Category Archives: South Carolina

Why can’t we let her stay over there? No, really; what would be wrong with that?

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Notice how all of my posts the last couple of days are either about Dick Harpootlian or Jon Huntsman? What’s up with that?

Anyway, right when I got back from the Huntsman thing, Dick sends out this video. He’s big on videos. Well, he missed the mark on this one.

It makes two dubious points — the rather painfully populist one about how YOU, the taxpayer, paid for Nikki’s trip to Paris, and his point that the gov should come back and tend to South Carolina business, or as he put it, “the people of South Carolina would rather her worry more about the unemployment rate and the education sector in our state.”

Here are my thoughts on those, in reverse order:

  1. You really think that if she were here, she’d be doing anything for our schools? Anything at all?
  2. She is far more likely to stumble on something of economic use to our state, something to create jobs in SC, over there than she is here. I can far better see her charming some air industry exec who doesn’t know her very well (she makes a great first impression) than I can see her pursuing policies back here that boost our prosperity. After all, the one thing Mark Sanford accomplished in that sphere in 8 years was landing Boeing, and he did that, at least in part, by going to the air show.

Huntsman files in SC, speaks to sweltering audience

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Having noted that Dick Harpootlian had singled him out for abuse, I thought I’d check out one of Jon Huntsman’s appearances in Columbia today. (Here’s what he said at an earlier appearance.) I thought, “I hear the Republicans have this nice new building, and that would be better than going to a barbecue.” I had reckoned without the event being outside the building. In case you wondered, a seersucker suit does not keep you cool standing in the sun on a day like today. The things I put up with for y’all…

This was my first actual official 2012 presidential event. I’m hoping they don’t have any more until October. Or have them inside. Or in England.

Anyway, I’m uploading some video to YouTube now, which may or may not be ready by the time I finish typing this.

When it’s up, you will see the following people standing up with Huntsman and his wife and (some of their) kids: Mike Campbell, John Courson, and the inimitable Henry McMaster. Henry played master of ceremonies, as he did so often four years ago for John McCain. That got me to thinking about something. I asked Henry, after the Huntsman speech, how many of the presidential candidates he had personally backed had won their SC primaries. I said I couldn’t remember him NOT having backed the eventual winner. He thought for moment, standing there sweltering, and said he wasn’t sure, but he wouldn’t to my saying that. So I just did.

This provides an interesting perspective. Jon Huntsman may seem to some like a bit of an outlier in the GOP — at least at the moment. But here we had him with the GOP establishment in SC, just about anyway you slice it. A Campbell. Two of South Carolina’s most ardent Reaganites, McMaster and Courson. He’s got Richard Quinn in his corner, too.

Now you may say that those guys are the OLD establishment, that not it’s about the Nikki Haleys (who swamped Henry and every other establishment type back in the Year of the Tea Party) and the Mark Sanfords. Well, Huntsman has Joel Sawyer running his campaign. And I thought I saw Rob Godfrey posing for a picture with the candidate, but I could have been mistaken.

And indeed, many of the folks there were just there out of curiosity, or to be polite because they were invited — such as Eric Davis, who as chair of the Richland County GOP was sort of there ex-officio. Among those I spotted, but did not get around to asking why they were there, were Frank Barron, Katrina Shealy, Kelly Payne, Mike Green, Adam Piper, Andrew Williams and our own sometime commenter Walter Durst. You may see others on the video. I did not look at it closely because I was in a hurry to upload it. It’s raw, and unedited. Enjoy.

John Courson (his grin, anyway), Jon Huntsman, Henry McMaster...

A candidate to be taken seriously

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I don’t know a whole lot about Jon Huntsman. I mean, I know a few things, but not enough to reach critical mass for a judgment in my own mind.

But I know I’ll be watching him closely, now that he’s announced:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. officially launched his White House bid here Tuesday morning, setting up a campaign for the GOP nomination that, if successful, would lead to a matchup against his former boss.

“I’ve been a governor … I’ve been a businessman and a I’ve been a diplomat. I’m the husband of the love of my life … and the father of seven terrific kids,” Huntsman told a crowd of supporters at Liberty State Park, the Statue of Liberty rising just behind him. “I’m from the American West, where the view of America is limitless with lots of blue sky.”…

I look at it this way: Jon Huntsman has a reference that is almost as good as having the UnParty seal of approval — Barack Obama. The president hired him for a job of considerable responsibility, ambassador to China. You know, that big place across the water that owns all that U.S. debt. The place where all that stuff at Walmart comes from.

So if Obama thought enough of him to hire him, and now he’s turned in his notice in order to run against Obama — well, that’s a guy who might have something to say worth listening to. He might be a credible, informed critic.

So I’m going to listen.

Speaking of listening, I listened in to a conference call Dick Harpootlian had today with media types to talk about Huntsman, after which he put out this release:

Harpootlian welcomes “ambassador, governor, Democrat, Republican Jon Huntsman to South Carolina”

Columbia, S.C. –  South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootilan held a conference call today to welcome Jon Huntsman to South Carolina.

While Huntsman travels to our state to kick off his Presidential campaign Harpootlian welcomes him by saying, “we always welcome Obama administration officials in South Carolina.”  Harpootlian called Huntsman a political “schizophrenic” who’s “very similar to Mitt Romney” in his flip-flopping on key issues such as the Recovery Act.

