Drilling off the SC coast: the first step

On Tuesday, April 27, the Minerals Management Service, a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior, held two informational sessions and hearings in Charleston. The stated purpose was to solicit public comments prior to beginning work on a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) that will assess the projected environmental impact of geological and geophysical (G&G) activities. The latter are basically the testing and mapping necessary to ascertain if there is even enough oil and/or natural gas off our shores to warrant drilling; if, after paying for a G&G survey, an oil or gas company were to decide to drill in the south Atlantic region, another environmental assessment process would be undertaken. So, technically, the hearing (or “scoping meeting”) has nothing directly to do with drilling itself. In fact, the PEIS, once in final form, will only serve as a guide to the MMS and the Secretary of the Interior in making a final decision as to whether or not to allow G&G activity and, if so, what environmental safeguards to require. Once the PEIS is published (and before that decision is made), there will be another period of public comment (accompanied by more scoping meetings up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts). The MMS representative who moderated the meeting was very clear about the steps in this long and winding process – and that the kinds of comments he wanted to hear were specific suggestions about which environmental factors to take into account when researching and drafting the PEIS – e.g., particular species of fish, particular habitats and ecosystems, and so forth. The representatives of the oil and geological surveying industries who spoke during the comment period were even more blunt – the public, they said, shouldn’t be allowed to turn this first step into a skirmish in the war over offshore drilling, and indeed the MMS should proceed with the PEIS as quickly as possible, emphasizing public input only later in the process. (They even had the nerve to go ahead and ask the MMS to expand the area open to seismic mapping to include the North Atlantic as well.)

The public wasn’t buying it.

Much to the chagrin of the MMS (and, I’m certain, the industry reps), nobody wanted to talk about obscure fish species. There was clearly a feeling in the room that waiting to air one’s views on the larger question of drilling until after the PEIS and/or the G&G would be a mistake – that even undertaking the PEIS at all would put us on a slippery slope. Hamilton Davis of the Coastal Conversation League pointed out that since oil and gas companies (not the taxpayers) hire the G&G surveying companies to do their work, the results of the seismic analysis of oil and gas reserves will be confidential and proprietary, hidden even from state governments, not to mention ordinary people. The process, he argued, will be less open, not more open, to public input as it progresses. If he’s right, then it made sense to deluge the federal government with anti-drilling arguments even at this very early stage – especially since the MMS has now been accused of allowing the Deepwater Horizon rig to operate without a plan on file as to how BP would handle a massive, catastrophic event (such as what actually happened last month).

Dr. Janice Ryan-Bohac, a plant breeder who has developed a giant sweet potato that she claims is a more efficient source of ethanol than corn, talked about the opportunity cost of government support for offshore drilling. While the MMS representative did clarify that all G&G activities will be paid for by the private companies interested in drilling for oil and/or natural gas (should worthwhile amounts of those resources prove to be present off our coast), he also said that the PEIS would be conducted at taxpayer expense. He was unsure of the answer to the question of whether environmental monitors that would probably be placed on the ships doing the seismic surveying (primarily to spot marine mammals in the area that could be affected by the loud noises used in the surveying) would be paid for by the government or by the companies, although it seems to me that the latter would raise questions about conflicts of interest. Many other additional costs will surely be borne by taxpayers, including the cost of the environmental assessment prior to the actual drilling, continued monitoring, and (knowing South Carolina) probably state incentives such as tax exemptions and help paying for onshore facilities to lure companies to our shores. Dr. Ryan-Bohac stated her opinion that federal and state money would be better used to assist the development of renewable energy sources, through grants, subsidies, tax credits, and reductions in licensing fees. (She claims she is unable to market her sweet potato ethanol because of a prohibitively high federal fee for licensing the plant needed to mass-produce the fuel from the potatoes.) Certainly this is food for thought for those who say we can both drill for more oil AND work toward technologies that can ultimately break our dependence on petroleum.

The public comment period prior to the undertaking of the PEIS will close on Monday, May 17. Comments may be submitted to GGEIS@mms.gov. The MMS has posted on its website the Power Point presentation given at the public scoping meetings, as well as other pertinent information, such as which companies have applied thus far for G&G licenses for the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf region. Please make your views known – whether or not you’re knowledgeable about particular fish or marine mammal species.

