Category Archives: The Nation

Of COURSE food stamps shouldn’t pay for junk food

I actually meant to address this subject a couple of months ago, when I read this op-ed by Louis Yuhasz, the founder of an anti-obesity nonprofit in Charleston:

Our foundation works with a 17-year-old girl who weighs 495 pounds. At home she’s fed a diet of convenience store food, bought at convenience store prices, largely at taxpayer expense. Rare is a salad or lean meat. Processed, packaged food is all she knows. And it’s slowly killing her.

But she won’t leave this earth without costing us all a small fortune. She’ll need knee replacement surgery before she leaves her 20s, and in her 30s her hips will fail her too. Taxpayers can probably expect to pay for a long stay in a nursing home for her, because of the toll diabetes will take on her vision and limbs.

If ever there was an example of solving one problem while creating another, it’s the food stamp program in America. Through it, as one critic recently suggested, our government is “subsidizing the obesity epidemic.”…

Don’t get him wrong, he explained. The food stamp program has done a lot of good, and saved lives. But it needs to be changed:

So here’s something Washington should think very seriously about: strictly limiting what foods can be purchased with the money we provide SNAP recipients. We already impose limitations: Beneficiaries can’t use their payments to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Why not take it one step further and bar the purchase of foods that are making us fat and sick, at least with the money coming out of taxpayers’ pockets?

Where would we draw the line? If it comes from the meat, seafood, produce or dairy sections, it’s probably good to go. Or maybe we could use an even more general standard: If my 100-year-old grandmother would recognize it as food, it is.

On the other hand, if the ingredient list includes added sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic trans-fats, industrial seed oils, any ingredient name longer than four syllables, or if it would survive a nuclear holocaust, then put it back on the shelf, or at least buy it with your own money…

I’ve never gone along with the people who want to ban junk food, the way they’ve done with limiting soda intake in New York. But I have no problem at all with limiting what our tax dollars pay for. Besides, obesity costs us too much. We’re paying for it on the front end and the back end, as Yuhasz noted:

SNAP is expensive at $65 billon, but get a load of what obesity costs us in direct medical costs: $190 billion per year. Almost three quarters of Americans are either overweight or obese. Almost one in five children are clinically obese, and what used to be called adult-onset diabetes is one of the biggest health problems among kids…

So now I see in the paper today:

COLUMBIA, SC — Seeking to slow the childhood obesity epidemic, South Carolina health leaders would like to limit the purchase of sugar-filled drinks with food stamps.

Catherine Templeton, director of the Department of Health and Environmental Control, and Lillian Koller, director of the Department of Social Services, have exchanged thoughts on the subject. They agree that cutting the intake of sugary drinks could improve the health of the state’s children, but they are struggling with how to use the food stamp program as a tool in that effort, and especially with whether the federal government will allow it.

Several similar efforts, most notably by New York City, have failed to gain approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps. The feds told New York in 2011 that they agree with the goal of limiting intake of sugary drinks, but the city’s proposal had operational challenges and impacted too many people. They suggested a test program on a smaller scale…

I’d like to see SC be used as that test case, as Joey Holleman’s story goes on to suggest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for our state to be in the vanguard of improving health for once?

This seems to me like something that left and right ought to be able to get behind. I can imagine arguments against it, but I can’t imagine any good ones.

Hagel nomination hearing begins, against a backdrop that is pretty far from ‘peace in our time’

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I knew all these things from following the news, but I was impressed to see them listed together in a WSJ editorial this morning challenging the nomination of Chuck Hagel as SecDef:

In the week since President Obama declared “a decade of war is now ending” at his inauguration, a few things happened.

• Israeli warplanes on Wednesday struck a truck convoy outside Damascus and headed to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, according to news reports, amid concern about the spread of chemical and advanced antiaircraft weapons from convulsive Syria.

• The U.S. commander in Kabul predicted a tough spring of fighting and “an uncertain future” for Afghanistan.

• The French retook northern Mali from Islamist militias.

• Egypt’s military chief warned of the “collapse” of the Arab world’s largest nation.

• China moved ahead with naval exercises around Pacific islands disputed with Japan.

• And the Pentagon announced plans to boost American cyber defenses and set up an air base in north Africa (near Mali, Libya, Algeria, etc.)….

The Journal’s point was to wonder whether Mr. Hagel would be supportive of President Obama’s plans to cut defense spending to a percentage of the U.S. budget not seen since before Pearl Harbor (2.7 percent by 2021, compared to the current 4 percent).

By the way, Hagel’s confirmation hearing has begun, and you can watch it live here. The NYT’s report on the proceedings thus far make it sound like the nominee is doing his best to assuage concerns such as those expressed in the editorial quoted above:

WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, on Thursday morning said that the United States must lead other nations in confronting threats, use all tools of American power in protecting its people and “maintain the strongest military in the world.”

In an opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Hagel presented a broad, forceful endorsement of American military power aimed at answering critics who say he would weaken the United States. He offered strong support for Israel, said he was fully committed to the president’s goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and said he would keep up pressure — through Special Operations forces and drones — on terrorist groups in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.

“I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world,” Mr. Hagel told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee….

But he’s facing some tough questions, such as one from Sen. Inhofe asking why his nomination has been endorsed by the Iranian foreign ministry:

“I have a difficult enough time with American politics,” Hagel says. “I have no idea.”

