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Andy Brack
Number of posts: 44
Email address: email
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Posts by Andy Brack:
- 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.
Crooked Politics
Lawmakers must reform ethics system now
If anything has become crystal clear in politics over the last few months, it’s that legislators aren’t very good police officers of their own behavior.
Recall that earlier this year, Republican activist John Rainey complained to the House Ethics Committee that GOP Gov. Nikki Haley wrongly acted as a lobbyist while she was a member of the House. The committee met in private session and quickly threw out the allegations, only to receive massive criticism for acting too rashly and out of the public eye. So it started the process again, got evidence, investigated and held a two-day hearing in June, only to throw out the allegations again.
Manipulating Research
Be careful about questions on chocolate cake, road extensions
If you got a letter in the mail or a call on the phone from someone who asked whether you “favor or oppose receiving a chocolate cake,” there’s a high degree of likelihood that you’d say, “I’d favor it.” Why? Because chocolate cake tastes good.
The same goes for a caller who wanted to know whether you wanted to receive a sports car, a trip to Bermuda, or, say, the construction of the Mark Clark Expressway along a particular route. But if you were told that the chocolate cake would cost you $50, would you still be in favor of getting it?
Don't Read This
Do not buy this anti-South rant for any reason
If you come to the South with a bad attitude and want to find clichés, you’ll find them.
As Oregon travel writer Chuck Thompson relates in his new South-hating book, the South still has some rednecks, tacky trailer parks, racists, government-haters, religious zealots, fat people and guys who look cloned from the movie “Deliverance.” But so do Vermont, Kansas, Utah, Alaska and just about anywhere you look across America.
Come to think about it, it’s probably not too hard for anyone visiting Oregon to find salmon-wrestling lumberjacks who wear cowboy hats.
State House Report
Don’t tread on the Gadsden flag
Look around in your town and it probably won’t take long to spy a bright yellow flag with a coiled rattlesnake in the middle and the words, “Don’t Tread on Me.”
This flag, named for Charleston patriot Christopher Gadsden, is a Revolutionary War symbol for national unity and perseverance. But that’s not why the 237-year-old flag is showing up in front yards all over. It’s being inappropriately hijacked by the tea party.
Back in 1754, founding father Benjamin Franklin penned America’s first political cartoon to whip up national support to encourage colonists to fight with the British in the French and Indian War. Franklin’s cartoon featured the words “Join or Die” under a rattlesnake cut into eight parts, each of which symbolized the colonies.
Southern Politics
New job might have saved McConnell’s life
Becoming South Carolina’s lieutenant governor in March just might have saved Glenn McConnell’s life.
“People have said ever since I came down here, I look healthier and I’ve been healing faster,” said McConnell, the powerful Senate president pro tempore who resigned from a job he loved to take over for disgraced former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, who was sentenced March 9 on ethics charges. In December, a rare tick bit McConnell on the neck.
Cheating the Students
On Hold
High court needs to rule on 1993 school funding case.
It takes four years for most high school students to graduate from high school. Most college students traditionally also graduate in four years. But four years apparently isn’t enough time for the state Supreme Court to come to a conclusion about a festering school funding case first filed by poor South Carolina school districts in 1993. Yes, 1993. A student in first grade back then should, by now, be out of college and could even have a master’s degree. This thing has been going on that long.
State House Report
Option for Haley’s book: Take a pass
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s new book is sure to cause three differing reactions:
