Brad Warthen's Blog

Blagojevich: Who'd have voted for this guy?

From the moment he intruded upon the national awareness last week, Rod Blagojevich has prompted a sort of Monty Python response. Whenever I see him -- and I see him too often -- I think, "How'd you get to be governor, then? I didn't vote for ya..."

Those of you who are literal-minded are thinking, "Of course you didn't vote for him; you don't live in Illinois," but don't spoil my fun. What I'm saying is that when I look upon this guy, I am as mystified by the radical peasants in the mud contemplating the king: I can't imagine anyone voting for him, so I imagine he must have come into office in some bizarre manner involved strange women distributing scimitars or some such. A "farcical aquatic ceremony" seems more likely than his winning an election.

This is a first-impression thing for me. I look at the guy, and I think, "Yeah, I believe he did all that stuff they're saying he did." And that's saying something, because what they say he did is probably a national record-setter for being simultaneously crooked, brazen and stupid all at the same time.

But I look at this guy, and I think, yeah, I can see him doing all that. I don't even have to see video, or hear his voice. A still photograph is enough.

And what gets me is that he has apparently always looked just like this. So I find myself wondering, who would have voted for a guy who looks like this guy? I mean, look at him -- he just drips sleaze.

The only explanation I can imagine is that whoever he was running against looked worse. But if that's the case, I don't want to see the person he beat.

At least we don't have to worry about Sanford doing things the CHICAGO way...

After more than three decades in this business, you can get sort of jaded. You hear that the governor of Illinois is arrested and charged with trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat, and you think, here we go again. What's new in the world? Hey, I've seen gubernatorial corruption. I was there in Nashville in January 2009 when they swore in Lamar Alexander several days early because Gov. Ray Blanton was expected to turn a bunch of prisoners loose in his last days in office.

And hey, this is Illinois we're talking about, so what do you expect? They're doing politics the Chicago way.

But then I saw that, among the nefarious things this Blagojevich was about to do is blackmail the troubled Chicago Tribune into firing the entire editorial board as the price of getting state aid. At that point I thought, now he's gone to meddling! I mean, there oughta be a law, right? Fortunately, there is...

I'm still not sure exactly what happened. The NYT said:

The authorities also say Mr. Blagojevich threatened to withhold state assistance from the Tribune Company, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, which filed for bankruptcy on Monday. According to the authorities, Mr. Blagojevich wanted members of the Tribune’s editorial board, who had criticized him, to be fired before he extended any state assistance.

What state aid, I wondered? Here I was thinking that my industry was the only one taking its lumps without asking for any government handouts. The WSJ described the plot differently:

Another incident that came from intercepted conversations involved the Chicago Tribune.  The governor wasn't pleased with the Tribune's coverage of him and its editorial content. According to the government, the governor threatened to stall the sale of Wrigley Field if the newspaper failed to fire certain members of the editorial board. Both the newspaper and Wrigley Field are owned by Tribune Co.

According to Mr. Fitzgerald, the person who was targeted to be fired is still at the newspaper. He wouldn't offer specific names.

In a statement, Tribune said the actions of its executives and advisers working on the Wrigley Field sale "have been appropriate at all times." The company also said, "No one working for the company or on its behalf has ever attempted to influence staffing decisions at the Chicago Tribune or any aspect of the newspaper's editorial coverage as a result of conversations with officials in the governor's administration."

Apparently, the gov was upset about editorials such as these:

• Governor, let's talk
• Nobody trusts the gov...
• Gambling with health care

Hey, isn't that the way a newspaper is supposed to write about its governor?

Anyway, we've got nothing to worry about. Aside from the fact that our governor is NOT a crook -- and remember, you read it here -- our governor doesn't believe in the gummint getting involved with bailouts anyway, so what kind of leverage could he have if he DID go bad...

By the way, the photo above is of the Illinois gov arriving at da scene of da crime -- Tribune Tower -- on Monday. In the perp-drive photo below, that's his (allegedly) naughty face peeping out from behind the cop's headrest at extreme left.

