Category Archives: Working

Not only is dope illegal, it should be

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Note Cindi's column today about Sheriff Lott and Michael Phelps.

Originally (in a somewhat condensed form), it was going to be an editorial — that is, an expression of the consensus of the editorial board as a whole. Trouble is, we didn't reach consensus.

We were all in agreement that the sheriff was right to drop the case, and inadvisable to have taken it as far as he did. We agreed that the law should be applied equally, but that there was no case here, and discretion would dictate that the sheriff's department's resources would have been better spend elsewhere.

We also agreed that had Phelps been caught in the act, and in possession — say, if the cops had raided the party — he should have been prosecuted. The law is the law.

But then, we had a disagreement. Warren and I wanted to say that not only is the law the law, but it should be the law. We agree with Cindi that we don't need to have nonviolent offenders in our prisons — they need treatment and probation, not jail time. But Warren and I believe marijuana possession should still be a crime; Cindi isn't convinced of that. She's not sure what she thinks, but she is inclined to believe it should be regulated more the way alcohol is.

We didn't get deeply into WHY we thought what we did. We were too busy scrambling to rethink tomorrow's page, turning the piece into a column (as you should know, signed columns reflect the opinion of the writer; unsigned editorials the board view) and making other changes on deadline.

But I'll tell you one reason I think the way I do. And it's the classic case of personal experience shaping one's views, so be aware. You've probably read about how heavy use of marijuana can mess with the development of an adolescent brain. Well, I've seen that up close. Someone very close to me started smoking dope heavily when he was about 12. Over the next decade you could tell that something had gone wrong with a bright and engaging kid. For one thing, he didn't grow up. Up until the time he died at age 30, he still talked like a kid. He was very credulous, having trouble telling between what was likely to be true and what was not. He lost connection with the truth. He turned to petty dishonesty in pursuit of drugs (eventually going well past marijuana, of course). He never kept any job for long. He did several stretches in jail (for trying to pass forged prescriptions, not for anything violent). Eventually, his habits led to his early death.

Note that I'm not saying m.j. was a "gateway drug" for him. I'm saying that cannabis itself did something to him at a critical point in the development of his brain and personality that caused him to fail to be the adult he would otherwise have been.

So do I think that cannabis is worse than alcohol? No, I don't think so. Each is worse in different ways. But society made the decision a while back that it was NOT going to ban alcohol; it's too ingrained in our culture. So we do what we can with regulating it, taxing it (and by the way, in SC we tax it MUCH more heavily than we do tobacco, in case you were wondering) and keeping it out of the hands of kids. We do NOT have to make the same concessions for loco weed; the case just isn't nearly as strong. Maybe if Jesus had turned the water into Panama Red, dope would have the same central role in our culture that wine does. But he didn't. His very first miracle was to affirm the central role of alcohol in a sacramental celebration. And I cite that not to make a religious or theological point, but a cultural one. Humans stopped being hunter-gatherers so they could grown barley to make beer, or so I'm convinced. We just can't root it out.

Anyway, I'm meandering now. What do y'all think? Not all at once, now…

How the economy looks from where I sit

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One reason that I asked y'all to tell me how the economy was looking in your own lives is that if you work in the news biz, it helps to check with people who are not looking at what WE are looking at every day. When I talk about the economy, I'm perfectly aware that my own perception is colored by the situation that newspapers — and TV stations, and other media — find themselves in these days.

As you know, since I've told you in the past, I've lost just over half the staff I had at the start of this decade, due to cost cutbacks. And that was just because of long-term problems in the newspaper business model, the thing that caused Knight Ridder (which used to own The State) to suddenly disappear. (The short explanation: We have no trouble making the transition to online with our content, except for one thing — online advertising won't pay for the kind of news-and-commentary staffing that print advertising traditionally has. The money to pay reporters et al. has to come from somewhere; we just haven't figured out where yet.)

But take this long-term problem we already had, and add in this monster recession, and the effect on our business is huge. Think about it: Classified advertising has always made up a huge portion of the revenue that enables us to publish newspapers. OK, now ask yourself, what are the three main categories of classified advertising? They are 1) employment; 2) auto and 3) real estate. How many people are hiring these days? How are car and home sales? Get the picture?

Of course, you don't need me to tell you this. You've probably seen one or more of the following:

  • This TIME magazine cover story, currently on the shelves, headlined "How to Save Your Newspaper." (Spoiler: The author has no new, magic-beans idea; he just says we should charge for our content online.)
  • The New York Times, which obviously has a lot at stake in the question, ran a front-page feature last week called "Battle Plans for Newspapers," which offered the thoughts of various deep thinkers on the subject.
  • Then, you might have seen this headline in Editor & Publisher, "With Q4 Loss of $20 Million, McClatchy Vows to Cut Expenses $100 Million in '09." This should be relevant to you (it certainly is to me) because McClatchy is the company that now owns The State. (You could have read about it in The State as well, but I thought I'd also give you the third-party source.
  • Then, just so you think it's not all about newspapers, check out this story from the WSJ, "Local TV Stations Face a Fuzzy Future." You've seen some of the effects of the squeeze on TV, such as when WIS recently got rid of veteran anchorman David Stanton and six others. Since then, WACH-57 has laid off several people.

Some people think news people live in an ivory tower and aren't exposed to the vicissitudes of real life. Hardly. I'm hear to tell you that we are extremely susceptible to whether our community is doing well or not. If it isn't, we're sort of like the canary in the coal mine — we feel the effects right away.

I try to set that aside and perceive truly what is being experienced out there by people who DON'T work for newspapers, which is why I enlisted y'all to give me feedback on this earlier post. I hope y'all will continue to do that. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure you knew how things are looking from where I sit. In case you wondered.

Notice how this hasn’t helped with SC jobs

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Tomorrow's op-ed page features this Trudy Rubin column about how, in tough economic times, xenophobia and scapegoating of "the other" tends to rise. She speaks of the synagogue trashed in Caracas, similar incidents in Argentina, the Vatican's recent mess with the reinstated archbishop, etc.

And just in passing, there is a mention of a type of scapegoating we have seen in this country:

    Of course, it won't just be Jews who will be scapegoated. It can be Chechens or dark-skinned people from the Caucuses in Russia, or migrant workers in Chinese cities, or illegal immigrants in the United States.

Well, yes and no, in terms of the direct correlation to the economy. We saw the rise of resentment of illegals peak BEFORE the economy's recent southward trend. And in fact, one has heard a lot less about it recently than one heard back before John McCain became the GOP nominee (except, of course, from the kind of GOP voter who said they would not vote for him, not no way, not nohow).

