Category Archives: South Carolina

Nikki Haley vs. Occupy Columbia: Pick your side

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Because I can’t. An excerpt from a release that just came in from Occupy Columbia:

On Thursday, Governor Nikki Haley said that unions are behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. We contest that accusation. This is a leaderless movement that welcomes participation from all groups, but neither bows down nor endorses any. We’ve publicly invited all people or organizations, whether they be Unions or the Tea Party, to come take part in a conversation about economic injustice and a system that is rigged to benefit the 1% at the direct expense of the 99%.

We challenge Governor Haley to produce evidence to back up her claim. If she would attend one of our General Assemblies (held every day at 10:00am and 7:00pm), she would realize that all decicions made by Occupy Columbia are voted on by those in attendence. We require a 90% threshold for consensus, and no group, Union or otherwise, has the ability to control that.

Whom should I back here? This is a toughie…

Seriously, though — I don’t think the gov should have said that about them, without justification. Shades of her tale about the drug-addled unemployed.

But then, I don’t agree with OC that Nephron locating here is a bad idea. The rest of the release:

On the other hand, it was the Governor herself who said, earlier this morning, that she is the “number one employee” of a pharmaceutical company and that their success is her “number one goal.” This company, Nephron Pharmaceuticals is the same company whose private jet she used to fly to a fundraiser in Dallas, TX last month, according to Fits News.

We had members in attendance for this morning’s announcement, one holding a sign reading “Who owns you?” Her number one priority should be the success of the people of South Carolina, not the non-body person that is a major pharmaceutical company.

By her statement, she is the personification of the merger of state and corporate interests. We applaud her bold honesty, but find it hard to believe that she can be expected to be accountable after such a declaritive pledge of allegiance to the highest bidder.

So I’m where I started, without a side. But that’s my usual position…

USC connection brings 707 jobs to Midlands

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First, for the overview, I’ll give you the press release from today’s event (provided by the SC Commerce Department):

Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation Announces New Operations in Lexington County

$313 million investment expected to create 707 new jobs

COLUMBIA, S.C. – October 28, 2011 – Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation today announced that the company will locate its new operations in Lexington County. The $313 million investment is expected to generate 707 new jobs.

“We are excited to expand our company by locating our new manufacturing facility in Lexington County. This is a big step for our firm and will help us meet increased demand, expand our market share and develop our pipeline of products. South Carolina has an excellent business environment and we look forward to our expansion into the Palmetto State,” said Lou Kennedy, CEO of Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation.

Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation will establish a new pharmaceutical manufacturing campus and offices in Lexington County. The company is based in Orlando where it currently operates 250,000 square feet of manufacturing, distribution and packaging facilities. Additionally, the company has distribution centers in Kentucky and Arizona.

“It’s another great day in South Carolina with today’s announcement. We celebrate Nephron Pharmaceuticals’ decision to locate its new manufacturing facility in the Midlands and create hundreds of well-paying new jobs. This is a big win for our state,” said Gov. Nikki Haley.

In June, William and Lou Kennedy were awarded the Order of the Palmetto for their philanthropy in founding the Kennedy School of Pharmacy at the University of South Carolina. Both are South Carolinians and alumni of the University of South Carolina. Discussions between the Governor and the Kennedys during the Order of the Palmetto visit led the company to consider South Carolina for the new facility.

“I am gratified that Lou and Bill Kennedy, who have already established the Kennedy Pharmacy Innovation Center at Innovista, see the University of South Carolina and our state as locations to further their commitment to pharmaceutical manufacturing with world class quality and efficiency. Their vision and keen business acumen have led to an important second step in increasing innovation and the knowledge economy in South Carolina,” said Dr. Harris Pastides, USC president.

“Nephron Pharmaceuticals’ investment and new jobs will have a huge positive impact on our state. This new facility will be a major boost for our pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. Today’s announcement is the largest one in the state’s life sciences industry this year,” said Bobby Hitt, Secretary of Commerce.

The new facility will be located on a 60-acre parcel of land near the Amazon facility in Lexington. It is expected to be up and running in the next couple of years.

“I would like to take this opportunity to publically recognize and celebrate the remarkable achievements of Nephron Pharmaceuticals and to hail their decision to expand their operations into their ‘home’ state. This expansion will bring over $313 million dollars into our local economy and will generate more than 700 jobs for the citizens of Lexington County, the Midlands and South Carolina. Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a

renowned leader in its field, and through the years has grown to manufacture over one billion units of medication. What an accomplishment,” said Lexington County Council Chairman Jim Kinard.

Central SC Alliance Chairman Jim Apple said, “Today’s significant capital investment and high-wage job creation announcement by Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a game changer in our quest to recruit international life science/biotechnology industries to the Central South Carolina region. This company is a market leader that produces millions of units of life-saving medications every year right here in the United States and shortly, product will be coming out of Lexington County. We want to recognize and thank the Kennedys for coming back home to South Carolina in making this announcement. The Central SC Alliance is proud to represent a dynamic nine-county region and we value the outstanding working relationship with the University of South Carolina and the S.C. Department of Commerce as we collectively grow our region.”

The S.C. Department of Commerce has committed a set aside grant of $4.5 million for site preparation and infrastructure. The company was also approved for job development credits, which will be available when hiring targets are met. The company will receive training support from the state’s ReadySCprogram.

Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a global leader in manufacturing generic respiratory medications. The company’s products are available to retail pharmacies, hospitals, home care companies, long term care facilities, mail order pharmacies, and various other customers. For more information about Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation, please visit www.nephronpharm.com.

About S.C. Department of Commerce

As South Carolina’s leading economic development agency, the Department of Commerce works to recruit new businesses and help existing businesses grow. This year, Commerce won the Gold Shovel Award and the Deal of Year Award from Area Development magazine. Commerce has been part of recruiting world-class companies to South Carolina such as Boeing, Bridgestone, Continental, Monster.com, Heinz, ZF Group, BMW and Google Inc. Commerce also supports small and existing business, rural development initiatives and offers grants for community development. For more information, visit www.SCcommerce.com.

