Haley opts for cant in her vanity project

"Cant" is defined at Dictionary.com thusly:

noun
1. insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness, or piety.
2. the private language of the underworld.
3. the phraseology peculiar to a particular class, party, profession, etc.
4. whining or singsong speech, especially of beggars.

verb (used without object)
5. to talk hypocritically.
6. to speak in the whining or singsong tone of a beggar; beg.

All of which gives the reader the appropriate frame through which to view Governor Nikki Haley's vanity project, a mem-wah titled "Can't Is Not An Option."

Such doorstoppers have become de rigueur for aspring politicos. One can't be taken seriously as a candidate until one has published a book with a trite but lofty title. It somehow proves one's literacy, and it shows that one has the tenacity and determination to write two hundred pages on a topic, which is especially misleading when the topic is oneself.

Might it be a better use of a governor's time to serve as governor than to generate one's own pablum while serving in office? For a governor who likes to brag that she spends all of her days trying to bring economic development to South Carolina, she seems to have spent an inordinate chunk of the people's time drafting a pros-y self-portrait. Let's recall that soon after the announcement of her book deal, she was caught tapping on her iPad in the White House itself, during a speech to the nation's assembled governors by the President of the United States.

Which is the definition of gauche, it turns out.

In this week's edition of Statehouse Report, Charlestonian Andy Brack publishes a respectful and straightforward review of Haley's attempt -- which leads me to respect Brack even more, as I've not been able to bear looking at the thing.

Gov. Nikki Haley's new book is sure to cause three differing reactions:

Tea partiers will fall in love with Haley again for wearing their white hat and repetitively incanting the rhetoric of limited government that bashes the political establishment.

Mainstream Republicans and moderates will spend a lot of time rolling their eyes at the 200-plus pages of gratuitous, preening arrogance, inane recollections and my-way-or-the-highway declarations of revisionism.

Liberals won't be able to finish it because it's such an obvious political attempt to propel the governor to Washington, sooner as a vice-presidential candidate (despite lots of protest by her) or later as a U.S. senator.

If you like Haley and want to be pumped up, go ahead and spend $28 for what seems more like a transcribed version of a lot of self-taped conversations than a book. Otherwise, don't bother. Haley is trying too hard to be a real-life fairy tale.

Nevertheless, here are some observations of Haley's “Can't Is Not an Option:”

Childhood tale. The best part of the book is the beginning in which Haley delves into her childhood as a member of the only Indian family in Bamberg. She talks convincingly about challenges, goodness and the American Dream without too much tea party propaganda.

Philosophical insight. When you read about how Haley worked as a bookkeeper as a teen-ager for her mother's store, you get a better understanding of the anti-government rhetoric that fuels her politics. One such lesson:

“I learned early that we couldn't control our revenue stream – we couldn't control who decided to walk in the door of the store and spend their money. All we could control was our expenditures. So we were constantly focused on tightening our overhead. … I noticed how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it away.”

What rankles about this statement by Haley, a self-professed policy wonk, is its naiveté about government. Unlike business, government can control revenue streams by raising or lowering taxes, or by providing incentives to bring in more businesses, all of which will increase the amount of money put in the state's pot.

Second, government can't always be run like a business, regardless of the GOP talking points. Sometimes, government is the only entity that's large enough or has enough of a cushion to do really big things, such as provide electricity to rural areas, build interstate roads, provide affordable college opportunities to millions, take care of the health of old people and more. For Haley, government is not a pathway to progress, but an impediment that has to be overcome. In the long term, that kind of vision of government isn't in South Carolina's best interest.

Courage. In the book, Haley often describes how she had courage to take on the establishment which “blackballed, demoted and humiliated” her for trying to get recorded roll call votes to boost accountability in the state House. Interestingly, she did not name the leader of the establishment, House Speaker Bobby Harrell, although she cut at him left and right for eight pages. Then in prose that would gag even a teen romance writer, she celebrated a “turnabout is fair play” moment as governor when she signed into law the bill she had pushed while in the House:

“The day didn't belong to me. It belonged to the people. I looked out and saw my parents, and I thought of what they had always taught me: If you fight for the right things, God will take care of the rest. It had taken a little while, but in the end my parents were right. The people had fought. Their cause was just. And now God was smiling down on South Carolina.”

Playing the victim. Haley also complained about people who saw themselves as victims, but within pages she would paint herself as a victim of Harrell, Gov. Mark Sanford or something else. After a while, it got more than a little monotonous.

Bottom line: Plant a garden. It's spring. There are better things to do than read this book.

Brack, Free Times react to House voucher bill

Two sources I consult regular for clear-eyed reporting and commentary on the goings-on in Columbia are Statehouse Report, published by Andy Brack of Charleston, and the Free Times of Columbia.

Neither has disappointed in covering last week's passage of a voucher bill by the House.

From Statehouse Report comes this headline: "Back-door voucher bill defies logic."

If you ever thought the folks at the Statehouse take voters as “April fools,” just delve into a newly-passed House bill that seeks tax credits for parents who have kids in private school.

The House of Representatives has passed a so-called “school choice” bill that supporters claim gives parents more choice in education. Over the last few years, proponents have received more than $2 million to push the legislation from New York millionaire Howard Rich.

Meanwhile, opponents say the measure is a voucher in disguise -- a harmful way to siphon public money from public schools to weaken them more than they already are.

When proponents talk about “school choice,” they ignore the fact that public schools today offer more choices than ever before. Not only are there a plethora of charter schools all over the state, but there are magnet schools and programs, vocational tracks, Montessori-style instruction, online schools, arts-based schools and more.

Take note of that last fact, readers; you'll see it here again.

To suggest that public schools don’t offer choices to parents is outright wrong. But more importantly, the logic behind this move for more “school choice,” is fundamentally flawed.

Consider how the newly-passed House bill would allow tax deductions for parents’ income in three categories:
Up to $4,000 for parents who send their child to private school;
Up to $2,000 for parents who home-school their child; and
Up to $1,000 for parents who send their kids to a school in a district which is not their own school district of residence.

Now think about that. The measure is elitist on its face. Why? Because you need at least $4,000 in taxable income to take advantage of the tax deduction. But guess what? About half of South Carolinians make so little income -- or have enough tax breaks already -- that they pay absolutely no South Carolina income tax.

I think Rep. James Smith made the same point during the House debate, and he added that because of this fact, the bill under discussion amounted to no more than "gravy" for those wealthy enough to take advantage of it.