As a side note, I wanted to thank Robert Burton, candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 1st Congressional District seat, for attending the meeting. Col. Burton could have used the opportunity to grandstand and get quoted in the papers, but instead he sat in the back and listened to the presentation and the concerns of citizens.

- KPE

This Saturday – voter registration deadline for primaries

Just a reminder that THIS SATURDAY is the last day you can register to vote in order to be able to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary on June 8 here in SC. Remember that 17-year-olds CAN vote in the primary if they will turn 18 before the general election. Registration forms (which can be faxed or scanned and e-mailed) can be downloaded at http://www.scvotes.org, or visit your county’s Board of Elections office. In Dorchester County, that’s at 201 Johnston Street in St. George. I’m not sure whether or not they will have Saturday hours.

Even if you’re already registered to vote, you must notify the Board of Elections if your permanent address has changed since the last time you voted. If you’ve moved to a different county, you must re-register.

- KPE

SC schools “on the ropes”

I hope Brian Hicks’ doomsday scenario is wrong. But I fear that we are cutting our economic legs out from under us as a state by continuing to defund our schools – not to mention doing a great wrong to our children. Our legislators cut taxes (then have to keep trimming the state’s budget) in hopes of attracting ever more businesses to South Carolina; now they’re even talking about scrapping the corporate income tax altogether. But low taxes and weak unions aren’t the only things companies like to see in a potential location. As our schools continue to decline, companies will either hire outside contract labor (who generally stay only a while, rent instead of buy, and don’t have time to develop loyalties to locally-owned businesses) or choose to locate elsewhere.

- KPE

Post on FRC is at my other blog

Dear readers,

Last night my husband Jonathan noted on his Facebook profile that I was going to blog on the Family Research Council and its latest e-mail update. Several people commented that they would like to see it and would watch my blog for it. Since I’m not sure which blog they meant, I thought I’d clear up any confusion by directing you to my other blog if you are looking for that post. In general, I blog here about local and state politics and save national, international, cultural, social, and/or theological content for The Eastvold Blog on Blogspot.

Thank you,

Katharine Pinckney Eastvold

Impressive debate on higher education in SC

I was quite impressed, actually, by last night’s debate among six of the gubernatorial candidates (Congressman Gresham Barrett was unable to attend because of a vote) on issues of higher education in our state. The level of discourse was fairly high, the candidates were for the most part well-prepared and proposed a variety of solutions, and although each primary is highly contested and candidates of both parties shared the same stage, no candidate openly attacked another or resorted to personal remarks. In the political climate that has characterized the weeks surrounding the health care reform push, that’s remarkable and a small victory for civility.

Did all the candidates agree? Absolutely not. There were major differences among the candidates in terms of how they would fund higher education, the importance they placed on campuses located in rural areas, their opinions of the InnoVista project, and their approach to using educational opportunities to lure businesses. Don’t misunderstand me; it matters whom we elect to this position. But I did want to take a moment to congratulate Winthrop University, moderator Ken Wingate, the questioners, and the candidates for a job well done in presenting these differing views to the public.

The archived video of the debate itself doesn’t appear to be up yet, but see http://www.cn2.com/web/guest/politics for post-debate interviews of each candidate, and the CN2 site should eventually have the full video available for viewing.

KPE

Gubernatorial candidates from both parties to debate higher ed

Tonight (Tuesday, March 23), all seven remaining candidates for governor of South Carolina will debate issues of higher education at Winthrop University in Rock Hill. There were a few tickets reserved for the public as of yesterday morning, but I have no idea if any are left. (Once again, a state-level debate receives virtually no publicity until the day before it is to occur. Where are our major newspapers when we need them? Why was this information not more widely disseminated?) The participating candidates, from both parties, are: Congressman Gresham Barrett, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, State Sen. Robert Ford, State Rep. Nikki Haley, State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex, and State Sen. Vincent Sheheen.

