Back during the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign, after one of the many debates someone asked us if we watched. Internal response was, “Why the fuck would we?” External response was, “No.” It might have had a little bit to do with the candidates, but a whole lot to do with the office and level of political polishing. For most debates for higher office, they’re totally stone-cold boring and contain no new information. Just a competition to see who could most artfully chop up their stump speeches into timed segments. So let’s kill the debates.

Most of the presidential debates, and they began in the summer of 2007 for chrissakes, were just exercises in waiting for the freak candidate to say something weird or drinking games for people who find it hard to get obliterated without rules and points. In races with a lot of people, many candidates say very little and even less of actual import. They would be better served with covering themselves with bumper stickers and turning about for the cameras.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vince Sheheen decided to a new twist on an exceptionally old trick — did the staff get high and approve this? — by challenging GOP nominee Nikki Haley to fucking Lincoln-Douglas debates. A whole mess of ‘em! And stories were written far and wide. This comprises the vast majority of all action regarding debates. Candidate A proposes something a little out of the ordinary. Candidate B says bah to that. Then so many news stories. It’s just a method to generate news coverage. As a result, most of the people who actually give a damn are those who are directly involved, and nobody else cares.

In that way, more than 90 percent of all political debates between candidates are little different than the presidential nominating conventions. No, they’re actually very much worse. Conventions have political memorabilia to buy, the occasional famous person sighting, entertainment by famous people (this applies mostly to Democrats, or to your definition of “famous”) and those wonderful hospitality parties thrown by big corporations and special interests that have the open bars and free food. Debates, even high-level debates, don’t come close. The best swag you’ll bring home is a press pass bought off some writer at the hotel bar. And about 90 minutes of sheer boredom.

Lower ballot race debates could be worthwhile, but if you’ve had to sit through multiple city council debates or watched State House candidates go at it in some back room in BFE with 11 people attending, you’d agree that the news value is negligible. Columbia would be better served by having the city candidates debate in front of the Metro desk reporters and save everyone else the trouble.

But here’s the connection between the debates and the conventions: as former DNC chairman Don Fowler taught us at Carolina, conventions never help a campaign and if they have effect, it’s bad. Fowler pointed to RNC ’92 in Houston and his own DNC ’88 in Atlanta as examples. The same goes for the debates. They’re only particularly newsworthy and have an effect on the campaign if somebody seriously fucks up, as in George H.W. Bush in ’92 in Richmond (looking at his watch) or Al Gore in 2000 (le sigh).

Discussions, like among the Pub Politics crew or the fabulous C-SPAN broadcast of William F. Buckley and George McGovern from several years ago are different matters altogether. People sitting down with different points of view and talking about them can elicit interesting commentary and analysis. And jokes that aren’t pre-scripted. Operatives, former pols, reporters who are allowed an opinion — Lee Bandy at the Dan Rather thing in ’08 was great — these are people close enough to the action to really know what’s going down, but removed enough to actually say something worth listening to.

But these candidate debates, they’re moribund, they’re out cold. It’s toe-tag time.

Don’t call it a turf battle. Maybe. Reps. Jimmy Merrill and Chip Limehouse, both from the Charleston area, are being pretty vocal about opposing the new expansion by the USC School of Medicine. It’s no coincidence that MUSC, which has to compete for talent and resources, is in their backyard, right? But whatever the motivation, Carolina’s plans to get together with the Greenville Hospital System are getting some close scrutiny.

For instance, there’s the system’s finances. It dropped a peg on the credit rating and laid off 50 people during the spring. GHS responds that its credit is still good and it plans on hiring more than 200 people in the near future. Then there’s the involvement of former Carolina president Andrew Sorensen, who works in the School of Medicine, is a consultant for GHS and has been pushing deals with the system since before he resigned the presidency.

Sorensen’s involvement looks a little shady, but understandable. If there’s a guy at USC who would be at the nexus of medicine, institutional management and financing, it would be Sorensen. And this project has his fingerprints all over it. The deal is for GHS to spend between $35 million and $39 million over seven to 10 years. It’s a massive project, similar to Sorensen’s when he was president. The sciences got shit-tons of money and new buildings while other university divisions (coughcoughCollege of Mass Communicationscoughcough) seemingly appeared forgotten.