Graham: ‘Hillary Clinton got away with murder’

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Our senior senator is just all over the place this week, to the point I’m having trouble keeping up with him.

FIrst, he and John McCain are in bipartisan moderate mode as they attempt to revive the issue that almost did McCain in (and did Graham a world of hurt back home) the last time they tried it. Then we see him trying to hold his base at bay by standing up against gun control (here’s video of that, which his office put out today).

Somehow in all this, I missed that he said the following words yesterday on FoxNews:

I haven’t forgotten about Benghazi. Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view.

Somehow this escaped me until some friends mentioned it this afternoon. The way I heard it was “Lindsey Graham said Hillary Clinton got away with murder in Benghazi.”

Now when you look at what he said in context, it’s not nearly that bad. He didn’t say she “got away with murder” in Benghazi. It seems pretty clear that he was just saying she got off too easy in the hearings last week.

But still.

That he would use words that could be (and of course, would be) misconstrued that way — especially with a clip as short and context-free as this one on Politico — is remarkable given that this is Hillary Clinton we’re talking about. Yes, there are those in Mr. Graham’s base who may consider her a she-devil of some sort, but Lindsey Graham and Hillary Clinton have long formed a well-known mutual admiration society. Each has only had kind things to say about the other since their early days in the Senate together, and each has used the other to prop up his and her bipartisan cred.

That he would rhetorically throw her under the bus (just to use another common expression) this way is surprising.

I mean, come on, Lindsey — the lady just got out of the hospital…

Obama on immigration: ‘Before they were us, they were them’

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Upstaged Monday by the Gang of Eight, President Obama today rolled out his own plans for comprehensive immigration reform today. Here is a fact sheet put out by the White House, and here are his complete remarks. The president went more in for some high-flown rhetoric in his speech, delivered in Las Vegas. An excerpt:

Immigration’s always been an issue that inflames passions. That’s not surprising. You know, there are few things that are more important to us as a society than who gets to come here and call our country home, who gets the privilege of becoming a citizen of the Untied States of America. That’s a big deal. When we talk about that in the abstract, it’s easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of us versus them. And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of us used to be them. (Cheers, applause.) We forget that.

And it’s really important for us to remember our history. You know, unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. (Cheers, applause.) Somebody brought you.

You know, Ken Salazar — he’s of, you know, Mexican-American descent, but he — he points out that his family’s been living where — where he lives for 400 years.

(Cheers.) So he didn’t — he didn’t immigrate anywhere. (Laughter.)

The Irish, who left behind a land of famine; the Germans, who fled persecution; the Scandinavians, who arrived eager to pioneer out west; the Polish; the Russians; the Italians; the Chinese; the Japanese; the West Indians; the huddled masses who came through Ellis Island on one coast and Angel Island on the other — (cheers, applause) — you know, all those folks, before they were us, they were them. (Laughter.)

And when each new wave of immigrants arrived, they faced resistance from those who were already here. They faced hardship. They faced racism. They faced ridicule. But over time, as they went about their daily lives, as they earned a living, as they raised a family, as they built a community, as their kids went to school here, they did their part to build the nation. They were the Einsteins and the Carnegies, but they were also the millions of women and men whose names history may not remember but whose actions helped make us who we are, who built this country hand by hand, brick by brick. (Cheers, applause.)

But he did talk about the practical business of getting something passed, and favorably mentioned the Gang of Eight’s proposals, while saying if they don’t fly, he’ll be pushing his own plan:

Now, the good news is that for the first time in many years Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together. (Cheers, applause.) Members of both parties in both chambers are actively working on a solution. Yesterday a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for comprehensive immigration reform, which are very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. So at this moment it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s very encouraging.

But this time action must follow. We can’t allow — (applause) — immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate. We’ve been debating this a very long time. So it’s not as if we don’t know technically what needs to get done.

As a consequence, to help move this process along, today I’m laying out my ideas for immigration reform. And my hope is that this provides some key markers to members of Congress as they craft a bill, because the ideas that I’m proposing have traditionally been supported by both Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Republicans like President George W. Bush. You don’t get that matchup very often. (Laughter.) So — so we know where the consensus should be.

Now of course, there will be rigorous debate about many of the details. And every stakeholder should engage in real give and take in the process. But it’s important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place. And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.

So after six years, this issue is officially back on the nation’s front burner. Here’s hoping something sensible actually gets done this time.

The utter pettiness of public life in our times

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As a young man, Abraham Lincoln fretted that there was no opportunity for his generation to accomplish anything important; gone were the days in which the founders had risen to the great challenge of establishing the nation.

Here’s an early passage from Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which I finally finished reading a couple of nights ago:

… Lincoln had expressed his concern that his generation had been left a meager yield after the “field of glory” was harvested by the founding fathers. They were a “forest of giant oaks,” he said, who face the “task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land,” and to build “upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights.” Their destinies were inseparably linked” with the experiment of providing the world,” a practical demonstration” of “the capability of a people to govern themselves. It they succeeded, they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be revered and sung, and toasted through all time.”

Because their experiment succeeded, Lincoln observed, thousands “won their deathless names in making it so.” What was left for the men of his generation to accomplish?…

Of course, Lincoln was profoundly mistaken:

In 1854, the wheel of history turned. A train of events that mobilized the antislavery North resulted in the formation of the Republican Party and ultimately provided Lincoln’s generation with a challenge equal to or surpassing that of the founding fathers.

