this and other issues our focus should be
on trying to come up with viable solutions/interventions rather than
simply debating.

After all that — and partly because that thread is scattered through a 36-comment conversation among multiple parties, meaning that lots of folks might miss it — I thought I’d respond in a separate post, as follows:

Paul,

The issue isn’t whether The State is "too timid;" it’s whether there’s a public policy issue to be addressed. In the conventional sense, there’s not. But once you start talking about the state getting into pre-K development, you are into unconventional territory. So let’s explore it.

Up to now, our concern has been what to do with the reality that faces our public schools: There are children out there with only one or no parents — or parents who don’t give a damn about them or their education — and what are we going to do about those kids? We can rant all we want about how that shouldn’t happen, but it does, and it’s not the kids’ fault. So we end up about where Judge Cooper did — we need to do something to help those kids whose parents have failed them. It’s the well-established principle of the state acting in loco parentis under extreme circumstances.

But if you’re talking about acting to prevent such situations from arising, you’re getting into areas that give the civil libertarians fits (which, come to think of it, might be enough reason to go there in and of itself). Are we going to license reproduction … outlaw bastardy … make the term "illegitimate" true to its Latin root, as in "not lawful?" What would be the penalties for the inevitable breaches? And what would you do with the children who are the products of such illegal activity? Actually, that brings us back to where we already are…

Personally, I’m for going the non-governmental route and simply resurrecting shame as a salutary force in our society. I’ve been for that for a long time. My being for it, though, hasn’t done much to stem the tidal wave of shamelessness I see washing all around me.

Maybe we should make shame a plank in the Unparty platform. What do you think?

On the sixth day of Christmas…

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… I finally filed a post…

Did you wonder if I’d fallen off the face of the Earth? Or were you too busy with more more worthwhile pursuits than perusing my pontifications? Let’s hope the latter. I also hope you’re having a fine Christmas season, and rest assured I will be opining to the limits of your endurance and likely beyond, once the new year is well under way.

In the meantime, this matter has come to my attention, as it no doubt has to yours. What do y’all think about it? Personally, I think what I’ve always thought: Does it really matter whether we were meeting the constitutional minimum, in terms of what South Carolina really needs to be doing to catch up with the rest of the nation? I mean, it’s shameful for a court to have to find the state to be deficient in any area by that lowly standard. But suppose the judge had found the state had met the "minimally adequate" standard in every area? Would that have been enough so that South Carolina would no longer be last where it should be first, and first where it should be last?

Of course not. Most every other state in the union has been doing much more than South Carolina’s minimum for generations.

What does "doing more" look like for South Carolina? Does it mean devoting more resources to make schools in Richland District 2, or Lexington 1, even better than they already are? No. It means the state stepping in to make sure that kids in Marion, Lee and Allendale counties have the same opportunity for a good education as do those growing up in Columbia’s suburbs and bedroom communities.

And what that means is that the main business of the upcoming legislative season should still be what it already needed to be before this ruling: Revamping the state’s entire system of taxing and spending so that fundamental needs are met in every corner of the state (not just those parts with good property tax bases), and raising the money in a manner that is fair, reliable and conducive to economic growth.

I look forward to seeing what y’all think about this once I have time to return to the blog on a regular basis — which, as I said, will be a couple of days or so into the new year.

Until then.

