Post #16: Challenge the Orthodoxies

Bobby Kennedy campaigning for President in 1968

I'm the first to admit it: I reacted too often in the Legislature to things I never should have concerned myself with. Bouts with Governors Sanford and Haley... squabbles with colleagues... a cheap quip when I should have kept my mouth shut. The lesson has been learned.

Those reactionary characteristics of my time in the Legislature overshadow what I am most proud of, and that was thinking in an outside-of-the-box, proactive manner when it came to crafting legislation. It's what led to my casino legislation (which creates jobs and revenue to fix roads), but it also led to things such as my ethics plan, my conservation proposals and my call for stronger domestic violence laws.

I often said South Carolina had all the tools needed to be successful, but we lacked leadership and vision. One of the key components to being a visionary is the ability to challenge the orthodoxy.

One of my favorite movies is Moneyball-- not because of the acting, but because the theme of the movie is to challenge the way the world does things. Near the end of the movie, Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) goes to Boston to entertain a job offer from the Red Sox owner, John Henry. This is how Henry pitched the offer to Beane:

"I know you are taking it in the teeth, but the first guy through the wall... he always gets bloody... always. This is threatening not just a way of doing business... but in their minds, it's threatening the game. Really what it's threatening is their livelihood, their jobs. It's threatening the way they do things... and every time that happens, whether it's the government, a way of doing business, whatever, the people who are holding the reins - they have their hands on the switch - they go batshit crazy."

What a quote! I have watched that clip so many times that I can nearly recite it verbatim. When I ruffled feathers for introducing casino legislation, I knew it was coming. When I introduced what was called the strongest ethics reform legislation in a generation, I knew I was going to take it on the chin, but I always drew inspiration from Robert Kennedy's famous speech in Cape Town, South Africa. Maybe my favorite part of the speech is this excerpt:

"'There is,' said an Italian philosopher, 'nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.' Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation, and the road is strewn with many dangers.
        First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's greatest movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. 'Give me a place to stand,' said Archimedes, 'and I will move the world.' These men moved the world, and so can we all."

With all of this said though, I realized how hard it is to change even one's hometown. I often remark, "I got elected thinking I could change the world, but then found out I couldn't even change my own county."  It is frustrating, but change doesn't come easily. So whatever it is, your business, your view on your community, something that you think needs to be challenged, I encourage you to saddle up and take it on. It's exhausting, but it's fun... and if you don't, you'll always regret it.

Post #15: Clowns, Circuses and the General Assembly

"Look around you. We are the winners! We are the best our communities have to offer!"
-The late John Graham Altman (R-Charleston)

Yesterday, I ventured over to "Importantville" (aka The Statehouse) to catch up with a former colleague. Not because I wanted to be there, but because something about holding the title of "Representative" blocks one from returning phone calls, and I had to talk (not the people's) business.

I only work a block and half away from the place, so I walked over just before noon. As a former member, I still retain floor privileges in both the House and Senate. Since the House had not yet convened, I ventured over to the Senate to see some old friends: McGill, Peeler, O'Dell, Coleman, Cromer, Sheheen and Larry Martin. These guys "get it." They know what their job is, and they do it. The Senate really is the firewall that protects South Carolina from what happens in the House.

Speaking of the House, at about 12:15, I ventured over to the House floor. Of course, being a quarter past noon, the House had not yet convened... they run about 15-30 minutes behind on a fairly regular basis (unless food, drink or fundraisers are involved). Anyway, as I stood at the back of the Chamber talking to the Sergeant and my good friend, Rep. Derham Cole, I couldn't help but think of the quote at the top of this page that Rep. Altman would use sarcastically. These are the best that communities could offer up. These people, the General Assembly, is a collective representation of the Palmetto State. Sure, it may be true, but I refuse to believe that.

House Chamber

As the members filed in one by one, it was as though I was watching the opening act in the Ringling Bros. "Big Tent." You had the one-eyed man, the bearded lady, the fire-eater... the list goes on.

Now, before you say it, allow me: Yes, I know I was once a member of that clown car, but I learned quickly that I did not need to be there, so I left. As I told one reporter upon leaving the Legislature:

 "They're losing their juggler, but the show will go on!"

Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.
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Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.
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Post #14: Pung Waden, M.D.