“Between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, we have, actually, four candidates rather than two,” said Harpootlian.

That’s pretty much what he said to us on the phone. Afterwards, I asked him whether he was more worried about Huntsman than he was the other Republicans. He said he wasn’t. But I think he should be.

Yeah, Huntsman has a challenge before him getting the nomination with his party momentarily in the thrall of the Tea Party. But from what little I’ve seen so far, he seems like he could have a better chance in the general if he could get that far.

But as I say, that’s how it looks so far. I’ll keep watching.

B-minus?!?!?!? Well, that’s just so SC; we’re too polite to be honest

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Did you see this in The State today?

Legislators give Haley ‘B-‘ grade for first session

You’re kidding me, right? You want me to believe that the honest assessment of “legislators” is that Nikki Haley’s performance as governor is worthy of a B-minus? There’s just no way.

Yeah, I realize people who don’t know the State House, and who get their notions of such things from watching national TV news, will say, “That’s understandable — most of them are Republicans, right?” The majority of Republicans would seem to be the last people who would think Nikki Haley — or her predecessor — was worthy of a passing grade. Much less a B-minus. I mean — these people just sued her (successfully) for trying to boss them around. Or McConnell did, which amounts to the same thing. And that was not the low point of the relationship.

Yeah, I know how they are. It’s just the first session. At this point, they were trying to give Mark Sanford every chance, too.

But a grade — a grade isn’t supposed to be a tool of diplomacy, or an expression of future hopes (“Maybe she’ll get better…”)

A grade should be an honest assessment of actual performance. It should confront uncomfortable truths. An honest teacher says, “I know you’re trying hard, and nothing personal, but you flunked the course.”

But we don’t do that in South Carolina, do we? And it’s why we don’t move forward as a state; it’s why we lag behind. We’re so busy being polite and worrying about offending anyone that we never state the case, analyse the problem, and move to fix it.

We can be so pathetic.

I don’t even want to know how The State chose the lawmakers it interviewed. In any case, it was only 20 percent of the General Assembly. I wonder what an actual poll of the whole legislative branch, with secret ballots, would have produced. Probably something much closer to what The State‘s readership came up with. Yeah, the readers who responded were heavily Richland County. But that Democratic bias would have been balanced, in a real survey of the General Assembly, by the fact that those officeholders know her, which should make them just as likely to be negative as Democrats…

Making use of the “women are grownups” argument

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A couple of days back, in the midst of an argument about something else, I started griping about a piece I’d read somewhere by a feminist of the “men and women are just alike and don’t you dare say otherwise” variety (there are all sorts of feminism, and that is but one type), suggesting that there’s nothing to the idea that male politicians are inherently more likely to engage in sexual misbehavior than are female politicians.

I begged to differ, citing my oft-asserted belief that, in general, women are more likely than men to be actual grownups. To elaborate:

You know me; I hate Identity Politics. I don’t care whether our legislative bodies are all male, or all female, or all white or all black, as long as we get the best candidates (which we don’t, but don’t stop me; I’m on a roll). I’m not for electing women qua women. But there’s a side benefit apart from the IP one: Elect more women, you get more grownups.

Yes there are exceptions. And we could have a debate, if you’d like, about whether the problem with Nikki Haley is that she “governs like a guy.” But in general, the principle holds….

Well, I’m not the only one thinking that way. The Southern Institute for Women in Politics is pushing the same line:

Retrospective on scandal

Lessons learned from the likes of Anthony Weiner

Comedians will regret the loss of great material provided by Anthony Weiner’s denial and later admission of lewd electronic behavior. Weiner’s Congressional colleagues will be relieved by his resignation so they can return to business. But Weiner’s sad tale of self-destructive and testosterone-induced behavior is just one in a growing list of elected men (of both political parties) that tells a bigger story to tell: In 2011, U.S. politics is still a boys’ club.

When we’re all finished clucking our collective tongues, we need to get focused and recognize that this is a call to action for women – including women in South Carolina.

Research points to a substantial gender gap in the way women and men approach running for office. Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw – all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected.

“The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.”

So, it’s time for more of us to step up to the plate.

Not everyone needs to be a candidate, but all women need to be more informed, more involved, in politics at every level. At a minimum, we need to vote – cast a ballot for everything from who runs our children’s schools to who sets the tax rate for our towns – have a say in who gets to make these decisions that affect our lives.

We desperately need good women to run for office. We can’t win the game unless you play, so come on ladies, let’s get moving.

How you can help clean the political house:

So, friends, let’s learn some lessons from Anthony Weiner (and Elliott Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc., etc., etc.) and make 2012 the year we run and elect more women to office in South Carolina than ever before.

Read news that directs our lessons

Weiner Scandal: A Victory for Women Leaders?
The mentality has to change. The world is half men and half women. The government has to >>

In political scandals, girls won’t be boys
“I’m telling you,” said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., “every time one of these sex scandals goes, we just look at each other, like>>

More Women Needed in Politics
The story of U.S. Rep. Anthony and his Weiner is more disappointing than surprising.Another male>>

Women are better investors, and here’s why
Call it the Weiner principle: men self-destruct. Anthony Weiner has put men in a pickle.Here’s why>>

How about Dan Adams’ new book?
Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else. Read more>>

Welcome to the team, girls. I mean, ladies. I mean — aw, I’d never make a good feminist anyway…

And I take exception to the beer taster thing.

