GOVERNOR NEEDS TO ACCEPT BLAME, DISPENSE WITH LIES AND EXCUSES OVER DATA BREACH
For the last three years, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has made the case for expanded executive power in South Carolina – all in the name of greater “accountability.”
As a candidate in 2010 – and as governor over the last two years – Haley has made “government restructuring” her top priority, insisting that if lawmakers’ empower her office with additional responsibility state government would become more efficient and accountable.
Obviously Haley’s view of what constitutes “accountable” government differs from ours … and her broader failure to win support from limited government conservatives has been a key to the undoing of her various status quo proposals.
But Haley hasn’t just failed when it comes to passing government restructuring … she is singlehandedly ruining the case for expanded executive authority by being a totally incompetent executive.
For example, look at the abysmal management of the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce (SCDEW) – which was placed in the governor’s cabinet shortly before Haley was sworn in back in January 2011. Or look at the piss poor performance of the S.C. Department of Transportation – a quasi-cabinet agency that Haley has been effectively running (into the ground) for the last two years.
Both of these agencies are unmitigated disasters … sort of like Haley’s S.C. Department of Social Services, or her S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
In fact … is there a single Haley cabinet agency which isn’t fucking up?
Of course no cabinet agency has been a bigger disaster than the S.C. Department of Revenue, which earlier this year coughed up 3.8 million Social Security numbers, nearly 400,000 credit and debit card numbers and tax info for more than 650,000 business – an unprecedented state-level cyber security breach.
So has Haley – who has spent the last three years begging for more responsibility – taken any responsibility of her own in the wake of this breach?
Of course not.
Haley has followed her typical pattern of lying and obfuscating … while refusing to take so much as a shred of responsibility for what happened.
That’s unacceptable … and embarrassing … but it’s also terrible news for those of us who believe that governors really should be given additional responsibility.
Haley’s hypocrisy on fiscal issues – and on the issue of government transparency – has basically killed any momentum for these long-overdue reforms. Now the governor’s failure to take responsibility for the SCDOR scandal is killing any momentum for real government restructuring.
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44 comments
“Accept blame, dispense with lies and excuses”? Haley? Seriously?
After the Governor claimed her Dept. of Revenue was using banking standards, I went to Bank America, Wells Fargo, And Ameriprise financial. I asked them about this and every one of them, very nicely said, “She is not telling the truth”!
A friend went to the South Carolina Credit Union, They told him the same thing. Just another case of this lying, incompetent Governor.
I went to NBCS and First Citizens. I believe the banks not Haley. She lies and lies and lies in my humble opinion.
So I guess we can assume that the old saws ” The buck stops here” is no longer relative, but “Do as I say, not as I do” is still very much operative.
The buck stops with Nikki Haley – this breach happened on her watch. This breach could have and should have been prevented. Any IT person that manages servers will tell you that this breach was NOT that sophisticated. This is why she should not have a dept. of administration – she can’t even handle this one department. Get Haley out of office – she is an embarrassment. She won’t even stay in town long enough to do her job as governor. If she hadn’t been off campaigning for other people or doing her fund raising instead of doing her job – this might not have happened. And she won’t be doing anything about the hacking over the weekend – Haley will be goind out of town again to speak at the Barry Goldwater Dinner and her fund raiser.
“This is why she should not have a dept. of administration – she can’t even handle this one department. Get Haley out of office – she is an embarrassment”
I agree with both of these statments 200%.
OMG, they even talk about her at the Indian grocery, like what an embarrassment.
She is an idiot, and she has appointed a bunch of idiots to run our state. Give her more agencies to run and more appointments to make, and pretty soon all of state government will be in the same situation DOR and the rest of her agencies are now.
Just like Abe. What a buffoon!
Abe? Huh who is tat?
She probably had one of her kids running the show.
She is a stupid ugly bitch!
