Brad Warthen's Blog

My Spidey sense is tingling

Just got a telemarketing call that was more interesting than most. A young lady from Greenville said, "I'm calling on behalf of 'The Amazing Spider-Man'."

Well, I couldn't hang up on her after a beginning like that. If Spidey needs me, how can I turn my back? He's suffered enough at the hands of a fellow newspaper editor, and I am no J. Jonah Jameson.

But when she started thanking me for being such a loyal subscriber, I told her that would be my son, the serious collector. Some of his comics still come to our house from when he still lived at home, but it would be up to him whether to renew at the terrific new price they were offering.

I gave her his number. I hope it was the right thing to do. But how could it not be? I'll bet she looks just like M.J.

Great news on smoking bans (I think)!

The S.C. Supreme Court says Greenville's smoking ban is OK after all -- as in, NOT pre-empted by the usual legislative attempts to prevent local governments from governing as local folks see fit:

By MEG KINNARD - Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Cities and towns have the power to ban indoor smoking in public places, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday in a decision that anti-smoking advocates predicted will spawn more rules against where people may light up in South Carolina.
    The ruling upheld a ban against indoor, public smoking that the city of Greenville imposed last year. Dozens of bars and restaurants had sued, claiming their business would suffer. A judge then quashed the ban, ruling that local governments had to let the state lead the way when it comes to smoking bans.
    In the justices' unanimous decision Monday, the high court said local governments can impose more stringent regulations...

So, does this mean that Columbia can finally pull the trigger on its prospective ban on smoking in restaurants (but, unfortunately, not bars). It would appear so, since the ban supposedly waited only on a court ruling. A number of other communities had gone ahead with bans of their own. Here's a list.

The jury's still out on a statewide ban. But as long as the Legislature doesn't move to make SURE locals can't do it (and don't put it past them for a second; they HATE the governments closest to the people), at least the will of local communities can now be acted upon, and relied upon to stick.

Robert's Saturday cartoon

Robert's Saturday cartoon didn't post on the Web, and a fan has asked for it, so until I can run down that problem, here it is.

Dogonomics

Just fed the dog, and mentioned to my wife that he's really low on food, so that one of us will be sure to get another one of those huge bags. She asked if there was enough for tomorrow, and I said yes, and for the next day, too.

Then I thought a moment, and added, "But don't tell him how low it is... as far as he knows, that can is limitless." All he needs is someone with opposable thumbs to open it -- we keep his ready food in one of those big popcorn cans my great-aunt gives us each Christmas -- and to place it in his bowl. He's completely dependent on this for survival, but that's fine; he trusts us completely.

But if he knew that it was possible for the can to run out, that would rock his world completely. He'd stay up nights worrying about it. He might even get an ulcer.

It's reassuring to me that at least one sentient creature I know never worries about where the food is coming from, or paying the bills, or whether that work on the house can be put off another year, or anything else. All he has to do is threaten intruders -- and he has a loose interpretation of the word -- in his own rather easygoing way (you don't have to work hard at it when you're as big as he is), and everything is covered.

Dogs are good, loving, dutiful creatures. If anyone I know is to be free of worry about material limits, I'm glad it's a dog. He deserves it.

On Saturdays, you’ll find us on the Web

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SINCE YOU’RE reading this, we can assume you found us in our new location. Actually, Page D2 is sort of an old location for the Sunday editorial page. We were here for many years before jumping to the A section a little more than a year ago.
    Being back on D2 feels like home to me; I hope it will make our pages more convenient each week for you as well.
    But my purpose today is not to talk about a change already made, but one coming up. And this one is going to feel a lot less familiar to all of us.
    Starting six days from now, we will no longer publish opinion and commentary pages on Saturdays in The State. Instead, we’ll unveil a new Web page featuring content of the sort that we would have published in the paper, only more of it. The new page will be called “Saturday Opinion Extra.”
    Why are we doing this? Two reasons, which I’ll keep as simple as possible:

1. We have to cut costs.
2. There are things we can do online we can’t do in the paper.

    Now, about the cost-cutting:
    You may have read that newspapers don’t make as much money as they used to. We still make money, just not as much as the stock market demands. And when you’re a publicly traded company, you have no options: Making less money is something shareholders don’t stand for.
    So you do two things: You work like crazy to bring in more revenue, which is not my department. And you cut costs, which does involve the editorial staff.
    When we lost one writing position three years ago, we eliminated staff-written copy from our Monday pages. Now, faced with further reductions, we’re eliminating editorials from another day, plus eliminating two pages of newsprint a week.
    But just as we replaced the staff copy with a lot more letters to the editor (one of the most popular features in the paper) on Mondays, you’ll get more content on Saturdays online than we could possibly put in the paper. For instance:

• We get far more syndicated and local guest columns than we can fit on our op-ed pages during the week. On our new Saturday Web page, we’ll be able to give you several op-ed pages worth of columns from the likes of David Broder, Kathleen Parker, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Cal Thomas, Paul Krugman and Charles Krauthammer.
• Add to that at least one column from a local writer, just as you would normally have received on Saturdays. But the particular columns we put online might be something you’d never have gotten in the paper. We often get more than one column in a month from such newsmakers as Gov. Mark Sanford (Columbia Mayor Bob Coble has submitted three this past month). But since space in the paper is at such a premium, we try to limit each writer to no more than one a month. We also turn down most columns that other newspapers have published. So we turn down some interesting, relevant columns — but finite space in the paper demands tough choices. Online space is virtually unlimited, so you’ll get additional chances to read what newsmakers, and others, are thinking.
• You will see at least as many letters to the editor online as you would have received in the paper, with the added bonus that some of them will be letters held out for no reason other than that they were too long for our page, and didn’t lend themselves to trimming.
• We regularly shoot video during editorial board interviews with newsmakers. I’ve been using some of it on my blog the last couple of years, but sporadically; the Saturday Opinion Extra page gives us a place to showcase some of the most interesting footage from the past week.
• You’ll find links to such things as a new, improved page devoted to Robert Ariail’s recent cartoons, featuring such DVD-style bonus features as unpublished sketches, archives, and video of Robert talking about what he does. (There will also be links to recent posts on my blog, of course.)

    That’s the content we’ll be starting with, and I hope you will suggest more.
    This is a big and scary step for us in the editorial department. We have always published editorial and op-ed pages daily, and departing from that feels a little like stepping off something firm and secure into thin air.
    But like skydiving, it’s also pretty exciting. Ever since the 1980s — since before there was a Worldwide Web — I’ve been interested in the potential of an electronic opinion forum, with immediacy and interactivity you can’t get on paper. That’s why I started the blog; this takes us another step.
    Sure, we’ve let  our paper content flow onto the Web for years, but we’ve hardly scratched the surface of what we can do there in the opinion realm. The editorial board needs to turn some attention to better serving the 800,000 unique visitors who come to thestate.com each month.
    Please check out this new feature on Saturday, and let us know what you think of it. Even more than a published page, this new venture will always be a living work in progress, and I’m counting on our readers to help us shape it.

Until the new Saturday Opinion Extra page appears, please come to my blog to share your thoughts:  thestate.com/bradsblog/. Or send us a letter at stateeditor@thestate.com.

Wright context doesn't change message

OK, I finally got around to watching one of those longer clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- specifically, one that contains the "God Damn America" part. I've been told many times that I just needed to get the context to understand that what he said shouldn't be understood in the stark way that I have understood it.

The Rev. Joe Darby, in his op-ed piece on today's page, suggested the same point:

... America is still focused on a few ten-second sound bites from Rev. Wright’s 30- or 40-minute sermons

Anyway, I watched this six-minute, 48-second clip -- and it doesn't change a thing. "God Damn America" still means "God Damn America." There's no part in which he says, suggests or even hints that he didn't really mean it, or that he thought America was in danger of damnation, and he wanted to save it. No, if anything, it's clearer that he meant what he said.

But I think some of the well-meaning folks trying to explain all this to me are actually misunderstanding me. Start with the assumption that I somehow lack information. Aside from the above quote suggesting I need the context of the remark, the Rev. Darby also says:

Dr. Wright’s critics also need to learn more about the historically black church and its clergy...

I surely don't claim to be an expert on the black church, especially in the presence of Joe Darby, who lives it. But no one has told me anything about the black church, in the course of "explaining" Mr. Wright to me, that I did not know. Sure, maybe something is lost in translation, but so far I've seen no indication that that's what is at work this time.

But what Mr. Wright said is clear. The six-minutes-plus of context that went before "God Damn America" was exactly what I would have guessed went before it. Essentially, it was a review of history, mixed with a small dollop of political partisanship (the comparison of not-so-bad presidencies with the current one). Short version: The government has upheld oppression of black people during the course of American history.

Folks, I'm an American history major, and I've lived in this country for most of 54 years. What part of the rather sketchy overview in that sermon do you think I didn't know already? If I'd been sermonizing, I could have added a lot to it -- including the fact that the blood offering of the Civil War, as horrific as it was, seems to have been an inevitable sacrifice to expiate the sin of slavery. And I would have said the evil didn't end there, nor could it, there being original sin in the world, and no one of us since Jesus Christ born free of it.

But I wouldn't have said "God Damn America." Not in a million years. For me, the point of bringing up evil is to try to overcome it -- as I believe two people Mr. Darby mentions (King and Bonhoeffer) were trying to do.

Sorry, but I can't accept that the Rev. Wright was saying "things that challenge America to rise above its sins of prejudice and greed." No, if he'd said America was in danger of damnation, or headed straight thataway, rather as Jesus said to the Pharisees in the example cited by my colleague Warren Bolton this week, that might have been seen as a challenge, perhaps even a well-intentioned warning. (Personally, although he had more right, being God, than anyone else to do so, I don't remember Jesus ever damning anything more sentient than a fig tree.)

But Mr. Wright didn't call on us to do anything. Instead, he called on God to damn America.

One last point -- Mr. Darby seems to assume, as have other writers, that those who say things like what I just said are against Obama. Well, I'm not. But just because I like a guy, I'm not going to sugarcoat a problem. As I said, Obama gave a brilliant speech, but he did not succeed in separating himself from what the Rev. Wright had said. He couldn't. If he had disowned him at this point, it would have been crass opportunism, and beneath him.

So this guy I like -- Obama -- has a problem, one he can't get rid of. Just as another guy I like, John McCain, is way old -- nothing he can do about that, either.

I would suggest that if anyone out there supports a candidate and thinks that candidate is perfect, he should look a little harder. Nobody meeting that description has come along in two millennia. Thus endeth my sermon for today.

Tom Davis predicting Rod Shealy attack

A reader yesterday asked what I thought about the smear job, reportedly engineered by Rod Shealy, that hit Tom Davis this week at the outset of his attempt to unseat Sen. Catherine Ceips.

When I read about it, I just nodded. Tom, the subject of my column this past Sunday, indicated last week that he expected something of the kind, and that it would probably be worse than even he expected:

    I hadn't even thought about that, to be honest with you... I hadn't even thought about what it's gonna be like having a guy who wakes up in the morning who just wants to strip the bark off me. I mean, and that's what Rod Shealy's gonna wanna do... I've never been through a campaign. I've been told just to expect, whatever it is about you that you don't want people to know, expect it to be known.

Tom thought it would be about something true about him -- such as the fact that he was a Democrat when he was young -- instead of this illegal-alien nonsense. But that's Tom's great liability in this race: He's a Mr. Smith type. He's a very open, candid, straightforward, sincere kind of guy (I would have added "thrifty, brave, clean and reverent," but you get the idea), so he figured whatever he was hit with would be something real.

So he was right: He hadn't really thought through what it would be like with Rod Shealy after him. That's because Tom Davis is incapable of thinking like Rod Shealy.

It's a helluva thing, isn't it, when honest people have to fear running for public office because of sleazy stuff that will be done to them that has nothing to do with their suitability for office?

Oh, but wait! Rod Shealy is reformed! It's got to be true... PBS said so...

Anyway, in the video above, you'll see and hear Tom talking about this subject.

Did Hunter Howard just substantiate the rumor?

The rumor has been kicking around that Hunter Howard of the state Chamber would run against Sen. David Thomas in the upcoming Republican primary.

His announcement yesterday would be consistent with the rumor -- as you can read here, he's quitting his 17-year job with the Chamber (I would have guessed it was longer than that, his face and name have been synonymous with S.C. business interests for so long) and moving home to Simpsonville.

So maybe it's so. But if it is, why didn't he say so, and get a free bump from coverage of his leaving the Chamber? Maybe he promised not to; I don't know. When I see him I'll ask him.

In the meantime, we don't have long to wait to see if it's true. The filing deadline is this weekend.

