ENJOYING A MEAL: Great Egrets are feasting on the bottom of Lake Elizabeth, which emptied during October’s flood. Residents are eligible for Individual Assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Bamberg, Berkeley, Calhoun, Charleston, Clarendon, Colleton, Darlington, Dorchester, Florence, Georgetown, Greenwood, Horry, Kershaw, Lee, Lexington, Orangeburg, Richland, Sumter and Williamsburg counties. Deadline is Dec. 4, 2015. Photo by Bill Koplitz/FEMA
IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS BRIEFS: Pre-term birth rates, Freudian slip?
COMMENTARY: New book on South offers clichés, good stories
SPOTLIGHT: Home Builders Association of South Carolina
MY TURN, Fritz Hollings: Understanding Washington
FEEDBACK: Thanks for your kind thoughts
SCORECARD: Up for Winthrop, Teck, Burns, Gates, Clemson
NUMBER: 167
QUOTE: You don’t want to know
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Allendale County
NEWS BRIEFS
State gets a D grade for pre-term birth rate
Staff reports | South Carolina received a grade a “D” for its 10.8 percent rate of preterm births last year, according to the new 2015 March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card.
The organization wants each state to have a preterm birth rate of 8.1 percent or less by 2020, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
“Our state is not doing as well as we should in preventing premature births and too many of our babies must fight to overcome the health challenges of an early birth,” said Breana Lipscomb, director of Program Services for the March of Dimes South Carolina chapter. “Premature birth is the number one killer of babies and many of our families still face that fear.
“There are large gaps in the preterm birth rate between communities in our state, and racial and ethnic disparities persist.”
Of the state’s large counties, only Greenville with a 9.7 percent preterm birth rate got a grade of a C on the organization’s scale. Spartanburg (10.4%), Charleston (10.8%) and Lexington (11.4%) counties each got a D. But two big counties — Horry (12.1%) and Richland (12.7%) — failed.
Lipscomb told Statehouse Report that the risk for pre-term births was greater in women younger than 17 or older than 35.
“Additionally, appropriate spacing between pregnancies is important. It is recommended that a woman wait 18 months between the end of one pregnancy and the conception of another. This allows time for the woman’s body to heal and prepare for the next pregnancy.”
Prematurely-born babies who survive face “serious and lifelong health problems, including breathing problems, jaundice, vision loss, cerebral palsy and intellectual delays,” the March of Dimes said in a press release.
- To learn more, you can download the Go Purple for Preemies Toolkit at marchofdimes.org/southcarolina.
Freudian slip from the Speaker’s office?
Draw your own conclusions from a headline (below) of a Thursday news release from the office of House Speaker Jay Lucas. In recent weeks, he has gotten really riled up after the state Supreme Court issued a February 2016 deadline for the legislature to come up with a plan to deal with more equitable school funding following a 2014 ruling on a long-simmering court case by poor school districts.
On Thursday, the high court waived the February deadline and gave lawmakers until the end of the 2016 legislative session to come up with a summary of a plan on how it will improve education for children who live in poor and rural areas. The high court didn’t address assertions that justices overstepped their constitutional authority by setting a deadline.
So with this background, what do you think this headline on a news release from Lucas’s office says about the way the way the legislature views the judiciary? Alternatively, it could just be a misspelling:
Lucas Commends Supreme Court Dismal of Abbeville II Deadlines
Judicial overreach stands in way of reform
COMMENTARYNew book on South offers expected clichés, but some good stories
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher
NOV. 8, 2015 | Noted travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux’s new book about our region, Deep South, causes me to have very mixed reactions.
On more than one occasion, I wondered, “Where does this guy get off saying that?” And I grab the book and want to hurl it through the window. These fits particularly came after one of Theroux’s elitist, degrading attempts at phonetically capturing the Southern accent.
But the book also shows he’s a great storyteller who occasionally makes an interesting observation. “Well, that’s a good point,” I would think. “Don’t get rid of it yet.” And I kept reading.
For 50 years, Theroux, who is obviously not from around here, has traveled the corners of the earth — India, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Patagonia and China. But he realized he knew little about a lot of his own country, particularly the American South.