Every day that he was in office, Lincoln and his administration wrestled mightily with questions of ultimate important and great moral weight. Until very late in the war, the great issues — whether the United States would continue to exist, and whether all its people would be free — were in great doubt.

Along the way, he dealt with a great deal of human pettiness — from the criminal uselessness of General McClellan to the scheming, naked ambition of Salmon Chase, from the everyday grubbing of officeseekers to personal disputes that threatened the government’s ability to function — but his focus, and that of most of those around him, was on the towering issues of the day.

And in spite of all, the challenges were met, masterfully. By Lincoln, whom I am more convinced than ever is the most remarkable and able individual ever to hold the office of president, but also by ordinary people who rose to do extraordinary things.

All the time I was reading that book, I kept thinking how unbelievably petty our public life is today. And I’m not just talking about the partisan bickering that I decry here so regularly. It’s the things that we squabble about that are so depressing.

The whole time I was reading that book — and I read it slowly, over a period of months, mostly at the dinner table, a few pages at a time — the great crisis of our time was the “fiscal cliff.” That precipice was created by our utter inability to deal with the most routine concerns, those of financing the government. And of course, we have a series of unresolved conflicts of the same nature that we must deal with this year, since the can has only been kicked, and kicked feebly, down the road.

In her column this weekend, Peggy Noonan wrote the following, in another of her passages finding fault with President Obama:

All the famous criticisms of him are true: He has no talent for or interest in sustained, good-faith negotiations, he has no real sense of alarm about the great issue of the day, America’s debt….

Really? That’s “the great issue of the day”? How mind-numbingly appalling.

And perhaps she’s right. Politicians in Washington, and all those who ape them in the hinterlands, certainly act as though that, and attendant issues, are the great matters of our day.

But here’s the thing: There are no great moral considerations involved here, people. Figuring out what it costs to run the government and how to levy the taxes to pay for it are matters that a middling accountant could work out in a day, and the issue would be behind us. How much to tax, how much to spend are indeed debatable issues. But they are not issues of right and wrong. They are unworthy of anyone’s passion.

No, I don’t long for us to be engaged in a mighty war to settle whether this nation, or any like it, will continue to exist. I don’t want to see more that 600,000 of my fellow citizen die in settling some momentous issue.I don’t lament, as Lancelot did in a time of peace in The Once and Future King, that “We don’t see many arrows thrilling in people’s hearts nowadays.”

I would just like to see us recognize that petty issues are petty issues, and resolve them, and move on. And no, I don’t consider trillions of dollars to be small considerations; I’m just saying that these issues are eminently solvable, with just a modicum of reasonable behavior on the part of all parties. I’m saying that the “drama” of “fiscal cliffs” and debt ceilings is entirely contrived, artificial and unnecessary.

Getting rid of slavery — now that was difficult. It was the great unresolved conflict that had dogged the nation since its founding. The issue could not be resolved without tearing the nation apart and putting it back together again. The solutions accepted as fact in 1865 were unthinkable in 1860. (Yes, they were “thinkable” in that abolitionists advocated them; but it was politically impossible to implement them until the height of the war.)

We shouldn’t need a national existential crisis to solve the problem of balancing the national checkbook. We should just be able to do it, and move on.

View of Jim DeMint changed radically after the 2004 campaign

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I was rather startled to run across something I’d written about Jim DeMint in 2004.

For so many years now, I’ve seen him as a hyperpartisan ideologue, as responsible as anyone in the country for pulling his party into Tea Party extremism right up until his recent resignation from the Senate, that I’d forgotten I used to see him differently.

Here’s what I wrote right after the 2004 election, when he had defeated Inez Tenenbaum in the contest to replace Fritz Hollings:

While I criticized Rep. DeMint heavily for choosing to run as a hyperpartisan (despite his record as an independent thinker), there’s little doubt that that strategy was his key to victory. The president won South Carolina 58-41, and Mr. DeMint beat Mrs. Tenenbaum 54-44, demonstrating the power of the coattail effect. I congratulate him, and sincerely hope he now returns to being the thoughtful policy wonk he was before he wrapped himself in party garb in recent weeks.

Wow. What a difference a few years make. “Thoughtful policy wonk?” I only vaguely remember that Jim DeMint.

So that’s when it began. Before the 2004 campaign, I saw him as a fairly thoughtful guy. But I guess that campaign showed him what red meat could do for him…

Columbia’s Donehue Direct becomes Push Digital

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Wesley Donehue’s political tech outfit, which has helped campaigns across the country, is making a change, it announced today:

Top SC political internet firm rebrands as Push Digital

Columbia, SC – January 24, 2013 – Wesley Donehue, founder and CEO of leading political tech firm Donehue Direct, announced today the rebranding of his firm to Push Digital.

The new Push Digital will continue its nationally recognized work in website and application development, mobile marketing, online advertising and targeting, fundraising, brand management, and social media. Push is also reemphasizing its commitment to data collection, management and analytics, something that Donehue has working toward for several years.

“Four years ago when I was asked what the next big tech trend was, I said ‘data,’ and a lot of people rolled their eyes,” Donehue said. “Too many people think data is boring and it isn’t sexy, but we all saw firsthand the results of a data-driven campaign this year in the presidential race. Our goal, quite simply, is to be second to none when it comes to data, and that’s something that will mean big dividends to our clients in terms of their ability to target their message and raise cash.”