Graham on his road trip with McCain, Lieberman

Kids have Christmas, and Lindsey Graham had his recent road trip with John McCain and Joe Lieberman to Iraq, the Mideast and Europe. To a foreign policy wonk, what could be better? I'd like to have been along myself.

Basically, he got to be at the elbow of the guy who, as he put it, has a 50-50 chance of being president next time he talks to these foreign leaders, only under circumstances without all the formal bull you have to deal with traveling with an actual president.

Anyway, as this clip begins, he is giving his enthusiastic assessment (which now that I look back at the video, sort of stands in contrast to the merely polite description he gave of Gov. Sanford) of Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and goes on from there. This was near the very start of our meeting.

Graham on Sanford, S.C. politics

Sen. Lindsey Graham made headlines today by rather dramatically breaking with his friend and fellow Republican Mark Sanford. Far from having a "list" of Republican lawmakers he'd like to get rid of, Sen. Graham gave a thumbs-up to the whole GOP field of officeholders in South Carolina.

So when he came by today to talk about Iraq, Iran, Europe and nuclear proliferation, before he left we inevitably got into S.C. politics, starting with a question from reporter John O'Connor about to what extent Mark Sanford is actually a veep contender.

Mr. Graham was careful only to say positive things about the governor, he did say something about himself that drew a contrast between the two of them. He said he was backing Republicans, regardless of whether he agreed with them totally or not, is because "I'm a party leader." Which of course suggests that certain other people are not, but he wasn't going to say so.

He was much more forceful and articulate when talking geopolitics, of course. I plan to go back through the more substantive parts of the interview and see if I can can pull out a clip or two from those parts later. For now, I thought I'd share the part that dealt with today's news story.

Earmark crusader still takes credit for SOME funds going back home

Jim DeMint deserves a lot of credit for his crusade against earmarks. While we were reminded recently by Andrew Sorensen that earmarks are not necessarily always a bad thing -- they've brought significant research funding to our universities -- there's no question that the whole process was out of control. Sen. DeMint has played a leadership role in embarrassing Democrats and Republicans alike on the issue, and on the whole I think that has had a salutary effect.

I was a little taken aback the last couple of days, though, when I received releases from Sen. DeMint announcing grant money for schools back here in South Carolina. No, they weren't technically "earmarks." But by "announcing" these grants that were ostensibly "competitive" -- which suggests that they were disbursed according to some criteria other than the political pull of a member of Congress -- he is participating in the standard political practice of suggesting to the home folks that he is somehow responsible for this largesse.

And that, of course, is why politicians go after earmarks -- so they can say to the folks back home, "Lookee what I brung you!" Here's the release I received today:

Department of Education Awards $955,101 in Competitive Grants to Richland and Lexington School District 5

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced that Richland and Lexington School District 5 will receive $955,101 in competitive grants under the Teaching American History Grants program. This grant is designed to raise student achievement by improving teacher’s knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of U.S. history.  The program also aims to improve the quality of history instruction by supporting professional development for U.S. history teachers.

            ###

These releases do not cancel the cred Mr. DeMint has earned on the earmarks issue. And they're not a lot of money, and this one sounds like it's for a good cause (Lord knows we need to increase the level of understanding about our history in this country). They just seemed worth taking note of.

Lea Walker responds

Just now I finally got caught up with yesterday's e-mail, and found this message:

Dear Sirs and Madam:

Your editorial today endorsed Runyon, and your comments are not fair to me, nor to the city. My international background will bring unique and broader vision and solutions to our City. I'm not motivated by the zoning issue, but by my urge to contribute and get involved. The city council should be diversified/open-minded, and not to be self-absorbed and not to treat the minorities as invisibles.

 

The most important issues for this campaign should get our city council think out of the box, but not just to get another one who thinks alike. To me, all the other candidates talked about the same issues, and suggested the same remedies.

 

 

Lea Walker, President
(US) Chinese Culture Center

Ms. Walker (pictured above) is one of the four candidates running for the at-large seat on Columbia City Council. I still hope to get around to posting something from our meeting with her before this thing's over. If you'll notice, I haven't posted anything on our meeting with the guy we endorsed, either. I did put up something from our meeting with Daniel Rickenmann, but it wasn't nearly as complete as what I've done on Brian Boyer and Belinda Gergel.

Unfortunately, those kinds of posts are very time-consuming (I stayed very late doing the Rickenmann and Gergel ones), and when things get busy around here, putting out the editorial pages comes first.

Joe Azar, The State on same page for once

Just saw this e-mail that Joe Azar sent out to his list:

    Today The State editorial board endorsed Cameron Runyan over incumbent Daniel Rickenmann. Read it below. From all I can hear and see, Runyan should become our next city councilman. But don’t sit back and wait, forward this to everyone, call all your friends, and make sure to get everyone out to vote Tuesday, April 1. That is the only way to win, so do it!...

You should take note of this moment, because you won't often find Joe so heartily agreeing with us. I for one intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

Here's the editorial to which he refers.

What is the useful role of CHE?

As foreshadowed in a previous post, we met this afternoon with Garrison Walters, the new (new to us, anyway) head of the state Commission on Higher Education.

Once upon a time, that post was filled by Fred Sheheen -- Vincent's Daddy, for those keeping up with political genealogy -- who had an active, aggressive notion of the role the CHE should play in marshaling this poor state's limited higher education resources to greatest effect. The powers that be, such as those who revere the prerogatives of the godlike boards of trustees of the respective institutions, did not like his style. They moved not only to get rid of him, but to restructure the CHE to make it kinder, gentler and less likely to say "nay" to anything they wished to do -- or to have any authority even if it did say so.

Since then, the organization has been a lot more studious and polite -- content with a "coordinating" rather than "governing" role. Mr. Walters is aware that our board has long favored a Board of Regents that would treat our collection of public, post-secondary institutions as a system rather than islands. He maintains, as do many who cast doubt on our restructuring fervor (say, the Senate on doing away with the "long ballot," or defenders of the council-manager system in Columbia), that some states with such boards do well, and others do not, while some states without overall governance do fine (he cites Michigan, Illinois and Texas).

My position, as always, is that given a choice between a structure intended to facilitate efficiency and accountability on the one hand, and a structure that one can succeed in those regards in spite of, I prefer the former.

As previously noted, of course, we temporarily have a condition in which our three research institutions, motivated in part by such inducements as the endowed chairs, are pulling at their oars as though they understand that we're all in the same boat. Mr. Walters made note of that. Our position is to applaud our current state, but to worry about what happens when the current individuals in leadership move on, as Andrew Sorensen is about to do. Below that level cooperation and coordination is less evident, although there are encouraging exceptions to that trend.

Anyway, Mr. Walters held out hope that once a study committee finishes its work in September, we might see a new focus and purpose toward focusing our higher ed efforts. Let's hope he's right. In the meantime, I provide a video clip in which I ask our guest what he thinks it will take for South Carolina to get where it needs to go, and what CHE's role is in that...

South Carolina just got a little smarter

This morning I had the honor of meeting Martin Morad, who plans "to develop the world’s first pacemaker made from living tissue," and to do it right here in South Carolina. He's the latest extraordinary individual that the endowed chairs program has brought here. (That's him with Larry Wilson and Harris Pastides above. I think those are Ray Greenberg's arms folded at left; I don't know the lady in the background.)

There are a lot of things I could say about this guy, and I hope to come back here and say them later (right now, I'm stealing time from other things that need doing today in order to write this -- as usual). For now, read the story that was on today's front page.

I'll just mention one thing that may seem small to you, but which marks a huge step in my mind...

If there is one thing that holds South Carolina back economically, politically, socially and in every other way more than anything else, it's fragmentation. Our government is completely dysfunctional thanks to the fragmentation of authority and accountability in the executive branch. On the local level, you see fractals reflecting the same pattern -- Columbia as an economic entity can't get its act together because it's split into about a dozen municipalities, two counties, seven school districts, various special purpose districts, etc. Even when you distill it down to the tiny political entity that is technically Columbia, political power is fragmented across a seven-member council with no one, elected individual in a position to be responsible for the big picture.

In the realm of higher education, fragmentation has taken us into some amazingly stupid realms in our recent history. First, there is the fact that each of our colleges and semi-colleges is a political entity unto itself, answerable to no one but each institution's respective board of trustees, each member of which is elected by the 170 members of the General Assembly. This has led to such things as the battle over supercomputers in the late 80s, right after I came back to SC to work at this newspaper -- if USC was going to get a supercomputer, then the political "logic" of this state was what Clemson had to have one, too.

We have the charade of a coordinating body -- the Commission on Higher Education -- which is, by legislative decree, toothless. (Coincidentally, the new head of the CHE is coming to meet the editorial board this afternoon, which puts this even more immediately in mind.) But there is nothing like, say, a board of regents with real power to assign missions, coordinate and focus resources and avoid duplication.

In the last few years, we have been fortunate in that the three presidents of our research institutions -- Andrew Sorensen, Ray Greenberg and James Barker -- have formed an alliance to work together on a variety of fronts to accomplish some of the things that a unified, rational system of public higher education was accomplished. One of the greatest factors encouraging this relationship to flourish -- giving it an undeniable economic impetus -- is the endowed chairs program.

Anyway, here's the thing about Dr. Morad that is in its way as remarkable for South Carolina as, say, developing a living pacemaker: He is the first faculty member in the history of the state to be simultaneously hired by all three research universities at once. (Why? Because it took all three institutions to come up with the talent he needs to make his project happen -- which suggests that maybe we should start referring to the three, and governing them, as one institution; put them together, and you've got something impressive.) Therefore he embodies the combination of our resources to achieve great things that our petty divisions have kept us from accomplishing in the past. He is the New South Carolinian, the Adam in our new-tech Garden of Eden.

I'll stop with the metaphors now. Suffice it to say, his arrival in this, his new home, is a big deal for South Carolina.

Democrats got a Senate candidate!

Well, lookee here... we keep hearing (although not all that much) about lesser-known Republicans running against Lindsey Graham on account of their being ticked at him over immigration. That's old news.

But now I read that a Democrat -- Michael Cone, a Charleston lawyer -- is also interested. Here's a story that was brought to my attention this morning. More to the point, here's his Web site. And here's a philosophical interlude from that site:

    ... Thomas Jefferson wrote that there are only two real political divisions between people: people are either Aristocrats or Populists, no matter the label they might hang upon themselves.
    Essentially, an Aristocrat is someone who believes that the people of the United States should be represented in government by an elite group of privileged few who know what is best for the people. A Populist believes that the people themselves know what is best for them and that their representatives in government should represent the will of the people to the largest extent possible. Equal opportunity for everyone is not favorable for Aristocrats as they would lose power if they were not lifted above the people. Therefore, it is imperative for the Aristocrats to create artificial divisions among the people so that the people cannot come together to create equal opportunity for everyone.
    I am a Populist....

Had you all in suspense there, didn't I? You thought he was going to say he was an Aristocrat, I'll bet. Or maybe not.

Anyway, not being that big a fan of Jefferson, I see the world in less simplistic terms, more as his protege Madison did. In other words, I believe in the republic that our Constitution established, which provides that regular folks get elected to Congress, go there and study the issues as most of us are unable to do, and become smarter about those issues before voting on them. I want government that's a lot smarter than an opinion poll. But that's just me; I'm weird.

Anyway, no word yet on whether he's upset about immigration, too. Looks like he's for the "FairTax," though.

Club for Growth targets two

You read here before about the incumbents who are favored by the Club for Growth. Now, in this release, we see whom they want to get rid of. Since the only names on the list are those of Richard Chalk and Jake Knotts, I'm guessing this is not a final list, but I could be wrong (Matt, please correct or confirm).

Mind you, this is not the same as the governor's "list," but I think we can assume (there I go again) that it has some names in common with it. Anyway, here's the release:

SC Club for Growth State Action PAC Endorses Three Reform-Minded Candidates
Columbia, SC – Today, the South Carolina Club for Growth State Action PAC endorsed three reform-minded candidates who are seeking election in the upcoming June 10th primary.
    Tim Scott, Stu Rodman and Katrina Shealy are lifelong advocates for smarter government, increased economic growth and more money for families and small businesses whose budgets are not growing nearly as fast as our state government’s.
    Each has shown a commitment to improving a state government that refuses to address South Carolina’s most important problems including high taxes, too much regulation and an outdated government structure.  Their success in this historic, watershed election will positively impact our state for decades to come.
    In a legislatively dominated state, change happens at the ballot box.  In the last election cycle, the SC Club for Growth State Action PAC endorsed candidates in 23 primary and general election races.  Thanks in part to the electorate’s desire for change and the generosity of our members, endorsed candidates won 17 elections - an impressive 73 percent of the races in which the Club PAC was involved.
    The South Carolina Club for Growth State Action PAC has already endorsed seventeen strong, fiscally conservative incumbents for re-election.  Today, the State Action PAC is proud to announce the first challenger/open-seat endorsements of the 2008 primaries:

TIM SCOTT (HOUSE DISTRICT 117 – CHARLESTON)
    Tim Scott is a very successful small business owner, Chairman of Charleston County Council and a strong fiscal conservative.  Endorsed by Governor Sanford last fall for state treasurer and recently for this office, Tim has never voted for a tax increase nor has the council ever increased taxes during his thirteen-year tenure.  Long-time incumbent Tom Dantzler, who has consistently received “F” ratings from the Club, recently chose to retire rather than face a great candidate like Tim.
    Tim’s opponents for the open seat, Wheeler Tillman and Bill Crosby, both present causes for concern.  Tillman served for four years in the House during the 70’s as a Democrat, ran again for public office as a Democrat in the 1980’s and only switched parties earlier this decade.  Crosby wants to spend billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money on mass transportation and making local libraries a statewide responsibility.
    We think Tim is unquestionably the best candidate in this race based on his record as a strong fiscal conservative and reformer.  Tim will also make history as the first African-American Republican elected to the legislature since Reconstruction.  Tim Scott is a rising conservative star, and we urge you to send him to the Statehouse.

