Category Archives: South Carolina

That’s more like it, Boyd. Good lad!

Last night, Phil Bailey called me with five minutes to go and asked me to be a last-minute replacement for Joel Lourie on Pub Politics, so of course I said yes, and they held the show for a few minutes to give me time to get there.

That’s seven times now, people. No one else comes close. The Five-Timer Club long ago became passé for me. I’m the standard fill-in guest. The one sad thing is that I can never be a stand-in guest co-host, because you have to be a Democrat or Republican. That’s the format. Speaking of which, Wesley Donehue was out of town again (China was mentioned), and Joel Sawyer filled in for him. You know, the former press secretary to Mark Sanford, now state campaign director for Jon Huntsman. He did great.

One of our topics, as it happened, was Kevin Fisher’s column about my post about Boyd Brown’s inappropriate little witticism. (When I entered The Whig, I saw Corey Hutchins seated at a table, went over and stood over him, cocked a fist back and said, “Look out — I’m liable to attack you…”) Our discussion — during which both Phil took the position that Boyd’s comment was great, and Joel held that it was Corey’s journalistic obligation to report it — led me to an ironic observation: While one of them represented the left and the other the right, I was the only real conservative at the table. They would only agree that I was the grouchy old guy upholding outdated notions of civility and propriety. (Which is basically what conservatism is, properly understood.)

We also discussed other, more interesting stuff. I’ll post the show when it’s available.

But that’s not why I come to you today in this post. I wanted to share with you this op-ed from the aforementioned young Mr. Brown, in which he expresses his thoughts regarding the “F” the governor gave him in a far more mature and appropriate manner. An excerpt:

Recently, as you may have heard, Gov. Nikki Haley released her legislative report cards for 2011. I will not venture into the sheer pettiness of this nonsense, although it is just that – petty nonsense. Instead, I’ll explain why I got the grade I received, and why, for the first time in my life, I’ll ignore the “teacher’s” advice on how to improve my grade.

According to her standards, I was given an “F.” Not since my first year of Carolina have I been awarded an “F,” and now that I’m in law school, I hope it’s not a recurring theme. I was ashamed of the “F” I received on my first test in freshman philosophy, but I recovered and did well in the course. I can’t say the same for the “F” I was awarded by Nikki Haley; instead, I am proud of it.

Some would argue that since she is our governor, she knows what the people of South Carolina want. Those who are really drunk on her Kool-Aid would probably argue that point loudly and irrationally. Here is my argument:

The “F” I received stands for Fairfield, for your family. In last year’s election, Senator Vincent Sheheen won our county with overwhelming numbers. Nikki Haley and her platform (or lack thereof) were soundly rejected. She is clearly out of touch and out of step with our community – just look at the election returns.

It is offensive to me for her to think that her agenda for our state trumps the agenda of those who I represent. For her to think otherwise shows her skyrocketing level of arrogance, which only rises higher with every national news show she visits, and every out of state fundraiser she attends….

And so forth.

This is good. This is right. Far better that you express clearly why you are offended by her actions (and you have every reason to be offended by her presumption) that for you to be offensive yourself.

That’s it. That’s my fatherly, or at least avuncular, advice for today.

Kevin says I ‘attacked’ Free Times. News to me…

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Perhaps you should go back and read my original post. Not much to see, really — a lightweight stream-of-consciousness thing in which I started out joking about something I’d read on Twitter, teasing everyone involved… and then decided, near the end, that that was too much levity and that I should play the grownup and harrumph a bit over the Decline of Western Civilization. So I did. And down below, I will again.

My award-wining colleague Kevin Fisher seems to have taken it quite seriously:

Brad Warthen, local blogger and former editorial page editor of The State, is someone I know, like and read regularly. But it seems he needs a trip back to the newsroom at his old haunt on Shop Road, or to sit in on a Journalism 101 class at USC, or to reflect on the wisdom of shooting the messenger.

In a post on bradwarthen.com that surprised me (and I bet others who know and respect him), Warthen attacked Free Times staff writer Corey Hutchins for accurately reporting a comment made by Rep. Boyd Brown (D-Fairfield) about Gov. Nikki Haley…

He was even offended by the joshing part, before I got around to the harrumphing:

Yet Warthen seemed unable to differentiate between the message and the messenger in his Oct. 5 post on the subject, writing: “And Corey and Boyd — what are you boys doing using language like that …”

“You boys.” Tsk, tsk. Yeah, that sounds like me rolling out the big guns, all right. Kevin should refresh his memory regarding the way I write when I’m being critical. This, for instance, is me criticizing someone:

Mark Sanford approaches elective office with the detachment of a dilettante, as though it simply does not matter whether anything is accomplished. His six years in Congress are remembered for a futon and a voting record replete with empty, ideological gestures. As governor, he has proven himself utterly unable — or perhaps worse, unwilling — to lead even within his own majority party. He is easily the most politically isolated governor we can recall. He is startlingly content to toss out marginal ideas and move on, unruffled by the fact that most of his seeds fall on rocky ground.

