Category Archives: SC News/Commentary

Revolutionize your plate, and the planet

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Progressive Network Movie Night

Forks Over Knives

Nov. 22, 6:30–9:30pm

Conundrum Music Hall, 626 Meeting St., West Columbia

Learn about the great health benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet while sampling vegan dishes at our FREE screening of Forks Over Knives and potluck!

Don’t miss this film, full of crucial information but also easy and fun to watch. You will not be subjected to scenes of factory farm horror; instead you’ll see evidence of health hazards caused by meat and dairy in the human diet. Watch what happens when the narrator decides to try a whole foods, plant-based diet during filming. The results are extraordinary.

Beer and other beverages available for purchase. Bring a non-veg friend. The hope is to inspire people who haven’t tried a plant-based diet to move in that direction.

Film starts at 7pm. See movie trailer and more at www.forksoverknives.com. The SC Progressive Network shows free movies every 4th Tuesday.

Thanks to Rosewood Market for donated organic vittles.

Download a flyer to post at work, school or church.

Don’t let special interests hijack tax reform, again

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By Michael Fanning

ROAR SC

South Carolina stands at a moment of crisis. Our state has the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 11 percent. While the recession played a role, much of the blame lies with our convoluted and antiquated tax code, which promotes selected special interests, unfairly burdens the average taxpayer and discourages a competitive business environment.

Sleazy special-interest tax exemptions and loopholes are killing our state. With more than 80 sales tax exemptions and hundreds more service tax exemptions, we exempt more revenue than we collect — leaving our state broke, even as our sales tax rate ranks among the highest in the country.

A non-partisan report commissioned by the Legislature said we could lower our sales tax rate from 6 percent to 4.5 percent by removing some of these special interest exemptions — or to 3 percent by eliminating them all.

Act 388, which most legislators now agree was a mistake, shifted a property tax burden of hundreds of millions of dollars onto our business community. Meanwhile, the income tax rate is among the nation’s highest (higher even than Massachusetts), but special-interest exemptions and loopholes leave 41 percent paying no income taxes.

Over the past 22 months, a grassroots organization named ROAR (Reduce Our Awful Rates) has held more than 220 town hall meetings across the state. Everyone, from tea partiers to liberals, from businessmen to educators, sends the same message: We desperately need real, honest and comprehensive tax reform. Reform that (1) lowers overall tax rates, (2) restores the stability of South Carolina’s tax base (sales, income and property taxes) by eliminating unfair exemptions, (3) increases our state’s competitiveness, attracting businesses and promoting job growth, (4) creates a fair, honest and transparent code and (5) helps our state balance its budget while providing core services.

ROAR’s building momentum is forcing the hands of state policy makers. A House Republican study committee, a bipartisan Senate study committee and Gov. Nikki Haley are drafting plans to address the issue. Unfortunately, we all know the corrupting influence of special interests rarely allows our state government to function as it should. As the legislative session approaches, these groups are presenting their own disingenuous “reform” plans, benefitting themselves at the expense of the taxpayer.

But rarely do we get advance notice when special interests begin to cut their backroom deals with legislators. Recently, the S.C. School Boards Association presented a plan to increase taxes by $1 billion and further complicate our tax code — and called it tax reform. The plan mentions sales tax exemptions only in passing, ignores Act 388 entirely and leaves our income tax structure untouched and unjust. Our core services do need a stable revenue base, but this plan is no better than that of any of the other special interests: Each crafts special tax policies just for itself, ignoring the consequences on the state as a whole.

These are the tired old politics of division: Raise your taxes to pay for what we want — our special exemptions and our desired services. This selfish behavior is what got us into this tax mess.

These vested interests tell us they want change — if it benefits them. They call for reform — that includes more exemptions and higher taxes. South Carolinians of all walks of life and across the political spectrum demand real, honest tax reform. As the momentum builds, armies of moneyed lobbyists seek to divert it to their advantage.

South Carolina has the nation’s15th-highest sales tax, 13th-highest income tax for top earners, fifth-highest business property-tax assessments — but refuses to talk about the one thing that could unite us: reducing the billions of dollars in special-interest tax exemptions.

Reject these special-interest wolves in sheep’s clothing. Refuse to support any legislation that perpetuates a system benefiting the few at our expense. Let this moment of real crisis become a moment of real change. Stand united. Start ROARing.