STU RODMAN (HOUSE DISTRICT 123 – HILTON HEAD)
    Stu Rodman is a proven, reform-minded leader who will bring his fiscally conservative principles to Columbia.  He currently serves on the Beaufort County Council and was elected to the Beaufort School Board, giving him valuable insights into government. 
    As a businessman with an M.B.A. and an engineering degree, Stu understands how important it is for South Carolina to be competitive in the global marketplace by lowering taxes, limiting government bureaucracy, and improving educational opportunities for our children.  Stu also served on Governor Sanford’s 2003 State Commission on Management, Accountability and Performance, which suggested ways to restructure and streamline state government.
    Stu is challenging incumbent Richard Chalk.  Chalk received an “F” in 2007 on the S.C. Club for Growth’s scorecard, which reflects his poor voting record on fiscal issues.  Chalk supported a higher gas tax on working families and was one of the few Republicans to vote to overturn Governor Sanford’s vetoes on all fifty budget items in the Club’s “Lard List.”  One can only assume Chalk was trying to send a message when he voted to overturn Governor Sanford’s veto of pork items like $150,000 for a new pottery program, over $8 million for Senator Hugh Leatherman’s pet projects in Florence and $9 million for a program editorial writers called “a legislative slush fund.”  We hope you will send a message to Chalk by supporting Stu Rodman.

KATRINA SHEALY (SENATE DISTRICT 23 – LEXINGTON COUNTY)
    Katrina Shealy is a proven leader and reformer in Lexington County.  Her experience as an insurance underwriter gives her a great foundation in fiscal issues and she recognizes that South Carolina’s out of control growth in state spending must end.  She supports state budget spending caps as well as tax cuts that will lower our state’s high income tax to encourage new businesses and better paying jobs.  Katrina also supports important tort and worker’s compensation reforms that will safeguard our small businesses.  As Chairwoman of the Lexington County Republican Party, she has done an incredible job of building a grassroots network of people who will work to support her campaign.
    Her opponent is incumbent RINO (Republican In Name Only) Jake Knotts, who earned an abysmal 8 out of 100 on our most recent legislative scorecard.  Knotts voted against a 29% reduction in our state income tax in 2005, complaining that letting you keep more of your tax dollars would reduce what he and his legislative buddies got to spend on government programs.  And spend it they have – growing government by over 40% in the last few years!  Last year Knotts even voted to send $950,000 of your tax dollars to the aforementioned Green Bean Museum and later voted to override every single one of Governor Sanford’s 228 budget vetoes that would have saved taxpayers $167 million. 
    To say that Knotts has worked against Governor Sanford’s reform agenda is like saying that John Edwards is willing to pay “a little extra” for a haircut.  He has cast crucial votes to kill Sanford-backed restructuring plans and to prevent parents from having increased choices about where to educate their children.  Just last year, Knotts voted to give a liberal judge a ten-year term on our State Supreme Court.  He explained his vote by saying that the candidate was “a female who puts more diversity on the bench.  It shouldn’t be about being conservative.”
    Frankly, we are not sure how Knotts even calls himself a Republican after publically supporting Democrats Jim Hodges and Tommy Moore over Governor Sanford in the last two gubernatorial elections.  Fortunately, he’ll finally get a chance to face Republican voters.
    Knotts’ defeat will remove a major legislative roadblock to lowering taxes, slowing government growth and implementing common-sense structural and educational reforms.  Katrina’s election will provide sorely needed leadership for her district and the state.  In fact, Knotts seems to agree – he contributed $100 to her campaign for House in 2002.  Once you are over the shock of hearing that he actually supported a Republican for a change, we hope you will support the real Republican in the race- Katrina Shealy.

You gotta hand it to the Club... here we haven't even had our first legislative candidate interviews, and they've already settled on endorsements. Maybe it's a little easier for them. Then again, maybe it's just all that hard work, initiative and talent that helped the Club members grab their disproportional portions of the American pie, and which they firmly believe WE could do, too, if we would just buckle down and apply ourselves...

Why not just let in more Mexicans?

Over the weekend, we had our gazillionth in a series of letters from indignant writers insisting that they are NOT anti-immigration, they are anti-ILLEGAL immigration:

    We in the pro-enforcement camp do not oppose legal immigration, and we do not call for discrimination against legal immigrants, no matter their race or ethnicity. All we ask is that our government enforce its immigration laws, secure our borders and deport illegal aliens.
    Since when is being in favor of law enforcement on a nondiscriminatory basis racism? Certainly, those who favor illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens have been unfairly labeling us, as they have no legitimate reason for opposing enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

And of course, for about the gazillionth time I thought, fine -- let's change our immigration limits and streamline our procedures so that the Mexican labor our economy seems to demand can get in legally. Then, we'll all be happy. I certainly will, because I don't like having a shadow, extralegal population either. People in this country from another should be documented. People who are hot about illegal immigration will also be happy. People who just don't like having a lot of Mexicans around will not be, but you can't please everybody.

Why not remove the incentive to come in illegally by lowering barriers to legal immigration? I'm not an economist, but it seems fairly obvious that there is a demand for Mexican labor in this country -- and a demand for American work in that country -- that is greater than the supply we are currently processing legally. Those demands will continue to exist, and those forces will continue to attract vast waves of people to this side of the border, whatever laws we have. So let's get serious about getting a handle on it.

The people who actually ARE economists disagree with each other on all this, of course. Here's an interesting, fairly dispassionate piece that was in the NYT Magazine a couple of years back, which examines whether we should let so many unskilled workers into our economy. If you're looking for an absolute "yes" or "no," you need to look elsewhere, but I found the discussion interesting:

    Economists more in the mainstream generally agree that the U.S. should take in more skilled immigrants; it's the issue of the unskilled that is tricky. Many say that unskilled labor is needed and that the U.S. could better help its native unskilled by other means (like raising the minimum wage or expanding job training) than by building a wall. None believe, however, that the U.S. can get by with no limits....
    What the economists can do is frame a subset of the important issues. They remind us, first, that the legislated goal of U.S. policy is curiously disconnected from economics. Indeed, the flow of illegals is the market's signal that the current legal limits are too low. Immigrants do help the economy; they are fuel for growth cities like Las Vegas and a salve to older cities that have suffered native flight. Borjas's research strongly suggests that native unskilled workers pay a price: in wages, in their ability to find inviting areas to migrate to and perhaps in employment. But the price is probably a small one.

That last point, of course, is an important one to discuss. And in fact, if these are NOT "jobs Americans don't want," but merely jobs with conditions and wages depressed by an oversupply of cheap labor from south of the border, then we should reduce the flow northward, and thereby raise wages and conditions for Americans (and the cost of goods and services, but that might be a policy outcome we decide is worth it).

But if, in the aggregate, these millions of Latinos are just a supply meeting a demand without widespread ill effects on the working class, why not let more in legally?

What's changing your mind, bud?

This is an invitation to a regular correspondent to elaborate on an interesting observation. Back on this post, bud left a comment, toward the end of that long thread, that in part said this:

I'm gradually changing my allegiance to Obama from Hillary. Obama is the real deal, no doubt about it.

I'm curious about bud's reasoning, and I think it's worth exploring in greater detail, if bud's willing.

The reason I think it's worth going into is that I think bud is going through a process we've seen across a large portion of the Democratic electorate this year. Remember, just a few months ago Hillary Clinton was seen as inevitable. That started changing in the weeks before Iowa, and kept on changing, as Democrats and independents who chose to vote in Democratic primaries (where that was permitted, such as in S.C.) starting moving toward Barack Obama.

Now, with neither candidate able to get the required number of committed delegates before the convention, we're watching as superdelegates (and voters in Pennsylvania) ponder whether to declare for, or switch to, Obama. That makes the thought processes through which a voter like bud has gone particularly relevant.

You know what I think, but I preferred Obama from the time we focused on the candidates in the last days before the S.C. primary. It's far more interesting right now to see what would convince someone who preferred Hillary then to move toward Obama.

So give it some thought, bud, and share...

There goes the Easter Bush!

'I told 'em you were real, Harvey, but they didn't believe me...'

An ‘exit interview’ with the governor’s right-hand man

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
MY BEST CONTACT in the governor’s office left Mark Sanford’s employ last week, which is bad news for me. The jury is still out on whether it’s a good thing for South Carolina.
    The jury in this case will be the voters of S.C. Senate District 46 in Beaufort County. Tom Davis, formerly chief of staff to Mr. Sanford, will oppose Sen. Catherine Ceips in the Republican primary in June. I have no idea which should win; we’ll have our hands full on the editorial board just trying to endorse in primaries for Midlands districts.
    But Tom dropped by our offices on his way out of town last week, and I thought I’d share with you some observations from what one might term this “exit interview” — less for the light it sheds on a Senate contest, and more for what they tell us about the guy who’s been the governor’s point man for most of his time in office.
    You will have gathered from previous columns that I am, shall we say, disappointed in this governor. But Tom Davis has always impressed me with his passionate support of his boss. He is so earnest and so insistent in his faithful advocacy — from taking flak from lawmakers without resentment to sending me e-mails so intensely detailed in their rebuttal of criticism that I have to set them aside until I can find the time — that you can’t help but respect and like the guy, even when you disagree.
    The five issues he says he most wants to address distill some of the best things the governor has at least theoretically stood for (with a hint here and there of the worst). They also remind us how little has been achieved under this governor, despite Tom’s efforts:

1. Education funding. He would take all the money from the bewildering array of sources we have now — the EIA, the EFA, the whole EIEIO — and put it all into one stream, “so you can see where the money’s going and what it’s doing.” He’d have the money follow each child rather than districts and programs. This, of course, brings to mind the governor’s voucher and tax credits crusade. But it also points to the work that Tom has done reaching out to Education Superintendent Jim Rex. I’ve often been frustrated at the governor’s slowness to work personally with Mr. Rex on reforms they agree about, but Tom has definitely been the good cop on this one. Tom praises Mr. Rex’s efforts at public school choice, and says what’s needed to make the plan work is the funding reform he advocates.
2. “The way we tax.” Rather than get bogged down with the governor’s obsession with the income tax, Tom clearly advocates the comprehensive tax reform that our board has pushed for what seems like forever.
3. Government restructuring. The main reason we endorsed Mr. Sanford in 2002 was his embrace of our restructuring agenda — and his fecklessness on the issue played a role in our not endorsing him in 2006. Tom wants to try working for these crucial reforms from the very citadel of resistance, the S.C. Senate. And he understands that the state’s systemic problems extend far beyond just reducing fragmentation at the state level — he would stress prying the state’s fingers from the throat of local governments (my terminology, not his) so that the governments closest to the people can do their jobs.
4. Quality of life. One purpose of restoring the promise of Home Rule would be empowering local governments to fight sprawl. This is a natural outgrowth of the uncontrolled growth he’s seen in the Lowcountry, and an area where he and the governor have a lot more in common with Theodore Roosevelt than too many modern Republicans.
5. “The Ports.” One of the subjects of some of Tom’s most recent e-mails has been his fierce insistence that I am wrong when I say the governor hasn’t accomplished much. His evidence is the deal that he, Tom Davis, has helped engineer between our governor and Georgia’s over a new Jasper County port. He acknowledges this has been his “silo” at the governor’s office and perhaps looms larger in his mind than other people’s. But he maintains, with some justice, that there are few things more important to South Carolina’s economy than the health of its ports.

    Tom argued a bit with us about vouchers. He says that movement has led to such promising developments as Mr. Rex’s open enrollment initiative. I say it’s brought any efforts to improve public schools to a grinding halt, consuming all the political oxygen that could be going to fight for such things as merit pay for teachers and district consolidation — things the governor has said he favors, but has done little to promote.
    Tom said that if elected, he would actively push those things. That would be good. It would be even better if Mark Sanford would.

