Developer being considered for SC Dept. of Health and Environmental Control post

EDIT- 1/4/06
The State reports that Norman has withdrawn his bid to head DHEC, saying that he appreciates the nomination, but believes it would be a better idea to serve elsewhere. The decision was applauded by SC conservationists who look forward to a more suitable nominee. No word yet on who else Sanford has lined up for the position.
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This week, SC Governor Mark Sanford announced that he was considering real estate developer and 2006 Congressional candidate Ralph Norman to head the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control. If appointed, it could mean a substantial shift in the state's environmental policy, says The State. Norman, who was defeated in November by House incumbent John Spratt, has strongly criticized concerns over global warming as "overstated" and "a lot of pointy-headed bureaucrats looking for a grant." During the campaign, Norman objected to Spratt's stances on offshore drilling, pledging to eliminate "regulatory obstacles" if elected to the U.S. House.
This news comes as several state environmental groups have joined the Governor to discuss tackling global warming at a state level, including the formation of a commission on climate change. The SC Sierra Club, which endorsed Sanford for reelection last month, is having trouble reconciling the choice, which the club's Director, Dell Isham calls "inconsistent with the Governor's professed interest in the environment," and "a drastic change and not a change for the better."

Dana Beach, director of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, said he wants Sanford to pick a chairman with experience on coastal environmental issues, instead of a Charlott-area developer.
“I suspect that there are a lot of people who meet that criteria more closely than Mr. Norman,” Beach said. “Not to take anything away from him, but he lives in Rock Hill and has not been actively involved in conservation.”

Sanford has been a supporter of increased funding for land protection, maintaining reserve funds for hazardous waste cleanup, and vetoed legislation that would make it harder to remove billboards from SC highways. Current DHEC Chair Elizabeth Hagood is known as a conservationist who pushed for tighter control over coastal development.

Brinson: Evangelicals transforming their concerns

In the Center for a Better South's new December 2006 FIVE QUESTIONS interview, Alabama doctor and Christian leader Randy Brinson takes a look at how evangelical Christians are transforming their relationship to politics by expanding their concerns to global warming, health care, poverty and more.

QUOTE: "I think Christian evangelicals are proud of the spirit that exudes from the culture of the South. I think they want to see the spirit of the Christmas season continue throughout the year. "

Brinson is co-founder and chairman of Redeem the Vote, a nationally-known nonprofit organization founded in 2003 to improve voter registration and participation among young people of faith.

• Read the whole interview | Read an op-ed excerpt

Raising cigarette tax makes sense

One of the key 11 ideas highlighted in the Center's tax reform book this year was to raise the cigarette tax for public health purposes.

Several Southern states have raised the tax (albeit not to the national average), but South Carolina remains mired at the bottom with the nation's lowest tax (7 cents per pack). Today, The State newspaper in Columbia again called for lawmakers to raise the cigarette tax. Read this excerpt to see why it's a no-brainer:

There’s a downside to nearly every tax: A sales tax that’s too high can send shoppers scurrying to the Internet or across state lines, hurting local merchants. An income tax that’s too high can discourage job creation.

But a higher cigarette tax pushes the cost of cigarettes out of reach for some teenagers, saving them from a lifetime of addiction that the rest of us will pay for in higher taxes and medical insurance costs. At 7 cents a pack — the nation’s lowest, 93 cents below the national average — we practically beg kids to smoke.

The deterrent effect of a higher cigarette tax is so dramatic — each 10 percent increase in the cost of cigarettes reduces youth smoking by 6.5 percent — and the cost to taxpayers to treat smoking-induced illnesses so high that our state would benefit financially even if we burned the money from a higher cigarette tax.

Move forward or get left behind

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is not the first person to point out that the 2006 elections left Republicans secure only in the deep South.

But he goes further to argue that the GOP is being undermined by its Southern base, because the South doesn't actually represent "real America."

It wasn't all that long ago that Democrats and liberals were said to be out of touch with "the real America," which was defined as encompassing the states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including the entire South. Democrats seemed to accept this definition of reality, and they struggled -- often looking ridiculous in the process -- to become fluent in NASCAR talk and to discuss religion with the inflections of a white Southern evangelicalism foreign to so many of them.

Now the conventional wisdom sees Republicans in danger of becoming merely a Southern regional party. Isn't it amazing how quickly the supposedly "real America" was transformed into a besieged conservative enclave out of touch with the rest of the country? Now religious moderates and liberals are speaking in their own tongues, and the free-thinking, down-to-earth citizens in the Rocky Mountain states are, in large numbers, fed up with right-wing ideology.

[...]

How durable are these changes? In both politics and culture, the side that thinks it's losing usually accommodates itself to the ascendant order. My hunch is that we will be seeing many new claims to moderation and social concern on the right and many fewer fake NASCAR fans on the left.

Dionne is probably correct about the national trends, but his argument implies the South will remain static as the rest of the country evolves.

In reality, the end result should be a more progressive South. Otherwise it will be left in the dust, once again.

John Edwards, Progressive Politics, and the South

John Edwards, a former senator of North Carolina and Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee in 2004, is expected to announce that he is running for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008. Edwards, a native of the Carolinas, was the topic of a recent article in the Charlotte Observer which discussed the progressive agenda Edwards has set forth in his speeches and work at UNC--Chapel Hill's Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity.

The 2004 vice presidential nominee already has a retooled campaign agenda that is unabashedly
progressive.

Today, Edwards tosses around phrases such as "universal health care" and "public campaign financing." He criticizes the Bush administration's "convergence of stupidity" on education and demands the immediate withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Sources say that Edwards plans to announce his bid from New Orleans after Christmas.