Dr. Fanning, who has served the past 14 years as executive director of the Olde English Consortium in Chester, is the founder of the grassroots organization Reduce Our Awful Tax Rates. Contact him at FanningROAR@gmail.com.

U.S. Department of Justice challenges South Carolina’s immigration law

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Complaint cites conflict with federal enforcement of immigration laws

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice challenged South Carolina’s recently passed immigration law, Act No. 69, in federal court today.

In a complaint, filed in the District of South Carolina, the department states that certain provisions of Act No. 69, as enacted by the state on June 27, 2011, are unconstitutional and interfere with the federal government’s authority to set and enforce immigration policy, explaining that “the Constitution and federal law do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.” South Carolina’s law clearly conflicts with the policies and priorities adopted by the federal government and therefore cannot stand.

South Carolina’s law is designed to further criminalize unauthorized immigrants and, like the Arizona and Alabama laws, expands the opportunity for police to push unauthorized immigrants towards incarceration for various new immigration crimes by enforcing an immigration status verification system. Similar to Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and Alabama’s H.B. 56, this law will place significant burdens on federal agencies, diverting their resources away from high-priority targets, such as terrorism, drug smuggling and gang activity, and those with criminal records. In addition, the law’s mandates on law enforcement will also result in the harassment and detention of foreign visitors and legal immigrants, as well as U.S. citizens, who cannot readily prove their lawful status.

“Today’s lawsuit makes clear once again that the Justice Department will not hesitate to challenge a state’s immigration law, as we have in Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina, if we find that the law interferes with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “It is understandable that communities remain frustrated with the broken immigration system, but a patchwork of state laws is not the solution and will only create problems. We will continue to monitor the impact these laws might have on our communities and will evaluate each law to determine whether it conflicts with the federal government’s enforcement responsibilities.”

“DHS continues to enforce federal immigration laws in South Carolina in smart, effective ways that focus our resources on criminal aliens, recent border crossers, repeat and egregious immigration law violators and employers who knowingly hire illegal labor,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “This kind of legislation diverts critical law enforcement resources from the most serious threats to public safety and undermines the vital trust between local jurisdictions and the communities they serve, while failing to address the underlying problem: the need for comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level.”

The department filed the lawsuit after consultation with the South Carolina attorney general and South Carolina law enforcement officials. The suit was filed on behalf of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State, which share responsibilities in administering federal immigration law. The department will soon request a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of the law, parts of which go into effect on Jan. 1, 2012, arguing that the law’s operation will cause irreparable harm.

The Justice Department previously challenged S.B. 1070 and H.B. 56 on federal preemption grounds. The department continues to review immigration-related laws that were passed in Utah, Indiana and Georgia. Courts have enjoined key parts of the Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and Indiana state laws and temporarily restrained enforcement of Utah’s law.

Activists to meet Oct. 29 for SC Progressive Network’s fall strategy summit

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The SC Progressive Network will hold its 16th annual fall strategy summit Oct. 29 at Brookland Baptist Fellowship Hall, 1066 Sunset Blvd., West Columbia. Grassroots activists from across the state will gather to co-ordinate plans for the coming legislative session and beyond.

“We have been building a statewide progressive movement for 16 years,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. “We are now faced with historic opportunities due to Wall Street greed, anti-government politicians, and a state budget robbed by special interests.”

Most recently, the Network has been leading a grassroots fight against special-interest tax breaks that keep billions out of the state budget.

It also has been working hard to educate and mobilize communities statewide in an effort to block South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

“The unnecessary and costly requirement for voters to have a state-issued photo ID is a partisan attempt to suppress the vote,” said Network Co-Chair Rep. Joe Neal. “It is no coincidence that minorities, seniors, students, rural and low-income voters will be most affected, as they historically vote Democratic. We will continue our work to have this law blocked.”

In its Oct. 26 response to the US Dept. of Justice, the State Election Commission deleted voters who have been dropped from the list of voters without photo IDs due to a criminal conviction.

“There are tens of thousands of voters who have completed a criminal sentence, who are eligible to vote, who won’t be notified of the new law,” said Rep. Neal. “There are over a quarter-million registered voters without DMV IDs, and there is no doubt that many of them will be disenfranchised.”

