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"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/24/AR2006122400795_2.html";

We have lost the art of disocvery beyond ourselves. Google Rick Warren's Meet The Press interview for concerns about civility, too.


Tax swaps are a bad idseaGov. Mark Sanford has once again proposed a tax swap: raising the cigarette tax to lower business and personal income taxes. That's not an appropriate way to use a cigarette tax hike.

Revenues from a cigarette tax increase should go toward bolstering Medicaid health care for the poor. The state spends an estimated $1 billion a year on cigarette-related health-care needs. At least $362 million of that cost is borne by taxpayers. It's only fair to ask smokers to pay a higher cigarette tax and shoulder more of the cost of cigarette-related illness.

At 7 cents a pack -- the lowest in the nation -- South Carolina's cigarette tax is disgracefully paltry given the number of health-care needs in the state. It's true that a cigarette tax is a regressive one, falling most heavily on poorer South Carolinians. But poorer South Carolinians also benefit most from Medicaid.

It doesn't make much sense, however, to use a cigarette tax to subsidize income tax cuts. That would place a higher burden on low-income South Carolinians for the higher wage-earners who benefit the most from income tax cuts.
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Granted, a higher cigarette tax would have positive benefits -- whether it's enacted by itself or as part of a tax swap. A higher cigarette tax discourages smoking, especially among young people.

But a tax swap is not the right course. A higher cigarette tax by itself could bring in millions of dollars in new revenues for unmet health-care needs in the state. A 30-cent increase, for instance, could generate $107 million. Moreover, state money spent on Medicaid often draws down $3 in matching funds from the federal government.

That's money that could be used to help the uninsured -- 700,000 South Carolinas -- obtain health insurance. It could be used to help businesses afford health insurance for their employees. It could be used to fund programs to help smokers quit and keep children from starting. It could support mental-health services. The state might be able to provide health coverage for more children as well: South Carolina is one of only a few states in the nation that doesn't provide health care for children in families of up to 200 percent of the poverty level.

Income tax cuts are not objectionable, but they should be funded through surplus funds if available. The cigarette tax should be reserved for health care.

Sanford has said he supports a cigarette tax hike only with a corresponding cut in another tax. He should reconsider: The governor would be showing real leadership in helping to improve the health and well-being of South Carolinians.

Run, don't walk, to the home of the new Cocklebur!

Visit www.thecocklebur.net

See you there!

But read this first:

Here's the guts of the welcome message for the new site, just in case you get too excited to read it: No. 1 If you had an account at the old Cocklebur, the easiest way to log in is to use your email address and your password. Your pen name has been retained, but it may have been slightly modified: In cases where your username had spaces, they have been replaced by dashes. If you had caps in your username, they have been lowercases and if there were weird characters, well, something's happen to it.

No. 2 Please take the time to fill out your profiles and add your avatars. It's one of the more fun things you can do to brighten up this clean, minimalist interface that tries not to draw to much attention to itself. Many of us know each other here, so add a name to a face whydontcha?

No. 3 Please do your best to add your topics to the right categories so that we maintain an orderly environment. You'll find this particularly helpful if you subscribe to a topic-based RSS feed. Also do your best to add tags to your posts so that we might be more likely to find it when we're interested in doing some research about a person or place that may have been discussed here!

No. 4 Please make sure that you aren't afraid to take advantage of the community moderation feature, thumbs up, thumbs down, that allows you disappear a post that crosses the line, even for an adult environment like TheCocklebur. Also use the notifications feature so you can more easily stay on top of what's said.

No, 5 If you know someone who really needs to be here, just go ahead and invite your friends using the widget at the top left of your screen!

Finally, thanks to the wonderful people at Lefora, especially Vinnie, aka the chief, and Andrew, who did the spade work writing the scripts to import our old forum to this new platform. They're a San Francisco start-up with smart, visionary people who hope to revolutionize the way the Internet's oldest community spaces work. They love feedback, so drop em a line here: chief@lefora.com

We're almost there, and we've saved the best to last.

As I've mentioned before, the desire to go to the new platform was mostly about developing moderation tools that were community based. After two years managing this forum, and an 18 months dealing with comments at Independentmail.com, I consider myself an expert on the issues related to handling nuisance posters. My bottom line: There's not much you can do with a determined troublemaker.

So the new platform gives everyone a communal power to essentially hide posts that receive a certain number of thumbsdown from individual users. The platform eventually will enable people to tag certain users as friend or foe so you'll only ever see those people you want to.

Also, the new platform gives users a much easier way to serve as "moderators" if we designate them as such. They will be able to move posts into the proper categories, add tags and do basic neighborhood cleanup etc.

The last of the community features is the ability to message someone. You'll actually have a proper message box, a bit like an exclusive email account for use with your Cocklebur membership. Consider it a gift from us!!!

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

We hope you are as excited as we are. Given what happened in Anderson County Tuesday, there'll be a lot to discuss for the next several years, at least

One of the biggest features that we want to boast about is the improved interface for adding your comments. The new platform boasts a smart editor that allows you advanced formatting for text. It also includes the ability to embed videos, photos, links and pretty much every common media type right into your posts. Even better, those media types are visible on the headlines page, giving extra attention to those who went the extra mile in supporting their points with information from the web.

We think you'll agree it's pretty neat, and sure beats having to know HMTL ...!

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

Less time finding information on the Cocklebur is more time to spend discussing it. That's why I think you'll be excited about the tagging feature in our new platform that allows you to find content based on a few well-chosen keywords.

This is in addition to the new platform's vastly improved search and indexing capability that allows you to find much more archival information at a glance than is now possible.

A "tag cloud" always will be displayed on the right hand rail of the site allowing users to see at a glance what are the most important topics to the community as a whole -- and letting them link directly to those posts.

For the first time, RSS feeds from the forum also will be available with our syndication widget, allowing you to easily subscribe to topics and posts so you can stay on top of activity in your favorite browser, Yahoo or Google account or feed reader!

We think these are more examples of features you'll love.

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

Spam is a constant nuisance to every web site, so we're pleased to say that our new forum platform will be using constantly updating spam filtering software.

That means the only filth that will appear online is that which the Cocklebur community is responsible for. (Natch ;))

We think it's one more feature that will make for a much more pleasant experience.

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

The Cocklebur community is what it is because of the people who live here.

There are plenty of places online to offer your opinions, but no other place has the likes of J.D. Tippett and Art Kaldas. With such an all-star team of wits and sages to boast of, we're particularly excited about our new platform's emphasis on its members, including allowing photos of members to accompany profiles and the ability to track the comments from your favorite members as though you were reading a "blog."

We think it's one more feature that will delight you

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

Everyone who registered at The Cocklebur should have received an email like this today. It is a legitmate email that is part of the process of checking the importatation of user information.

With so much posting going on here, keeping track of who says what is job in itself. We hope this helps respect your time.

Read the full post for answers to the biggest questions!

The time has finally come!

Ever since the launch of The Cocklebur in March 2006, we've been searching for a way to move this site to a more robust platform. Our aim was to make this site more secure, more pleasant to use and to include better tools to help it function as a true community of more than 500 bona fide registered users and countless lurkers.

Every day, I'll share one of the features of the new site that I'll think you'll enjoy. Read the full post below for answers to the biggest questions you may have....