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This was a big day for all concerned, as you can tell from the basic facts, but the pics below will help confirm. Everybody wanted to get in on the act — the governor, Harris Pastides and a large array of USC honchos, Lexington County Council, the Lexington legislative delegation, Steve Benjamin and his folks, and of course the whole economic development community, from Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt (who was sort of the master of ceremonies) through all the local and regional recruiters. Walid Hakim and others from Occupy Columbia were there, which really confirmed what a big deal it was.

There was enough glory to go around for all, especially for USC. Hence the Horseshoe venue. Lou and Bill Kennedy got their start at USC, and they have a child who is a freshman at the university. More to the point, they had already set up the Kennedy Pharmacy Innovation Center as part of Innovista. This is what Innovista is to look like, folks. Not White Elephant parking garages, but industries getting a foothold here through a research relationship with the university, then expanding into good jobs for South Carolinians.

After the formal ceremony, Lou Kennedy said the jobs they’ve produced in Orlando pay an average of about $70,000. And at this point, they don’t plan on bringing any of their Orlando personnel here.

So, very good news. And very little controversy — so far. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham was given a chance to compare this to the fight Lexington County lawmakers had with the governor over Amazon (which will be this plant’s neighbor), and he declined. This one was nothing but cooperation.

Part of that may be that the industry itself wanted to come here, rather than having to be enticed. (There apparently were incentives, but no one — aside from those involved in the deal — knows what they were yet. I ran into my friend Kevin Dietrich of The Nerve, the scourge of incentives, there, and he didn’t seem on the scent of any yet.) But whatever the reason they’re here. And I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb when I say that’s a very good thing. Congratulations to all involved, from the governor on down.

Perry’s SC visit turns up one key endorsement at least — SC House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s

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This morning, I saw some speculation out there that Rick Perry — who met with Nikki Haley today — was trying to get the endorsement of the fellow governor with who he shares one key friend: Eleanor Kitzman.

Well, I haven’t seen anything out of that yet, but he did come up with an announcement that might mean more to the more establishment types in the GOP: Speaker Bobby Harrell. Here’s the release:

House Speaker Bobby Harrell Joins South Carolina Legislators
Endorsing Rick Perry for President

AUSTIN – South Carolina House of Representatives Speaker Bobby Harrell today joined more than 20 other prominent South Carolina GOP leaders in endorsing Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president.

“Speaker Harrell is a proven conservative and respected leader,” said Gov. Perry. “His endorsement speaks to the growing support of our campaign and my conservative record, and I look forward to working with him and the rest of our South Carolina team as I continue to travel the nation sharing my vision for how we will get America working again.”

Gov. Perry has previously been endorsed by the following South Carolina GOP leaders:

  • U.S. Congressman Mick Mulvaney
  • State Commissioner Hugh Weathers
  • Ambassador David Wilkins
  • State Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, Cherokee
  • State Senator Paul Campbell, Berkeley
  • State Senator Ronnie Cromer, Newberry
  • State Senator Larry Grooms, Berkeley
  • State Senator Mike Rose, Dorchester
  • State Rep. Todd Atwater, Lexington
  • State Rep. Liston Barfield, Horry
  • State Rep. Eric Bedingfield, Greenville
  • State Rep. Alan Clemmons, Horry
  • State Rep. Marion Frye, Saluda
  • State Rep. Dan Hamilton, Greenville
  • State Rep. Bill Hixon, Aiken
  • State Rep. Chip Limehouse, Charleston
  • State Rep. Philip Lowe, Florence
  • State Rep. Chris Murphy, Charleston
  • State Rep. Bill Sandifer, Oconee
  • State Rep. Gary Simrill, Rock Hill
  • State Rep. Tommy Stringer, Greenville
  • State Rep. Bill Taylor, Aiken
  • State Rep. Mark Willis, Greenville

For more information about Gov. Rick Perry’s record, presidential campaign and plan to get America working again, please visit: www.rickperry.org.

Interesting. Last time around, Harrell and Henry McMaster were among the few who stuck with John McCain through thick and thin, even when everybody was saying he was out of it and would never get the nomination.

This time, McMaster (and John Courson, who is also accustomed to seeing his candidates win in SC) are supporting Jon Huntsman. But Harrell’s taking a separate path…

Lindsey Graham fighting good fight again, this time to preserve essential foreign aid

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Just when you thought Lindsey Graham had collapsed back into a complete defensive mode to protect his right flank, he has stepped out again to lead on an issue that could cost him political support across the spectrum.

This is good to see. This is the Lindsey Graham who more than earns his pay. Because a politicians who isn’t willing to risk his position to do the right thing has no business holding office at all:

GOP’s Sen. Graham works to protect foreign aid

By JAMES ROSEN – McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has taken on tough tasks from immigration reform to climate change, faces another one as he calls for spending billions of dollars overseas on unpopular foreign aid programs that he insists are vital to U.S. national security.

With Congress facing mandatory spending cuts and previously sacrosanct military programs on the chopping block, Graham is trying to protect funding for foreign aid even as most Americans oppose it – 71 percent in a recent poll – and other Republican leaders call for focusing U.S. resources at home.

“It is a tough sell, but you can be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Graham, a Republican in his second term, told McClatchy Newspapers…

As Rosen correctly notes, this is classic Graham, the one we saw stepping out on rational immigration reform, and (until county parties back home starting censuring him, pushing him toward the defensive posture) on energy and climate change.

This is good to see.

Today, I was walking through Charleston, past 39 Rue de Jean, and mentioned to a friend that the first time I ate there, it was with Alex Sanders. Which got us onto the 2002 Senate campaign, and what a bitter pill it was to the state’s Democrats that he lost — they had placed such hope in him reviving their fortunes. But, my friend noted, Graham has done a good job since then.

