TheState.com: Mike Fitts

The necessary ingredient for success: hope

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:25 EDT

“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words — ‘Wait and hope.’”

— Alexandre Dumas,

The Count of Monte Cristo

If you want to excel in sports, the coaches will tell you to picture success in advance.

Basketball players look up at the hoop before a free throw and try to put past misses out of their heads. Golfers are told to look past that pond in front of the green and visualize hitting a smooth shot that settles near the cup. Put failure out of your mind completely and focus only on success, sports psychologists say.

Climate change can be addressed, if we get innovation into gear

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:18 EDT

THE OTHER DAY in my mail at home I got another issue of this smutty magazine. (I didn’t sign up for it, I swear.)

It’s filled with glossy photos: Sensual curves. Amplified assets. Sinful from cover to cover.

I don’t know why I’m getting Corvette Quarterly for free. It’s especially ironic considering the prim, abstemious Toyota Prius hybrid in my driveway. It’s like someone got me a subscription as a joke.

I should be immune to the lure of Chevy’s legendary street ride. Of course, I am not. I can’t resist looking at the coming ZR1 supercharged Corvette, with its 620+ horsepower for carbon-burning thrills. It looks like tremendous, dangerous fun on wheels.

Too often, concerns about global warming are packaged as the End of Fun as We Know It, with everyone forced into the more mundane, efficient world of Priuses and fluorescent light.

Will Jasper port plan be Mark Sanford’s top achievement?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:15 EST

THE GOVERNOR’S chief of staff, Tom Davis, thinks the deal made with Georgia to build a port in Jasper County is an enormous, underappreciated achievement.

How big is the economic payout likely to be? “Much, much bigger than BMW in the Upstate,” Mr. Davis said.

That frame of reference helps in understanding the passion over issues involving the ports, as reflected in the op-ed piece on the opposite page.

Mr. Davis has served a stint on the state Ports Authority and, as chief of staff, has been the lead negotiator with Georgia on behalf of Mark Sanford. So this deal is personal for him, of course. But he argues that folks in Columbia, especially at this newspaper, have failed to appreciate the economic powerhouse being constructed on the governor’s watch.

To buttress that, he starts with where we were on the Jasper port just two years ago: going nowhere, except to court. The S.C. Ports Authority was suing Jasper County to block the county’s effort to develop the port, asserting that only the agency had the right to do such a thing; Jasper had filed a countersuit. Georgia was suing Jasper County too. The S.C. Ports Authority also was locked in a legal battle with Georgia over development rights, and that one, Mr. Davis says, would have had to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Starting to piece together an energy policy for South Carolina

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:14 EST

AN ENERGY PLAN for South Carolina is starting to come together — but in a very South Carolina way, in pieces and with halting steps.

Before I talk about what’s been rolled out this month, I guess I still, even in the world of $100/barrel oil, need to make the case that the Palmetto State needs such a plan. Here goes:

On energy, South Carolina is in a painful bind. We are among the poorest of states on citizen income, earning about 80 cents to the nation’s dollar. Add to that our waste of energy: We rank as the fourth least-efficient state in the nation. The combination leaves us spending a lot of our meager income to pay the energy bills and not investing enough in conservation.

Where can we expect energy costs to go in the future? Up. Energy is a global commodity; even if we drill for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and knock off the tops of more Appalachian mountains to get at the coal underneath, we’ll still be competing with our (weaker) dollars with consumers from here to Beijing to buy these resources. As the Third World continues to grow its middle class, the price of energy seems a lock to keep climbing.

That doesn’t even mention the environmental cost. Given the overwhelming likelihood that all this incinerated carbon is quickly warming the atmosphere, we have to accept that we can’t burn our way out of our energy problems.

McCain haters ignore results of his ‘independent’ streak

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:12 EST

SEN. JOHN McCAIN now stands within striking distance of the Republican nomination, but some conservatives are not going to take it lying down.

Several self-appointed guardians of conservative politics in Pundit World have become unhinged at the thought of the Arizona maverick as the presumptive nominee. Most prominent is radio talker Rush Limbaugh, who has trained all of his considerable firepower against Sen. McCain, saying that he rejoices in turning his back on his own party to work with Democrats.

On his show Monday, he told listeners that Sen. McCain would be taking revenge on the party. “This is how he’s going to get even with Republicans for defeating him in South Carolina in 2000,” Limbaugh said. “The Republican Congress will effectively be neutered.”

Interestingly, S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, a major McCain backer, says McCain “has never once complained about all of that.”

It’s not just pundits, of course, who have doubts about Sen. McCain. Voters in more conservative regions of the country, the South and Mountain West, showed their dissatisfaction with the Arizonan in Tuesday’s results.

Candidates mostly clumped together on Iraq

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:16 EST

LOOK AT WHERE we are in the debate over the thorniest policy that our next president will inherit right off the bat: Iraq.

That discussion is just where it was six months ago, even as events on the ground have shifted considerably. We’re still 12 months from inaugurating the next president, even though voters are about to winnow the field to two finalists. Will the whole discussion of the way forward sit stifled, in increasingly irrelevant positions, regardless of events in the next year?

