Brad Warthen's Blog

Salvation Army says homeless center not moving either way

We just remade tomorrow's op-ed page to share with our readers a piece that I think everyone should have the chance to read (folks who live in the Elmwood area will find it of particular interest), even though it has already been overtaken by events, and could be more so by the time the paper hits your doorstep Thursday morning.

So it is that I go ahead and give it to you here and now. An explanation: We got this piece today, when Salvation Army board chief Michael Beal shared with us the letter he had sent to Columbia City Council. He wrote it before the Midlands Housing Alliance voted NOT to change its plans and move to a site being pushed by some members of the city council. That happened Wednesday afternoon.

What I don't know at this writing is what the city council will do in light of a) this letter, which tells them that the homeless services that residential neighbor want well away from them isn't going to move whatever the Alliance does, and b) the vote by the Alliance this afternoon NOT to change its plans.

I've heard one thing about the city's plans: That it plans to discuss the issue behind closed doors tonight. Here's hoping that the city's leaders think better of that and deal with this in the open. For my part I'll find out when I read the paper in the morning; tonight I'll be watching the presidential debate (assuming I get out of here by that time tonight). When I'm going to finish reading that blasted book so I can write the column that will be the counterpart to the "Barack Like Me" column, I don't know. But that's not your problem, is it?

Anyway, here's the piece from Mr. Beal, adapted from the letter he sent the council:

Killing homeless center won’t move homeless

By MICHAEL M. BEAL
Guest Columnist
On Wednesday, I sent a letter to Mayor Bob Coble and City Council on behalf of the Columbia Salvation Army Advisory Board to disabuse them of the idea that the homeless are leaving our site at 2025 Main St. If the Midlands Homeless Alliance doesn’t serve them at our current headquarters, we will continue to do so.
    I share the substance of it here.
    The Salvation Army has a 100-year history of caring for the homeless in Columbia. We believe the Homeless Alliance’s plan to build a residential homeless transition center at 2025 Main St. complements out mission.
    The selection of an appropriate location is loaded with emotion. No one wants a homeless facility in their backyard. And yet it must be somewhere.
    City Council, the Homeless Alliance and the Salvation Army all must make decisions that further their missions. Council will have to determine which homeowners to appease and which to upset (Elmwood Park and Cottontown vs. CanalSide) as well as whether to help facilitate a well-financed and well-considered solution to a problem for the greater good.
Council also has a duty to be a good steward of the taxpayers’ money. From an economic standpoint, the Homeless Alliance proposal is clearly the best option.
    The alliance will have to gauge the feasibility of abandoning the Salvation Army site for a city-sponsored alternative, which raises many questions and jeopardizes some of its financing.
    The Salvation Army’s goal is to sell the property to the alliance and become a service provider at the new transition center. To be very clear: If lawsuits or red tape kill the pending sale, we will renovate our facility and continue our residential care mission at 2025 Main St.
    We are informed that much of the financial support garnered by the Homeless Alliance will be lost if the transition center is not built on Main Street. If that occurs, we expect those who had agreed to support the alliance to support us instead, so we can continue to provide shelter and other services.
    If the new residential facility is built somewhere else, that would undoubtedly influence us, but it would not end utilization of the property for homeless services, including programs with substantial residential components.
    This is not an either-or issue. The current zoning permits the Salvation Army to use the property for up to 261 residential beds, with full support services. Infinitely. We continue to serve the homeless today even though much of our funding has been diverted to the transition center. If the Homeless Alliance contract is not closed, we will continue to own the property and will continue our mission and ministry of helping the homeless at 2025 Main St. for another 100 years, or until there are no more homeless people who need our assistance.
    If the Homeless Alliance isn’t able to build its state-of-the-art center, it will further Columbia’s reputation as a dysfunctional city where critical issues are interminably debated, not resolved.
    While we debate and litigate, little is being done to actually solve the problems of homelessness in Columbia. Homeless people (who are people) continue to sleep on the streets and urinate in citizens’ yards. Another winter will come and go in Columbia, and no answers will be provided.
    The Miami shelter, which many members of council and this community visited, has a success rate in excess of 60 percent. If the Midlands Homeless Alliance’s plans are approved and we achieve a success rate close to 60 percent, it will not take long to see a noticeable improvement in downtown Columbia. In addition, the lives of the formerly homeless will be changed forever: They will become employed, tax-paying citizens. If it happened in Miami, it can happen here.
    This is Columbia’s last and best chance to properly address homelessness.
    The alliance’s project has incredible support in the community. Hundreds showed up at the announcement at the Salvation Army this summer. Churches have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars, and business and individuals have pledged $5 million to match the Knight Foundation’s incredible gift. The Midlands Business Leadership Group, Knight Foundation, United Way, Central Carolina Community Foundation and the faith-based community have come together in an unprecedented fashion on this singular issue to provide something that Columbia has been lacking for many years — leadership.
    We hope that council will be part of the solution and help Columbia take the first step toward becoming the great city we all believe it can become.