The fact that there’s all this investment and time when the university has so many needs and budget issues and rising tuition is probably the best reason why the plans should get a second look.

In separate articles, one appearing in The State on Monday and another in the Journal of the South Carolina Medical Association last month, doctors C. Warren Derrick and Charles S. Bryan questioned the timing of the expansion plan and doubted whether it would produce more primary care doctors.

Derrick is a professor emeritus at USC’s School of Medicine, and Bryan is a former chairman of its Department of Medicine.

Derrick said residency slots will need to be increased if the state hopes to increase the number of doctors here since medical students are more likely to stay and practice medicine in the state where they completed their residency. And Bryan wondered whether the current poor economic climate will allow GHS to uphold its commitments.

“Is commitment to indefinite funding of a four-year medical school, and notably of new, academically-credible basic science departments, good business strategy during this time of economic uncertainty for the nation and for health care financing?” Bryan wrote.

Back in June, Bill Chumley made a surprise upset of Rep. Keith Kelly in the Republican primary for House District 35. The campaign, according to the disclosure reports, appeared to be chronically underfunded. But, there seemed to be a lot more spending going on. Then the July 10 reports come out, and there’s nothing showing the stepped-up effort. Somehow, only $12,000 was spent between late May and mid-June? And slightly less than $2,000 in expenditures were showing on the pre-election report?

Hm.

Mind you, Kelly spent more than double that during the same period of time. This is either the most incredible stretching of dollars, ever, or something else was going on. We were told that the invoices weren’t received before the reporting time. However, in this economy, even consultants are hurting for cash. Really — we’ve heard of politicians taking their time to pay off invoices, but not sending them out in a reasonable time is a first.

Last week was not exactly the best for S.C. Democrats, who had to bear witness to three different events that weren’t entirely the doing of U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene. But, oh, did Greene and his campaign come up big. This guy and his people just don’t stop providing entertainment.

Greene’s epic freakout
We got it around noon on Saturday, and it began to go viral a few hours after that. Charlotte’s WCNC television sent a crew down to Manning to talk to Greene about his recent indictment (bad incident 1A) regarding the incident when he allegedly showed porn to a Carolina student in one of the worst pitches for tail since our last appearance at Bar None. The epicness is epic, as the kids say.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The Post & Courier‘s Brian Hicks does a fine job taking on the actions of the S.C. Democratic Party‘s reaction — Chairwoman Carol Fowler reiterating that Green should drop out, and lands a Forrest Gump reference on the candidate himself.

“My lawyer is dealing with that,” Greene said before hanging up.

That’s all he had to say about that.

But Friday’s statement shouldn’t be all the Democratic Party has to say about this. The party has fouled up several important races around the state, yet still wonders why it seems to be the permanent minority in South Carolina these days.

Green’s SCDP executive committee appearance
While the SCDP has publicly come down for Greene to step aside, it still played host to him at its executive committee meeting on Thursday. Free Times was on hand for the spectacle, in which we get friendly clapping, more candidate-in-a-pod behavior (30-second speech, no questions, no comments) and more people looking to get high-end jobs on the low-end campaign.

Greene’s speech clocked in at around 23 seconds, which is consistent with what his campaign adviser Felipe Farley had predicted weeks ago, when he noted that Greene wasn’t going to be doing any long barnburners on the stump.

When Greene finished, one of his newer advisers stood up.

“I would like to say that Alvin isn’t being short with you -– my name is Georgean McConnell and I’ve been working with Alvin -– and we have a speech committee and so forth and so I didn’t want him to get into no debates tonight or anything, because it’s really not fair since he’s been very cooperative with us.”

McConnell works at the University of South Carolina School of Music in the Center for Southern African-American Music as the gospel music ambassador. She went on to describe Greene as a quick learner and a knowledgeable person.

“So I think, in a very short time, you’re going to be seeing a very different Alvin Greene,” she said.

A-ha. Nope, looks like more of the same. Not that we’re upset about that one bit.