Corey quotes me well in The Nation

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Several weeks back, Corey Hutchins of The Free Times called to say he was working on a profile of Nikki Haley for The Nation magazine. He wanted to talk with me about it, and asked if I’d meet him for a beer at Yesterday’s. He didn’t have to twist my arm. (Note the ad — be sure to check out Yesterday’s. Good food, good beer, good company, reasonable prices.)

So we met, and I said a bunch of stuff, and later I got a call from a fact-checker at The Nation, so I knew that the piece was coming out soon. (Yeah, just like in “Almost Famous.” To a newspaperman, the whole “fact-checker” thing is weird. If you’re going to have a staffer check all the facts, why not just send them to do the story to start with? But when you’re using freelance, which magazines do, I guess this is something you have to do to protect yourself. When a reporter works for you, it’s different. You can fire his butt if he tries to put one over on you, and he knows it.)

Anyway, Corey did a pretty good job. Personally, I don’t normally enjoy reading The Nation, but this was good. And he did an excellent job of extracting something intelligent-sounding from my ramblings:

Still, like so many Palmetto State chief executives before her, Haley seems to be angling for a spot on a national ticket. She is already penning her memoir. “Every governor we’ve had since Carroll Campbell has had national aspirations, but with her it’s more naked and obvious,” says Brad Warthen, a Columbia advertising man who until 2009 was the longtime editorial page editor of the State. Warthen endorsed Haley in two legislative elections and chronicled her rise beginning about seven years ago. In that time, he says, she has morphed from a naïve newcomer, to a politician he thought could become a good force in the legislature, to something approaching megalomania.

“I think she’s had her head turned by discovering where demagoguery will get you,” Warthen told me. “I don’t think that’s totally who she was before. I think she has developed in this direction. It’s a B.F. Skinner behavioral reinforcement thing; she has been rewarded and rewarded and rewarded. This has worked for her. And she continues to charm the national media. Because you know what? They don’t care. It’s just a story.”…

You see what just happened? Yep. For the first time ever, after a 35-year career in newspapers, I was just identified in a national magazine as an “advertising man.” Move over, Don Draper. You’re about to be replaced in the national imagination.

There were other good bits. Such as this, the result of an interview with John Rainey:

But Haley has been navigating a series of land mines—IRS disputes, questionable business deals and appointments, multiple adultery allegations—any one of which threatens to blow up her political career. “I believe she is the most corrupt person to occupy the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction,” declared John Rainey, a longtime Republican fundraiser and power broker who chaired the state’s Board of Economic Advisers for eight years. A 69-year-old attorney, Rainey is an aristocratic iconoclast who never bought the Haley myth. “I do not know of any person who ran for governor in my lifetime with as many charges against him or her as she has had that went unanswered,” he told me on a recent afternoon at his sprawling horse farm outside the small town of Camden. “The Democrats got Alvin Greene; we got Nikki Haley. Because nobody bothered to check these guys out.”

OK, so John was way more provocative than I was. But I think I sounded more erudite.

It’s worth a read.

Thirty-two to zero? That’s what gets me

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This release came in last night; I just noticed it:

COLUMBIA, S.C., June 14, 2011 — In a 32-0 vote, the South Carolina Senate today passed a measure halting the use of video cameras in the enforcement of speed limits.  Passage of S.336 came after months of debate in both the House and Senate. The Town of Ridgeland had placed automatic cameras along I-95, issuing thousands of camera-assisted traffic citations in the process.

“This is a hard-fought win for liberty, and a well-deserved loss for Big Brother,” says Senator Larry Grooms, Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee and author of the bill.  “Good riddance to what was nothing more than a small-town money grab and a menace to motorists.”

The bill now heads to the Governor.

###

Remember when I wrote about this before? (My headline was, “Everything that’s wrong with the SC Legislature.”) OK, I get it that some people, infected with all this nonsensical fear of Big Brother (and as you know, I love Big Brother, and hope he knows it), would object to the perfectly commonsense idea of using cameras to enforce the speed laws.

I can even see rational objections to the practice. For instance, if the speeder doesn’t get stopped, and doesn’t even see a cop car, there is no immediate deterrent effect. Sure, you can post the fact that the speed is monitored by cameras, but does that work as well. (The obvious presence of police is a more effective deterrent, affecting more drivers, than the actual issuance of tickets.)

But what I have trouble processing is that NO ONE in the Senate would object to this, yet another case of the bullying General Assembly stepping on the throats of local governments. Yeah, I know that once all the discussion has occurred, things tend to pass unanimously in the Senate — which is another thing — but sheesh.

Drat! Foiled again! Curse you, Snidely Obama!

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I was WAY busy last night with real-life stuff until about 1:30 a.m. (just wait until YOU have five kids and four grandchildren and everybody’s coming and going and having to be picked up at the airport in the middle of the night), and barely found time to watch some of that presidential debate. I didn’t even have time to think about Nikki Haley’s national TV appearance. Good thing, too.

