BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

The filing period for Democratic and Republican candidates running for the upcoming State House and Senate elections closed last week. We will not know the exact election returns until November, but this we already know: the ‘Good Old Boy Party’ has won.

Yep, that’s right, over 50% of the current members of the legislature will be returned to the State House with no opposition in either the primary or general election. And, if you add in the incumbents that have only token opposition, probably 80-85% of incumbents will win easily.

South Carolinais a one party state, but it is not the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, it is the Good Old Boy Party – the party of incumbents, the status quo, political insiders, and special-interest deal makers.First and foremost, they run state government of, by, and for themselves. We the people come in a distant second. They have rigged the system to suit themselves and the rest of us have been shut out. Just a few examples:

• FOIA – They specifically exempted themselves from Freedom on Information Act legislation so that the public does not have access to their tax-payer funded correspondence, records and emails.
• Special Pension – They created a special pension for state legislators that no other state employees can get. It is hugely generous, such that members of the legislature can get ‘retirement’ payments while still in the legislature.
• Campaign Money – They fund their campaigns with special interest and PAC contributions instead of by individual contributions from the people they are supposed to represent. Most legislators get upwards of two-thirds of their money from these special interests.
• Ethics Commission – Next, they gutted the already meager budget for the State Ethics Commission from $725,000 to a measly $284,000, thus severely limiting the Commission’s ability to monitor and pursue ethics violations.
• Conflict of Interest – They refused to require significant personal financial disclosure by members of the legislature, thus shielding information about un-ethical business dealing with state government.

And on and on it goes. Just last month, a study released by the national Center for Public Integrity rated South Carolina in the top five states most ripe for corruption because of weak ethics rules and requirements.

No one who pays attention to how the legislature and state government operates was the least bit surprised.

Now, it would be wrong to say that all legislators go along with this corruption – they don’t. There are good, decent, and honest legislators of both parties that want big change and real reform, but they have been stymied by the indifference or outright hostility of too many of their colleagues, especially those in leadership positions.

In the last election, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor used the word ‘corrupt’ to describe politics as usual in Columbia, but little has changed since then. There have been a few minor proposals that work around the edges – but no real serious attempt at reform.

One bright spot came a couple of weeks ago when Rep. Boyd Brown introduced the most far-reaching and comprehensive ethics reform proposal in a generation. Warning of another impending ‘Lost Trust’ scandal – the crisis in the 1990’s that saw 10% of the legislature plead guilty to corruption — Boyd blasted the current corrupt system.

And what was the response from his colleagues? Only three other legislators, Carl Anderson, James Smith and Leon Stavrinakis, stood with Boyd at the press conference. When asked where everyone else was, Boyd pointed out that many were busy feeding themselves at a free lunch – it was provided by a special interest group.

So, we are back to the Good Old Boy Party running the show, with very little support for real change and big reform from legislators in either party.

So, the next time you hear folks talking about South Carolina being a one-party state, tell them, “Yes you are right, but its not the Republicans or the Democrats, it’s the ‘Good Old Boy Party.’”

They are the party firmly in charge…at least for now.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and serves as the President of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@scnewdemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

There is a whole generation of heroes that are dying and their heroic deeds are being forgotten. They are the quiet heroes of our state’s and country’s most recent revolution – the civil rights revolution.

It has been fifty-seven years since Rosa Parks refused to move on the bus in Montgomery and sparked the bus boycott that propelled a twenty-five-year-old Baptist preacher to greatness. It has been forty-seven years since a twenty-five-year old sharecropper’s son named John Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on the road that would lead his people to freedom and himself to Congress. It has been forty-nine years since Harvey Gant of Charleston quietly walked into the registrar’s office at Clemson and forever changed South Carolina’s history.

These are a few of the names we all remember, the heroes who those many years ago took great risk in noble deeds that have forever changed our state and nation for the better.

In his famous letter from the Birmingham jail, Dr. King said, “One day the South will recognize its real heroes.” He was right, and we have.

But there are others, countless hundreds, even thousands, of quiet heroes across our state and the South that also helped make this revolution succeed, and we need to recognize them, too. While the famous folks whose names are a permanent part of history get most of the attention, the civil rights revolution only succeeded because of the countless acts of tolerance and courage by everyday people, the unsung heroes who have been largely forgotten.