Let me run that by you again. Of the 2 million income tax returns filed in 2009, some 889,889 returns (43.7 percent) had absolutely zero tax liability. If you add another 131,592 returns where filers’ tax liabilities were $100 or less, then just over half -- 50.15 percent -- of filers paid $100 or less in S.C. income tax, according to the most recent numbers from the state Department of Revenue.

So do you really think people who don’t earn enough money to pay income taxes in South Carolina are going to benefit from a $4,000 tax deduction or have enough money to send their kids to private school? Heck no. But the legislature wants you to believe it is “looking out” for low-income people and trying to give them real choices.

Hogwash. This Republican-backed measure isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s nothing more than a way to help rich backers who want public money to help pay for private schools.

Various estimates suggest that between $7 million and $15 million has been donated to legislators and candidates, or used to mount propaganda campaigns, in support of the scheme.

The fiscal impact statement of the bill is estimated to cost the state $37 million in the first year, and more in subsequent years. I'd say that a lot of payback.

Jon Butzon of the Charleston Education Network said the House bill will harm public education.

“It’s only going to benefit a few and anybody who gets anything can already attend a private school,” he said. “The bigger issue is the General Assembly has a constitutional responsibility to every child of the state of South Carolina and it’s not meeting its responsibility.”

That responsibility, he said, is to fully-fund public education, as required by the state Education Finance Act. For the coming year, the House passed a $6.5 billion budget that underfunded public education by $700 million, or $1,002 per student.

So our lawmakers under-fund the base student cost by $1,002 per student, then moan and groan about the poor results coming out of public schools, and use them as justification for a voucher scheme that isn't paid for in our budget. This isn't public policy; it's a bad Three Stooges reel.

So while legislators plan to abrogate their responsibility to pay for public education as required by the law -- particularly laughable in a year when the state has a $900 million surplus -- they are also trying to sell the education moonshine of the need for tax deductions for people with kids in private school.

“They’ll sit up there and point the finger, but the Constitution says they’re responsible for every child,” Butzon noted. “This bill lets them off the hook to sell the smoke and mirrors that voters deserve a choice. Where is THAT in the Constitution?”

This House bill is a fraud that takes us all as April fools. Let’s hope the state Senate doesn’t fall for this illogical, vituperative political malarkey.

Amen. The State's "Buzz" author seems to think the Senate will bury it quickly, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Award-winning writer Corey Hutchens of the Free Times offered his own circumspection of the matter in this week's edition:

The Palmetto State has been a national flashpoint in the school choice movement since former Gov. Mark Sanford introduced the issue in 2004. In doing so, he attracted out-of-state pro-voucher forces whose outside money and hardball political tactics have become legend.

In 2009, Sanford’s lieutenants circulated a “hit list” of GOP incumbents who opposed school choice. Groups aligned with the issue recruited and funded primary challengers.

Gov. Nikki Haley, long a darling of the private school choice movement, said early in her administration that she won’t make the divisive issue a priority — but will sign a school choice bill if it makes its way to her desk.

In 2010, a Winthrop University poll showed likely voters in the state were evenly split on education tax credit proposals, which was a significant change from previously reported negative public perception.

Funny thing about polls is how the language of the questions often leads to pre-determined answers. Ask someone, "Would you support taking public dollars away from public schools?" and, if they support their local public schools, they may answer "No."

Now ask the same person, "Given that we spent roughly the gross national product of a Latin American nation on public education but haven't yet seen a graduate win a Nobel Prize, would you support giving state money to private schools where class sizes are small, school lunches are nutritious and children seem happy?" You might get a teary "Yes."

So I'm not that excited about polls unless I can read the questions and compare apples to apples.

Debbie Elmore, spokeswoman for the South Carolina School Board Administrators Association, who has fought such legislation for years, agrees that more lawmakers might have voted for it because it’s a “tamer” bill, but cites other reasons, too.

She blames outside school choice groups using what she calls bullying and harassment tactics to antagonize Republican lawmakers who oppose school choice, particularly in the Upstate.

During Sanford’s administration, the school choice debate made Howard Rich a household name. The wealthy New York City-based antigovernment activist dumped millions into South Carolina in support of school choice by funding SCRG and pro-voucher candidates.

One of former Democratic S.C. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex’s legacies was making the word “voucher” toxic when it came to school choice legislation. The language has since changed to “tax credits.”

This year, the national tea party-aligned FreedomWorks has zeroed in on certain lawmakers with phone calls and direct mail in their districts.

The efforts aren’t new, but are they finally paying off?

While Elmore won’t go that far, she says they’ve certainly taken their toll.

“I think that they’ve worn down the weary,” she says.

Wearing down the weary: Another tactic that doesn't lead to great public policy.

As I noted, The State seems to believe that the Senate will kill the voucher bill quick. True, the filing deadline for Senate races passed on March 30, so the voucherites don't have that to hold over Senators' heads. But a lot of Senators already have opposition, so we'll see.

Writes The State:

As any civics teacher can tell you, the role of a lower house – in South Carolina’s case, the state House – is to hotly reflect the desire of the public.

Now.

Elected every two years, House members cannot afford to be philosophical.

Even so last week’s S.C. House vote to start (it will never end) diverting state tax revenues – via tax deductions and credits – to parents who home school or send their children to private school was surprising.

No. 1: The voucher movement has been noisily renouncing any communal societal obligations – humbug!!! it’s failed!!! – for a decade.

No. 2: New York real estate millionaire Howard Rich and his friends have put nearly $2 million into S.C. political races over that decade to elect enough legislators – overwhelmingly Republicans – to turn the state into a K-12 lab experiment.

What’s surprising?

What took so long?

Lower houses, like the S.C. House, are the legislative equivalent of the grand jury that would indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor said he – or she – wanted it. You, Joe or Mary Donor, or Bill or Sarah Voter want it? It’s part of the GOP agenda! You get it!

Of course, your civics teacher also would remind you that that is the proper role of a lower house, and the role of an upper house – in this case the famously deliberative S.C. Senate – is to sort the good ideas that the hotheads in the lower house have from the bad ones.

And it will.

(Heck, the S.C. Senate even kills good ideas that come from the House.)

Bottom line? The latest school choice bill will go nowhere this year. It felt good (in the House). But the Senate will kill this puppy so smoothly it won’t even yelp.

And, this being the end of a two-year session, after the bill dies in the Senate, it can all start again next year.