Gunn checks out
While the Greene sideshow has been running for some time, the abrupt announcement by Rep. Anton Gunn that he was leaving the House and taking over the regional U.S. Department of Health and Human Services post was the absolute bomb. Gunn’s a competitive Democrat in a competitive district, though a district that would tend to go Republican more often than not. His departure brought a lot of speculation about other issues, like whether his close ties to President Barack Obama were seriously hindering his reelection hopes or that he would simply be a victim of high Republican turnout.

Either is possible, but we think we could make a good case that a ficus plant would make a better member of the House than GOP nominee Sheri Few. The consideration that no other Republican this side of the padded-room set decided to run and win the nomination may suggest that local Republicans felt Gunn was solidifying his position as the HD-79 representative. Maybe because it seems Few will run on a regular basis, anyway, it just wasn’t worth another tough primary battle.

Whether any of these statements were factors doesn’t change the fact that this is a major blow for replenishing the stock of good Democratic candidates and for overall sanity in the General Assembly.

In light of what Sen. Hugh Leatherman wants to do with capping tuition increases, it’s funny to think about the sort of world that would happen if the S.C. Policy Council would get its way. After all, the SCPC has seen little of any government – public sector – spending that it likes. And it seems to have a hard-on for defunding all public education in South Carolina, whether it’s K-12 or higher ed.

Now, we’re pretty sure of our audience. We’re pretty sure y’all trade in argumentative fallacies, logical fallacies, the sort of ways about speaking of one’s position that are easily broken apart by level-headed thinking and basic common sense. But those arguments are the bread-and-butter of politics. They’re what you’ll see in handouts, mail pieces, advertisements, stump speeches and stand-up comedy routines.

So let’s have some fun with the Policy Council.

One big player this year, and probably in the GOP presidential primary race, is former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Newt’s a big fan of alternate history, along with writing partner and author William R. Forstchen. Let’s do a bit of alternate future, aye?

Beginning, the SCPC gets what it wants. Government in South Carolina, as we knew it, is gone. No statewide law enforcement, regulation, everything. The Palmetto State falls into “failed state” status as much as we all learned in early-level political science classes. The federal government, fed up with our antics and devoid of S.C. federal officials who will cooperate with the federal government, gives up on us. We devolve into a weird combination of post-1992 Somalia, 18th century Russia and plutocratic rule and a theocracy.

South Carolina does have a government, at its basic form, but it’s really strange. Ceding to people who have been involved, we have multiple capitals. Amalgamated Industry & Agriculture, the corporate group that handles everything dealing with money and commerce, buys the State House complex and handles disputes in Columbia. The rest of the United States and the world consider this the “Commerce Capital.”

A strong band of armed social conservatives claim part of the power vacuum for itself, establishing a ruling order in the Upstate to handle every vice and everything you do with your naughty, naughty genitals. Originally located in Greenville, a breakaway, fundamentalist group establishes a new religious government in Spartanburg. So now you have two groups of statewide religious police checking up on you. Be careful, brother.

The Grand Strand is ceded to North Carolina, and Hilton Head is ceded to Georgia. Too many people were having trouble figuring how to work Yankee-heavy areas into our new combination of free markets and religious fundamentalism. Yankees who feel like they belong apply, and are given permanent resident status, as long as they absolve all fealty to the Big Ten, the NBA and anything regarding to sports north of Baltimore or west of Austin. Being a hockey fan is considered a capital crime.

Congress, working slowly but worked into a frenzy because of the developments, sends Georgia and North Carolina national guard units to run border patrol. Initially, powered by Twitter and Facebook, many moderates, liberals, intellectuals, artists and other sorts took off for Charlotte and Savannah before the borders close. Rural residents and sportsmen who know the border regions and are friendly to criminals who become known as “RINOs,” “Democrats,” “educators,” “reporters,” “musicians,” “good-time Johnnys” and “those who are too big for their britches” are under special scrutiny from the Upstate moralist squads.

As the situation unfolds from the mountains to the river, Charleston figures out what’s up, organizes a government unto itself and rejoins the United States, a historical irony by itself. A city-state of a fashion, the Commonwealth of Charleston maintains its connection to America, but with an independence that befits the Holy City and its denizens. CC takes within its bounds all of Charleston County, and parts of neighboring cities and counties. The Jasper County port situation, to put it mildly, becomes a little more complicated. And by complicated, we mean issues with all-powerful corporations, multiple governmental entities and firearms. Wait – nevermind. That’s exactly how it is now.