928,647 Page Views Served

Was just looking at my stats in TypePad, and it seems that since I started this blog in May 2005, I've had this many page views:

928,647

Which means that, at my current daily-view rate, we should hit our millionth page view in about six weeks. (Obviously, if y'all had been reading at the current rate, I'd have hit it long ago; the pace has picked up considerably lately.)

We should mark the occasion somehow. Maybe I'd give a prize for the millionth viewer, except I don't know that there's any way to identify that person. Maybe I'll just pick someone arbitrarily.

Or maybe I'll just give myself a prize. I'm the one who did all the danged work, after all.

Other suggestions? No, I mean nice suggestions...

Obviously, they didn't poll ME

Just got this press release:

Dear Brad Warthen:
    I write to inform you of the release of a new public opinion poll on whether leaders should listen to public opinion. In sharp contrast to views recently expressed by Vice President Cheney, this poll finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe government leaders should pay attention to public opinion polls and that the public should generally have more influence over government leaders than it does
    These findings are part of a larger international poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, an international research project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.  The poll of 975 Americans was fielded from January 18 to 27 by Knowledge Networks. The margin of error was +/-3.2 percent.
    Please find the press release pasted below. You may access the press release, charts and a questionnaire at: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/
    If you would like to speak with the principal researcher of this study, please contact Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org...

Sincerely,
Melinda Brouwer
Communications Coordinator
Program on International Policy Attitudes

Of course, I couldn't resist answering the e-mail, as follows:

I disagree. I don't know what Cheney said [and don't much care to know, frankly], but it's been my observation that the republic is being undermined by finger-in-the-wind governance. We elect people to do what 300 million people can't all do -- go to the capital, study issues, listen to people who disagree with them, and make the best decision they are capable of making. If they go by the gut, unconsidered reactions of people responding to "yes" or "no" questions, we get ... well, we get the hyperpartisan, polarized, dumbed-down sort of governance we now have.

I didn't even get into the fact that, if one thinks we shouldn't govern by polls, why would one be persuaded otherwise by the result of a poll disagreeing with us? I felt sort of like I'd made my point without that.

More context on Wright sermon

Warren Bolton sent me this earlier today, and I was going to try to watch the links myself before post it, but it's going to be so many hours -- and probably tomorrow -- before I can get to that, I'll let y'all go ahead and get a head start:

Brad, thought I'd forward to you what someone shared with me. They are video clips of Wright. The first is a longer version of the "God Damn America" sermon. It won't change your mind, but it puts more context around his comments.

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=8pedwsGGGp0
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=8pedwsGGGp0
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=9HjSoMZ7y7A
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=-w5I1MR1NBg
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=4ThIdzzb0zc
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=6yOR_srOUI0
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=ckz6H3IbYzc

Warren, as you'll recall, had a column on the subject this week -- with a different take from mine.

The op-ed that came too soon

Speaking of Mayor Bob, as we were earlier... A few days ago, he sent us an op-ed submission. Then he resent it with an additional byline on it -- that of Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine. It was about the recent city council retreat.

Trouble is, we had run a piece from him just days earlier -- last Friday, as a matter of fact. And that piece wasn't long after another one from him. We can't just turn over the space we have for local guest columns to the mayor every time there's something he wants to respond to -- he's a very responsive guy. We have space most days for one local, nonstaff column. There's a lot of competition for that slot, most days. So we have a guideline -- no more than one piece for the same person within 30 days. And we had already stretched that rule once for the mayor, since his earlier piece had been on Feb. 20. We couldn't give him yet another pass and still face all the other folks we've said "no" to. We'd made the first exception because he was responding to an editorial that had been critical of the city. We could have made another for the same reason, but chose not to.

Instead, I offered to put it on the blog. Here's the cover note that came with the most recent version of his latest submission:

In light of today's editorial I wanted to submit again the op ed from myself and Tameika Isaac Devine. The editorial was based on Adam Beam's story about our retreat. While the editorial and Adam's story certainly describe legitimate issues, I believe the op ed addresses one issue that has been corrected. The City Council partly as a result of the study cited in the editorial has set specific goals and a specific strategic action plan to implement those goals. Both the goals and the plan will be on our website after the plan is updated from the comments at the retreat. 

The editorial specifically addresses the report and lack of goals when the writer says: "The report, based on interviews with dozens of managers in city government, said the City Council set no vision or goals..." The editorial goes on to say: "Council members told the study commission that the 2001 report was accurate. But they declared things had changed under Mr. Austin. Mayor Bob Coble said he thought members followed state law in terms of how they interact with city employees. But the events at the recent retreat say things have gotten no better. The council remains a major culprit in ensuring the city’s government struggles."

Clearly the main thrust of the editorial is the "interferance" (the writer's term in the opening paragraph) of City Council and the form of government and not the lack of planning. While City Manager Austin would be the one to say what improvements have been made in how City Council interacts with him, I would note that the lack of formal goal setting and planning has been addressed, I believe in fairness the op ed adds an important perspective on whether the City Council took steps to formally address that criticism (instead of using the State of the City for the last six years as the primary vehicle for setting goals as would be the common practice under a strong mayor form of government). Of course the op ed discusses the major issues that were addressed at the retreat in addition to the one that Adam addressed in his story. As always I appreciate your consideration.

And here is the text of the submission itself:

City Council Retreat Friday March 7, 2008
    I wanted to give a report on the Columbia City Council Retreat that was held Friday March 7th at the Convention Center. The bulk of the day was spent reviewing the four broad goals that City Council adopted last year. Those goals were:
1. To enhance the quality of life in the City of Columbia for all citizens, customers and visitors.
    2. To enhance and protect our natural and built infrastructure.
3. To enhance Columbia’s future role as the flagship municipality in South Carolina through the use of best practices for local government operations.
4. To grow the City’s tax base by facilitating opportunities for citizens and future generations to reach their full economic, social, and cultural potential.   
Those broad goals are being implemented through Columbia’s Strategic Operational Plan that staff has developed, and that City Council reviewed at the retreat. Both the goals and strategic plan will be on our website www.columbiasc.net.
    While a number of specific issues were discussed at the retreat, I think four were particularly important. First, City Council affirmed our plan for safety and security in Columbia. We established as our top funding priority, the police and fire retention plan to increase salaries by $2.5 million over a three year period. We reaffirmed our commitment to fund a security camera system and the goal of 375 police officers (an increase of 19 officers). Additionally, we are committed to fighting gang and youth violence with the implementation of the recommendations of our gang assessment. 
    Secondly, we reviewed the progress we are making in correcting the deficiencies in our Finance Department that were outlined in the September 2007 Management Letter. We have retained the Municipal Association of South Carolina to help us establish best practices and online financial reporting.
    Thirdly, the City has made a real commitment to climate protection. Implementation of our energy audit, which will be released this month, will be a top priority for the coming year. Columbia must do our part to reduce global warming and protect our environment.
    Fourth, we reviewed the implementation of the disparity study that was adopted by Council in August of 2006. City Council reaffirmed our strong commitment to the study’s implementation and the need for accountability in reaching our goal of economic fairness and inclusion for our diverse community.   
Columbia City Council established last year our broad goals and the strategic operational plan to implement those goals. This year’s retreat was an important opportunity to review progress and take corrective steps where needed. Columbia is going through the greatest renaissance in our history. Innovista will transform our economy and create high wage jobs. The Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and Hilton Hotel are bringing in tourists and conventions. We are creating new attractions such as EdVenture, the Three Rivers Greenway, and the historic Bethel AME Church Museum. The heart of Columbia, from the Riverfront, Downtown, Five Points, North Columbia, Two Notch Road to Read Street, has been revitalized. Private investment, both residential and commercial, has exploded. We have stronger neighborhoods with more residents, more homeowners, and greater home values in Columbia. We have achieved this growth with a commitment to diversity and inclusion. We have launched a new effort “Together We Can” to improve our public schools through greater community partnerships. This coming year will be an exciting though challenging time. Clear goals and our strategic plan will help us achieve success. 

Thank you,

Mayor Bob Coble
3333 Heyward Street
Columbia, South Carolina

Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine

How clueless is Brad? Check his brackets

Yes, it's that time of year when I truly do what so many of you think I do every day -- offer my assessment about something that I know nothing about. In this case, the NCAA basketball tournament. Here's last year's effort. Above is an actual, undoctored photograph of the one I completed earlier today. (To keep me honest, you might want to print this one out, if you're really that suspicious.)

I assure you that, once again, I've gotten through an entire season without watching, or checking the paper for the results of, a single game. No, wait -- after hearing how excited my in-laws in Memphis were about a game between U. of Memphis and Tennessee, I did check the next morning to see how it came out. But I don't remember which one won. I'm thinking it was UT, but then how did Memphis get seeded so high if that's so? Whatever.

And no, I'm not going to go look up the answer, which would spoil the purity of my system for making predictions. I generally give the advantage to three kinds of teams:

1. Schools that I or someone in my family have been associated with at some time or other (Like Fred Thompson, I'm a Memphis State grad, from the days when it was called Memphis State.)
2. Catholic schools, or schools with Catholic-sounding names (I don't know about St. Mary's, but any school named for the Mother of God has to be good for at least one round, don't you think?)
3. Schools that were roundball powerhouses back when I was in college, as near as I can remember.

Oh, and I have one other rule -- all things being roughly equal, bet on Duke. I did that for several rounds this year, getting them into the Final Four, but didn't take them all the way.

Anyway, you'll see that this year, I gave the most emphasis to Rule 1. Only time will tell if I was right.

God bless Mayor Bob

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but as one who has worked at the south end of Assembly for over 20 years, about three or four years of which (by my highly scientific estimate) have been spent waiting for trains to move -- and mind you, I long ago learned every trick for getting around them, but sometimes it's impossible -- I was deeply grateful to Mayor Bob for setting forth a vision for ridding us of this curse.

I'm not sure the city can afford it, and I'm not necessarily convinced that if it had the money it shouldn't spend it on other things, but I do appreciate the thought.

'God Damn America' means what it means

Over the last couple of days, I've seen and heard a number of explanations, or attempts at explanations, regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright having proclaimed, "God Damn America."

Most of them have been along the lines of the old cliche, "It's a black thing; you wouldn't understand," although no one has used those precise words. Well, I accept that on one level or another, I can never fully understand where any other human being is coming from. My own brother has the same genetic background that I do and grew up in the same household, but each of us has had a separate experience of life that has shaped us differently and causes us to express ourselves differently. The farther you get from being my biological brother -- or, to describe someone I've spent a lot more time with than my brother, my wife -- the wider that gap will get. The more different our experiences, the more different our perceptions of the world, and the more different our ways of speaking of the world.

But I've got to tell you, "God Damn America" is not a statement that is fraught with nuance. It's very clear, uncompromising and all-encompassing. In all the explanations I've heard for that statement, no one has suggested that the words mean anything different. In English, they can only mean one thing. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "God Damn America," I know what he means, even though he and I probably have a lot fewer reference points in common than the Rev. Wright and I have.

And if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking from his pulpit, deliberately and clearly calls upon God to damn America, and urges his congregation to send forth the same prayer, I know what he means. It means asking God to send America to hell forever. Damnation, under any sense of the word that I have every heard of (and no one has offered an alternative definition in response to this issue), and within any theology I have heard of (and again, no one has offered a different theological meaning of the word), means that and nothing else.

It doesn't say, "America has a lot to answer for." It does not say, "America is guilty of terrible crimes." It does not say, "America has treated you and me and millions of others horribly and inexcusably, and we can never forgive that." It means to curse America beyond redemption, beyond improvement, beyond a second or third or billionth chance. "Damn" means "damn." It goes infinitely beyond any other obscenity you might utter in expressing your displeasure with America. If you say -- and pardon my implied language -- "F--- America," that is at least something from which the object of your anger might recover. If you say "Kill America," you have at least described something from which it might be redeemed. But the Rev. Wright did not say those things. He said "God Damn America."

I understand hyperbole. I know all about exaggeration for effect. I know that many people have profound, complex reasons for being angrier about the way the world is and has been than I ever will. But this is not about exaggeration. This word is not a matter of degree. It is not about merely using a word that goes quantitatively too far.

I also understand that black homilitic and worship traditions are very, very different from that of, say, my own church, or any that I regularly attended growing up. I've been in this country most of my life (like Obama, I've lived abroad), and I took in that fact long ago.