Yes, he has. Especially when he does stuff like this.

There’s a slight implication — perhaps not intentional — in Rosen’s story that there’s something ironic about the hawkish Graham pushing “soft power.” But the idea that there’s some sort of dichotomy between soft and hard power is a canard pushed by people who don’t understand foreign policy. Effective foreign policy includes a good deal of both, and Graham is a guy who understands, and advocates, the full DIME.

Oh, by the way — that thing about 71 percent of Americans wanting to cut foreign aid… there’s nothing new about it. Polls always say that. They also tend to say that Americans don’t know squat about foreign aid. When you ask them how much of the budget goes to foreign aid, they tend to answer that it’s something like 25 percent. When you ask them how much should go to foreign aid, they say about 10 percent.

The true amount? About 1 percent. So basically, if Graham sought to make foreign aid 10 times as much of the budget as it is now (or 3-5 times, according to some polls), they should be happy. But watch — they won’t be.

SC Dem spoof of bizarre Herman Cain advert

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I’m not going to tell you which is the real Cain thing and which is the spoof… OK, if you see them both, I guess you can tell. But if I just showed you the Cain video alone, and asked you whether it was real or a spoof, you’d have trouble getting it right.

In fact, I’m still having trouble with it. I’m still thinking Herman Cain might be sending us up. Look at that grin.

The WashPost suspected the same thing:

A few questions come to mind….

1. Why is Mark Block, Cain’s campaign manager, smoking a cigarette?

2. Why is Mark Block blowing cigarette smoke into the camera?

3. Why is Mark Block on camera?

4. Who is holding the camera?

5. Why did anyone think this was a good idea?

6. Why is Herman Cain smiling?

7. Are we being punked?

Anyway, enjoy. And don’t y’all be smoking anything, OK? It’s all bad for your lungs.

(The spoof, by the way, is the best-executed video yet from Tyler Jones, who posts on YouTube under the handle, SCForwardProgress. Or at least, I assume he’s the one doing them, since he’s the one who always calls them to my attention.)

Occupy Columbia got press releases!

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Not sure whether this represents a significant stage of evolution, but now I’m getting press releases from “Occupy Columbia:”

Occupy Charleston to Join Occupy Columbia at the State House

Sunday, October 23rd at 6:00pm

Last night, Occupy Columbia sent a small team to travel the state and connect with the other Occupy groups. We have just been informed by these emissaries that Occupy Charleston voted this morning to join us at the State House, beginning Sunday at 6:00pm. Here is a picture of their vote:
With Solidarity,

– Will with Occupy Columbia, a member of the 99%

More on continuing friendship of Haley, Kitzman

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I missed this a couple of days ago — a freelance piece, apparently, by Corey Hutchins of the Free Times. It elaborates on a piece about Nikki Haley’s secretive out-of-state fundraising that ran in The State Oct. 11. An excerpt:

Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman has been on the job less than three months, but it appears she already has an affinity for the pay-to-play political culture of Gov. Rick Perry’s administration.

On Sept. 20, Kitzman headlined a political fund-raiser where she helped tap the insurance industry—the very companies she’s charged with regulating—on behalf of long-time friend and former boss, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, according to a copy of an invitation obtained by The Texas Observer.

The event—held at the corporate headquarters of the auto insurer Ethos Group in Irving, Texas—attracted a number of insurance executives ready to open their checkbooks, according to Gov. Haley’s campaign records. It also included Barry Goldwater Jr., president of a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that represents the insurance industry, according to the invitation. It’s rare for a political appointee—Kitzman was appointed by Perry in late July—to participate in raising campaign money from the industry he or she regulates.

“It stinks. There’s no doubt about it,” says Alex Winslow, director of Texas Watch, a consumer protection watchdog group that has advocated for tighter regulation on the insurance industry in Texas. “It is completely inappropriate for the insurance commissioner to be headlining a fundraiser hosted at an insurance company headquarters.” He likened it to a shakedown operation.

Kitzman didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. She was out of state on Friday, Oct. 14, according to her assistant, Laverne Chase. When asked where, Chase said, “I’d rather not say.”

The Kitzman event raised money for Haley, but it may have benefited Perry as well.

Haley, the nation’s youngest governor, has yet to make an endorsement in the South Carolina’s critical first-in-the-South presidential primary. She has said that she will. A Haley endorsement would be a major boost for Perry’s sagging presidential campaign. As she ponders it, the insurance commissioner—who Perry appointed just three weeks before launching his presidential bid —is helping make Haley comfortable in the Lone Star state…

Ms. Kitzman just can’t do enough for Nikki Haley, can she?

He don’t know Steny very well, do he?

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In a column today in the WSJ (“Squatting on Wall Street“), Daniel Henninger scoffed a great deal at Occupy Wall Street (“Compared to this group, Mark Rudd and the Columbia University sit-ins of 1968 were Periclean Athens.”)

I have no huge problem with that, although I think his ultimate point of trying to tie the Obama re-election effort firmly to OWS seems to go a bit far.

And I had to hoot at one passage:

And so on Sunday, Mr. Obama found a way to yoke Martin Luther King Jr. to Occupy Wall Street: “If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has praised OWS for its “spontaneity.”

What came to be known as Occupy Wall Street began several blocks from Wall Street itself, in Zuccotti Park, in downtown Manhattan. I spent a morning in Zuccotti Park this week. Let’s put it this way: I’d make a contribution to the Democratic House re-election committee to see Mrs. Pelosi lead the austere Steny Hoyer and a delegation of her House colleagues through Zuccotti Park. Spontaneity? Most of the people living atop the park’s pavement are virtually catatonic.

Hey, anybody who thinks Steny Hoyer is “austere” didn’t see him doing the Electric Slide in Columbia last year, and really getting into it. I did, and the video is above.

He don’t know him very well, do he?