The Buzz sure hopes so.

South Carolina could use the added economic impact of Mr. Rich financing another 10 years of Palmetto State political races and blogs.

Must we suffer that injustice to reap economic growth?

I appreciate that The State added the vote breakdown, so we can see who did what on the fateful day.

For those of you keeping score, here’s how the House vote broke down:

For – 65 members, all Republicans – Rita Allison, R-Spartanburg; Todd Atwater, R-Lexington; Nathan Ballentine, R-Richland; Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville; Liston Barfield, R-Horry; Eric Bedingfield, R-Greenville; Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington; Don Bowen, R-Anderson; Bill Chumley, R-Spartanburg; Alan Clemmons, R-Horry; J. Berham Cole, R-Spartanburg; Tom Corbin, R-Greenville; Kris Crawford, R-Florence; Bill Crosby, R-Charleston; Joseph Daning, R-Berkeley; Greg Delleney, R-Chester; Tracy Edge, R-Horry; Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort; Mike Forrester, R-Spartanburg; Mike Gambrell, R-Anderson; Dan Hamilton, R-Greenville; Nelson Hardwick, R-Horry; Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston; Jim Harrison, R-Richland; George Hearn, R-Horry; Phyllis Henderson, R-Greenville; William Herbkersman, R-Beaufort; Bill Hixon, R-Aiken; Chip Huggins, R-Lexington; Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston; Deborah Long, R-Lancaster; Phillip Lowe, R-Florence; Jay Lucas, R-Darlington; Peter McCoy, R-Charleston; Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley; D.C. Moss, R-Cherokee; Steve Moss, R-Cherokee; Chris Murphy, R-Dorchester; Wendy Nanney, R-Greenville; Ralph Norman, R-York; Phillip Owens, R-Pickens; Steve Parker, R-Spartanburg; Andy Patrick, R-Beaufort; Michael Pitts, R-Laurens; Tommy Pope, R-York; Joshua Putnam, R-Anderson; Rick Quinn, R-Lexington; Kevin Ryan, R-Georgetown; Gary Simrill, R-York; B.R. Skelton, R-Pickens; G. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter; G.R. Smith, R-Greenville; J. Roland Smith, R-Aiken; Mike Sottile, R-Charleston; Edward Southard, R-Berkeley; Kit Spires, R-Lexington; Tommy Stringer, R-Greenville; Eddie Tallon, R-Spartanburg; Bill Taylor, R-Aiken; Anne Thayer, R-Anderson; David Tribble, R-Laurens; Brian White, R-Anderson; William Whitmire, R-Oconee; Mark Willis, R-Greenville; Tom Young, R-Aiken

Against – 49 members, including five Republicans – Paul Agnew, D-Abbeville; Terry Alexander, D-Florence; Karl Allen, D-Greenville; Carl Anderson, D-Georgetown; Michael Anthony, D-Union; Jimmy Bales, D-Richland; James Battle, D-Marion; William Bowers, D-Hampton; Joan Brady, R-Richland; Lester Branham, D-Florence; Doug Brannon, R-Spartanburg; Curtis Brantley, D-Jasper; G.A. Brown, D-Lee; H. Boyd Brown, D-Fairfield; R.L. Brown, D-Charleston; Mia Butler Garrick, D-Richland; Bill Clyburn, D-Aiken; Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg; Laura Funderburk, D-Kershaw; Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston; Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg; Chris Hart, D-Richland; Jackie Hayes, D-Dillon; David Hiott, R-Pickens; Kenneth Hodges, D-Colleton; Jenny Horne, R-Dorchester; Lonnie Hosey, D-Barnwell; Leon Howard, D-Richland; Joseph Jefferson, D-Berkeley; Kevin Johnson, D-Clarendon; Patsy Knight, D-Dorchester; David Mack, D-Charleston; Joe McEachern, D-Richland; Walt McLeod, D-Newberry; Elizabeth Munnerlyn, D-Marlboro; Jimmy Neal, D-Lancaster; Joe Neal, D-Richland; Denny Neilson, D-Darlington; Harry Ott, D-Calhoun; Julia Parks, D-Greenwood; Lewis Pinson, R-Greenwood; Todd Rutherford, D-Richland; Ronnie Sabb, D-Williamsburg; Bakari Sellers, D-Bamberg; James E. Smith, D-Richland; Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston; David Weeks, D-Sumter; Seth Whipper, D-Charleston; Robert Williams, D-Darlington

Will primary candidates visit Scott's Branch High School?

Statehouse Report editor Andy Brack offered a great suggestion for our hifalutin' guests arriving from New Hampshire this week. Among a list of places he recommends they visit while pressing the flesh and sipping sweet tea for the cameras is Scott's Branch High School. Writes Brack:

Scott’s Branch High School. An Upstate professor encouraged GOP candidates to visit Scott’s Branch High School in Summerton to better understand how segregation impacted the state -- and how the past still haunts the present. Scott’s Branch is a school highlighted in the Briggs v. Elliott court case, one of five consolidated into the Brown v. Board of Education in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal.

Even today, conditions in “Corridor of Shame” schools from Dillon County to Jasper County along Interstate 95 generally are substandard to those in more affluent areas of the state. By visiting Scott’s Branch school, the professor explained, candidates would better understand how a quality education system is key for future generations to become more fully involved in the country’s economic system. In other words, a better education will lead to better jobs for all, but if we don’t invest in education, we won’t reap the rewards, particularly in rural areas.

Capital idea.

Given, however, that none of the candidates in question has made promotion of public education -- or the eradication of inequality in educational opportunity, for that matter -- the cornerstone of his campaign, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any of them to arrive in Clarendon County.

Public schools are no budget priority in South Carolina

I appreciate reading Bill Davis's columns in Statehouse Report, as they're usually quite cogent and pertinent analyses of the state's unncessary misfortunes. His item in the August 5 edition was no different, titled "State avoids fully funding education."

Comprehensive and sensible public education reform could benefit, or be the victim of, competing political agendas in the days ahead.

South Carolina has always struggled with the confluence of education and money, from the time of slavery until modern times. And the 2011-12 school year will be no different based on trends.

In hopes of better competing with regional, national, and international school systems, South Carolina’s legislature in 1977 passed a series of funding bills to funnel money into schools and maintain funding on a per-pupil basis, also known as base student funding.