And I've read the news stories -- here's one that was in our paper today, and another I saw in The Wall Street Journal -- that quote experts explaining that it's different when Jeremiah Wright says it. But it isn't different. There is no moral context, no separate historical grounding, no cultural style, no emotional framework that gives the words "God Damn America" a different meaning. When, in The State's story, the Rev. Joe Darby -- whom I have known and respected for years, and to the best of my knowledge would never say "God damn America" -- speaks of "the role of the historical black church in 'speaking truth to power'," I know what he means. I agree that has been the role of the black church, and it has played that role well, and employed hyperbole in the course of doing so. But the point seems to me irrelevant. In what way, shape or form does "God Damn America" constitute speaking truth to anyone?

I also get it that I'm the clueless white guy. I've pled guilty to that before. But again, I remain unconvinced that I am too clueless to understand what "God Damn America" means.

Now -- does what I am saying here change the fact that I respect and admire Barack Obama, and think he should get the Democratic nomination for president? No, it does not. To the contrary, I was very much impressed by the speech he gave on the subject yesterday, which in so many ways spoke to the qualities that I respect in Sen. Obama. And note that he strongly repudiates his former pastor's message.

Am I saying he absolved himself from his connection -- his extended, deliberate, close association -- with a preacher who would say, "God Damn America?" No. He did not do that. And after all the years he has been going to that church, I can't imagine any words he could say that would accomplish that feat. And if he did, he would be rightly criticized for politically convenient timing.

As a voter, and as a writer who comments upon politics in this country, I am deeply impressed by the transcendent way in which Barack Obama addresses the intensely, damnably pervasive issue of race in America. He says just what I want a presidential candidate to say on the subject, and he says it better than any politician I have heard. He reaffirmed that for me Tuesday.

But I do have to set all that alongside the fact that he has deliberately associated with the man who said -- and apparently meant, since I've heard about no repudiation from the preacher himself -- "God Damn America." That will be something that Barack Obama as a candidate will just have to live with. It can't be changed, any more than John McCain can change the fact that he would be 72 years old if inaugurated (a very different sort of problem, but just as immutable).

Those are both inescapable facts, and voters will have to decide what weight to give them if these are the two nominees in the fall.

The mysterious attack on the Gergels

A few days ago, I was sent this PDF file, which was attached to an e-mail that proclaimed, "Belinda Gergel Lies on Ethics Report." The accusation of lying, as near as I can determine, is unsupported, and therefore reprehensible. (The e-mail was forwarded to me by a Brian Boyer supporter who was unable to tell me where it originated.)

What you will see if you call up the document is that it includes scans of a lot of documents, including Belinda Gergel's SEC filing that explains that her husband is the president of Gergel, Nickles and Solomon, P.A., but under "Income and Benefits from State and Local Agencies in South Carolina" for the past year, cites only pay that she received for part-time teaching at the College of Charleston.

The implication is that she and/or her husband received income from work that Richard Gergel's law firm did for the city. Richard Gergel answers the charge this way:

    Brad:
        This document is floating around as part of a smear campaign against Belinda.   There is no secret that I have done legal work for the city for many years, just like I have done for many other governmental agencies in S.C. including the Governor, the Supreme Court, the Budget and Control Board, the State Retirement System and the Workers Compensation Commission.
        When Belinda decided to run, we resolved that I would cease all work for the city once she was elected.  I realized last October that I had no outstanding projects with the city and thought it was a good time to cut off any further work on my part.  I wrote Council and have done no work for the city since that time.  We also arranged that any work done by other members of my firm would be under a legal entity in which I have no financial interest and even with that Belinda would recuse herself from all votes relating to those legal services.
        Further, the smear states that the firm has paid an "estimated" rate of $300 per hour.  Where do they get these things?  The firm has never been paid more than $140 per hour for legal work, which is a significant discount from our normal hourly rate.
        I suspect this is just the beginning of the smear that will come over the next two weeks.  Makes you wonder why you would ever seek to run for public office.  You live an entire life of honor and integrity and have a bunch of folks hiding behind the anonymity of the internet  to smear you.   If they have something important to say, why are they insisting on communicating anonymously?

    Richard Gergel

No one has come forward to defend the attack. When they do. I'll be glad to present you with that argument as well.

A footnote: Richard Gergel does not know exactly where the PDF originated, but he did share with me something he had obtained: "the original FIOA request from a Charleston law firm seeking information on my legal work with the city." Here is a PDF , provided by Mr. Gergel, of that FOI request.

Mr. Gergel notes that:

The letter is dated May 2, 2007 but the fax transmittal of the firm indicates that it was sent May 7, 2007.  Belinda began telling people she was considering the race in late April 2007 and the first press mention of her candidacy was May 3, 2007.  These guys have been cooking this thing up from the moment she began her candidacy but have apparently been holding the smear back until late, apparently hoping to do it at a time and in a manner that Belinda could not defend herself.

Anybody who has other thoughts to share on this subject -- and especially anyone who can add to our knowledge of the document's origins -- this would be the place to share.

'They're panicking out there right now, I can feel it.'

Yes, that headline is a quote from the wisdom of Billy Ray Valentine, former star of that once-great Philadelphia commodities brokerage, Duke and Duke. Sorry, but with me, analysis of financial matters doesn't get much deeper than that. That quote popped into my head yesterday morning as I was observing, with my PDA brower set to the WSJ site, the reaction on Wall Street to the Bear Stearns bailout.

The latest word is that the crisis has been averted, or delayed, for what that's worth.

I must confess that, since I get a bit confused just following what Winthorpe and Valentine did to the Dukes at the end of "Trading Places," I hardly know what to think about this supposedly Earth-shattering set of events surrounding Bear Stearns.

This is a barrier to my reading the news stories about it. As an editorial page editor, I read with the constant question in my mind, "What do I think about this?" I read any news story skimming past most of the who, what, where and blow-by-blow stuff, looking for answers to specific questions that will help me come to a conclusion.

But I don't find answers even to the preliminary questions that occur to me regarding the buyout of Bear Stearns, such as, "When people go to work in the morning at Bear Stearns, what do they do?"

I do get a little more sophisticated than that. I also ask, "Why did the Fed deem it necessary to prod J.P. Morgan Chase to buy out Bear Stearns?" And wasn't there something really unseemly about the government helping one financial firm buy out another at $2 a share? (I am reminded disturbingly, and almost certainly irrelevantly, of the case I read about recently regarding the Manhattan Elevated Railway, which Jay Gould bought at a fire sale price in 1881 after a judge had helped run down the value of the stock -- young Theodore Roosevelt built his early legislative career largely on the basis of fighting such deals.)

What would have been the awful thing that would have happened had the bailout (or purchasing at a ridiculously low price -- which seems to me like a really, really different thing from a bailout) not occurred? And why did the markets panic so AFTER it occurred? Was it because having the Fed invest $30 billion on behalf of you and me? Should I be freaked out, too? Should I be pleased or ticked off that the nation's central banker exposed itself like that for the sake of one company?

What does this mean to us average Joes? Are we going to be more or less likely to buy our little boys the G.I Joe with the kung fu grip? And will anything ever happen on Wall Street that will get me that 52-inch HD TV with 1080 resolution? Let's get real here, people.

But the people who allegedly know the answers to these compelling questions just drone on and on in a language of their own...

Prepared text of Obama speech

Here's the text of Obama's speech as written. It came in at 10:52, embargoed until he gave it. I'm posting it as it ends, and as I go into a meeting...

EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
"A More Perfect Union"
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

As Prepared for Delivery

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” 

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy.  Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. 

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished.  It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. 

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. 

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.  What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.  I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.   

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.  But it also comes from my own American story. 

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.  I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.  I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations.  I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.  I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. 

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate.  But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one. 

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.  Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country.  In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. 

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign.  At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.”  We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary.  The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. 

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.  On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.   

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.  For some, nagging questions remain.  Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy?  Of course.  Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?  Yes.  Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views?  Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.   

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial.  They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice.  Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. 

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough.  Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask?  Why not join another church?  And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way 

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man.  The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.  He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones.  Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.  Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity.  Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.  Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor.  They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.  The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.  As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.  He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.  Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.  He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.  I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me.  And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable.  I can assure you it is not.  I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.  We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. 

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.  We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. 

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.  And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. 

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point.  As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried.  In fact, it isn’t even past.”  We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.  But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.  That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened.  And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. 

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.  They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.  What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.  That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.  Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.  For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.  That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends.  But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.  At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.  The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.  That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.  But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community.  Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.  Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch.  They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.  They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.  So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. 

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company.  But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.  Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.  Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends.  Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.  And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. 

This is where we are right now.  It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.  Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. 

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.  It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.  But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.  And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons.  But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. 

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society.  It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.  But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change.  That is true genius of this nation.  What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.   Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.  It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. 

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us.  Let us be our sister’s keeper.  Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. 

For we have a choice in this country.  We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.  We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news.  We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.  We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction.  And then another one.  And then another one.  And nothing will change. 

That is one option.  Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”  This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.  This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem.  The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.  Not this time.   

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. 

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.  This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. 

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag.  We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. 

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.  This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.  And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. 

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.   

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina.  She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. 

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer.  And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care.  They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches.  Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice.  Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally.  But she didn’t.  She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign.  They all have different stories and reasons.  Many bring up a specific issue.  And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time.  And Ashley asks him why he’s there.  And he does not bring up a specific issue.  He does not say health care or the economy.  He does not say education or the war.   He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama.  He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.” 

“I’m here because of Ashley.”  By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough.  It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start.  It is where our union grows stronger.  And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.   

###

EMBARGOED FOR DELIVERY
March 18, 2008

There were, of course, minor changes in the actual delivery, but I'm not going to try to provide a transcript -- you'd have to wait until the fifth of Never for that. But I think most of the changes were minor. For instance, the text says "That is true genius of this nation." But he corrected that to say, "That is THE true genius of this nation..."

Waiting for Obama

We postponed our morning meeting for Barack Obama's speech that's billed as an attempt to put to rest the trouble he's had over his former pastor's inflammatory statements. It was supposed to happen at 10:15. It's 10:32, and I'm still looking at a bunch of flags on a stage. Now there are some roadies fiddling with the mikes.

Anyway, if you want to watch the excitement, I found a live feed at Fox News (didn't see one right away at CNN, MSNBC or C-SPAN, but I didn't look very hard). Here's the link. (It has a red WATCH LIVE note next to it.)

When it's over, I've got to go into a meeting, but y'all should go ahead and start discussing it here.

His wife's there now (below), so he's bound to show soon, right?

Sanford focusing no energy on veep possibility? Get real, Joel

Did you see this quote from Joel Sawyer of the governor's office in today's paper?

    Joel Sawyer, a Sanford spokesman, said the governor finds the interest in him “very flattering” but views it as pure speculation.”
    “It’s nothing that he has been focusing any of his time and energy on,” Sawyer said.

Oh, really? Come now, Joel. Take a look at Saturday's editorial page in The Wall Street Journal:

The Conservative Case for McCain
By MARK SANFORD
March 15, 2008; Page A10
    ...Fortunately, the presidential election offers us a real choice in how to address the fiscal mess. To use a football analogy, we're at halftime; and the question for conservatives is whether to get off the bench for the second half of the game.
    I sat out the first half, not endorsing a candidate, occupied with my day job and four young boys at home. But I'm now stepping onto the field and going to work to help John McCain. It's important that conservatives do the same...

This piece would be bizarre on several levels even without the otherwordly rumors about Sanford as a possible veep choice (which persist in spite of all logic). Mark Sanford is not a rah-rah, sis-boom-bah kind of Republican. His disdain for standard party boosterism is a noteworthy part of who he is. If fact, he's not a team player of any kind, party or otherwise.

Add to that the fact that he did sit the game out when it counted, when every other Republican of statewide stature was taking a risk by taking a stand -- DeMint for Romney; Graham, McMaster and Harrell for McCain (even when McCain looked down and out). Finally, when he did "endorse" the inevitable nominee, he did so in the most desultory, back-handed, even outright insulting kind of way -- with Joel having to be asked, and essentially responding that yeah, OK, the governor supported him, why not...

Finally, there's the odd conceit in the piece about Mark Sanford being some sort of national "conservative" leader who can step in and give the thumbs-up. Mark Sanford's national constituency is the Club for Growth and other libertarians, NOT the kind of traditional conservatives who were voting for Mike Huckabee in the last weeks of the process. I read that, and I picture Mark Sanford the loner suddenly stepping into a roomful of conservative activists and saying, "OK, guys, let's get behind McCain," and the others in the room say, "Who's this guy? Where'd he come from?"

And what would be his motivation to suddenly pop up and do something that out of character? I can imagine no purpose other than trying to give the McCain folks the impression that he, Mark Sanford, is the kind of guy who has that kind of juice with the people in the party whom McCain needs to get right with. Mark Sanford's mind works in mysterious ways, so there might be some other explanation.