Of course, there are some here in SC who would attribute the quieting of the anti-illegal lobby to the terrific job they say they're doing. I just got this release today from S.C. Senate Republicans:

South Carolina’s Immigration Laws Could Be Severely Weakened

Federal Government May Not Reauthorize E-Verify Program

Columbia, SC – February 17, 2009 – South Carolina’s State Senators are taking action and asking the United States Congress to reauthorize a federal program that is presently allowing the state to crack down on illegal immigration.  State Senator Larry Martin (R-Pickens) today introduced a resolution urging Congress to reauthorize the E-Verify program.
    E-Verify is an Internet based program run by the Department of Homeland Security, which allows for the instantaneous verification of an employee’s residency status.
    After an outcry from businesses, workers, and taxpayers across the state, the South Carolina General Assembly last year passed the nation’s toughest illegal immigration laws. Using the federal government’s E-Verify program, South Carolina’s new laws give the state the ability to punish those who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  Unfortunately, South Carolina’s laws could lose their teeth and be severely weakened if Congress does not reauthorize E-Verify.
    Senator Larry Martin says the affect on South Carolina’s economy could be devastating.  “We now have the third highest unemployment rate in the nation due to this harsh economic environment. Our new law has stopped the influx of undocumented workers in South Carolina. We need to ensure that every available job in the state is being filled by a legal United States resident.”
    Martin continued, “E-Verify is the most cost-effective, secure, and reliable tool for businesses to verify the residency status of their employees. I can not urge Congress enough to reauthorize this vital program.”
            ###

So basically, he's saying we've got to keep out the illegals to protect our jobs. To which I say, what jobs? The period during which he's saying SC's done a great job of keeping out illegals (which remains to be seen, but let's play along) is a period in which unemployment in SC has soared.

Here's a clue, folks: You know what's more likely than anything else to keep out illegals? The continued decline of our economy, that's what. When there aren't jobs to be had, they're going to stay away. But is that what we want?

Think about it: Would you rather have high unemployment and keep the illegals out, or low unemployment but with illegals here? I'm sure the choice before us is not a pure question of either-or, but a basic understanding of supply and demand would suggest that there is a high correlation…

Troubles in the private college sector

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You know about all the budget cuts that have hit USC and other state institutions, but I was just talking to Caroline Whitson, president of Columbia College, and trying to operation a private college is no bed of roses these days, either. She had called me earlier in the day, and I got her back on her cell while she was walking the dog…

Most of the college's funds come from tuition (I had guessed it was from gifts, but I guessed wrong), and that's not exactly the most dependable funding stream at the moment. With so many families hurting, and student loans harder than ever to get, she said she's "not sure what enrollment is going to look like in the fall." So the college is looking at all sorts of contingencies.

As for gifts, well… whether your name is Pastides or Whitson, you tend to hear from a lot of people that their portfolios are down, and this just isn't the best time…

Me, I find it hard to imagine being in that situation, because I've never had a flippin' portfolio.

Real life anecdote follows: As I was getting off the phone with Caroline, my wife called on my cell to remind me that she'll be home late, so I might want to stop at the grocery on my way home if I want to eat. And I should remember that there is $15 in the checking account until I get paid, so don't go over that. Of course, as I recall she told me the day after I got paid LAST time — after she'd paid the bills — that there was only $11 in the account. I guess the additional $4 is all that's left from her pay after we paid some MORE bills.

You know how they say you should always have two months salary in an accessible account in case you lose your job? That always makes me laugh maniacally, because the only time I ever have two WEEKS pay is for about five seconds after I get paid every two weeks (and of course I never have two weeks gross, just net). And no, I'm not complaining. I know I'm well off. All I have to do is look around me — at work, in the community, among friends and family — to see how well off we are. But how other people build up portfolios, I don't know. Somehow, the world always knows EXACTLY how much is in my paycheck, and all the bills add up to that amount — give or take $15. I don't know how they coordinate it. Actually, I don't think they do. You know what I really think it is?
God doesn't want me to have money — he knows me too well, and doesn't trust me with it or something. I'm not being facetious. I'll explain my theological view on that another time.

Oh, and when they call from our alma mater — Memphis State, which has changed its name — seeking contributions, I do not laugh maniacally, but only because I'm polite.

If you want to be a hero, then just follow me…

My measly 1.5 Million looks sort of sad now

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You know, I was going to brag on the blog today because I just noticed that, at 1,473,925 and climbing, this blog will soon pass the 1.5 million-page view mark. Like, within the coming month — maybe two weeks, maybe three.

I thought that was pretty cool because it took three whole years to reach a million, and here we are at half again that much just nine months later.

But then Tim Geithner comes out with that 1.5 Trillion number, and I just don't feel so special anymore…

Do we REALLY need people to be making RVs?

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Yesterday, Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia said President Obama either had been, or would be, invited to address the National Hydrogen Association’s annual conference here in April. The mayor said, rightly, that such would be a great opportunity for the president to demonstrate his seriousness about the "green economy" and energy independence.

I heard the mayor say that yesterday afternoon.

So imagine my surprise to see that the president's first high-profile road trip beyond the Beltway (or one of the first; I'm not really keeping score) was to Elkhart, Indiana, which is suffering double-digit unemployment because…. well, because people aren't buying so many Recreational Vehicles these days.

Now, I consider it to be a BAD thing that all those people are out of work. But as the author of the Energy Party Manifesto, I have to say it's a GOOD thing, in the grand scheme and all that, that fewer people are buying RVs… In other words, I'd like to see all those good people of Elkhart working at good jobs doing something else.

One would think, given the things that he says about green technologies and energy independence, that Obama would think that, too. So I have to puzzle over the choice of Elkhart as a place to go campaign for his stimulus plan that is all about putting people to work AND protecting the environment and making us more energy-independent. It's just an odd setting. I mean, why not choose another town that's hurting, only from people losing their jobs building tubines for windmill farms or something, or printing Bibles or doing something else virtuous.

Obama's speechwriter seems to have been aware of this, so while he empathized with folks and promised jobs, he did NOT promise them jobs making RVs. Nor did he mention, specifically, that they needed to be something OTHER than making RVs, for the good of the country and their own economic future. He finessed it.

But he wouldn't have had to finesse it if he'd just made the speech somewhere else.

Reaganism, boiled down to its essence

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Being a word guy, I got a kick out of this first paragraph of a letter we ran on our Sunday page:

Government is the problem. Stop it.

Although those two sentences actually make more sense, something about them reminded me of Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You!)"

The temptation was strong to edit the letter so that it stopped there. It would have been perfect, a statement of Reaganism boiled down to its minimalist essence. If Reagan were the coal, this would be the diamond.

But I left the letter alone. Here it is:

Government printing too much money

Government is the problem. Stop it.

It
is printing unprecedented amounts of money. Continuing will lead to
hyper-inflation. Remember the Weimer Republic hyper-inflation, when a
wheelbarrow full of money was needed for a loaf of bread?

It's
simple supply and demand. When the government effectively prints so
many dollars, the value of the dollar will eventually go down,
drastically.

For now, call all members of Congress and urge them to kill the “stimulus” (incredible pork-barrel, not stimulus) bill.

