By Tim Wheeler
People’s Weekly World

South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna DeWitt [and Chair of the South Carolina Progressive Network] quickly brushes aside questions about Gov. Mark Sanford’s tearful admission June 24 that he flew secretly to Argentina for a week-long tryst with a paramour.

His aides put out the story that Sanford, an avid hiker, had gone for a long walk on the Appalachian Trail to clear his mind after losing several bruising fights with the legislature. It turned out to be a lie. Instead he had flown to Buenos Aires pursuing his love affair with an Argentinian woman named “Maria.”

The story is pouring out in sordid detail, including steamy emails between the woman and Sanford, married and the father of four children. There are reports that the Governor, a fiscal barracuda who slashes programs that serve the poor, flew three times to Argentina at State expense. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Sanford, then a member of the House of Representatives, called on Pres. Bill Clinton to resign to restore “moral legitimacy” to the White House. He voted to impeach Clinton.

Yet DeWitt focuses instead on the other source of Sanford’s notoriety: His much publicized rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in President Obama’s Economic Stimulus funds that South Carolina was to receive. The South Carolina legislature repeatedly overrode the Governor’s vetos of spending bills funded from the economic stimulus and a State Court recently overruled his rejection of the money.

“It’s a sad, sad story from a sad State,” DeWitt told the World in a phone interview from her office in Columbia, the state capital. “The Labor Council gave Sanford a 20 percent rating when he was in Congress. He slept on a futon in his Washington Office. But his door was open to labor. He came to the ILA picnic and brought his wife and kids. She comes from a very wealthy family and has always been his main political adviser.”

Sanford, she charged, “hasn’t been focused on running the State of South Carolina but rather on running for President. All the things he did flowed from his political ambitions.”

She stressed the dire economic crisis that afflicts the Palmetto State. “We needed the money,” she said, referring to the Obama stimulus funds. “Across the board we were looking at 20 percent cuts to our schools, tremendous cuts in healthcare. If he is truly the compassionate conservative he claims to be, those cutbacks would have been important to him but he put his political ambitions ahead of our schools and healthcare.”

His loud rejection of the economic stimulus funds, “was a political ploy. Don’t forget, John McCain invited him out to Arizona to discuss naming him his running mate in last year’s election. Sanford wants to make a name for himself.”

There are other scandalous facts about South Carolina not aired by the corporate media. “South Carolina ranks 50th in the nation in the number of women elected to public office,” DeWitt said. “South Carolina is the only state with no woman in the State Senate. We are always in the top five in the number of women killed by domestic violence. Our unemployment rate is 12.5 percent among the highest in the nation. In some rural counties, it is in the 20 percent to 25 percent range. We have rural counties that are just devastated and they desperately needed that economic stimulus money.”

The South Carolina Progressive Network (SCPN) and the State AFL-CIO organized a rally of nearly 4,000 people April 1 on the steps of the State Capitol to denounce Gov. Sanford’s grandstand play against the stimulus package. The multi-racial crowd held up pink signs with the message, “Pink Slip for Mark Sanford.” Banners proclaimed, “Recall Sanford” and “It’s Our Money: Jobs, Education, Healthcare.”

SCPN Executive Director Brett Bursey told the World he has known Gov. Sanford more than a decade and takes no satisfaction in his personal “tragedy.” But he too stressed that the overriding issue is the plight of hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and poor people in South Carolina as the economic crisis deepens. “We’re tops in the nation in unemployment,” he said. “Its over 12 percent. There were going to be severe cuts in services — critical services — even with the economic stimulus package, including severe teacher layoffs.”

SCPN, the AFL-CIO, and other allies responded by mobilizing the biggest protest demonstration to demand the stimulus funds of any state in the South.

Some in South Carolina believe Sanford cannot survive and will be forced to resign. He has already stepped down as Chairman of the National Republican Governors Association. Once considered a presidential contender, he joins U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. on the GOP’s lengthening roster of disgraced and discredited might-have-been GOP presidential candidates.