Even the rednecks pick on South Carolina now

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This morning, I could not tolerate another second of the pledge drive on ETV Radio (even when I have money to give, and DO give, I can’t abide actually listening to the pledge drive; it’s all those repetitions of the phone number that get to me), and I didn’t like what was on Steve-FM, so I decided to get my first John Boy and Billy fix in a long while.

And that’s when I heard the Tim Wilson song you hear in the video above.

Partial lyrics:

You can go to war when you’re 18
But you can’t buy a beer
You can load missiles on a submarine
But you can’t buy a pistol here
You can breathe chemical weapon fumes
But they don’t want you to smoke
so when you’re shootin’ up a bar in Baghdad, don’t order a rum and coke

OK so far, typical redneck comic lament. But then you get to:

You can be a governor at 21
Or a president at 35
You can be the senator from South Carolina
If you can just stay alive…

This has gone too far. Jon Stewart picking on us is something you’d expect, but when the rednecks start giving us a hard time over our political predilections and idiosyncrasies, maybe we’d better start talking seriously about making some changes.

Picking presidents not private property of political parties (nor are pickled peppers, people)

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Yesterday, I Tweeted my indignation that some SC counties consider the coming GOP presidential primary to be, as Adam Beam reported it, “a private election” that the state Republican Party should pay for.

That position is utterly indefensible. If any election should be publicly funded, this one should be. It is the ONLY chance for South Carolinians to have a voice in deciding who the president will be.

We know that South Carolinians who voted for the Barack Obama in November of that year will have zero effect on the electoral total, because in this red state, all the electors will go into the Republican column.

So this is it, your one chance to make a choice that has any effect. You don’t vote in the GOP primary, and you have no opportunity to influence the election. And the state of South Carolina owes its people that chance.

Yeah, I know that counties are extremely strapped for basic operating funds. As a public defender in Chester wrote to me in response,

The untold story of the budget the last few years is how strapped most counties have been. The parties ought to pick up the tab…

He added:

My office hasn’t received any additional county funding in years. I just see higher priorities locally than this.

I get that. And it’s fine with me if the only slightly less strapped state government (which is largely responsible for local governments’ inability to fund basic services) pays for the election.

The selection of the president is not the private property of political parties (nor pickled peppers). Although occasionally some partisans act as thought it were.

What we SHOULD do is have totally open primaries, meaning that you get to vote in both (when we have both). We should not be barred from voting in the Democratic primary because we voted that same day in the Republican, and vice versa. Every single voter in the state has a stake in who appears on that ballot in November, because one of those people is going to get elected. You should have a say in both of them.

For those of you who say this is nonsense, that of course it’s the choice of the parties whom they nominate, I say that’s the extent to which you have been brainwashed by these parties that hold a shared monopoly on public office in this country.

I won’t get my way on that any time soon. For now, I’ll just be grateful that we’re not yet required to register by party. And continue to expect my government to provide me with the opportunity to vote, at least to that extent.

Just for the record, I am not mad at Boyd

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Rep. Boyd Brown at Yesterday's.

About an hour after Kevin Fisher called me to set the record straight on whether he had called me, I met Boyd Brown for a beer at Yesterday’s.

We had a fine time getting acquainted — I don’t believe we’d every had a conversation before — although it was unnecessary from my point of view. Boyd had suggested the meeting because he thought I was mad at him or something, and I went along because, as my readers know, I’m always glad to spend time at Yesterday’s (see the ad at right).

It was a very South Carolina kind of conversation. We talked about Boyd’s experiences with his Daddy (who is probably younger than I, since Boyd is younger than my fourth child) being on county council in Fairfield County, and about when his grandfather was a high official in state government, and about the people he’s related to in Bennettsville (my birthplace), and partisan politics, and race, and… just a little of everything.

And, more to the point… Boyd says he did not realize until after he had said it that in the case of our governor, his remark could be construed on yet a third level that, he agreed, is inappropriate. So we had a total meeting of the minds. Except, to some extent, when we got on the subject of upcoming legislation that he’s planning to push, but more about that later…

Duke Endowment gives $11.25 million to HSSC

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Jay Moskowitz speaks at the news conference.

I am running through so much stuff today (most of it non-blog) that I don’t have time to say much about this very development, but it’s a big deal, that could lead — among other things — to real-time information being available statewide for doctors and hospitals to better treat their patients.

There was quite a crowd at the announcement, including Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt (the second of three times I would see him today; he was an active guy, too), and such other luminaries as ex-Spartanburg Mayor Bill Barnet and Minor Shaw President of the Micco Corporation, both members of the Duke Endowment board — as well as board chair L. Neil Williams of Atlanta — to give you an idea of how far people came to celebrate this important investment in health research and implementation in South Carolina:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 19, 2011

Health Sciences South Carolina lands an $11.25M grant from

The Duke Endowment

Major gift can result in health care innovation, boost economy, and translate into healthier citizens in SC.

Leaders from Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC), The Duke Endowment, and the state gathered in Columbia today to announce significant news for the future of health care in South Carolina. HSSC, a statewide biomedical research collaborative, has been selected to receive a major grant from The Duke Endowment totaling $11.25 million.

“This grant will help us continue to improve health, health care and health research in South Carolina,” said HSSC President and CEO Dr. Jay Moskowitz. “HSSC, through the support of The Duke Endowment, can translate research discoveries into improved delivery and care models and healthier lifestyles that will benefit not only South Carolinians, but all humanity.”
Today’s grant marks the second time that The Duke Endowment has invested in HSSC’s work. In 2006, HSSC received $21 million from The Duke Endowment, the largest grant for a health care initiative in the foundation’s history. As a result of The Duke Endowment grants, HSSC, through research grants and proposals, has brought another $50 million into South Carolina.