In the longer form, however, the message lacked purity. It gave you things to argue with; you could say, "Hmmm. I seem to recall the Weimar Republic had certain other problems that contributed to the devaluation of the currency, something more than the act itself of printing too much money." Nevertheless, I do love a good historical analogy. My favorite with regard to Weimar inflation is this: The night of the Beer Hall Putsch, until it was time to make their move, one of Hitler's aides bought three beers so the two of them and one other follower could blend in. The beers cost three billion marks. But you know, if I wanted to talk about runaway inflation, I'd probably cite something more immediate: Zimbabwe has to print new denominations every week, because prices double every day. (Then again, though, Zimbabwe has bigger problems that contribute to having to print the money, not vice versa.)

But that first paragraph was very enjoyable, esthetically speaking. It was like haiku or something…

Amen to letter debunking Reagan tax ‘reform’

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Just now remembered that I meant to say a big "Amen!" to the third of these letters that ran on Thursday:

Reagan tax policies began economic slide

I think that if I read one more letter praising Ronald Reagan’s tax policies I will be sick.

I
was in the tax business when his 1986 tax reform act was passed. This
act was revenue-neutral. The cut in the top brackets was accomplished
by cutting numerous deductions that the middle class enjoyed. My own
taxes increased more than $2,500.

The idea, of course, was that
those in the top brackets would create jobs and products. The problem
was the middle class had less money to purchase the products.

From
that point on, the discrepancy in accumulated wealth between the middle
and upper classes began to widen, and the government deficit began to
increase.

If you want real tax reform, I have a suggestion: Allow
those who take the standard deduction also to take their charitable
deductions. This would result in churches and other charities being
able to meet the increasing demands they are facing in this current
economy.

WILLIAM R. GEDDINGS JR.
West Columbia

The first year that tax "reform" took effect was my first year at The State. I had taken a big pay cut to come here from Wichita (I SO wanted to be close to all of y'all and I really, REALLY wanted to get the heck out of Kansas). I mean a big one, like 25 percent. Add to that the fact that I was the first (or at least, the only) editor ever hired from out of state (in our daily meetings, pretty much everyone was a USC grad except for the guy who was ostracized for having gone to Clemson), and there simply did not exist a procedure for compensating such new hires for their moving expenses. My boss fiddled the books (legally, acting within he rightful prerogatives) to give me an extra $1,000 in my first paycheck to help me out with that. I went with the cheapest deal with the movers I could get — we did all the packing, in our own boxes — and we drove a lot of stuff ourselves crammed into our two vehicles like the Clampetts heading for California. With needing to stop for the kids, it took us four days to get here. And the move still cost me $1,500 out of my own pocket, which cleaned out our savings account.

We rented because we couldn't afford to buy, and we kept putting food on the table by my wife taking in other kids to care for them along with our four (our fifth was born here the following year).

And THAT year, thanks to Ronald Reagan's tax "reform," was the first time I EVER had to pay more than had been deducted from my paycheck. In fact, I think it still stands as the ONLY time, but I'm not positive; I'd need to check.

So needless to say, I didn't think much of what the Gipper had done for me. Maybe somebody benefited — Gordon Gekko or somebody — but it was pretty painful for me and mine, hitting me in probably the worst year of my adult life for such an unexpected expense.

Not that we should make tax policy based on how it affects yours truly. I'll leave such arguments as that to my libertarian friends. I'm just saying Mr. Geddings' letter struck a chord with me.

The editorial I didn’t write for tomorrow

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My plans for the day had included writing an editorial on the stimulus bill currently stumbling its way through the U.S. Senate, but then I spoke to someone in Washington who said it COULD pass tonight. If I knew it were going to pass tonight, and had some idea how it would end up, I could write about how it and the House version should be reconciled. If I knew it WEREN'T going to pass tonight, I could write about what should happen to it in the Senate before it passes. Not knowing, and not having started writing (and having a bunch of other stuff I need to be doing today), we'll be going with a local piece that one of my colleagues has almost finished instead.

But here are some of the points that I would have wanted to make:

  • The House bill is a nonstarter. I thought David Broder did a good job of explaining how it got that way in his Sunday column. Nancy Pelosi has done another partisan number on the country similar to what she did on the TARP bill a couple of months back. And the Republicans were only too happy to oblige her by voting against it unanimously. That means the $300 billion or so in tax cuts that were there to garner GOP support is wasted money (they are far too small and unfocused to do the taxpapers any appreciable good, so their ONLY theoretical value was political), without even getting into the waste the Democrats added for pet projects. A mess that would prove to be an overall waste in the end. A lot spent without giving the needed boost to the economy.
  • Kudos to the moderates in both parties — Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Susan Collins of Maine in particular — for working together to strip out some of the worst spending provisions. (As for our own Senate moderate — I'm thinking Lindsey Graham is supporting those efforts, based on statements I've seen, and if I were writing an editorial I would check to nail that down. But I'm not. I do know I haven't seen him mentioned in the national stories I've read.)
  • But as great as it is that we're getting rid of some of the worst spending ideas, is a SMALLER stimulus bill what we're aiming for? I don't often agree with Paul Krugman, but he IS a Nobel winner in economics, and I have found persuasive his arguments that Obama's proposed stimulus, even if all of it is properly focused, isn't big enough to give the jolt the economy needs. So rather than CUTTING stuff from it, should we not be trying to FOCUS the spending that's there into more productive channels? Such as, more shovel-ready infrastructure… In other words, it's good that the moderates want to prevent wasteful spending, but isn't the problem less the size of the stimulus (which as Krugman says, may not be large enough), but what it's being spent on?
  • The Buy American stuff — the latter-day Smoot-Hawley — should go. After a piece I read in the WSJ this morning, which sort of crystalized my half-formed thoughts on the matter, I'm more concerned about this than I was yesterday. If I had written the editorial, though, I'd have had to reach an agreement with one of my colleagues who is not as much of a free-trader as I am. Since I'm not writing the piece, we're not pausing in our work today to have that argument.

As you see, it would have been a fairly complicated editorial, pulling in many different directions, reflecting the complexity of the legislation and the lack of clear sense — on my part, on the Senators' part, on the House's part, on everybody's part (except for the ideologues who SAY they know what to do, but don't) — of exactly what will cure what ails the nation's economy.

Increasingly, I am pessimistic that what finally emerges and gets signed by the president will lead in any obvious way to the kind of dramatic improvement in economic activity that we need. That can further a crisis of confidence in everything from the new president to our ability to effect our own recovery in any way. And that can lead to depression, in more than one sense of the word.

(Oh, and before you comment that my thoughts on this are half-baked and incomplete — well, duh. I told you, this is the editorial I didn't write, so I haven't gone the extra mile of refining and reconciling these various points, as I made very clear above. Having done a bunch of reading and thinking about it, though, I thought I'd toss these points out for y'all to discuss. In case that's not obvious.)