I guess I should have sensed a foreshadowing of this. Initially, Corey Hutchins and Eva Moore seemed a bit put out with me, but then I decided they were being ironic, too. A day or two later, I worried that I’d misread that situation when Corey Tweeted another mention of me. But all was well, he assured me when I inquired: “All in good fun, friend!”

Maybe THAT was ironic. But I don’t think so.

Originally, the headline of that post was something like, “Don’t use that language around Amanda!” or something similarly silly. Me being the avuncular old guy, protecting the young lady’s sensitive ears: “(W)hat are you boys doing using language like that around Amanda?” See what a corrupting influence this has had upon the poor lass?

But just before I published it, my rather slow mental processes finally penetrated down a couple of layers and realized what I was looking at. So I began the “Seriously, folks…” part, and then changed the headline. (I dig alliteration.)

Why did I do that? What did I see that I hadn’t seen when I started out being facetious?

First, consider that on a superficial level there was nothing original in what Boyd had said. It’s become a bit of tired joke in politics to say something like, “Oh, he’s only doing to her what he’s been doing to the rest of the country for four years.” The reference is a bit salacious, but refers obviously to what the speaker believes as harmful policies. (I say “old.” The earliest references that I find in a quick search — such as here — refer to Bill Clinton. I found some to Bush and Obama, too. But I actually think the device is older than that, a bit of a chestnut.)

But this was said with reference, specifically, to Nikki Haley. Who is not only the first woman ever to be governor. but the only candidate I can recall to have been accused, repeatedly and VERY publicly, of marital infidelity in the course of a political campaign.

Which takes on something different from the meaning of that joke in the normal course of political waggery. And which is, as I said, “grossly inappropriate” in the public sphere, whoever says it and whoever passes it on — particularly when one cutely plays around with the coarsest word we have in the language for such activity.

I shouldn’t have to explain all that. Our sense of propriety should not be so far gone that such an explanation should be necessary. But what should be and what is are not always the same.

Here’s a place for you to talk about Spurrier, Morris, Garcia, etc.

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A reader Tweeted, as I was headed to a late lunch (1:46 p.m. EST), “Eager to read your thoughts on Spurrier v. Morris.” I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, but now I do. I’ve seen the video and everything. (Interestingly, I could not find anything about it on the mobile version of thestate.com, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the browser version at the time.)

Of course, by that time, the news that the coach, or Eric Hyman, or somebody, had thrown Stephen Garcia off the team — apparently for real, this time. Hyman explained, “For Stephen to return to and remain with the football squad this fall, we agreed on several established guidelines. Unfortunately, he has not been able to abide by those guidelines and has therefore forfeited his position on the roster.”

I don’t know what the guidelines were, as I don’t follow this stuff. But I did see the Auburn game, and a reasonable guess would be that one of his guidelines involved throwing the football straight. Yes, I’m joking. Sort of.

But Micah apparently wanted to know what I thought about the Ron Morris thing. Gee, I don’t know.

I’m not Ron’s editor; never was. If I were, right now I’d be saying, “What the hell, Ron?” Or perhaps I’d use some other, saltier, newsroom expression. And Ron would tell me what was going on as well as he could, from his perspective. Although, based on the performance I saw on the video, it might not be altogether clear to him what it’s all about (apart from the usual animus that, from what I’ve seen, Ron is accustomed to engendering). Anyway, assuming he had the information available, I would have Ron lay out for me his version of the story. Then, I would check it out as well as I could.

If Coach Spurrier had an ounce of professionalism in him, of course, he would already have communicated to me (as Ron’s theoretical editor) what his beef was. Let’s assume he does, and he did. In that case, I would already have had it out with Ron about it and, given the way Spurrier acted today, probably would have told him I’d decided to back Ron. Hence the public tantrum.

Of course, if the coach did NOT try the normal, civil route first, then his performance today was inexcusable. Perhaps understandable on some level given that his QB was just canned after letting him down, but still not excusable in a man paid $2.8 million a year by a public institution to represent that institution.

Speaking of which, if I were Eric Hyman or Harris Pastides, I’d right now be having a serious talk with the coach about his performance — a sort of mirror of the one I’d be having with Ron as his editor. We’d start by watching his game film. Some of the things I’d be asking him:

What’s this really about, Steve? And don’t give me that nonsense about some column last spring. That was last spring; you blew up today. What’s really going on? (Oh, wait: Maybe THIS is the column Spurrier is referring to, in which Morris wrote, “Spurrier poached Horn’s program.”)
What exactly do you mean when you say it’s “my right as a head coach” not to talk to Ron Morris? Is that some special right we don’t know about? Do assistant coaches, or ordinary mortals walking the streets, not have that right? Because one would think that they do; that any human being walking the planet would have the right not to talk to Ron Morris if they chose not to. (Unless, of course, they were working for us, and we were paying them $2.8 million a year, and we told them to talk to him…) So what’s this imperious “as a head coach” stuff? Have we really made you feel that important?