But until we hear it, I find the assertion that the governor has exerted NO energy toward trailing his coat for the veep nod to be incredible.

Oh, yeah: You don't want to miss the ending of this piece, which is so out of character that you have to check the footer to make sure this is the same Mark Sanford (and indeed, it says "Mr. Sanford, a Republican, is the governor of South Carolina."):

    The contrast between the two opposing teams is stark. It is time for the entire conservative squad to step onto the field. Who will join me in helping our team get the ball and move it down the field?

Who will join ME, the unquestioned team player and leader, in getting out there and winning one for the McGipper? As though anyone ELSE but Mark Sanford has been sitting on the bench...

What can you say to that but, "Boola-Boola?"

The hottest City Council race money can buy

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
MY QUOTE of the week — I don’t usually name a quote of the week, but I’ll make an exception — is from Charles T. “Bud” Ferillo:
    “We will not be outspent.”
    Bud was speaking in his capacity as campaign consultant to Belinda Gergel, who is seeking the 3rd District Columbia City Council seat being vacated by Anne Sinclair. This will, by all accounts, be the most expensive City Council district race ever in Columbia, with most of it spent by Ms. Gergel and rival Brian Boyer. A third candidate, Reed Swearingen, is running a much lower-key campaign.
    Mr. Boyer started running a TV ad Wednesday depicting photos of him as a Dreher High School athlete and Army officer serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. In all, he plans to spend $50,000 on television between now and the April 1 election, out of a total campaign budget of $130,000 to $140,000.
    Belinda Gergel has raised $164,000, and had not intended to use any of it for TV, but that changed this past week — her own campaign commercial started airing early Friday morning. (You can see both ads, plus video from our endorsement interviews with the candidates, on my blog at thestate.com/bradsblog/.)
    Where does all the money come from? Mr. Boyer’s is replete with the names of local builders and Realtors, including that of Don Tomlin — the candidate’s brother-in-law and president of the homebuilding company of which Mr. Boyer is a vice president. Other names include Kirkman Finlay III and Gayle Averyt, who have been allied with Mr. Tomlin.
    Ms. Gergel’s rather longer list includes a lot of names long associated with local political activism, such as Joel Lourie, Ed Sellers, Bill Boyd, J. Lewis Cromer, Zoe Nettles, Barbara Moxon ... and Bud Ferillo.
    Those lists play into the conventional wisdom that, despite City Council being nonpartisan, the two most visible candidates represent distinct, rival factions:
    Mr. Boyer, a homebuilder, is seen as the “developer” candidate, representing the political faction led by Mr. Tomlin, who has also backed council members Tameika Devine, Kirkman Finlay III and Daniel Rickenmann. Ms. Gergel, as the past president of Historic Columbia Foundation, is perceived as the “preservationist” candidate, representing Mayor Bob Coble and other Democrats. (Never mind that Mr. Tomlin et al. supported Mr. Coble’s re-election in 2006; “conventional wisdom” overlooks such things.)
    Ms. Gergel, the retired head of the history and political science departments at Columbia College, rejects that pigeonhole, stressing that “I believe in the nonpartisanship of this election.” And indeed, among her contributors are names such as Jack Van Loan, a Five Points business leader and confidante of John McCain.
    “As far as this ‘camps’ thing,” Ms. Gergel says, “I don’t know where this is coming from, and I have no idea why someone would focus on what camp Belinda would be in. I am a strong, independent woman; that is what Columbia College did for me as a student, and what we worked on as faculty to encourage in our students. I have no permanent enemies and no personal friends on councilæ....”
    And as the daughter of a developer herself, she was not brought up to be “anti-development.” She says she’s for smart development that enhances existing communities, and fully understands how vital such growth is to the local economy.
    Mr. Boyer laughs off talk of factions, and of the Tomlin connection says he can’t help who his sister happened to marry. “I’m about as independent as they come.” As for the folks who are supposedly behind him, “none of them were there in the mountains of Afghanistan” or the “deserts of Iraq,” where he earned the Bronze Star before returning home to become a homebuilder.
    “I sort of feel that I’ve proved myself, and proved my decision-making ability, long before I knew those guys.”
    And he takes great pride in the kind of development he has been able to do, including homes priced for low-income buyers in the Arsenal Hill area.
    In our endorsement interviews, all of the candidates stressed public safety issues — Mr. Boyer suggesting his military experience qualifies him in that area, Ms. Gergel speaking of her own experiences dealing with crime in her University Hill neighborhood, and Mr. Swearingen promising to spend more on police whatever the political cost.
    All three decried the lack of accountability recently with regard to city finances. Messrs. Boyer and Swearingen both favor switching to a “strong-mayor” form of government to make city administration more answerable to the voters. Ms. Gergel, a veteran of the commission that considered changing city government, said she went in as a strong-mayor advocate, but realized it’s not going to happen politically, so the thing to do is “fix the system that we have now.”
    This isn’t the only City Council race on the ballot — three challengers are running to unseat at-large member Daniel Rickenmann. We’ll get to that one another day.

District 3 commercials, contributors

Here are the two TV commercials bought by the two best-known candidates for Columbia City Council District 3. That's Brian Boyer's, which went on the air Wednesday, above. Belinda Gergel's, which started Friday, is below. (I would link you to the versions on thestate.com, but it's the weekend and I'm at home and I need somebody to show me how to embed those. They're linked from Adam Beam's story today.)

Also, so you can see where the candidates are getting the money to spend on these ads, plus phone banks, yard signs, etc., I provide these resources:

• Belinda Gergel's contributors, which are listed on her Web site.
• A spreadsheet of Brian Boyer's contributions as of the end of 2007.
• Boyer contributions since the start of the year.

Read more about these lists in my Sunday column. Admittedly, though, readers of the blog won't find a whole lot that's new there -- beyond the names you can get yourself from the above lists.

Peggy's got it wrong this time

Peggy Noonan's column today puts forth a promising analogy -- I mean, "promising" in the literary sense of presenting a device that looks like it will work in making her point -- of a neighborhood with two houses. One is neglected, dilapidated, old, and people are so used to seeing it they don't even notice it any more. The other is still under construction, a source of excitement, the cynosure of eyes.

The old house is the Republican Party with John McCain at its head, the other is the Democratic. The analogy only works, of course, if Obama gets the Democratic nomination -- hard to see anyone looking upon a Clinton candidacy, which would certainly be a rehash of old battles, as fresh and new. But Ms. Noonan glosses over that part, because it's not her point.

Her point is, what does McCain need to do to get people excited about him? And her answer, or rather her suggestion of what is missing, is ideology... no, wait -- she says it's "philosophy," and she believes there's a huge difference: "Not an ideology—ideology is something imposed from above, something abstract dreamed up by an intellectual. Philosophy isn't imposed from above, it bubbles up from the ground, from life." Yeah, OK. So which is "a thousand points of light?" The latter, I suppose -- or neither.

Perhaps I should quote that entire passage:

In the most successful political careers there is a purpose, a guiding philosophy. Not an ideology—ideology is something imposed from above, something abstract dreamed up by an intellectual. Philosophy isn't imposed from above, it bubbles up from the ground, from life. And its expression is missing with Mr. McCain. Political staffs inevitably treat philosophy as the last thing, almost an indulgence. But it's the central fact from which all else flows. Staffs turn each day to scheduling, advance, fundraising, returning the billionaire's phone call. They're quick to hold the meeting to agree on the speech on the economy. But they don't, can't, give that speech meaning and depth. Only the candidate can, actually.

Philosophy is the foundation. All the rest is secondary, a quick one-coat paint job on a house with a sagging roof.

Anyway, one thing that neither McCain nor any candidate I would support needs is "philosophy." Please, Lord, spare us another Reagan. And no "kinder, gentler," either.

For me, the foundation is character, and all the rest is secondary, with "philosophy" coming somewhere near the rear of the procession.

John McCain believes in America, and the ideas that undergird it, that lift it up above mere nationalism as practiced through most of modern history. He has gone to the mat, and far beyond, for his country, and will never fail to do so in the future. Take that, and throw in a leavening of Teddy Roosevelt-style reformism, and you've got John McCain. Don't give me any more philosophy, beyond the old-fashioned kind of "conservatism" I have previously extolled. It's a kind of conservatism that gets bored or even impatient with talk of "philosophy," like a crusty old guy who knows who he is in a roomful of people discussing the latest fashions.

(Ms. Noonan objects to Mr. McCain's fondness for Hemingway. But let me quote Hemingway, and address it toward her call for "philosophy:"Let's not talk about it... You'll lose it if you talk about it.")

The older I get, the more I like candidates with characters I can trust -- honor, integrity, a moral sense -- who want to do what works to make the world better, without the taint of ideology. You might say, don't you need philosophy to define "better," and I would say most of us would recognize it if they saw it. We're talking pragmatism. Look at comprehensive immigration reform. It pleased no political philosophy, but just happened to be the one approach that makes common sense (a point Ms. Noonan acknowledges, while failing to see how pragmatic and unphilosophical it was). Comprehensive reform means you look at the whole problem, and consider all the practical angles, not just those pleasing to a philosophy.

Yes, some would object (on philosophical grounds, no less) to some of my definitions of "better," definitions I believe McCain shares. McCain is rooted in the American Century, and in his own life got a bellyful of what it's like for this nation to be "humbled" over its foreign actions. I see another, greater American Century -- one in which our nation is truly engaged in the rest of the world, diplomatically, economically, in humanitarian terms and yes, militarily -- as vastly preferable to, say, a Chinese Century. Or a century in which the whole world slides back away from liberalism (in the geopolitical sense, not the way it's misused in our domestic politics), a victim of chaos and distrust sown by atavistic impulses.

Whoa, I'm getting dangerously close to "philosophy" here. Best back off and say that I'd rather vote for somebody I trust, period.

Have an awesome time -- responsibly, of course

Did you have a good time last year's St. Paddy's Day in Five Points? To quote Frank the Tank, "I had an awesome time." So did my brother-in-law, pictured above.

Part of it was that my son got married that day, which is why Cooper (my brother-in-law) was here visiting from Memphis. Happy day all around. Coop and I had one awesome time, went home, got some coffee, then went to the wedding and had another awesome time. Responsibly, of course. No streaking on the Quad, or anything like that.

Cooper, by the way, was featured in one of my most-watched movies ever, which was shot that day: "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?"

Anyway, Coop can't make it this year, but I'll be there. Hope to see you.

That trooper was hardly alone

Don't think there was anything particularly rare about the language that trooper used in the notorious video.

Warren Bolton says he's gotten "some pretty interesting feedback on my trooper column" in today's paper. He shared this "gem" with me a little while ago:

Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
To: Bolton, Warren
Subject: Re: Trooper's actions

Bolton;

The only thing that trooper did wrong was in not shooting the bastard down. At least that would have put one less nigger crimmal [sic] out of business.

Val Green

Warren gets this sort of thing all too often. So perhaps you can see why he worries that, as he said in his column today, "we're not there yet" in the year 2008.

Bud testifies about the constitutional amendment

Just so you know Bud Ferillo thinks about more than spending Belinda Gergel's money, here's his testimony to the Senate subcommittee considering whether to amend the S.C. constitution to read that the state "will provide a high quality education, allowing each student to reach his highest potential."

