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Columbia City Paper

Legislature should back off on search, I.D. bills

Something’s fishy in Columbia with two bills that directly impact our constitutional rights.
In one, state lawmakers want to start so-called “warrantless searches” to allow police to search people on parole or probation without the hassle of getting a search warrant.  In another, legislators want to require photo identification for voting, a practice that could dampen turnout among more than 300,000 people who don’t have such identification cards.
In both cases, state legislators want to use the strong arm of the law to impede people’s civil liberties.  What’s fishy is that these efforts are being backed strongly by Republicans, the party that preaches the gospel of limited government.
“When they say they believe in less government, watch what they do, and not what they say,” warns Charleston civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner.
First, let’s look at warrantless searches.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, a Democrat, started the push for warrantless searches to help cut down on crime in Charleston.   If police can search any probationer or parolee any time, proponents believe the threat of searches will discourage those folks from returning to a life of crime.
In the original version of the bill, warrantless searches extended to private homes that a probationer or parolee might be in.  In recent days, the House deleted that provision to deal with the very real concern that police would be able to get into anyone’s home without a warrant.  Now the proposal calls for searches in cars or in the public if an officer deems it necessary.
But it’s a slippery slope.  If we allow police searches of parolees and probationers without a warrant, what’s to prevent future proposals to take away more constitutional rights from unreasonable searches and seizures in the future?
“It’s government reaching too far,” said one of the few Republican legislators against the bill.  “They’re finding an end run around the Fourth amendment.
“The problem is it’s not narrowly tailored for what they say the intent is,” said the lawmaker, who asked for anonymity.  “The repercussions are great as it relates to innocent third parties.  Nobody is trying to protect the right of people on parole or probation.  The concern is the impact on third persons who have done nothing wrong.”
State Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, notes the whole idea of warrantless searches is odd since getting a warrant isn’t really that hard if police have a suspicion of wrongdoing.   Rather than mess with constitutional rights, perhaps authorities should better use existing laws, such as setting higher bonds for probationers or parolees who get in trouble, he added.
Next up:  photo identification for voters.
According to the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, there are more than 178,000 registered S.C. voters who don’t have a state-approved photo I.D. or driver’s license.  Requiring those people to get more identification for voting would cost about $1 million and could create longer lines at the polls, the League says.
More importantly, requiring photo IDs is solving a problem that really doesn’t exist.  Derfner said the state already has adequate identification requirements.
“We’ve never had a complaint of that kind of fraud,” he said, later adding that the voter I.D. proposal “is just a fraud because there’s no need for it.  The only reason they want to do it is cut down on voters.”
State League President Barbara Zia said the proposal is something that, if it passed, might be held up by the U.S. Justice Department because of the state’s history of discriminatory voting practices.
“The current bill covers only voter impersonation and the fact is there are no documented cases of such voter fraud in South Carolina,” she said.
What’s interesting about the whole controversy is that just a few years back, Republicans squawked about national identity cards as an intrusion into a person’s privacy.  And while some still are against national IDs nationally, the playing field seemed to change after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Regardless, fiddling with people’s constitutional rights of being able to vote with few barriers and being able to exist without unreasonable searches is dangerous.  State lawmakers need to seriously consider how they are proposing to take away citizen rights before proceeding with either unnecessary bill.
Andy Brack, publisher of Statehouse Report, can be reached at:   brack@statehousereport.com.

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Wellington Causes Brown Surge

Does DeMint secretly read City Paper? Ask him.

I had something really good planned for this week. Everything was going great. Joe Wilson is safely ensconced as a one-hit-wonder (For everyone in Columbia, he’s still an A+ asshole but in the national consciousness his “You Lie!” is already part of some “Remember the Aughts” television nostalgia special). There was nothing juicy about Lindsey Graham in “Game Change” (although I can’t resist referring to the passage where Cindy McCain interrupted something John was saying and the Senator turned to her and said “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” flipping her the double bird, both hands, big time—it’s hard to imagine mild-mannered Lindsey as best-friends with a guy like this, much less wanting him to be President). Yep, everything was going well.  And then came the special election in Massachusetts. Lindsey Graham, being the decent fellow that he (sort of, sometimes) is, warned his own party “If you are a Republican in a red state, don’t think this can’t happen to you.”

