Gov. Mark Sanford‘s War on Education 2010™ gets its last chance to be stopped today and tomorrow, as well. What’s really got a lot of people riled up is his full-on broadside against S.C. Educational Television, which also runs the public radio side under the ETV banner. This shit is just baffling. Did an episode of “Nova” rub him the wrong way? Maybe it’s ETV’s dedication to providing open forums during elections. Perhaps Sanford took the wrong advice from Tom and Ray and threw the rods in his car. Then there’s always the chance he really, really hates jazz. Or tote bags and coffee mugs.
Whatever it is, people like Sanford have been punching public broadcasting in the kidneys and knifing it in the back for so long that Ira Glass is asking us for money on the podcasts. When we lived in North Carolina, it seems our mom gave so much cash to WFDD that we might have been able to use that money for college. Like say, Wake Forest. Really, there are those of us out there, especially before the advent of iPods and podcasts that wake up with “Morning Edition,” go home with “All Things Considered,” and do the “Car Talk,” “Whad’Ya Know,” “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” circuit on Saturday, saving “A Prairie Home Companion” for the Sunday morning replay.
Jesus, we listen to a lot of NPR. Regardless, that’s not counting, as we’ve said before, the valuable services ETV provides with handling election coverage and helping educate students in newsgathering and multimedia. So, hands off, gaucho.
As for the rest, it just fits with the pattern. Sanford’s trying to blow up the technical college system — something that North Carolina rode to economic success decades ago — and continuing to assault funding that lets our research universities do actual research. You know, things that help move our state forward, attracting new, innovative businesses and the educated, well-paid workers that come with them.
This cut at any cost, screw the impact on actual people, consider only the numbers thinking isn’t a Sanford creation, of course — that would force him to be creative. No, the International Monetary Fund got pretty good at it. And we’ll end up the same way as those third-world backwaters, with no support, no nothing for actual people, sliced down to the bone with no benefit. Them that’s got shall have, them that’s not shall lose.
Oh, yeah — and he’s really against trying to anything for minorities in education, unless it’s to set up local black preachers to expand their personal fiefdoms for political support in the manner of “school choice.” This is — you know, you have hopes for a guy, and then he sends out a 29-page document detailing the opposite and strongarms the Legislature into buying most of it.
Veto 2
Commission on Higher Education
SCAMP, $187,410
This is a statewide alliance among colleges and universities to work to increase the numbers of black undergraduates who decide to go after doctorates in the sciences.
Veto 3
Commission on Higher Education
Greenville Higher Education Center, $67,967
This is an agreement among colleges and universities to offer higher education services to the Upstate.
Veto 5
Commission on Higher Education
Access and Equity, $416,336
This program attempts to “recruit and retain minority students.”
Veto 8
S.C. State University
Teacher Training and Development, $478,786
Because our state apparently has a surplus of great teacher training. If there’s anything that should be saved from the axe, it should be anything devoted to helping our teachers reach their potential, and in turn helping their students reach their potential.
Veto 9
University of South Carolina
African-American Professors Program, $178,805
The point behind this program is to recruit more black professors to important areas at state colleges and universities.
Veto 11
University of South Carolina
Nanotechnology Research, $558,573
Good God almighty. While we were at Carolina, the nanotech program was hailed alongside the international business program as one of the jewels in the crown. It’s one of the very positive things that makes Carolina unique. Of course Sanford would try to kill half a million in funding to it.
Veto 12
University of South Carolina
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Research, $558,573
Again, the clown currently residing in the Governor’s Mansion is missing the point. He’d rather strip down the government to nothing than have a state university break new ground in alternative energy. If you believe the spending outweighs the benefits, we feel sorry for you.
Veto 13
University of South Carolina
Technology Incubator, $111,714
Because helping develop businesses that attract skilled workers with good incomes is obviously a bad idea. Join the Governor for the race to the bottom, South Carolina!
Veto 19, Veto 20, Veto 21
Technical and Comprehensive Education Board
All General Funds, $3,012,760; $624,717
Other Operating Expenses, $367,724
Perhaps one of the most egregious run of vetoes in the entire message to the General Assembly. Beyond the rhetoric, it contains a significant amount of, “Fuck you, tech schools.”
Veto 22, Veto 24
S.C. Educational Television
All General Funds, $1,180,134; $3,353,032; $710,000
Ugh. Self-explanatory.
It sure must be nice to be Gov. Mark Sanford. You’ve got all that money. You can have an affair on the state dime with a woman on another continent who is used to the finer parts of living. You can raid Mallory Factor’s ice cream stash. And you have health care. Think that’s not a big deal? Try making less than $25,000 and affording a basic plan.