Oh, the more things change….

When former The State editorial cartoonist Robert Ariail took a new job with The Herald-Journal, we thought it was a good thing for an accomplished guy and a nice move by a newspaper that is perhaps not going down the path of running a mid-size daily paper with the staff of a 7,000-circulation weekly. But what of the recent past? Ariail had joined up with the S.C. Policy Council for a little while, working with the half-baked but excessively well-funded The Nerve.

And that’s the rub. On July 18, Ariail went live with the cartoon above, which got more that a little bit of play for showing Rep. Nikki Haley in a burqa. After discussing the piece with friends, we decided that was perhaps not the best way to go. At the very least, it might be considered more than a little insensitive considering Sen. Jake Knotts‘ publicized ill-timed remarks.

But the Policy Council and Haley are tight, as she is with all of the little satellites of the disintegrating Sanford cabal. When the cartoon came out, though, we don’t remember hearing a peep out of the SCPC or anything from the Haley campaign drawing attention to the Policy Council’s association with Ariail. And yet, the following passage went out from a Nerve email on Wednesday.

The Nerve wishes cartoonist Robert Ariail the best as he begins his new venture with the Herald-Journal in Spartanburg. Ariail, who was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, has been a great asset to The Nerve over the past several months. We’ve all enjoyed hearing his clever ideas and seeing him turn his thoughts into brilliant sketches. We are looking forward to seeing this gifted artist’s continued success.

Interesting.

Saturday, legislators from across the South will be meeting in Charleston for the 64th annual Southern Legislative Conference so that they might return to their respective states with a little better ideas as to how to tackle issues that address the region. Off the top of our heads, some things that have needed attention for years are the neglect of public schools since desegregation, really trying to do more to move beyond manufacturing for a job base and totally restructuring the tax system. Alabama is really bad about this, since its constitution is even worse than ours, but South Carolina is doing things with the Taxation Realignment Commission. Maybe some lessons can be taken from that.

Beyond the event being held in the Lowcountry, South Carolina flavor is all over this year’s conference. Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell is the conference chairman, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham will speak at the opening plenary session, while U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn will hold court at the closing plenary. The conference, which was paid for by donations from businesses, is expected to generate about $3.5 million for the local economy.

“This event will bring in thousands of new visitors and will create a multi-million dollar economic boost for our state,” Harrell said in a statement. “For many of the conference guests, this will be their first trip to our state and we hope our hospitality makes return visitors out of many of them.”

Part of the conference is indeed showing off local attractions — Charles Towne Landing, the South Carolina Aquarium, Dunes West (which we haven’t been to in 19 years, but it must still be nice, right?), the Culinary Institute of Charleston and nearby museums, among other things. That makes it seem like a relaxing few days in the Holy City, with some meetings in between. Oh, ho, would that be a mistake assumption. A cursory look at the agenda shows that, yeah, this means all sorts of work. Committees here and committees there on every type of public policy, meetings on this, that and the other. They’re going to have to play nine at Dunes West just to readjust.

And — oh, yeah — Darius Rucker is playing.

Changes are going down in the Holly Springs VFD commission, and perhaps the strange dealings may be coming to an end. If you recall:

…those commissioners are appointed by Sens. Lee Bright and Shane Martin and Rep. Joey Millwood. From what we’ve been told about the four appointments, not everything’s been on the up-and-up, which is simply shocking when it comes to a couple savants like Bright and Millwood. It’s all a bit Byzantine, but hang with us here. First of all, when it was time for applications for a couple of the positions, they were not supposed to be allowed after Jan. 1. But, these got passed through. They were Clarence Gibbs, who owns Inman Realty, and Roscoe Kyle, a retired police officer. First, Gibbs employs Kelly Waters, who is another commissioner. Second, commissioner Ryan Phillips has a home loan with Gibbs. Third, Kyle grows crops on Gibbs’ property and is pals with him and Phillips.