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Old Friendship, New Ideas

By Judit Trunkos
Walking into Gallery 80808 the day before the opening reception, I found four busy artists, who were putting the final touches on a new group exhibition at Gallery 80808. David Yaghjian, Mike Williams, Edward Wimberly and Stephen Chesley had exhibited together before.  Long-term friendship and art brings these artists together every year to showcase their new works.
Stephen Chesley’s new pieces shed light on his deep interest in other modern artists, especially abstract expressionists.  In order to perfect the depth and the dynamics of his brush strokes on canvas, Chesley fills sketchbooks with practice stroke studies to explore the usage and effect of negative space and dynamics.  At this group exhibition, he actually framed some of the best brush stroke compositions individually.  Chesley’s group of oil on paper, collectively titled “Kline/Zen,” introduces some of these unique brush strokes.
“Isolating the brush stroke, taking a piece out of the whole, shows that the piece is really equal to the whole,” Chesley says, giving a nod to the method Franz Kline used in the 60s.  “Just as Pollock’s work might appear chaotic at first, it is very well controlled by the artist.
Art-lovers in Columbia all know David Yaghjian’s “middle aged man” figure, who has been appearing in his work in the most unexpected and psychically unbalanced positions and situations. This year Yaghjian unveils new developments for his figure and begins to use trees as the main focus of these paintings.  According to Yaghjian, trees are still symbols for life and for the connection between heaven and earth, but they seem to appear more frequently as the main themes of his works. Yaghjian has also created wooden sculptures for the exhibit.  The wood and crayon pieces reflect the artist’s unlimited search for new ideas and the experimentation with new materials.
“Using crayons and chalk is like using kids’ tools. Allows me to discover new materials and have fun with them,” he says.
Mike Williams, best known for his abstract depictions of fish, features his new works inspired by nature and wetlands.  His mostly abstract paintings developed new lines this year, but he just had to add the fish figures to this background to finalize his work.  To further toy with the reciprocity of his works, Williams painted ”Across the Fish” in a way that his “Fish” sculpture fits into the painting perfectly.
“I am always trying to progress the work, trying new things,” he says. “There are no formulas. I just paint as I go.”
The character, Raggedy Ann, appears in most of Edward Wimberly’s exhibited works.  Even more surprisingly, the fictional character created by Johnny Gruelle has no connections to childhood or the story itself. Wimberly paints what he feels fits into the composition without having an ideological or compositional plan in mind.  Often Wimberly starts with one character or group of characters, which might not even be at the center of the canvas, and develops the rest of the composition afterwards.  In the painting titled “Evening on the Farm” Wimberly portrays a farm house in the background at night with a number of dancing and moving creatures in front of it.  Raggedy Ann dances with a ballet dancer in a pink tutu while a group of cheerful monkeys interact with the dancers.
“I paint things that do not make any sense,” Wimberly explains. “Afterwards, I look at the composition and try to understand it. But I do not know what I will end up painting in the beginning. I think it is boring to know what I will paint, before I paint it.”
This group exhibition is always a blast and will be featured at Studio 80808 until February 2.