For more details on time, place, and where to see a live feed (if these organizers can avoid the technical difficulties that plagued the last televised debate):

http://www.heraldonline.com/2010/03/22/2035447/sc-gov-candidates-to-debate-tuesday.html

With unprecedented state funding cuts to higher ed, but also promising new possibilities for would-be students in the form of the new overhaul of the federal college loan process, there’s lots to discuss. I’ll be interested to hear what questions are asked and what the candidates have to say.

KPE

Special needs funding: compassion and common sense

On Sunday afternoon, I attended a forum organized by parents of special needs children with the stated aim of educating legislators about the effect the proposed funding cuts to the Department of Disabilities and Special Needs would have on their families. A number of law-makers were, in fact, in attendance, and both sides of the aisle were well-represented. One by one, about a dozen mothers and fathers took to the podium, many in tears, to describe the difficulties (and joys) of caring for children with special needs; the impact of DDSN services on their ability to continue to work and care for their children; and their desperation when faced with the impending termination of services such as respite care, therapy, early intervention, and the provision of medical supplies. As originally proposed, the cuts would eliminate eighty percent of DDSN’s budget, basically allowing the department to run a few residential institutions (at current capacity, with no more waivers to get into these facilities) and little else. Early intervention services for preschoolers with autism, funding for specially staffed day care centers, funding for transportation of physically disabled children, help with home modifications such as ramps and lifts, money for community group homes for mentally challenged adults able to live semi-independently, care coordination services, night nursing to allow sleep-deprived parents of seizure-prone children a break, and many more services would be nearly or completely terminated. Many of the parents who spoke pointed out the fiscal absurdity of this plan to “save money,” since in most cases institutional care costs more than services to assist parents who are caring for their children at home, and since parents (especially single parents) unable or unwilling to find a place in an institution for their special needs child would in many cases be forced to quit their jobs to care for the child and thus would need other forms of financial assistance just to put food on the table. They also spoke of the human toll of these financial decisions: fears that an autistic four-year-old’s recent progress due to behavioral therapy would be lost, older parents wondering what they will do when their backs are too weak to allow them to move their severely disabled adult child, and so on. One of the organizers of the event read a letter written by a young woman with cerebral palsy who is willing and able to hold a paying job that would provide her dignity and help defray the cost of her care but needs transportation to and from her work - a benefit that would be cut.

Fortunately, it appears that a solution is in the works (although as I type this, members of the House are still awake and wrangling over the budget, so there’s no telling what will eventually come out of the legislative cauldron). According to the Charleston Post and Courier, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Cooper is proposing that 200 million dollars supposedly coming South Carolina’s way, thanks to the jobs bill the U.S. Senate approved last week, be used, among other things, to fill gaps in the DDSN budget. The bill, of course, hasn’t even been signed into law. It’s probably a one-shot deal, not a reliable annual source of revenue. And it’s unclear whether all of the endangered DDSN budget would be restored, or just some.

While attendees of Sunday’s meeting enthusiastically applauded, many rising to their feet, when Rep. Annette Young (R – District 98) and Sen. Mike Rose (R – Summerville/North Charleston) said they’d heard the message loud and clear and promised that the desired funding would be restored, one mother who spoke hit a nerve with the crowd when she suggested that kindly words from politicians might in some cases be disingenuous. She said that there is a cyclical pattern to these budget fights: legislators threaten to slash and burn the pool of money available for South Carolinians with special needs and their families, then restore some (but not all) of the funding – at which point the affected families, rather than being upset that any cuts were made, are relieved and grateful to have been spared the nightmare scenario. In this way, she suggested, law-makers get away with deeper and deeper cuts each year, with few if any political consequences. She reminded the legislators that families with special needs children don’t have a lot of time for political advocacy, and that it is draining and discouraging to fight the same battles over the budget, year after year, without a great deal of commitment to fixing our state’s financial situation so that essential expenditures are not constantly on the chopping block.

This is what legislators really need to address. Are there other places we can cut? Are there taxes we could raise further, such as the cigarette tax, which even if current proposed legislation is passed and signed by the governor, will still remain well below the national average? Are there other creative solutions to this problem? We need to find some middle ground between wiping out services for our most vulnerable residents in the name of fiscal responsibility, and enthusiastically spending one-time windfalls without regard to whether they can be replaced.