Push is one of the few political Internet firms that has run campaigns from top to bottom. Its team has been involved from the state legislative level all the way up to the presidential, as well as numerous marketing campaigns for state parties, issue groups and nonprofit organizations. The team has had broad experience running the political, finance, and communications operations.

Push Senior Vice President Joel Sawyer noted that too often, those branches of the campaigns are “siloed” from one another, and not integrated with regard to technology.

“Part of our new mission with Push is to give clients the tools they need to integrate tech into all aspects of a campaign, and more importantly, making sure all the data integrates,” Sawyer said. “We live in a world where the internet is completely pervasive in our lives, yet too many campaigns out there are run on a model from two decades ago.”

In addition to its political business, Push will continue its work with non-profits and issue advocacy groups. Push will maintain its office presence in both Columbia, South Carolina and San Francisco, California.

Learn more at www.pushdigital.com

Follow us on twitter: @pushdigitalinc

“Politics is always going to be our bread and butter,” Joel Sawyer told me this afternoon. But the kind of increasingly sophisticated data mining that the firm does can “apply to any persuasive endeavor.”

In the past, he said, many campaigns have had volunteers who are willing to wave a sign on a street corner on the one hand, and people who give $10 or $15 on the other — often missing that a sign-waver could well be a donor, and vice versa. What Push Digital will do is pull all of a campaign’s data together and make it work in ways it hasn’t in the past.

Y’all know Joel. He was for awhile Mark Sanford’s press secretary, and was the guy the gov left to hold the bag when he ran off the Argentina. Joel resigned shortly after that, although I don’t ever recall him saying that there was a cause-and-effect relationship between the events.

Wesley y’all will know from all those communications for the Senate Republicans, and from Pub Politics, which just kicked off its new season last night. (Joel fills in for Wesley occasionally, as their business often requires travel.)

Check out Pinterest for a look at the newly-renamed firm’s portfolio.

Good luck with the new identity, guys.

: One of the newly-renamed firm’s many national clients.

Whoa! I missed the part about ‘Peace in our time’!

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MunichAgreement_

As I said before, I didn’t catch all of the president’s speech yesterday, and something rather important got by me:

The WTF moment for me in Obama’s second inaugural address, delivered Monday at noon, was his use of the phrase “peace in our time.” This came during his discussion of foreign policy, and in such circles, that phrase is a synonym for appeasement, especially of Hitler by Neville Chamberlain in September 1938. What signal does his using it send to Iran? I hope he was just using it to jerk Netanyahu’s chain.

I also simply didn’t understand what he meant by “a world without boundaries.” But my immediate thought was, No, right now we need boundaries — like those meant to keep Iran out of Syria and Pakistan out of Afghanistan…

Yikes. You know, there are certain phrases that anyone with an understanding of history would be careful to avoid. Such as “Mistakes were made.” “I am not a crook.” “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

And of course, “peace in our time.” What was the thinking on that? Did the president think that his base would like the sound of it, and not understand the profoundly disturbing historical allusion? Hey, it was politically popular when Chamberlain said it, although Britain woke up later.

I just don’t see how a line like that appears in such a formal speech by accident. And no other explanation is excusable.

That’s an association you don’t want. And for another thing, it doesn’t fit well with the president’s ongoing aggressive drone war. That suggests cynicism. As in, the president gave the gift of peace to four al Qaeda militants on Monday…

Oh, and another thing… since when did people who right for Foreign Policy start using such expressions as “WTF”?

Modest turnout for King Day at the Dome

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I went down to the demonstration, as Mick Jagger would say, for just long enough to take a few pictures before walking briskly back to the office (I’m really trying to work in a little exercise each day).

What I saw was a respectable-sized, but smaller-than-usual crowd.

Of course, it might be a bit unfair to compare this to previous such events that had a special “draw.” There was the first of these events, in 2000, at which a throng estimated at 60,000 — you couldn’t move on the grounds, and the crowd covered Gervais and spilled northward up Main Street — demanded that the Confederate flag come off the dome. (Which it did later that year, and now all subsequent King Day events have occurred under the one flapping on the grounds.)

Then there was the big turnout for the aforementioned one in 2008, with all the presidential candidates. The one before that, at which Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd spoke, wasn’t bad, either.

But this time, the event was up against Barack Obama’s second inauguration, and a lot of people who go to demonstrations went to that instead. Or watched it at home, instead of on the screen provided on the State House steps.

I didn’t hear much — as I said, I was just there long enough to take a few pictures. And as usual, that was a challenge, with the crowd in sunlight and the speakers in shadow. One of these days, somebody needs to have one of those on the other side of the State House.

I did hear part of an address by the Rev. Brenda Kneece about gun violence (from what I heard, she was against it). Then, as I was leaving, Tom Turnipseed got up, and after a reference to his having been “hooked up to jumper cables” (it was him saying it this time, not Lee Atwater) in his youth, he started talking about MLK Jr. having psychiatric problems. I’m not sure where he was going with that, but the theme of this event was supposed to be mental health, so…

As I walked away, I ran into Sammy Fretwell of The State. Someone else was doing main coverage of the event, he said, explaining that he was there to look for “fringe elements.” And as it happened, someone had just been arrested… he broke off then to ask a passing cop about it, but didn’t get anything.

Anyway, I hope Sammy found some fringe elements, to make his efforts worthwhile.