Old Friendship, New IdeasBy Judit TrunkosWalking into Gallery 80808 the day before the opening reception, I found four busy artists, who were putting the final touches on a new group exhibition at Gallery 80808. David Yaghjian, Mike Williams, Edward Wimberly and Stephen Chesley had exhibited together before.  Long-term friendship and art brings these artists together every year to showcase their new works.Stephen Chesley’s new pieces shed light on his deep interest in other modern artists, especially abstract expressionists.  In order to perfect the depth and the dynamics of his brush strokes on canvas, Chesley fills sketchbooks with practice stroke studies to explore the usage and effect of negative space and dynamics.  At this group exhibition, he actually framed some of the best brush stroke compositions individually.  Chesley’s group of oil on paper, collectively titled “Kline/Zen,” introduces some of these unique brush strokes.“Isolating the brush stroke, taking a piece out of the whole, shows that the piece is really equal to the whole,” Chesley says, giving a nod to the method Franz Kline used in the 60s.  “Just as Pollock’s work might appear chaotic at first, it is very well controlled by the artist. Art-lovers in Columbia all know David Yaghjian’s “middle aged man” figure, who has been appearing in his work in the most unexpected and psychically unbalanced positions and situations. This year Yaghjian unveils new developments for his figure and begins to use trees as the main focus of these paintings.  According to Yaghjian, trees are still symbols for life and for the connection between heaven and earth, but they seem to appear more frequently as the main themes of his works. Yaghjian has also created wooden sculptures for the exhibit.  The wood and crayon pieces reflect the artist’s unlimited search for new ideas and the experimentation with new materials.“Using crayons and chalk is like using kids’ tools. Allows me to discover new materials and have fun with them,” he says.Mike Williams, best known for his abstract depictions of fish, features his new works inspired by nature and wetlands.  His mostly abstract paintings developed new lines this year, but he just had to add the fish figures to this background to finalize his work.  To further toy with the reciprocity of his works, Williams painted ”Across the Fish” in a way that his “Fish” sculpture fits into the painting perfectly.“I am always trying to progress the work, trying new things,” he says. “There are no formulas. I just paint as I go.” The character, Raggedy Ann, appears in most of Edward Wimberly’s exhibited works.  Even more surprisingly, the fictional character created by Johnny Gruelle has no connections to childhood or the story itself. Wimberly paints what he feels fits into the composition without having an ideological or compositional plan in mind.  Often Wimberly starts with one character or group of characters, which might not even be at the center of the canvas, and develops the rest of the composition afterwards.  In the painting titled “Evening on the Farm” Wimberly portrays a farm house in the background at night with a number of dancing and moving creatures in front of it.  Raggedy Ann dances with a ballet dancer in a pink tutu while a group of cheerful monkeys interact with the dancers. “I paint things that do not make any sense,” Wimberly explains. “Afterwards, I look at the composition and try to understand it. But I do not know what I will end up painting in the beginning. I think it is boring to know what I will paint, before I paint it.” This group exhibition is always a blast and will be featured at Studio 80808 until February 2.

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Bauer should drop out of gubernatorial race

By Andy Brack
Let’s give a big hand to gubernatorial candidate Andre Bauer:  He’s wrapped up the intolerant, racist, elderly vote with recent comments linking government assistance to stray animals.   Maybe all the lieutenant governor now has to do to garner the GOP nod is expand his base by speeding more cars, crashing more planes and punching more walls.
What he really should do is save the state from four years of being the continuing butt of national jokes.  How?  By dropping out of the governor’s race.  Regardless of your political party, South Carolina just can’t afford Bauer’s immaturity and mouth to get in the way of where the state needs to go.
After years of bad behavior with planes and cars, Bauer’s mouth has finally caught up with him.  At issue is his deplorable comment last week on taking away government assistance for people who didn’t pass drug tests or attend PTA meetings.  At an Upstate political gathering, Bauer recalled his grandmother telling him to stop feeding strays:  “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
In a Sunday story in The Greenville News, Bauer said he didn’t regret the comments, but said using the “stray animals” comment probably wasn’t the best metaphor.
By Tuesday, the spin was in full control.  He told The State in a story printed that morning that he regretted the comment because it was being used as an analogy, not a metaphor.
By Tuesday afternoon, he was throwing more gas on the fire by “explaining” his comment about strays to the S.C. Radio Network:  ““If you can’t take care of them, take them to the animal shelter. But what happens when you feed them all the time and they become dependent of the food and you go on vacation?  They’ve learned how to not take care of themselves. They’ve become dependent on you, so what happens to them? I should have never used that metaphor. I never dreamed people in the media would try to turn this thing around instead of saying ‘hey let’s have an honest discussion.”
Bauer’s words have been roundly criticized and are, as the Times and Democrat of Orangeburg wrote “not some kind of Democratic overreaction.”  The Rock Hill Herald said he was reckless and used “spectacularly insensitive language.”   Bauer was “not only cruel and derogatory, but counterproductive,” according to the Myrtle Beach Sun-News.  And Warren Bolton at The State, who said he ate free lunches when he was in school, noted Bauer’s remarks were “an affront to every parent and child who might not come from financially stable homes.”
What’s bothersome, though with Bauer’s cycle of telling the comment to a friendly Upstate audience followed by not regretting it, regretting it and then saying it again, is the very real possibility that what he did was a calculated political move to inject some life into a dull, somewhat sputtering campaign.
Like him or not, Bauer long has been a determined, savvy campaigner who shouldn’t be underestimated.  Just ask Sen. Phil Leventis or former Rep. Robert Barber, both of whom narrowly lost to Bauer in statewide races.
But Bauer’s brand of unenlightened, retail politics isn’t what will move South Carolina forward.  Leaders of all political stripes are calling for real leadership in wake of the disaster of the Sanford years.  And real leadership is not something that Bauer has shown through the years.  Instead of governing, he’s been the eternal candidate who has run his mouth.
South Carolina deserves better from its next governor than someone who kowtows to the lowest common denominator.  After the last week, it deserves just about anybody but Andre.
Andy Brack is publisher of Statehouse Report.  He can be reached at:  brack@statehousereport.com.