And so on. That would just be for starters. And I’d be doing that in between fielding phone calls from people over at the newspaper asking me, “What the heck?” Because they use language like that in talking to the public.

So, as I say, if I were charged with taking a position on this, I’d be in fact-finding mode now before making a decision. But if you held the proverbial gun to my head (and I’d much prefer that to a literal one), I’d have to choose Ron on this one. And I might get embarrassed doing so — I might later have to run a full retraction on the challenged column last spring or something if it turned out Ron was wrong. But if you forced me, I’d go with him on this, because I know him. Or at least, I know him better than I do Spurrier, whom I’ve never met.

That means I used to run into Ron in the hallway sometimes, and stop to chat. I never actually worked with him. I don’t think he was in the newsroom when I was (pre-1994), and even if he had been, we’d have had little occasion to deal with each other. But he has always struck me as a pretty thoughtful, careful guy.

I knew people hated him — people of the “Cocky is God” persuasion. And I used to wonder about that, but I’ve often had occasion to wonder about really serious football fans. Sometimes, when one of Ron’s columns caused a splash of some sort, I’d actually turn to the sports pages and read it. And it usually read OK to me — of course, I was judging it outside the context of having any particular knowledge of the subject matter.

So Micah, that’s what I think.

Caroline Whitson to retire from Columbia College

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Here’s something for the “this just in” department:

WHITSON TO RETIRE AS PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN 2012

October 11, 2011

Dr. Caroline Whitson, the 17^th president of Columbia College, will retire at the end of this academic year – June 30, 2012.

Since coming to the college in 2001, Dr. Whitson has been an energetic advocate for women’s education and forimproving the status of women in South Carolina.

In announcing her retirement on behalf of the Board of Trustees, Chairman Lex Knox said, “Columbia College has been very fortunate and blessed to have someone of Dr. Whitson’s character and talent to lead us for the past decade. She has been an outstanding leader through challenging times, and has steered the college through needed changes. While disappointed at the news, we respect her decision and certainly wish her well.”

Dr. Whitson said, “I am well aware that the successes the college has enjoyed during my time here are a direct result of the work of a talented, committed faculty and staff and the support of an engaged Board of Trustees. I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with and learn from them.”

As president, Dr. Whitson championed the establishment of the college’s 4Cs. The unique leadership model combines academic and co-curricular programming to support students in the development of the Courage, Commitment, Confidence, and Competence to lead for change. She guided the expansion of the college’s Leadership Institute, which serves both girls and professional women. Dr. Whitson founded the Alliance for Women, a partnership between Columbia College and the Governor’s Commission on Women, when the commission was targeted for closure in 2004. The Alliance has supported entrepreneurship for women, including bringing both the Women President’s Organization and Make Mine a Million to South Carolina.

During Dr. Whitson’s tenure at the college, annual fund-raising has more than doubled. The college’s endowment has increased by 40%, including the establishment of both the McNair Scholars program and the Reeves Endowed Chair in Leadership Studies.

Facility expansion at the college of 1,269 students includes the addition of a new student union, residential cottages and an athletic complex, as well as renovation of the freshman center, the Goodall Art Gallery, Edens Library and the Cottingham Theatre. The installation of solar panels and a campuswide revision of energy systems have significantly reduced the college’s carbon footprint. A campus beautification program led to implementation of an extensive landscape design.

Recently Dr. Whitson signed agreements for research and for faculty and student exchanges with both the State University of Mongolia and the Hiroshima Jogakuin Women’s University.

Since 2001, Columbia College has received national recognition for teaching and scholarly excellence from the Theodore Hesburgh Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the National Collegiate Honors Council, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, the Foundations of Excellence for the First College Year, the NAIA Champions of Character, the National Communication Association, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

During her tenure at the college, Dr. Whitson has been a leader in civic affairs. She chaired the Richland County Transportation Commission, the South Carolina ETV Endowment board and the Presidents’ Council of the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities. She has served on many boards, including those of the United Way of the Midlands, New Carolina, and the Midlands Business Leaders Group. Nationally, she has served on the University Senate of the United Methodist Church, as a member of the President’s Circle in the National Council for Research on Women, and on the board of PLEN (Public Leadership Education Network).

Dr. Whitson has been honored with a “Woman of Distinction” award from the Girl Scouts of the Congaree Area, as the “Outstanding Advocate for Women in Business” from the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce, and with the Martha Kime Piper award from the South Carolina Women in Higher Education.

Chairman Knox said Vice Chair of the Board Becky Laffitte will head the search committee to find a new president for Columbia College, with the rest of the committee being named within the next two weeks. The committee will include some board members as well as representatives from the rest of the college community.

Caroline has been a great person to work with in the community. I served with her on a local advisory council for the Knight Foundation years ago, and dealt with her during the effort to pass the sales tax referendum for transportation last year — which, as you’ll recall, I interviewed her about on “The Brad Show.” She had helped lead community conversations about transportation for several years leading up to that.

I understand that she plans to stay in the community. That’s good news.