I did glance at the coverage of it on CBS, and even managed to read on a bit after the horrible shock of the opening words:

Four of the biggest names in the Republican Party – Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Rep. Allen West of Florida, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahom…a

Really. “Biggest names.” Take THAT, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush… I could go on, but what does it matter? They’re nobodies! The peanut gallery is taking over!

It is just absolutely stunning how little one has to accomplish to be one of the “biggest” these days. In fact, in the GOP, accomplishing anything actually counts against you. Look at Romney and health care.

Of course, Nikki Haley is about as accomplishment-free as anyone can get, and by the new standards, that makes her golden. Of course, she likes us to think that she wants to accomplish stuff, but that uncontrollable forces prevent her.

What, you ask, has kept our gov free of the blemish of achievement? Could it be that she lacks good ideas? Could it be that she is clueless when it comes to working with other people who would have to be involved in making these things happen, such as the Republican leadership of the General Assembly? Could it be because of her inept, ham-handed approach to everything from USC trustee appointments to her own tax returns?

No, it’s none of that. There’s another villain, one that no rational person would have suspected in a million years:

Haley went on to say that “everything I’ve tried to do to govern in South Carolina has been stopped by President Obama,”…

Yep, it’s her favorite Snidely Whiplash, the guy she ran so hard against in her election last year (Vincent Sheheen? Who’s he?). He is still foiling her beautiful plans! Curses!

Recalling the national overreaction to that Edwards column

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A few days ago, Mike Fitts posted this on Facebook:

This seems like a good day to re-post my former boss’ column, written not all that long ago in the summer of 2007, about his gut feeling that John Edwards was “a big phony.” Got Brad Warthen national attention then, but all too obvious now.

Which I thought was nice of him to remember. I suppose it was because a certain person was back in the news…

Mike linked to the version at thestate.com, which is appropriate because that’s the one that got all the page views — 190,000 the first day, as I recall. Totally screwed up the stats for the paper’s website for the next year. Whenever the online folks presented stats at senior staff meetings, they had to explain, “We’re actually doing well, it’s just that is looks down because we’re up against that Edwards column of Brad’s…”

I was jealous of that traffic; it certainly would have been cool if it had gone to my blog. That would have been a huge hit — like months worth in a day. (Back then, I only got about 20,000 or 30,000 page views a month. You may be surprised to know that today, my traffic is closer to 200,000 a month — sometimes more, sometimes less.) Also, the version I had posted on my blog was better. I had written the column at home on my laptop and didn’t realize how long it was, and had to chop it down much more than I would have liked to get it into the paper. The version on my blog — the “director’s cut” — was shorter than the original, but quite a bit longer than the paper version. My point came across better in the blog version, because the anecdotes weren’t quite as truncated.

But still, the lesser version created a weird sort of splash. Still does. I got a letter just a week or two ago from a reader who says that he was an Edwards supporter and gave me grief in a letter at the time (I don’t recall), and is sorry now. But a lot of smart people didn’t see the problems with this guy at the time. In fact… I’ve told y’all before how I talked myself hoarse in a three-hour meeting to get the board to endorse Lieberman in the 2004 primary, right? What I may not have mentioned was that a couple of my colleagues wanted to back Edwards, and I was determined not to let that happen — so determined that I just won my point by exhausting everyone. I’m very glad not to have an Edwards endorsement on my record. (By the way, when people give me a hard time for how horribly Joe did in that primary, I have a ready answer: “Yeah, the voters went with Edwards. I’m more satisfied than ever that I was right.”)

I was shocked at the reaction the column got. It was just something I had had on a back burner for months. I had said something on my old blog about Edwards being a phony, and readers demanded to know what I meant, and when I realized how many words it would take to explain (being based on several encounters with the guy), I told them I would do a column sometime. I had been on vacation the week before I wrote this, and for one reason or another decided to take one more day — the following Monday — off as well. Feeling guilty, I told my colleagues that to make up for it, I’d whip out a column over the weekend, so nobody else would have to write one for Tuesday. This was an easy one to do, the “legwork” for it having been done inadvertently years before. So I dropped by the office Sunday just to check my memory on a couple of dates and such, wrote it that night at home, and turned it in on Monday morning — and didn’t think about it any more.

Then, the next morning, two people stopped me on the way into the building to talk about the column, and the reaction that was already manifest. I think Drudge had already picked it up. Later in the day, the column — or rather, the Edwards campaign’s reaction to it — was the LEDE political story on the Fox News site. As the week wore on, I was about worn out with media interview requests. I did as many as I could, including Dennis Miller’s show, which was fun. It was a day or so before I had any actual contact with the Edwards campaign (it led to no more than a lunch with the lovely Teresa Wells, in which she told me how wrong I was and I told her that no, I wasn’t). But I had heard that Mrs. Edwards, among others, had gone somewhat ballistic.

The media reaction surprised me. I hadn’t thought much of the column myself, and it was some time later before I figured out why the reaction was so much bigger than anything I could have imagined: The thing is, I had SO completely dismissed Edwards in my mind by that time. I had decided years earlier that I didn’t take him seriously, in spite of his having won the primary here in 2004. So who cared what I thought of him at that point, right? I mean, the column was still worth doing on a day when I just needed a column because he WAS still in the news. But I was convinced the nominee was going to be Obama or Clinton. And I just wasn’t seeing the enthusiasm for him in SC that had so alarmed me in 2004.

