Columbia City Paper

By Andy Brack

Now is the time in our state and nation for courage – - for leaders who will stand up for what’s right for the state and nation, regardless of how it will impact them personally.

What do we have instead?

• Blowhards like Sarah Palin who are more interested in soundbites, making money  and getting on TV than actually doing any work.
• Weaklings like Mark Sanford, who drag out the release of a public report of a public investigation by a public body about his failings as a public servant.
• Scoundrels like three Democratic U.S. senators who are holding out voting for health care reform because they are scared they won’t be re-elected.
• Partisan boobs like the infotainers Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann.
• Political lemmings, like many in the state House and Senate who aren’t able to make up their minds without consulting the polls, lobbyists and special interests.

Where are the Martin Luther King Jr.s of today?  Where are the crusading editors, such as the Atlanta Constitution’s Ralph McGill, who wrote about kicking the Klan in the teeth from the 1940s until his death in 1969?  Where are more leaders like Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, who marched on Columbia earlier this decade in protest of the Confederate flag on the Statehouse?

In 1955 when then-Senator John F. Kennedy published “Profiles in Courage,” he recognized that all sorts of forces seek to dampen the spirit of courage in our elected leaders – the influence from political peers in office, the desire to be re-elected and the pressure from constituents and lobby groups.   In the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, he recognized the increased impact of mass media, which has exploded since Kennedy’s day with the Internet, faxes, Blackberries, Twitter, Facebook and cable television.

But in the end, he concluded that political courage and the ability to compromise without giving up principles remains important for America to remain America:  “A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality,” Kennedy wrote.

Eleven years later, respected U.S. Sen. William Fulbright wrote in “The Arrogance of Power,” that it was important to criticize one’s country.  “Criticism is more than a right:  it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, than the familiar rituals of national adulation.”

So when there’s news that Republican county parties in South Carolina are censuring U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for diligently working with others to come up with a national solution on carbon pollution or immigration, we think of Graham’s courage and others’ callousness and cowardice.

When we read how Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mullins McLeod of Charleston wants the Confederate flag taken off the Statehouse grounds, we easily can predict the firestorm of hatred his campaign will get.  And while he may have been trying to kickstart his campaign, at least he had the courage to take a stand unpopular to many.

When we see President Obama trying to fix health care, get better options on Afghanistan and move the economy forward, we know we’re seeing flashes of courage, and not grandstanding.  These are tough decisions.

More of our leaders need to take a political lesson from the daily, unheralded experiences of our police, firefighters, soldiers, sailors and airmen – sometimes it’s just time to say, “Damn the torpedoes … full speed ahead.”  These elected officials need to ignore pollster politics and stand up for what’s right.

More in our media need to stop the hype, ask hard questions and do the real stories that highlight what’s going on in America and our state.

It’s time for political and editorial courage – for people to look into their hearts to do what’s right – to work on big challenges in the economy, education, health care and poverty.  And if not now, when?

Andy Brack, publisher of S.C. Statehouse Report, can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.

Compiled by Todd Morehead

HONEA PATH

Tax Dollars at Work

The Anderson County EMS Advisory Commission has voted to withhold county funding for the Honea Path rescue squad while an investigation into suspicious credit card charges moves forward.

Officials are investing the squad after county officials discovered an EMS credit card was used for such dating services as Singlesnet.com, eHarmony.com and Match.com.

Honea Path Police Chief David King said he didn’t know who had the card at the time of the purchases, according to the Anderson Independent Mail. Authorities are also exploring the possibly that the charges could be linked to identity theft and credit card fraud by a person not associated with the rescue squad. The squad receives about $25,000 per year in public funds, according to one report.

CAMDEN

Honey, I Don’t Have HIV

A Camden man has been sentenced to six years in prison for not disclosing his HIV infection to his ex-wife.

Prosecutors said Joel Bedenbaugh, 47, told his wife he took medicine for a blood disease throughout their five-year marriage, but never disclosed that the medication was for HIV. A jury found Bedenbaugh, a former teacher, guilty of exposing others to HIV. His wife was not infected.