“I made it my habit to drive past the buoyant cities and obvious pleasures in favor of smaller places and huddled towns, to meet the submerged twenty percent,” he wrote, explaining why he bypassed the prosperous South of Charleston and Hilton Head Island.
In doing so, he got an incomplete picture of today’s South. He found cliché and decay. He found desolation, poverty, hopelessness and hunger in rural South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and elsewhere.
Yes, those areas exist and are much too prevalent. But he missed urban booms, promises and other problems that make today’s South so much more of a complicated region, as witnessed by the outstanding quality of life for rich folks in gated communities who are often served by the poor who ride buses for hours to get to the only jobs they can find. It’s almost as if he found the South to be a highly-functioning alcoholic, but he only focused on the disease, not any of the good.
South Carolina native Jack Hitt, whose brother happens to run the state Department of Commerce, slammed Theroux’s book as filled with “superficial stereotypes” with “observations worthy of a freshman sociology major.”
Writes Hitt in The Washington Post, “His big discovery is that the poor areas of the Deep South are heartbreakingly poor — which is true, and was true when Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Appalachian tour, Walker Evans’s photographs, …”
When Theroux started quoting Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, whose Turn in the South was a similar misinformed discovery of the obvious about the South, I knew the book was in trouble. He also waxed on about writers like William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell, obvious sources of Theroux’s gothic, gritty preconceptions. He was looking for that South and, predictably, found it in places like Allendale, South Carolina’s poorest town.
About a third of Deep South is about South Carolina and includes stories about the Orangeburg Massacre, Strom Thurmond, drunks at the Aiken Steeplechase and attending black church services. But Theroux’s focus in the Palmetto State is on the desolation and desperation of Allendale. He fixates on how Indians run convenience stores and a motel: “There was something weirdly colonial about the presence of Indians in the rural South, which reminded me of Africa: the Indian shop in the dusty upcountry town, the overpriced and grubby merchandise, the locals squatting under the trees [drinking alcohol], giving parts of the South an even more dramatic, sleepier, unfixable Third World appearance.”
While Theroux told stories of how the nonprofit Allendale County Alive is trying to help people in the area get better housing, he missed how USC-Salkehatchie’s new dormitory is energizing the community or how the new Promise Zone is bringing people together to make positive changes. Focusing on the negative and problems just must have been easier.
Despite the book’s narrowness, Theroux got a couple of things right. He found Southerners — from gun nuts to the poor — to be hospitable and kind. And he understood many poor areas are having a tough time economically because of how mechanization hurt family farms and how big American businesses shifted the only jobs left in rural areas to other counties.
If you must, read Deep South. But the 441-page book can be summarized simply: People in the rural South are good folks, but a lot of them are poor. (Thanks. We know that.)
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Send feedback to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
IN THE SPOTLIGHTHome Builders Association of South Carolina
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. Today we shine the featured spotlight on a new underwriter, the Home Builders Association of South Carolina.
The Home Builders Association of South Carolina (HBASC) is a professional, non-profit association committed to promoting housing for people of all income levels and the production of quality homes. The HBASC membership is comprised of home builders, trade contractors, suppliers and industry professionals.
Through the HBASC, members can confront and obtain solutions to a multitude of building-related issues. HBASC links the individual member to the entire industry by providing information, educational and technical services, as well as networking opportunities through meetings and special events. Over the years, our efforts have resulted in landmark legislative successes and regulatory actions which create a positive, more predictable business environment for HBASC members.
- For more information, visit the HBASC here.
Understanding Washington
By former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings
Special to Statehouse Report
NOV. 5, 2015 | Everybody complains that Washington does nothing but they don’t seem to understand that Wall Street, the big banks and Corporate America pay the Congress and President to do nothing.
They want to keep the China offshore profits flowing. They don’t want to annoy China. So, they do nothing about China’s devaluation of its currency; do nothing about China’s required transfer of technology; do nothing about China’s closed market; do nothing about China’s human rights. And Washington does nothing.