But a lot of folks, including national media, were very much taking him seriously still. Hence the reaction… And when I saw how the news stories about it were written, I realized: Oh. Everybody’s thinking, the editorial page editor of the largest newspaper in a state where Edwards HAS to win has just totally dismissed him. That’s the deal. The situation reminded me of that Mark Twain quote: “I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots.” It was one of those rare occasions when other people thought my opinion was a bigger deal than I thought it was. Doesn’t happen much.

I was reminded of this when the Mark Sanford Argentina thing broke. Sure it was a big story here, and pretty big nationally as well. I got that. But there’s a difference between a big story that everybody talks about, and something important enough to be the lede story in The New York Times. I’ve written before how the NYT has a VERY conservative, old school idea about its lede position — which I respect. As a front-page editor back in the 80s, I’m kind of old-school myself. There is a huge difference between the most interesting story of the day and  the most important. Sometimes, the same story is both. This was not one of those times. I expected it to be a big story above the fold in The Times — maybe with a picture. But no, it was a simple, sober, one-column lede story. Which startled me.

Remember, I was helping out The New York Post on that one. (By the way, my first interaction with the Post had been when they asked to reprint the Edwards column. Dig the headline they put on it.) A story under my byline led that paper. But that was to be expected. That was the Post. I thought the NYT would have a greater sense of perspective — yes, interesting scandal, but not that earth-shattering, I thought they’d harrumph.

Here’s why I was wrong: Again, the national media were overestimating a South Carolina political figure. Since I knew Mark Sanford well, I didn’t take any of that “presidential contender” garbage seriously. The NYT did. Hence this wasn’t just a juicy scandal to them. It was a contender’s White House chances being dashed.

It’s interesting when you suddenly see things from another editor’s perspective…

The first moment it really felt like summer

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Summer is felt not in furious action, but in the almost motionless intervals BETWEEN actions...

Last night, I went to a Chamber of Commerce “Business After Hours” reception out at the ballpark before the Blowfish game. As I told Ike McLeese, it was the first time I’d been there since the Bombers days.

And there was for me, as the sun was lowering to a more acute angle in the west, and the ballplayers were warming up and wandering about lazily the way they do before a game, with their uniforms still clean and fresh, and the markings on the red clay of the infield still white and clear, and the smell of the grass, a sort of magic moment. Something like what Ray Liotta (as a very unconvincing Shoeless Joe Jackson) was getting at in “Field of Dreams” when he talked about “the ball park in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet… The thrill of the grass,” and observed, “Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money. It was the game… The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?”

It was like that, one of those hard-to-define, quintessentially American moments of anticipation. Like the time I was at a Braves game, and Greg Maddux was wandering about back and forth slowly on the mound during a commercial break, with nothing happening on the field, staring absently at the ground, and the P.A. system was playing “Strawberry Fields Forever”… OK, maybe not exactly like that, but you know, transcendental…

It was, among other things, the moment that it first felt like summer to me. Yeah, I know we’ve had really hot weather the last week or two, and I also realize that according to the calendar it’s not technically summer, but for me, this was when it started.

Summer is felt not in furious action, but in the almost motionless intervals between actions…

These iPhone photos don’t perfectly capture it, but I thought I’d share them anyway.

I framed this one this way because I liked that kid's hat. And the two nonplayers lounging against this side of the fence...

Party membership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — and that’s a good thing

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Cleaning out my IN box today, I ran across this from four days ago:

Senators Say They Will return to Columbia on Tuesday

COLUMBIA – South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler today released a list of Senators who have requested it be made public that they will return to Columbia on Tuesday June 7th ready to conduct business per Governor Haley’s Executive Order.?

“We have enjoyed many successes with the Governor Haley this year. Now that the Governor has called the General Assembly back, it’s important we finish the job on these critical government restructuring reforms.”

Senator Harvey Peeler

Senator Lee Bright

Senator Kevin Bryant

Senator Ronnie Cromer

Senator John Courson

Senator Tom Davis

Senator Mike Rose

Senator Greg Gregory

Senator Greg Ryberg

Senator David Thomas

**Senator Shane Martin supports the effort to return to Columbia on Tuesday, but will be unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.

*Some Senators were unable to be reached this afternoon.

###

Interesting, huh? Especially in light of what happened. Here’s something that’s even more interesting, given my jaded view of political parties…

That release was sent out by Wesley Donehue, in his capacity working for the Senate Republicans. He also, under the same auspices, sent out the releases from Glenn McConnell challenging the governor for violating the separation of powers. Now that’s cool. Wesley’s doing his job. But the point I want everyone to note is this:

Being a Republican, or a Democrat, means next to nothing. They are false associations, mere granfalloons. When a theoretically coherent organization such as the Senate Republicans are putting out statements taking such different positions on an issue, it makes this fact clear. (You will occasionally see reportage that notes that the Republican governor is at odds with the Republican legislative leadership, in a tone that suggests there is something ironic about it. There is not. Nor is it strange or ironic for GOP senators to take different paths.)

This is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Senators SHOULD be thinking for themselves, and taking their own positions individually, rather than marching in lockstep. I just wanted everyone to notice it.