How has that gone over the past 10 years? Does the word “rollercoaster” ring a bell? Despite claims by legislators that education was cut last and “held harmless” in recent years, the hard numbers tell a different story.

State law requires the General Assembly to fund school districts at roughly $2,700 per-student for the current school and fiscal year, according to state officials. But, the legislature, making use of special one-year temporary laws called provisos, has routinely skirted funding the full amount.

How far off? The actual per-pupil amount this year is $1,880, according to the state Department of Education, with even less in recurring funding. In other words, the base student allocation is roughly one-third off.

As a diligent journalist, Davis was bound to give Su-Pretendent Mick Zais's spinmeister, Jay Ragley, time and space to rationalize the deep cuts.

Though diligent, I am not similarly bound; I will offer my own interpretation of Ragley's answer, in my own words: In South Carolina, under the present leadership at the state and legislative level, adequate funding for public education is not high on anyone's priority list.

Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility; say it enough times and it loses meaning.

And, what a law says is subject to interpretation: You say you don't have enough money to do the job, I say you do. That's life. Deal with it.

Currently, the per-pupil funding is on par with actual dollar amounts from the 1998-99 budget. And the total amount of education funding from the state’s General Fund, which doesn’t include federal pass-through dollars, dropped to $1.8 billion last year in 2010-11. That represented a nearly $300-million cut from the previous year, and is on par with state appropriations from 10 years ago -- before the dot-com bubble burst was completely felt.

Davis included some views from educators themselves on the matter, Scott Price of the South Carolina School Boards Association and Jackie Hicks, president of The South Carolina Education Association.

Price, who is paid to advocate on behalf public education, said he saw the paucity and the up-and-down nature of per-pupil funding as a bellwether of other state priorities.

“If we’re a decade behind in school funding, then we better take a look at the conditions of our state roads, and the number of law enforcement officers we have patrolling them.”

This was far from the first year that Jackie B. Hicks, president of the S.C. Education Association, became frustrated with legislators for skirting the law they passed to set per-pupil spending. She said the legislature ought to follow its own legislation or write a new law to solve the ongoing problems.

“In our state, leadership has not done a good job of putting public education first,” Hicks said. “Provisos have depleted everything,” which, she said, was especially damaging in a state with such a high ratio of children depending on school-based free and reduced price lunch and breakfast programs.

Offering a view into his "crystal ball," Davis concluded, "Failure to act on the voluminous Taxation Realignment Commission final report this year showed how little interest the General Assembly has in affecting major taxation changes. And with next year being an election year and the dominant perception being that an exemption removed is a new tax created, there may be no simple answer to improving state school funding issues."

Which is how many educators are reminded every day that we live in South Carolina.

What is South Carolina's story?

Yesterday, I posted a note about an unfortunate letter written by a Charlestonian and published in Andy Brack's Statehouse Report. While the correspondent proposed sweeping the seamier facts and figures reflecting South Carolina's reality under the old rug, I suggested that we might be more authentic if we addressed those bad outcomes and changed our ways to make future reports better.

Brack published last week another item that speaks to the same issue: What to do about South Carolina's reality? He attended a forum sponsored by the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, where he heard Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt, a former Australian premier, and a couple of public relations gurus discuss the question. Their suggestion: Rebranding.

Brack writes,

One of the first rules of politics is to define yourself and not let your opponent define you.

As a state, we've ignored this rule for too long. We've become frequent fodder for late-night comedians who poke fun at images we've brought upon ourselves -- from a philandering governor who redefined what hiking the Appalachian Trail means to the current lieutenant governor who can't seem to get his story straight on how he uses his campaign money.

One friend remarked years ago that the only time outsiders saw South Carolina in the news was about something bad -- either leaders in a pickle or when another embarrassing or bad statistic reared its ugly head.

So maybe it's high time that we devote some real effort into fixing South Carolina's image by giving ourselves a new brand. Let's make South Carolina mean more than the Palmetto tree and crescent moon logo that confuses most outsiders.

"We need to work a little bit on the good," S.C. Commerce Department chief Bobby Hitt said this week at a development forum put on by the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina. "The bad and ugly are winning."

Mm. Sadly, the bad and the ugly are the doors we walk through to get to our own front porches. But I'm fully in support of Hitt's suggestion to work on the good. It's not enough to cut weeds off at the ground; you have to pull them up by the roots and replant something beneficial to the community.

But was Hitt -- and his co-panelists -- talking about digging up and replanting, or merely putting a privacy fence around our weedy lot and redirecting the public's eyes to the pretty fountain across the street?

Former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who was on the same panel, agreed. "Marketing can change South Carolina's image."

The state may be well on its way, in fact, by ripping off an idea from its sister state of Queensland. About a dozen years ago, Beattie said his state in Australia was down in the dumps like South Carolina is. To counter the image, Queensland started investing big in biotechnology and university research. It developed the concept of Queensland being the "Smart State" for research and development in the new economy.

In May, South Carolina's Centers of Economic Excellence program, which seeks top-notch academics to join Palmetto State research universities to drive economic development, changed its name to the SmartState Program, in part as a rebranding effort. Coincidence? No.

Sounds a lot like Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, the South's own "Smart State." Heavy investment in education, check. Biotechnology and university research, check. Developed the state as a center for research and development in a new economy, check.

Question: Are South Carolina's leaders willing to make the investment that Queensland and North Carolina made to birth a new South Carolina?

Prediction: Not hardly. But we can imagine -- briefly -- before the whistle blows and we have to punch in at the timeclock again.

Alas, the public relations gurus focused on devising a palette of lipsticks to use on the pig. There are so many choices, they said.

The value of fixing the state's brand can't be underestimated, according to two of the state's top marketing and advertising executives.

"We are not telling the full story about what South Carolina has to offer in areas like business, tourism, education and quality of life," said David Campbell, president of Columbia's Chernoff Newman agency. "The advantages [of branding] are that you get to control the story and get to help shape and realign perceptions by telling our unique characteristics. Disadvantages in today’s economic environment mean that there can be large costs associated with communicating through mass media. However, we must remain competitive so we can hardly afford not to. But you must have a clear vision about what you want to communicate. What is our story -- a pro-business state, a great place for tourism, a great place to live?"

Bruce Murdy, president of Rawle Murdy Associates in Charleston, said the state should tell its story strategically over a long term to shape how people think about the state.

"Every state has strengths and every state has its weaknesses, silly stories and attention-grabbing headlines from time to time," he said. "A good branding program isn’t about ‘glossing over’ issues as much as it can help refocus and put the spotlight on the great things our state has to offer.