 

Thomas Smith and the pirates

Among my e-mails today was one calling my attention to an interview (by someone I'm not familiar with, if you'll forgive the dangling preposition) with Columbia's Thomas Smith about the pirates. A sample:

TUSR: Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was stunned by the pirates’ reach. I was taken aback by Mullen’s surprise—the reach has been well-documented in all manner of media, even a lengthy feature in National Geographic this year that somewhat romanticized the pirates. So why is an admiral stunned?
SMITH: Admiral Mullen was ‘stunned’ by the pirate attack taking place so far from the coast, about 450 miles offshore. The attack in fact was a bit surprising. It was bold, very risky for the attackers, and much farther out into the so-called ‘blue water’ than previous attacks we’ve seen by similar bands in recent history.

Now, I’ve since seen a few bloggers and others criticizing the admiral for his remarks – suggesting that no true fighting admiral would say such – and perhaps ‘stunned’ was a less-than-stellar word choice. But the admiral is a professional Naval officer, not a politician. And so I say, it’s easy for those who have never been to war or to sea—and have no frame of reference for an appreciation of just how vast and unforgiving the sea can be—to criticize.

And as long as I'm on the subject, there was a nice piece in the WSJ Saturday drawing some parallels to the Barbary Pirates. I sort of knew the outline of all of that, being a history major who sorta kinda concentrated on that period, but I learned at least one interesting fact from the piece I don't remember having known before:

By the 1790s, the U.S. was depositing an astonishing 20% of its federal income into North African coffers...

We finally decided maybe it would be better to build a Navy, and deal with the problem. Trying to buy off the pirates just encouraged piracy -- which sort of stands to reason, if you think about it.

Anyway, the piece further encouraged a notion I've been kicking around, which might turn into a column: The idea that the Somali pirates actually pose an opportunity to President Obama once he's in office. It's a chance to show the willingness to use force in the defense of international peace and security, with a ready-made multinational coalition to dramatically demonstrate his unBushness:

Of course, the world is a vastly more complicated place than it was two centuries ago and America's role in it, once peripheral, is now preeminent. Still, in the post-9/11 period, America would be ill-advised to act unilaterally against the pirates. The good news is: It does not have to. In contrast to the refusal to unite with America during the Barbary Wars, or more recently the Iraq War, the European states today share America's interest in restoring peace to the seas. Moreover, they have expressed a willingness to cooperate with American military measures against the Somali bandits. Unlike Washington and Jefferson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama need not stand alone.

Ozmint wants to let prisoners go -- what else can he do?

This just in from the AP:

{BC-SC—State Budget-Prisons,0113}
{SC prison chief preps inmate-release plans}
{Eds: APNewsNow. Will be updated.}
   COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's prison chief says he has a plan to release inmates early because of a budget shortfall.
   Prison agency director Jon Ozmint told the state's financial oversight board Thursday he's prepared to submit an early release plan to the Legislature to ease a deficit of more than $14 million. Earlier this year, legislators rejected Ozmint's proposal to cut time off the end of sentences.
   The Budget and Control Board is monitoring Ozmint's shortfall. Gov. Mark Sanford heads the board and says he's not ready to endorse that kind of plan. He says people committing crimes should know sentences will be carried out.

That's a short item, but it raises several points:

• The governor is not the "head" of the Budget and Control Board, in the sense of controlling anything. He's one of five votes.
• He IS, however, the boss of Jon Ozmint. Meaning that any plan Mr. Ozmint comes up with that doesn't have his blessing seems unlikely to see the light of day. Of course, maybe some of those lawmakers who give Ozmint such short shrift because he's Sanford's man will actually pay attention if they think it would irk the governor. But the smart money would be on lawmakers doing what they always do -- continue to shamefully neglect Corrections, when they're not pointlessly persecuting it.
• Sanford picked Ozmint because he was a very conservative, small-gummint sort of Republican. So why would they disagree on this point? Because Mr. Ozmint has for several years had the responsibility, day after day, of actually trying to run the prisons and keep the prisoners inside them with a budget that has shrunk year after years. And faced with that reality, he knows he can't keep doing it. Mark Sanford's opinions regarding what it costs to run government properly are entirely theoretical, and immune to practical reality.
• I recall Mr. Ozmint showing me a while back exactly how thin security was at the time -- this many people per that many prisoners, THIS part of a perimeter covered but not THAT part. It was very alarming. And that was several budget cuts ago.
• We've said this many times; perhaps someday the folks at the State House will listen: As much as we need to appropriate more for prisons, the REAL solution is to stop locking up so many people we don't NEED to lock up -- a category that covers most non-violent offenders.
• Henry McMaster needs to back off on the "no-parole" stuff, and ramp up his efforts to push alternative sentencing.