Of course no cabinet agency has been a bigger disaster than the S.C. Department of Revenue,
Of course no cabinet agency has been a bigger disaster than the S.C. Department of Revenue so far.
I bet that there will be a cure for Genital Herpes before the Gypsy Queen Governor ever takes responsibility for any negative action or consequence of her reign.
I would be refreshing for her to say “I take full responsability for not insuring that this data was protected. It will not happen again and I will put measures in place to insure that it never happens again under my watch”! Then she should summons the DOR director to the Gov’s mansion and show his ass the door. Thats accountability!
“To those who much is given much is required……mmmm….well, except for you Nikki”- J.C.
“she is singlehandedly ruining the case for expanded executive authority by being a totally incompetent executive.”
Anyone who worked for a Cabinet agency during the Sanford Administration knows that she is just following in Mark’s footsteps.
And, no, we cannot afford any more unaccountable, unchecked power in the hands of the kinds of idiots that South Carolina picks for governor.
The Buck stops here. So did the Will, the Larry, the Mike, the Earl, the Thad, the Nate, the Mark and God knows who else.
It’s all about covering up the blunders. The Revenue Department has been working its IT employees extra long hours to play “catch up” on all of the security shortfalls that fell of deaf ears for so long.
You can bet that the public relations damage control team is also working around the clock. Hiring outside attorneys when they have a whole floor of them, public relations firms, high-dollar security firm; and all at the taxpayer’s expense.
I’m just waiting to see who Haley, Etter and the other seniors at DOR are setting up to take the fall for all of this. The fingers are pointing 100 different ways.
Hey Insect how about rating Nikki’s donors
Will
Larry
Mike
Earl
Than
Nate
Mark
Let’s see how they stack up……
Has there ever been a bigger screw up in SC State Government than the data breach at the SCDOR? Haley obviously made a wonderful choice for Director for her Cabinet Agency. Then Etter turned over the operations of the agency to a long-term bureaucrat, ex-TERI employee who is just as obviously marking off time until he can be a triple dipper in retirement.
Yes, hacking can happen to anyone and probably will. But in this case, not even the simplest safeguards were in place. These morons can’t even make a decision to encrypt the data. If they can’t safeguard the most personal of information of the citizens of this state, how can we trust them to enforce the tax laws?
These two need to go …… and fast!
Teflon Nikki strikes again. I’m appalled we have received no National media coverage. This breach is suppose to effect people all the way back to 1998, how many people have moved out of SC that have no idea that their information has been hacked. Unless there is national attention they will not receive the safe guarding that is being offered. Haley is out of her depth. Too busy being a high school bully and has no idea how to run a business or govern a state. She needs to go back to what she is better at, writing fiction.
Please subjects, keep Nikki Haley until I retire which will be amid much grandeur, pomp and circumstance. She makes me look honest, credible and brimming with integrity! Thank you.
I’ll drink to that!
Let’s hope that everyone whose personal financial privacy has been violated will decide to vote against the Governor in the next election.
No, you will still have idiots vote for Haley. Beats all I’ve ever seen.
WTF IS UP WITH THAT BITCH POSTING SOMG LYRICS ON FB DURING WORK HOURS?!
*SONG
This is not a game. This is not politics as usual. This is not Nikki me, me me. This is serious stuff that directly affects the lives of people in our state. This is a tremendous dereliction of responsibility. Nikki, get serious about this. Fire your director of DOR as a symbolic gesture that this is not tolerable. We know you don’t administer this agency–your appointee does. Show us you do not tolerate the lackluster management this represents. Shameful.
Man that’s a bad picture of her — thin lips, crowfeet lines, bad skin, scowl, wicked-witch nose. Please give us an ass shot next time. Helps with the bad news.
CNN and other national outlets are about to run stories about the hack. This story is about to get the national attention it needs.
I also heard that the National News is investigating the Hacking story from my friend in Atlanta.