"We’re a great vacation destination, and yet we’re so much more. So, do we let the media highlight our unemployment rate … or do we provide them great stories about BMW, Google and Boeing? Do we let the bloggers talk about our education challenges…or do we highlight what’s going on at ICAR, CURI and the Academic Magnet High School in Charleston? Do we let the headlines underscore our high obesity rates…or do we talk about the amazing discoveries at MUSC?"

Here's a thought: Bloggers talking about South Carolina's education challenges are not the problem. A self-perpetuating system of self-satisfied government that keeps South Carolina's children and public schools stuck in the Eisenhower era is.

And if the solution is to hold up BMW, Google and Boeing as our state emblems to redirect attention, let's beginning the planning now for the next of these forums in another decade, when we can repeat the whole conversation, yet again. Maybe then we can decide that to change perceptions, we might need to change reality.

Brack wraps it up smartly:

Bottom line: It's high time to redefine South Carolina. Our leaders need to invest in a smart, long-term strategy that will inform people about what we all know about the Palmetto State. And while they get smart people to spread the good word about South Carolina, maybe they can work seriously on bettering education, technology and workforce development that can turn around some of our bad statistics.

Disproportionate poor not to blame for South Carolina's ills

Readers of Andy Brack's Statehouse Report will recognize below a letter to the editor published in the most recent edition of that newsletter. (Those who do not subscribe are encouraged to do so.)

Since the young man signed his letter, it's revealing no secret to repost that information here:

To Statehouse Report:

I took note of your recent post ["The numbers tell a story of challenges," 6/25] listing the abysmal percentages that SC ranks in comparison to other states in certain categories. I am unclear on your intent and who your intended audience is in reporting this highly skewed and extremely pessimistic list, especially in the forum which you chose. How does a piece like this serve any positive purpose?

SC is a state complete with talented and educated people as well as unskilled and uneducated people ... as with every state. What SC does have, which is different than many other states, is a disproportionate percentage of a lower socioeconomic population (both black and white). It is very clear that a piece like this speaks heavily and directly to this economic and social class difference. To say that your “list” is a reflection on this lower class is accurate, but to say (and print) that this is a reflection of SC as a whole, is misleading and does the entire state and it’s educated population a huge disservice.

Others view SC as an uneducated and backwards state because that is the information that we provide to them. If we can begin to frame our negative statistics and attribute them to where they belong, you and others will see that we are not very different from other states and might even be a bit better.

-- Craig Delk, Charleston, SC

The summary of "abysmal percentages" to which Delk refers is found here, and I posted a similar set of abysmal data here.

It is easy to dismiss Delk's letter as the cranky angst of a promoter who wants to sweep our defects under the rug and focus attention only on South Carolina's sunny patina. But to dismiss it, I think, is a mistake; I suggest Delk's letter is worthy of intense consideration. In fact, the young man may be, perhaps unwittingly, giving voice to the base instincts of many others.

Consider his points:
-The list of data collected and published by Brack is "highly skewed and extremely pessimistic," he says. Delk does not question the data itself, only the collection and publication of it. Why? Because it is easier to criticize the dissemination of the information than it is to address the problems reflected by the data.

-South Carolina, like other states, is a mixture of "talented and educated" and "unskilled and uneducated people," but it suffers from "a disproportionate percentage of a lower socioeconomic population (both black and white)," he says. Delk offers no census data or other evidence to demonstrate the disproportionate percentage he perceives, and I have no interest in doing his research for him. But his assertion -- and his language -- is telling: Rather than face and address the individual South Carolinians reflected in Brack's summary of data, it is easier for Delk -- and likely of others who share his values, else he would not feel comfortable airing his view to a general readership of Brack's newsletter -- to group those individuals together and label them as he did, by their class. By establishing people of lesser means as a sort of "other" and grouping them together, it's easier to attach stereotypes to them, to dehumanize them, and to disregard their needs.

-Brack's summary of data, Delk writes, "speaks heavily and directly to this economic and social class difference." The charge -- a simple charge of "class warfare" -- underscores his earlier animus toward Brack's dissemination of information; to wit, Brack isn't interested in solving problems, he's engaging in class warfare, and for what purpose?

- Delk's next sentence is the revelatory one: "To say that your 'list' is a reflection on this lower class is accurate, but to say (and print) that this is a reflection of SC as a whole, is misleading and does the entire state and it’s educated population a huge disservice." Delk, speaking for himself but comfortably representing the view of friends and intimates, is offended that Brack or anyone else would post data reflecting the misfortune of others -- though they live in our communities, towns, cities, counties, and our state -- and leave open the possibility that readers outside our state would lump us all together. Underlying the offense is a well-known set of tropes: Education imputes rightness and, more importantly, goodness. Lack of education imputes wrongness and, indeed, badness. Good things come to good people, who deserve them for being good; bad things happen to bad people, who deserve them for being bad. Those of us who are educated, the logic follows, have a right to be offended when the other/bad/undeserving/lower socioeconomic class impedes our view of ourselves as a state. And we hold a special sense of offense when one we presume to come from our own class -- think of Franklin Roosevelt, called a "traitor to his class" -- like Brack, in this case, gins up a portrait that mars the view we hold of ourselves, as we represent our state.

-Delk repeats his point-of-view in his penultimate point: "Others view SC as an uneducated and backwards state because that is the information that we provide to them." Again, in his view, the data itself is not the problem; rather, the problem is the dissemination of the data.

But, in fact, the data is the problem. Observers don't see us as "uneducated and backwards" because that's the only face we show them. It's because that's our face.

For example, we chose to elect a state treasurer, Thomas Ravenel, some years ago who was criminally unsuited to the role, and was a cocaine dealer besides. I doubt it was our "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population" who forced him to traffic in cocaine, or even who elected him. Ruling them out leaves the guilt on the presumably educated class which Delk offers to represent.

Likewise, we elected a lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, who drove recklessly through downtown Columbia and berated a police officer for applying the law equally to all citizens, and who later equated the poor to yard animals. We elected Governor Mark Sanford, who carried on an extramarital affair while in office, even sneaking out of the country to be with his mistress, and lying to us and everyone else. One of our elected representatives to Congress, Joe Wilson, shouted down the president of the United States in the middle of a live broadcast of a State of the Union address.

