US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins is returning to South Carolina, to join law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.
Wilkins will be based in the firm’s Greenville office and will chair Nelson Mullin’s Public Policy and International Law practice group. The group will focus on representing businesses on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, offering unique experience to Canadian and U.S. companies, according to a firm press release.
Wilkins, the former speaker of the SC House of Representatives, was appointed ambassador in 2005.
During his tenure, Wilkins helped resolve some of the most high-profile issues between Canada and the United States, including the decades-old softwood lumber dispute. Wilkins took special care to emphasize the two nations’ roles as NATO partners in fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan and their long-standing and significant alliance in NORAD, according to Nelson Mullins.
Columbia-based Nelson Mullins is SC’s largest law firm, with 11 offices and more than 400 attorneys.
The New Deal: Bad then and bad now
02/02/2009
The Wall Street Journal has a well-done opinion piece this morning on how FDR’s policies didn’t shorten the Great Depression, as we’ve been led to believe for so long, but actually worsened it.
Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian also assert that enacting similar policies won’t pull our nation out of its current economic downturn, either.
“So what stopped a blockbuster recovery from ever starting? The New Deal. Some New Deal policies certainly benefited the economy by establishing a basic social safety net through Social Security and unemployment benefits, and by stabilizing the financial system through deposit insurance and the Securities Exchange Commission. But others violated the most basic economic principles by suppressing competition, and setting prices and wages in many sectors well above their normal levels. All told, these antimarket policies choked off powerful recovery forces that would have plausibly returned the economy back to trend by the mid-1930s.”
The bottom line: wholesale government intervention brings with it unintended consequences, usually of the most unwanted variety. President Obama and Congress should keep that in mind when they set out to “fix things.”
“A large fiscal stimulus plan that doesn’t directly address the specific impediments that our economy faces is unlikely to achieve either the country’s short-term or long-term goals,” Cole and Ohanian write.
Coke to be ‘Classic’ no more
02/02/2009
Former State newspaper business reporter Joe Guy Collier, now with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is reporting that Coke plans to drop the “Classic” tag from its top-selling soda.
The move finally puts to rest the ill-conceived New Coke saga that began in 1985 and proved disastrous for the world’s largest beverage company.
Coke added Classic to the label that year in the United States as it brought back the original formula. The return to the original formula was triggered by consumer backlash over the introduction of New Coke.
The change coincides with a global campaign launched earlier this month called “Open Happiness.” Classic was only used in the United States, the paper reported.