I didn’t get a harrumph out of that guy…

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Being an editor is often a thankless job, but you get these little rewards now and then. Such as this one, which probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't love words as much as I do, but was a nice treat for me…

One of my colleagues had used "harrumphed" in an editorial I was editing, and I decided that I would check the spelling, on the off chance that it was actually in the Webster's New World College Dictionary, which is the one we use as an official arbiter in our style rules.

And it was! Which I thought was way cool. Also, I believe it's correct to call it an onomatopoeia, which doubles the fun, since that's a fun word to say.

Finally, it allowed me to use my favorite line from "Blazing Saddles" as a blog headline.

And who says editors don't have fun?

Employment Security Commission and Sanford

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You may have noticed that yesterday I mentioned having met with the S.C. Employment Security Commission. Well, I wrote a column for Sunday based in part upon that, and I thought I'd go ahead and post the video that goes with the column.

We talked about plenty of other stuff, but I had terrible luck with catching the good bits on video. Seems like every time they said something interesting, I'd have switched my camera to still photos, and when I went back to video, it was Dullsville. This clip was about the only entire, coherent bit of any interest that I captured in its entirety.

In the wide-ranging discussion, there were high points and low points, for instance:

  • High point — The ESC members, after having been defiant as recently as the day before, promised they'd get the information the governor had been asking for to him — or 90-95 percent of it — by Feb. 9. They said the rest of it is just stuff they don't have because they don't collect that kind of data. Anyway, John O'Connor of our newsroom, who sat in on our meeting, wrote about that in today's paper.
  • Low point — We asked why in the world they have their own TV studio, and the answer wasn't satisfactory — to me, anyway. But then, how could it be? No, it doesn't add up to a lot of money, and it's a bit of a red herring compared to the actual reason why the unemployment benefits trust fund is out of money: Several years ago the Legislature cut the tax that businesses pay into the fund, and we've been paying our more than we take in since at least 2001. That said, the TV studio does sound ridiculous.

But the subject in the video was the thing that grabbed my attention, because it spoke to the problem of the gross failure to communicate between the Commission and the governor. After all this silly back and forth the last couple of months — and it IS silly (of COURSE the Commission needs the money the governor is trying to hold back, as anyone who has seen what's happening in our state can attest, and of COURSE the Commission was being absurdly petulant by trying to hold info back from the gov), not to mention just plain wrong — I had to ask them if they ever sat down to talk to the governor face to face.

I asked that for a couple of reasons. First, people who are sitting down talking to each other don't act the way the governor and the commissioner had been acting. Once you're dealing with someone as an actual person, rather than some faceless opponent out there, you show them more respect than this. Second, I asked because our governor is Mark Sanford. Most governors are interested enough in actually governing that they try to maintain contact and communications with the various parts of government on a regular basis. Not this guy — for him, it's about the press release, the statement, the op-ed piece, the piglets in the lobby; NOT about sitting down with people and reasoning with them.

The commissioners went on at some length about how the governor had never sat down for a meeting with them in his six years in office, and how he had never accepted an invitation to speak to their big annual luncheon — unlike every previous governor they had known. (And that latter bit REALLY rang true, as one thing I've noticed about this governor is that he has little affinity for the rubber-chicken circuit — not that I do myself, but most governors hit all those events they can.)

Anyway, what is NOT on the video is what Joel Sawyer in the governor's office said to Cindi Scoppe the next morning (and I'm copying and pasting some notes Cindi sent me):

We actually found where the gov did indeed meet with them in 2003, and had a letter from ted halley thanking him for meeting with them. he’s also had conversations with all of the commissioners over time.
we looked for more recent requests for meetings, and the only one was I guess a week before they ran out of money. at that point it was just on such short notice that the gov couldn’t attend, but scott english and joe taylor did…

Here's a copy of the 2003 Ted Halley letter
Joel mentioned.

So I called Commissioner McKinley Washington to ask about that, and he said the 2003 "meeting" was one of the incidents they talked about on the video: The commissioners were meeting with Eddie Gunn of the governor's staff, and the governor briefly stuck his head in the door and said hi, and that was about it. It was NOT a meeting with the governor, he said.

Mr. Washington also mentions on the video, and repeated to me Friday, that there was a later incident in which the commissioners were meeting with Chief of Staff Henry White, and the governor — who had apparently changed clothes for a press conference or something, "cracked the door" open long enough to "reach in and grab his denim" so he could change back. And that was it.

So I asked how come ESC executive director Halley sent that note to the governor thanking him for his time back in 2003? "That was just a courtesy statement, but he did not meet with us," said Mr. Washington. "You try to be nice."

Finally, the commissioners said that they tried to meet with the governor at the beginning of the current crisis, but were told he was unavailable, so they met with Scott English (of the governor's staff) and Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor instead (the Sawyer notes above allude to that).

Anyway, more on the subject in my Sunday column…

An Edwards column I had forgotten

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Looking in our internal database for something entirely unrelated (what I might have written in the past about Bill Clinton's Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, actually) I ran across a column from 2003 that I had forgotten about. It struck me as interesting for two reasons:

  • It's an unfortunate fact that if you search for "Brad Warthen" on the Web — I did it several days ago as a way of trying out the Grokker search engine — you run across a lot of stuff about a certain column I wrote in 2007 about John Edwards. That column drew 190,000 page views to thestate.com within the first week (not to the blog version — unfortunately, since the blog version was better). If you recall, it was about three incidents that, taken together, had persuaded me that John Edwards was a "phony." I didn't think all that much of the column when I wrote it, but it looks like it's going to dog me forever in what we once called Cyberspace. Anyway, this previous, forgotten column was the first time I had written about one of those incidents.
  • Criticizing John Edwards was not the point of the column. Oh, I was fairly dismissive of him; he never impressed me all that much. But the point was to criticize some young Republican protesters who had come to try to disrupt his campaign event.

Anyway, it's a mildly interesting footnote to something that caused a lot of hoo-hah, so I share it.

You'll note that I mention the very moment I later cited in the "Phony" column, and call Edwards on it for its general bogusness, which shows even then what an impression it made on me. Of course, I don't zero in on it quite as harshly as I did later, and the reason why is fairly obvious: The other two incidents had not yet happened, so while I had serious doubts about him, and especially about his populism, I had not yet put it all together and made up my mind fully about John Edwards. My impression had not yet, as I later wrote, "been reinforced with steel girders."