And it isn't just our elected officials; appointed ones have done their part, too. Only two years ago, a Columbia police officer found our assistant Attorney General Roland Corning parked in a cemetery with a prostitute -- or stripper, depending on which official source you consult -- and a variety of adult toys and Viagra in his car. Our assistant Attorney General explained that he "always had" these things in his car, "just in case."

Lest we mistakenly believe South Carolina's vulnerability to misfortune is a recent affliction, or an affliction of our "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population," we should consult history.

We elected Rep. Preston Brooks to Congress, who in 1856 beat down Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the Senate with a walking cane -- beat him unconscious, and continued beating him -- leaving Sumner with permanent damage, so badly injured that he couldn't work for three years. We hailed Brooks as a conquering hero. A marble plaque in his honor is installed in the foyer of our Caroliniana Library on USC's Columbia campus.

We chose to secede from our nation, and persuaded other states to leave with us; it turned out badly for us and for them, yet we continue to honor and celebrate the cause for which we seceded. It's hard for out-of-state observers to ignore a state holiday -- or the flag we continue to fly in front of our State House.

We elected former Governor Ben Tillman to the U.S. Senate after he participated actively in the murders of innocent black militia members in Hamburg in 1876, and later made the entertaining and psychotic threat that he would drive a pitchfork through President Grover Cleveland's gut. And when he died, we erected a statue in Tillman's honor on the State House grounds, where it stands today.

When we were prohibited from keeping slaves, we excluded minorities as much as possible from our growing industrial economy, using impoverished women and children in our factories instead. We fought the progressive movement of the early twentieth century that led to child labor laws in other states, keeping our own 10-, 11- then 12-year-olds on mill payrolls until 1905.

Our elected lieutenant governor in 1903, James Tillman, angry at the truthful reports and editorials being published in The State newspaper, shot and killed, on the State House grounds, the newspaper's editor. He was appropriately charged with murder, but his uncle -- the same U.S. Senator who murdered innocents and threatened to maim a president -- intervened to move the trial from Richland County to Lexington County, and attended every day of it, at the end of which the jury unanimously voted the younger Tillman innocent of the charges.

We fought the campaign for a constitutional amendment allowing women the right to vote. Our legislature never ratified that amendment until 1969 -- 49 years after it became federal law without us.

When our mill workers sought to organize themselves as a union and negotiate for better working conditions, we watched them murdered in Honea Path in 1934, and we watched their factory shut down and themselves booted from their jobs in Darlington in 1956.

In part because of President Harry Truman's executive order integrating the armed forces, our Senator Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform. We and three other southern states gave him our electoral votes.

In 1952, in anticipation of Supreme Court rulings prohibiting segregation, we adopted a constitutional amendment empowering the legislature to close public schools, if necessary, to prevent integration. When the Court ruled in 1955 that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, our Governor Olin Johnston announced to a special session of our legislature that we, as a state, would defy that ruling. We appointed a School Segregation Committee, chaired by Senator Marion Gressette, to maintain that position for as long as possible. To honor Gressette for his long service, we named our state Senate Office Building for him.

Though we've existed as a colony, then a state, for 341 years, it was only 34 years ago that we adopted a law providing a formula and a mechanism by which to fund annually our state public school system. Yet even that proves too great a commitment; we've fully funded our own 34-year-old, outdated formula only a handful of times.

We were so preoccupied in the 1990s with maintaining the supremacy of the racist policies of our heritage that our lawmakers wasted months, perhaps years, of time debating the placement of the Confederate battle flag, which still holds a place of prominence on our Capitol grounds. So important was the single issue to us that it became a topic of conversation in the presidential primaries of 2000.

So peculiar is the issue of race in our history that a single impolitic remark about Strom Thurmond's run for the presidency cost Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott his party position. And so peculiar was it still that after Thurmond's death in 2003, we heard the rumors of a biracial daughter called, by our still-sitting Congressman Joe Wilson, a "smear on the image... [of] a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina." Indeed, the rumors proved to be accurate, and the granite base beneath the nine-foot-tall bronze statue honoring Thurmond was revised, with Essie Mae Washington Williams's name carved elegantly beneath the names of her much younger half-siblings.

And all of this occurred before our Governor Sanford carried two piglets up to the lobby outside the House chamber, where they soiled the rug, woven on historic looms at Oxford Mills of Mississippi, that had been installed as part of the multi-million-dollar restoration of the Capitol only a few years before.

It is arguable that none of these deeds or developments were the fault of South Carolina's "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population." Yet these are the pieces that give observers from outside South Carolina their view of our state.

In his final point, Delk proposes in his letter of criticism to editor Brack that we accentuate the positive, with regard to the awful data reflecting the status of South Carolina's poor and unfortunate: "If we can begin to frame our negative statistics and attribute them to where they belong, you and others will see that we are not very different from other states and might even be a bit better."

Sadly, neither lies nor obfuscation, nor ignoring, nor "reframing" facts and figures, will produce silk purses from sow's ears. Neither Brack nor the other sensible reporters and editors of our pitiful reality are to blame for what is. If our goal is to produce and disseminate news of wonderful outcomes, we as a state -- our educated middle- and upper-class, too -- might succeed by focusing on addressing our problems at their roots.

Will Haley veto a plan to grant public schoolchildren more funds?

The Aiken Standard published a note today optimistic that our schools may get $56 million out of a conference committee agreement that irons out differences in the House and Senate budget plans. But the Standard is well aware that Governor Nikki Haley issued a declaration last week that public schools should get none of the late spring's windfall tax revenues.

It happens that Aiken County stands to collect two million dollars from the total sum, if it escapes Haley's wrath. And if that happens, the local school board may not be forced to raise the local millage rate.

If a S.C. legislative budget conference committee deal holds up, school districts would get an additional $56 million to boost their per-pupil allocations, including more than $2 million for the Aiken County School District.

The additional statewide funding is roughly half of the $105 million that the S.C. Senate had inserted into its budget initially after the Board of Economic Advisors projected another $210 million in new revenue.
...
Earlier this week, Gov. Nikki Haley said she would veto any additional funding for education.

As The Associated Press reported, the current per-pupil school allocation is $1,617 - more than $1,100 less than the state's own funding formula. Initial budget efforts improved the allocation to $1,788. The $105 million in extra appropriations would have move it to $1,959; the $56 million agreed upon by the committee will provide $1,880 per student.