Even better, try living in a rural area, affording a basic plan with a very limited income and then try to get good access to the general practitioners and specialists you need. An absolute ton of money — most of it going to rural areas and Medicaid — is getting cut unless our legislators do something this week to stop it. This state has a lot of people in rural areas who are poor and underserved.
Veto 17
Area Health Education Consortium
Rural Physicians Program, $422,244
It’s long been a scandal that in rural areas, especially the rural South, we don’t have enough adequately-trained doctors to handle the population.
Veto 18
Area Health Education Consortium
Infrastructure Development, $393,974
According to Sanford’s own report, it “provides salary support and fringe benefits for four regional coordinators, student housing and travel expenses for student activities. While this program’s purpose – to encourage clinical experiences in rural and underserved community settings – is laudable….” Translation: “You’re poor and live in the country. Suck it.”
Veto 26
Department of Health and Human Services
Other Personal Services, $384,184
Basically cutting funding for Medicaid, because South Carolina obviously doesn’t have a need for health care funding for the poor.
Veto 28
Department of Health and Environmental Control
Infectious Diseases: Other Operating Expenses, $3,213,439
Facepalm.
Veto 54, Veto 55, Veto 56, Veto 57, Veto 58
Department of Health and Human Services
Rural Hospital Grants, Community Health Plan Grants, &c.
More cutting of funding for Medicaid.
And the big one.
Veto 107
State Budget, Part IV
Federal Medical Assistance Percentages, $214 million
This is straight-up money allocated to the state by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Medicaid.
It really is true. Gov. Mark Sanford really is a (and saying this in an English accent) right bastard. His absurdist views when it comes to the role of government and where his priorities are is totally fucked. People have been rightly pointing, in the days after the vetoes came out, that our state’s entire system of the arts and humanities is under a full-scale attack.
The State Museum, the State Library, county libraries, the S.C. Arts Commission, the Department of Archives and History and all sorts of related entities are getting hit, and hit hard. There’s already talk that the Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum, housed at the State Museum, will have to close.
This appears to be yet another attack on the average South Carolinian. We can’t explain how important a place that good museums and local libraries played in our life. For parents and kids, especially on a budget, these places are invaluable resources to augment or surpass what happens in the classroom. We need to make it easier for parents to help in their children’s education, not making it harder.
And then there’s the state archives, which actually requires funding to hire people to preserve our state’s history promote it and educate about it. This whole mess is horrible. It’s rank. It’s an insult to the working people of South Carolina.
And yet how were we not surprised. The humanities — remember, the things that make us human — have been getting devalued for generations in our country. The Cold War, tech booms and a misplaced jingoism as it came to international competition created the misplaced notion that math and science matters more than English and history. If you don’t see it as a zero-sum game, then you are one optimistic person.
You see it in high school down here. Sure, kids that we went to school with had their trig classes, but they were dumbing down our AP English and history classes. Having an AP class where the kids didn’t have the same vocabulary skills we were expected to have in middle school in North Carolina — well, that was irritating. If there was a chance to take an English 201 class or a 300-level history class as an upperclassman, we would have stayed our senior year instead of leaving early for college. But those subjects don’t seem to matter, especially to the highest elected official in state government.
Look on [his] works, ye mighty, and despair.
Veto 29
Department of Archives and History
Other Operating Expenses, $635,445
Veto 30
Department of Archives and History
Old Exchange Building, $145,500
Veto 31
State Library
Aid to County Libraries, $4,653,933
Veto 32
S.C. Arts Commission
General Funds, $1,212,733
Veto 33
State Museum
Other Operating Expenses, $1,643,893
Veto 92, Veto 104, Veto 105, Veto 106
State Budget, Part III, Section 2
State Library, $1,172,758
Department of Archives and History, $200,000
S.C. Arts Commission, $250,000
State Museum, $50,000
As Professor Farnsworth would say, “Good news, everyone!” It was looking bad for a while for the state budget. The Senate raised fees to pay for the courts and public safety, even involving a rare rebuke of Lt. Gov. André Bauer on the rules. Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed it, and the House, not having the votes to override, carved $50.2 million of state health care funding. The Senate wasn’t having any of that, and the House, in turn, rebuffed the Senate (isn’t legislating fun?).