SC should ditch specialty license plates

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I was struck particularly by this passage in the AP story about specialty license plates in South Carolina:

There are 370 plates currently issued in South Carolina, and a bill in the Legislature next year could nearly double that to more than 700. While the proliferation may be well intentioned, law enforcement officers and the head of South Carolina’s Department of Motor Vehicles say the increased number of options make the plates hard for law officers to decipher…

Say what? MORE vanity plates? There’s not much in this world that South Carolina needs less.

And of COURSE they hamper law enforcement. Always have. Aside from giving us something perfectly stupid to have arguments about in the Legislature (allow this plate, not allow that one?).

Yet another of my pet peeves, and someone is, predictably, trying to make it twice as bad. And guess who it is — yep, Michael Pitts, the representative who suggested that South Carolina abandon the Yankee dollar as currency and replace it with gold and silver. That guy.

Folks, license plates distributed by the state are about identifying your vehicle for law enforcement purposes, and showing that you’ve paid your taxes. Period. They should perform those functions as plainly as possible, with a minimum of Mickey Mouse.

You want to express yourself, buy a bumper sticker. Or a sketchpad. Or start a blog. Or post a video on YouTube. Twitter and Facebook are freely available. Anything you choose. But don’t ask the state of South Carolina to do it for you.

We should be ditching specialty plates altogether, not adding new ones.

The USC biomass “travesty”

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Hats off to Wayne Washington (and his editor — I always like to remember the editors) for a rather overwhelmingly thorough report today on the mess that is the University of South Carolina’s biomass-to-energy project. An excerpt from the lengthy package in The State today:

On June 28, 2009, an explosion rocked the biomass-fueled power plant on the campus of the University of South Carolina.

The force of the blast sent a metal panel some 60 feet toward the control office of the plant at Whaley and Sumter streets, according to documents obtained from USC by The State newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request.

No one was hurt, but USC officials were concerned enough about the “potentially lethal accident” that they ordered an independent safety review and, in a strongly worded letter to the company that had built the plant, made it clear that university staff would not be allowed back into the building until the review was completed.

The blast underscored what some USC officials privately grumbled about for years: That the plant has been a $20 million disaster, a money pit that was poorly planned and built by a company that had never constructed such a cutting-edge “green energy” power plant before.

Interviews with USC officials and a spokeswoman for the company as well as a review of more than 1,800 pages of documents show that…

Rich material for a discussion. Here’s how it is likely to go, although I look forward to unanticipated variations:

Some of you: Yet another example of USC wasting time and money on unproven, pie-in-the-sky energy alternatives and leaving us in a financial hole with little or nothing to show.

Others of you: What a classic case of the private sector not delivering — a Fortune 500 company that takes millions from a public institution and doesn’t get the job done…

To me, the whole mess is too complex for simple conclusions, but here’s a stab: Some USC officials under the last administration made an unwise, expensive deal, while at the same time trying to insulate us from loss by getting the company to guarantee savings. Then after that, everything went wrong.

But tell me what y’all think.

Bobby Hitt on media, unions and other stuff

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SC Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt speaking to the Columbia Rotary Club on Monday.

Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to get to all week…

Fellow Rotarian Jimmy Covington asked my long-ago managing editor, Bobby Hitt, what he thought of the news media today. Bobby, who is now SC Commerce secretary, said:

I think that it’s as good as it can be.

That was followed by a long pause, with Bobby regarding the crowd with one of those patented Hitt wiseguy grins as they laughed with appreciation, before he added:

… but not as good as it was.

That said more succinctly what I say so often in answer to the same question. My more wordy answer goes something like, “You have to understand that my friends who still have jobs in the MSM are working heroically in the face of a really horrific lack of resources, yadda yadda….” Bobby put it more cleverly.

Here are some other things he said to the Columbia Rotary Club Monday…

Between the newspaper and Commerce, Bobby spent 18 years at BMW. So it was with some authority that he said that whatever you may think about the government providing economic incentives to attract jobs — however much you may want markets to take care of everything — the truth is that “BMW has never built an Interstate highway, and has no plans to do so in the future.” But without them, no BMWs would get delivered, and there would be no BMW plant in Greer.
A core strength of South Carolina in economic development is that “We’re good at making stuff.” When’s the last time, he asked, that a manufacturing company located here and then left? That’s why, aside from the new Bridgestone plant, Michelin has just expanded. Those are jobs that are here to stay, he said: Our grandchildren will be working at those plants. “The world gets us, maybe better sometimes than we get ourselves.”
Tensions between one part of the state and another are “foolish.” A great advantage we have is that we are a small state, and it’s possible for us to work together statewide. “I look at South Carolina as one big county” in promoting economic development.
“I would like to see a time when South Carolinians are not just on the plant floor; they’re in the front office.”
Staying a right-to-work state is key to economic development, and in any event it’s not up to him. He just doesn’t see any political chance of it changing. He said he doesn’t see South Carolinians as interested in third-party representation: “Most people in South Carolina don’t want to be told what to do by anyone other than the one that pays them.”