Mr. Beal chairs the Columbia Salvation Army Advisory Board.

The opus is done; you'll see it Sunday

Well, I just finished writing what I consider to be my most provocative column of this long presidential election. At least, it's the most provocative to me. You have to consider that I didn't expect the John Edwards column to cause such a fuss. So maybe this one will be a dud; I don't know.

But I do know it's longer than any other column that I can ever remember publishing in the paper -- twice as long as usual. It will jump from the Sunday editorial page to the op-ed page. But then, I've thought about it a lot longer than I do most columns -- months, in fact. That's something it does have in common with the Edwards piece, although this one is much more complicated. Even at this length, it requires the reader to understand more than I have space to say. And maybe, because of that, it will be unintelligible. But a lot of my columns attempt to say more than I can denote in a limited space. This one just has more than usual to say.

Anyway, I look forward to your reactions to it. I think.

Updates from the Palin front

We've all been so distracted with serious bidness the last few days that I've hardly had a moment to think about Sarah Palin. But I pause now to pass on two things:

1. I met with Marvin Chernoff over breakfast this morning, and he asked me whether I'd seen the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit on SNL, and I said I had, but after a moment it hit me that we weren't talking about the same skit. Turns out she reprised the role Saturday night and I missed it, while Marvin was unaware of the earlier one. Now that I've seen the latest (clip above), I've got to say it sort of fell flat by comparison, but it would have been hard to match the hilarity of the first effort. It was the funniest thing on that show in decades.
2. Be sure to check out tomorrow's op-ed page. Kathleen Parker writes about the tidal wave of vehement reaction she got to her Palin-should-drop-out column the other day.

So THAT'S who that arrogant-looking so-and-so was...

For months now, I've been seeing this one photograph of this one guy, over and over, in The Wall Street Journal -- almost always with stories I was uninterested in reading, so the picture just sort of registered in the background.

It was the sort of picture that no sane company publicist would ever have distributed, unless it wanted its CEO to be hated. And you knew this was a CEO; the picture just radiated, "I'm the kind of guy who thinks he's really hot stuff because I'm so absurdly overcompensated." And you know, I seldom think that when I look at people. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt (something that drives some of y'all crazy, because you're always wanting me to join you in despising somebody, and I just don't feel like it -- not necessarily because I'm a nice guy; I just don't feel like it). But this picture INSISTED that you not like the guy. If a psychologist included this photo in a Thematic Apperception Test, I suspect there would be a surprising uniformity in the stories the subjects would tell.

Well, we've all been paying more attention than usual to Lehman Brothers the last few days. For tomorrow's op-ed page, I happened to choose this Nicholas Kristof column, which in a nutshell is about a guy named Richard Fuld who got paid the equivalent of $17,000 an hour while he was running that company into the ground.

Needing art for the page, I searched AP photos for "Richard Fuld." And lo and behold, what should pop up but that very same picture that's been half-registering on my mind the last few months. That's it above and to the right. It was taken by Kevin Wolf at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Jan. 22, 2007. I especially like the way Mr. Wolf thought to include the satellite image of the Earth in the frame, just in case we missed the whole "master of the universe" thing going on.

And apparently, to the extent that this guy Fuld will be publicly remembered, he'll be remembered looking like this.

Well, I feel so much smarter for knowing that now. But not nearly as smart as he apparently thought HE was.

Double dose of Krauthammer

Robert was poking around nosily on my desk earlier and, seeing the op-ed page proof, expressed his pleasure that I was going to be running Charles Krauthammer for a second day in a row.

Dang. And I'd hoped nobody would notice.

The problem started when I saved Mr. Krauthammer's column that had been written for Friday publication for our Monday page (it was better than any other leftovers I had at the time I had to choose, which was Friday).

This morning, as I looked over the 11 new columns I had from writers to whom we subscribe, one of them was an EXTRA one that Mr. Krauthammer had offered over the weekend (he normally only writes once a week). Like most such spontaneously offered material -- stuff the writer just felt compelled to write -- it was a strong one. But I had just run a Krauthammer.

