SC Supreme Court Orders Sanford to Take the Money

Thanks Governor (4.00 / 1)

Sanford threw away most of a legislative session where nothing got done because the state's politics were tied up in knots.  He ignored tens of thousands (maybe millions) of phone calls, letters, emails and petitions.  He burned up thousands of hours of time of people who work throughout our communities, including plenty of Republicans, who were out trying to get the government to respond instead of meeting human needs.  He pumped huge amounts of unnecessary stress and anxiety through state employees, educators, non-profits and local governments already struggling with fiscal challenges in the midst of the worst economic contraction in over half a century.

From the mountains to the sea for four whole months librarians, teachers, prison administrators, school board members, police officers, legislators, activists of both political parties, local officials, parents and students worried, wasted their time, dealt with frustration and in some cases lived in fear of losing their class, their funding or their job.

The Governor says it was a really valuable debate.  He lies.  A debate could have been had during a week or two in March.  The legislature could have voted, he could have vetoed it and the court could have ruled.  It could have all be over by April.  The state and all the people affected by this could have moved on to more important work.

Instead he abused the people of his state, grandstanded for an inattentive right wing much more interested in Sarah Palin's far smaller stimulus show in Alaska, or more likely just Sarah Palin.  Sanford is no closer to being President.  After all this, he can't poll in the top ten.

These are not the actions of wise and measured leadership in difficult times.  These are the actions of an abusive bully who is indifferent to the suffering around him and kicked his state when it was down.

The long suffering people of SC, poorer, sicker, less well educated and more vulnerable than the citizens of nearly every other state in their nation have been betrayed again, for cheap reasons, by a leader who does not care about them.  It is the story we have written together.  It needs a new theme for its next chapter.

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by: wjhamilton 29464 @ Thu Jun 04, 2009 at 16:50:45 PM CDT

lackluster (4.00 / 1)

what wjhamilton said and.. and I would say that his legal team did'nt really seem to buy their own BS. I mean if you come to a gun fight..bring some gunz. They hemmed and hawed, stumbled and seemed kinda like they wished they were somewhere else while using the legal argument of " if we repeat the same thing over and over- it's gotta be true!" Which makes it all the sadder as it really could have been over so much sooner with at least the feeling that real issues were at stake and they came to fight for realz.

5 - 0 !

Fix the roads. Especially the deadly ones.

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by: Finx @ Thu Jun 04, 2009 at 21:01:55 PM CDT

That's a nice opinion (4.00 / 1)

The SC Supreme Court said in their ruling:

We accordingly construe the participial phrase "desiring to receive an allocation [or seeking a grant]" in §14005 [of ARRA] as modifying the word immediately preceding it-"State"-to avoid any conflict between our State constitutional allocation of power and the ARRA.  With this construction, it is the State which must desire to receive the funds and grants, not merely the Governor.  The Governor is the officer designated by Congress to perform the ministerial act of submitting the State's application for the funds.

That's exactly right and what I said here in this May 22 comment

And so I repeat, why couldn't A.G. McMaster figure this out?  He looked at the issue for his March 31 letter to Sen. McConnell, and he looked at it again for his filings in the lawsuits.  

A.G. McMaster contended that "the better reading of the [ARRA] Act as a whole and one avoiding certain Tenth Amendment concerns, was that the Governor possessed exclusive authority under ARRA to apply for State Fiscal Stabilization funds."  What else to say but wrong, wrong, wrong.

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by: michaelrodgers @ Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 05:12:10 AM CDT

McMaster is a puppet as well (4.00 / 1)

Jamie Sanderson

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by: Jamie Sanderson @ Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 12:49:14 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Best Line = SK (0.00 / 0)

Indeed, their argument and much discussion was concerned about the ambiguity  within the ambiguity of certain lines. How frustrating.

Which made SK's line about learning how to diagram sentences pretty funny. And got a good laugh from the courtroom and judges. I can see why somebody around her digs her so much.

Ironically ( I can misuse this term just like everyone else does) if the Governor's arguments had prevailed there would have been less money to for education to teach gooder English!

Fix the roads. Especially the deadly ones.

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by: Finx @ Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 20:59:24 PM CDT