Pung Waden at home

He didn't have a medical degree, but Pung Waden was certainly a doctor. He could heal diseases with homemade remedies. He could cure the cough with a swig of pot liquor. And he could heal a broken soul just by listening to the old man's wise advice through his deep drawl.

Pung was a herb doctor, so they say, a big difference between that profession and one of a root doctor. He didn't practice voo-doo, he just knew that every plant in the ground had a reason for being there, and he oftentimes knew that reason-- like making soot from burning broom straw, then rubbing it on a case of shingles to keep it from burning.

Maybe Pung's favorite ingredient was corn. He fed the hogs he ate with corn; he ate corn just like all of us do, but most importantly, Pung made his most famous potion out of corn: moonshine. On one occasion, deputies from SLED busted Pung's still. Fortunately for Pung, one of Chief J.P. Strom's favorite fishing holes was right below Pung's house and the Chief had known Pung for quite some time. I won't go into details, but that moonshine still was operational again about a week after it was busted up.

Some who knew Pung may tell you that moonshine was his secret ingredient to all of his other cures. That a little bit of moonshine goes a long way. I won't argue with that... a little alcohol has cured several ailments of mine on occasion. But I can recall the visitors Pung would have from places as far away as Michigan and New Jersey, and I would wonder if they were there for the 'shine or the herbal remedies. There had to be something more.

Pung Waden was born on the same piece of property he would later die on, a piece of land that members of my family still own today. My grandfather was an only child, and just growing up a poke from Pung, he would often say that Pung was the closest thing he ever had to a brother. He was like a family member to all of us, and was larger than life to all of my grandfather's friends. (I can still remember his old hound "Fish Head"-- given that name because he ate the fish heads and guts of caught and cleaned bream!)

Shortly before Pung passed away, The State newspaper in Columbia did several stories on him. With the help of former political reporter John O'Connor, I dug up those articles a few years ago, here they are:
 

FOLK REMEDY PUT FLU BUG ON THE RUN Bill McDonald, State Columnist The last time I talked to William "Pung" Waden was six months ago, when I visited his rural home in Blythewood to talk about his folk medicine and cures. "Pung" is 83. Among the things he learned long ago was the exercise of charm. He's a great teller of stories and can sit for hours spinning tales of his successes. A few weeks ago I called to tell him I was sick. Maybe even needed a folk remedy. "So you want to cure the flu?" he said over the telephone, his voice as slow and deep as a bend in the Mississippi River. "Now, if you really sick, you need to go to the doctor. But I can go to the woods and make some herb medicine. I cured a heap of folks that way."

Pung doesn't charge for his folk remedies. So I won't charge for passing along his RX for flu. You simply gather some horehound and devil shoestring and mix it with the sap from some sweet gum, maple and pine trees. "Boil it all down," Pung says, then add a pinch of soda and a couple of teaspoons of turpentine. After a few swallows you'll be able to run the Boston Marathon (and probably even win). Want to try it?

Go ahead, try it next time you get the flu! I bet you don't know where to begin looking for devil shoestring or horehound though.

Then there was this profile by Mr. McDonald.

HERB DOCTOR BILL McDONALD, Staff Writer Down a dirt road a poke from the stoplight in Blythewood, a dilapidated old clapboard house sits in a forest clearing dotted with chinaberry trees. The occupants of the house and land are William "Pung" Waden, two tick hounds, a roisterous old rooster and a half dozen Duroc hogs that break out from their wooden pens once or twice a year and run loose over the rural landscape. Off and on for 40 years now, Waden, 84, has treated a variety of stomach pains, migraine headaches, rheumatism and arthritis with herbs.