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A Perfect Storm

State unemployment program bankrupt amid record jobless rate

By Todd Morehead
An economic hurricane has finally made landfall over South Carolina and state legislators seemingly didn’t have the foresight to pack an umbrella. It was widely reported last week that the jobless rate in S.C. has hit a record 12.6 percent, well above the 10 percent national average. At a time when scores of out-of-work South Carolinians are looking to the state for unemployment benefits, many taxpayers may not realize that the Employment Security Commission’s unemployment insurance reserves ran dry over a year ago and the state government is relying on federal loans to keep the program afloat.
South Carolina, a state that made national headlines for attempting to reject federal stimulus dollars, has already borrowed over $723 million from the federal government since December 2008 to cover the unemployment insurance shortfall in order to keep paying out benefits.
Following a federal law passed during the Great Depression, each state may set its own unemployment insurance policies and set parameters for funding those policies within broad federal guidelines. The programs were designed for states to pad their reserves during times of economic stability, so that unemployment insurance could aid unemployed workers and continue to stimulate the economy during downturns –in short, to keep consumers spending and businesses open long enough to weather the storm. Over the years, however, enough state legislators nationwide vowed to increase benefits while lowering taxes, and effectively chipped their unemployment systems into the red. Currently 17 out of 50 state unemployment insurance programs have gone bankrupt and are forced to borrow money from the federal government in the middle of the worst recession since the Depression that gave birth to the programs.
South Carolina was among the first eight states to show a declining trust fund balance starting around 2005. The fund had close to $800 million in reserves in 2000, but massive tax cuts kept incoming revenue from sustaining it.
So far, the federal loans have kept the state unemployment insurance program from going belly up, but an unfortunate side effect is that the loans pass along costs to federal taxpayers, many of whom live in states that properly funded their unemployment programs. South Carolina taxpayers, in the long term, will cover tens of millions in interest charges on the federal loans, which likely will have to be paid out of the state’s general budget.
South Carolina has responded with short term planning, so far only restructuring the parameters of benefits payouts to the unemployed. Recently the House almost unanimously approved a temporary measure that will make it harder for workers who were fired for legitimate reasons –such as insubordination, sleeping on the job, intentionally damaging property, and other reasons—from collecting benefits. The measure moved to the Senate last week.
A number of other measures on the legislative agenda include a bill to require mandatory drug screenings for persons receiving unemployment; redefining the words “unemployed” and “wages” to tweak S.C. Employment Security Law and to increase the taxable wage base, respectively; and to allow a state tax credit for employers hiring an unemployed individual receiving unemployment benefits.
House representatives also plan to enact the “Employment Security Funding and Reform Act,” which is currently still in committee (House Ways and Means).
While state legislators hammer out ways to plug the leak, it could be years before South Carolina taxpayers are out of the water.
Special thanks to Olga Pierce and the Pro Publica journalism project for compiling a portion of the data used for this story.

