THE SUMTER ITEM N.G. Osteen 1843-1936 The Watchman and Southron
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2014 H.G. Osteen 1870-1955 Founder, The Item
H.D. Osteen 1904-1987 The Item
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Margaret W. Osteen 1908-1996 The Item Hubert D. Osteen Jr. Chairman & Editor-in-Chief Graham Osteen Co-President Kyle Osteen Co-President Jack Osteen Editor and Publisher Larry Miller CEO Braden Bunch Senior News Editor
20 North Magnolia Street, Sumter, South Carolina 29150 • Founded October 15, 1894
COMMENTARY
President Putin’s Ukraine gambit
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ASHINGTON — country to Iranian hegemony, just as Obama’s writing Henry Kissingoff Syria invited in Russia, er once pointed Iran and Hezbollah to reout that since Peter the Great, Russia had verse the tide of battle. Putin fully occupies vacbeen expanding at the rate uums. In Ukraine, he keeps of one Belgium per year. flaunting his leverage. He’s All undone, of course, by withdrawn the multibilthe collapse of the Soviet Union, which Russian Pres- lion-dollar aid package ident Vladimir Putin called with which he had pulled the now-deposed Ukrainian “the greatest geopolitical president away from the catastrophe of the centuEU. He has suddenly mobiry.” lized Russian forces borPutin’s mission is restodering Ukraine. His health ration. First, restore tradiofficials are even questiontional Russian despotism ing the safety of Ukrainian by dismantling its nascent food exports. democracy. And then, havThis is no dietary hying created iron-fisted “stagiene campaign. This is a bility,” march. message to Kiev: We can Use the 2008 war with shut down your agriculturGeorgia to detach two of al exports today, your natuits provinces, returning ral gas supplies tomorrow. them to the bosom of We can make you broke mother Russia (by way of and we can make Potemkin indepenyou freeze. dence). Kissinger once Then late last also said “in the year, pressure end, peace can be Ukraine to reject a achieved only by helong-negotiated deal gemony or by balfor association with ance of power.” the European Union, Ukraine will either to draw Ukraine into fall to Russian hegePutin’s planned Charles “Eurasian Union” as KRAUTHAMMER mony, or finally determine its own futhe core of a new ture — if America Russian mini-embalances Russia’s power. pire. How? Start with a declaTurns out, however, ration of full-throated Ukraine had other ideas. It American support for overthrew Moscow’s man Ukraine’s revolution. Folin Kiev, Viktor Yanulow that with a serious kovych, and turned to the loan/aid package — say, reWest. But the West — the placing Moscow’s $15 bilEU and America — had no lion — to get Ukraine idea what to do. through its immediate fiRussia does. Moscow denancial crisis. Then join nounces the overthrow as with the EU to extend a the illegal work of fascist longer substitute package, bandits, refuses to recogpreferably through the Innize the new government ternational Monetary created by parliament, Fund. withholds all economic asSecretary of State John sistance and, in a highly provocative escalation, mo- Kerry says Russian intervention would be a misbilizes its military forces take. Alas, any such declaon the Ukrainian border. ration from this adminisThe response? The EU tration carries the weight dithers and Barack Obama of a feather. But better that slumbers. After near total than nothing. Better still silence during the first would be backing these three months of Ukraine’s words with a naval flotilla struggle for freedom, in the Black Sea. Obama said on camera last Whether anything week that in his view Obama says or does would Ukraine is no “Cold War stop anyone remains queschessboard.” tionable. But surely the Unfortunately, this is exWest has more financial actly what it is for Putin. clout than Russia’s kleptoHe wants Ukraine back. cratic extraction economy Obama wants stability, that exports little but oil, The New York Times regas and vodka. ports, quoting internal The point is for the U.S., sources. He sees Ukraine leading Europe, to counter as merely a crisis to be Russian pressure and make managed rather than an up for its blandishments/ opportunity to alter the inpunishments until Ukraine creasingly autocratic trajectory of the region, allow is on firm financial footing. Yes, $15 billion is a lot of Ukrainians to join their money. But it’s less than destiny to the West and one-half of one-tenth of 1 block Russian neo-imperipercent of the combined alism. EU and U.S. GDP. And exSure, Obama is sympapending treasure is infithetic to democracy. But it nitely preferable to expendmust come organically, ing blood. Especially given from internal developthe strategic stakes: Withments, you see. Must not out Ukraine, there’s no be imposed by outside inRussian empire. tervention, but develop on Putin knows that. Which its own. is why he keeps ratcheting But Ukraine is never on up the pressure. The quesits own. Not with a bear tion is, can this adminisnext door. tration muster the counterAmerican neutrality pressure to give Ukraine a doesn’t allow an authentic Ukrainian polity to emerge. chance to breathe? It leaves Ukraine naked to Charles Krauthammer’s Russian pressure. email address is letters@ What Obama doesn’t charleskrauthammer.com. seem to understand is that American inaction creates © 2014, The Washington a vacuum. His evacuation Post Writers Group from Iraq consigned that
NOTABLE & QUOTABLE In “Open autopsy records to public,” The Charleston Post and Courier weighs in on The Sumter Item’s FOI battle now in front of the S.C. Supreme Court. Read it online at www.postandcourier.com:
MORE OPEN GOVERNMENT INCLUDES AUTOPSY REPORTS As much as we’d all like to think public officials will always be honest, it simply isn’t the case. That fuels today’s widespread distrust of government. And unfortunately, efforts to make government in South Carolina more open go in fits and starts. Take, for example, autopsy reports. The coroner in Sumter County refused to release to The Sumter Item an autopsy report of a man shot by police as they searched for a carjacking suspect. The official reason? The coroner calls himself a health care provider and contends the records are thereby private. No kidding. But as South Carolina Press Association attorney Jay Bender said, coroners only treat dead people. So The Sumter Item obtained the coroner’s report from another source, and, sure enough, it didn’t comport with what investigators had said. The state Supreme Court is considering The Item vs. Sumter County coroner case. A lower court ruled that autopsies were not covered under the Freedom of Information Act and therefore did not have to be made public. If that ruling stands, the public might never find out what really happened to someone shot by police. It would bind the hands of watchdogs searching for the truth. Autopsy reports have been a tricky subject nationally. The Associated Press reported that 15 states allow their release. About six others allow the release of those not being used in a criminal investigation. The rest severely restrict or withhold information from autopsy reports. Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association, said public officials are becoming bolder about breaking the state’s open records laws. They try to deter people by charging them large sums to provide information, or even decline the request out of hand. A bill filed in the Legislature would limit what can be charged for records and prohibit agencies for charging when records are available digitally. That shouldn’t raise red flags with anyone, but a similar bill struggled last year. It’s all the more reason for advocates to speak up for more open, transparent government that allows the public to see what elected officials are doing and how they are spending tax dollars. Autopsy reports contain detailed information that can support or undermine what the public is being told. They are not medical records. They are public records. And the public in South Carolina has a right to know what officials know about those reports.
OUR AVIAN FRIENDS SAY SPRING HAS ARRIVED IN S.C. Breaking news from the “Bird Notes” column in The Myrtle Beach Sun News:” The calendar may say spring starts March 20, but the appearance of fish crows in Conway, along with a couple of sizable flocks of common grackles visiting for a few days, shows that spring is here, and the annual northward migration of birds has begun. Very soon the first purple martins will start to appear in the Myrtle Beach area. Some will be merely passing through on their way to more northern breeding areas; others will be the earliest of their respective groups to return to previous years’ breeding sites. Eastern bluebirds are well into their house hunting for the coming breeding season. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to clean out your bird boxes and make any necessary repairs. Note that it is entirely unnecessary to paint a bird house (or bird feeders, for that matter). Untreated, unpainted wood is preferable for any surfaces birds may come in contact with. If you feel you must paint any such structures, be certain to use a paint clearly labeled as non-toxic.
NO ALTERNATIVE TO STRONG GROWTH Dan Henninger writes, “Ukrainians want what we’ve got: The benefits of real economic growth.” Read it online at www.wsj.com: All future histories of the Obama presidency will analyze the phrase “leading from behind” — the idea that the U.S. superpower should behave as no more than a co-equal partner in managing the affairs of the world. Chapters will be devoted to laying this revisionist template over Libya, Syria and Iran. There is one area, though, in which the returns are already in on this new notion of American leadership: For five years, the U.S. has been leading the world economy from behind. It’s not pretty. Hang around the Washington political and pundit class these days, and you get the impression this doesn’t matter much. We’ll muddle through low growth till the sun comes out again. Raise the minimum wage, create more tax credits or spend $300 billion pouring federal concrete, and the clouds will part. You think so? Let’s try to describe as provocatively as possible the future that a slower U.S. economy will produce, and we don’t mean the coming Medicare-cost bomb. If the American economic engine slows permanently to about 2%, you’re going to see more fires around the world like Ukraine and Venezuela. At the margin, the world’s weakest, most misgoverned countries will pop, and violently. No one in our politics should be so naïve as to think that in a dangerously low-growth world, the U.S. won’t have to get “involved.” Weakening economies breed anger and political volatility, as in the 1930s, and if the flames get high enough, there will be U.S. boots on the ground somewhere. The Item’s “Notable & Quotable” column is compiled by Graham Osteen. Send comments or ideas to graham@theitem.com.
HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? Send your letter to letters@theitem.com, drop it of at The Item oice, 20 N. Magnolia St., or mail it to The Item, P.O. Box 1677, Sumter, SC 29151, along with the writer’s full name, address and telephone number (for veriication purposes only). Letters that exceed 350 words will be cut accordingly in the print edition, but available in their entirety at www.theitem.com/opinion/letters_to_editor.