This is a problem for both parties.

The Democrats all settled into their positions last summer, when support for the war was at its nadir. At that time, they were engaged in a contest to see who could promise to get our troops out the fastest, with Gov. Bill Richardson touting his plan to order the troops home on the first day of his administration.

Even now, a contest to see who’s the most antiwar continues. Former Sen. John Edwards told a New York Times reporter last week that he would immediately withdraw 40,000 to 50,000 troops from Iraq, and all of the troops, except for a protective force of a few thousand for the U.S. Embassy and possibly humanitarian workers, within nine or 10 months. He would not leave any troops in place to train the Iraqi army that would be called upon to keep the country together — any training would go on outside Iraq.

Oprah Winfrey really showed her power to help Obama

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:49 EST

IN A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE, Sen. John Edwards’ campaign on Friday tried to downplay the importance of Oprah Winfrey’s visit to South Carolina, calling it a “publicity stunt.” But what else is a political campaign, if you’re not seeking public attention and a chance to persuade?

Ms. Winfrey gave Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign both on Sunday, and showed why her first-time foray into politics changes the landscape of this presidential race, especially in South Carolina.

First off, look at Sunday’s crowd: about 29,000, according to the organizers’ count. Sen. Obama is a big draw, but that crowd in Williams-Brice Stadium speaks to the added jolt she brings.

Most of the people I spoke to as they were filing in said that Sen. Obama was the reason they came, with Oprah as a bonus. “It’s like a team,” said Mary Stroman of Irmo. Lori Harkness made it clear that she made the trip to hear from the candidate more than the talk show host. “I see her every day at four.”

But Oprah Winfrey is different from most celebrity endorsers, and she showed it on Sunday. She not only draws a large crowd, but comes in with a credibility with the public no one else can beat — aided by the fact that she’s never done this before. She triggered tremendous energy when she took the stage. She’s a natural before an audience, and especially good before this Southern audience — which I’d guess was three-fourths African-American.

Biden’s plan for Iraq gaining steam, just in time

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:15 EDT

SEN. JOE BIDEN hopes his presidential campaign can get a boost from the “big feet” — and his big idea.

The “big feet” are the pundits and opinion makers, in the classic sense. His big idea is about the first question facing the country as it starts really considering the selection of a new president: Iraq.

Sen. Biden proposes to keep Iraq together, but let three regions have most of the political power: One area for Sunnis, one for Shiites and one for Kurds. He makes a point of saying that this is not the outside world divvying up Iraq, but a power-sharing agreement that is already possible in the Iraqi constitution — the Kurds live under such autonomy now.

It’s not a new idea, but it’s been gaining ground recently. Last week, a nonbinding resolution endorsing the plan garnered 75 votes in the U.S. Senate — a place where Iraq is so divisive it would be hard to get 75 senators to agree on how to spell Iraq.

In an interview Monday, Sen. Biden was positively crowing about the result. “That vote shocked the administration, I guarantee you.” The senator says he recently discussed such a division of power in Iraq with the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Russia, China, France and Great Britain. The response was: What’s taken so long to try this? He stresses that other nations would have to promote such a plan to Iraqis. “We need a label other than made in America, because we have no credibility.”

Primary politics and the maddening race to be first

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:43 EDT

MY WIFE AND I found what amounts to an easy lever to get our 4-year-old in gear. It’s the challenge to be “first.”

Once kids start doing things for themselves, they can quickly gravitate to wanting to win the race. This can be an annoyance, but we found it a great motivator.

In the mornings, our question was: Who’s going to get dressed first, us or our son? To get into the house, to brush teeth, even, yes, to use the bathroom — it’s always been, who’s going to be first?

A silly motivational ploy? Sure, but parents will tell you that anything that gets young children through the tasks of the day without huge confrontations is a godsend.

Woe betide the parent, however, who finishes first ahead of their progeny. If he’s not first — even if that’s because he refused to take part — there’s going to be a burst of fussing and pouting like a summer thunderstorm. The point of the race is winning.

Can South Carolina revolutionize its market for energy?

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:13 EDT

PERHAPS SOUTH Carolinians are starting to become more interested in making their homes energy efficient.

Earlier this month, I wrote a column about how our state uses the nation’s third-highest amount of electricity per capita, and much of that goes to cool all outdoors: We waste far too much power.

Despite that, there seemed to be no broad movement by consumers to invest in efficiency. But some recent items show some increasing interest in South Carolina:

• The Home Builders Association of Greater Columbia launched a campaign to educate its members about green building techniques, which include efficiency and using renewable materials. Builders will be able to get a home designated “green” if it meets certain requirements. “The public is driving the program,” said Mark Bostic, chairman of the green building council. “Builders can see that there’s a market need for this kind of house.”

• The State wrote about a local builder who is expanding his business to build better-insulated homes. He is building houses with polystyrene foam in the walls, making the house both more durable and much more energy efficient.