“From the beginning, Trustees of The Duke Endowment were impressed with Health Sciences South Carolina’s vision and commitment from its partner organizations to share knowledge and to work together,” said Neil Williams, chair of the Endowment’s Trustees. “Through this new investment, we believe South Carolina has a chance to bolster leading-edge programs and impact pressing health issues. It will help HSSC continue its vital role in making good health possible in South Carolina.”

The Duke Endowment funding will enable HSSC to build on its existing infrastructure and move in a new strategic direction focused both on research and on translating that research into better clinical care in all parts of the state.
For example, the grant will support HSSC in its efforts to continue to build and implement a health care information technology and clinical trials network in South Carolina. The central feature of this effort is a statewide clinical data warehouse, which will compile real-time clinical data from across HSSC’s collaborative hospitals. The statewide IT and clinical trials network not only will make research more efficient, but also will allow medical teams to use clinical data to make evidence-based decisions, resulting in better patient care. In addition, it will help South Carolina attract clinical trials, which can benefit patients and bring economic activity to the state.

Furthermore, the new funding will enable HSSC to improve the pace at which health care quality and patient safety innovations are integrated into practice in South Carolina. By translating research into clinical practice faster, HSSC believes it can significantly improve how some of the state’s most critical chronic diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, are treated.

While the grant will help HSSC foster research and translate that research into better health care, it also can strengthen South Carolina’s economy by leading to the development of new products, new jobs and new industries. Additionally, with the support of the grant, HSSC can play a role in containing and reducing health care costs in South Carolina.

“In 2004, HSSC set out to develop a health care model that was unique in the U.S. and, through it, to improve the health of all South Carolinians,” Moskowitz said. “Through HSSC’s ongoing initiatives and the support of The Duke Endowment, we are realizing the promise of new treatments, methodologies, tools and discoveries. We believe that this grant, ultimately, will translate into healthier citizens in every part of South Carolina.”

About Health Sciences South Carolina

Established in April 2004, Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) is a statewide public-private collaborative of research-intensive universities and major health systems possessing the shared vision of using health sciences research to improve the health, healthcare and economic wellbeing of South Carolina. HSSC includes Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina, the University ofSouth Carolina, Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center, Palmetto Health, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, McLeod Health, Self Regional Healthcare and AnMed Health.

For more information, visit www.healthsciencessc.org.

About The Duke Endowment

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation in Charlotte, N.C., seeks to fulfill the legacy of James B. Duke by enriching lives and communities in the Carolinas through higher education, health care, rural churches and children’s services. Its founder is the same Duke behind Duke University and Duke Energy, but they are all separate organizations. Since its inception in 1924, the Endowment has awarded nearly $2.8 billion in grants. For more information, visit www.dukeendowment.org.

More than one of the business and research leaders present for the announcement later said it was good to see some of that North Carolina money flowing into South Carolina — particularly since that amount can move the needle here more than it can there.

Obama swamps would-be opponents in fund-raising — in SC, of all places!

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Maybe it’s always this way. I don’t recall having looked at fund-raising numbers in quite this way before, at this point, in a campaign shaped like this one. Cindi Scoppe probably has — she compiled The State‘s first campaign-contribution website if I recall correctly. She’s into stuff like that. As for me — well, it’s about money, so MEGO.

But this got my attention:

Rick Perry is the leading Republican presidential fundraiser in South Carolina, and he did most of it on one day in August.

The Texas governor took in $55,000 of the $103,000 that he has raised in South Carolina on Aug. 25. Katon Dawson, who is advising Perry’s S.C. campaign, confirmed Perry held an S.C. fundraiser that day but told a reporter, “I can’t tell you anything about it.”

While languishing in the polls, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania also is popular among S.C. donors. Santorum has raised $80,080 in the state, the second-highest of any Republican candidate, just ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who raised $75,230.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, actually was the top fundraiser in South Carolina, collecting $238,291. However, Obama is not expected to carry South Carolina, which last went for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976.

Say what? Repeat that last?

Yeah, I get it. He’s the incumbent. But he raised way over twice as much money as the richest fund-raiser among all GOP candidates, and he raised it in South Carolina — a state he doesn’t have a prayer of winning in 2012. Which is why his bus tour somehow magically appeared in North Carolina on a trip northward without having passed through South Carolina, far as we could tell. (Did you hear his teleprompter got stolen in Virginia?)

He’s raised $238,291 in our state — more than 90 grand of it in Richland County (three times as much as all Republicans combined in the capital city) — and has spent… $2,385 (that’s according to a graphic in The State that I couldn’t find online). Yep, 1 percent.

You realize this makes South Carolina a Democratic Party donor state? So much for Democrats being all about what Washington can send to them… I guess this is payback time, huh?

Who are these rich Columbians? And how come they aren’t buying ads on bradwarthen.com? (If I were still at the paper, I’d get Cindi to go find out for me. I didn’t find names in a cursory Web glance at the data Adam drew his story from. Of course, if I were still at the paper, I wouldn’t get to sell ads and keep the money, so… Anyway, more as I know more. I just wanted to go ahead and get something up on this before the day was out.)

Meanwhile, over on the fiscally conservative side, Jon Huntsman has raised $2,550 here, and spent $277,744 in SC. According to the FEC’s website, which is where Adam’s numbers come from. Michelle Bachmann has raised $23,197 and spent $83,156. Others, such as Perry and Santorum, are staying within their SC-raised means in SC.

All told, if young Adam did his sums right, presidential candidates have raised $382,902  from SC sources and spent $719,276 here. So on the GOP side, SC is a beneficiary of political welfare — which makes sense, we being an earlier-primary state than the places where their money likely came from.

Which depends. For Perry, it’s Texas. For Obama, it’s California and the Northeast. For Romney — well, the map looks kind of the way it does for Obama, except the Republican is getting a larger proportion from Florida. Here’s where you can look all that up. Now you don’t need me. Let me know if you find the names of those donors. Get their contact info…

A morning ‘rant’ about a borderline word

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Maybe that headline’s wrong. Maybe it’s not a borderline word. Maybe it’s clearly over the border. I don’t know. Y’all decide.