If the political pundits and editorialists would start publicizing the fact that Washington gets paid to do nothing, then something will happen. The people seem to enjoy the outrageous money that is spent in politics. The people seem to enjoy the race between Republican fundraising and Democratic fundraising. The Democratic Party goes after the Koch brothers and the Supreme Court’s decision, Citizens United, which allows unlimited and unattributed corporate giving. But, they’ve never caught on to the simple solution passed by Congress in 1971 and 1973. Congress limited spending in federal elections and President Nixon signed the ’73 law. Senator Strom Thurmond and I were limited to so much per registered voter – about $687,000. My seventh time to be elected to the Senate in 1998, cost $8.5 million. A contested race for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina today would cost $12-$15 million. Outrageous!
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the ’73 decision on spending in Buckley vs. Valeo by equating free spending with free speech. We attempted to correct Buckley with the McCain-Feingold law, public financing, etc. But only a constitutional amendment empowering Congress to limit or control spending in elections will suffice. After 30 years of trying, I again proposed a constitutional amendment to limit spending in 2002. The Republicans in control of the Senate proposed a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning and asked that I withhold my spending amendment. I refused and no joint resolution was considered in the U.S. Senate in 2002, 2003 or 2004.
Located amongst 10,000 lobbyists in Washington, senators don’t want to lose their six-year advantage of fundraising morning, noon and night. The people have yet to catch on. The fundraising has allowed the lobbyists to take control of Congress and you can’t get a vote on immigration, gun control, etc. No one in Congress mentions a constitutional amendment to limit spending. Once spending is limited, the fundraising is limited, partisanship is limited, gridlock broken and the lobbyists lose control of Congress.
It’s not a problem of the middle class but a problem of the country. The economy of the country is being drained. In December 2006, the Princeton economist Alan Blinder estimated that in 10 years Corporate America would offshore 30-40 million jobs. That’s 3 or 4 million jobs a year. The economists attribute the loss of 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion deficit in the balance of trade. Last year, our deficit in the balance of trade was $505 billion which means we lost 4,545,000 jobs. Earlier this year, Ford announced a $2.5 billion plant in Mexico; General Motors a $5 billion plant in Mexico and Nabisco announced it was moving from Chicago to Mexico. Corporate America continues to offshore its research technology, production, jobs, payrolls – our economy. People think it’s the middle class and income inequality but its offshoring our economy.
Economists complain about the “Great Recession” and lack of consumer confidence in the economy. The 2008 recession ended in June 2009 and it’s not the lack of confidence but the lack of money. Imagine a country that you can’t produce for a profit. That today is the United States of America. We want to keep our labor, environmental and health provisions but the President and Congress must make is profitable to produce in order to limit the offshoring.
The solution is to replace the 35 percent corporate tax with a 9.7 percent value-added tax (VAT). This immediately releases $2 trillion in offshore profits for corporate America to repatriate tax-free and create millions of jobs. It not only aligns the United States with the majority of countries on refusing to tax for offshore profits but it also would replace the payroll tax which would make it profitable to produce in the United States.
But no congressman, no senator, no President, no political pundit mentions a VAT that is used by 164 countries to compete in globalization. Germany also uses its 19 percent VAT to produce in the United States. BMW, Volkswagen, Siemens all produce the engines and vital parts in Germany, ship the parts for assembly in the United States at 3 percent cost, assemble the parts to make automobiles in the U.S. so that they have to pay no Corporate Tax and ship the finished automobile at 3 percent cost back to Europe for sale. For three years, the “ultimate driving machine,” assembled in Greer, S.C., wasn’t sold in the United States. It was shipped back to Europe for sale.
Those countries with a VAT helped put GM and Detroit into bankruptcy. We’ve got to replace the corporate tax with a VAT to compete in globalization but Wall Street, the big banks and corporate America oppose the VAT or 10 percent increase in the cost of imports. We can’t wait on imports to defend the country and a superpower can’t live on imports.
Fritz Hollings served as governor of South Carolina from 1959 to 1963 and U.S. senator from 1966 to 2005.
FEEDBACKAnimals are loving, loyal, resilient, forgiving
To the editor:
Just wanted to send a quick note to say how much I enjoyed reading your article and please accept my condolences for your loss of your family pet and friend.
Everything you wrote I have found to be true, and because my long-time girlfriend runs a rescue agency, I have blessed over the years with lots of friendships with lots of dogs. Oftentimes, I see them in the worst conditions imaginable and it never ceases to amaze me how loving, loyal, resilient and, most importantly, forgiving, animals can be.