Bud, as you may or may not know, is the guy who made the film, "Corridor of Shame:"

Presentation of Bud Ferillo
Senate Subcommittee
On S.1136
March 13, 2008
9:00 AM
          It is a privilege for me to address the subcommittee this morning, something I have never done before.
          While I served this state, in the 1970’s and 80’s as Chief of staff to House Speakers Rex Carter and Ramon Schwartz and as Deputy Lieutenant Governor under Lt. Gov. Mike Daniel, I come today as a private citizen still in awe of these halls and full of respect for those of you in both parties who serve our state today.
          The Constitution of the State of South Carolina which the legislation before you would amend was adopted in one of the most difficult periods of our state’s history by some of our most unenlightened elected officials. It was the era of Jim Crow and the long shadow of slavery has given way to legalized racial segregation, a cruel, one sided system of rights and privileges for the few over the many. It was not until 1911 that South Carolina attained a majority white population and so the constitution adopted in 1895 was not a declaration of human rights. In fact, it sought to enshrine the benefits of government only to those with political and economic power.
          Our racially segregated public schools remained separate and unequal for another two generations because that was state policy. Even with the Brown decision in 1954, rising from the school desegregation case of Briggs vs. Elliott in Clarendon County, it was not until Governor Hollings declared in 1963 as he left office that “South Carolina had run out of courts” and the state negotiated the admission of Harvey Garnett into Clemson University, followed a year later by the integration of USC and our public school system.
          This difficult history is painful to recall and painful to hear but it explains why we have attained no little progress in securing quality public education for all the children of the state. To be honest, we have not been about the business of providing quarterly education to all the children of South Carolina for very long.
          Even today, sadly, the legal position of our state in the Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina school funding case, still places South Carolina on the wrong side of history. This state continues to claim it has no obligation to provide even a “minimally adequate” education for our children.
          I have come to you today as a witness to the failure of our state to achieve either minimally adequate education or the opportunity for our children to achieve an excellent education which would equip them to contend in a world changing before their eyes at warp speed.
          My plea today is a simple one: I urge the General Assembly to put the issue of high quality public education to the people of this state to decide.
          Our sister states of Virginia and Florida have shown the way by amending their constitutions to require their states to provide high quality education to their children.
          A state’s constitution is its highest standard of governance; it is the document that enshrines our noblest aspirations; it is the final repository of who we are and what we care about as a people. While we were born into an unjust society in South Carolina; we do not have to grow old in it.
          I respectfully urge this subcommittee to favorably report S.1136 so that it might begin its rigorous journey through the legislative process and be given to the people of this state to determine in the general election of 2010. The amendment will serve a useful purpose in setting the highest standards of educational attainment against which future legislative actions and funding can be judged.
          My friend and ally John Rainey, who will address you shortly, and others across this state in a coalition too broad and lengthy to name will soon launch a petition campaign that will allow South Carolinians to participate directly in the legislative process.
          We will soon unveil the web site www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com where South Carolinians may sign a petition in support of this constitutional amendment. It is our ambitious but accepted challenge to present the signatures of 1,000,000 South Carolinians in support of S.1136 to the General Assembly during the opening day of the 2009 General Assembly.
          We cannot miss this opportunity to involve the people of our state in this process which will, to a large extent tell, us everything about what kind of state we have and what kind of future we will pass on to those who follow.

I'm not entirely sure what practical effect Bud and other advocates believe this wording change will have. I mean, even based on the "minimally adequate" interpretation, all that a court case that started in about 10,000 B.C. has accomplished was a ruling saying South Carolina should do better at early-childhood education, to which the Legislature responded by nodding vigorously, expanding a pilot program, then forgetting about it.

Such a wording change might make a lot of folks feel better, but the fact is that if South Carolina wants to pull up its rural areas to the educational level of the suburbs -- which it must do if we're ever to begin to catch up to the rest of the country -- it will do so, whether the constitution mentions education at all or not.

Hold your breath

You probably already saw the news story on the subject of this release from the Southern Environmental Law Center that came in Wednesday, but I thought you might be interested in the graphic above, so I pass it on now.

The SELC's point is that the EPA's new standard isn't stringent enough. That seems like a bit like arguing about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin from a Columbia standpoint, though: We can't even meet the lower standard. The release:

South Carolina Upstate and Midlands still plagued by unhealthy air, according to EPA
EPA’s new standard fails to adequately protect public health, say environmentalists and public health professionals

Chapel Hill, NC – New standards released today by the Environmental Protection Agency show most of the South Carolina Upstate and Midlands have unhealthy levels of ozone, including the Florence region, home to a new power plant proposal that will increase the region’s ozone levels. The new standards go further to protect the public’s health from ozone pollution, but fall short of the recommendations of public health professionals and EPA’s own scientists which recommended stronger protections.

“Unfortunately EPA has chosen to bow to political interests over the public’s health by releasing a ozone standard that falls short of the recommendations of  doctors and other public health professionals.  The fact that more cities than ever are being tagged as having unhealthy air should serve as a wake up call to all South Carolinians that this is a widespread and protracted problem,”  said David Farren, senior attorney with the non profit Southern Environmental Law Center.

Under the new standard, Columbia, and Greenville are expected to remain in violation of the federal standard, otherwise known as being in “nonattainment,” while smaller cities such as Chester, Lancaster, Newberry and Seneca will likely be added to the list. These areas will face deadlines to reach the new standard or risk federal sanctions including tighter smokestacks controls and the possible loss of federal highway money. 

“What we’re seeing is that unhealthy air is not just an urban problem,” said Farren. “Even small and mid-sized cities are going to have to tackle their air problems in order to protect the health of their citizens.”

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must set air quality standards at levels that protect public health, including sensitive populations, with an adequate margin of safety. In 1997, EPA set the national air quality standard for ozone at 0.08 parts per million (ppm) averaged over an eight hour period. The standard announced today is a slightly more stringent 0.075 ppm. However, in 2006, an EPA panel of scientists and public health experts unanimously recommended strengthening the ozone standard even lower, to within the range of 0.060 to 0.070 ppm, to adequately protect public health.

Power plants are a leading contributor to ozone pollution. In fact, the proposed Pee Dee plant will emit 3500 tons of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides each year under the existing draft air permit.

In addition to coal fired power plants, cars and trucks are among the biggest sources of ozone pollution in the South. To improve air quality, South Carolina must focus on strategies to reduce how much and how far its citizens drive such as investing in transportation alternatives and coordinating transportation and land use planning to reduce sprawl. Recently enacted reform of the state’s transportation department, if faithfully carried out, should aid in this work.

Lobbyists representing the oil, coal, electric power and manufacturing industries lobbied heavily against improved air pollution standards in the weeks leading up to the decision. However, EPA and OMB studies repeatedly show heath care costs and lost productivity far outweigh costs of clean up.

Ozone pollution, also known as smog, is known to trigger asthma attacks, reduce lung capacity, and has even been linked to heart disease and premature death. At its worst on hot, dry weather, ozone pollution causes officials to warn children and the elderly to stay indoors on many summer days. Children, whose respiratory systems are still developing, risk permanent loss of lung capacity through prolonged exposure to polluted air. For senior citizens, the natural decline in lung function that occurs with age is worsened by air pollution.

Brian Boyer, Columbia City Council Dist. 3

As previously noted, City Council candidate Brian Boyer was in the news today for his precedent-setting $50,000 media buy. He tried to place the expenditure in perspective by saying, "TV is a great way to reinforce the door-to-door campaigning I’ve done."

I can back him up on the door-to-door thing. On Saturday, March 1, I was at my daughter's home visiting grandchildren. My wife and I were at the front of the house with the babies, and my daughter and her husband (the only ones present who could vote in this thing) were at the back, when somebody knocked at the front door. "Come in," we said. The knock came again. "Come in!" But the knocker allowed as how he'd better not: "It's a stranger," he said.

But it wasn't. When my wife opened the door I recognized Mr. Boyer and he recognized me back where I was sitting on the couch, so I got up and we all stood on the porch (he had a buddy with him) for awhile talking about the election.

Anyway, that Wednesday he came in for his actual interview. We talked about his growing up in the district, and his schooling at Hand, Dreher and West Point. Once he got his commission, he went to Ranger School, did his airborne training, then tried out for the Ranger Regiment itself. He made it, and was sent to Savannah to join the 1st Ranger Battalion. He was just beginning to settle into the routine of being a peacetime Army officer (albeit in a crack regiment) in the summer of 2001. You know what happened then -- he went to war as a rifle company commander. The battalion "lost a good many men" in Afghanistan during service on the Pakistan border, part of that in the Hindu Kush. The unit got back stateside in January 2003, figuring they'd done their bit. Two months later, the battalion joined the invasion of Iraq. He says he only served there for a couple of months. He was awarded the Bronze Star.

His career as a civilian is less dramatic. He went back to school to get an MBA, worked for awhile in Charlotte, then came home and started a homebuilding company (he is vice president of Hallmark Homes International, Inc., where he "supervises all aspects of land acquisition, design, marketing, and sales"). He bought "the ugliest house in Shandon," which had been split up into three apartments, and started fixing it up as a single-family residence. A year after he moved in, he heard Anne Sinclair would not be running for re-election to the 3rd District.

His community involvement has included service on the board of the Columbia Chamber. He takes pride in his service on the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force, and notes that he built 10 townhomes in the Historic Arsenal Hill neighborhood which appraised at $161K apiece and were sold at cost for $99K. He says he's in the process of getting certified as a "green builder."

He would want to stress three issues on council:

1. Crime and Public Safety. He said adequate funding of this had not been a top priority of the city and should. He cited his military experience as being helpful in this area. He wants to get better technology in patrol cars so officers can file their reports from the field and stay out on the street more, something he called a "force multiplier." He's distressed at the city's and county's inability to coordinate on youth gangs, and would want to be a bridge-builder on that.
2. Financial accountability. He criticized the lack of openness as well as competence, citing not only the failure to close books on time, but the secrecy about the former financial director's severance.
3. General leadership. He said politicians "talk about I want to do this, I want to do that," but he has demonstrated the ability to follow through -- both in the military, and with affordable housing.

He talked at some length about the failure to have an evaluation system in place for the city manager until recently. In the Army, he noted, you don't go more than six months without a fitness report.

He would change the form of city government to a strong-mayor form, or the hybrid that's been  suggested.

When I asked him about the "factions" thing (see the elaboration on the Belinda Gergel entry), he said he couldn't help the fact that his sister is married to Don Tomlin. "I'm about as independent as they come." As for the folks who are supposedly behind him, "none of them were there in the mountains of Afghanistan" or the "deserts of Iraq."

"I sort of feel that I've proved myself, and proved my decision-making ability, long before I knew those guys." At the same time, he's proud to have their support.

But you can hear more about that on the video:

Belinda Gergel, Columbia City Council District 3

When Belinda Gergel was an 18-year-old freshman at Columbia College, she first saw a house that she decided she must live in one day. Now, retired from chairing the history and political science departments at that college, she does. And her experience as a vocal community leader in the University Hill neighborhood shapes her campaign to represent it on Columbia City Council.

As president of the Historic Columbia Foundation, she led the fight to keep USC from demolishing the historic Black House and Kirkland Apartments, and sponsored some remarkably well-attended symposiums (symposia?) on the burning of Columbia and the assassination of N.G. Gonzales by the coward James Tillman. She's currently a member of the board of Columbia Green, and is helping lead an effort to create a 22-acre Garden District in downtown Columbia.

But her interests hardly stop there. She is intensely interested in public safety -- her home was burglarized the first night she was in it (not for the last time, either), and gang members shot a federal prosecutor on the same block within a month of that. "If our neighborhoods are not safe, nothing else matters," she said in our editorial board endorsement interview on March 5.

She has also reached out beyond residential concerns to form alliances with business people. She's been endorsed by Five Points leader Jack Van Loan, who had not known her previously. (Full disclosure: Jack asked me to join him and Ms. Gergel for lunch one day in February, and I took Warren Bolton along -- but all of our substantive discussion of her candidacy took place in our formal interview.)

As a member of the commission that studied Columbia's form of government, she went in as an advocate of switching to a strong-mayor form. But she came out of that outrageously strung-out experienced convinced that such a change is not politically viable, and that we "need to fix the system we have now." A key element of that is developing a far more professional relationship between the city manager and the council. That would happen within the context of strategic planning -- she says the council must set a vision, and the manager must be held accountable for implementing it, two things that have utterly failed to happen up to now.

She served on the metro-area committee that drafted a plan for a comprehensive approach to homelessness, and was "very disappointed" at the way the city went off on its own and essentially demolished the regional process. She would be determined as a council member to pick up the pieces, involve faith-based providers and all local governments in resurrecting the comprehensive approach.

She and Columbia College President Caroline Whitson rode the metro area buses last fall, and learned how hard it was to find out how to get where you want to go on that system. "When I was a student, the bus was how you got around," she said. Now, it was hard to figure out the schedule. She believes the city ought to be doing all it could to encourage people to take the bus, and get them the information to make that practical.

Probably the most interesting part of our interview was when Ms. Gergel directly confronted (she is direct and to-the-point on all issues) the talk about opponent Brian Boyer and her representing different factions in the city, despite the election being nonpartisan (the short version of that "conventional wisdom" -- she is allegedly aligned with Mayor Bob Coble and other Democrats, and Mr. Boyer with his brother-in-law Don Tomlin, Daniel Rickenmann, Kirkman Finley III et al.).

"I am not in a camp," she said. "I believe in the nonpartisanship of this election, and I will not be seeking the endorsement of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. I think that there's a good reason for council membership to be nonpartisan."

"As far as this camps thing -- I don't know where this is coming from, and I have no idea why someone would focus on what camp Belinda would be in. I am a strong, independent woman; that is what Columbia College did for me as a student, and what we worked on as faculty to encourage in our students. I have no permanent enemies and no personal friends on council, that's how I see it, but issues that need to be addressed, and I will work with each member of council to address those issues."

"And I know that's what the residents of District 3 expect. They don't want a factionalized, 'camped,' partisan city council. They want us working together, and moving the city ahead."

When asked at the end if there were any issues we had failed to cover, she brought up the fact that she had "sensed" that some people assumed that, because of her work in historic preservation, she was "anti-development." She said nothing could be further from the truth. As the daughter of a developer, "I have great appreciation of what development, and developers and homebuilders are all about" -- a growing and vibrant economy. "That's how we were brought up."

