Editorial Roundup: South Carolina
Post and Courier. December 12, 2023.
Editorial: Editorial: Since cities banned them, plastic bags have gotten stronger. Bans should too.
Four years ago, we urged residents and businesses along South Carolina’s coast to give up single-use plastic bags in favor of paper — or better still, reusable bags — because the flimsy plastic bags were more apt to reach the marshes, tidal rivers and ocean, where they pose a threat to marine life that gets tangled up or ingests them.
And we supported local governments’ new ordinances to encourage them to do just that. The city of Charleston and Charleston County enacted plastic bag bans that took effect on Jan. 1, 2020, following the lead of smaller beach towns and inland cities, although the COVID-19 pandemic delayed Charleston’s enforcement until that summer.
Unfortunately, a few large chain stores and other businesses opted to give their customers thicker plastic bags that they claimed were reusable, and in fact were for some uses, just as flimsier bags could be reused in certain cases.
Now, as The Post and Courier’s Toby Cox recently reported, Charleston City Council has begun to modify its plastic bag ban to close that loophole, banning bags with heat-infused handles. City Council members recently gave final approval to an amended ordinance that expands its ban to include these thicker bags, and it will take effect next July.
Sure, it takes a little while to get in the habit of bringing reusable bags to a store, just as it took homeowners a little while when Charleston County first asked them to place their recyclable materials in a separate blue bin rather than simply tossing them in the trash. But it helps us all by reducing the amount of money the county has to spend on space to dump all that waste into our landfills.
Other local governments should act to update and strengthen their plastic bag ordinances because we have evidence that they have worked. According to Ms. Cox’s report, data from the South Carolina Aquarium’s litter sweep show that plastic bags, foam and straws made up 25% of litter collected several years ago, but since those items were banned, they make up only 14%. And of the littered plastic bags found so far this year, many were the thicker variety. A local graduate student found the number of thin plastic bags decreased by 50% since the ban, while the number of thicker bags rose about 200%.
While the Legislature has debated bills that would preempt local governments from enacting bag bans, it has not passed any. And that should remain the case, as these bills are an affront to home rule and the notion that the government that governs closest governs best.
As environmental advocates have noted, plastic trash in coastal and inland waterways creates several problems, from visual blight to being consumed by marine organisms to breaking down into small particles that can erode the ecosystem, end up in our water supply and create other negative effects.
The vast majority of businesses — about 98% by one estimate, all but a few national chains — have complied with the spirit and letter of Charleston’s ban. It’s time to reach 100%.
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Times and Democrat. December 9, 2023.
Editorial: Political attacks on Nikki Haley off the mark
Democrats say former U.N. Ambassador and S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley is a right-wing extremist. On the flip side, her foes for the Republican presidential nomination say she is the embodiment of old-guard politics in the GOP.
Here is what South Carolina Democratic Party spokesperson Alyssa Bradley said following a Wednesday GOP presidential debate: “In her desperate race for second place, Nikki Haley has tripled down on her extreme agenda to ban abortion nationwide, hand out tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of working families, and end Medicare and Social Security as we know them. No matter how it’s packaged, Haley is extreme and always has been.”
Contrast that with charges from her opponents in a Wednesday presidential debate. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tried to paint her as a stooge for wealthy backers and hidden interests.
“Nikki will cave to those big donors when it counts,” said DeSantis, who also said she is too liberal on transgender issues.
Ramaswamy said the U.S. is “marching towards fascism under (President Joe) Biden” and “the only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley, who thinks the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID.”
Wait just a minute. Haley, a Bamberg County native, is a longtime conservative with positions that do not mesh at all with those of Democrats. Yet she is pragmatic enough to take positions that her conservative critics might call moderate.
Take abortion for example:
Haley supports a “federal role” in restricting – not outlawing -- abortion rights. She has said a consensus measure should include banning late-term abortions, encouraging adoptions, making contraceptives more widely available and making clear that women who have abortions would not be jailed.
Let’s not forget the Haley history. She was elected governor with support of the Tea Party, taking a surprise win over the GOP establishment in South Carolina. She was an outsider and anti-establishment candidate before former President and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump took over the GOP with his populist agenda.
Haley is being attacked primarily because she is doing well as a candidate for president. And with national media painting her as the anti-Trump alternative, she will continue to draw fire from Trump and others.
The bigger problem, for her and any other GOP candidate, is overcoming Trump’s lead. It would take a major shift at this point to derail the former president.
The latest Winthrop poll indicates she cannot even win South Carolina next February. Trump has the support of 52% of S.C. Republicans while Haley is the choice of 17%.
A lot of things can happen and history proves they do happen. Haley could yet become the GOP presidential nominee. She appears best-positioned to do so if Trump fails. Attacks on her will come more often and with more intensity and urgency. So be it, but don’t mistake needed pragmatism with a lack of conservatism.
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The Index Journal. December 13, 2023.
Editorial: They who write the laws often are beneficiaries
There’s no argument that businesses selling alcohol need a healthy liability insurance policy. However, there is sound argument to be made for how ridiculously high their premiums are and how disproportionately the liability is or can be spread among businesses when someone has patronized more than one and winds up in a wreck that results in serious injury or death.
Let’s say someone stops at Joe’s bar and has a beer. He then goes to Bill’s bar and has two beers. Bill has not seen any evidence the customer is inebriated and has no idea the customer already had a beer at Joe’s. The customer leaves Bill’s bar and heads over to Al’s bar where he sits for several hours and tosses down multiple drinks, maybe even mixing things up a bit with beer and whisky. He leaves, Al’s and drives head-on into another car, killing that car’s driver. Under current law, Joe and Bill can be held equally liable as Al. Fair? Not at all.
State Sen. Mike Gambrell, R-Anderson, joined other legislators in sponsoring a bill, Senate Bill 533, that is designed to make liability be proportional. In essence, allocate the fault proportionally among establishments that served the at-fault customer.
Where this legislation goes remains to be seen, but Gambrell, in discussing the bill, brought up a key point that speaks to legislation’s yin and yang in general.
In trying to fix the current law’s lopsided effect with new legislation, Gambrell said, “I’ll be honest, it’ll be an uphill battle because most of the Legislature is attorneys.”
They who write and pass the laws are all too often the very ones who benefit the most from those laws. Yet, we keep sending attorneys to Columbia — and Washington, D.C., for that matter.
As the saying goes, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how it works. They can fill bills with lawyer-speak that the average person can barely, if at all, interpret and hang their shingles out for business that the laws create. They know the ins of the laws and, just as important, they know the outs.
It reminds us of another popular saying about foxes guarding the hen houses.
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