CHARLESTON

If She Scooped, You Must Acquit!

Dorchester County Council wants Circuit Judge Diane Goodstein to stop bringing her dogs to work. According to one media report, the council has asked the county attorney to write a letter asking that only service dogs be allowed in the court building.

Goodstein told the Charleston Post and Courier that her dogs, an Airedale and two spaniels, are housebroken and haven’t soiled the courthouse floors. The judge said she believes the rumors started when she was witnessed on her hands and knees cleaning mud tracks left by a construction worker, according to the report.

OUCH! Naked Reverie Ends with Taser

A Charleston man’s naked escapades in an apartment complex parking lot came to an abrupt end after residents reported the disturbance to police.

According to the Charleston Post and Courier, police responded to reports of a naked man jumping on cars and running around the Ashley Shores apartment complex. The man was reportedly yelling, “He was the sun, the moon and that he was all-knowing,” according to the report.

When authorities arrived on the scene, the man jumped into a nearby marsh and made his way toward the Jenkins Orphanage. Police later Tased the man and transported him by EMS to an area hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

ORANGEBURG

Porn: Entertainment While You Wait

An Orangeburg man on probation for burglary has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a woman’s home and watching Internet pornography while waiting for her to return.

Jaquetin Fox, 18, is charged with armed robbery, first-degree burglary, grand larceny and kidnapping. Police found four knives and lengths of cord that had been cut from the blinds and appliances that were placed strategically around the house.

“All that stuff wasn’t positioned around the house so he could talk about the weather,” Capt. Mike Adams of the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Adams told the Orangeburg Times-Democrat. “It certainly takes on the appearance of more than a simple burglary.”

ROCK HILL

Ah, Sheee-it! That’s Just Low, Man!

Police are seeking information about a stolen golf cart that belongs to a woman with cerebral palsy.

According to the Rock Hill Herald, Haley Christmas, 27, enjoyed parking the golf cart in her yard to smile and wave at passing cars. Christmas reportedly named the cart “Bye-Bye” and has worn an oval shaped track in the grass from driving in a large circle.

When someone stole the golf cart earlier this month, Christmas’s father told the Herald, they also “stole [Haley’s] soul.”

An officer working the case said that in all his years on the force, he’s never seen a crime as rotten as stealing a golf cart from a disabled person. The Christmas family said they hope the thief simply returns the cart on their own.

POLITICS

Worst Part of State Government

South Carolina State Legislature

We’ve been riding DHEC for five years now and with good reason. But let’s not forget our horribly underfunded public schools — 11 out of the 25 worst schools in the United States are in South Carolina. Plus, there are all the usual reasons that make most sane residents of this state wake up screaming in the shadow of the Confederate Flag.

Worst Representation of South Carolina A five-way tie:

Leon Lott vs. Michael Phelps

Henry McMaster vs. Craigslist

Mark Sanford’s affair

The guy who had sex with a horse

Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” outburst

Worst Political Counter Move

Andre Bauer on Homosexuality

Blogger Mike Rogers, who outed both Larry Craig and Mark Foley, recently cited male sources who claimed to have had sex with Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. Instead of letting the rumors die, Bauer brought up the subject himself during an interview with the State and then allowed state Sen. Jake Knotts to distribute a letter that blamed the rumors on Sanford staffers.

What a drama queen!

Worst Use of Taxpayer Money

Hospitality Tax Funding

Since 2003, the Columbia City Council and the state Department of Revenue have been overcharging local restaurants to assist their buddies. Here’s what the racket seems to be: They use the tax revenue to create business guilds that charge members dues and then the organizers lobby for additional tax dollars with which to line their own pockets. The scam is so great, we’re ashamed we didn’t think of it ourselves.