Judicial independence column

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America must uphold judicial
independence at home, too
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WHAT DO Viktor Yushchenko, Saddam Hussein, Clement Haynsworth and Samuel Alito all have in common?
    Judicial independence.
    That is to say, all have been at the center of events that illustrate the importance of that criticalUkraine2 element, which anchors our republic in the rule of law.
    This is what was on South Carolina Chief Justice Jean Toal’s mind when she spoke to the Columbia Rotary on Monday.
    She started off with last year’s Ukrainian election, which ultimately led to Mr. Yushchenko’s election as president — but not until the bully boys behind Viktor Yanukovych had tried everything from election fraud to assassination by poison to keep the people’s choice from power.
    What saved the day? Well, the “Orange Revolution” in the streets had a lot to do with it, as did international pressure from the United States and others. But ultimately, there would not have been a happy ending for democracy if the Ukrainian supreme court Ukraine1had not stepped in — after the central election committee had refused to hear fraud complaints — and ordered a second runoff election, declaring the results of the crooked first one invalid.
    “How did the Ukraine Supreme Court have the courage and the tools to conduct this important judicial review?” Chief Justice Toal asked. “Many credit the… strong decision for the rule of law to their training by a team of American judges and lawyers sent on an outreach mission to newly emerging democracies to school their judges in the art of creating and operating an independent court system.”
    It is commonly understood that “America is exporting Democracy in the form of free elections” all over the world, to Afghanistan and Iraq certainly, but also less visibly to Bosnia, Saudia Arabia, and so on, she said. But just as importantly, we are “also exporting the idea of the importance of a stable court system.”
    Saddam Hussein knows that, and so do his most violent supporters. That’s why Baathists assassinated a judge involved in charging the former (and would-be future) dictator. It’s also why Saddam has done so much to challenge the viability of the court trying him, from theatrics in the courtroom to refusal to show up.
    The old order in Iraq knows that an independent judiciary that enjoys broad public confidence isSaddam_trial yet another nail in their coffin.
    The chief justice’s remarks remind me of something Sen. Lindsey Graham told me recently. While others measure progress toward success in terms of Iraqi army battalions and police forces trained and effective, he has thought in terms of a functioning cadre of judges who value law over the will of men. That’s one reason he thinks of American disengagement in terms of years rather than the months that political expedience would dictate.
    As Ms. Toal put it, America must be “a beacon to the world,” shining a light on “what living by the rule of law can contribute to the liberty of all.”
    But for the judiciary to be effective, it must enjoy public acceptance — which is not at all the same as “agreement.”
    That’s why she worries about the intersection of politics and judicial selection in Washington.
She tries to stay hopeful, and has seen recent signs that things can go well, even inside the Beltway. She said it will “be interesting to see whether (the nomination of) Alito follows the same positive process” as that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
    “One can only pray for the republic that that is the way it proceeds.” Mr. Roberts was eminently qualified, and was treated accordingly. Ms. Toal said she doesn’t know all there is to know about Mr. Alito, but “what I do know suggests that he is in the cream of the cream,” she said in a Thursday interview.
    But she worries that Senate Democrats, frustrated that they found no chinks in Mr. Roberts’ armor, are determined to make up for it now. And when politicians make up their minds to do that, the stuff is going to fly.
    She’s seen it before — when South Carolinian Clement Haynsworth was nominated by Richard Nixon in 1969 to replace Abe Fortas on the nation’s high court.
    She was working in the Haynsworth firm at the time, and her husband was Judge Haynsworth’s clerk. She watched as her fellow Democrats “drummed up” all sorts of bogus accusations at Judge Haynsworth, who was “revered and highly respected” by both sides of the political fence.
    But after Republicans had succeeded in blocking Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Justice Fortas to be chief justice, “Democrats vowed that they would go after the first nominee of Nixon as payback.” So they did, with Ted Kennedy and Birch Bayh leading the charge.
    This was long before the verb “to Bork” entered the language. But things have only gotten worse as the years have passed.
    “Too often, what we are doing is judging the judges on the basis of the hot-button issues,” said Ms. Toal, when “The real examination ought to be, is he fair and will he call them as he sees them?”
    Many will remember that as a politician, Ms. Toal was a Democrat. But she was “an anomaly — a pro-life Democrat.” So she was never one to embrace the litmus tests of Washington.
    Being a judge, and one who is particularly devoted to her calling, strengthens her aversion to what she fears the fight over Mr. Alito could become.
    But you don’t have to be chief
justice to agree with her. All you have to be is someone who respects the rule of law to understand that you’re not supposed to try to “put someone on there who will sing your song.”

Bad Company

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I see some of my correspondents have gone ahead and brought up the Time magazine piece rating Gov. Mark Sanford one of the three worst governors in the nation, placing him in the unsavory company of Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Bob Taft of Ohio.

I heard about this yesterday,  but didn’t get time to look into it until today, after it had already been in the paper. And here’s what struck me: The little blurb in Govbikerim042 Time — really a sort of afterthought sidebar to go with the story on the magazine’s five best governors — referred to Mr. Sanford’s being criticized by "leaders of his own GOP," and by "GOP bosses."

In our story, GOP Chairman Katon Dawson was quoted as saying that he was never contacted for his opinion, which seemed by implication to impugn the integrity of Tim Padgett, who wrote the blurb for Time.

Katon’s a nice guy and all that, and I supposed technically he is a "GOP boss," but is that who you think of when somebody says "leaders of his own GOP," especially within the context of criticizing his own party’s top state officeholder? Of course not. Republican Party chairmen are the world’s foremost practitioners of the 11th Commandment. They would never bad-mouth their own guys. For one thing, it would be inimical to the whole point of the job. For another, they simply don’t have the political standing to do so.

We all know of actual, elected GOP leaders who have been critical of the governor (while of course saying they didn’t really mean to be critical of the governor). There’s no mystery as to who they are. And the fact that they have done so without any political cost to themselves (so far) speaks volumes about the governor’s vulnerability within his own base.