By Charlie Smith

Charleston, SC

The blogosphere is ablaze this week with pseudo-amazement that Andre Bauer, Glenn McConnell and Lindsey Graham might be gay. While we’re expressing our indignation/stirring the media pot on this subject, maybe we should just call up Nancy Grace and declare open season on all suspected closet cases. Then maybe we can get this outing thing over with once and for all…starting at the top. Jesus, for example, a confirmed bachelor at 33, was known to host at least one dinner party with twelve unattached men. Wouldn’t a straight man have done lunch at the club? But then Jesus never said a negative word about gay people, so maybe we should reconsider his case.

The only reason that anybody cares about the sexuality of Andre, Glenn and Lindsey is that everybody knows what jackasses they have been on every issue that has negatively affected the lives of LGBT South Carolinians in recent years. In other words, if these elected officials truly are gay, everybody knows that they will then richly deserve whatever comeuppance they get. These rumors are not new. Anybody who can perform a Google search will discover that Ketner’s comments are less than Earth-shattering. (See  “Seven Minutes In Gay Hell” published in September 2007 by The Charleston City Paper)

Hopefully one day soon South Carolinians will realize the true harm they inflict on themselves when they elect and re-elect gay-bashing closet cases to public office. An elected official who has to waste time fortifying his closet to stay in power is by definition giving less than his or her full attention to the real problems of our state…not to mention being a sorry example of leadership. Linda Ketner’s point was that honesty and integrity are essential to both the public and private life of those who seek to serve our citizens.

Ketner has been open and honest about every aspect of her life and because of that she has been able to profoundly improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians…including yours and mine. If Andre, Glenn and Lindsey have something to hide, then they and others like them have made their own political beds by attacking gay people at every opportunity. If they are hiding something, they deserve whatever political retribution they get.

Sides debating how to allocate broadcast capacity

By GINA SMITH
The State

A panel of lawmakers says it needs more time to study a proposal to bring WiMax, the latest in wireless broadband, to the Palmetto State.

Wednesday, the Joint Bond Review Committee sent to subcommittee a plan to lease ETV’s excess broadcast capacity to private companies, Clearwire and Digital Bridge Communications.

A contentious part of the proposal lets the state recapture 20 percent of the excess capacity if it’s needed in the future for yet-to-be-determined law enforcement, school or governmental needs.

Some lawmakers and residents say the state should hang on to more of the capacity. Others think the capacity could be worth more money.

“It sounds to me like we may be selling ourselves a bit cheap,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg.

The S.C. Progressive Network said lawmakers should designate some of the capacity for free Internet for K-12 students and reduced-rate Internet for residents.

Members of a legislatively appointed study committee say they’ve negotiated the best possible deal for the state.

The companies will pay nearly $143 million to the state over 30 years. The companies would build WiMax networks, offering S.C. residents, businesses and others wireless Internet and, eventually, other uses, like interactive tools.

It would take 18 months to build a network, according to Clearwire.

The debate comes at a time when Clearwire is facing legal troubles.

Customers in four states, including North Carolina, are suing Clearwire, alleging the company is misrepresenting the reliability of its network and is unfairly charging early termination fees.

Clearwire is upgrading its network from an early version of WiMax to mobile WiMax.

Clearwire representatives have said South Carolina would get the mobile WiMax version.

It’s unclear how soon the subcommittee will report back. The State Budget and Control Board has the final say.

Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign Action Fund

This week’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court could add an ally of campaign finance reform to the nation’s highest judicial body. Sotomayor was a member of New York City’s Campaign Finance Board in its earliest days, helping establish the city’s successful system of publicly financed elections.

In a 1996 Suffolk Law Review article, co-authored with Nicole Gordon, the Board’s executive director at that time, Sotomayor writes:

“We would never condone private gifts to judges about to decide a case implicating the gift-givers’ interests. Yet our system of election financing permits extensive private, including corporate, financing of candidates’ campaigns, raising again and again the question what the difference is between contributions and bribes and how legislators or other officials can operate objectively on behalf of the electorate. Can elected officials say with credibility that they are carrying out the mandate of a ‘democratic’ society, representing only the general public good, when private money plays such a large role in their campaigns?”

Her confirmation would stand in contrast to the arrivals of Justices Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court. Both have taken a negative stance towards the regulation of campaign money. There’s more to see in this article from Politico.