Maybe Gov. Mark Sanford is shutting it down early, but he’s decided not to oppose $127 million in federal spending that’s slated for state health care programs. Specifically, programs dealing with the poor and disabled. Mind you, this is a guy who camped out on cable television during the second stimulus debate and went to court against the General Assembly to stop federal stimulus money from reaching the Palmetto State.
Sanford’s spokesman said that he just didn’t want the fight, and that he didn’t (?) oppose the health care stimulus bucks. That’s all well and good, but when the Department of Health and Human Services spokesman says the agency is still $200 million in the red, that’s a problem. What it signals is that next year’s budgeting is going to be another round of 20-hour sessions and every group that gets state money tubthumping to keep their funding.
What’s likely, and won’t be fun for many, is there will be another ton of cuts and many people will be trying to do more with less. And a lot of people who depend on the state for services would be well-served to figure out another method to get done what’s needed.
The recent fetish with the Founders by tea partiers has us thinking about this post we put up in May of 2009. The “Mount Vernon Statement,” yet another part of this, goes into a blind contemplation of what went down between 1776 and 1788.
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
[...]
The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
In filing his lawsuit against the State of South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford name-dropped the Founding Fathers, something every politician, and those in the periphery, have a duty to do at least several dozen times a year. Here’s the problem: the Founders weren’t deities, they were men.
If the Governor wants to play up the separation of powers argument to prevent needed money to get to schools and to keep South Carolinians safe, then that’s his prerogative. But including the Founders as a buttress to what he is saying is one of the most ridiculous rhetorical maneuvers in American politics. The intention of the name-drop is, “If the Founders wrote it, it must be great.”
Sure, about 75-to-80 percent of what ended up in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was brilliant, on a level never seen before and rarely again. But, one has to realize some facts.
The Founders were all privileged white men. They owned a good bit of land. A solid number of them owned slaves. Hence, who could vote for George Washington? White men who owned 20 acres of land. Women, free blacks, lower-class whites? Yeah, not so much. But, hey, it’s not all bad. If you were a slave, you counted as three-fifths of a person, though under law you were still as much of a piece of property as the overseer’s whip.
Hence, it took until the 1820s for all white men to be able to vote, a Civil War and Constitutional amendments to abolish slavery and give black men the right to vote (though, in practice, that took another 100 years) and about 144 years after independence for women to gain the franchise.
If you wanted to vote for your U.S. senator, good luck being elected to the state legislature. It wasn’t until the 20th Century that senators were elected by popular vote. Also, if it weren’t for a bunch of crazy people worried about civil liberties, we wouldn’t have gotten the Bill of Rights.
And, sweet heavens, this is just the beginning. So, next time you hear something about “original intents” or what the Founders wanted, keep in mind what was the original intent. Political history, like current events, is never in the bichromatic, simplistic way some would like it.
Rep. Nikki Haley has made her time in the House by bullshitting her constituents, who apparently haven’t been paying close enough attention or been getting involved enough to call her on her hypocrisy. Of course, her buds (Will Folks, the S.C. Policy Council, [because his boss heads SCPC] Adam Fogle, the S.C. Club for Growth, &c.) won’t do anything to show what a shit campaign she’s running for governor.
If Haley had decided to bide her time in the House, she probably wouldn’t be caught in so many traps. But, she creates them for herself and then steps into them and acts like nobody will pay attention. That’s too bad, because the House leadership is done with her crap. When you get called out in public by the leadership of your own party, that could be a clue that you don’t know what they hell you’re doing.
Tuesday, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Dan Cooper, decided he had enough and called a spade a spade.
For months I have held my tongue while Rep. Nikki Haley traveled the state touting her “opposition” to taking federal stimulus dollars, but after reading her Feb. 12 guest column in this paper I felt compelled to set the record straight. Here are the facts:
While the majority of state legislators opposed President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan on principle, we realized that if South Carolina did not accept the federal funds then the hard-earned tax dollars of the families we represent would be spent in other places, like New Jersey and California. In other words, we would be paying the price and getting nothing in return.
Rep. Haley knew that. This legislation was thoroughly discussed, and the issues were very clear. On March 9, Rep. Haley joined 107 other legislators voting for an amendment to the budget bill to accept the stimulus money. The very next day, she voted for the budget bill that included the stimulus money. On the third and final reading of the bill, it passed overwhelmingly with a voice vote.
It was only two weeks after she announced her candidacy for governor that Nikki Haley changed her tune on the stimulus. She then began to publicly question everyone else who had joined her on multiple occasions in voting to accept these federal funds. And despite all of her double talk, the truth is Nikki Haley’s rhetoric just doesn’t match her record.
Haley has taken steps in recent years to get in tight with the Sanford cabal. Now that organization is falling apart, she’s up the creek. It should be a lesson to others who sell out for for out-of-state dollars and perceived influence. Put your constituents and your district first — not political pals.
We’ve considered Rep. Nikki Haley‘s gubernatorial campaign to be half-baked from the very beginning. She entered the race after the biggest names in the Republican primary were in (or assumed to be in), and after they started raising money. Our sources have indicated to us that her finance operation has been late in getting its shit together, and her grassroots planning has been worse. Then you have the campaign’s political director, Justin Evans, leaving in December before things get interesting. There’s a story there, but nobody’s talking.
Now we’ve got this stimulus business. As the Sanford candidate, Haley’s been trying to toe the rhetorical line on the stimulus bills, bringing it up multiple times in the GOP gubernatorial debate recently. Quoted today in The State from the debate, she said, “I don’t want any Washington bailout money of any kind.” Au contraire. Last year, she voted for the cash. The justification? Her belief in Gov. Mark Sanford‘s strange thinking that the state could reject it.