Anyway, here's the forgotten column:

EDWARDS HAS HIS FAULTS, BUT THE PROTESTERS MADE THEM HARD TO SEE
State, The (Columbia, SC) – Sunday, September 21, 2003
Author: BRAD WARTHEN Editorial Page Editor

I DON'T GET protesters.
    I'm not talking about political debate, or dissent, or seeking redress of grievances. Those things are part of what our country's all about. They're what my job's all about. We definitely don't want to curtail any of that.
    And I believe that there are rare cases when taking to the streets – in an orderly, peaceful manner – is perfectly justifiable, even imperative. Laws would not have changed in the United States if not for the forceful, nonviolent witness of Martin Luther King and thousands of others.
    What throws me is people who whip up signs and take to the streets at the slightest provocation – or no provocation at all.
    I've expressed my puzzlement about such behavior at the dinner table, only to have one of my children make the very good point that of course I don't understand; I don't have to take to the streets because I have my own bully pulpit on these pages. True enough. But everyone has available more constructive means of political expression than making a public spectacle of themselves.
    Even revolutions can be conducted with dignity. Compare John and Samuel Adams. John, who started as an unremarkable farmer and lawyer from Braintree, Mass., persuaded the Continental Congress to formally declare independence. Cousin Samuel, by contrast, preferred whipping up mobs in the streets of Boston. Who accomplished more? I would say John.
    All of this is on my mind because I went to hear John Edwards announce his candidacy at the Russell House Tuesday. What did I see when I was there?
    Well, a lot of silliness, mostly. But it was to be expected. There are few things more unbecoming than a millionaire trial lawyer presenting himself to a crowd as the ultimate populist. Huey Long could pull it off; he had the common touch. So did George Wallace. But John Edwards is one of those "sleek-headed" men that Shakespeare wrote of in Julius Caesar. He may be lean, but he hath not the hungry look. Mr. Edwards is decidedly lacking in rough edges. Not even age can stick to him.
    His entrance was predictably corny. Other speakers had unobtrusively climbed the back steps onto the platform. Mr. Edwards snuck around to the back of the crowd, then leaped out of his hiding place with a huge grin and his hand out, looking for all the world like he was surprised to find himself among all these supporters. He hand-shook his way through the audience to the podium, a la Bill Clinton , thereby signifying that he comes "from the people." Watch for that shot in upcoming TV commercials.
    His speech was laced with populist non-sequiturs. For instance, he went way over the top exhibiting his incredulity at Bush's "jobless recovery," chuckling with his audience at such an oxymoron – as though the current administration had invented the term. (A computer scan found the phrase 641 times in major news sources during calendar year 1993 ; so much for novelty.)
    Despite all that, I came away from the event with greater sympathy for the Edwards campaign than I might have had otherwise. That's because he and his supporters seemed so wise, thoughtful, mature and dignified – by comparison to the protesters.
    These were, I assume, members of the University of South Carolina chapter of College Republicans, based on that group's stated intention to be there in force. I suppose I could have confirmed that by asking them, but like most of the folks there – Edwards backers and disinterested observers alike – I tried to ignore them. It wasn't easy. When one speaker praised Mr. Edwards, they would yell, "Bush!" When another said Elizabeth Edwards would be a fine first lady, they hollered "Laura!" The signs they carried were equally subtle. Some called the candidate an "ambulance chaser." Two were held side by side: One said "Edwards is liberal"; the other, "S.C. is not." Deep stuff. It apparently didn't occur to them that conservative people don't act this way.
    They settled down noticeably when Mrs. Edwards politely called for a display of "good Southern manners." But the heckling resumed when her husband started speaking. I had made the mistake of standing near the back of the crowd, and some of the young Republicans took up position behind me. Therefore, when the candidate noted yet again that he was born in Seneca, South Carolina, and a heckler hollered a sarcastic "No kidding," it was right into my ear. I was similarly well situated to get the full brunt when someone started shouting some of Mr. Edwards' more well-worn stump speech lines along with him.
    What makes people behave this way? Yes, they were young; I understand that. But why is it that political dialogue has degenerated to the point that even young people find it acceptable to act like this?
    Agree with him or not, John Edwards is running for president of the United States. Why can't people just let the man have his say? What compels them to rush out into public and show their fannies this way?
    Not that anyone did that literally, although there was this one young man off to the right of me who did lift his shirt to flash his ample belly at the rostrum. I have no idea what that was about. Maybe he had something written there; I didn't look that closely.
    What I did see was the huge, cherubic grin on his affable face. He was having a whale of a good time. I suppose I should be glad that someone was.

Write to Mr. Warthen at P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, S.C. 29202, or bwarthen@thestate.com.

Oops, it’s Brooks again — this time with a squitchy-good communitarian column

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OK, I promise to try not to overuse "squitchy." Or at least, not to misuse it. I've coined a new use with my "squitchy good" thing, whereas Melville meant something else by it. (I actually use it correctly, as Melville intended, in a comment on this post).

Where was I? Oh, yes… A few days ago, Cindi shared with me a laugh at herself. Somehow, she had gotten the impression that I had chosen a George Will column for the next day's op-ed page, and when she read her proof, started into it without noticing whose picture was on it. And she thought, "Wow, I can't believe Will wrote this! This is really a departure for him!" That was because it was written by David Brooks. (OK, so maybe that's not much of a laugh to you — too esoteric. Think of how, in "Amadeus," all those people at the party laughed at Mozart playing "in the style of" various other composers. Not very funny unless you lived and breathed that music, his comical mugging aside. So to us, seeing a "Will" column "in the style of Brooks" is a real knee-slapper. It takes all kinds.)

Anyway, I had just grabbed a bunch of columns off the wire — a George Will, a Trudy Rubin, a Bob Herbert, a Cal Thomas and a David Brooks — and then called them up again in quick succession to read further and try to pick one.

Well, I was doing this in a hurry the way I have to do everything these days, and I THOUGHT I had clicked on the Herbert column, and as I read it I was amazed. It wasn't his usual partisan rant that turns me off in the first paragraph. It was really different. It was really thoughtful. And best of all for me, it was really communitarian — overtly and obviously so. Hey, I was going to enjoy running the first Herbert column I had run in a while.

I got all the way to the bottom before realizing I had NOT clicked on the Herbert column, but on … yes, another David Brooks, which happened to be right next to it the Herbert. A slip of the mouse. Oh, well — hey, maybe the Herbert column would be good, too. But here's how it started:

What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies
have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so
divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly
believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other
forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to
this deplorable state?

Yes, another flat, two-dimensional partisan rant, nothing original, nothing to appeal to an UnPartisan. Hey, if I wanted that kind of nonsense, I could run the Cal Thomas piece, which said in part:

   The president has commendably met with Republican congressional leaders during the early stages of his push for an economic “stimulus'' plan, but now comes the hard part. There remain two distinct and possibly irreconcilable differences between traditional Republicans and traditional Democrats. Republicans once believed and encouraged doing for one's self and approaching government — if at all — as a last resort. Democrats see government as a first resource and people as an expanding pool of victims who are incapable of independently bettering their lives (and if they do, they are to be taxed to subsidize those who don't).

Unfortunately, you can too often summarize Thomas by saying "Republicans good, Democrats bad." And you can definitely summarize Herbert by the opposite.

So guess what I'm picking for tomorrow?

Now, before you accuse me of picking it because I agree with it, think: Seriously, I pick columns every day, and when was the last time I even had the opportunity to choose one that was so overtly communitarian? Like, practically never. No, the reason to pick this one is going by the same standard that I try to apply every single day: It says something that might help people think thoughts they haven't thought before. The communitarian thing on this one is just a bonus for me, this one day.