My laptop was stolen last night

Folks, this is awful timing, but you won't be seeing as many blog posts from me as you normally would, on account of this:

Someone smashed the window out on my truck last night and stole the newpaper's laptop, the one that is my primary work platform. I do all blogging, all e-mail, most working of photos and cartoons that I handle, plus all of the video and other stuff I do for the blog. All administrative files, such as evaluations and budget info, were on the laptop, plus all of the photos I had taken of candidates for this fall's elections.

My truck was one of 10 broken into on my street.

That the computer was in my truck was just the worst possible luck. It's probably been years since I've left it there overnight, and I only did it this time because on Monday I came to work without it, which put me way behind on the week, and with the confusion of election night and all, I wanted to make sure I remembered it this morning. Add to that the fact that I normally don't take it home during the week, but only did so last night because it was election night and I was going to be working from home. I still can't believe this.

Now I've got to run out and deal with the guy who came to replace the window in my truck; he's here now.

Back to you later.

Now watch this: Lee will blame this on Obama.

Top Five courtroom dramas

Got this e-mail yesterday from a local trial lawyer:

Mr. Warthen

Read with interest your brief comments about Ms. Brockovich's appearance at our convention. Why not come listen to her before you judge? You might actually learn something.

By the way, Jonathan Harr, who wrote "A Civil Action," (the book is much, much better than the movie) spoke by invitation to a group of trial lawyers, hosted by former AAJ president Ken Suggs, a few years ago. Signed my copy of the book! And the lawyer who was portrayed (Jan Schlictmann) has been invited numerous times to speak to our group. Ask your daughter, Elizabeth -- we trial lawyers have open minds!

First, I have a daughter who is a lawyer, but her name is not Elizabeth. I'm leaving this lawyer's name off to protect him from my daughter.

I replied by saying I didn't know I was "judging," I thought I was just riffing on the blog as usual. And sorry, but I really didn't like the movie. I did mention another I liked -- "Runaway Jury."

This brings us to the fact that we haven't had a Top Five list in days. How about a Top Five Coutroom Dramas list? Here's one to start the conversation with:

1. "12 Angry Men" -- Nothing else can touch this, of course. It's to courtroom dramas what "High Noon" is to Westerns.
2. "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- Very close second, and even maybe a better movie -- but only part of it happens in the courthouse.
3. "A Few Good Men" -- Does military justice count? I think so.
4. "Witness for the Prosecution" -- Just to get all snooty and throw in some foreign accents.
5. "Primal Fear" --  Edward Norton's breakout, and certainly scariest, performance. Richard Gere almost disqualifies this one, but Norton saves it.

Other candidates?

SLED's antique helo

Sometimes on the edit page, we get into a bit of a rut. There are so many ways in which our inadequate state government is underfunded that for simplicity's sake we tend to fall back on certain standbys when we gripe about our Legislature's failure to set priorities in budgeting. When we cite a litany of neglect, we usually fall on:

• Mental Health -- A favorite example is how the lack of state resources for the mentally ill unnecessarily overcrowd our jails and hospital emergency rooms.
• Prisons -- We keep locking up more and more people, and providing less and less resources even to guard, much less rehabilitate, them.
• Highways -- We let them crumble, and we don't enforce speed limits or other laws.
• Schools -- Too many districts, no follow-through on the promise to do more in early childhood, the neglect of the most troubled and impoverished rural districts, etc.

And that's a nice overview, as far as it goes. It's fine for just a representation in passing of the overall problem. We refer to such examples when we're complaining about everything from poorly considered tax cuts to spending on things the state doesn't need to spend on.

But we could write about other examples as well, and probably should more often. I was reminded of this by new SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd when he spoke to the Columbia Rotary yesterday. He talked about how everywhere he's been in either state or federal government, he always seemed to arrive just as the budget screws were being applied.