Two of Aiken County's legislative delegation are tickled pink at the prospect of avoiding a millage increase: Reps. Bill Taylor and Roland Smith. But another two, Sens. Shane Massey and Greg Ryberg, take Haley's stand: In economic times such as these, children in the public schools have to suffer like the rest, and do more with less.

Ryberg, in fact, offered a colorful metaphor to illustrate his cold-hearted and cynical attitude toward the needs of children:

"The national economy is teetering toward a return to a recession," Ryberg said. "Squirrels have the sense to keep nuts for the winter."

Yes, summertime is precisely the time for Aiken County's children to forage for nuts and tuck them away in pencil boxes for those lukewarm Aiken County winter mornings to come. Ryberg assured the Standard he supports education, and the Standard gamely quoted him so:

"I'm fully supportive of education," said Ryberg. "But it's crazy to be in the same situation and face the same problems that we had four years ago when the downturn in the economy started."

He makes an excellent point. Many's the time during Senate budget debates past, when the state's economy was pink and the coffers were full, that our grave veteran Senators have intoned, Now is no time to spend money we have and commit ourselves to greater future obligations, even for the benefit of the little children of South Carolina.

Yet many's the time during Senate budget debates past, when the state's economy was bleak and the coffers were bare, that the same grave veteran Senators have moaned, Now is no time to spend money we don't have and commit ourselves to greater future obligations, even for the benefit of the little children of South Carolina.

It seems there is no good time to commit ourselves to a greater future, if doing it requires spending money.

Unless you live in North Carolina.

Andy Brack, publisher of an intelligent product called the Statehouse Report, included a noteworthy column in a recent edition. In it, he proposed that investing with perseverance in the things that matter can yield, over time, tremendous results. This is, of course, not new wisdom; Brack quoted the ancient philosopher Aesop, and used the fable of the crow and his pebbles to illustrate his point.

It seems entirely appropriate to offer Brack's example, given Ryberg's squirrels-with-nuts tangent, and another segment of his note:

If we want to do better on any of these measures, South Carolina has to make a sustained commitment to excellence and follow through like the crow. Two examples illustrate how perseverance pays off.

First turn to North Carolina. In the 1950s, some of Tarheel state's numbers, particularly on poverty and education, were as bad as -- if not worse -- than South Carolina's. But an inspirational leader, Terry Sanford, mustered the political muscle to invest big in public education, particularly at the university level. And a group of business, political and academic leaders worked together to create a research and development park that blended the resources of universities with the corporate sector. The result? Research Triangle Park, now the home to more than 170 global companies.

How did it happen? North Carolina's leaders dreamed, adopted a shared vision and persevered to make it happen.

A second example comes from the world of politics. Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the idealism of John F. Kennedy, Great Society naysayers concocted a political vision espousing government was bad for America. With the Watergate scandal injecting cynicism in a country still smarting from the clashes of the 1960s, the political environment was ripe for the message by Ronald Reagan that "government is the problem." In the years that followed, many politicians blindly adopted the mantra that the only way to get what's needed in America was to cut taxes, cut more taxes and cut more taxes -- to, in fact, cut government so much that conservative tax-hater Grover Norquist could "drown it in a bathtub."

The moral is that conservatives adopted a once-controversial political vision, but kept plugging away at it for years until that vision became the vision of the majority.

But in 2011, a vision to continue to cut taxes more is becoming ridiculous. With South Carolina having the dubious distinction of taking in the lowest amount of taxes per capita according to the Tax Foundation, we don't have much fat to cut. We're cutting into the bone.

Our state's leaders need to comprehend that South Carolina needs transformational change to survive. To persist in cuts on top of cuts will lead us to becoming a third-world state.

The root of the word "fable" is Latin and means "story." The word "fabulous" has the same root. If we want South Carolina's future story to be fabulous, we've got to become the crow and work hard to shrug off the hangovers of the past. Invest perseveringly. Dum spiro spero.

Of course, I prefer Brack's example to Ryberg's.

The question is, Is Nikki Haley going to be crow with wisdom, or a squirrel hoarding nuts?

Will state employees have retirement security or not?

Bill Davis, editor of the Statehouse Report, published an item on the state's retirement plan more than a week ago, and I'm curious about how his analysis squares with that of Sam Griswold, whose judgment on retirement system questions is impeccable. Griswold wrote, here, about the competing legislation to make changes to the retirement system, especially for new state employees' benefits, and the significant change that Governor Nikki Haley made that week to the SCRS leadership: the removal of longtime director Peggy Boykin.

Facts don't seem to count for much here -- it's the ideological principle of the thing that seems to be driving this.

Some say our retirement system has an unmanageable unfunded liability. We, like many systems across the nation, do have a significant unfunded liability. Some modest adjustments in contributions and benefits may be necessary to deal with that unfunded liability. But our system is actuarially sound and there is no crisis. We have time to deal with any changes that need to be made and they should be made in a deliberate manner with professional assistance. The system is not broken so we need to be careful when we try to "fix" it. Unfortunately there does NOT seem to be the inclination to want to solve the problem in this manner.

In Davis's words, however, the state is "struggling" with its retirement program.

The crux of the matter seems to be this issue of "unfunded liability." As I understand it, analysts or actuarials calculate that IF every single state employee currently on the job retired today, all at once, the state would be "liable" for the dollar amount necessary to pay out all of their collective retirement benefits on the spot.

Of course, that doesn't happen. Not even employees who are eligible to retire do so on the very date of their eligibility, much less those who have been in state employment only a few years. So the premise is absurd. But let's play it out that way. Let's assume that every single state employee working today retired today. What would happen?

If that occurred, then the "unfunded liability" that lawmakers moan about would impact us. The retirement system is apparently very well situated to meet present needs, even the needs that will arise for many years to come, but it every state employee retired today, it likely wouldn't be able to meet its benefit obligations, and that is apparently what the "unfunded liability" means. Because the state legislature has made promises -- meager, pale, stingy ones, but promises nonetheless -- to its public workforce, the state legislature would have to make up the difference quickly. And that would probably require cutting the budget or raising taxes.

It's that last part -- raising taxes -- that provides the legislature's most conservative members their hook. Using this absurd premise, they wave the "raising taxes" flag to call out their troops, and the troops come a-running. We have to avoid raising taxes to meet this outrageous demand by -- cue the scary music -- retiring state employees, so we have to act now, and cut-cut-CUT! their benefits while we have time.