Network Co-Chair Donna Dewitt is also the President of the SC AFL-CIO, a statewide federation representing over 80,000 current and former union members. “The governor has declared outright war on workers rights, and is making the ridiculous argument that our economy can be improved by suppressing wages,” Dewitt said. “We’ve got to connect the dots between the anti-worker, anti-immigrant, anti-minority laws being passed and expose them as the corporate power grab that they are.”

The summit begins with a 10am meeting of organizations and individual activists for Network housekeeping. The meeting is open to anyone interested in knowing more about the Network and its coalition members.

At 1:30, the public is invited to take part in an engaging presentation by Dr. Mike Fanning of the tax reform group ROAR SC, who will argue that the state’s not broke; the system is. His show is part comedy and 100 percent shocking truth. Dr. Fanning will field questions from the audience. Later, we’ll move the discussion to tactics and strategy to move this issue in the coming months.

“If you are concerned about the economy and the corporate-sponsored assault on democracy, you don’t want to miss this event,” Bursey said. “These are the hard times we have been preparing for.”

You don’t need to be a Network member to attend. Nor do you need to stay the whole day. Come when you can; leave when you must.

Registration is $10, which includes a Mexican buffet at 12:30 catered by Tio’s. The public session beginning at 1:30 is free. RSVP required for lunch at 803-808-3384 or network@scpronet.com.

Progressive Network movie night screens “The Yes Men Fix the World”

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Oct. 25, 7:30pm: Progressive Movie Night to feature THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD.

This month we’re moving from Conundrum Music Hall to the State House lawn. We’ll be entertaining ourselves and the Occupiers with this new movie. A wickedly fun skewering of corporate greed, THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is the true story of two conscientious mischief-makers who pose as the representatives of companies they despise. In this wonderfully therapeutic film, Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno impose cosmic (and comic) justice by any means necessary. To a television audience of 300 million, Andy (posing as a Dow Chemical spokesman) announces that Dow will finally compensate the victims of the Bhopal disaster, causing the company’s stock to instantly plunge by $2 billion. At an oil industry conference, the Yes Men introduce a wonderful new Exxon miracle fuel made from the bodies of global warming losers. THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD “shines with a raw wit and originality” (Newsweek) as it fearlessly follows the twisted logic of corporate capitalism to its crazy conclusion, exposing the hilarious and awful absurdities of the economic system that ruthlessly rules the planet.

Free popcorn; bring your own nonalcohlic beverages. For information, contact the Network at 803-808-334 or network@scpronet.com.


SC voter ID law hits some black precincts harder

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By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s new voter photo identification law appears to be disproportionately affecting minority voters in one of the state’s largest counties and black precincts elsewhere, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
For instance, nearly half the voters who cast ballots at a historically black college in Columbia lack state-issued photo identification and could face problems voting in next year’s presidential election, according to the analysis of precinct-level data provided by the state Election Commission.

In surrounding Richland County, the state’s second-most populous county, the percentage of minority voters without the IDs is also higher than what it is statewide. The same is true for majority-black Orangeburg County.

“This is electoral genocide,” state Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian said. “This is disenfranchising huge groups of people who don’t have the money to go get an ID card.”

State Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said the numbers show there is work ahead for the state.
“It means they would have to take some action to get proper ID,” Whitmire said.

South Carolina’s photo identification law requires people to show a state-issued driver’s license or identification card, a military ID or passport when they vote. Without those forms of identification, they can still cast a provisional ballot or vote absentee. The U.S. Justice Department has been reviewing the law for months under the federal Voting Rights Act.

South Carolina is among the five states that passed laws this year requiring some form of ID at the polls, while such laws were already on the books in Indiana and Georgia.

Proponents of the laws say they will prevent fraud, although even they are hard-pressed to come up with large numbers of cases around the country in which someone tried to vote under a false identity. Opponents say the laws are a way to effectively keep minorities, traditionally Democratic voters, away from the polls. They argue that blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, people with disabilities and the poor are more likely to lack the required photo ID.

In South Carolina, previously-reported statewide numbers suggested that, overall, the law’s effect on white and nonwhite voters would conform to the state’s voting demographics: 70 percent of the state’s 2.7 million registered voters are white and 30 percent are nonwhite. Meanwhile, 66 percent of the 216,596 active, registered voters without state-issued photo IDs are white and 34 percent nonwhite.

But the numbers can skew differently at the local level. Lacking state-issued IDs are 11,087 nonwhite voters in Richland County and 4,544 in Orangeburg County. That means half the voters affected by the law in Richland County aren’t white, and in Orangeburg County it’s 73 percent.