Let’s put this in context. Six years ago, U.S. Sen. John Kerry got raked over the coals for the statement, “I was for it before I was against it.” Haley has one-upped that, by being — by her statements and actions — for and against something at the same time. That is truly deft political dancing. A few pols might have been able to pull that one off, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton come to mind, but those men were geniuses at the art of politics, the type that come around once in a generation.
If what we’ve seen so far is the case, the District 87 representative is not cut of that cloth.
Not all of the emails turned over to the media were of a serious nature. Some people tried to be funny, while others were humorous totally without intention.
Jokes about goats
This can’t be good. A few supporters of Gov. Mark Sanford, in a “send all” email, joke around about U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson‘s endorsement of Sen. Jake Knotts in Knotts’ primary race last year against Katrina Shealy. First were the remarks about goats, and then some rather ill-advised remarks about Wilson’s wife.
That’s not my tweet
The Governor’s Office, none too happy with the proliferation of fake Twitter profiles of Sanford, lodged a complaint with the home office.
Gov gets pwn3d on the stimulus
This one speaks, in all caps, for itself.
The S.C. Supreme Court ruled today to support reason, good sense and logic as it went unanimously, 5-0, against Gov. Mark Sanford and required him to accept the $700 million over two years in budget stabilization dollars allocated by the federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
According to the Court, Sanford exists in a ministerial role and does not have the authority to reject the funds since the General Assembly passed it, then overrode his veto. The irony is that this part of the decision lies in a separation of powers argument, something that the Governor’s big-time barristers tried to spin in his favor.
The duty to execute the Budget, as properly enacted by the General Assembly, is a ministerial duty of the Governor. He has no discretion concerning the appropriation of funds. The application for the SFS funds is a simple, definite duty arising under the conditions specified in the ARRA and leaves nothing to Governor Sanford’s discretion. It is a ministerial duty. Because the General Assembly, following Governor Sanford’s certification and request that the ARRA “funds be released,” included the SFS funds in the Budget and by virtue of its concurrent resolution, the clear intent is the State of South Carolina desires the SFS funds, and Governor Sanford must ask for the funds.
While we recognize and respect Governor Sanford’s sincerely held beliefs concerning the ARRA, those convictions do not alter the ministerial nature of the legal duty now before him. The decision on a request to mandamus the Governor is an extremely delicate one, which is undertaken with great reluctance and consciousness of its great gravity and importance. Blalock v. Johnston, 180 S.C. at 43, 185 S.E. at 52. However, when mandamus is warranted, “the judiciary cannot properly shrink from its duty.” Id. at 50, 180 S.E. at 55.
We hold under the circumstances presented that a writ of mandamus is warranted and issue a writ of mandamus to compel Governor Sanford to apply for the SFS funds and take all legal and necessary steps to effectuate the State’s receipt of the SFS funds for the purposes as set forth by Congress.
One of the interesting things about this case combo, which was previously unknown to WR, was that the husband of Columbia City Council member Belinda Gergel, Richard, helped represent the S.C. Education Association in a “friend of the court” capacity.
Regardless, it’s nice that things like facts and sense won the day, but the countdown starts now to the Sanford lackeys creating their own reality to attack the decision.
Put a big red nose on the Governor, because he’s been clowning out. Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Anderson sent two of the stimulus suits back to state courts, where they will be heard by the S.C. Supreme Court. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Gov. Mark Sanford from trying to move the goal posts, and doing what it takes to try to spin the story before he loses, again, trying to keep millions of dollars away from public education and law enforcement.
“I think even where the court case ends up underscores in essence good people trapped in a horrible system,” Sanford said in The Post and Courier. “We have in this case a Supreme Court that is picked by the General Assembly. They regularly lobby the General Assembly for funding and other things. You could have five Solomons, but at the end of the day if you had to go to another group to get funded and to give you the goal posts, if you will, for your playing field it would be a very, very tough spot in which to operate.”
OH NOES! You never knew our governor was such a whiny bastard, did you? He’s like that jackass in elementary school who, in the middle of a pick-up game of baseball or football, wants to change the rules because he’s losing. Seriously, normally you would think that parents would be proud of a kid who becomes governor, but when you act like a rich, spoiled kid like Sanford has, it’ll give you pause.
Can’t wait to see what he does at the S.C. Supreme Court today, as nearly everybody and their mom will be watching the live feed.
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.
The lead attorney in the top-flight firm handling Gov. Mark Sanford‘s stimulus suit actually took him for a ride. In a plane, that is, during Sanford’s 2002 campaign for governor. John Foster, a partner in Kilpatrick Stockton, flew him to several campaign events, according to a story by the Associated Press.
Not only that, but said pilot/attorney has also been doing work for the State Ports Authority, drawing over $200,000 in the past two years. That may not seem like much to the well-heeled crowd Sanford surrounds himself with, but drawing over $100,000 for a side job sure would sound nice to the over 1-in-10 South Carolinians currently without a job.
It should come as no surprise, either, that the firm has, collectively, given Sanford over $14,000 between his two campaigns. As much as Sanford (or the person who is on the state dole to spout the Governor’s misinformation) would like to say, “No, nothing to see here,” we know better.
For anyone who has investigated the Governor and his myriad of shell groups, 501(c)4s, allied non-profits and the like, the connections between this firm and the Governor’s Office simply raises more questions. With Sanford, all roads lead to one place, but they tend to be meticulously covered to prevent any untoward snooping.