They are the mom-and-pop restaurant owner who one day took down the whites-only sign, not because some federal marshal told them to, but because they realized that it was time for change. It was the businessperson who nominated a black man to join the Rotary Club and never referred to his race. It was the plant manager who, on his own initiative, took down the “White” and “Colored” signs over the water fountains.

Sometimes these changes happened without resistance; other times these folks were the subject of taunts and social ostracism, but yet they held firm. These are the unsung and unrecognized heroes that need to be recognized.

There are many ways this can be done. Please forgive me for using a personal example. My father was a Presbyterian preacher and in the late 1950’s we moved from Greenville to Anniston, Alabama. In 1962, when the Freedom Riders came through Anniston, their bus was burned and the passengers were savagely beaten. A picture of the burning bus was flashed across the national and global news wires and became one of the iconic images of the civil rights movement.

A while later, two black preachers called my father and asked if they could simply come talk with him about the racial problems in the community. He said yes and one thing led to another. The city fathers soon appointed the first bi-racial committee in the South and asked my father to be chairman. The commission was recognized by President John Kennedy as a national model.

My father was not a crusading liberal taking to the streets agitating for change. He was an eight-generation Southerner who simply believed that all God’s children should be treated the same, and when asked by his fellow preachers, he acted on that simple belief. That alone was enough to earn him the top spot for a time on the Ku Klux Klan’s hit list in George Wallace’s Alabama.

Forty years later, at the urging of his children, my father wrote a short book about his experiences, and this triggered a whole series of events in Anniston to recognize the everyday real heroes of the town – black and white. There have been many oral histories, first person articles in the local newspaper, murals have been painted on the site of some key events, markers erected and many special programs and events directed to educating Anniston’s children about their shared history.

No one would claim that Anniston today is a racial oasis, as they still have many problems, but they have made great strides simply by looking back, recording and commemorating their common heritage and engaging the people who lived through the turbulent times.

And the town did it themselves. There was no federal grant or big company sponsor, just the people of the town making a sincere effort to honestly look at their history and recognize its real heroes.

We in South Carolina need to do the same. There are countless near-forgotten stories of brave people who took action in these dangerous times that have helped make our state a better place.

How do we get started? One of the main catalysts for Anniston’s recent actions was the local newspaper, The Anniston Star and its publisher H. Brandt Ayers. A simple search for ‘freedom riders’ on the paper’s site will lead to dozens of articles about what the city has done. Another site is BeyondtheBurningBus.org.

All that’s required for us in South Carolina to begin to recognize our real heroes is for us to decide to do it and make it happen. This column is distributed by the SC Press Association to every newspaper in the state. Any publisher or editor can take the initiative to get started in their local community. If they won’t, their readers can follow the Anniston example and start themselves.

We can recognize the real heroes of our communities. It’s time we did.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and serves as President of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group founded by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@scnewdemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

When we in South Carolina get national attention, it is usually because some politician has done something stupid, immoral, or illegal – and we are all very embarrassed.

This story is about a group of Upstate women that have done something 100% good, inspiring and important – and we should all be very proud.

It all started with an individual woman and a really simple but powerful idea. Marsha Wallace is a mother of four and a former nurse who lives in Greenville. She read an article about how a group of friends got together and had a pot luck dinner and took the money they saved by not going to a fancy restaurant and used the money to help families in need.

This idea of ‘dining out dollars’ being used to help others appealed to her and a group of her friends and in the Fall of 2002, they started Dining for Women, or DFW, with the proceeds going to projects that benefit girls and women in developing countries.

To say that Marsha’s simple idea ‘caught on’ would be a huge understatement. Soon the group was featured in national media stories by the New York Times, Good Morning America, the Today Show and literally dozens of others.

As their website (DiningForWomen.org) says: “Today, more than 250 chapters and 8,000 people have joined DFW, making a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and girls living in the most extreme poverty in more than 30 countries. To date, DFW has raised over $1.5 million, one potluck at a time!”

In recent years, it has become clear that boosting women and girls is the key to larger success in solving the problems of the developing world. Women and girls are more stable, more committed to community development, and less likely to abandon their families and villages in tough times.

DFW understands that empowering women to find solutions to the problems they face through education, healthcare, and economic development is the ultimate solution to those living in the poorest conditions – many living on less than $1 a day.