One way to push state employees out into the cold and get them off the state's retirement rolls is to make them enroll in a 401-K account. And that's where Bill Davis of the Statehouse Report picks up the trail, writing,

Will they or won’t they? That is the question.

Will future state employees continue to get state pensions or will legislators, as bills in the legislature propose, keep new employees from joining the state pension plan and force them into 401K-like savings plans?

State Sen. Chip Campsen (R-Charleston), the primary author of the Senate version of the retirement plan bill, said state government needed to follow the private sector’s lead in handling its pension obligations. How? By segueing from defined benefits plans, or pensions, to defined contributions plans that are controlled by employees and seeded with government contributions.

What's the difference?

The difference in a defined benefit and a defined contribution is the difference between paying off the mortgage and living securely through your retirement, OR losing the house before paying it off, and having to work another 10 or 20 years past your retirement age because your retirement check doesn't cover the groceries.

A defined benefit means that the state guarantees what it promised: You work all those years, and we guarantee that you'll collect the retirement benefit you were promised from day one.

A defined contribution means that the state will kick in a little bit to your 401-K, but when the market tanks again and your 401-K loses forty percent of its value, you're on your own: The state owes you nothing.

Lest we forget, every time there's an economic recession and the market drops, the value in our 401-K account drops too. It happened during the stagflation recession of the 1970s, the Reagan recession of the early 1980s, the Bush I recession of 1991, and Bush II recession of the early 2000s, and when the real estate bubble burst two years ago: Market values dropped, and everyone with 401-K accounts saw a sudden drop in their account values. Translation: If your retirement security is tied up in the stock market, you don't have any retirement security.

But state employees and retirees whose retirement security rests in the South Carolina Retirement System saw no damage whatsoever. What has been promised to them will be delivered to them, because we as a state have guaranteed that to one another. It is the contract we make with our state employees in recognition of the piteous salaries we pay them over the course of a working life.

And this situation provides us perhaps the best illustration of our lawmakers' callousness toward the very workers who clean our buildings and highway roadsides, who provide public services and do them at odd hours of the day and night. When snow falls in the Upstate and shuts down our roads, who gets up at 3 a.m. to clear them? That's who we're talking about.

Davis continues:

Gov. Nikki Haley says something has to be done, claiming the state’s retirement system is burdened with $13 billion in unfunded liabilities. Critics say the number is vastly overstated. But what Haley wants done is unclear as she has yet to spell out specifics in her administration’s plan.

Reached for comment Friday morning, Haley’s spokesman Rob Godfrey said the governor has said state government needed “to protect the benefits promised to current retirees. She has also said that the current unfunded liability is not sustainable, and is probably the greatest financial risk facing South Carolina.”
...
Treasurer Curtis Loftis, who has clashed with Haley publicly over Blume’s appointment, told Statehouse Report this week that the state employee retirement pension fund was $88 million underfunded just from 2010 alone.

This is a great piece of information: Which is it, $13 billion, or $88 million? Not that $88 million is beans, but it's a far cry from $13 billion -- and that's if we should buy this line of criticism in the first place. Is the sky falling? Or are our conservative Cassandras in the big house just chafing at having to pay state workers and then pay them a retirement benefit, too?

Currently, the state retirement system has roughly 450,000 members, with about 190,000 active members and 110,000 pensioners members and 150,000 members not yet eligible to receive benefits, according to the Budget and Control Board, which oversees the retirement system.

Loftis said he worried the state may be on the hook in the future if new hires were cut out of the defined benefits system. The treasurer worried that if the state didn’t continue to add new hires to the pension system, then the state eventually might have to contribute more money over time to fund any gaps in the pension system.

Why should we want new hires to be added to the pension system? It's because new hires contribute to the system, and their contributions are invested with everyone else's in the stock market. The greater our aggregated stock market investment, the greater our return, and the better able we are to pay current and future retirement benefits without adding dollars directly to the system.

Take those new hires out of the equation, and you lose the benefit of their investment. It's a Catch-22 for fiscal conservatives.

In contrast, there seems to be no conflict at all for fiscal progressives, whose argument is simple: If you want public services, pay public employees and guarantee them a retirement benefit.

The key is the guaranteed benefit. This is how Franklin Roosevelt explained Social Security to us, and how it worked before federal lawmakers turned it into their own federal savings account.

Campsen worried that the current retirement model mimicked the federal Social Security program where new contributions were being used to fund existing benefits. “If that’s what happening in the state system, then we need to stop the bleeding sooner rather than later,” he said.

But that’s not what is happening. The state retirement system is fully solvent because the state is not borrowing from the pension fund to pay other bills, as is the case with Social Security on the federal level.

Bob Borden, who oversees the retirement pension fund, has said publicly that the fund is “back in the black” and exceeding investment projections, with a total value of about $23 billion.

Borden did not return several days of calls for comment on the fund, so it is not clear what he means by saying the fund was “back in the black.” In 2008, the fund’s value was $29 billion -- $6 billion higher than it is today. The $23 billion fund now, however, has regained $3.5 billion from a $19.5 billion low point two years ago.

See that "low point" from two years ago? That's when the bottom fell out of the market thanks to the real estate and mortgage mess. In two years, the retirement system was able to bounce back. But how did the sudden drop in value affect Americans with 401-K accounts who were ready to retire when the bottom fell out? They couldn't retire, that's what happened. I can't imagine many things worse than being ready to retire after a long career, and finding that the 401-K account that was supposed to support you through the next 20 or 30 years is now so devalued that it can't support you for five years. What options do you have then, when bills are due and the best your financial advisor can do is tell you to leave the account alone and wait, wait, wait, wait until the market comes back.

That's the difference between having a defined benefit and a defined contribution.

Joe Benton, the interim executive director for the S.C. State Employees Association, disagreed with Haley’s assessment of the pension fund. He said she was playing games with the numbers – that her $13 billon number was premised on the unrealistic idea that everyone would who could retire in state government were to do so tomorrow.

Benton likened the crusade against the state’s retirement system as saber rattling, considering, he said, that the average pension recipient receives less than $20,000 a year. And Benton, a former economics teacher, worried that it might not be the safest idea to let state employees with little investment savvy manage their retirement savings.

Oh, I think that's precisely what the investment firms hope for: Wave after wave of state employees with little investment savvy bringing their retirement savings to invest in the market. This is how newly-minted young investment bankers become wealthy, powerful investment bankers -- and how South Carolina's poor get poorer and poorer, all the while.