- KPE

Democratic candidates for governor to debate

Finally, the state Democratic Party has scheduled a debate among the remaining candidates for the party’s gubernatorial nomination: Sen. Robert Ford, Superintendent of Education Jim Rex, and Sen. Vincent Sheheen. The debate will take place in Columbia on April 24; other debates are apparently in the works for Charleston and the Pee Dee region as the June primary election approaches.

I’ll be posting more information here (as it’s available) on tickets, whether the debate will be broadcast and/or streamed live online, the moderator, the format, etc.

- KPE

Chad McGowan: family man

Yesterday Chad McGowan  announced that he will not be seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate after all. After a strong exploratory period in which he overcame the distrust of many Democrats (Mr. McGowan had in the past given financially to Republican candidates and was considered by some not to be fully loyal to the party) and raised $250,000, he issued the following statement:

I’ve come to the conclusion that now is the wrong time for me to mount a successful campaign for the United States Senate. The demands of a young family place a premium on every minute. There is nothing more important to me than my wife and three small children. In order to fulfill my duties as a husband and a father, I’ll be leaving the race for United States Senate effective immediately. A few years from now, the kids will be older and in a phase of life that can tolerate the demands of a successful run. In the meantime, I’d like to thank my supporters for standing tall with me thus far, but ask that they understand that my kids come first and they need me at home. I am still very much committed to the cause of fixing our broken political system, and will be fighting from the sidelines to defeat Jim DeMint and others who think South Carolina’s best days are behind us.

Although I, too, had some misgivings about Mr. McGowan’s candidacy (not because he has supported a Republican in the past – I’m a firm believer in voting for the candidate, not the party – but because of his moderate positions on some issues on which I’d prefer my Senator not be quite so middle-of-the-road), I have to admit he’s being a class act. If his publicly stated reasons for getting out of the race are sincere (and given his success so far there’s no reason to doubt that they are), he’s provided us with a great role model of fatherhood. Women have made huge strides in the past 100 years toward being considered equal to men in public life, but there is still a very powerful assumption, honored by many, that children need their mothers more than they need their fathers, and that if one parent has a demanding job requiring many days on the road, it should be the father.

I don’t know what McGowan’s family situation looks like, but I applaud him for being willing and unashamed to say the kinds of things women have had to say so often: that his three children are young and need him at home, that he likely will be better able to run for office once they are older, and that his family comes first. He also affirmed that his “duties as a husband and father” take time, in an age when many people assume that children need a father in the picture but not necessarily spending lots of time with them day in and day out, and that marriages barely take any time at all because, hey, we’re both adults and we’ve got important stuff to do.

I have to admit, at the same time, that I’m grateful for men and women who make the decision to sacrifice some of their time with family in order to run for public office and serve once elected, because if everyone made the same decision as Mr. McGowan, we’d be deprived of the unique insights and energy and contributions of people who are raising families now. So I’m not saying his is always the right path. But evidently it was the right path for him and his family, and I’m proud of him for speaking up about it.

One more note on McGowan: he is apparently refunding all campaign contributions in full.

That said, the Democratic Party badly needs new, qualified, energized, and exciting candidates for U.S. Senate if we’re going to unseat Jim DeMint in November and secure for our state wise representation, rather than irresponsible pandering to the right wing of the Republican Party, to the exclusion of the rest of our citizens. I am hoping that Vic Rawl, former judge and current member of the Charleston County Council, will decide to run. I hope others do, too; the more the merrier.

- KPE

Can theologically conservative Christians support public assistance?

The following is my response to Jamie Sanderson’s excellent post, “Wanting South Carolina Christians to Wake Up.” I started to post it as a comment on his site, but it got too long, so I decided to move it over here.

As one of the SC Christians doing their part to denounce Bauer’s comments, I thank you for this post. Your analysis of Christian voters’ response to economic and social issues and their captivity to the Republican Party is spot-on. Christians best represent our values when we refuse to be co-opted by either party, and if you have to choose one of the major parties, the Democrats in my opinion more often do “what Jesus would do” than the Republicans.