A friend had a bad start to her day this morning, and vented a bit.

I should explain that the friend is black, and she works for a large organization in the Midlands. That’s all I’ll say, since she asked me not to identify her. Here is her self-described “rant,” with all the installments run together:

I can’t even say Good Tuesday bc I’m starting with a rant.
Staff meeting today and co-worker refers to a church as the “colored” church. Really? How do u respond to that?
I know that’s how some of my coworkers think, but they have to verbalize it every so often. Lack of motivation is bad enough.
Ignorance is another story. That is all. Rant is complete.
I don’t even know if he’d get why I’m upset.

I’ll bet he wouldn’t.

In fact, as a Clueless White Guy myself, I really don’t know how my black friends would react if I used the word “colored.” Of course, this not being 1955, it would never occur to me. It’s so…

Well, the first word that strikes me is “anachronistic.” It makes me wonder, first, how old this guy is. I’m getting on up there, and while I remember the old folks using this word in my childhood, I don’t think I had occasion to use it myself. (No, wait! Maybe once… Oh, it’s too long ago to quantify… I was a tiny kid at the time.) For the old white folks, it was then the “polite” word they used to describe black folks.

By the time I was aware that there was a such a thing as demographic designations, the official, universally-approved word — if you had to refer to a person’s “race,” which I avoided and still avoid when possible (I was reluctant to do so in my second paragraph above, but it seemed essential to the story) — was “negro.” Then, it was “black.” Which I resisted. I preferred, if forced to refer to race, to use a word that sounded clinical, and technical, and less likely to divide people on an emotional level. “Black” sounded to me like, well, like we weren’t fellow human beings. Black and white are opposites, and have nothing in common. It seemed to me, as a teenager, a polarizing word.

But eventually I adopted it. My acceptance was eased by the fact that it was only one syllable. Force me to acknowledge race, and I’d get through it more quickly and move on. I liked that part of it. So I got used to it.

And I’ve stuck with it. I don’t think I’ll ever reconcile to the seven-syllable “African-American,” which is even longer than the “Afro-American” that was briefly popular in my youth. It seems to dwell WAY too long on something that I believe unnecessarily divides people. The only thing worse than that would be “European-American” — eight syllables — which thankfully has never caught on with anyone. (It’s so irrelevant. I never knew a single ancestor who even knew an ancestor who came from Europe. What would be the point?)

Yet, you’ll hear be use “African-American” in an extended discussion of race. Mainly because I get tired of saying “black” after awhile. (When you’re an editorial page editor in South Carolina, or a member of the Columbia Urban League board as I was for a decade, you end up having a LOT of extended discussions of race.)

But it has never occurred to me to say “colored.”

Did that guy think it was cool because he’d heard some of more politically conscious black people say “people of color?” Maybe. But you know, I’m not sure white people are licensed to say that. I’ve heard them try, and it sounds extremely stilted and phony — even more stilted than when black speakers say it. It’s like listening to people who learned a foreign language as adults. The pronunciation may be approximately correct, but the accent is all wrong.

“Colored” used to be a euphemism. Was it for this guy today? Did he use it just because my friend was present? What would he have said otherwise?

Maybe he went home today congratulating himself on his tact. Do you think?

SC Atty. Gen. Alan Wilson at Rotary today…

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“Ironically, I tend to look left,” said SC Atty. Gen. Alan Wilson at the Columbia Rotary Club today. “That’s a joke.”

He said that because he had already gotten a big laugh, unintentionally. Worried about his time, he had turned to tell our president that he was just going to speak a minute-and-a-half about Yucca Mountain before going to questions. Except that our president, Rodger Stroup, was on his right, and he turned the other way and said it to David Kunz, who was seated up there to do Health and Happiness. The laugh came when David said, very enthusiastically, “All right by me!”

But the rest of his speech went pretty well. Crawford Clarkson turned to me afterward to say it was one of the best speakers he’d heard at Rotary. And Crawford’s been in Rotary approximately forever. I said I didn’t know about that, but I thought he did well.

He did well because he spoke as something other than what detractors of his Dad might expect. Sure, he started out sounding a lot like Joe, looking around the room and recognizing his many friends. But that was cool. I’ve always liked that about Joe. He’s very sincere about it, and so was Alan. Alan was a bit cooler about it, in fact. Joe tends to be rather manic in his extreme excitement to be there as a congressman.

Anyway, as I said, some would like to think that Alan is another Charlie Condon. (Charlie, who is a perfectly reasonable human being in person out of the limelight, turned into a sort of pandering monster as A.G., pursuing one issue after another that seemed fabricated to further his political career.) But I haven’t seen that yet, and there was none of that in the presentation we got today. Charlie would have worked in the “electric couch” somewhere, but not Alan.

Wilson spent a large portion of his time simply talking about the routine work that the A.G.’s office does in the course of meeting its statutory and constitutional obligations — handling civil litigation, criminal prosecution, post-conviction relief, criminal domestic violence, etc. That he chose to do so, to explain his office in such professional terms rather than political ones, is to me worthy of praise. Perhaps because I’m always on the lookout for another Charlie. (Fellow Rotarian Henry McMaster was a welcome change from Charlie — and it should be pointed out, Henry was largely responsible for the emphasis on CDV. I’m glad to see Wilson is continuing to be interested in that.)

Then he got onto the controversial issues — the NLRB/Boeing thing (although in SC, that’s hardly controversial), the health care mandate, Yucca Mountain — and he fought his corner well on these. His point on each was that he approached them according to the law as he read it. Of course, I’m less likely to disbelieve him than some, since I see the first and third ones the way he does. I disagree strongly with him on the middle one (and the idea that he could be successful in pursuing severability appalls me), although I fear he may be right that in the end it will be settled by a 5-4 SCOTUS decision, one way or the other.