A statewide look at the 2,134 individual precincts also indicates that black precincts are some of the hardest-hit. The analysis shows there are 10 precincts where nearly all of those affected are minorities, a total of 1,977 voters.

The same holds true for white voters in a number of precincts, but the overall effect is much more spread out and involves fewer total voters: There are 44 precincts where only white voters are affected, or 1,831 people in all.

The precinct that votes at Benedict College in Columbia, has 2,790 voters, including nine white voters. In that precinct, 1,343 of the precinct’s nonwhite voters lack state identification, but only five white voters do.

Karen Rutherford has run voter registration efforts at the private, historically black college across town from the Statehouse and a couple of blocks from the county’s voter office for years. She said students had a tough time in the 2008 election as their IDs were challenged at the precinct. “They were upset because someone was trying to take away their ability to vote.”

A precinct at state-run South Carolina State University has 2,305 active voters, including 33 white voters. There, 800 nonwhite voters and 17 white voters there lack state IDs.

The new law doesn’t bar voting for people without photo identification, but it can create hurdles. They’ll still be able to vote absentee by mail, go to voter offices and get new voter registration cards with pictures or cast provisional ballots that require them to later produce the ID.

The state is offering free ID cards. To get those, people have to show documents that include their name, such as birth certificates, marriage or divorce records.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley supports the law and offered voters without IDs free rides to state offices to get them last month.
The law requires the state to develop a list of names of people who lack state-issued identification. And the Justice Department has asked the state to document how it will reach out to those voters. South Carolina’s election law changes have to be cleared by federal authorities because of past voting rights abuses.

New South battles old poverty as right-to-work promises fade

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By Margaret Newkirk and Frank Bass

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) — Nineteen years ago, when BMW announced a new factory off Interstate 85 in Spartanburg, South Carolina looked like the king of smokestack recruiting.

The world’s biggest manufacturer of luxury vehicles would make the city a “Mecca of foreign investment in the United States,” The Independent of London predicted. It would see a rush of industry chasing Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. Downtown would spring to life. I-85 would be America’s Autobahn.

“Oh, they were going to solve all of our problems,” said Cynthia Lounds, director of community economic development at Piedmont Community Actions Inc., a social-service agency.

Today, South Carolina is one of the most impoverished states in the nation, becoming the seventh poorest in 2010 from 11th in 2007, according to recent U.S. Census data. Its percentage of residents living in poverty shot to 18.2 percent from 15 percent in that period. In downtown Spartanburg, near- empty Morgan Square features a used clothing store and two pawn shops.

South Carolina and other southern U.S. states topped the nation’s poverty rankings, a sign of trouble in the so-called New South known for its growth and ability to lure employers with laws restricting union organizing. The South was the country’s only region with an increase from 2009 to 2010 in both the number of poor and their proportion of the population, the census said.

‘Downward Pressure on Wages’

The numbers show that even as South Carolina trumpeted coups like BMW, the state’s stance toward organized labor has depressed living standards, said Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, North Carolina.

“There’s been this kind of undertow of low-wage jobs all along,” Kromm said. “There have been successes in luring industries, there’s no question about that. But it brought an overall downward pressure on wages.”

Job creation is at the center of the 2012 presidential campaign. South Carolina on Jan. 21 will play a key role as host to the first Southern primary in the race to select President Barack Obama’s Republican challenger.

The effect of right-to-work laws on wages has been the subject of intense debate for years. The National Right to Work Committee, for instance, says that employee compensation rose faster in states with those laws, according to the organization’s website.

Boeing Battle

South Carolina’s rising poverty rate coincides with a dispute over expansion of a Boeing Co. plant in North Charleston. The National Labor Relations Board sued Boeing Co. over its decision to locate a 4,000-job factory there, saying the move was intended to punish union activity at its base in Washington State.

“It’s like the Obama administration can’t come up with anything else to stifle business growth in this state,” said Lewis Gossett, president of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance.

Hostility to organized labor was at the core of the region’s strategy for attracting jobs: South Carolina joined the ranks of right-to-work states in 1954, outlawing contracts that require union membership or dues, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

‘Come on Down!’

The state marketed its non-union labor in the unionized North, said Brett Bursey, executive director of the SC Progressive Network, an activist group based in Columbia. One industry recruiting poster from the 1980s, he said, showed a man in a T-shirt and a swelling belly. “South Carolina has no labor pains,” it read. “Come on down!”