But it all worked out in the end. Four Republicans and two Democrats put their heads together and crafted a compromise that looks like it’ll fly, meaning that the chances are looking better that the General Assembly won’t have to return for extra time. It’s ends up with the House getting one bit and losing one bit. A proposal to ban funding for abortions in cases of rape or incest found its way to the cutting room floor, but the funding cuts remained in. Considering that it looks like the fee increases were Sanford’s main reason for sending the budget back to the legislature, this could very well be done.
Unless, of course, some wags in either chamber decide to throw a spanner in the works. Please, ladies and gentlemen, just send the budget through and let’s move on.
Hey, kids — you may have forgotten that with the state’s political environment turning into so many wacky waving inflatable arm flailing arm tubemen, the General Assembly is still in session, and there are important decisions being made. You may have also thought that a lot of the enmity between the legislature and Gov. Mark Sanford has gone away. Maybe so, but on Tuesday the Senate didn’t get down with Sanford’s vetoes.
When the Governor vetoed the fees to pay for shortfalls in judicial funding, the budget went back to the House. It appeared to be clear to the leadership that there wasn’t any way to whip enough votes to override the veto, so Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Cooper put forward an amendment that you’ve likely heard about. It basically took a machete and sliced the shit out of the budget, cutting more that $50 million. The cuts came from all kinds of health care assistance for the poor and lower-middle class. The amendment and the budget passed, and it went on to the Senate. But something funny happened on the way to sending the budget on its happy way.
The Senate was not down with the House changes, voting to reject the amendment. Welcome to conference committee, gentlemen. Six legislators now have the thankless task of trying to fix this $50 million problem and how to get the budget into law, with or without Sanford’s signature.
As of now, the General Assembly is slated to adjourn on June 3. Many years before, the sine die deadline hasn’t really mattered, and a special session would be called to either handle fixing the budget or vetoes or whathaveyou. There’s been a strong push this and last year to get all the work done in fewer days in order to save cash. There will no doubt have to be a lot of off-the-clock work to beat the deadline this year.
In a rare move on the part of the Senate, Lt. Gov. André Bauer found himself on the wrong side of the count when a ruling he made was overturned. Late Thursday night and into early Friday morning, Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell and Bauer took turns presiding over the Senate’s marathon session to pass the budget. While Bauer was up, he ruled out of order a $12 fee on license plate registration.
That ruling, which was not welcomed by many on the floor, threw the budget out of balance. Needless to say, there was a feeling that the ruling was made under the wrong assumptions. Also — heavens — needing to go through and re-balance the budget would have been a gigantic clusterfuck if there ever was one. Shortly thereafter, McConnell stepped back in and a motion to reverse the Lieutenant Governor’s decision. It only took a majority vote.
In short order, or what amounted to that during the evening, Bauer was overruled by the Senate by a vote of 28-14. This sort of incident looks like fodder for the gubernatorial campaign, for Bauer and for his opponents. Bauer can roll out and say he was protecting the pocketbooks of South Carolinians, while his opponents can say that even after almost eight years as President of the Senate, he’s still making mistakes on knowing the rules of the chamber and lawmaking in South Carolina. Everybody wins.
It turns out that the “Sanford candidate” for governor, Rep. Nikki Haley, doesn’t have the clean status on the federal budget stabilization dollars as she would like you to think.
In a conversation with conservative blogger Moe Lane, she said she was opposed to the $700 million in stimulus money from the beginning, and backed Gov. Mark Sanford‘s very poor plan to spend that money on paying off bondholders, instead of shoring up funding problems in education and law enforcement.
On March 9, she was one of 108 members of the House to vote for Amendment 73 of H. 3560, the budget bill. Amt. 73 was sponsored by Reps. Dan Cooper, Kenny Bingham, James Smith and Bakari Sellers. The idea behind it was to put the stimulus dollars up front and get it out of the way, and it’s impossible that she didn’t know what she was voting for, since it read, “(SR: ARRA Fund Authorization) It is the intent of the General Assembly to accept all available funds from the State Budget Stabilization Fund contained within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Office of State Budget is directed to increase agency federal fund authorizations for funds from the State Budget Stabilization Fund allocated by the General Assembly.”
You would have thought she would have voted in the negative, along with Reps. Nathan Ballentine, Eric Bedingfield, Dan Hamilton, Joey Millwood, Wendy Nanney, Garry Smith, Jim Stewart and Thad Viers. Not so much.
Then, she voted against the stimulus when it came back to the House via Sanford’s veto, saying of it, “As we saw with the override of the Governor’s veto regarding stimulus funds, there are still too many in the legislature committed to spending every taxpayer dollar they can find.” So, what — it’s OK on March 9, but reckless spending on May 20?