"Pung, I got me a bad hurtin'," one visitor moaned one cool spring morning. Another praised a liniment and asked if Waden could give her a jar for an arthritic aunt in Orangeburg. The clapboard shack is Waden's house, his office, and, on occasion, the community's alternative drugstore. Some call Waden a medicine man. Waden calls himself an "herb doctor." Whatever he is called, Waden says he's not a "root doctor" or practitioner of African voodoo: "I don't hurt nobody," he said. "You can't pay me to put a spell on people." Some days the stream of visitors arriving at Waden's shack in their late- model Cadillacs or two-tone Thunderbirds or asthmatic trucks, bearing license tags from as far away as Florida and Maryland, are not welcomed with open arms. Such was the case one recent morning. Slumped down in a chair on his front porch, Waden gazed glumly out on the grassless yard while a rooster scurried past a chinaberry tree, flapping its wings: "I wish I felt as spry as that rooster," he said, bundled up in a pile of shirts and sweaters and wearing a tweed hat over his graying head -- an appearance which gave him the look of a gnome. In a slow, rumbling voice, which gave no sign of the pain behind his words, Waden described his present state of "de-crep-i-ta-tion." He recently broke an ankle climbing over the fence of his hog pen while trying to mend a hole his hogs had used as an escape route. "A piece of board kicked back on me and broke the bone loose from here," he said, reaching down and placing a thumb and index finger on the shinbone leading to his ankle. "I couldn't hardly walk." The bone is knitting slowly, he said, but the pain has now jumped into his right shoulder, and it's excruciating. He can't sleep at night. "Can't lift nothing, either. Can't even go to the woods and get my herbs." Thus it is that life's vexations, the ones afflicting most ordinary mortals, also can harry someone as exalted as an "herb doctor." But Waden would never consider going to a doctor. He broke into laughter at the very thought: "Why I need to do that? I ain't never been under a doctor in my life. I know what's wrong with me. I'm trying to kill myself. If I had went, the doctor woulda ripped me open. I'm doing my own remedy and curing myself." The ankle is soaked each day in a mix of turpentine, apple cider and epsom salts. Waden also massages it, feeling and pushing the bone gently with hands that look as practised as a surgeon's. By some miracle of healing, the bone is mending. Unlike some fad herb healers, Waden does not promise cures or push some miracle plant. (And he only doctors on broken bones when he's the patient, he said.) While he believes he can relieve minor aches and pains, he doesn't do any diagnosing or consider himself a substitute for a doctor. "Some folks I advise to go to the doctor right off," he said. "But a heapa times the doctor can't find it. So they come back to me." One lady came to see him because she hadn't been able to retain food for days. Everything she ate, she regurgitated. He suspected the source of the trouble right off:"A twisted gut." "I've seen it in cows, too," said Waden, who also treats livestock. "I told the lady to go to a special doctor, not an ordinary doctor." Waden's confidence in his remedies comes from experience and religious faith. "God'll cure every pain in your body. All you gotta do is trust him. He'll let you get up and travel again." He started learning about herbs when he was a young boy. His mother and his grandmother, a former slave, showed him how to gather the "lady five finger" and "ginger root" and boil them to make a broth. "It'll cure the blind staggers and high blood in a minute," he said. "It'll rush that blood down. It'll thin it out." For treating rheumatism, he gathers "the pokeweed root, the angle berry root, the slip elder root, and boil them down" to make a liniment. For treating an upset stomach, the "slip elder root works everytime," he said. In decades of healing, Waden, a first-grade dropout, has never charged anyone. If he helps someone, and the person feels grateful, "then they can make a small donation. I don't want the name of robbing a man and woman, taking their money and telling lies. A lot of people want me to put a price on it, but I can't do it." Armed as he is with his encyclopedic knowledge of herbs, Waden said he has little fear of disease or being carried away in a plague. The only thing he's ever feared is falling "over his head" into a pond of water. "That water don't know nobody," he said, "and you can't drink all of it."

Bill McDonald wrote this last one just after Pung passed away. The article includes an anecdote from my grandfather, who always claimed Pung cured him of Shingles. Missing from that story is the part where Pung and my grandfather had to chase down the rooster... climbing on top of Pung's tin roof to finally catch the chicken:

FOLK HEALER WAS SPECIAL BILL MCDONALD, Staff Writer Whatever the weather or time of day, visitors would respectfully wait outside his three-room, sharecropper house near Ridgeway. ``Mr. Pung,'' they would say to the 92-year-old folk healer who died last week in a nursing home, ``I got me a bad hurtin'.''