The wiretaps he spoke of, and which were cited in the brief in today's paper, were related to this. SLED has the equipment and the authority to do wiretaps in drug and gang investigations. But the people haven't been trained in how to do it, so the equipment has sat there (to the delight of libertarians, no doubt, but not to those of us who love Big Brother).

But my favorite anecdote was when he was talking about the department's Huey. When I heard that, I thought maybe I heard wrong: They're still flying a Huey? But that wasn't the half of it. This particular Huey was salvaged from the rice paddy it once crashed into in Vietnam. Now, it's being flown by pilots who weren't yet born then. Not long ago, SLED did some sort of joint thing with some folks from the Coast Guard, and they all wanted to see the Huey. They had heard about it, but found it hard to believe.

Another license plate, another bad idea

Here we go again. I just got this release from S.C. DMV:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 21, 2008

GEORGIA TECH FOUNDATION LICENSE PLATE AVAILABLE
Blythewood, SC - The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (SCDMV) announced today the availability of a new specialty license plate.
    The Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is now available in SCDMV offices across the state. The fee for the Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is $70 every two years in addition to the regular motor vehicle registration fee. The plate is available to the general public and has no special requirements for obtaining the plates.   
    A portion of the fees collected for the Georgia Tech Foundation plate will be used for scholarships to Georgia Tech for students from South Carolina.
     To view images of all the specialty license plates currently available, visit the SCDMV Web site at www.scdmvonline.com.
                    #####

We had another op-ed piece in today's paper on the interminable debate over whether South Carolina should issue "I Believe" plates. I thought Kevin and Butch did pretty well with what their client gave them to work with. Gotta hand it to them, the "Secular Humanists of the Low Country" plate was a new one on me.

And it makes a certain kind of sense for the state to make "I Believe" plates if it's going to make "In Reason We Trust" plates, and it should make those if it's going to make, oh, I don't know... "Surfrider Foundation" plates. (By the way, I am not making any of these up. You can look at all of them here.)

But as I've said before here, and as we've said editorially in the paper, we shouldn't be making any of these specialty plates, especially not the ones that exist to raise money for some cause or other. I'm not going to repeat all the arguments. I set them out back here. But I will say this much again:

The purpose of a license plate is essentially a law enforcement one -- they should be quickly identifiable as SC plates, which is a standard that all these special vanity plates blow out of the water.

With all these different plates already, how a cop is supposed to tell whether he's looking at an SC plate or not at a glance is beyond me...

Mayor Bob defends his apartment security plan

Mayor Bob came by the office this morning to try to sell us on his proposed ordinance to require security measures at apartment complexes. We talked for about 45 minutes. As you know, we have criticized the city in the past for trying to get the federal government to do the city's job with regard to crime in poor North Columbia neighborhoods. Here's what we said March 9:

THE STATE
POLICE OBLIGATED TO PROTECT ALL CITY NEIGHBORHOODS
Published on: 03/09/2008
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: A22
IT MAKES GOOD sense for the owner of troubled Gable Oaks apartments to beef up security, but that doesn't relieve Columbia police of their duty to adequately patrol and enforce the law at the omplex.
    City officials seem to believe it's largely up to the owner of the apartment complex to provide what amounts to basic police protection.
    They say the onus is on Transom Development, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, to ensure residents' safety. Some council members want the federal government to require -- and help pay for -- security at apartment complexes, such as Gable Oaks, that accept federal housing vouchers. Last week, some S.C. House members got into they act by filing legislation that would offer income tax credits in exchange for providing security at low-income, multifamily housing complexes.
    Considering the fact that three people have been killed in or near Gable Oaks since December, it's understandable that residents and city officials are very concerned. It's perfectly appropriate for Transom to do all it can to provide extra security for its residents. And it should pay for that higher level of service. Transom plans to do just that; it has agreed to hire security guards and to issue residents parking decals.
    But make no mistake about it, the primary responsibility for protecting residents of Gable Oaks or any other part of the city lies with the city. Gable Oaks is in the city limits, and its tenants are city residents. City residents should be able to expect a certain level and quality of service from the police department.
    We can't help but believe that if there was a spike in crime in Shandon or Wales Garden -- no matter how minor -- the city would aggressively patrol the area, get matters under control and pay more attention going forward. Gable Oaks deserves no less.
    But the tone and tack city officials have used when discussing Gable Oaks make it seem as if residents are on their own if the owner doesn't provide maximum protection. That would be unfair and discriminatory.
    While Gable Oaks is in the spotlight, north Columbia residents have taken this opportunity to express concern that the city neglects their area of town. During a meeting last Monday night, about 50 residents complained of poor police presence, indifferent landlords and a City Council focused more on downtown than north Columbia. There's no doubt that over the years, the city has paid inadequate attention to certain areas of town, and north Columbia is one of them.
    While city officials say the owner should police Gable Oaks, some acknowledge that tenants from the complex aren't necessarily the troublemakers. Visitors and people passing through cause some of the problems. That means those people are passing through -- or even coming from -- other city neighborhoods. And it's the city's responsibility to police all its neighborhoods and ensure people's safety.
    By all means, Gable Oaks' owner should improve security. But city police shouldn't take that as a sign they don't have to be vigilant in policing the area.
    Ultimately, the quality of law enforcement residents in Gable Oaks, or other parts of Columbia, receive will be determined by how committed the city is to help make it safe.