"We want great development," the sort that enhances a community, "and expect nothing less."

I don't know what I just typed out all those quotes when I have those parts on video (which is how I checked the quotes). Here's the video:

Bud Ferillo's quote of the day

No, I don't normally have a "quote of the day," but this is a good time to start a tradition. You saw the piece today about Brian Boyer's unprecedented media buy -- spending 50 Gs on a TV ad that will be wasted on most viewers, seeing as how most of 'em don't live in the district?

The best part of that piece was the response from Bud Ferillo promising, on Belinda Gergel's behalf, a similarly extravagant gesture:

“We will not be outspent,” Gergel campaign consultant Bud Ferillo said.

Had our brethren in the newsroom more license to wax interpretive, the story might have said, "... Bud Ferillo said gleefully." Nothing like being a consultant in a spending war.

Ironically, I saw Bud standing around outside his house weekend before last as I was on my way to show my wife where Ms. Gergel lived. (Long story -- Brian Boyer had stopped by my daughter's house when we were visiting, which got us to talking about the District 3 race, which caused me to mention something about where the candidates lived, and my wife had trouble picturing it. Somehow, though, I made a wrong turn and we never saw it.) I didn't make the connection, though, either not knowing or forgetting he was handling her campaign.

Bud, noticing that the left front fender and bumper of my pickup were about to fall off (a recent collision with a bigger truck I didn't see coming in time), told me he had hit recently a deer with his truck in Andrews, doing all sorts of ugly damage.

I got my truck back from the body shop today. Maybe when the candidates in this race get done spending, Bud will be able to get his fixed, too.

WSJ says the recession is here

For those of you keeping score, The Wall Street Journal reports the following:

    The U.S. has finally slid into recession, according to the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal economic-forecasting survey, a view that was reinforced by new data showing a sharp drop in retail sales last month.
    The survey, conducted March 7 through 11, marked a precipitous shift to the negative from the previous survey conducted five weeks earlier. For example, the economists now expect nonfarm payrolls to grow by an average of only 9,000 jobs a month for the next 12 months--down from an expected 48,500 in the previous survey. Twenty economists now expect payrolls to shrink outright. And the average forecast for the unemployment rate was raised to 5.5% by December from 4.8% in the previous survey.

Make of that what you will. Economics is (are?) not my forte.

Who can resist a rebuttal of such deft sensibility?

Do you, like Katon Dawson, believe last week's editorial regarding our governor and the veep rumors was lacking in delicacy and tact?

Well, you'll be gratified to know that I've had my comeuppance.

Just a few minutes ago, I opened a manila envelope addressed to me that contained what looked like a flattened sheet of bloody pulp. This, of course, is always the sign of a carefully considered observation regarding the offerings on our daily pages.

This one was unusual in that the expansive thoughts of the writer demanded use of the entire page, even though the item being addressed occupied only a small portion of it. To make sure I didn't miss what the writer was referring to, two bold red Xes were placed tastefully on either side of the editorial's headline, and that part of the page (and only that part of the page) was left free of red ink.

All was not as it appeared, however. Although it would seem to the untutored eye to be the work of a single hand and a singular mind, the reader is boldly assured that it expresses the views of

"AVERY LARGE GROUP OF Gov. MARK SANFORD SUPPORTERS."

Just so you know. The message is, beyond that, unattributed, which unfortunately bars me from sending a "thank you" note.

Anyway, the writer(s) maintain(s) that Mr. Sanford would make a wonderful running mate for the GOP nominee, and that rather than running down such an idea, we should instead spend our ink criticizing "some of the bad hoodlum-type individuals," because after all, "there are many of them."

There's also some stuff about the Real ID that I can't fully make out (on account of it being written over a lot of type and all), but which seems based in an incomplete understanding of our position on the issue, as expressed in an editorial the day before the Sanford/veep piece.

But our message in the Sanford piece seems to have gotten across quite clearly. I can at least take satisfaction from that.

Why not baby tattoos?

That's Baby B in the foreground. But I thought it was Baby A.

Perhaps I should say right off that this post employs irony, since this is not always readily apparent to all readers.

Remember my new twin granddaughters? Well, it turns out they are identical; we learned that a month or so ago.

Here I was, taking great pride in the fact that I could tell them apart, even when other family members had trouble. This gave me, I felt, a sort of moral advantage -- look at what a great grandfather I am. But it also meant I was staving off something that terrified me: I was worried about how a child would feel if her own grandfather couldn't tell her apart from her sister.

But when notifying us that they were identical, the doctor observed that they looked more different at that moment than they ever would again.

Unfortunately, this has proved to be prophetic. Earlier, they looked distinctly different. And it wasn't a question of this one has a slightly different coloring from the other (which they did; one was ruddier than the other), or shape of the mouth or anything simple -- their faces simply looked, in their totality, like different people's. Baby B reminded me of some of my cousins; Baby A (while being perfectly beautiful in her own way) did not.

But over the last few weeks, Baby A has started looking more like Baby B. See that picture above, taken last Tuesday (March 4)? That's Baby B in the foreground. But when I initially took it off my digital camera, I thought it was Baby A, and labeled the image that way. I'm not quite sure what to do.

My daughter, knowing how I obsess about the subject, sent me this piece from the NYT via e-mail:

    It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles.
    But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not. The discovery opens a new understanding of why two people who hail from the same embryo can differ in phenotype, as biologists refer to a person’s physical manifestation

That's interesting, I said, but if you read on, it doesn't sound like these genetic differences are going to be enough to tell them apart.

So I suggested that my daughter look into whether it's actually illegal to put tattoos on babies. Something small, I'm thinking -- something tasteful, and out of the way. Say, something only visible during diaper changing. A tiny heart with "Mommy" written across it on one of them, that's all.

Yes, that last paragraph was the ironic part. But I'm serious about worrying about telling them apart.

S.C. budget earmarks

Here's how to find the earmark list Cindi wrote about in her column this morning:

    Here's the link: http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess117_2007-2008/appropriations2008/gab4800.htm.
    It's the second item listed under "H. 4800, GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL": "Earmarked Projects Pursuant to House Rule 5.3(F) (Excel format)."

    Cindi being the obsessively thorough type, she also suggests that I give "step-by-step directions for finding it," in case the link fails. (So that's why I'm doing this; it's not that I think you're stupid or something:

    To FIND the list, go to www.scstatehouse.net, select "Current Legislation" from the options listed across the top of the page, then select "The Budget" on the right side of the page, then select "Fiscal Year 2008-2009 - General Appropriations Bill H. 4800 of 2008" to get to the link above.

Republicans don't like paying for it

No, this isn't about politicians' involvement in prostitution. It's about something that struck me about this press release I just got from Jim Clyburn:

March 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CLYBURN: WHAT DO REPUBLICANS HAVE AGAINST VOLUNTEERISM?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn today released the following statement criticizing House Republicans for defeating the GIVE Act, HR 5563, legislation that promotes volunteerism and reauthorizes national service programs.
    “What demonstrates true American values more than volunteering?  What better way to give back to our country and community than engage in service work? When our cities and our towns are in crisis, how do we rebuild them and get our neighbors back on their feet?  With volunteers—people giving their time, their care, their resources to make our neighborhoods and our nation a better place.  I am truly confounded as to why my colleagues would divide on partisan lines and defeat a bill that strengthens and provides for our national service organizations.
     “This bill was approved unanimously by the Education and Labor Committee 44 to 0.  It authorizes extremely successful and effective organizations such as AmeriCorps, VISTA, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Foster Grandparent Program, and Senior Companion Program. It also creates a new service-learning program called Summer of Service, which engages youth in service through summer volunteer opportunities.
     “What do my Republican colleagues have against volunteerism?”

                    -30-

Rep. Clyburn has been a party leader too long. He seems to think he's backed his opponents into a rhetorical corner, when the answer to his question is obvious to anyone but a guy who talks too much to members of his own party: Republicans have nothing against volunteerism. Some of them just don't like paying for it. And they have a point, although a limited one. Republicans see no need for Congress to "authorize" people to volunteer in their communities; the Constitution guarantees freedom of association, etc.

Does that mean there's something wrong with these programs Mr. Clyburn supports? No, or at least, not necessarily. There's nothing wrong with the concept of paying for a program that employs volunteers. As the former president of our local Habitat for Humanity, I can tell you that volunteers only get you so far; you've got to have cash to build houses.

As for governmental volunteering, you can look at good examples from the Peace Corps to our post-draft military. I'm also familiar with cases in which paid volunteers were not terribly useful, but they got paid anyway.

My point is that in a debate such as this, both sides often have points. But too little of the rhetoric we hear acknowledges that. Note the simplistic advocacy on this blog, which includes the too-oft-repeated emotional "argument" that goes like this... "the almost $1 billion for volunteerism here is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion price tag on the war in Iraq." As though the expense of the war were either an argument that we shouldn't prosecute the war, or that we should fund the volunteer programs. Which is isn't; nor does it demonstrate the opposite in either case.

... or this, from an extremist in the other direction, which inevitably invokes Alexis de Toqueville.

I don't know whether, if I were a member of Congress, I would vote for this bill or not. Since it was just now brought to my attention by Rep. Clyburn, I would seek more time to decide. That, by the way, is theoretically why we delegate people to go make laws for us -- to study and consider, not reflexively go one way or the other.

But I'm pretty sure that, whichever way I voted, I would not think that either a "yes" or a "no" would be absolutely, unquestionably right and true.

The Midlands Subway System

Taking off on the subject of this recent post, I thought I'd hark back to a column I wrote in 1998, way before this blog was ever thought of. In it, I set forth my vision of what it might be like if the Midlands had the mass transit amenities of New York or Washington or even Atlanta:

    Imagine: Say it's a few years from now, and you live in Lexington and work in Columbia. You drive the mile or so to the station and leave your car in a parking lot. You take your seat and ride the old Southern line that parallels Highway 1 into the city. Call it the A line.
    Despite all the stops, you get downtown in less time than it takes to drive, while getting ahead on work or (better yet) reading the paper. You change trains at the Vista Center station near the new arena and conference center.
    Say you work where I do, near Williams-Brice Stadium (and why wouldn't you; this is my dream, after all). You take the C line down one of the very tracks that used to frustrate you in your driving days (if you can't beat the trains, join them). You get off within a block of work.
    A few hours later, when you have a lunch appointment in Five Points, you take a quick ride back up to Vista Center, then through the underground stretch beneath the State House complex and the USC campus on the eastern reach of the A line.
    Need to shop after work? Take the C all the way out to Columbiana, or the D along Two-Notch to Columbia Mall. (Where does the B line go? Out toward Lake Murray, which means it runs between 378 and the Saluda River, right by my house.)

Now that there's so much more growth out to the northeast I suppose we could extend the D farther out. The C would be longer, too. And the A might need a spur that would run out Garners Ferry. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, I was dreaming then and I'm dreaming now -- like the guy in that movie "Singles," who kept talking about his mass transit dream (in Seattle, I think it was), and anyone he told it to would say, "Yeah, but I love my car."

But it's a nice dream. Here's the rest of that column, by the way -- but I already gave you the relevant part.

Did you read Katon's piece? What did you think?

Noticing that apparently only one commenter had actually read Katon Dawson's piece this morning back on this post, I thought I'd make it easier by linking it here.

I'm curious about y'all's reaction because I've been intrigued over the last few days by the reaction that Friday's editorial engendered, pro and con. I didn't think it was all that much to get excited about myself. I just posted it on the blog because I had written it, and I knew I wasn't going to have a Sunday column to post, so it just seemed like a good substitute.

But I've gotten more reaction -- positive and negative -- to this than to anything in awhile. It's the biggest sleeper since that little E.W. Cromartie piece (which was not written by me). And yet it's mostly stuff I've said before. Sure, it was an editorial, so it was more than me saying it, but like all editorials it reflected the consensus of the board. And there's nothing outlandish about that consensus -- it's pretty much the one that has emerged over at the State House the last few years, among Republicans as well as Democrats. In fact, it's more vehement among Republicans.

That's one of the things that struck me about Katon's piece -- a party leader might say those things out of a sense of duty, but not many Republican officeholders would. The piece was for me a good illustration of the absurdities of partisan thinking. I mean, what non-brainwashed person thinks Mark Sanford equals the GOP leadership in the Legislature, or Lindsey Graham equals Jim DeMint?

But it struck me as particularly ironic in this case, given how little Mark Sanford does for most Republicans. One fan wrote in to me betting that the governor's office put Katon up to this. My response was, if I'm Katon Dawson (and mind you I'm stretching here to try to think like a party guy), I would say: "What have you ever done for this party, that I should do this for you?"