You are right that we have a lot to learn from them. Thanks for writing that article. I wish you and your family healed hearts and hope that your daughters can find solace in the fact that you provided Simon with a life well lived.
— Bryan Cordell, Charleston, S.C.
A note from the editor
Many thanks to the many readers like Bryan who sent kind notes about the death of our family dog, Simon, who we wrote about in the last issue [“If you want a friend, get a dog”].
Our family appreciates all of the emails and comments from more than 100 people on Facebook. We still miss him, but your kind words and thoughts help.
— Andy Brack
Send us a letter. We love hearing from our readers and encourage you to share your opinions. Letters to the editor are published weekly. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. We generally publish all comments about South Carolina politics or policy issues, unless they are libelous or unnecessarily inflammatory. One submission is allowed per month. Submission of a comment grants permission to us to reprint. Comments are limited to 250 words or less. Please include your name and contact information.
- Send your letters to: feedback@statehousereport.com
On Winthrop, Teck, Burns, Gates, Clemson
Thumbs up
Winthrop. Hats off to Rock Hill’s university for being picked to host the First in the South Democratic presidential forum, slated for tonight. More.
Tecklenburg. Congratulations to Charleston businessman John Tecklenburg, who came in first in a much-watched, six-way election on Tuesday to replace longtime incumbent Joe Riley for mayor of the Holy City. Tecklenburg still faces state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, in a Tuesday runoff, but a big endorsement for Tecklenburg by third-place finisher Ginny Deerin may make the Nov. 17 outcome academic. But, as all in politics know, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Burns, Gates. We’re looking forward to a national conversation on race next month that will kick off next month when filmmaker Ken Burns and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. start in Charleston. More.
Clemson. Calls of “We’re number one” now actually ring true thanks to the latest ranking in national football polls. Congratulations to the Tigers — and good luck against Florida State this weekend.
In the middle
More time. It’s reasonable for the state Supreme Court to give lawmakers more time to figure out a way to fix state education funding, but all of the squealing by legislators about a possible constitutional crisis over the court setting deadlines was a little too much. More.
DSS. The beleaguered agency, which is 18 years behind in developing a system to track deadbeat dads, says it wants at least $17 million more to get the system going six months after the last deadline. Umm, get it together, folks. You’ve already wasted enough money not doing the job. More.
House Ethics. The committee kicked the can down the road when it agreed to give former House Speaker Bobby Harrell more time to prepare his case challenging the demand that he pay $113,000 to the state in a fine related to his corruption conviction. More.
Thumbs down
Mosquitoes. We hate ‘em. So do you. Thank goodness lawmakers from both parties agree that it’s a non-partisan, big priority to get rid of the plague of mosquitoes that have descended upon the state since the flood. Yes, there are health risks, but getting bitten to a pulp by mosquitoes poses big risks too.
DHEC. Three of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control’s top environmental officials have left or transferred since DHEC director Catherine Heigel took charge six months ago — not exactly a ringing endorsement of her leadership. More.
NUMBERS
167
That’s the number of letters that state regulators have sent to owners of more dams requesting that they submit repair plans following October’s devastating floods. Three weeks ago, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control sent emergency orders requiring owners of 75 dams to lower water levels, inspect dams and submit repair plans. More.
QUOTE
You don’t want to know
“Are the results for downtown in yet?”
— The question that state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, kept asking while waiting to see how he did in Tuesday’s race to be Charleston mayor. Long considered the front-runner, Stavrinakis came in a close second to businessman John Tecklenburg, who creamed Stavrinakis downtown by more than 1,000 votes — four times the number of total votes that separated them. They meet Nov. 17 in a runoff. More.
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIAAllendale County
S.C. Encyclopedia | Formed in 1919, Allendale is South Carolina’s youngest county, yet it contains the oldest known human habitation in the state. Archaeological investigations in Allendale have found evidence of human settlement dating back more than sixteen thousand years. These prehistoric people used “Allendale Chert” in making stone tools.
Europeans began arriving in the area in the 1750s, settling at Matthews Bluff on the Savannah River and Jackson’s Branch, a tributary of the Salkehatchie. Other families settled along the headwaters of the Coosawhatchie and its tributaries. In 1759 they organized Coosawhatchie Church, which became Beech Branch Baptist Church. Cattle herding and farming were the mainstays of the pioneer economy.