Pung Waden would serve the petitioners from a storehouse of herbs and roots mixed in pungent concoctions, his deep voice always rumbling with conviction. The clapboard house was his home, his office and the community's alternative drugstore. And one seldom visited when there weren't cars from as far away as Connecticut, New Jersey or Alabama. Herb doctor.Waden called himself ``a herb doctor.'' He also took pains to ensure that no one confused him with ``a root doctor'' or practitioner of ``voodoo.'' ``I never hurt anybody,'' he would say in a marvelously rich voice that sounded as if God were speaking from a clearing in the forest. ``You couldn't pay me to put a spell on people.'' Whatever he was called, Waden's advice was easily sought. Neighbors also would praise his liniments and wonder if Waden could send jars of it to an arthritic relative. ``What Pung tells you is true fact,'' a satisfied customer once told me. Cured of shingles. Waden's landlord and longtime friend, Walter B. Brown of Winnsboro, recalls the day Waden cured him of shingles with a nonherbal remedy. ``Pung cut the toe off a black chicken and rubbed the blood on my stomach. I haven't had shingles since,'' the retired vice president and lobbyist with Norfolk Southern Railroad says. A research team from the Medical University of South Carolina also visited Waden once. ``Pung knew every herb and root in the world, and he loved people to visit and talk with him about it,'' Brown recalls. Ginger root.Waden learned about herbs from his grandmother, a former slave. She taught Waden how to make a broth from the ``lady five finger'' and ``ginger root,'' for example, that cured ``the blind staggers and high blood.'' But the first-grade dropout never charged anyone. If he helped someone, and they felt grateful, ``they can make a small donation. But I don't want the name of robbing anyone.'' Armed as he was with an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs, Waden also had little fear of illness or ``being carried away by a plague.'' The only thing he feared, he told me once, was ``falling over my head'' into a fishing pond. ``The pond doesn't know me, and I can't drink all of it!'' Waden was a kind, gentle man, a friend and ``herb doctor'' whose reputation stretched across the Midlands. His healing sprang from the need of people living in poverty to make do with what they found on the land. And I, for one, will sorely miss him. Bill McDonald's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The State.

We all miss Pung... He was a character, and one heckuva doctor!

Post #13: Betting on South Carolina

“Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that have never been and ask, ‘Why not?’”

Often attributed to Robert Kennedy, it was another famous Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, who spoke those words. Hardly a day goes by that I am not reminded of this quote in some fashion, and during my time in the State House I reminded myself of this question in the form of a plaque on my desk. Read it again, and then think of South Carolina.

In my farewell address to the legislature, I remarked that South Carolina has all of the tools needed to be successful but we only lack two things: leadership and vision. I can join the chorus and complain about the leadership aspect of that, or I can build upon the vision aspect in this op-ed and offer a solution; I choose to do the latter.

As someone who served with the decision-makers in Columbia, I will be the first to admit that a tax is not going to be raised in South Carolina—nor should one be raised. As South Carolinians, we continue to hear about the horrible conditions of our roads and bridges—conditions that will cost an estimated $28 Billion to fix. That money is not going to raise itself, and it seems we only have two options: raising taxes to pay for it, or allowing senators with minds from the past to borrow it from future generations like mine.

But there is one alternative, and it ties back into the quote I began this opinion piece with—the idea of asking why not?

As I mentioned, South Carolina has all of the tools to be successful. One of those tools is our tourism hotspot, Myrtle Beach. Think about it, and then tell me what location is better suited in the southeastern United States for casino gaming.

I have seen numbers that show where highly-taxed and regulated gaming in South Carolina would generate $2.5 Billion per year in state revenue, a number that could, if I had my way, be put to fixing our roads and eliminating the vehicle property tax.

But surely the Legislature and Governor are already working on fixing roads, right? If putting a borrowed $600 Million in one-time money is fixing our $28 Billion problem, then yes, they’re working on it—but do not think they are going to lower your vehicle property tax for a second. They’re simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The monies generated from this proposal would be staggering, and would forever change South Carolina for the better. Casinos would create thousands of jobs in the deprived “Corridor of Shame” area of our state, and would help boost businesses across the Palmetto State: road contractors, food/beverage industry, general contractors, homebuilders, retail merchants, building suppliers, etc., all benefiting our state’s economy. What other idea takes thousands off of the unemployment rolls by giving them jobs that pay higher than the state average?

The reduction or elimination of the vehicle property tax would put hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working South Carolinians, money that could be spent on groceries and household goods, among other things.

We oftentimes hear that there is no silver bullet answer to fixing our problems, and oftentimes that is a true assessment. But I also believe in the idea that you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.

So I’ll paraphrase Mr. Shaw in closing: “Some men see South Carolina’s problems and do nothing, I see South Carolina’s problems and offer a solution to do something about them.” Let’s take a gamble, and let’s bet on South Carolina’s future.