In supporting his assertion that for him it’s about the law and not political advantage, he cited the Cornell Arms case, in which a security guard shot and killed an unarmed man who he said he thought was threatening him. Wilson said some told him that “You’ll take heat” from 2nd Amendment advocates for supporting the government’s prosecution of the guard. But in his account, he said, “That’s irrelevant.” The man had served five years, and would have been released by the state Supreme Court had Wilson not filed for a rehearing. As John Monk (happy birthday, John!) reported after the meeting:

“This has nothing to do with the right to carry (guns), nothing to do with the gun issue,” Wilson said. “The defense has the right to appeal at each level of litigation, and the state has a right to ask the court to reconsider their decision.”

A  good example for the point the A.G. was making. But whether you agree that he’s always representing the law rather than serving politics, I was impressed that he took no opportunity to posture before Rotary. There was no ideological cant about “big government” or, to cite something his predecessor sank to in trying to run for governor, about promising to protect us from Obama and his Washington “vultures.” He opposes the mandate and sees it as constitutionally unsound. Fine. I just disagree. At least he expresses himself like someone who respects the law, rather than an ideological ranter.

And that counts for a lot. Now, to be perfectly frank, his website seems a tad more self-promotional than his speech today (I went there to get y’all a link to look up more about these issues and his involvement with them). But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good speech. That it was, and well received.

Yep, they’re laughing at us in the UK, too…

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Rick Noble shared this with me today at Rotary, from The Economist:

IT’S a great day in South Carolina, and if you don’t believe it, ask Governor Nikki Haley. On September 27th the governor ordered the 16 directors of cabinet agencies under her direct control to change the way their employees answer the telephone. So now when phoning, say, the Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services or the Department of Employment and Workforce, callers are supposed to hear this cheery greeting: “It’s a great day in South Carolina. How may I help you?”

Ms Haley says the new greeting will boost the morale of state workers and help her to sell the state. “It’s part of who I am,” she declares. “As hokey as some people may think it is, I’m selling South Carolina as this great, new, positive state that everybody needs to look at.”

The blogosphere has been inundated with people mocking the new salutation and proposing alternative greetings. One suggestion: “It’s still better here than Mississippi. How can I help you?” Another was more explicit: “Thank you for calling South Carolina where unemployment is high, morale is low and political leaders are very busy wasting your resources. How may I direct your call?”…

Man, I miss reading The Economist. I used to get it at the paper. But I’m already paying for too much other stuff that used to be covered by the paper, so that’s fallen by the wayside. (Man what DID I spend my salary on back when my club memberships and subscriptions were paid for?)

I used to know the South Carolina writer who wrote for The Economist. I sort of see (or imagine I see — “That blame media is SO bah-ussed!”) her political views in the particular facts chosen in this brief piece — and they are not views that are consistent with those of the editors of The Economist. But I’m not going to name her, because it might be somebody else by now, and then I’d look stupid. Or rather, stupidER.

‘What do we want?’ ‘WE CAN’T TELL YOU!’

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I could have sworn I saw something similar to this on a promo for the Letterman show (“Top Ten Things Overheard at the Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations,” or some such), but couldn’t find it on the Web. In any case, partly inspired by that, but more by what I’ve seen and read in recent days, I Tweeted this this morning…

“What do we want? WE DON’T KNOW! When do we want it? DOESN’T MATTER! WE’LL STAY HERE FOREVER!”

And of course, it’s not just me. The NYT had this story on its site this morning:

Protesters Debate What Demands, if Any, to Make

In a quiet corner across the street from Zuccotti Park, a cluster of 25 solemn-faced protesters struggled one night to give Occupy Wall Street what critics have found to be most lacking.

“We absolutely need demands,” said Shawn Redden, 35, an earnest history teacher in the group. “Like Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ ”

The influence and staying power of Occupy Wall Street are undeniable: similar movements have sprouted around the world, as the original group enters its fifth week in the financial district. Yet a frequent criticism of the protesters has been the absence of specific policy demands…

In other words, they don’t know why they’ve spent the last five weeks of their lives doing this. At least, not in any way that could actually translate into results.

While the demonstrators’ goals are no clearer to me after having read that, my own opposition to the movement itself is a bit sharper.

One thing they seem to believe in, and which I strongly oppose, is direct democracy. One of the things that has prevented them from articulating aims is their insistence on everyone participating meaningfully in the decision.Which is impossible.  (They’ve tried it with Facebook, then decided not everyone is on Facebook, so that lacks legitimacy. Which shows how extreme they are in their democratic impulse.) Beyond the kind of painfully simplistic, bumper-sticker demands you hear in the kinds of chants I mock in my headline and Tweet above, a crowd can’t take a position on anything. And even on that mob level someone, or some few someones, have to come up with the idea to chant to begin with.

Where these folks are on the right track is in their sense that our representative democracy isn’t functioning as it should. But the answer is to fix the republic, not to abandon it for mob rule.

A mob cannot discuss, or refine, or incorporate minority ideas to achieve consensus. A crowd can’t deliberate or discern. Come up with an algorithm to assemble opinions from masses of people and synthesize a position, and you still won’t be arriving at anything like an intelligent decision. (Aside from placing a great deal of undemocratic power into the hands of the writers of the software.)

Good ideas for governing a multitude seldom spring, like Minerva, directly from the brow of an individual. They are even less likely to do so from a crowd. In either case, the idea should be tested, challenged and refined in debate. The problem in our republic today is that we don’t have real debate between people with differing ideas — we have shouting matches between irreconcilable factions who are not listening to each other. And a crowd on the street is just another set of shouters.

The thing is, you NEED a “1 percent” to arrive at properly nuanced decisions for a multitude. In fact, the decision-makers need to be fewer than that for anything larger than a village, or a neighborhood. It’s not possible for the 99 percent to all interact with each other meaningfully in arriving at an intelligent decision on a complex issue.