Laurin and Nancy at the social media symposium

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Laurin is presenting, Nancy is going over her notes, and I'm trying to think up some mayhem that will get me sent to the principal's office. Just like school.

Last night, I participated in a symposium on politics and social media at Francis Marion University. Which was great. Trouble is, I was on a panel with Laurin Manning and Nancy Mace. And they were better prepared than I was.

See, I thought it was going to be just a panel discussion, so I had jotted some notes about points I wanted to be sure to hit on, and showed up. Laurin and Nancy had slide shows, and got up and made presentations. So I had to, too. No problem, really, because I can fill any amount of time… I talked about the old blog and why I started it and how it related to my old MSM job, and the new blog and how it’s going, my Twitter feed (dang! I forgot to mention I’m one of the Twitterati!), how I hate Facebook (it’s the AOL of this decade), “Seinfeld,” my Top Five Baseball Movies, and I don’t know what all.

Then at some point, I realized I’d gone on enough, or more than enough, and shut up. Which I think was cool, but it was way less polished than what the other panelists did.

You know how, when you were in school, there were these girls (and sometimes traitor guys) who always showed up with their homework done? And raised their hands and asked for more work, for extra credit? And when the teacher had been out of the room, and came back, they told her what you had been doing while she was gone? It was like that. Laurin and Nancy were good.

But I survived to the actual panel discussion part, and that went well (I think), so all’s well that ends that way. As it happened, I enjoyed it.

I especially enjoyed learning from Laurin and Nancy.

Laurin was sort of a mentor for me when I started blogging in 2005, and she was well established with the legendary Laurinline. She later was part of the unstoppable Obama social media machine of 2008. Recently, she’s blogged at SC Soapbox.

Nancy, the first female to graduate from The Citadel (how’s that for intimidating?), is founder and CEO of The Mace Group, LLC. She’s also partners with Will Folks in FITSNews— she does the technical side, and leaves the content to Will.

I’m not going to share with you all the cool trade secrets they imparted, because knowledge is power, and I want it all to myself. But I will share this anecdote that they told us about:

You know how Will started his blog? By accident. He was actually trying to post a comment on the Laurinline, and got so confused in trying to do so that he inadvertently set up a blog of his own. Really. That’s the way Laurin and Nancy tell it. The site is much more technologically sophisticated now with Nancy involved, and has more than a million page views a month — compared to my measly traffic, which has only broken a quarter of a million a couple of times. (That’s it. That was my display of humility for this month.)

Anyway, that’s why I was in Florence.

A ‘C’ was just about right for Courson

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At an event Wednesday night, the first two people I ran into were the senators pictured above, Nikki Setzler and John Courson.

Courson was bragging on the grade Nikki Haley had given him earlier in the week — a “C.” And of course, as he kept telling everyone, it was “a strong C.”

For him, he told me and others, that was perfect. An “A” would have gotten him into trouble with the rather large number of Democrats in his Shandon district. An “F” would have sent the Tea Party out for blood in a primary next year. It was a Goldilocks grade — just right.

So there was at least one happy pupil in Haley School.

Nikki — Setzler, not Haley — wasn’t complaining about his, either. But of course, in his Lexington County district, it probably would have been nice to get a grade a little higher than his “D.”

And he could have done that, too, if he had done the governor’s bidding more. But what sensible man would actually decide whether to vote yea or nay on actual legislation — laws we would all have to live by — in hope of a meaningless “grade” from this governor?

And Nikki Setzler is a sensible man.

New drivethru at Florence Starbucks

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OK, not really, and in fact, at least one person appears to have been injured. So it’s no joke. But the truth was, that headline was, I must admit, my first thought when I beheld the scene. Or rather, my second. My first was, “Someone was even more anxious for a cup of coffee than I was.”

This morning, I was heading back to Columbia from Florence (after participating in a symposium at Francis Marion University last night), and debating whether I should stop for a Starbucks on my way out of town. Why the debate? Well, I’d just had two-and-a-half cups of coffee at breakfast.

Of course, I decided in favor of all that is right and good. But as I turned in, I saw that all was not as it should be. There was a firetruck blocking my view of the shop, and all the baristas were standing around outside. Which was not good, because if they’re standing around outside, how are they going to serve me coffee?

I parked, got out and approached, and saw the above. The third- or fourth-hand story I got from one of the baristas was that a woman was trying to park and her brakes failed. Or she hit the wrong pedal. Or something. I looked at the curb she would have had to jump, and decided it was probably “or something.” (It turns out the driver was complaining of chest pains.)

I didn’t bother any of the police officers standing in a clump at the other end of the firetruck, because they were busy standing there staring, talking in murmurs, and waiting for something. Besides, I had to get on the road. Which I did, after Tweeting out the above picture.

I stopped again shortly thereafter, and saw that the FloMo had this report:

FLORENCE, S.C. –A Nissan Altima crashed into the drive-thru Starbucks at Five Points in Florence.

According to emergency responders, the undentified female driver was complaining of chest pains before and after the accident. Although she showed no signs of cardiac problems, she self-administered nitroglycerin medication as a precaution.