What I WANTED to run on Tuesday was a "liberal" columnist, even though I normally don't think about such things. Why? Because a colleague suggested the other day that I've been running more "conservative" syndicated op-ed columnists than "liberals" lately. She may have been right; I had not been keeping score. In the daily scramble to put out pages since we lost Mike Fitts (who used to choose op-ed copy), I have done each day's selection in a vacuum, with no thought to what I ran the day before or will run the day after.

And each day, I have simply chosen what seemed to be the best-written column. You see, I only have room for one. I can't pick what I regard as the best column, and then another for "balance." But since this perceived imbalance was pointed out to me, I've been making an extra effort to see the "liberals" as "best" on some days. But they haven't been helping much. Especially today.

Oh, I thought I was in good shape on my goal, because I first picked a Paul Krugman piece that I thought was particularly timely. It was about the mounting crisis in the U.S. financial sector. Good topic, one I certainly could stand to know a lot more about. I had it picked, and edited, and was in the process of choosing some AP art to go with it, when I made the fatal mistake of READING the captions on the photos of anxious traders I was looking at. They mentioned that Lehman had filed for bankruptcy today. Mr. Krugman's piece didn't reflect that. Nor did it reflect that Bank of America was buying Merrill (he had been writing over the weekend, for Monday publication). Dang.

At this point, already late for my Rotary meeting, I turned back to my options, and noticed that while some of the folks on the left had written about the Sarah Palin interview with Charles Gibson ...

• Bob Herbert: While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson on Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I've gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail....   "Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?'' Gibson asked during the interview. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal. Clueless, she asked, "In what respect, Charlie?''
• Maureen Dowd: Being a next-door neighbor is not quite enough, though. If Sarah had been reading about the world she feels so confident about leading rather than just parroting by rote what Randy Scheunemann and the neocons around McCain drilled into her last week -- Drill, baby, drill! -- she might have realized that as heinous as Russia's behavior toward Georgia was, it was not completely unprovoked. The State Department has let it be known that it warned McCain's friend, Misha, the hotheaded president of Georgia, not to send troops in to crush the rebellion in two breakaway states.  And she might not have had to clench her jaw and play for time when Gibson raised the Bush doctrine, the wacko pre-emption philosophy that so utterly changed the world.

None were as good as the Krauthammer piece. Those columnists went no deeper into the "Bush doctrine" thing than Tina Fey had on SNL.

Momentarily, I considered a column from Mary Newsom at The Charlotte Observer (a paper with a new EPE, by the way), which struck me as interesting because it was written by someone who disagrees strongly with Ms. Palin, but considers much of the criticism of her as "creepily misogynistic." I like columns like that -- you know, the "against type" columns, like the one in which Kathleen Parker broke with other "conservatives" and expressed her displeasure with the Rick Warren event -- but I was struck by how much this passage was like Herbert and Dowd: "Further, I am horrified at her inexperience in foreign affairs. Did you see her micro-expression of fear Thursday when ABC's Charles Gibson asked her about the “Bush doctrine” (that pre-emptive strikes are OK) and Palin obviously was lost?"

Meanwhile, Krauthammer not only raised the question that popped into MY head when I heard it -- WHICH Bush doctrine? (If you had forced me to guess, I would have guessed he meant "pre-emption," but I would have asked him to define his term first, too) -- but also made the point that while Sarah Palin obviously didn't know what it was, neither did Mr. Gibson. Nor, presumably (if Mr. Krauthammer, who claims to be the author of the phrase, knows what HE's about), do Mr. Herbert or Ms. Dowd.

An arguable point to be sure, but one that struck me as more interesting, and adding more to the conversation, than any column that merely elaborated on the Tina Fey point of ridiculing Ms. Palin. (And if you haven't watched that yet, you must; it was truly hilarious.)

Anyway, that's why you'll be seeing Charles Krauthammer two days in a row.

Mobile Ariail

As you know, Robert Ariail recently launched a Web site where you can get his latest cartoon, as well as archives.

Now, Robert has gone mobile. If you want to see his last few cartoons on your PDA, here's the address:

http://m.thestate.com/state/db_7612_index.htm

Just don't do it while driving, OK?

Looking ahead, his cartoon for Tuesday will be about ... let's see... what Joe Biden does for the Democratic ticket...

What the Capital City Club did for Columbia (column version)

Yep, once again, my column today was something you've read before here. In fact, the earlier blog version was more complete -- I couldn't fit all that into the paper today.