During the Revolutionary War, armies marched up and down the Savannah River and partisan fighters conducted raids. The Pipe Creek Light Horse, a patriot cavalry force consisting of men from what came to be Allendale and Hampton Counties, established a camp at Matthews Bluff. In March 1779, patriots fleeing the disastrous Battle of Brier Creek in Georgia floated on logs or swam across the Savannah River; their commander, General John Ashe, took refuge at Matthews Bluff. In April 1781, the Battle of Wiggins Hill near Burtons Ferry ignited bloody conflict among neighbors.
After the Revolution, the area became more settled, with Baptists, Lutherans, and Methodists each establishing churches in the vicinity. Great Salkehatchie Baptist Church at Ulmer was organized in 1790. St. Nicholas Lutheran Church was founded around 1800. A log building housed Swallow Savannah Methodist Church around 1816. The buildings of Smyrna Baptist Church, organized 1827, and Antioch Christian Church, organized 1833, remained standing at the start of the twenty-first century.
In the antebellum era, Allendale made up the southern third of Barnwell District. With the arrival of cotton and the cotton gin in the 1790s, landowners adopted the plantation system and slaves soon made up the majority of the population. Steamboats, pole boats, and cotton boxes plied the Savannah River during the era, and Allendale was the site of several boat landings. One steamboat line stopped at Matthews Bluff, while a competitor stopped at neighboring Cohens Bluff. Boats also stopped at Johnson’s Landing and Little Hell.
During the Civil War, General William T. Sherman’s army marched through Allendale County. Union troops spared the Erwinton Plantation house because it was being used as a hospital for malaria sufferers. Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick set up headquarters for his Union cavalry at Roselawn. Confederates staged their strongest resistance against Sherman’s march to Columbia at Rivers Bridge on the Salkehatchie; the resistance crumbled when Union troops crossed at Bufords Bridge and attacked the Confederates’ right flank. In the post–Civil War era, the area continued to rely on an agricultural economy and an African American labor force. As late as 2000, African Americans made up almost seventy-five percent of the population.
Allendale County was formed in 1919 from parts of Barnwell and Hampton Counties because of the inconvenience of traveling to the courthouse in Barnwell or Hampton. The first courthouse was all but destroyed by fire in May 1998. Construction on a new courthouse incorporating the exterior shell of the old began in August 2002.
In the mid-twentieth century, the local economy benefited from travelers along U.S. Highways 301 and 321. Construction of the Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons production plant, brought more economic opportunity to the area. Robert E. McNair practiced law in Allendale from 1948 until he became governor in 1965. The Salkehatchie Regional Campus of the University of South Carolina opened in Allendale in 1965. However, the opening of Interstate 95 deflated the tourism economy, the end of the cold war led to downsizing at the Savannah River Site, and an agricultural depression drove many farmers out of business. A handful of manufacturers, however, provided some light through the economic gloom, including Scotsman, Clariant, Mohawk, Collum’s Lumber, International Apparel, Fairfax Dimension, and Corbett Plywood.
Allendale County entered the twentieth-first century facing a series of economic and social challenges. The county had the lowest per-capita income and the lowest median household income in South Carolina during the final two decades of the twentieth century. More than one third of the individuals and well over one fourth of the families lived in poverty. Half of the families had a female householder with no husband present. In the 1990s, twenty-six percent of births in the county were to teenage mothers. The county also had the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest percentage of high school graduates in the state. In 1999 the South Carolina Board of Education authorized the state to assume management of the Allendale County schools until goals for improvement were met.
– Excerpted from the entry by Daniel McDonald Johnson. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
CREDITSEditor and Publisher: Andy Brack
Senior Editor: Bill Davis
Contributing Photographers: Michael Kaynard, Linda W. Brown
Phone: 843.670.3996
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Excerpts from The South Carolina Encyclopedia are published with permission and copyrighted 2006 by the Humanities Council SC. Excerpts were edited by Walter Edgar and published by the University of South Carolina Press. Statehouse Report has partnered with USC Press to provide readers with this interesting weekly historical excerpt about the state. Republication is not allowed. For additional information about Statehouse Report, including information on underwriting, go to https://www.statehousereport.com/.
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