Part of the success of DFW lies in its simple and basic appeal. Their five guiding principles are:

– All women deserve to be self-sufficient
– Education transforms the giver and the receiver
– Connections are the engine that power giving
– Transparency and integrity will mark our work
– To reach all, we must believe we can

Cynics might argue that $1.5 million raised to date is a mere drop in the bucket and can hardly have an impact – but that misses the point. DFW is not just about providing direct assistance but it is about changing how people give and participate and impact global issues.

Their larger vision is to “create a new paradigm for giving – collective giving on an immense scale while maintaining the intimacy of small groups with a focus on education an engaged giving.”

Like many other new Internet-enabled social action projects, DFW is lean, global, and transparent. Their board of directors has grown far beyond the bounds of Greenville or even South Carolina; it is global. And consistent with the new models of transparency, all of DFW finances are online and each and every program expenditure is listed on their website.

Not only should all South Carolinians be proud, but also we should all participate and join or create our own group. (I’m sure there are ways that men can have an impact and show their support.) There are over 25 existing DFW groups in the state and the website has easy to follow step-by-step instructions for finding, joining or creating a group.

So the next time your cringe in embarrassment at a late night comedian making fun of a Palmetto state politician, think about Marsha Wallace. Remember how one South Carolinian and her friends have changed the world – literally, one pot luck dinner at a time.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and is the President of the South New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@scnewdemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

South Carolina has a good vision for education. Three recent news stories show how this vision is failing. And three words tell us why – stupid Republican policies.

First the vision. The last time that South Carolina did anything really big and bold to improve K-12 education was way back in the 1980’s when Gov. Richard Riley pushed through the Education Improvement Act to seriously reform education and the Education Finance Act to pay for it. These reforms were hailed as a national model for dramatically reforming education. (Full disclosure: Gov. Riley was the founder of the SC New Democrats).

One of the most important parts of the reforms was the creation of the independent SC Education Oversight Committee. Their charge is ‘reporting facts, measuring change and promoting progress.’

Several years ago, they formulated 2020 Vision that set the goal “that by the year 2020 all students will graduate with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete successfully in the global economy, participate in a democratic society, and contribute positively as members of families and communities.”

That about says it all. It is a great vision of what good education is all about and why it is so vital to our state’s future.

The problem is that Republican politicians in Columbia have systematically gone about gutting and undermining this grand vision because of their rigid radical ideology, petty politics, and just plain stupid decisions.

The results: the Oversight Committee’s most recent annual report says that we are failing in each of the four key areas of measuring success – reading proficiency, on-time graduation, college and career readiness and improving at-risk schools. Yes, failing in all four areas.

As with so many things, it starts with leadership at the top and that is where our failure begins. Mick Zais is our Superintendent of Education. After a distinguished record of 31 years of service in the Army, he became President of Newberry College for 10 years and in 2010 was elected state superintendent of education.

I’m sure that Zais is a nice man – and clearly he loves his country, his children and his God – none of which have any bearing on his record of just plain stupid ideas and decisions that he has pursued as Superintendent.

The first tip off to the impending disaster was in the campaign, when he said he did not support four-year-old kindergartens because he thought children at that age could not learn. As any reasonably parent knows – and a mountain of reputable studies prove – the vast majority of the development of a child’s brain takes place before they are six years old.

Next, Zais refused to compete for ‘Race to the Top’ funds from the US Department of Education. This program was established to encourage states to develop new, big and bold initiatives to improve education. The whole point was to allow states to develop their own ideas, independent of Washington, and then implement them so other states could learn from these examples.

When the first awards were made in 2010, before Zais took office, our state barely missed the cut and it was clear that we were a slam-dunk for funding in the second round. Zais said ‘no thanks’ and refused to even turn in the second round paperwork.

Next came the $140 million. As part of the broad effort to deal with the impact on the states of the global economic meltdown, South Carolina was allocated $140 million in federal funds, mostly to re-hire teachers that had been laid off due to falling tax revenues. $140 million, free and clear – and Zais said ‘no thanks’.

This money was allocated so that every state would benefit and there were essentially no strings attached. The Feds even sent a notice to Zais saying if he did not take the money, it would be given to others states. He said go ahead and give it to someone else.

And throughout this whole time, Gov. Haley and the Republican controlled legislature have continued to slash existing education. In her most recent budget, she cut funding another $80 million.

So where are we today, two numbers say it all – 24% and 50th. Because of SC Republican’s policies, in the last four years SC has cut education spending by 24.1% – the greatest cut of any of the 50 states. And to make matters worse, even before the cuts, we ranked near the bottom in education spending.

Let’s be clear as to why this happened. It is the Republican Governor, Republican Superintendent of Education, and the Republican State House and Senate that made these cuts. They have an overwhelming majority in both houses and they pushed through these cuts with Democrats in near unanimous opposition.

This is a partisan issue – Republicans voted draconian cuts, Democrats opposed them.

That is the truth – and that is stupid.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and is President of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@scnewdemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org.

Some issues are a close call – it is hard to know what is the right thing to do. Technology and education is not one of these issues. It’s obvious that technology and education are the keys to success in the global economy of the 21st century, both for us as individuals and as a state.

The only question is: Why is SC so stupid about figuring this out and doing the right things?

While our experience in South Carolina is discouraging, we only have to look across the border 20 miles north of Charlotte to see an excellent example of what we are missing.

First, the bad news: the foundation has been laid for success, but the SC Legislature has refused to do their part. I was fortunate to be a part of an innovative project called One Laptop Per Child SC (LaptopSC.org) that raised over $1 million in private money to provide almost 3,000 laptops to every child in 15 schools across the state. After a year of evaluation, then Supt. of Education Jim Rex found that ‘dollar for dollar this computer will have a bigger impact in improving education that anything else we can do.’

Sadly, the Legislature refused to take the next step and provide the funding to expand the project. However, local school districts are now moving ahead on their own, with several good initiatives underway. Most recently, the Charleston County School District provided iPads to all the students in three low-performing high schools and three elementary schools, with an eye to expanding to the whole district.

While some schools in South Carolina are struggling to develop the right model, North Carolina’s East Mooresville Intermediate School has become what the NY Times has called ‘the de facto national model of the digital school.”

Three years ago, about the same time OLPC/SC was started, Mooresville issued 4,400 laptops to 4th thru 12th graders in five schools. As with the South Carolina pilot project, the Mooresville results have been overwhelmingly positive:

Graduation rates went from 80% to 91% in three years
Students who met proficiency requirements on reading, math and science tests went from 73% to 88%
Attendance is up and dropouts are down.

And if you assume that Mooresville is an affluent area, you would be dead wrong. Minorities make up 27% of the school and 40% are poor enough to receive free or reduced price lunches.

Here’s the bottom line on Mooresville in one sentence from the NY Times:

Mooresville ranks 100th out of 115 distracts in North Carolina in terms of dollars spent per student – $7,415.89 – but is now third in test scores and second in graduation rates.

This is about as good as it gets.

And in terms of the costs, the story only gets better. In Mooresville, they lease the newest MacBook Air from Apple for $215 a year for a total of $1 million, and they spend an additional $100,000 for software. Each family is asked to donate $50 to cover repairs but the fee is waived if they cannot afford it. In addition, the school district has negotiated a deal such that any family can have broadband access at home for only $9.99 a month.

An added cost bonus is reduced personnel expenditures. Mooresville was able to eliminate 65 jobs, including 37 teaching positions.

And what about South Carolina? We could easily afford to do what they have done in Mooresville. While the per student spending in Mooresville is $7, 415, in South Carolina it is over $11,000 . Simply duplicating Mooresville in South Carolina, without the savings of cutting positions, would cost only $250 per student, or less than 2% of what we are spending today.

However, in one sense, this is not about technology; it’s about changing the teaching culture of the school, and the computer is the tool to leverage this change. As Mooresville’s Superintendent says, “It’s not about the box. It’s about changing the culture of instruction – preparing students for their future, not our past.”

Therein lies the great paradox – the computer is the tool or lever to change the teaching culture, and it costs virtually nothing to change a culture, just good leadership.

So, my original question remains: Why is SC so stupid about education and technology? The answer is the aforementioned ‘good leadership’. If we can’t get good leadership out of Columbia, then we need to change that leadership there, but also we, as citizens, need to lead the change in schools on the local level.

The Mooresville model is something special – but there is nothing there that cannot be duplicated all across South Carolina. Copying a good model is smart; ignoring the pathway to success when it is just over the state line, is just stupid.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and President of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@SCNewDemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

Because of the convergence of a number of factors – God, global economics and good luck – South Carolina is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the emerging global wind industry, unless our politicians blow it. And they may.

Let’s start with God. The good Lord created a natural environment that makes our state ideal for the development of the wind energy industry. Just off our coast, up around our border with North Carolina, the ocean winds blow at consistent speeds that may be ideal for windmills that generate electricity. Plus, the ocean is not very deep in this area, thus making it fairly easy to build stable windmills in relatively shallow water.

Second, anyone that can read a news paper understands that development of wind and other alternative energy sources is vital to our counties long-term security, both economic and physical. Oil and terrorists are principal exports of the same region.

Third, in South Carolina today, we have the technology, know-how and manufacturing base to be a leader in the global wind industry. This is not some pie-in-the-sky, ‘maybe in the future’ idea. I’m talking right here, right now.

Pop Quiz – Where is the largest manufacturer of windmill turbines in the US? Answer: Upstate South Carolina.

The General Electric facilities there are among the best in the world, but we do not have a single windmill in the state – zero, none, nada.

The good news is that this may be changing and the potential is huge, unless the politicians screw it up.

With a number of other public and private sector partners, Clemson University is building a mammoth facility at the old Charleston Navy Base to test windmill drive trains. The drive train is the key component that takes the energy created by the turning windmill blades and increases the speed to generate electricity. It functions much like the transmission in a car.

The new facility was put together with about $100 million in financing from the US Department of Energy and private investors and when it is finished, this testing facility will be the most advance facility of its type in the world.

South Carolina as world class in something – there’s an idea you don’t hear much these days.

The potential is not just to build a few windmills; the potential is to become a new global hub for the entire wind industry. Given the potential for easy exports through the Port of Charleston, the right testing facilities will attract other wind-related companies and manufactures from around the world to come to the region. It is the same concept that has worked so well with Clemson, BMW and the growth of the automotive industry in the Upstate.

In fact, the concept has already started working. Recently, the IMO Group, a Germany-based alternative energy company, announced they would make a $47 million investment in a Dorchester County plant that will create 190 jobs.

Now here’s the problem we have with the politicians in all this. In short, they just don’t get it. They don’t understand the potential and refuse to help. It is bad enough that we don’t have any significant political leadership pushing this idea, but they are actually making things worse.

As a condition of the federal grant, the state had to come up with $10 million as our part of the project. Not once but twice did Gov. Haley try and kill the deal by refusing to support the funding. Our Governor says she was an accountant so you would think that she would understand the math – put in one dollar, get back nine more.

She is always talking about what she is doing to create jobs, but here she’s essentially killing jobs. The U.S. Department of Energy study predicted that by 2030 the project would create over 20,000 new jobs in our state – and these are good, well paying, high tech jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.

So here we are again: another narrow minded politician lets their knee jerk radical ideological dislike for Washington endanger the potential for a new and important high-tech industry that will create tens of thousands of jobs.

Politicians in South Carolina are famous for blowing a lot of hot air that has no impact. For once we have the opportunity to harness some wind that can make a difference. If the politicians wise up – they could help propel our state to a world class status.

Phil Noble is a businessman from Charleston and serves as President of the SC New Democrats, and independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@scnewdemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

The state Legislature convened in Columbia recently and quickly went to work. Given the results so far, we would have been better off if they had stayed at home – and therein lies a solution to the problem that has worked in many of other states.

So what critical problem or big issue did they tackle this week? Was it fixing our broken state budget? Or improving education? Or creating jobs?

Nope. None of the above.

Instead, the Senate passed a bill honoring two dead people – Pres. Ronald Reagan and Eartha Kitt, the famed African American singer and actress from the town of North – and then immediately got in a fight about it. As one Senator said, “I fully support recognizing President Reagan without having to diminish his great accomplishments by equating them to the actions of a liberal gay rights activist.”

How many jobs did this create?

Next, they took up debate on a bill to require unemployed people to pass a drug test before they could receive unemployment benefits. You would have thought we settled this issue back in September, when Gov. Haley made a big deal out of claiming that 50% of the applicants at the Savannah River plant failed a drug test. In fact it is less than 1 percent.

As a Post and Courier reporter pointed out, if this bill becomes law, ‘they could run afoul of the federal government just like two signature pieces of legislation passed last year: Voter ID and immigration reform’. It would seem that intelligent people would quit wasting time passing laws that clearly will not pass federal muster.

What’s curious is that ‘wasting time’ is not an issue for many legislators; they dilly-dally around with unimportant issues and spend time posturing and making speeches that no one really listens to.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of good diligent hard working legislators in both parties that sincerely want to do the right thing. But the dirty little secret is that, for many, being in Columbia six months out of the year is a both a pleasure and a perk, and they actively work to stretch it out as long a possible.

The Legislature convenes the first of January each year and usually stays in session about six months, sometimes longer if they get called back to deal with the governor’s vetoes and other special issues. Though officially in session throughout the work week, they generally don’t meet at all on Monday or Friday and they roll in late morning on Tuesday and roll out early afternoon on Thursday.

Why do they stretch it out so long? There are lots of reasons. Some legislators simply enjoy the attention. For others, coming to Columbia makes them feel like big shots in the big city, as they get lots of TLC from their staff, lobbyists and others who are competing for their time and attention.

There is an old saying around the statehouse that describes the session as ”three dull days and two glorious nights,” and for too many legislators this is the case. The social calendar of the Legislature is chock full on breakfasts, lunches, dinners and receptions sponsored by special interest groups, lobbyists and even the occasional legitimate citizens’ group. They are so busy that they even have official committees of both the House and Session just to deal with all the invitations they receive.

The legislators love these events for the free food, the open bars, and the fawning attention. For lobbyists, the strategy seems to be to corner the legislators and talk with them about a tax break or other special deal while they are stuffing their faces with liquor and canapés.

And the tasty morsels don’t always stop at the buffet line. Though it is said to have improved slightly in recent years, the ratio of blonde highlights to bad comb-overs is still suspiciously high at these Legislative receptions. And no one there seems to mind much one way or the other when one of the latter decides to go into ‘special session’ for the evening with one of the former – after all, (good ol’) boys will be (good ol’) boys, right? Or so says the culture of indolence and indulgence that goes largely unchallenged these days under the Dome in Columbia.

As is often the case, the solution to this is quite simple: limit the time of the legislative session – say, to 60 days every year. This will force the Legislature to take up the important stuff and quit wasting time.

A quick look at other states shows that this is an eminently reasonable solution. For example: Florida is nearly four times as big as South Carolina, yet they only meet 60 days a year. In fact, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures study, 32 state legislatures meet for less time annually than does South Carolina, and four other states only meet every other year.

The old maxim is that work expands to fill the time available. So, let’s shorten the session and force them to get down to serious work.

It will be good for the state and save tax money to boot. And the legislators themselves would probably be a lot better off – healthier, anyway – if they cut down on the lobbyist-provided food and drink, and got a good night’s sleep back in their own districts once in a while.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and serves a President of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@SCNewDemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

It’s true. We as a state have an extra $1 billion dollars more in state tax revenues than we thought we did just a few weeks ago. And it gets even better; this includes $519 million in recurring revenues, money we will get annually from now on – or until the economy tanks again.

The question is: What will we do with this money? Will we be smart or just revert to politics as usual?

Everyone in Columbia has their opinions as to what we should do. Gov. Haley says use it to pay some of the shortfall in the state’s pension fund and refund some of it to the taxpayers. The various state agencies and their friends in the legislature all have their long list of special projects and needs. And they can all make a good case, as we have lots of real needs and most of the agencies have suffered from horrendous budget cuts.

But left to politics as usual, the money will simply get spent by the same old people in the same old ways, based on which group can best mobilize their lobbyists and friends to get what they want.

Let’s do something different this time. In fact, let’s start by doing something really radical: let’s ask the people.

The money is tax money and people should be asked what they want. There are various ways to get real and honest input from the voters, such as un-biased opinion polls, asking for people’s suggestions via special websites and, new online tools, or holding town hall meetings around the state. The media would be happy to help in promoting the idea and taking feed back from the voters.

Politicians say they know what the people want and cynics will say that this won’t work as all the special interest groups will just organize their folks to game the process. Maybe, but if Gov. Haley and the leadership in the legislature make a sincere and honest attempt to use some new ideas and new technology to ask the voters, people will honestly respond. My guess is that our so-called leaders will be surprised by the thoughtful and earnest responses of the people of our state.

We are not just a collection of special interest groups but a state with people who care about each other and our future.

Second, let’s agree to not just keep funding a failing system — let’s fund success for a change. Government is broken, politics is corrupt, and the last thing that we should do is just pour more money into an already leaky bucket. Let’s fix the bucket.

Through out this state there are lots of examples of things that are working well– public schools that are doing a good job in educating our children, job training that is teaching people new 21st century skills, community health projects that are both reducing costs and meeting people’s needs. We need to focus on replicating these successes and not simply funding something because it was a line item that was cut the last time around.

Finally, let’s make a meaningful commitment to funding the kind of innovation and technology that will pay real dividends in the future. There are too many politicians in this state, of both parties, whose attitude seems to be ‘to hell with the future, let’s keep fighting about the past.’ Innovation is how we succeed long term and we should set aside a big portion of the $500 million in recurring revenues to fund some long-term projects that may take a few years to pay off but potentially have a big return of 10 or 20 to 1.

And, in the short term, the pay off is in technology. My company has been fortunate enough to do a bit of work over the years with Microsoft and other major tech companies in both in the US and globally, and the industry consensus is that simply installing the best current off-the-shelf technology in most government agencies would save anywhere from 15-20% of operating costs. This is not some pie-n-the-sky speculation but a hard projection based on countless examples from state governments across the country.

None of this is earth-shaking stuff; it’s really just common sense. It only seems radical to those who have a stake in the failed status quo and refuse to move beyond simply playing politics as usual.

A billion dollars now and half a billion annually is a lot of money – a whole lot, in fact. The last thing we need to do is simply spend it in the same way that we have in the past and get the same result.

It’s our money and we should demand that it is spent smart , for a change.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and is president of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@SCNewDemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

There are those of us who believe that we in South Carolina have within our borders all the resources we need to solve virtually any problem our state faces. Last week, all the people we need to make it happen were assembled in one big room at one time. It was the Liberty Fellowship Summit in Columbia.

Let me explain. The Liberty Fellows program was started by Hayne and Anna Kate Hipp of Greenville, and it is a truly visionary project. It identifies emerging leaders in our state, helps them look at our problems in new and different ways, and then guides them to take positive steps to make the changes we so desperately need. The project is affiliated with the Aspen Institute and its larger global leadership programs. In this state, we are truly blessed to have people such as the Hipps with the vision, resources and commitment to start and run such a project, as well as the universal respect required to assemble such a group.

Each year since 2004, about 20 individuals ages 30 to 45 have been chosen as Liberty Fellows and mentored by senior advisers, older blue-chip leaders in the state. The Fellows go through a two-year long series of seminars, briefings and discussions, and then each Fellow develops their own special project to tackle a specific problem. Their work has begun to make a real difference with some of the toughest issue facing our state — in education, health care, race relations, environmental protection, government reform and a host of other important issues.

Last Wednesday, Liberty Fellows held their second annual summit at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. The event brought together not only the Fellows and their mentors, but also several hundred others from around the state and beyond. The theme was Transcending Tribalism — getting beyond the self-imposed barriers of geography, race, sex, politics, religion, etc., that keep us isolated in our own silos or tribes and prevent us from solving the common problems of our state. Clearly there has been no greater plague on our state throughout its history than these artificial divisions that have held us back.

In addition to the South Carolina leaders, the summit brought some of the best and the brightest from around the county to help grapple with these tough issues. Among them were: Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and award-winning author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein; Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, one of the most respected and innovative governors in the country; Kim Smith, a founder of Teach for America; Anton Gunn, a former South Carolina state legislator and now Southern Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and others.

The Summit was not just about a few luminaries sitting up on a stage pontificating with a lot of pie-in-the-sky, thumb-sucker analysis. Instead, dozens of action groups spent three hours delving into the nitty gritty of tackling some of our state’s toughest problems. And most importantly, they developed detailed action plans with specific steps that we can begin to take today to turn things around.

One of the most notable features of the Summit was the absence of high-profile speechmaking by our state’s politicians; there was none. Those few elected officials who came joined in the work like everyone else without any special recognition or leadership role. And, that is as it should be. In the past, we have been too quick to abdicate our civic responsibility to the politicians — and, in turn, they have largely failed us and given us a broken government that has been corrupted by special interest politics and money.

Will this Liberty Summit result in big, immediate changes overnight? Of course not. But something important is happening here: The people of our state are coming together on their own to try and solve our state’s problems with intelligence, vision and a commitment to hard work, and their efforts could have a profound long-term impact.

In the great room of Independence Hall in Philadelphia 224 years ago, our nation’s founding fathers proclaimed that ‘we the people’ are the ones who must make the decisions about what kind of nation we want and then work together to make that future a reality.

There were no three-cornered hats or quill pens and inkwells in the room in Columbia last week, but there were a lot of smart and committed people determined to make South Carolina a new state, a better state — and they just might do it.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and is president of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. phil@SCNewDemocrats.org www.SCNewDemocrats.org

BY PHIL NOBLE, PRESIDENT, SC NEW DEMOCRATS

This may seem odd coming from a Democrat who lives in city that led the Confederate Rebellion, but one thing is very clear from the Republican presidential primary – our state and nation desperately needs to see the return of the party of Lincoln. It will be good for Republicans and Democrats, and most importantly, good for our state and country as a whole.

As with so many things in our state, first a little history. Most people think that Lincoln was the first Republican Party candidate for President; in fact, it was John C. Fremont, who first ran on the Republican Party label in 1856. Born in Savannah, Fremont was the bastard son of a socially prominent Virginia planter family. He spent much of his early life in Charleston and was thrown out of the College of Charleston in 1831 shortly before he was due to graduate. Fremont ‘went west’ and became an explorer, early California politician and an ardent abolitionist.

After Fremont’s failure in the 1856 election, the Republicans nominated Lincoln for the 1860 campaign, largely due to his moderate views on the issues of slavery. He urged a pragmatic domestic policy of more ‘internal improvements’ – i.e. government public works projects, and as one born in a log cabin of humble origins, above all else he was for the common man.

Once elected, Lincoln reached out to his political opponents and created a ‘Team of Rivals,’ as noted by the title of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book. Lincoln knew that in a divided federal government in a divided country, he had to engage all sides to forge solutions to complex and difficult problems.

Lincoln was pragmatic. Throughout his five years as President, he was not driven by a rigid ideology; he was willing to compromise on political tactics and strategies while never losing sight of his overall goal of preserving the Union.

On a personal level, Lincoln is best remembered for his great compassion for his fellow human beings. ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all…’ Lincoln sought to bind up the wounds of a deeply divided and broken country.

Above all, Lincoln was driven by his sense of national purpose – to preserve the Union above all else. He was willing to make political compromises, endure personal insults and attacks and make any necessary sacrifice of blood and treasure, to ensure the Union prevailed.

How different is the Republican Party today, both nationally and in South Carolina.

Today their presidential candidates are almost all lacking in any serious leadership capacity. Instead of articulating real policy solutions, they fall all over each other trying to get to the most extreme right wing position to appeal to their Party’s ideological base – see immigration, abortion and no tax pledges.

If one of today’s contenders dared to use candidate George W. Bush’s phrase ‘compassionate conservative,’ he would be eaten alive by the likes of Fox News, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

And what of the Republican Party in South Carolina? The very idea of working across party lines to solve difficult issues is simply anathema to many Republicans.

And a ‘team of rivals’ – not hardly. The very idea of Gov. Haley ever appointing a Democrat to a significant position is laughable – see Darla Moore and the whole DHEC Board she fired.

Today, the Republicans’ biggest preoccupation seems to be hunting RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. Any time a Republican in the state house begins to seriously talk with a Democrat to fashion a sensible solution to difficult issues, like education, they are immediately condemned as sellouts and thus become fair game for the RINO hunters.

And a sense of higher purpose for the good of all – forget it. In both Washington and Columbia, special interest groups with their political action committees and campaign contributions dictate the political agenda. As a result, our government is broken and our politics is corrupt.

Nationally we see this with the dysfunctional debt limit and ‘super committee’ fights and in the next few months we will see this played out here in the statehouse battle over tax reform. In South Carolina, there are countless special tax exemptions and loopholes in our current law that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each and every year. Watch closely and see who prevails – our state’s larger interest or the narrow special interest.

Where is Honest Abe and his Republican Party when we need them?

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and is President of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group founded by former Gov. Richard Riley.