Normally, we don’t pay attention to what Will Folks writes, because it would be just as enjoyable to put one’s hand on a hot stove. While standing in a pile of fire ants. In 120-degree heat. But, every once in a while he writes something that has absolutely no basis in reality, and needs to have his immature, sophomoric ass called out for it (Remember Harrell for Governor? We do).
This time, he’s making something out of less than nothing by saying that U.S. District Judge Joseph Anderson has some sort of vendetta against Gov. Mark Sanford because his brother ran against Sen. Shane Massey last year. One of the most absurd things is the allegation that Sanford raised $30,000 for Massey. Where is this money? Where did it come from? Naturally, he just throws the figure out there and doesn’t say. Nor does he say who gave him this arbitrary number. [Looks like people finally got under the petulant child's skin.]
But, perhaps the most asinine assertion is that the race was “close and incredibly contentious.” Really? Massey beat Greg Anderson by nine points, and was 0.85 percentage points away from hitting double digits. Damn — that’s really close. Anderson never had a chance in that race. In fact, he already had issues early on. There appeared to be some bad feelings among black Democrats in the district, and Aiken resident and then-S.C. Young Democrats president Travis Johnson jumped in at the last second to challenge Anderson in the primary. There were also rumors that a local black radio personality was fired for speaking against Anderson during the primary race.
The whole basis of the steaming pile S.C.’s resident eight-year-old blogger posted was that Judge Anderson should have recused himself from the case because of his “obvious proximity to Sanford.” Jeebus save us. So, a judge’s brother loses an election to a Republican, and that constitutes “obvious proximity” to the Governor? With that logic, it’s no surprise he once had a job with one of the worst governors in the history of the state.
Here at WR central, we like to wait until the end of the business day to see what happens. Usually, news will break around 5 p.m., and it happened again Wednesday with Gov. Mark Sanford‘s high-priced (but free!) attorneys making a motion to move the suit of Chapin High senior Casey Edwards and USC law student Justin Williams from state to federal court.
It is, frankly, interesting that a man so wrapped up in opposing the federal government is nonetheless running to the federal courts to make certain that South Carolina does not have the money it needs to fill in funding gaps in K-12 and higher education, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Juvenile Justice. It is also interesting that he got himself named as a party to the suit for this expressed action, then launched ad hominem attacks at the attorneys for the students.
Dick Harpootlian, one of the attorneys representing the students and one of Columbia’s best with the spoken word, said to WIS, “The Supreme Court allowed Governor Sanford to intervene after the deadline with the condition that he not deny them jurisdiction. He then denied them jurisdiction. This is conduct unbecoming of the Governor or any other elected official. Why is he running the Federal Court from state court when he has made a career out of condemning federal interference in state affairs?”
Either way, U.S. District Court Judge Joe Anderson will hear arguments in all three stimulus cases on Monday. But, if anyone thinks that a ruling in district court will stop this, they’re dreaming. Expect Gov. No and his band of merry barristers to push this as far as it will go.
The stories making news on this getaway afternoon, are, not surprisingly, coming out of the courtroom. We’ve got opportunistic attorney generals and lobbyists taking a break from payday lending, and nothing resolved, quite yet.
McMaster v. The Vast Series of Tubes
A federal judge put a temporary kibosh on Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster’s war against liste de Craig’s, which means it’s time to drop the slips of the paper back into the hat and select a new crisis.
S.C. students, et. al. v. Gov. No
The last time Chapin High School senior Casey Edwards saw her case go to court, the judge threw it out because it had not reached appropriate ripeness. Now, she has been joined by USC Law student Justin Williams as they attempt to sue Gov. Mark Sanford into accepting the federal budget stabilization dollars. Dwight Drake, taking a break from being the punch to Tommy Moore‘s jab for the payday lending industry, will again be the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
S.C. Association of School Administrators v. Gov. No
According to a late-afternoon tweet and subsequent correction (O’CONNOR! ::fist waving::), SCASA is suing to make Sanford accept the budget stabilization money, as well. Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex is also named in the suit.
All of this litigation (which we lay at the feet of the Sanford and McMaster), not to mention the Governor’s smooth move earlier this week, just goes to prove again that, no matter for all the griping about lawsuits in South Carolina, nobody is willing to do what it takes to resolve conflicts outside the courtroom. Over here, we believe that this is because, excuse us, way too fucking many people in state politics are attorneys or have law degrees. We never trusted those types when we were in school, preferring instead to cavort with the degenerates in the PR and journalism programs.
It should be a general rule of thumb that just because you can bring a lawsuit, doesn’t mean that you should.
