March 1 is International Death Penalty Abolition Day, which marks the anniversary of the date in 1847 in which Michigan officially became the first English-speaking territory in the world to abolish capital punishment. It is a day to remember the victims of violent crime and their survivors; it is a day to remember those killed by state-sanctioned violence – guilty or not- and their survivors; and it is a day for intensified education and action for alternatives to the death penalty. See more here.

To view photos from a recent SC vigil as the state executed Luke Williams III, click here.

If you want to connect with South Carolina activists working to abolish the death penalty, email becci@scpronet.com.

Rush has become the mouthpiece of the Republican Party. As embarrassing as you’d think it would be, there has been no effort on their part to shut him up. Maybe Rush is right: he’s just saying what they are thinking.

“The dirty little secret,” he said, “is that every Republican in the country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it.”

Jonathan Hafetz to speak Feb. 26, 12:45-1:45 at the USC School of Law Auditorium.

A senior attorney with ACLU’s National Security Project, Mr. Hafetz focuses on post-September 11 detention issues, government secrecy, and immigrants’ rights. Mr. Hafetz is the ACLU counsel in the landmark detention case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, currently before the Supreme Court.

Mr. Hafetz is the author of numerous articles in scholarly and popular publications, including the Yale Law Journal, California Western Law Review, Fordham Journal of International Law, Legal Affairs, and the New York Law Journal. He frequently serves as an expert commentator for television and radio on liberty and national security issues.

For more information, call Jan Landry at 843-720-1423.

This week, Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D-Jasper) and Rep. Joseph Neal (D-Richland) introduced legislation to address the corrupting influence of money in politics. They have sponsored bills that would provide an alternative to politicians taking cash from industries they regulate.

“There has been much hand-wringing about the payday lending industry’s large infusion of cash to legislators,” said Sen. Pinckney. “While most people shake their heads and say ‘that’s politics,’ the truth is that it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Rep. Neal said, “Legislators feel trapped in a system of private funding for public office, and there is a perception that legislators pay more attention to the concerns of their contributors than they do to their constituents. We looked at the increasing cost of running for public office and the decreasing number of candidates, and came up with a workable and affordable plan to reduce the control that money has on our elections and our decisions as legislators.”

While the Clean Elections Act has been introduced every session since 2000, this year there is a separate bill for a study committee to create a pilot program.

The legislation would bring comprehensive campaign finance reform that provides a system of public funding for candidates for legislative and statewide offices who pledge not to accept any private contributions and agree to spending limits. “Clean Elections” as the initiative is referred to in the states where it is practiced, would provide grants to qualifying candidates that are based on the average amount spent to win a particular office.

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By Charlie Smith
Charleston

US Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has proven himself to be the stereotypical “Christian Republican” who professes to the world that he is practicing the teachings of Christ in his policy-making, when in fact he is merely parroting the most unChrist-like teachings of Milton Friedman. Note to Senator DeMint: There is absolutely no way to reconcile the teachings of Christ with the teachings of Milton Friedman…especially on the subject of greed. Government exists to serve the needs of human beings first…not those of big business first.

Sen. Demint’s almost “Branch Davidian” reverence to Friedman’s unregulated, free-market, “Chicago School” economic philosophy demonstrates his total lack of knowledge of the history of its disastrous applications in the modern world. Since 1970 “Chicago School” economic policy has destroyed both the people and the economies of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Poland to name just a few. Total economic devastation was forced upon these resource rich, but economically downtrodden people by Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” at a time when their economies were totally vulnerable to unbridled American corporate greed. Every asset held in trust for these people by their governments that could be “privatized” was sold off to the highest bidder in return for a few high-interest shekels from the IMF and the World Bank. Anyone who opposed these policies ran the risk of being tortured, murdered, “disappeared” or any combination thereof. Neither the people nor the economies of these countries have ever fully recovered; but American Corporations, the IMF and the World Bank have continued to “acquire” whatever they wanted and move on to the next victim. Afghanistan and Iraq are being sucked dry as we speak. Apparently we learned nothing from Germany after World War I.

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Making the case for Clean Elections

Yesterday, Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D-Jasper) introduced the Clean Elections Act, legislation the SC Progressive Network has supported since 2000. Here is a four-minute video clip SC ETV made in 2007 on the pros and cons of publicly financed elections.

SC Progressive Network Director Brett Bursey talks about clean elections at a Columbia CLC picnic in July 2007.

Read about the Network’s campaign for clean elections that ran in the fall 2000 issue of POINT by clicking here.

Click here to send an email to your state representatives asking them to oppose H3305, which changes the SC Constitution in an attempt to dodge the Employee Free Choice Act.

By Brett Bursey

Director, SC Progressive Network

Upon our state’s preparing to secede from the Union, James Petigru observed, “South Carolina is too large to be a lunatic asylum and too small to be a republic.” True to form, it seems our legislators insist on swimming against history’s tide and holding fast to all manner of lunacy.

On Thursday, Feb. 19, the legislature will be holding hearings on bills that may prove Petigru wrong about limits on the size of an asylum.

The Senate Agriculture Committee is taking up (again) a bill (S-232) at 10am in 406-Gressett, to include nuclear power as a “renewable” resource. While it is a fantasy of the nuclear industry to catch the renewable energy wave by painting nuclear fusion green, there is not a damn thing renewable about nuclear power except the industry’s audacity. (Remember in the 1950s when radiation was measured in “sunshine units”?)

These same lunatics run the asylum that passed legislation last session to let private corporations charge rate payers – up front – to build nuclear reactors. SCE&G predicts a 37 percent increase in your utility bills over the next decade to subsidize construction that can’t get private financing or insurance. It’s likely that the final bill will be twice what SCE&G claims.

A rational legislature, concerned about our energy future, could have put a similar golden carrot on the stick that led to the development of real renewable resources.

How many of us would install solar panels if we could pay for them incrementally over a decade? How many good and enduring jobs could be generated if we put support behind real renewables? The $4.5 billion dollar reactor is predicted to provide 500 jobs after construction. That’s a cost of $9 million a job.

At the same Senate Agriculture hearing Thursday, Sen. Robert Ford will be pushing a bill (S-44) that opens our coast to offshore drilling and expedited DHEC licenses. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will remove federal prohibitions on coastal oil and gas drilling.

Ford, you may recall, is the black legislator who said America isn’t ready for a black president. At the time, Ford was on Hillary Clinton’s payroll.

This column ran in the online version of The State‘s editorial page. John Crangle’s group, Common Cause South Carolina, is a member of the SC Progressive Network.

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By Bob Edgar and John V. Crangle

The avalanche of scandals of the past six months simply adds to the mountain of evidence that America must change the way it pays for its elections. The cases of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich illustrate the problems of America’s pay-to-play political system.

Our highest-bidder style of campaign fundraising is an open invitation to more scandals at every level of government. It also invites public cynicism because those who want something from government – whether it’s a tax break, a lucrative contract or favorable legislation – make the largest contributions to political campaigns.

It is difficult today to tell the difference between legal contributions to political candidates and illegal contributions made with an express quid pro quo. Lawmakers who serve on committees with jurisdiction over specific issues and sectors of the economy receive much of their campaign money from the very industries they are supposed to regulate. The most appalling cases of this are congressional committees that are supposed to watch Wall Street, but outrageously fail to do so.

In the wake of an $800 billion trillion stimulus package that features road work and other infrastructure projects in the states, we are likely to see this pay-to-play culture get even worse. The ultimate solution is to create a voluntary system of public funding under which federal and state candidates run vigorous campaigns funded by a combination of small contributions and limited public dollars.

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