I’m intrigued by the exchange you report between Rev. Chuck Currie and a commenter. Rev. Currie’s view of Scripture, which guides his interpretation of it, is one of many in the Christian community, and he’s certainly entitled to hold that view. Many Christians, though, particularly in SC, will not be convinced by his argumentation. They, like myself, believe that all Scripture, whether or not it represents the direct words of Jesus, IS “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16) and must be taken seriously. Some would say literally; I would say, taken seriously according to the best interpretation possible in the light of the historical, culture, and literary context in which it appears.

In any case, I’d argue that it is not necessary to hold Rev. Currie’s view of Scripture in order to disagree with Bauer and advocate for the use of government money to help the poor. Paul’s words don’t need to be discounted as, “Oh, that was just Paul, and he wasn’t as important as Jesus.” (He wasn’t, of course, but his words in the letters included in the New Testament were still inspired by God, according to the most conservative view.) And we certainly don’t need to question the canonical status of 2 Thessalonians. Rather, Paul wrote these words in the context of the Church, which at the time constituted a pretty small number of people in each local congregation. He wasn’t talking about government at all.

In a small, close-knit congregation, I imagine it was pretty easy to tell who couldn’t work or find a job, and who was just plain lazy. Not only did everybody know everybody else in the church in the earliest phases of Christian expansion, but the economy was different from ours. My guess is that figuring out whether an able-bodied person was willing to work was often as simple as offering him a job around the house or farm or home business in exchange for room and board, and seeing whether or not he accepted the work and, if so, whether he was actually doing his job or wandering off to sleep whenever the employer’s back was turned. People couldn’t travel very far to seek work (at least not without leaving the purview of the local congregation), so it was also probably easy enough to keep tabs on what jobs were available in the area.

When we’re talking about government-run assistance programs, the picture is much more complicated, of course. Because there are hundreds of thousands of people in the system, seeking jobs in a complex state-wide economy, I’m sure there are some people who take advantage of benefits and get away with it. At the same time, it’s much harder to make sure someone who hasn’t found a job isn’t looking for one, as opposed to facing barriers to job-seeking and employment. I would argue that the Christian response to this situation, as opposed to the particular one Paul’s churches faced, is to give people the benefit of the doubt when there’s doubt, while putting commonsense limits in place, as South Carolina has in fact more than amply done (one may receive benefits for only 24 months at a time, benefits do not increase when the recipient has an additional child conceived after benefits were started, etc.)

Hopefully, this will keep us from running afoul of all the Biblical injunctions (dwarfing in number and emphasis the one verse about not feeding someone who won’t work) to care for the orphan and widow and to give justice to the needy. Also, it’s pretty obvious if we think about it that the verse in question says, “He who will not work work shall not eat” – not “The family of the one who won’t work shall not eat.” There’s nothing in the passage suggesting punishing or threatening even the laziest of individuals by refusing to help their children. One final observation about the context of 2 Thess. 3:10: in the early years of the Church, many Christians thought Jesus would return very soon, in their lifetimes. Some thought that, given this fact, they shouldn’t have to work and do other mundane activities and could just wait around until the Second Coming. So there was a definite problem with idleness in the Church, beyond just the usual human proclivity.

Then there’s the objection to government doing the assistance instead of private individuals and organizations. Jesus clearly held individuals responsible for their responses to poverty and their generosity (or lack thereof) to “the least of these.” But He clearly did not consider government to be illegitimate (since He Himself paid taxes), and Paul’s and Peter’s writings urge Christians not only to obey the law, but to appreciate the ways in which God has uniquely ordained government to accomplish some of His purposes. Especially now that we have a republican form of government, and Christians are well-represented in our political life (a very different situation from the Roman Empire that ruled the known world when the New Testament authors were writing), I don’t see any Scriptural reason that government, in addition to other avenues, shouldn’t be used to help those Jesus told us to help. I think Christians should be especially willing, because of their faith, to see their tax dollars going to public assistance programs!

I know this is an absurdly long comment, but I wanted to make the point that favoring public assistance as a Christian does not require concluding that certain books of the Bible aren’t really inspired by God and can thus pretty much be ignored. I think quite theologically conservative folks can come to the same conclusions about the role of government and what we ought to be doing politically to fulfill Jesus’s command to care for “the least of these.”

- KPE