He is one of the few Southerners in both major parties that is a prospective presidential candidate. Former General and Democrat Wesley Clark and outgoing Republican Governor Mike Huckabee--both from Arkansas--are considering bids for their parties nominations. Former House Speaker and Republican Newt Gingrich of Georgia is also condering a presidential bid.

Will these candidates draw attention to issues that particularly affect the South? Will Democrats try to make inroads in Southern states? Will the rest of the nation embrace these Southern candidates, especially in early nomination contests in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire? An Edwards' candidacy only makes these questions more intriguing.

N&O Editorial Endorses Progressive Tax Policy

A recent editorial in the Raleigh News and Observer endorses the creation of a state earned income tax credit in North Carolina.

State Rep. William Wainwright of Craven County says that he and Sen. David Hoyle of Gaston County, both Democrats, will re-introduce legislation to create a state earned income tax credit set at 5 percent of the federal credit. If the bill passed, North Carolina would join 18 other states and the District of Columbia in providing the working poor with this incentive, which benefits people whose wages keep them on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

The earned income credit, by contrast, directly benefits the working poor. It encourages low-income people to enter and stay in the job market by offering a tax credit equal to a percentage of what they earn. If the credit exceeds what a worker owes in income taxes in a given year, the difference is returned as a tax refund.

Such assistance has been especially helpful this year because Congress has imposed stricter welfare-to-work requirements. People who receive public assistance should work if they can, but many start out making wages that simply can't support a family. The credit can be a needed safety net for families on the financial edge.

The Center for a Better South’s Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South, promotes the state earned income tax credit as a positive tax policy reform.

The "other" house and senate: fertile progressive ground?

I'm coming off of a self-imposed hiatus in posting here after spending the last year volunteering as the communications director for a State House campaign here in Tennessee, but I wanted to share some of my reflections on the experience before I jump back into blogging the issues of the day.

A bit about my background: I grew up in a home where state politics never exactly made the radar. County politics were front and center, as were national issues, but for a variety of reasons, I paid little attention to the goings on in Nashville.

The last year showed me that I wasn't alone. Days of canvassing revealed a striking lack of awareness among young people about, frankly, what the legislature even did or who represented them. More striking to me, though, is that these young people were acutely attuned to national political issues. Far from the often ridiculous stereotype of the disengaged young person, many were politically aware, and some even active the U.S. Senate race in the state. But if you asked them what issues were important to them on a state level, you'd often get no more than a blank stare.

As I said, it was a position I shared with these folks not very long ago at all. For me, it was a personal connection and friendship with a candidate for state office that made me sit up and pay attention, but that makes me the exception and not the rule.

In the heat of the race, there wasn't time to sit down with each person and explain the deep and daily relevance that those forgotten lines on the ballot had in their lives, but for the long term it presents, in my mind, a tremendous opportunity.

As progressives in the South, we are forever engaged in a battle to define our message in a way that connects and resonates with the people of our region. The quest to find a relevant home for our message may lead us right back to a place that most people hardly understand: the state houses in capitals across the South.

Of course, there is no panacea for the challenges facing Southern progressives, but perhaps the state legislative world opens opportunities. With small districts and the chance to make the politics more personal and more relevant, progressives have the opportunity to begin writing on many people's blank slates.

It's certainly something to ponder as we look at ways to better talk about critical progressive issues heading into the next election cycle.

Church politics in Northern Virginia

The Washington Post details today a development in the Virginia diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church, which is home to 193 congregations, two of which are among the church's largest. Those two congregations, in Falls Church and Fairfax, are now engaged in a bitter dispute about whether to leave the U.S. arm of the international Anglican Communion in reaction to the ordination of a gay bishop some three years ago. If they do vote to leave, the Northern Virginia congregations will join a Fairfax-based mission that follows Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, supporter of a law in his own country that would jail homosexuals.

Particularly notable about these inner church politics is the context: many had pointed to the region's rejection of the so-called "Marriage Amendment" to the Commonwealth's constitution last month as evidence of a further division in the cultural values between "NoVa and RoVa" (or Northern Virginia and the rest of the state). The Falls Church City Council and Chamber of Commerce had both passed resolutions against, and Falls Church voted 74% against, the gay marriage ban; 54% of Fairfax citizens voted "No."

But intensity of the reaction against gay clergy in Northern Virginia indicates that the religious conservatism message still holds sway in the suburban communities, perhaps enough to tear asunder an historically resilient relationship.

"The difference between the Episcopal Church and the others is that Episcopalians are really loath to split about anything," said Diana Butler Bass, a U.S. church historian who believes politics, not theology, has been driving divisions in the Episcopal Church since the 1980s.

The congregations are set to vote next week.

How to get cities thinking about climate change

An article in Environmental Research Letters came out this month that discussed strategies for engaging urban residents in climate change issues. As an increasing percentage of U.S. residents live in urban areas, and cities are the primary sources of energy use and greenhouse gas production, it is critical to mobilize cities towards progressive climate change policies. The article states that citizens overall believe that climate change is occurring but may feel helpless as individuals. It is important for communicators of climate change issues to know their audience, and different cities will have different perspectives and needs.

Concern about climate change is no different from where it was in 1990 - only 62% of Americans are worried about global warming. Only 35% of people believe that global warming will pose a threat to them and their lifestyle during this lifetime.

The article emphasizes the need to focus on solutions for both individual citizens and cities that are realistic for dealing with climate change. There are an innumerable amount of opportunities for social change. A combination of bottom-up (e.g. local neighborhood) and top-down (e.g. regional, national, and international political) approaches will be needed to effectively combat climate change.