Worst Moonlighting Gig

Erotica Authoress

Well, it’s the worst gig if you’re the chair of the State Board of Education, anyway. Kristin Maguire, also a former Republican committee member, allegedly authored erotic fiction under the pen name Bridget Keeney. Nothing against writing smut — especially coming from us — but it’s just another example of the conservative GOP hypocrisy. Here’s a quick excerpt from Keeney’s story “Continental Cuisine:”

“The rhythmic sway of the train car added to the bobbing of my head as I sucked deeply. [...] My hands were braced on Erik’s hips to keep us in synch. [...] His friend Joren was watching us. I gazed at him in the dim light from the moon as I slid my hands under Erik’s balls. [...] I had come to Europe for new experiences. Sucking off two strangers in a train car would definitely count as one.”

Worst Good Ol’ Boy Hire

Charles Austin

The former city manager accidentally misplaced $30 million in city reserves yet apparently is the perfect candidate for a deanship at Benedict College.

MEDIA/ENTERTAINMENT

Worst Local TV Show

Lion of Judah Worship Center’s “Miracle Service” on Cable Channel 4

This is a spectacle so bizarre it’s good. Watching a West Columbia faith healer claim to speak for God and then dupe a mentally deficient congregation is somehow fun, enraging and sad all at the same time.

Worst Advertising Scheme

Best Of Awards

A Best Of Award from corporate media is the equivalent of your nephew’s Little League trophy: They get one just for showing up. Or, in the case of some local Best Of Awards, advertisers get one just for having a checkbook and a pen. Here’s the trick: To read a Best Of issue properly, you must insert some language — you know, like putting “in bed” at the end of your fortune-cookie fortune. Next time, when you read “Best Bar,” instead read “Best Bar Who’s Giving Us Money.”

Worst Print Publication

Carolina Panorama

Carolina Panorama is Bizarro Columbia City Paper. It prints only positive news! And that makes sense for a state like South Carolina, where the official unemployment number hovers around 10 percent, the illiteracy rate is the third-highest in the nation, and crime is beating in your back door. Finally, as much as we love positive news, we must deliver a negative message for Carolina Panorama’s publisher: Stop putting your awful newspaper on the top portion of our racks.

Worst Local Advertisement

COF Columbia Office Furniture

Last year, we had no trouble making fun of the $99 office chair guy. But this year, the old man has outdone himself, holding up his granddaughter in what seems to be a desperate plea for you chain-loving bastards to think of small family-owned businesses this holiday season.

Worst Editorial Playbook

The State

Columbia’s daily fishwrap ran 359 anti-Sanford articles but was the only major newspaper in South Carolina not to call the international playboy’s resignation.

NIGHTLIFE

Worst Karaoke Song

(No such thing.)

Worst Pick Up Line

“Excuse me, haven’t I seen you in a Bang Bus video?”

Worst Shot

The Discombobulated Sasquatch

… Or: anything mixed on the fly during the interview segment of Drinking in the Morning with Aaron and Grant.

Worst Bathroom

St. Patty’s Day Festival Port-a-John

There hasn’t been this much fecal matter concentrated in one spot since the Five Points Association opened its visitors center.

Worst Rock Scene Trend

The Whole Friggin’ Thing

Put down the xylophones and synthesizers, get Lasik, and bring some danger and bravado back to rock ‘n’ roll. Just because you walk around the club with your shirt off after the show doesn’t excuse the fact that your band sounds like REO Speedwagon.

Worst Hip-Hop Scene Trend

Auto Tune

Why not buy an Alvin and the Chipmunks R&B album and be done with it?

Worst Thug Fashion

Spongebob Squarepants Ganstawear

According to the cops, Spongebob clothing is related to a street gang — and believe us, fellas, we mean no disrespect here — but maybe y’all could find a scarier cartoon character related to the number five?

Worst Place for Public Sex

Elmwood Cemetery

This is a popular spot for cops to bust teenagers and Republican legislators to engage in sex acts (sometimes with each other).

LEFTOVERS

Worst Place for a Picnic

West Columbia River Walk

By this, we’re talking specifically about the Columbia Farms chicken plant side of River Walk. It comes with  a truly Biblical stench. Add the hobos bathing on the rocks and there’s just no way to salvage your picnic.

Worst Fashion

Fluorescent 1980s throwbacks

Why do fashion boutiques these days look like K-Mart in 1986?

Worst Shame in Local Sports

No South Carolina IWFL team

We had a brief semi-pro tease with the Columbia Stingers indoor football league a couple of years ago. But what this town needs is a semi-pro women’s football league. North Carolina has three! We’re talking women with crew cuts and missing teeth. Think we could convince a local roller girl or two to test their mettle, put on some shoulder pads, and go full tackle with a 200-pound nose guard from High Point?

Worst Tattoo Parlor

Richland County Detention Center

Worst Marketing

U.S. food labeling

The liberties the Food and Drug Administration allows in the promotion of food products are not only getting out of hand — they’re becoming a national security issue. Earlier this month, the Pentagon reported that more than one-third of Army recruits aged 17 to 24 are too fat for service.

Worst Sign

No Turn On Red

These signs are misplaced throughout the city.  Our favorite is the one at Main and Gervais where there isn’t even a cross street. As for Five Points, packed with pedestrians and drunken drivers, no need for any signs there!

Worst Homeless Hotel

RCPL Downtown

Or: Five Points Post Office

Everything about the modern            conservative movement looks like lemmings headed for the cliffs. The fact that Republicans picked up a couple of governorships in the off-off-year election two weeks ago means very little.

The GOP lost two U.S. House races that same day amid the healthcare debate. One of those seats, in Upstate New York, had been in Republican hands since 1872! If voters were as outraged about healthcare reform as Republicans like to pretend, it looks like they would have handed those seats to the GOP. Instead, the seats went to Democrats, who flew to Washington and were sworn in just in time to vote for the healthcare overhaul on Nov. 7. The historic bill passed by five votes. With victories like these, the Republicans don’t need any defeats. But I predict that they will be seeing a lot of them in coming years.

The GOP lost New York District 23 because the Republican candidate was moderate — too moderate for the Club for Growth, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and other far-right wing, out-of-state players, who threw their considerable weight and resources behind the more conservative candidate. The Republican candidate withdrew, handing the election to the Democratic challenger.

Something like that is going to happen on a massive scale in Florida next year. There, the teabag fringe of the conservative movement has organized and registered a new political party. Yep, they call themselves the Tea Party! And if they run candidates in next year’s elections, as they say they intend to do, they will split the conservative vote and make the Republicans an endangered species in the Sunshine State.

With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that Republicans in South Carolina are following a similar road to extinction.

The Charleston County Republican Party last week voted to censure Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham for being too reasonable and pragmatic. Or as the county GOP said in its resolution, “U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in the name of bipartisanship continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.”

Since he was first elected to the Senate in 2002, Graham has shown a fiercely independent streak — something for which the southern GOP has no patience. Two years ago, he outraged state and national Republicans for working on immigration reform with Sen. John McCain and Democrats. Last year, he supported the Troubled Asset Relief Plan, a massive federal bailout to get the financial industry back on its feet. And last month he reached across the aisle to work with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on cap-and-trade legislation to reduce greenhouse emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Not only does the Republican orthodoxy reject the science of climate change, but it also rejects the reality of global and national problems that cannot be solved by individuals and county councils.

“There have been a lot of things over the years that people have been dissatisfied with the senator for doing, but I think the cap-and-trade issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” county GOP chairwoman Lin Bennett said. “We have a state platform that if you want to run as a Republican in our state, part of that platform includes ideals and goals we would like to see, and one of them is smaller and less government intrusion into people’s lives.”

Bennett said she expects a similar censure resolution at the state party convention next spring. Two years ago, the GOP executive committee in Greenville County censured Graham for his stance on immigration reform.

Graham is one of the most respected members of the U.S. Senate and, succeeding to the seat of the late retrovert Strom Thurmond, has brought favorable attention to this state. Of course, that it not the way South Carolina Republicans see it; indeed, if Thurmond’s 48-year Senate career proved anything, it was that the white people of South Carolina would gladly humiliate themselves to make a point.