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The Vocal Booth

Greetings!!!  2010 is underway and the time keeps rolling.  2010 has seen many good days, but a couple of bad ones for my brothers and sisters in Haiti who fell victim to one of the worst earthquakes (and intense aftershocks) ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.  I really hope those out there with a heart are doing more than just watching the news.  Please find a reputable charity and donate your time, money, or more to help.  Being that this is the 1st quarter of music releases, labels are working gearing up for February & March dates, I figured I’d give you a list of some of the best artists ever to hold a microphone, but for some reason they are no where to be found. Let’s get it!!!!
Where Are They Now???? (In No Particular Order)
D’Angelo
Deborah Cox
Jade
Zhane (Pronounced Jah Nay)
DMX
Paris
Phife Dawg (A Tribe Called Quest)
Olu
Nine (Whutcha Want!!!)
Cypress Hill
Kam
Foxy Brown
Nikki D
Naughty By Nature
Rob Base
Dana Dane
Slick Rick
Kool Moe Dee
Da Youngstas (Remember Crewz Pop!!!)
Chill Rob G
D-Nice
Jurassic 5
Killah Priest
The Born Jamericans
Mad Lion
Stetsasonic
House Of Pain
Digital Underground
Bahamadia
Jeru Da Damaja
***************************
HONORABLE MENTION- Craig Mack…from ‘Flava In Ear Fame’…one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Rest in peace to Teddy Pendergrass…one of the greatest singers and performers of all time.    From ‘Wake Up Everybody’ and ‘Joy’ to ‘Love TKO’ and ‘Close The Door’, Teddy P had one of the smoothest and most distinctive voices ever.  May he, his spirit, his family, and his legacy forever remain blessed.  Stay Up!!!!
DJ Kingpin-Villain Of Vinyl        kingpinvillianofvinyl@gmail.com

Greetings!!!  2010 is underway and the time keeps rolling.  2010 has seen many good days, but a couple of bad ones for my brothers and sisters in Haiti who fell victim to one of the worst earthquakes (and intense aftershocks) ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.  I really hope those out there with a heart are doing more than just watching the news.  Please find a reputable charity and donate your time, money, or more to help.  Being that this is the 1st quarter of music releases, labels are working gearing up for February & March dates, I figured I’d give you a list of some of the best artists ever to hold a microphone, but for some reason they are no where to be found. Let’s get it!!!!
Where Are They Now???? (In No Particular Order)
D’AngeloDeborah CoxJadeZhane (Pronounced Jah Nay)DMXParisPhife Dawg (A Tribe Called Quest)OluNine (Whutcha Want!!!)Cypress HillKamFoxy BrownNikki DNaughty By NatureRob Base Dana DaneSlick RickKool Moe DeeDa Youngstas (Remember Crewz Pop!!!)Chill Rob GD-NiceJurassic 5Killah Priest The Born JamericansMad LionStetsasonicHouse Of PainDigital UndergroundBahamadiaJeru Da Damaja***************************HONORABLE MENTION- Craig Mack…from ‘Flava In Ear Fame’…one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
WORDS OF WISDOM Rest in peace to Teddy Pendergrass…one of the greatest singers and performers of all time.    From ‘Wake Up Everybody’ and ‘Joy’ to ‘Love TKO’ and ‘Close The Door’, Teddy P had one of the smoothest and most distinctive voices ever.  May he, his spirit, his family, and his legacy forever remain blessed.  Stay Up!!!!
DJ Kingpin-Villain Of Vinyl        kingpinvillianofvinyl@gmail.com

Read more on The Vocal Booth…

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