Hey, I LIKE my pols to be off-message…

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Today in the WSJ, Daniel Henninger asks the unmusical question, “Where Is the GOP’s Jay Carney?” By which he meant that the president — and by extension the Democrats as a class (as Henninger sees it) — has someone who can be out there constantly, every day, pushing a consistent message. And that message gets pushed without the president himself having to waste his own capital by commenting on every little thing.

An excerpt:

The whole wide world is living in an age of always-on messaging, and the Republican Party is living in the age of Morse code. It isn’t that no one is listening to the GOP. There is nothing to hear.

Smarting from defeat by Barack Obama’s made-in-Silicon-Valley messaging network, congressional Republicans in Washington are getting tutorials to bring them into a Twitterized world. I have a simpler idea: First join the 20th-century communication revolution by creating an office of chief party spokesman. One for the House and one for the Senate…

Henninger goes on at some length about how the GOP lack that everyday messenger — and complains that our own senior senator makes matter worse (for the party), not better:

The best members are becoming frustrated at the messaging vacuum, and some are moving to fill the void. Marco Rubio comes to mind, and more power to him given the nonexistent alternative. But others will follow, creating a GOP tower of Babel. The TV networks know they can dial up a Lindsey Graham to blow a hole Sunday morning in any leadership effort at a unified message. It will get worse, and the near-term consequence of getting worse is being out of power.

But of course, that’s precisely what I like about Lindsey Graham. He can be relied upon to think for himself. Oh, sure, he’ll mouth orthodoxies now and then, as with this release on the president’s gun proposals. But an unusual amount of the time for a Washington politician, he has something more thoughtful to say than what may be in the party playbook. Not as off-message as Chris Christie, perhaps, but he still says things that show he actually thought about the issue himself.

Would it really be a good thing for the House to have its own Ron Ziegler?

(Oh, and by the way — unlike some of my friends here, I see nothing wrong with Graham going out of his way to let us know when he DOES agree with the orthodox position. That doesn’t make him inconsistent, or a hypocrite, or anything else that some of y’all call him. I, too, sometimes agree with the party zampolits on an issue. And if I were a Republican officeholder — or Democratic; the dynamic is the same — and wanted to continue to serve in that office, I would put out releases emphasizing the issues on which I agreed with my likely primary voters. Why wouldn’t I? I’m sure I’d do plenty of things to tick off those voters at other times, so why not say, when I can honestly do so, “Hey, we agree on this one”? I want Lindsey Graham to stay in office, so I’m glad he puts out such releases.)

Also, I think Henninger overemphasizes the extent to which a presidential press secretary is a spokesman for the entire party that the president belongs to. He speaks for the president. And yeah, in these hyperpartisan times, that can benefit his party. But it’s more of an institutional phenomenon than a partisan one. It’s in the nature of the presidency, and has been since long before the modern office of press secretary developed. The president speaks with one voice; the House is not expected to (and I would argue, should not, except in the context of the outcome of a specific vote). The presidential press secretary is a surrogate standing in the bully pulpit. I see no good reason for the House, or Senate, having a similar functionary.

Graham plants himself squarely in pro-gun territory

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Lindsey Graham, widely expected to face a challenge next year from right out of the 1830s, has responded to President Obama’s gun proposals today with words that place him safely in NRA territory:

Graham Expresses Opposition to President Obama’s Gun Control Proposal

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement in opposition to President Obama’s gun control proposal.

“The recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is heartbreaking and beyond words. However, the gun control plans brought forward by President Obama fail to address the real issues and I’m confident there will be bipartisan opposition to his proposal.

“One bullet in the hands of a homicidal maniac is one too many. But in the case of a young mother defending her children against a home invader — a real-life event which recently occurred near Atlanta — six bullets may not be enough. Criminals aren’t going to follow legislation limiting magazine capacity. However, a limit could put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage when confronting a criminal.

“As for reinstating the assault weapons ban, it has already been tried and failed.

“Finally, when it comes to protecting our schools, I believe the best way to confront a homicidal maniac who enters a school is for them to be met by armed resistance from a trained professional.”

#####

But take heart, gun control advocates: At least he doesn’t want to arm teachers, right? Not unless that’s what he means by “trained professional.” I initially took it to mean “cop,” but can we be sure?

Reagan told Irmo kid to get his act together

Everything that is wrong with our politics, in state & nation

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Haley Palin

OK, so maybe it’s not everything — there’s personal pettiness, and anti-intellectualism, and an appalling willingness on the parts of too many to stoop to the lowest common public impulses for advantage — but it’s something that runs through it all, and ruins everything it touches. And besides, those things are more or less related to this thing.

It was on display in this story today about the campaign “warchest” — oh, let’s not forget that another thing that is wrong with our politics is that we pretend that it is war, with all that attendant “fighting for you” trash — that Nikki Haley has assembled for an as-yet-undeclared re-election campaign.

I’m not talking about Nikki Haley in particular here. I’m talking about something that is all too much a part of modern politics, and she just provides us with a good example, because she’s a particularly avid practitioner of what I’m talking about. The relevant passage:

Haley had six fundraisers last quarter, half of them out of state, in California, New York and Florida.

Donations from S.C.-based businesses and residents accounted for less than 60 percent of the total she raised during the quarter. Florida donations were next at 10 percent, followed by New Yorkers at nearly 6 percent.