And yeah, I always lean toward the columns that are NOT all about "Republicans good, Democrats bad," or the opposite. You can read that junk anywhere; I'm looking for something that goes beyond that.

Why is it so hard to say ‘abortion?’

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There's nothing unusual about this, but about the thousandth time this morning, in reading an editorial from the weekend in The New York Times, I marveled at how long it took to get past all the pro-choice euphemisms ("women's health," "reproductive health and freedom," "safeguard women's lives," "free speech") and get to the one operative word upon which the issue turns:

Women’s Health, Ungagged
    President Obama on Friday began dismantling his predecessor’s broad and damaging assault on women’s reproductive health and freedom. He lifted the odious gag rule that President George W. Bush imposed on international family planning groups and began trying to restore financing to the United Nations Population Fund.
    It was a reassuring message that Mr. Obama takes seriously his duty to safeguard women’s lives and basic rights, including free speech and the choice of whether to bear a child.
    The gag rule was first imposed by President Ronald Reagan. It barred any health care provider receiving American family planning assistance from counseling women on abortion, engaging in political speech on abortion or providing abortions, even with its own money…

By my count (actually, by Microsoft Word's count — what, you think I've got time to sit and count them?), it took 113 words to get to "abortion." Which actually isn't all that bad, I guess, compared to some instances I've seen. But it strikes me as about 100 words, or two paragraphs, late, by any reasonable standard of getting to the point.

But then, I'm a word guy — and specifically, an editorial guy — so I probably notice stuff like that more than most people do. Also, I disagree with the NYT on the issue, so I'm that much more likely to notice how much they feel compelled to dress up the concept, with layer upon layer of rhetorical clothing, before bringing it out.

Change the system? ‘Aw, never mind …’

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
JUST IN CASE you were wondering, or knew and had forgotten, this is the way the political culture pushes back against change in South Carolina: Not with a bang, but with an “Aw, never mind.”
    Remember last week’s column, in which I offered, as a rare sign of hope, the gathering consensus that the state Department of Health and Environmental Control should be made more accountable by placing it directly under the elected chief executive? Well, ever since then, there’s been some backtracking.
Actually, it started even before that. While I was writing that column, I heard from my colleague Cindi Scoppe that Manufacturers Alliance chief Lewis Gossett was sending us an op-ed clarifying his position after The State’s Sammy Fretwell had reported that he and S.C. Chamber of Commerce president Otis Rawl were supporting legislative efforts to put DHEC in the governor’s Cabinet.
    Not having received that op-ed (and we still hadn’t received it a week later, when this page was composed), I just wrote around the business leaders, and focused on another Fretwell story that reported that the chairman of the DHEC board, Bo Aughtry, was supportive of the Cabinet idea. “It is worthy of serious consideration because I believe it would take some of the political influence out of decisions that really should not be political,” he had told Sammy.
    This was important because the board Mr. Aughtry chairs would be the very entity that would be surrendering power if the governor were in charge. I thought it reflected very well upon Mr. Aughtry.
On Wednesday, however, I began to worry when someone shared with me a memo that DHEC Commissioner Earl Hunter had sent internally on Friday, Jan. 16, which said in part (you can read it all on my blog):

On another note, several stories have been reported in The State newspaper and other media outlets recently regarding our agency being placed in the Governor’s cabinet. Two business organizations, the SC Chamber of Commerce and the SC Manufacturers Alliance were reported as being supportive. Information I have received from both of those organizations contradicts those storiesæ.æ.æ.æ. In addition, an article this week reported that our board chairman was also supportive. Chairman Aughtry has e-mailed and called me to let me know and let you know that he was misquoted. His statement to the media was simply that he felt that any change that would take politics out of the equation is worthy of consideration. He also let the reporter know that he was 100% supportive of the agency and its staff. As usual, however, that statement wasnt included in the report….

    Then, on Thursday, we received the op-ed piece from Bo Aughtry that you find on the opposite page. Please read it.
    He writes that “moving the agency into the governor’s Cabinet may be appropriate,” although “this is not my current position.” He does believe that “any move that will make DHEC decisions less subject to political pressures is worthy of consideration. Is this best accomplished by a move to Cabinet status? I do not know, but the objective is sound.”
    If that’s a denial, it’s a mushy one. But he delivers another message that I hear a lot more loudly and clearly: Earl Hunter is a great guy. His staff is very fine, too. The same is true of the folks on the governing board.
    And you know what? I agree. I don’t know all of those people, but I know Earl Hunter, and he is a great guy. He goes to my church. I truly believe he is a sincere advocate for the state’s health and environmental quality.
    But you know what else? This isn’t about how I feel about Earl Hunter. It’s about the fact that we have a system of government in this state that does not allow the public will to be expressed clearly and effectively through this or any other agency that does not report to the elected chief executive.
    Too often, the need for such accountability is expressed in punitive terms: A governor could fire an agency head who isn’t getting the job done. But an agency head who has the governor and his bully pulpit behind him will have a lot more political leverage for doing his job. Which is better: having the unelected board chairman “100% supportive of the agency and its staff,” or having the same support from the governor and his bully pulpit? As things stand, Mr. Hunter has no one at his back with any juice, but he does have to keep his board and 170 legislators happy, which is not a recipe for bold reform; it’s a recipe for caution.
    What I want is a system that gives South Carolinians someone to hold accountable for the fact that we take too much of the nation’s waste and are not as healthy as folks in other states. Such a system would also give the good, dedicated people at DHEC the political leverage to change the political dynamic in this state as it affects their mission.
    We’ve been here before. When this newspaper started pushing hard for a Cabinet system back in 1991, we ran smack into the fact that the then-commissioner of DHEC was also a terrific guy, named Michael Jarrett. He was enormously respected in state government circles, and rightly so. He spoke out strongly against making DHEC a Cabinet agency. He did so as he was fighting cancer, which took his life in 1992. Lawmakers listened, and did not make DHEC a Cabinet agency.
    We don’t need another reform debate based in how lawmakers feel about those serving in the current system, because in South Carolina, the reform argument always loses such debates. Once it becomes about ol’ so-and-so who has the job now, forget about change: Aw, never mind.
    The thing is, if Mr. Hunter and Mr. Aughtry were replaced tomorrow — something I am not advocating — it would not change one bit the fact that voters have no one they can hold responsible for improving our public health and environmental quality.
    Mr. Aughtry was right the first time, and he’s still right: Reform is “worthy of consideration,” because “the objective is sound.”

For more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

DHEC memo

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Here's the full internal DHEC memo that I referred to in my Sunday column. Commissioner Earl Hunter sent it on Friday, Jan. 16. I got it second or third-hand, and consequently copied and sent it to DHEC spokesman Thom Berry to check its authenticity. Unfortunately, he was traveling and couldn't get to his e-mail. So I read portions of it to him on the phone, and he said he recognized it as a message Mr. Hunter had sent the previous Friday:

Good afternoon, staff.