But there is something new to mention on the subject, which is to urge you to watch for Clif LeBlanc's follow-up story to the one he wrote that appeared on our front page Wednesday. The folo will be in the paper Sunday (or so I'm told), and it will address the question that  has occurred to me a number of times in the years since the Capital City Club opened Columbia's private club world to minorities and women:

Just how open ARE the rest of the Midlands' clubs today?

I look forward to reading it.

Is the Georgia invasion 'McCain's moment?'

You may note that the pundits most eager to write about Georgia and what it means are of the conservative persuasion. And there's no question that they, at least, believe that moments like this one make McCain look like a more attractive choice for commander in chief. George Will wrote this:

    Vladimir Putin, into whose soul President George W. Bush once peered and liked what he saw, has conspicuously conferred with Russia’s military, thereby making his poodle, “President” Dmitry Medvedev, yet more risible. But big events reveal smallness, such as that of New Mexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson.

    On ABC’s “This Week,” Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama’s running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign’s talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama’s zest for diplomacy, and that America should get the U.N. Security Council “to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint.” Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the U.N. for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.

    This crisis illustrates, redundantly, the paralysis of the U.N. regarding major powers, hence regarding major events, and the fictitiousness of the European Union regarding foreign policy. Does this disturb Obama’s serenity about the efficacy of diplomacy? Obama’s second statement about the crisis, in which he tardily acknowledged Russia’s invasion, underscored the folly of his first, which echoed the Bush administration’s initial evenhandedness. “Now,” said Obama, “is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint.”

    John McCain, the “life is real, life is earnest” candidate, says he has looked into Putin’s eyes and seen “a K, a G and a B.” But McCain owes the thug thanks, as does America’s electorate. Putin has abruptly pulled the presidential campaign up from preoccupation with plumbing the shallows of John Edwards and wondering what “catharsis” is “owed” to disappointed Clintonites.

In tomorrow's paper, Kathleen Parker even more starkly -- and more amusingly -- contrasts McCain to both Bush and Obama.

Whomever you like for president, you gotta admit the KGB line is a good one. It's a favorite of McCain's, and we're likely to hear him saying it more. His campaign is already putting out the line that events in Georgia have shown him to be "'Prescient' On Russia And Putin."

So how about it, folks? Does this affect your choice for November, and how? Does it make you more likely to vote for McCain -- or for Obama? Or does it not affect your thinking one way or the other?

Yes, it's grotesque to speak of such awful events in terms of its effect upon an election, but face it, folks: About all that you and I and the guy down the street can do in reaction to what's happened is choose the guy who's going to lead us in a world in which Russia knows it can get away with stuff like this.

Yeah, but what's 'normal?'

Just now had to run downstairs to make a change in a Friday editorial because I got this release from DHEC to the effect that test results "from the Saluda River in Columbia indicate water quality has returned to normal following the discharge of partially treated wastewater last week."

DHEC further says it's taken down the warning signs that everybody was ignoring, so I guess it has a lot of confidence in the tests.

Personally, I'm not going to run down the river and jump in quite yet, partly because of my heavy dignity as eminence grise of the editorial board, and partly because, after I dragged my old behind back up the stairs after updating the editorial I got to conjurin' (which is "Firefly" talk for "figuring"): Do they mean "South Carolina" normal, or "states with the kinds of safeguards in place to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen in the first place" normal?

Mind you, I'm not putting the blame on DHEC here -- or rather, I'm only assigning to them their fair share of it. The whole way we provide such basic local services as sewer in this state -- a fragmented, often overlapping mishmash of local gummints, special purpose districts and private providers -- is such a mess it's hard for anybody to keep track of it.

Maybe Mayor Bob ought to go ahead with pulling his summit together. With all these little local fiefdoms along the river counting on its waters to attract untold wealth to the region, I expect they've all got some more conjurin' to do.

(Oh, and for those of you who conjure that Mayor Bob, or someone in local gummint, should have been able to deal with this without meeting with a bunch of other folks -- well, you just don't understand how weak and fragmented local gummint is in our state. You can thank the Legislature for that, by the way. They never miss an opportunity to keep things this way.)

How do you say 'So Gay' in German?

Cindi wrote a short editorial for tomorrow about the latest way that our state has found to waste "Competitive Grant" money. In case you haven't read about it, Rep. Liston Barfield got 100 Gs to entertain German visitors to the Grand Strand, even though some local tourism officials said the money would have been better spent on advertising to promote tourism.

Wanting to jazz up the headline a bit, I sent her an instant message asking, "How do you say 'So Gay' in German?"

So far, she hasn't replied. Maybe Herb can help us with that.