Speaking of which — something else I Tweeted about this morning: “I saw ‘the 99 percent’ demonstrating at the Statehouse. Apparently, there are fewer people in Columbia than I had thought.”

Actually, what you had there on the State House grounds the last couple of days was about the right number for making effective decisions for the entire state — if they had been selected in a manner infinitely better than self-selection, and also better than the way we’re choosing lawmakers now. Because that’s not working so well, either.

Someone responded to my latter Tweet this morning. It took him two posts to say it all:

I actually sympathize with the movement. They just can’t articulate. But damn, Columbia protesters are cringe-inducing.
to me, there are actually similarities between OWS and Tea Party. They know something’s wrong, but are too dumb to articulate.

Indeed. But it’s not that they’re too “dumb.” They could all be the smartest people in America, and it wouldn’t matter. A crowd can’t articulate anything — or if it can, the thing it articulates going to be too simple. That’s the problem with street protests.

Great to see Jeff, but I still await that Dole story

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Jeff Miller and Warren Bolton, outside Yesterday's in Five Points.

Yesterday my phone rang, and told me Jeff Miller was calling. This was confirmed when I answered and heard his voice:

“I’ve got that Dole story for you.”

Except that he still didn’t have it. He was just stringing me along…

The background: I pulled Jeff out of The State‘s Newberry bureau in late 1987 to assign him to cover the upcoming Republican presidential primary here — the one that launched George H. W. Bush toward the nomination and the presidency, and did so much to burnish the S.C. primary as the early contest that picked winners.

I had other political reporters — plenty of them, in those days. But Lee Bandy was up in Washington, and my others who could do the job would be busy with the Legislature by the time of the primary. I needed somebody to work this story full-time, and for the duration. We could see it was going to be a big deal, with the nation’s eyes on South Carolina, so I didn’t want to treat it like just another story. Gordon Hirsch, who was then the news editor, suggested Jeff as somebody who, despite lack of political experience, could do the job. I jumped at the offer, and our state editor lost him from then until after the primary. (Actually, the State Desk have lost him permanently — eventually, he joined my governmental affairs staff for good. I just can’t remember whether he went back to Newberry for a while first. It’s been a LONG time.)

He did a great job, and had a great time, I think. I still remember him talking about being on the bus with David Broder, and what a nice guy Broder was. Jeff was young, and new to all this, and he was really impressed that the legendary Broder would just sit and talk with him like a regular person.

But he wasn’t too starry-eyed to do his job well. I was pleased. There’s just this one beef. After the primary was over, I had one more story idea for him. After all these years, I can’t even remember what the specific idea was, but I thought it was a good one — it was an angle about Bob Dole’s defeat here that no one else had done. Jeff wasn’t so sure. He was also pretty exhausted with writing about that stuff, and needed to move on to his other reporting duties. I kept bugging him about it — just this one more story, I kept saying. I was like that as an editor — even when people had been working double-time for a long time, actually even when they were on vacation, truth be told — and I usually got my way, through sheer insufferability. Not this time. Jeff would say, “Yeah, sure…” but I never got it.

So he owed me.

Today, he paid me back by taking Warren Bolton and me to lunch, on his first visit back to Columbia in a decade. We went to Yesterday’s, of course, because I got to pick (see the ad at right). We had a great time talking about the Dole story (neither of us can remember what it was about now — but it was gonna be good). We talked about the Cosmic Ha-Has, the softball team on which both Jeff and I played (I was the last Ha-Ha left at the paper; all gone now).  We talked about the county league basketball team that Jeff and Warren played on, and how neither of them plays any more. (I went out to play with them once. For some reason, they never begged me to come back.)

A lot of the intervening years — I was last Jeff’s editor in 1993 — Jeff was still covering politics, but for other papers. Washington became his home base, and when I last saw him, at the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004 (below), he was in the Washington bureau of the Allentown Morning Call, if I remember correctly. In 2006 he left newspaper work, but has stayed in D.C. Now, he’s the vice president for communications of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

It was great to see him again. Warren, too. But it’s usually not so long between times I get to see Warren.

Jeff and me on the last night of the RNC in NY in '04. The marathon was nearly over (conventions mean 20-hour days for press types). Like my beard? I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.

Some SC Democrats getting excited about Cain

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In a previous post, I derided the widespread notion among Republicans that Democrats will work to try to praise and promote the weakest Republican candidates.

That doesn’t mean it never happens.

Today, a couple of young SC Democratic wise guys have been having fun with Herman Cain’s rise in the polls. First, Lachlan McIntosh Tweeted this:

Herman Can for President? Where do we donate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmdexAKLuw New SC Forward Progress video

Then, Tyler Jones echoed that on Facebook…

Beware the tidal wave of protest as the Mighty Left of SC rises up!

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In case you're having trouble spotting the demonstration, it's just below and slightly to the right of the traffic lights.

Last evening, rushing to get to The Whig, I glanced across the street and saw the above demonstration. At least, I think that’s what it was. There was a sign, although the guy holding it never turned it so it could be seen. I didn’t have time to run across the street and ask, but I wondered at the time: Is this Occupy Columbia?

Apparently not. Apparently the Days of Rage don’t start until Saturday:

An offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protest phenomenon will stage a gathering Saturday at 9 a.m. on State House grounds.

“Occupy Columbia” is hoping to attract 200 people and grow in number from there, one organizer, Travis Bland, said.

Saturday’s event will be held on the same day as “Occupy” protests and gatherings around the state and world, said Bland, a 2010 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a degree in history.

“We were inspired by the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement,” Bland said…

I keep waiting for the moment when these folks wake up and realize, Oh, wait! This isn’t Egypt! There’s no police state, no Mubarak, no repression! This is the premier liberal democracy in the world, and it’s headed by Barack Obama! Never mind…

Until then, you might not want to drive near downtown on Saturday, because the streets will be clogged. Of course, that’s more likely to be because of the State Fair.

But you never know…