I don’t want to see that side of Haley…..Will, don’t show any pics of Haley. Just write her name in large fonts and that will do it for me. I can’t stand looking at anything Haley, including her name, but that’s better than her face and tail. Where’s the IRS? They must be sleeping on their information. I was praying they would investigate her and this nightmare would end.
Did you see Nikki’s picture in the new Time Magazine? Very glam. And, she is listed as a possible Presidential candidate in 2016 among Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and a couple of others. She is not in their league.
Damn Rino, you beat me to it. Could not believe it. The “lamsteam media” remains totally brain dead as it relates to Trikki. Presidential candidate? Come on, does anyone do their homework?
But it is one of the best pics of her I have ever seen.
Picture was airbrushed, come on now. Surely you can tell the difference. She’s cover in zits and they cleaned the pic up. Look at the snout.
Will,
You should know better than anyone that Governot Nikki Haley is incapable of accepting blame.
In her mind, she is always 100% right and can never do anything wrong. Oh, she accepts responsibility for when things go right. But when things go wrong, she blames that Big Bad President, Obama.
I think if you want to blame anymone you have to look at the IT Dept. and the Internal Audit department. As you get closer to the top you have big picture info as opposed to the full picture. The DOR IT department should have had the firewalls in place. The Internal Audit deparment should have performed due diligence.
That skin lightner seems to be working. Seen this picture before, but who is she chewing(?) out?
During my tenure as IT Seucrity Manager, my staff and I fought for many of the additional measures that could have mitigated or greatly reduced the exposure of this incident. However, when you report your concerns to a CIO who is more concerned about trying to do everything he can to make a poorly designed application perform faster at the sacrifice of securiity then you are stuck. During my tenure as IT Security, my staff diligently monitored many aspects of systems. IT Security was a constant battle with the CIO as it was not a priority for him. It only took 14 months after my departure for the diligent securoty measures to be put on the back burner. 14 months with no IT Security Manager. I am proud of my service to DOR and the many measures that were recommended and performed to protect data. It is interesting that no one has asked me for any information regarding the measures that were in place or those that were highly recommended but turned down by a CIO who knew everything and had no trust in the recommendations provided by those who he entrusted to perform their jobs. I am proud of my service to Revenue. However, I was fighting an imcompent CIO who should have departed long before now. I find it interesting that no part of any investigation has asked for my input. I suspect this is because what I (and my former staff who have also depsarted) would have to say would not reflect positively for the agency.
This cabinet form of government ain’t cutting it. Ask David Beasley how he liked having to deal with all the crap. Early on in his administration, Hunter Limbaugh, a top level employee, was speaking at a leadership program and talked at lenght about the inability of any administration to deal with the vast issues of each cabinet agency. He lamented that it ended up creating a state of paralysis because no one would make a decision without first consulting the governors office, who then had to be educated on the issue before making a decision. And Beasley had adults on his staff. Not that they were great or anything but were a dadgum site better than the assembly of incompetents in the current administration.
Ask yourself if you believe that anyone can effectively and effieciently manage the vast expanse of current cabinet agencies and the functions they perform.
Accountability was the key for instituting the cabinet form (limited as it is) of goverment. We wanted accountability. We got it, except for a mechanism to fire the chief executive.
Can you imagine where we would be today if we had all state agencies under the control of our illustrious leader.
she is a joke, and FITS is getting to a joke too………FITS should be thinking about the next phase of its life, because carrying water for a conservative movement that is strong only in dumbass South Carolina and a few dumbass other Southern states is not a prescription for wealth.
The GOP got the shit kicked out of it last week, friends.
People don’t like Republicans.
Last fourteen months huh? Well, that certainly falls under Haley’s reign. Can’t deny that. Maybe e national folks will interview you.
Stories like this, blaming the Governor, seem to serve no purpose beyond moving blame from where it belongs to her. While as the Captain of the Ship, sure, she is ultimately responsible, but not daily involved in the security of any agency.