Now they are at it again, and it seems they will not be satisfied until Graham is eliminated or intimidated into towing the party line. And in South Carolina, they may get away with it. Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson and Bob Inglis prove there is plenty of room to the right of Graham in the state GOP — enough room for a challenger to stake a position and attack. And you can bet some Republican yahoos are queuing up to take a whack at Graham.

The GOP might be able to purge Graham from their ranks and still win, but in more mainstream states, such tactics will only divide the Republicans and hand elections to Democrats. I will be pulling for them to do just that. Go, Sarah! Go, Rush!

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

Opinion by Andy Brack

When President John F. Kennedy proposed putting a man on the moon, he didn’t say it should be done “someday.” He put a time frame on his big vision — that it should be done by the end of the 1960s.

Such a big vision statement linked with a date for completion is something you might call a “measurable vision.” Last weekend, a group of more than two dozen southern leaders and thinkers set out to identify such visions for the South at a major conference at Davidson College in North Carolina.

The nonpartisan Center for a Better South called the conference to develop a new Agenda for a Better South — a pragmatic and progressive set of visions that southern leaders could seek to accomplish in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century. (Disclosure: I am the chair and president of the center.)

Too often, southern leaders, particularly those in a legislature, are sidetracked by policy red herrings — things that are really non-issues compared to generational southern problems involving education, poverty and health care.

Many seem to find it easier to deal with gay marriage, abortion or gator-hunting rules than serious reforms that would change an unfair tax system or generate new and better jobs or fix health care. Instead of solutions for addressing big problems, many southern leaders today seem to kowtow to increasing partisanship and offer small sound bites for big problems to fill the media’s daily craving for more.

Participants at the center’s conference included elected officials, corporate executives, newspaper editors, policy analysts and academics. They sought to look at these continuing problems in new ways that include measurable and attainable goals.

For example, instead of just saying southern states should improve education — and every one of them can stand for some improvement — participants linked improving education to jobs. As former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings touted more than 50 years ago, you can’t get good jobs if your workforce isn’t educated. And today, it’s more important than ever before. Here, for example, is how the group challenged leaders to move forward in education:

“To compete in a 21st century global economy, each southern state must increase its high school graduation rate and have 60 percent of native southerners and new residents with post-secondary degrees, including associate’s degrees from technical colleges, by 2020.”

Wow. Sixty percent would be huge. The international goal is something like 55 percent.

The Agenda for a Better South, which is in a draft stage for another week as participants hone their measurable visions, also calls for southern leaders to strive for these improvements:

Boosting wellness: Each southern state should increase life expectancy to levels on par with Canada.

Improving energy efficiency: Each southern state should develop a state energy plan that improves per capita energy efficiency by 20 percent in 2020.

Reforming taxes: Each southern state should adopt or change tax structures by 2015 that expand the tax base while lowering the rate to ensure revenue sources match or exceed the growth rate in the state’s overall economy.

Investing in infrastructure: Each southern state must invest 90 percent of its capital budget spending on priorities identified in its infrastructure capital planning process.

Cultivating governance: Each southern state should develop and implement a benchmark citizen trust survey by 2011. By 2015, each state’s levels of trust in state government should increase by 20 percent over the benchmark.

Ensuring opportunities: Southern states should reduce disparities in the treatment and well being of different groups to foster a more inclusive, creative, productive and prosperous South. By 2012, each southern state should adopt measures to drive significant reduction in identified disparities of at least five major categories.

Fostering safe communities: Each Ssuthern state should reduce the rates of violent crime to below the national average by 2020.

The South has come a long way in the last 50 years. It no longer is a showcase for segregation. It is home to major American businesses and millions of new residents who are thriving in the Sunbelt.

But the region remains burdened by its past in multiple measures of quality of life. It’s time for our leaders to think big by embracing a new Agenda for a Better South so our region is the envy of the world.

Andy Brack, publisher of S.C. Statehouse Report, can be reached at:  brack@statehousereport.com.