Oh, one last point — someone with the caucus may argue that being willing to come back as the governor requested is not entirely inconsistent with being opposed to the way the governor went about trying to make it happen. That’s true. The world is NOT black/white, either/or, liberal/conservative, the way parties would have you believe. Reality, and responsible governance, are far more complex than that.

Meanwhile, some comic relief from the party out of power…

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Dick Harpootlian put out this video today with regard to the dispute between Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Glenn McConnell chronicled back here…

Here’s what the Democratic Party chair had to say about his video:

“It’s time to send adults to the Statehouse and get rid of the whiny children.  Instead of the Governor worrying about her four pet projects, maybe she would be concerned with bringing news jobs to South Carolina and funding the education that will mold the true children of this state.”

A word about that, in the gov’s defense… what she was seeking was not the passage of “pet projects,” but substantive reforms. However, passing them was not an emergency worth overstepping constitutional bounds, or even exercising legitimate-but-extraordinary power…

In case you didn’t notice, the Legislature is NOT in session today…

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Having a busy workday today, and don’t really have time a lot of time to dwell on the SC Supreme Court’s sensible decision in stopping Nikki Haley from violating the separation of powers. The salient part:

Chief Justice Jean Toal and justices Donald Beatty and Kaye Hearn voted to block Haley’s order to call lawmakers back at 10 a.m. Tuesday, writing that the General Assembly “has not adjourned … and, therefore, is still in its annual session. Under these specific facts, respondent (Gov. Nikki Haley) cannot convene an ‘extra’ session of the General Assembly since it is currently in session. To do so would interrupt the annual session and would violate the General Assembly’s authority to set its calendar and agenda and would constitute a violation of the separation of powers provision.”

That was the thing. My good friend Kevin Hall (the governor’s attorney) had stated rather forcefully that the governor has the authority to call back lawmakers. Yeah. But she can’t call them BACK when they’re still in session (although in recess), and already have a defined agenda, and tell them have a whole other session in the middle of this one, and use it to do what I want. As I’ve said before, I am for having a much stronger governor in South Carolina (which is why I agree with the gov on three of the four things she wants). But I want a chief executive with more power to run the executive branch, not dictate legislative matters to a coequal branch.

A perceptive friend who doesn’t follow this stuff as obsessively as I do said, after reading The State‘s story, that Glenn McConnell doesn’t seem to think much of the governor. Well, to be fair, Glenn McConnell doesn’t think much of any governor, although they’re all right in his book as long as they know their place.

After saying in his courtly way that he would be happy to support amending the agenda when lawmakers come back as planned so as to allow them to take up the matters that concern the governor, he said this:

“I support the bills, and we’ll vote (on whether) to put them in the sine die,” McConnell said Monday, referring to the resolution that lays out the bills that senators can consider when they return. “But I’m only one of 46 senators. If (Haley) will use as much energy to get votes as she did to run over the Constitution, she’ll make it. She needs to get out and get the votes. The ball is in her court.”

I was busy laughing at the Senate president pro tem’s statement that “I’m only one of 46 senators” (he is such a wacky cutup) but when I got to the next sentence, I was like, “Whoa! Sen. McConnell is not amused…”

Doug Nye, and the things we remember…

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A few days ago, I saw on Facebook where a mutual friend had visited Doug Nye, and he wasn’t doing well. And I thought, “I need to check on him,” and now he’s gone. My mom called me last night to say it was announced at the USC baseball game…

It’s funny the things you remember about people. Doug was a great guy to talk to about all sorts of things, and not just westerns. To many people he will be remembered as the Father of the Chicken Curse, in terms of having popularized the concept. There are complex permutations on the Curse beyond what Bill Starr wrote about this morning that I could get into, but that’s not what I remember best about Doug.

Here’s what I remember best, and most fondly: Doug and I had a number of conversations sharing our childhood memories of watching “Spaceship C-8,” a kiddie show on WBTW out of Florence, hosted by the late “Captain Ashby” Ward, who was also the news anchor. I really didn’t have all that many specific memories about the show (Doug, being older, remembered more), despite having spent many an hour watching it during the summers I spent with my grandparents in Bennettsville. (Doug watched it from another end of the coverage area — I want to say Sumter.) But I enjoyed talking about it with Doug on multiple occasions.

It was about way more than one kid’s show; it was about remembering an era, a time before media saturation. A time when WBTW was the only station you could reliably get clearly in B’ville with a home antenna (WIS also came in, depending on the weather). Then, in the late 60s, along came cable to small town America, LONG before it came to cities. That way, you could get all three networks, plus some duplicates from different cities. There was less demand in cities, because they could already get three or four channels.

Consequently, we spent an awful lot of time doing stuff other than watching TV, or engaging any other mass medium. A time that in many ways was about as close as Huck Finn’s fictional existence as it was to what kids experience today.

Odd, I suppose, that the thing I would remember best from knowing the longtime TV writer was talking about days that were practically pre-TV. But that’s what I remember. It won’t really mean anything to you, I suppose, but I’m confident it would make Doug smile.