The fight over Chicago-based Boeing’s efforts to expand in North Charleston has revived the issue. With the state’s unemployment rate at 11.1 percent in August, compared with 9.1 percent nationwide, even some critics of the state’s labor stance want the Boeing plant to stay open.

“There’s not a lot of debate about that around here,” said Joseph Darby, a pastor of Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston who criticized what he said is the state’s emphasis on low-skill work over education. “The area is so starved for jobs.”

Like much of the Southeast, South Carolina lost construction employment during the recession. Its textile industry continued to bleed jobs as well: Union County, about 20 miles from Spartanburg, had the state’s fourth-highest unemployment rate after a sock factory and a mill closed in 2009 and 2010. The county also lost a 150-job Disney distribution warehouse it had lured from Memphis 12 years earlier with tax breaks. Disney moved the operation back to Tennessee in July.

Warehouse Work

“I’m just waiting to see what God has in store for me,” said Joan Bobo, 49, who worked at the facility since it opened. “I’m experienced in warehouse work. I haven’t found anything yet.”

South Carolina has seen good business news in the past year. Manufacturing employment in August was up 11,000 jobs from a year earlier, including 1,600 new jobs at BMW. The state beat out North Carolina for a Continental Tire company factory on Oct. 6. It’s getting an Amazon distribution center near Columbia.

BMW’s South Carolina plant directly and indirectly supported 23,050 jobs in 2007 and 2008, generating $1.2 billion in wages, according to a study by the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The automaker’s direct employees at the plant accounted for 2.2 percent of the state’s manufacturing employment, the study said.

Expectations ‘Exceeded’

“Since announcing our BMW operations in South Carolina in 1992, and beginning production in 1994, our expectations have continually been exceeded,” Max Metcalf, a spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Some of the new jobs in the state, though, have carried a downside. Employers began hiring through staffing agencies, instead of directly. The jobs were temporary and lower paid than permanent positions. At BMW, the difference was $15 per hour compared with $15.50, Metcalf said. The company needs the flexibility to respond to demand, he said, and recently moved many temporary workers to permanent status.

While South Carolina’s private businesses have added employment, the state lost 15,700 government positions in the year ending in August.

Juanita Dixon, 33, lost her seven-year government job in February. A community-college graduate and mother of two, Dixon earned $10.25 an hour, paid vacation and insurance as a medical assistant at a county rehabilitation center. Budget cuts closed it, she said in a phone interview.

Five Applications Daily

Dixon put in five job applications daily, she said. When BMW’s staffing contractor held a job fair at a hotel, she applied and was told the wage was $13 an hour.

She passed a written test, but failed a physical one. “You have to put tires on a car, and you have to do so many in so much time,” Dixon said. “They said, ‘You can reapply in a year.’”

Dixon now works at Spartanburg’s new Adidas Distribution Center, earning $9 an hour doing factory warehouse work. She got the job through a staffing agency in September: “It’s a temporary job for three months,” she said.

When BMW arrived in the city, the look of the place was transformed, said Lounds, of Piedmont Community Actions. Factory workers tooled around town in cars bought with employee discounts.

“There were more BMWs around here than Fords,” she said.

Drawn by BMW

Out on I-85, BMW now employs 7,000, nearly twice the 4,000 promised in the 1990s, said Metcalf, the spokesman. The automaker attracted more than 40 suppliers to the state, spurred investment in the Port of Charleston and invested $750 million during the recession in Spartanburg, which now has 277,916 people, according to the census.

Yet the I-85 “autobahn” of industry didn’t materialize, said Holly Ulrich, senior scholar at the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs at Clemson University.

“Those predictions were made during the boom years for South Carolina and the South, before a series of national economic catastrophes,” Ulrich said. “I haven’t seen evidence that it happened.”

On Sept. 27, five days after the census poverty numbers were released, the first-term Republican governor, Nikki Haley, tried to boost morale. She ordered state workers to change the way they answered the phone.

By the next morning, callers to an unemployment office in Spartanburg heard the new message: ‘It’s a great day in South Carolina.”

–Editors: Flynn McRoberts, Stephen Merelman

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Newkirk in Atlanta at mnewkirk@bloomberg.net; Frank Bass in Washington at fbass1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net.