Californians’ 51 donations ranked second in number behind the 418 reported from South Carolina, but their combined $21,000 ranked fifth in total amount, at 4 percent.

“It’s a strong showing,” Pearson said. “It shows that people in and outside the state want her to be re-elected gov

Haley had six fundraisers last quarter, half of them out of state, in California, New York and Florida.

Donations from S.C.-based businesses and residents accounted for less than 60 percent of the total she raised during the quarter. Florida donations were next at 10 percent, followed by New Yorkers at nearly 6 percent.

Californians’ 51 donations ranked second in number behind the 418 reported from South Carolina, but their combined $21,000 ranked fifth in total amount, at 4 percent.

“It’s a strong showing,” Pearson said. “It shows that people in and outside the state want her to be re-elected governor if she runs.”

And no, I’m not saying it’s awful that she goes after money where she can get it, or anything like that. The thing that I am saying is a problem is the fact that it is possible for a governor, any governor, to go outside his or her state to raise campaign money. It’s the fact that those outsiders will give, when asked the right way, that is the problem of which I speak.

Reading that story, I tried putting myself in Nikki Haley’s place. I tried imagining that I was running for governor, and I was on a fund-raising trip to New York or Florida or California or wherever, and I was standing in front of a well-heeled group of people with checkbooks in their pockets, and I thought:

What on Earth would I say to those people to get them to give money to me for my campaign for governor of South Carolina?

And I couldn’t think of a thing. I mean, I think about the reasons I would run for governor if I did, and they are many. I refer you to my last column at the paper for just a tiny few of those reasons. But not one of the reasons that could ever conceivably motivate me to run could ever possibly motivate someone who does not live in South Carolina and has no stake in South Carolina to give me money.

I would have nothing to say to them. Nothing that would be relevant to them, in any case.

But Nikki Haley, and other politicians who do what she does, have no problem in that regard. That’s because pretty much everything they say, and think, as political creatures is cookie-cutter stuff, the kind of stuff the national talking heads constantly spew out of the Beltway via 24/7 TV “news.” You can’t tell one from another.

That’s why it’s so easy and comfortable for someone like Sarah Palin to campaign alongside Nikki Haley, which they did with such aplomb and comfort in one another’s company during our governor’s first campaign. That’s because, even though they are from very different states with different issues and different needs, they think the same thoughts and say the same things. Henry Ford’s methods of mass production have been applied to politics, so that parts are interchangeable.

This is made possible by the fact that all these folks talk about is ideology — pure, simple, lowest-common-denominator ideology, unsullied by the specifics of reality, which is understood everywhere because of modern communications.

Their words and their thoughts have nothing to do with the messy, organic, ad hoc, practical, idiosyncratic business of governing — which to an honest person who engages it with an open and critical mind practically never meshes with the neat constructs of ideology.

And that’s what’s wrong. That’s what that story made me think about.

Tom Davis at the ‘nullification rally’

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This morning, I saw this on Twitter from Tom Davis:

Thanks, Ed Eichelberger, for this video of my speech at Tuesday’s nullification rally at the S. C. State House. http://fb.me/1eyP5zmGG

“Nullification rally?” Is that what was going on when I passed by on Tuesday.? Wait, let me go check. No, I was right: This is 2013, and not 1832…

I didn’t have time to look at the video until tonight. Before I wrap up for today, I want to take note of it here. We must all remember this when Tom runs against Lindsey Graham next year. If he does. Or when he runs for anything in the future.

I have always liked Tom Davis personally, and I have been very disturbed to see his steady descent into fringe extremism.

In case you don’t have time to watch it all, some lowlights:

“Lee Bright’s absolutely right.“
Launching on a history lesson — neoConfederates are big on condescendingly explaining their version of history to the rest of us, and Tom is picking up their habits — he says that George Washington was president in 1800. No, Tom, he wasn’t. Kind of makes you want to double-check all the other stuff he says. In case you didn’t already know to do that.
He says, with fierce, defensive passion, that as a South Carolinian he is “proud of John C. Calhoun,” whom he characterizes as “a great man who has been maligned far too long.”
“You have the intellectual high ground here.” This to the assembled nullificationists.
“I can’t do anything right now up in Congress…” As opposed to later, I guess.
“This state has a proud tradition of leaders stepping up and holding aloft the candle of liberty at a time when things were darkest.” Really? I would like to have heard an elaboration on that, with names and dates, so I can understand how Tom is defining “liberty” these days.

Joe Wilson accused of disaster hypocrisy

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… or at the very least, inconsistency.

I’m not going to quote the whole thing because of the language that he used, but here’s part of what someone named Jonathan Valania had to say about Joe Wilson’s vote against Sandy relief last week:

… this despite the fact that South Carolina has had 13 major disaster declarations and two emergency declarations in the last 30 years, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The worst storm to ever hit the Palmetto State, Hurricane Hugo back in 1989, caused over $13 billion in damage and left nearly 60,000 people homeless.

Guess who picked up the tab?

And back in 2003 when the South Carolina suffered through a severe drought, all 46 counties in the Palmetto State were declared federal disaster zones at Wilson’s urging. In 2005, he voted for a $10.5 billion Katrina relief package.

“The compassion, generosity, and solidarity of the American people during difficult times are one of our most cherished blessings as citizens of our great nation,” Wilson said after the Katrina relief bill passed the House. “As we now face the severity of this historic natural disaster, Americans must do what we do best: help each other.”...