I remember that, and the fact that, as I said, Doug was a great guy to talk to about anything. Always a ready grin (that’s why I know he’d smile at my trivial remembrance), the kind of naturally affable guy who you took a moment to chat with rather than just rushing past in the course of getting through a day’s deadlines. He stood out among newspapermen that way. Not that newspapermen were so awful; I just mean Doug stood out. Which is why so many will remember him fondly.

Talk about being Ms. Bossypants…

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One of the women in my household took it back to the library, so I didn’t get far enough in Tina Fey’s Bossypants to find out what happened after she hit puberty, but that’s cool. The part I did read was pretty funny.

What is not funny is the Gov. Bossypants we have over at the State House, who did this today:

Gov. Nikki Haley ordered lawmakers back to Columbia next week after they failed to pass a key piece of her legislative agenda on the legislative session’s last day, sparking dissention among legislative Republicans and howls from Democrats.

Haley wants lawmakers to return at 10 a.m. Tuesday to consider bills creating a Department of Administration, allowing the governor and lieutenant governor to run as a ticket, allow the governor to appoint the secretary of education and a bill merging the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole into the Department of Corrections.

“Pick any two,” Haley said, asking lawmakers to voluntarily forfeit the $250 daily pay they are due, a total of $42,500 a day….

In other words, Do my will, and don’t get paid for doing it.

What a supreme mix of autocratic egoism and faux populism. The perfect Tea Party mix, steeped so as to make the maximum Palin-style impression.

Of course, she did allow them to pick two out of four, which I suppose Her Bossiness would consider to be magnanimity.

Here’s the problem with that: I would gladly vote for three out of the four (if her Bossiness could deign to condescend to do so, I would, were I a lawmaker, have to ask her to explain the virtues of combining the D of PP&P with Corrections). You know why? Because I am one of South Carolina’s most monotonously persistent advocates of giving the executive branch the ability to effectively administer the executive branch and be accountable for it.

But this kind of presumption of dictating to the legislative branch plays straight into the hands of those lawmakers who want to mischaracterize such proposals as a case of executive overreaching: See? She’s trying to FORCE lawmakers to pass the laws she wants. She should advocate strenuously for her positions, but there is a world of difference between advocating that a coequal branch of government do something, and using the power of one’s own branch to FORCE an issue that is the prerogative of that other branch.

The latter is not cool. Which, to turn full circle, brings us back to Tina Fey — a standing prop of her comedy is that she is not cool, not by a long shot.

But when Gov. Haley does the Bossypants routine, it’s just not as funny.

A video interview about comprehensive tax reform

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Recently, I interviewed (for Alan Cooper’s MidlandsBiz) Michael Fanning of the Olde English Consortium about the need for comprehensive tax reform in SC. It’s an old favorite cause of mine, and he speaks about it ably, so if you have ANY interest in such wonkish-but-important things, you might want to watch.

Here’s the link, in case you have trouble with the embed.

The free market at work in the SC General Assembly

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A couple of weeks ago, I appeared on Cynthia Hardy’s TV show to talk about tort reform. Because I was asked. Which just goes to show, if asked, I will talk about pretty much anything. Seriously, though… I forgot to mention it to y’all at the time, but as far as my comments are concerned, you didn’t miss much. My position on the issue is what it’s been for years — I’m not convinced on caps, and I think punitive damages (that is to say, those damages above and beyond what it takes to make the winning plaintiff whole) should go to the state — just like other punitive fines for criminal offenses. Basically, you would actually punish people who might otherwise write off lesser damages as the cost of doing business, but you remove the incentive for individuals and their attorneys to use the tort system as some sort of lottery.

For more, you can look at The State‘s editorial from earlier this year, and Cindi’s column from last year. I generally agree.

Beyond that, I’ve sort of lost track of the debate this year. I do that sometimes when neither side is pushing the position I would go for, and I have other things to do.

Seems that, according to Wesley Donehue (who works for the Senate Republicans) things are coming to a head today:

Wesley Donehue
Watching the trial lawyers in the SC Senate block tort reform.

36 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone

Hmmm. Well, I don’t suppose anyone can argue with that. I mean, it’s the free market at work, with each individual selfishly protecting his own economic interests. The Tea Party types and Sanfordistas should be thrilled. And the trial lawyers should certainly be happy.

But come to think of it, not too great for the Chamber of Commerce, or the legislative leadership. Or for the rest of us. But then, unless the legislation has changed considerably since the last time I looked at it, I’m not sure our interests would have been all that well served either way…

What in the world are these things?

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Went to Greenville over the weekend, and was puzzled the whole way by these things, which were spaced more or less 100 yards apart all along the median of I-26.

I have no idea what they are. They appear to be covered in some sort of synthetic fiber, but moving at 65-70 mph, it was hard to tell. (And no, I was not driving. It was hard enough capturing one of these in a frame on my iPhone as we whizzed by even as a passenger. It took a bunch of exposures to get one as clear as the one above. The blurry one below was second best.) I could not tell whether they were solid — made, say, of concrete — or mere covered frameworks. There may or may not have been gravel about the base.

They were four or five feet in diameter.

Drains of some sort? Shock-absorbing barriers for cars that wander into the median? UFOs? I don’t know. If they are drains, they seem … excessive. Like maybe DOT had some stimulus money it didn’t know what to do with.

Anyway, can anyone tell me the correct answer?