Here are some of the main points that the mayor made to us this morning:

• The federal government, since it provides subsidies for housing in these complexes, should require security just as it has architectural requirements.
• The feds have refused twice to ge involved, but suggested the city would be within its rights to require lighting, fencing, private security guards and other measures by ordinance -- if the rules applied to ALL apartment complexes in the city.
• There is some chance the federal position might change with a new administration, but crime-beleaguered residents can't wait for that.
• Whatever the philosophical objections (such as our objection that if the crime were in Shandon, the police would deal with it), there is the very real problem of people being exposed to crime. The city has had real-life success stopping crime in Gable Oaks using the approach he is now proposing to apply to ALL apartments in the city, and there is no good reason not to implement something that works.
• One difference between this and crime involving single-family residences is that an apartment complex is a large business being conducted within the city, and is thereby subject to regulation.
• Requiring the complexes to provide security is no different from requiring USC to come up with off-duty cops to handle traffic for Williams-Brice Stadium events: If you're running an enterprise that causes a problem, you deal with the problem.
• It's not appropriate for city police to stay in one such business 24 hours a day, at the neglect of nearby areas.
• Private security guards can enforce rules that city police can't -- such as a complex's own covenants or lease provisions.

Near as I can recall, those were his main points. Maybe I'll post video from the interview on Saturday Extra this week. (In fact, I'm sure I will unless something better comes up.)

Oh, and by the way -- the mayor shrugged off the friction between him and Kirkman Finlay III (below, from a previous edit board meeting) over the issue. When Warren kidded him that "I thought you were about to rip your tie off," from Adam Beam's report this a.m. "No," said the mayor, "we were hugging and kissing by the time the day was over."

Lawmaker to level charges at police chief

This release struck me as unusual when I got it, but I set it aside because I didn't have time to blog about it. But when I receive a phone message from a someone making sure I had received the message and knew about the coming news conference, I decided to give y'all a heads-up on this:

SOUTH CAROLINA HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS
Media advisory for June 16, 2008

REPRESENTATIVE TODD RUTHERFORD TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE IN RESPONSE TO THE CLUB LEVEL SHOOTING INCIDENT
    Rep. Todd Rutherford [D-Richland] will hold a press conference in room 305 of the Blatt building.   His remarks will highlight the Club Level shooting incident, and pinpoint precautionary measures that could have been taken by Columbia Police Chief Tandy P. Carter. 

WHO: Representative Todd Rutherford
WHEN:  Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17, 2007) at 10:00 a.m.
WHERE: 1105 Pendleton Street, Blatt Building Room 305, Columbia, SC 29201

Kelly S. Adams
Director
SC House Democratic Caucus
P.O. Box 12049
Columbia, SC 29211

Maybe it's not all that unusual for a state lawmaker to poke his nose into a municipal police matter. But to do so under the aegis of his party's caucus is weird. To go to such lengths to call attention to it makes it sort of weird squared.

Wow. This police chief just got here, and he's got this much heat coming down already?