But Democrats (and disaffected Republicans, for that matter) are deluding themselves if they think that means Mr. Sanford is finished. When Sen. John Land says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

“Three Amigos” column

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Reform backers disappointed,
but not discouraged
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THEY WERE called the “Three Amigos,” even though there were up to five of them. They were business leaders who were instrumental in pushing the Legislature to pass the Education Accountability Act of 1998. Later, they served on the Education Oversight Committee that was created by that legislation.
    They were Bill Barnet, Larry Wilson, Joel Smith, Bob Staton and James Bennett (scroll down on the link to bio). But the old “Amigos” gag led me to ask three of them for reaction to last week’s news that, for the first time since the standards they pushed went into effect, schools across the state failed to advance.
Far more (354) got a lower grade than received a higher one (55), compared with 2004, while most (668) held steady.
    Messrs. Wilson, Barnet and Staton were all “disappointed” by the results, but none would own up to being “discouraged.”
    They were not surprised by what they saw as a temporary setback on a long “journey.”
After all, this is what the Accountability Act was supposed to do — use tough standardized tests to show objectively where the challenges are, so that they can be addressed.
    “I’m not all that upset about it,” Larry Wilson (whose latest ideas on education and economic development were the subject of last week’s column) called to tell me.
    “You have to look at long-term trends,” he said. One year’s setback isn’t enough to worry about. If schools lose ground next year, too, “Then I’ll begin to be concerned about a trend.”
    He noted that those who have spent their whole school careers under the law’s regimen are showing remarkable progress. For instance, our fourth-graders exceeded the national average in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, the “nation’s report card.”
    “As these students progress, we’ll see better results,” he said.
    He said the state has four big areas to work on:

  • Appropriate, early remediation for kids who need it.
  • Consolidating school districts to eliminate the “inefficiency and high cost of small districts.”
  • Early childhood education, getting children ready for the increased rigor they’ll face in K-12.
  • Raising expectations of students, parents and communities.

    As one trained in systems engineering, he says “education’s no different from any other complex system.” The key is finding the right buttons to push and dials to turn.
    Bill Barnet left the Oversight Committee to become mayor of Spartanburg, but his interest in the mission hasn’t waned.
    He said it’ll take time to overcome the “generational abuse” that led to the conditions the Accountability Act sought to address.
    He illustrated this with a story: For years, he ignored a herniated disc — until the pain in his leg became excruciating, and he consented to surgery. When his leg still hurt weeks later, he complained to the doctor. The doctor told him he couldn’t just assume the pain would go away overnight when he had allowed the damage to continue for 10 years.
    Similarly, the challenges to educational achievement in South Carolina “cannot be solved in any one- or five-year period.”
    He bristles at any suggestion that the struggle should be abandoned for, say, tax credits that encourage parents to abandon the schools.
    “The governor says, ‘How can you be comfortable and pleased with where you are?’.æ.æ.æ. I look him in the eye and say I’m not comfortable and I’m not happy,” he said. And then, he says, he tells Gov. Mark Sanford that while he, Bill Barnet, believes in “choice” (such as charter and magnet schools) where it works, the “Put Parents in Charge Act” is “all about your constituents, and maybe your run for president.” Ultimately, it’s a “huge distraction” from the real issues, such as the inequality between rich and poor districts.
    He keeps an eye on efforts to address that through comprehensive tax reform, but wonders if it is politically possible: “Greenville has to be willing to accept the premise that they’re going to take their money and send it to Dillon.”
    The message, he insists, shouldn’t be “stay the course.” It should be “stay the course, with thoughtful adjustments.”
    The only one of the three still on the Oversight Committee, Bob Staton takes heart from the knowledge that “Our kids are still being better educated than they were seven or eight years ago.”
In fact, he expected a setback such as this one last year — the first time the bar was raised on what schools had to accomplish.
    But he knows not everyone sees it his way: “People will use this information to validate their point of view that we’re awful, we’ve always been awful and we’ll always be awful,” he said.
    “My frustration is, people just look at a piece of it,” such as graduation rates. But today’s dropouts started school before the Accountability Act. “The kids that are beginning to come through it are doing better,” he said. “The graduation rate is the culmination of 18 years of that kid’s life and what goes on in it.”
    He cited “three things to look at” going forward:

  • Where a child is in the third grade. Remediate if necessary.
  • The transition from middle to high school, when reading proficiency is essential to mastering critical thinking skills.
  • Moving out of high school and into career preparation.

    “We’ve got to get them through each of those stages,” he said.
    And my reaction? The questions to be asked today are: What are the conditions that led to 55 schools doing better, and how do we go about replicating them in the 354 that slipped?