That was then and this is now.

Indeed. That was before the Tea Party, and before Joe decided he must do its will. And this is now, after Joe has followed the Four Freshman (OK, so now it’s Three Sophomores) through the looking glass.

Why have BOTH parties wasted our money on Voter ID?

65 Replies

This just in from Lindsey Graham and Trey Gowdy:

Graham, Gowdy Defend South Carolina Voter ID Law

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Congressman Trey Gowdy (South Carolina-4) today sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder renewing their request for documents pertaining to the Justice Department’s costly opposition to South Carolina’s Voter ID law.

Last Friday, the Washington, D.C. District Court issued a unanimous decision awarding South Carolina certain litigation costs incurred while defending its Voter ID law against a Justice Department challenge. The case cost the State of South Carolina an estimated $3.5 million.

“Not only do we strongly support the Court’s decision to award costs, we request follow up on our previous letter regarding the reasons why this costly litigation occurred in the first place,” wrote Graham and Gowdy. “If some, or all, of the costs associated with these actions could have been avoided by following the recommendation of career Voting Section experts, then we would like to know the reason why they were overruled.”…

Good question. Of course, it would be just as good a question to demand that our governor and legislative majority why they have insisted on passing and then defending in court a completely useless Voter ID bill.

As I’ve said so many times before, I remain completely unconvinced by either Republicans’ claim that there is a need for such a law, or by Democrats’ claim that it constitutes an intolerable burden. Every taxpayer dollar that either party has caused to be spent on the bill has been a waste, in my book.

Everybody’s got an agenda these days

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Remember how I mentioned the other day, with unbated breath, that Joe Wilson was going to unveil his agenda for this session of Congress? Well, here it is:

Wilson’s Agenda for 2013:

Create Jobs Through Economic Growth: Cut excessive red tape and regulations to help small businesses grow; Work with county, regional and state agencies to attract businesses to South Carolina; Protect South Carolina’s “Right to Work” laws; Defund the Government Healthcare Takeover Bill

Reducing Washington’s Out of Control Spending: Require a vote on Congressional pay; Make the government more accountable by sponsoring legislation calling for biennial appropriations; Support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution; Efficiencies within federal government agencies

Energy Independence and Efficiency: Promote construction of Keystone XL Pipeline; Fight to ensure South Carolina does not become our nation’s dumping ground for Spent Nuclear Fuel; Work to promote clean energy across our state via Energy Saving Performance Contracts

And right next to that in my Inbox, I see that the the Republican caucus in our state Senate have an agenda, too:

Senate Republican Caucus unveils jobs and reform agenda

Columbia, SC – January 8, 2013 – The Senate Republican Caucus today announced a six-point legislative agenda, centered on growing the economy and reforming government.

Jobs and the Economy:

Transportation Reform – The Caucus will support structural and funding changes to our state’s infrastructure maintenance and construction process to make sure every dollar is maximized and allocated based on merit. The Caucus will explore mechanisms for increasing funding to meet growing infrastructure needs without raising taxes.

Spending Caps – Congress’ recent inability to deal effectively with the Fiscal Cliff could have paralyzed the country’s economy. South Carolina needs a real spending cap to provide for sustainable and predictable growth in state spending. Doing so protects taxpayers, businesses and those served by government by helping guard against unexpected tax increases or cuts to services.

Cyber Security – It’s critical that taxpayers and businesses know their information is secure when they interact with government. The Caucus will make it a priority to enhance cyber security so that people can conduct business in South Carolina with confidence.

Government reform:

Ethics Reform – The Senate, the House, and the Governor’s Office are all in the process of reviewing our state’s antiquated Ethics laws and making recommendations to modernize them for the 21st Century. The Senate Caucus believes strongly that voters need more transparency and information about the people representing them in order to hold their elected leaders accountable for their decisions.

Ballot Reform – The Senate Caucus will act quickly to fix state law in regards to ballot access, to make sure candidates are not again denied access to the ballot as hundreds were this year. In addition, the Caucus plans to correct the disparity in filing requirements between incumbents and challengers.

Department of Administration – Last year, the Senate passed the first bill by either legislative chamber to completely eliminate the Budget and Control Board and create a Department of Administration. The Caucus believes that we need clear lines of accountability in state government.

Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler noted that with a one-seat GOP pickup in the Caucus that the agenda stands a good chance for passage this year:

“These are issues that all conservatives should be able to agree on, and they’re issues that the people of South Carolina clearly want us to move forward with,” Peeler said. “I am committed to making sure these items remain a priority throughout the session, and that we work with the House to move these bills to the Governor’s desk.”

In addition to announcing its agenda, the Caucus also re-elected Senator Peeler to the post of Senate Majority Leader. Peeler named Senators Danny Verdin and Shane Massey as Majority Whips.

On the Web: http://www.scsenategop.com/2013-agenda/

###

Agendas, it seems, are like opinions (or something): Everybody’s got one. Except yours truly, of course.

So which is it, Peggy? Is Obama’s situation unique, or what?

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Sometimes, pundits are at their best when the party they oppose is in power. Not necessarily so with Peggy Noonan. I’ve long admired her style, but her drip, drip, drip of condescending disdain for Barack Obama wore thin some time ago.