The driver was then taken to the hospital to assess her injuries.

An unidentified female customer also sustained minor injuries when she was struck by both the car and debris from the accident. She was able to transport herself to the hospital.

The Starbucks is closed until further notice.

So no joke, and I hope everyone will be OK. And that there will be coffee next time I go there.

Gov. Perdue did have a point, you know

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Speaking of emails, I just got this one from Joe Wilson:

What is Governor Perdue thinking?

She suggested recently that we shouldn’t hold a Congressional election in 2012 because you might hold your Congressional representatives accountable for the decisions they make.

Isn’t this what our country is all about? Aren’t you supposed to hold your elected officials accountable for the decisions they make?

By holding elections, you have the opportunity to send a message to your leaders, one that can have a very immediate and permanent effect.

This knowledge makes those of us in Congress aware of what our constituents want back home. It keeps us accountable. Without it, we could pass legislation in Washington that only benefited a select few.

That’s not how our country works, no matter how beneficial Gov. Perdue thinks it would be.

Your voice is important, and I consider your will as I cast my vote for any piece of legislation.

Actually, I think the lady had a point. All due respect to the Framers’ wisdom in putting “the people’s House” in perpetual election mode (which sort of got watered down when we started directly electing senators), but I have to wonder… what do we accomplish in these rituals every two years?

You know what will happen in 2012? Joe will raise a whole lot of money through emails such as this one, and the ones in which he exploits his “You Lie!” moment, and he will spend it, and he will be re-elected.

Same thing will happen with Jim Clyburn over in the 6th. I can’t speak to what will happen in the other four SC districts because I don’t observe them as closely, and the incumbents are all so new. So perhaps they are slightly more vulnerable — although probably not Tim Scott.

But Joe’s and Jim’s warchests and the power of incumbency will guarantee that no one credible emerges to run against them, and they will be re-elected.

And yes, I know that Doug and others will say this is why we need term limits. I’m not willing to drop that particular nuclear option on democracy, but we do need something. Because otherwise, these elections pretty much are a waste of time. Except to the political consultants and the media that get the advertising, of course. (See, Wesley, I didn’t just talk about you — I talked about the media, too.)

Defining deviancy down in our discourse

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Corey Hutchins started this rolling on Twitter this morning, but what shocked me was that Amanda Alpert Loveday reTweeted it:

Best @nikkihaley quote ever! “She’s been busy F-ing the rest of the state. I’m not surprised that she F-ed me.”@HBoydBrown @CoreyHutchins

My shock arises partly from Amanda being the… well, something over at the SC Democratic Party (apparently they’re too democratic at party HQ for titles, but she recently appeared on Pub Politics as the counterpart of Matt Moore, the GOP executive director). I know that her Twitter feed says “My tweets reflect my personal opinions…..,” but still…

The second is that, well, Amanda just seems like such a sweet “little girl” (to use our governor’s term) to an alter cocker like me. I mean, look at her; I ask you.

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda…

And Corey, and Boyd — what are you boys doing using language like that around Amanda?

Seriously, folks… This is not only grossly inappropriate language to be used when referring to the governor of our state, it’s not an appropriate topic, even if you used euphemisms.

And why am I writing about it? Well, I wouldn’t have if this had come from one of the usual sources for such. But this was said (apparently on the record) by a state representative, repeated by a representative of the Fourth Estate, and picked up by a party official.

And that’s wrong, on all counts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a term for it, or at least one that can be adapted to this purpose: Defining deviancy down.

We don’t need to be on this downward spiral, people.

Fan suggests Spurrier take pay cut for Saturday

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I mentioned breakfast at the Cap City Club back on my last post, which reminds me… Some of the guys at the regular round table this morning were talking about the Gamecocks-Auburn thing on Saturday, and one of them said, “I didn’t see any football over the weekend.”

What he meant was, he was there at Williams-Brice. He just didn’t see any football.

He’s not bitter or anything. He blames Coach Steve Spurrier for it, but he’s willing to forgive — if the Old Ball Coach will take a 1/12th cut in his pay for that one.

Intriguing. Since his salary is $2.8 million, that would mean a reduction of … $233,333.33.

Someone else at the table suggested that he could donate the amount to academics.

I am neither endorsing nor rejecting the idea. It’s one thing to deal in political controversy here on the blog without making suggestions about other people’s religion.

As for the rest of you… discuss.

Guess who topped this list of dumb governor tricks? Yep, ‘Gov. Sunshine’…

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I’m beginning to suspect that when people go to compile such things as this piece on Salon, “Why are the governors of America saying such dumb things?,” they look at South Carolina first. The very first example given was:

According to the Associated Press, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that forthwith, state employees are to answer official phones with a cheery, “It’s a great day in South Carolina!”

Gee whiz, that should solve everything! As AP noted, “Never mind the state’s 11.1 percent jobless rate and the fact that one in five residents are on Medicaid.” Great day, indeed. Presumably, Gov. Sunshine plans to accompany the next set of her state’s unemployment figures with a chorus of “We’re in the Money.”