The good news is that Gibbs has left the commission, so there’s some progress being made. Maybe in the coming weeks, it might open up more to Freedom of Information Act requests and basic government transparency measures. And perhaps because of this, Gibbs said in The Herald-Journal that he’ll be freed up to say what he wants and still interact with the commission without being subjected to those little irritants that let people in the district know what the hell is going on.

This surely won’t be the end of this story, but it’ll be interesting to see how the tempest in a teapot will end up.

The Taxation Realignment Commission is in the final stretch of its task to examine and offer common sense changes to the state tax code. Just getting the mission of TRAC through the General Assembly was not unlike pulling teeth when it came up, but it now could be the time that simplifications to the South Carolina tax system are ready to go. Wednesday, TRAC gave approval to a number of changes that will be up for final approval later this year.

For the most part, it’s advocating repealing sales tax exemptions for a whole host of products, including newspaper, groceries, cars, prescription drugs and some Internet sales. Certainly, that’s going to irritate some people, because no one likes to spend money if they don’t have to. But, it all evens out. Actually, the overall sales tax burden will drop, and the state is projected to receive the same amount of revenue. Sounds like a win, right?

Just like this year and the last, tough decisions had to be made in regard to funding, across the board. The idea behind TRAC was to get some of the best minds in the state around a table to take a hard look at our tax structure and make educated, hard decisions. If the commissioners came out with a report brimming with unicorns and lollipops, something would be wrong. Hopefully when this comes to a conclusion, legislators will keep in mind that it’s time for hard decisions and not everything is black and white.

Perhaps seeing where the power lines are drawn, or simply making a few selections, Howard Rich’s support of Democrats was a little anemic, but still interesting. We enjoyed the obvious support of Sen. Robert Ford’s gubernatorial bid, and the only dollars to a senate account we could find — Darrell Jackson.

ROBERT FORD
Democrat, governor, lost primary
Contributions: $23,542.15
(In-kind: $3,491.15)
Expenditures: $67,836.28
Cash on hand: $33,972.28

Significant contributions
123 Lasalle Associates, $3,500
Howard Rich shell company
123 Lasalle Inc., $3,500
Howard Rich shell company
Rich Lending Corporation, $3,500
Howard Rich shell company
Leon Howard, $200
State representative
Clementa Pinckney, $250
State senator
Kent Williams, $250
State senator
SCRG PAC, $3,492.15
School choice organization
188 Claremont LLC, $3,500
Howard Rich shell company
Terry Alexander, $350
State representative
Gerald Malloy, $500
State senator
Darrell Jackson, $500
State senator

Significant expenditures
None.

DARRELL JACKSON
Democrat, Senate District 21, no race
Contributions: $16,200
Expenditures: $21,888.65
Cash on hand: $4,347.77

Significant contributions
Stilrich LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Bradford Management of N.Y., $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
470 W 166 LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Rich Lending Corporation, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Coolcal LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
332 E. 11 LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Silver & Silver Properties, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
188 Claremont LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
123 Lasalle Associates, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company

Significant expenditures
None.

ENNIS BRYANT
Democrat, House District 50, lost primary
Contributions: $8,125
Expenditures: $9,963.68
Cash on hand: $4,514.53

Significant contributions
51 First Avenue LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Bradford Management of N.Y., $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
470 W 166 LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company

Significant expenditures
None.

JOHNNY SELLERS
Democrat, House District 54, lost primary
Contributions: $7,380
Expenditures: $5,583.76
Cash on hand: $1,991.98

Significant contributions
W 14 & 18 LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Bradford Management of N.Y., $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Coolcal LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
188 Claremont LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Silver & Silver Properties, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Rich Lending Corporation, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
123 Lasalle Associates, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company

Significant expenditures
None.

CURTIS BRANTLEY
Democrat, House District 122, won primary
Contributions: $18,550
Expenditures: $14,266.60
Cash on hand: $11,920.21

Significant contributions
123 Lasalle Inc., $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
West 14 & 18 LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
S.C. Legislative Black Caucus, $750
Legislative committee
Coolcal LLC, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Silver & Silver Properties, $1,000
Howard Rich shell company
Bradford Management of N.Y., $1,000
Howard Rich shell company

Significant expenditures
None.