And her column over the weekend, “There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Kumbaya’,” particularly bugged me because she wanted it both ways. First, she wrote:

Mr. Obama’s supporters always give him an out by saying, “But the president can’t work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in.” That’s true enough. But it’s true with every American president now—the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side’s big mouths are always braying they’ll take him down. They tried to capsize Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, calling him an amiable dunce and vowing to defeat his wicked ideology.

We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal.

A lot of the president’s staffers were new to national politics when they came in, and they seem to have concluded that the partisan bitterness they faced was unique to him, and uniquely sinister. It’s just politics, or the ugly way we do politics now.

In other words, these rubes just need to put their Big Boy pants on and recognize that there’s nothing unique about the calumny heaped on their guy; it’s politics as usual, as regrettable as that may be.

Then, five paragraphs later, she writes of the president:

He is a uniquely polarizing figure. A moderate U.S. senator said the other day: “One thing not said enough is he is the most divisive president in modern history. He doesn’t just divide the Congress, he divides the country.” The senator thinks Mr. Obama has “two whisperers in his head.” “The political whisperer says ‘Don’t compromise a bit, make Republicans look weak and bad.’ Another whisperer is not political, it’s, ‘Let’s do the right thing, work together and begin to right the ship.’ ” The president doesn’t listen much to the second whisperer.

So… which is it? Is this politics as usual, or is the polarization Obama inspires “unique?”

She would probably defend her inconsistency by saying that the unique part is all Obama’s fault, that the animus aimed at him would be politics as usual, except for the way he deliberately rachets it up.

Which would probably be persuasive to a partisan Republican. Not so much to the rest of us along the spectrum. Not to this independent, anyway.

The polarization that characterizes the president’s relationship with his political opponents is indeed unique. Yes, it exists on a political timeline in which we have seen continuing, rising polarization dating back, I would say, to the early 1980s (from my perspective, about 1982, when Robin Beard ran a startlingly negative Senate campaign against Jim Sasser in the state where I was, while in SC, a young man named Lee Atwater was moving from dirty local campaigns toward national prominence), and becoming overt to the point of completely poisoning presidents’ relationships with their not-so-loyal oppositions starting in about January 1993.

But there’s a unique flavor to the animus toward Obama, and has been since the beginning. That’s not an excuse for him not to work in good faith with the opposition, to the extent that they will let him. But it’s a fact.

Graham’s on Hagel’s case (and he’s not alone)

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As Washington media gather the soundbites on the Obama administration’s nomination of Republican Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, one of the first gathered is Lindsey Graham’s:

“This is an in-your-face nomination by the president. And it looks like the second term of Barack Obama is going to be an in-your-face term.”

Of course, that quote is distinctly lacking in substance. Here’s what Graham said further on CNN’s “State of the Union”:

“Chuck Hagel, if confirmed to be the secretary of defense, would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history,” Graham said. “Not only has he said you should directly negotiate with Iran, sanctions won’t work, that Israel should directly negotiate with the Hamas organization, a terrorist group that lobs thousands of rockets into Israel. He also was one of 12 senators who refused to sign a letter to the European Union that Hezbollah should be designated as a terrorist organization.”

Beyond Graham, those Republican senators vocalizing opposition to Hagel include Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas, Ted Cruz of Texas, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Chuck_Hagel_official_photo

In the plus column are Democrats Carl Levin of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Dianne Feinstein of California, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

That’s all according to The Washington Post.

Much of the animus toward Hagel dates from his opposition to U.S. involvement in Iraq. Then there’s his opposition to Iran sanctions. Then there’s his “Jewish lobby” quote. And gay rights advocates are still mad about something he said in 1998.

Evidently, the Susan Rice experience didn’t diminish the president’s willingness to engage in a nomination fight as his second term begins…

SC had two of the 10 most-mentioned senators

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There was an interesting tidbit in the Smart Politics piece that I mentioned in my last post:

For although DeMint was simply 1 of 100 in the senate, he was also an unofficial voice of the Tea Party, one of the most vocal critics of Barack Obama, and among the Top 10 most mentioned senators in broadcast media reports.

That made me think, Yeah, but I’ll bet Lindsay Graham is mentioned even more.

Sure enough, when I followed that link, Graham was at No. 6, and DeMint was ninth. (John McCain came in first, followed by Marco Rubio. Only two Democrats, Harry Reid and John Kerry, made the Top Ten.)

These two young fellas have made quite a mark, even though they are newcomers by our accustomed Thurmond/Hollings standard.

Tim Scott will have a lot to live up to.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: The Nation

Of COURSE food stamps shouldn’t pay for junk food

Hagel nomination hearing begins, against a backdrop that is pretty far from ‘peace in our time’

Graham: ‘Hillary Clinton got away with murder’

Obama on immigration: ‘Before they were us, they were them’

The utter pettiness of public life in our times

View of Jim DeMint changed radically after the 2004 campaign

Columbia’s Donehue Direct becomes Push Digital

Whoa! I missed the part about ‘Peace in our time’!

Hey, I LIKE my pols to be off-message…

Graham plants himself squarely in pro-gun territory

Reagan told Irmo kid to get his act together

Everything that is wrong with our politics, in state & nation

Tom Davis at the ‘nullification rally’

Joe Wilson accused of disaster hypocrisy

Why have BOTH parties wasted our money on Voter ID?

Everybody’s got an agenda these days

So which is it, Peggy? Is Obama’s situation unique, or what?

Graham’s on Hagel’s case (and he’s not alone)

SC had two of the 10 most-mentioned senators