Which frankly isn’t even fair. It’s not even something Nikki said; it’s something she made everybody else say, which therefore goes into the category of dumb things governors do.

If they wanted something she said, they could have gone to the thing Cindi was writing about — the one about all the drug fiends applying to work at SRS. She apparently said that one over and over, which should have qualified for extra points.

But I’m really tired of national media, and comedians, looking first to South Carolina for material (as Jon Stewart keeps saying, “THANK YOU, South Carolina!”).

I’m even more tired with our politicians giving them reason to.

Cindi’s good column about Haley’s naivete

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On Tuesday, while still eating breakfast, I sent Cindi Scoppe an email telling her what a good column she had written about Nikki Haley’s ridiculous claim (later retracted) that half the job applicants at SRS had failed drug tests.

I was proud of the fine job she had done. I was also proud of myself, because I told her it was good without any caveats or “yes, buts” or any qualifications of any kind. I mean, I didn’t even tell her that I thought the headline could have been stronger. I was unusually nice, for me. (Dave Moniz, who worked for me as a reporter in the early 90s, used to say the highest praise anyone ever got from me was “pretty good.”)

But was she grateful? No. She complained later that I hadn’t said how good the column was on the blog.

So here goes. Actually, I think I’ll just quote from the piece:

THE EXTRAORDINARY thing about Gov. Nikki Haley’s discredited claim that half the job applicants at the Savannah River Site had failed drug tests — the actual number was less than 1 percent — wasn’t her acknowledgement that she couldn’t back it up. It was her explanation for why she ever would have parroted such an absurd claim to begin with.

Some unidentified someone she talked to told her that during the campaign, she told The Associated Press’ Jim Davenport last week, and she took it at face value and ran with it. “I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me,” she said. “You assume that you’re given good information.”

I used to think the same thing about elected officials.

I don’t mean I believed everything they said. Quite the contrary. As a reporter, the most fun I had — and some of my most important work — was writing “fact check” articles that explained what was untrue or misleading about the claims politicians made in their political ads, speeches and debates.

Typically, this involved sins of omission: Candidates take their opponents’ votes or comments out of context to create an incorrect and unfair impression. And it tended to be confined to the campaign trail. The overwhelming majority of elected officials I’ve dealt with in a quarter century of covering politics could be trusted with the basic facts once the campaign was ended and they were talking about policy instead of their opponents. They didn’t fabricate “facts”; even Mark Sanford just manipulated numbers in convoluted and misleading ways — although he did it more purposefully and masterfully than any of his predecessors.

I took note before last year’s GOP primary of several misleading claims Ms. Haley had made during a meeting with our editorial board. What was striking was that she would stretch the truth so far in a setting where most candidates go out of their way to be extra careful. More striking was that there was no need for any of it. Although it might have meant a bit more work, she could have made legitimate arguments if she had stuck to the facts.

What has remained notable since she took office is that her demonstrably inaccurate claims continue to be unnecessary…

She goes on to give examples. It’s a good piece. You should go read it.

Wait, here’s another good bit:

That sort of carelessness is fairly common among people who aren’t used to being in the public spotlight. But most elected officials I know are actually quite careful about getting the facts right. They footnote their claims. They say they’ll have to get back to you before answering a question — not because they want to figure out how to spin it but because they want to make sure that they know what they’re talking about…

And here’s another:

Now that she has been forced to back off the drug-testing claim that she says convinced her that we need to make laid-off workers pass drug tests before they receive unemployment checks, I’m struck by the fact that she’s still pushing for the mandatory tests.

I don’t find it objectionable to require the tests. Wasteful, yes — since taxpayers would have to foot the bill, and indications are that fewer than 5 percent of applicants would test positive — but not philosophically objectionable.

What I find objectionable is basing an expensive policy position on an unbelievable anecdote that you didn’t even bother to question because it fits so comfortably with your preconceived notions. And then clinging to that position even after the anecdote has been so utterly discredited…

But you should still go read the whole thing.

Welcome new advertiser Palmetto Citizens FCU!

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When I first went to work at The State in 1987, I immediately opened an account with the newspaper’s credit union. In our old building there in the shadow of Williams-Brice Stadium (it now houses part of S.C. ETV) it was located in what I remember as practically a closet in the Human Resources department — a cubby behind a sliding glass door and curtain.

Perhaps my memory exaggerates. In any case, it was small. But it wasn’t there for long. The company credit union soon merged with Columbia Teachers Federal Credit Union — which had been formed in 1936 when 10 individuals all chipped in $5 apiece. Columbia Teachers opened a branch just down the street from us near the intersection of Shop and George Rogers (or is it Assembly there? hard to tell), and put an ATM in the basement of our building.

By this time, the credit union had expanded well beyond just Columbia teachers, and in 2001 changed its name to Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union.

They’ve still got my money — what there is of it — including the account where I put revenues from the blog. Which will, for the next year, include payments from the credit union itself, for the ad you see at right. Which has a neat sort of circularity to it…

In any case, I’m pleased and proud to welcome a very fine community organization, Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union, to bradwarthen.com.