    Let me begin by saying that I sincerely appreciate the positive way you have handled the budget balancing steps we've had to take to keep our agency afloat. And I especially appreciate the way you've continued to do your jobs with a sense of purpose and an emphasis on customer service. It's a testament to each and every one of you.
    Announcing furloughs just prior to the holidays was one of the most difficult tasks I have faced as Commissioner. I know all the members of the Executive Management Team feel the same way. I heard from many of you. The majority, very positive.  A few, very negative. Please know that I understand and can appreciate both reactions.
    Recently, however, I have learned of several unfounded rumors floating around that I am sure have caused concerns among many of you. One such rumor that I've been made aware of is that "an additional five or ten days of furloughs are forthcoming." I have also been told that some are saying that "the decision was made weeks ago" and that we are just delaying announcing this until the "right time." I ask that you pay no attention to these rumors.  They are just that…rumors…unfounded and untrue. Although allowed by law to implement up to 10 days during the year, no additional plans for furloughs have been or are being discussed.  If no additional budget cuts happen this fiscal year, it is my sincere hope and the current plan of EMT that no additional furloughs will be necessary this fiscal year
    On the budget front, the Board of Economic Advisors (BEA) met yesterday in Columbia.  According to news reports, collections for the months of October and November were actually ahead of revised projections by $30 million. Although $30 million in relation to the overall annual state budget is not a lot of money, it may be a sign that additional revisions downward of collection estimates may not be necessary. We hope that equates to no additional cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2009. The BEA will meet in February to review collections data for the holiday shopping season.
    On another note, several stories have been reported in The State newspaper and other media outlets recently regarding our agency being placed in the Governor's cabinet. Two business organizations, the SC Chamber of Commerce and the SC Manufacturers Alliance were reported as being supportive. Information I have received from both of those organizations contradicts those stories. Both may be coming out with formal statements of clarification soon. In addition, an article this week reported that our board chairman was also supportive. Chairman Aughtry has e-mailed and called me to let me know and let you know that he was misquoted. His statement to the media was simply that he felt that any change that would take politics out of the equation is worthy of consideration. He also let the reporter know that he was 100% supportive of the agency and its staff.  As usual, however, that statement wasnt included in the report.
    In closing, I ask that you all try to keep a positive attitude during these difficult time, and that you please not allow yourselves to be distracted by the media. We will be appearing before our House Ways and Means Budget Subcommittee next Thursday morning regarding next fiscal years budget, and plan to lay out for the members the effects of all three cuts our agency has taken thus far, as well as what further cuts would do and what our most pressing needs are — both for our agency and the people of this state  I will provide another update once that has concluded. Take care And thank you again for all that you do.

Earl

That’s why I don’t answer the phone

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Someone in our newsroom sent out this e-mail globally a few minutes ago:

Has anyone else  gotten a call from the woman who wants to talk about movie reivews, The State and the SC Supreme Court not displaying the American flag, Daniel Craig in "Defiance,"
China and the Germans? Among other things.

No, thank goodness — although that sounds just like a lot of calls I get.

When I became editorial page editor, I had to stop answering my publicized land line — which I felt really bad about, since my whole career I had valued accessibility. But I found that editorial page editors get a kind of call that other journalists don't get — the very nice people who, when they find out they're talking to the EPE, want to talk about every issue under the sun. And since they are nice people, I have a very hard time getting off the phone. When I DO make the mistake of answering it, it's not unusual for me to be trapped for half and hour, and sometimes more. Which I cannot do, and do all the other stuff I have to do in a day — especially if I'm going to read my e-mail, and communicate with y'all here on the blog.

Once, I had someone to answer the phone for me — and get me on the line if necessary. No more. Now I have to let the machine get it, and get back to people as I am able — something I apologize for, but I don't know how else to manage the time.

If someone really NEEDS to talk to me (not just chat) and they're not available when I call them back, I leave my cell number — which I always answer.

It's really, really imperfect, but I haven't figured a better way to get through the day. And yes, I've consulted people about time management, and you know what they always say? I try to do too much. Answering the phone is one of the few things I've given up.

Grooving on that way cool Obama poster

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The other day, looking for art appropriate to go with this Inauguration Day editorial, I settled on the 
now-famous Shepard Fairey poster.

In preparing it for publication in PhotoShop, I happened to change my view to "actual pixels," and went, Whoa! I had no idea of the depth of texture in the image, having only seen photos of it on T-shirts, etc. It put me in mind of that guy in "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" who drove everybody nuts with his constant running comment on a mandala he was grooving on. That guy would really have gone to town over this Obama poster.

So I thought I'd show it to you this way, with some detailed blow-ups, so you can groove on it, too.

 

And should you want to get a little deeper, no need to drop any Owsley Blues. Just go to this site, which my friend Cheryl Levenbrown at The New York Times turned me on to, where you can create your very own Obama-like poster, to wit (no, it's not nearly as detailed, but it's fun):

