Nikki Haley is a horrible horrible politician. No, I take that back, she won office so she is obviously good at the game of politics but she is a vengeful, spiteful person with the typical teaparty myopic view on funding anything other than the military. She has been on a campaign to gut everything she can think of, particularly things that don't provide immediate benefits to her benefactors. She tried to eliminate SC public TV and public radio entirely. And now she is trying to gut the SC Commission for the Arts and SC Sea Grant.

http://www.thestate.com/2012/07/07/2344 ... k=misearch

The Arts Commission hands out grants for arts projects statewide and oversees the state art collection.

SC Sea Grant Consortium is designed to give universities grants to pursue research that may lay the foundation for bigger federal grants. Often, the initial steps of research are risky and most granting agencies won't fund them. SC Sea Grant takes promising ones and gives them small grants so that they can get the preliminary data required to apply to bigger granting agencies.

But Haley sees it differently:

Haley says both agencies are redundant. Research universities can apply for their own grants, she said, and the private sector can support arts projects.

“I would rather give this money to the taxpayers and let them decide which charities they are going to give money to than to allow the Legislature to decide,” she said. “It’s the responsible thing to do.”

She also removed the budgets of tons of other things like "-$200,000 for DHEC's head lice program that provides schools with special shampoos" Thank god for Obamacare I guess.

By doing what she has done these people are all unemployed at this moment unless our lazy legislature gets back in during the summer and over rides her veto. They have done this before, to save public TV and radio. So all is not lost. But its summer....they are vacationing and coming back to vote would seem sorta like work.

South Carolinians are nice people. Its just too bad they are so poorly educated that they keep electing people who actively work against the very people who voted them in.

i didn't like anyone during the election that i wrote myself into all the positions, except for my town "mayor" position...that bitch was crazy as hell she needed to go. (wellford)
oh yeah they changed my polling place from the normal place i used to go (a gym) to a firehouse then to a church....found this little tid bit out during election day. lol

the private sector can support arts projects

How was that genius plan figured out?

I'm sure they can afford a bulkhead or two on a new aircraft carrier with that program change.

Gonna get worse...not just a Tea Party thing. State & local govt's are running out of money over time. Bad economy = less tax revenue.

I'm not sure its poor education. Citizens of Wisconsin are well educated and they elected Scott Walker.

mark wrote:

... she said, and the private sector can support arts projects.

This is an echo of a famous remark by Ronald Reagan when he was cutting funds to the NEA or whatever: (paraphrasing) "I worked in the arts for decades and my films never required public subsidies."

This, of course, was typical Reagan ignorance and stupidity at work. He worked in the entertainment industry, not the arts.

The difference between art and entertainment has always been that art does not have mass commercial appeal and requires subsidy, whether from royals and aristrocrats in the old days, or from government today.

On closer reading, I see Haley is just suggesting return to the aristocrat subsidy model. Well, okay, that's telling.

Beyond lack of vision, closer to sheer stupidity.

Xela

troutkiller wrote:Gonna get worse...not just a Tea Party thing. State & local govt's are running out of money over time. Bad economy = less tax revenue.

This is her agenda because of her belief that the guvment should be doing next to nothing. She vetoed a bunch of stuff last budget too, but even the Republicans came out against her and over-rode her veto.

SC has next to nothing in tax income anyway - no one likes to mention taxes but they all bitch about shitty services. I paid $287 in property taxes last year for my house. And I don't live in a shack. A friend of mine in Orlando who has a similarly priced house paid $3,200 in property taxes. But I don't have sidewalks, our schools are absolutely horrible, it took 20 mins for a cop to show up next door when the kid called them saying his dad was trying to kill him, there is a volunteer fire department about 5 miles away - I have no idea where a real one is, there is litter everywhere, etc etc etc. You get what you pay for.

On the flip side, the state is so poor that there is no way most folks could afford taxes like the ones in Orlando. But what a catch22 that is because without the taxes to fund the schools very few will be better off financially than their parents were. And the cycle continues.

The state keeps cutting the budgets to its universities: it contributes, for example, 8% of the operating of the major state university, USC. The vast majority of the rest of it comes from tuition and the university's cut of incoming research grants. So, the university response to this issue is multifold: freeze salaries, stop hiring faculty (even to replace faculty that have left), increase the rate of tuition, increase the number of students, require faculty to teach more classes and that class sizes must be larger, and push researchers to do research that results in big grants. None of those things help the education of students. Bigger class sizes (most have doubled in size) and faculty that have to teach more classes results in a crappier experience for everyone. Its just a vicious cycle and I see no way out. Its sort of depressing.

[quote="
This, of course, was typical Reagan ignorance and stupidity at work. He worked in the entertainment industry, not the arts.

...and I suppose you don't consider "Secret Service of the Air" or "Bed Time for Bonzo Art"