The worst thing about Haley’s chirpy greeting order is the insulting assumption that underlies it

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The worst thing about the “It’s a great day in South Carolina!” order isn’t the fact that it is so grating and insulting to the caller. Callers can shrug that off; if they really need to do business with the state, they’ll take a breath and go ahead (even while filing a mental note that they now think less of SC government than they did before).

The worst thing is the attitude that underlies the order, which was ably set out in the newspaper this morning by Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey:

“While the press focuses on the negative, the governor is changing the culture of our state.. She is proud of South Carolina, and while we have challenges, we are making great progress every day. The focus of this greeting is to have state employees pass along a positive attitude and ask the caller, ‘How can I help you?’ so that they remember – and the people know – that they work for the taxpayers. The governor has always said that it’s time for government to work for the people, and this is the first step.”

She’s changing the culture of our state…. It’s time for government to work for the people…

This is the first step.

Because, you see, that never happened before. It’s never occurred to any state employee that they serve the people of South Carolina. Ever. Nikki Haley invented it. Thank God for Nikki Haley, because not one single state employee in the history of South Carolina has ever considered serving the public, even for a moment. If any had, this would not be the “first step” in implementing this wonderful new day. And this is the first step.

Again, we are seeing what we get when a person who does not have a clue about an organization — what it’s for, whom it serves, what its personnel are like, how it works, how it should work — is placed in charge of that organization.

Tragically for all of us, that organization is our state government — an institution that the people of our state, perhaps more than the people of any other state in the union, badly need to be well-led.

But there’s more to it than that. Nikki Haley is merely a symptom of a sickness in the politics of our state. The sickness is a nasty attitude of despising those who serve the public — and despising them more and more as their jobs become more difficult.

She is now engaged in the process of tearing down that workforce. And the first step is humiliation.

Joel Lourie: What we need in SC is jobs

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In a more serious vein, I thought I’d share with you more of what Joel Lourie had to say at Rotary today.

I realize when you read that headline, you’ll think, “So? Everybody knows that, and all politicians say it.”

But Joel said it better than most.

One thing he did was share the numbers above — which I scanned directly from the sheet he shared with me afterward. (To read it better, click on it.) The numbers provide statistical snapshots of South Carolina before and after the Great Recession hit.

What Joel had to say about that was not — as you’d expect in a lesser politician — to complain about those awful Republicans (which in a Democrat in SC these days shows remarkable restraint), and blame it on them. It was more to say look, here’s the situation we have, and this is what we must deal with.

And to him, the way out is not to pass this or that particular piece of legislation (although he did make an able case for comprehensive tax reform), or to embrace this political ideology or reject that one. Nor does he see our state’s salvation in anything that government might do, because government can only do so much. All government can do is pursue whatever policies it can that encourage our economy to come back.

As an example of how lawmakers should work together to allow jobs to emerge in our state, he told the story of how Democrats and Republicans worked together to make sure Amazon didn’t take its 2,000-plus jobs and leave this year, how they worked together to turn a 2-1 “no” vote into a 2-1 “yes” vote for the sake of the Midlands, and of South Carolina. In that ecumenical spirit, he particularly praised his old USC classmate, House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham.

I never was as wholeheartedly for the Amazon deal as Joel was, but I certainly appreciate his point, just as I appreciate the motivation that he and Kenny and so many others had to turn that around for the sake of their community.

For Joel, that sort of service to the whole community is what it’s about, just as it was for his father before him. And because he delivers that service so earnestly and ably, I’m proud to know him. I didn’t tell him that at Rotary today. You don’t want stuff like that to go to people’s heads, you know.

USA Today plays up SC lawmaker pensions

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Cindi Scoppe just got a little help.

For years, Cindi has been writing at least annually about the outrageous pensions that SC lawmakers give themselves. She just got some reinforcement in that crusade, with a front-page story in USA Today, which begins:

At age 55, South Carolina state Sen. David Thomas began collecting a pension for his legislative service without leaving office.

Most workers must retire from their jobs before getting retirement benefits. But Thomas used a one-sentence law that he and his colleagues passed in 2002 to let legislators receive a taxpayer-funded pension instead of a salary after serving for 30 years.

Thomas’ $32,390 annual retirement benefit — paid for the rest of his life — is more than triple the $10,400 salary he gave up. His pension exceeds the salary because of another perk: Lawmakers voted to count their expenses in the salary used to calculate their pensions.

No other South Carolina state workers get those perks.

Since January 2005, Thomas, a Republican, has made $148,435 more than a legislative salary would have paid, his financial-disclosure records show. At least four other South Carolina lawmakers are getting pensions instead of salaries, netting an extra $292,000 since 2005, records show.

And so forth and so on.

Increasingly, national media are discovering just how wild and wacky South Carolina is. On the one hand, it’s embarrassing. On the other, it’s nice to get the attention.

Who knows? Maybe the added exposure will help here at home. After all, last year, laudatory national coverage got Nikki Haley elected governor.

Expect Cindi to write about it more.