Something completely different

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
Perhaps it would be a bit much to quote from the Book of Revelation: “Behold, I make all things new!” How about Monty Python? “And Now For Something Completely Different….”
    There is a tension in the air today between two ways of viewing the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. On the one hand you have thousands upon thousands who have scraped and planned and arranged to be in Washington — or the millions upon millions who will be watching from a distance and with them in spirit — who are fairly vibrating, resonating with communal anticipation. This includes elderly black folk who are praising God because they never thought they’d see the day. It contains — just barely, given the magnitude of their excitement — young people of all colors who left school and jobs and suspended their lives for a year and more to work toward this day. And more conventionally, it includes Democrats who are as thrilled as any group of partisans have ever been that their guy is finally going to replace that other guy.
    On the other hand, there are those who think this is all a bit much, or more than a bit: Whoop-tee-do, they think. A guy won an election. He’s just this guy, you know. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. Nothing changes: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
    Some of the latter, jaded, unexcited group are Republicans. Pretty much all of them are white. There’s not necessarily anything bad about them; they don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade. They just sort of want it over with. As Kathleen Parker suggests in the column on the facing page, there’s just so much earnestness and idealistic hoorah that one thinking person can possibly stand as we stride forth into this new age. That doesn’t make Ms. Parker a bad person. And I know that neither she nor the others in the “this is all a bit much” set are bad people, because, well, I’m sort of one of them.
    Or at least, I was. In the last few days, I changed my mind. The cynics are wrong, and the folks who just can’t contain themselves have it exactly right.
    I wrote the editorial above. I went into it as a chore that needed to get done and out of the way — one of those obligatory editorials you sometimes do, not because you had something you and your colleagues on the editorial board were burning to say, but because the particular moment in history demanded that you take note and say something.
    You may think that writing an editorial is about figuring out how to say what you already know you think. And often it is. But sometimes, it’s a process in which you discover what you think. That’s what happened here. The more I looked and read and reflected upon where we are as a nation and how and why we got here, the more I realized how significant this inauguration is, and how it differed from the previous 13 of my lifetime.
    No, it’s not that he’s a black guy. Yes, that’s a huge milestone for the country, and worth celebrating, but if you focus too much on that you miss just how different this moment is. As I said in the editorial, the nation chose much more than a racial first in this election: “It chose youth. It chose intellect. It chose pragmatism over the constant ideological bickering of recent years. It chose the promise of action rather than stalemate. It chose, in a word, change.”
    Yes, any new president represents change. But this change is generational, and attitudinal, and fundamental. The closest thing in my lifetime was when the generation of Dwight Eisenhower handed off to the generation of John F. Kennedy, but even that falls short. In choosing Barack Obama, the nation really took a risk and got out of its comfort zone. For Democrats, the safe and obvious choice was Hillary Clinton, or someone like Joe Biden (a point that underlines Mr. Obama’s wisdom in choosing his running mate, a move that made the risk more palatable). In the general election, even the “maverick” opponent was the safer, more comfortable, more conventional choice.
    This country decided it had had enough of the kinds of politics and government that we’ve had up to now. It chose a man who was practically a novice in politics and government — which made him untainted, but also meant he had almost no relevant experience. And yet, he possessed the eloquence and demeanor and intellect and attitude that persuaded us that he could deliver on the promised change.
    And you know what? I think he can, and will. I’ve seen proof. One example, which speaks volumes: his decision to pull South Carolina’s own Sen. Lindsey Graham — John McCain’s closest acolyte, leading advocate of our nation’s presence in Iraq — into his circle of foreign policy advisers. By sending Sen. Graham with Sen. Biden to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then appearing with both men to draw attention to the fact, explaining that he was “drafting” Sen. Graham “as one of our counselors in dealing with foreign policy,” the president-elect charted new ground. He threw out the rule book of partisan and ideological convention, and he did so in the pursuit of the very best ideas, the ones most likely to serve the nation and its interests and allies going forward.
    I’ve never seen anything like this, and neither have you. This is something completely different, and yet something that, after today, we’re going to see a lot more of. And that’s a wonderful thing for this country. It’s worth getting really excited about.

For more that’s different, go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Hope springs, even in S.C. politics

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
Last week’s column chronicled my rapid descent into a state of fuming impatience over the things that we simply refuse to do in South Carolina even though they would obviously, irrefutably make us healthier, wealthier and wiser. The proximate object of my frustration was our steadfast refusal to save young people’s lives by raising our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average. But I could as well have fulminated about our fragmented, unaccountable governmental structure, or the crying need for comprehensive tax reform, or… well, there’s a long list.
    And if I wanted to shake my fist at our fate a bit more today, I would have no shortage of cause. I could, for instance, dwell on the discouraging hour or so I spent Wednesday listening to our governor talk about his 2009 agenda: Yes, he’ll back a cigarette tax increase — a third of the way to the average — but only if he gets the counterbalancing tax cut he wants. Otherwise, he’ll veto it, again, without compunction. And yeah, he agrees that consolidating some of our smaller and less efficient school districts would be worthwhile, but he won’t spend energy pushing for that; he prefers to waste what little capital he has in the education arena in another debilitating ideological battle over vouchers. And so forth.
    Depressing.
    But that’s not what I want to do today. Today, I want to offer hope, and I’ve got some on hand. This past week, we saw some remarkable instances in which things that just were not ever going to change in South Carolina — not no way, not nohow, as they might say in Oz — suddenly change, and for the better.
    Let’s start with the sudden emerging consensus to place the Department of Health and Environmental Control — one of our biggest and least answerable agencies — under the authority of the governor. Set aside what I just said about this particular governor. The governor — this one or any other — is the elected chief executive, and far more likely and able to see that the agency is run the way we the people want and expect it to be than a largely autonomous, unelected board is.
    This is painfully obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of how politics works, and has been ever since my colleagues and I started pushing for it with all our might back in 1991. At the time, though, we had few allies other than a few wonkish good-government types and the occasional governor who wanted the power, while almost everyone else in a position to do something about it or with a stake in the system was ready and able to resist the change.
    All sorts of people had all sorts of reasons to fight reform. Environmentalists, for instance, knew how to game the complicated system and lay roadblocks to polluters and other adversaries, and feared that a more “efficient” system — especially one run by a governor enamored of economic development at any cost — would make it harder to block permits they opposed.
    And in South Carolina, the status quo always has the upper hand in the Legislature. So I despaired of seeing reform.
    Then one day, just before Christmas I think it was, I ran into Sammy Fretwell — who along with fellow veteran reporter John Monk had been writing a hard-hitting series about DHEC’s failures to do its job well — and he told me a remarkable thing: A key environmental leader who had long opposed making DHEC a Cabinet agency had become a convert to accountability.
    That was wonderful, but it was just the beginning. Other conservationists started working for, rather than against, a bipartisan bill backed by longtime restructuring stalwart Sen. John Courson and Sen. Phil Leventis in the Senate, and a similar bill in the House. The stunner, the coup de grace to my lingering doubts, came in Thursday’s paper: Bo Aughtry, chairman of the DHEC board, the man at the very center of the status quo’s sanctum sanctorum, called for making it a Cabinet agency. And several former board chairs agreed with him.
    Folks, stuff like this doesn’t happen in South Carolina. But it did, and is continuing to happen. And if it happened on this issue, it can happen on others. Such as, say, transparency.
    Remember what happened at the end of 2008 to Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine, two young GOP lawmakers who were innocent enough — and guileless, idealistic and dumb enough — to confront the leadership openly and directly on the need to have roll-call votes on important action? They got crushed, as one would expect. They were handed their heads. Advocates of reform were appalled, but expected nothing different.
    Then, on Wednesday, the House voted, unanimously, to do pretty much what Ms. Haley wanted. And the Senate did much the same. And all of a sudden, it was touted on all hands — by the leadership as well as by the governor and the long-suffering reformers — as just what everyone had wanted all along. And Nikki Haley, rising like a phoenix, is the heroine of the hour.
    Stuff like this doesn’t happen, not like this, not out of nowhere, not out of the mere fact that it’s the right thing to do and there are no good reasons not to do it, not in South Carolina. But it did.
    So now I’m just seeing hope everywhere. Such as in a poll released Wednesday that showed that 74 percent of S.C. voters support raising our cigarette tax to the national average. Sixty percent favor it strongly.
    Here’s the thing about that: As I indicated in last week’s column, the arguments for going all the way to the national average are so strong, and the arguments not to do so are so weak, that only the most perverse sort of resistance to rational change can prevent it from happening.
    In the past, such perversity has been richly abundant in South Carolina. But last week, we seemed to suffer a sudden shortage of it on two surprising fronts.
    So take hope.

For more to be hopeful about, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.