Amazon compromise appears to be a good one

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I’ve sort of run out of time to go very deeply into the Amazon compromise today, but I wanted to go ahead and put up something about it…

A deal reached early today paves the way for online retailer Amazon to open a distribution center employing 2,000 people.

The state Senate agreed shortly after midnight to give the company a sales tax exemption it wants for the project, ending a two-day talkathon that opponents launched to stall the measure.

“We’ve got a deal,” Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, announced after resistance ended when all sides agreed that Amazon will send customers in South Carolina notices that sales tax is owed on purchases.

It was quickly approved on a unanimous voice vote.

Amazon’s $125 million project near Cayce would be one of the largest recent developments in the Midlands.

The agreement moves the proposal to the verge of final legislative approval. The plan approved in the Senate will need to go back to the House, which approved the deal last week. But House leaders promise to accept changes that Amazon allies have made in the measure….

Basically, I was impressed at what the lawmakers came up with. No, Amazon won’t be collecting the tax on SC sales, and I think that it should. It won’t be calculating the amount for customers, either.

But what it WILL do is notify customers of something that many seem to be unaware of now — that they most likely DO owe taxes on the purchase (the reason why it says “may owe” instead of “owe” is to step around the complication of all those exemptions we have, such as the fact that you don’t owe taxes if what you bought from Amazon was a Bible) — and point them in the direction of finding out how much, and paying it. Here’s what the amendment requires (for more, search for “Amendment No. 230” on this link:

(E)(1)   A person to whom this section applies who makes a sale through the person’s internet website shall notify a purchaser in a confirmation email that the purchaser may owe South Carolina use tax on the total sales price of the transaction and include in the email an internet link to the Department of Revenue’s website that allows the purchaser to pay the use tax. The notice must include language that is substantially similar to the following:

YOU MAY OWE SOUTH CAROLINA USE TAX ON THIS PURCHASE BASED ON THE TOTAL SALES PRICE OF THE PURCHASE. YOU MAY VISIT WWW.SCTAX.ORG TO PAY THE USE TAX OR YOU MAY REPORT AND PAY THE TAX ON YOUR SOUTH CAROLINA INCOME TAX FORM.

(2)   The Department of Revenue shall cooperate with any person to whom this section applies and provide the person with the information and assistance necessary to comply with the provisions of this subsection and the means to link to the applicable portion of the department’s website. The department shall develop the webpage required by item (1) and develop a means to allow the purchaser to pay any required tax through the webpage. The department shall include on the webpage a table of the various sales tax rates of the State by location that permits the person to calculate the tax based on the total sales price and delivery location.

(3)(a)   A person to whom this section applies shall also by February first of each year provide to each purchaser to whom tangible goods were delivered in this State a statement of the total sales made to the purchaser during the preceding calendar year. The statement must contain language substantially similar to the following:

YOU MAY OWE SOUTH CAROLINA USE TAX ON PURCHASES YOU MADE FROM US DURING THE PREVIOUS TAX YEAR. THE AMOUNT OF TAX YOU MAY OWE IS BASED ON THE TOTAL SALES PRICE OF [INSERT TOTAL SALES PRICE] THAT MUST BE REPORTED AND PAID WHEN YOU FILE YOUR SOUTH CAROLINA INCOME TAX RETURN UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY PAID THE TAX.

The statement must not contain any other information that would indicate, imply, or identify the class, type, description, or name of the products purchased. Any information that would indicate, imply, or identify the class, type, description, or name of the products purchased is considered strictly confidential.

That’s more than we have now. And it gets us those 2,000 (or more) jobs. That’s a good deal for South Carolina.

An idea that is, was, and always will be bad

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Unfortunately, the “defund the schools” crowd was encouraged by the margin of the annual defeat of their execrable tuition-tax-credit proposal:

Nearly all lawmakers have their minds made up at this point on the topic, which repeatedly has surfaced since 2004 when school choice advocates, led by South Carolinians for Responsible Government, first introduced a school tax credit bill.

But advocates say they will continue the fight.

“We’re gaining ground every year,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, a tax credit supporter. “This was the closest vote yet.”

The death knell for this year’s bill was its price tag, according to several lawmakers….

The price tag, of course, is not the reason why anyone with even the slightest sense of responsibility to South Carolina should vote against this thing. The reasons are… you know what? Never mind. I got fed up with repeating all the reasons why this is an awful idea years and years ago, really by the time I started my old blog. It’s just so totally without merit. And it’s dead for this year now, so why even bother looking up the links to when I said it all over and over before, much less repeating myself?

But I know that next year, we’ll have the whole ridiculous argument again. You know why? Two reasons:

  1. There’s a whole cottage industry of interest groups that are funded specifically to push this.
  2. The extremes of the Republican Party have begun to become the core, with recent gains by the Tea Party. Hence the close vote this time, several months after the Tea Party achieved its zenith.

So I’ll just gather up all the painfully obvious arguments against sometime between now and then. Might as well. It’s not like we’re ever going to spend serious time in the Legislature discussing anything that might actually improve the quality of education in South Carolina — like school district consolidation, or empowering principals to hire and fire freely, or merit pay.

No, we’re just going to keep having this same pointless, monotonous argument over and over, year after year. And getting nowhere.