Carolina Politics Online

Like I said last year and the year before they are never going to let this go.  From yesterday’s Post and Courier article, let’s start with the logical fallacies of one Dr. Charles Darby.

“The higher the taxes, the more lives that we can save. It’s time for South Carolina to do what is right for our state,” said Dr. Charles P. Darby Jr., Medical University of South Carolina professor emeritus of pediatrics and executive director of the Children’s Hospital Center for Child Advocacy.

“Those of us who do not smoke pay higher health insurance premiums and taxes to subsidize the habit of smoking,” he said. “It is time the smoker pays for some of the cost.”

The Post and Courier

So according to the good doctor the only way to possibly solve this problem is to hand over more money to the government.  There would seem to me to be a much more logical solution.  Why don’t the insurance companies simply raise their premiums on people who smoke?  What, is that just too easy?  Or is the problem if we go that route our elected officials can’t get their grubby little paws on the money and then redirect it to all of their own little pet projects so they can buy votes at election time?

“Every delay just allows more children to get hooked on cigarettes,” Darby said.

According to what data, Doc?  You think a thirty cent price increase on a pack of cigarettes is going to stop kids from smoking?  It’s a negligible amount.  I am a former smoker myself.  I started smoking in high school back in the early 1990s when Marlboros were a buck a pack.  When I eventually quite smoking in my 20s the price of Marlboros was approaching $5 a pack.  It wasn’t the price that got me to quit.  I just decided to start being more cautious of my health.

Now I am going to shock you.  Unlike in years past, I am not as vehemently opposed to this tax hike this time.  Here is why.

Rep. Chip Limehouse, a Charleston Republican and a ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, made the proposal to get the 30-cent increase in the budget. He said a cigarette tax increase is about the only tax increase he could support and that it’s more important than ever to pass it now. New cash for Medicaid will free up money for schools, law enforcement and other priorities.

If they give so much as a dime of this increase to the schools I am going to be thoroughly pissed.  They don’t need any more money, but other state departments do.  As one example, our jails in particular have been the recipients of excessively painful budget cuts and that effects the safety of every resident in South Carolina.  The state budget has been stripped by more than $2 billion over what it was two years ago, so the efforts have definitely been made to try and reel in spending.

There is also this.

The governor said again in his State of the State address in January that he wants a cigarette tax increase to be used to cut corporate income taxes to make the state more competitive.

“We’re very much of the same mind as we’ve been in years past — that being that we’d definitely be open to an increase in the cigarette tax if it was accompanied by a corresponding tax cut in some other area. In fact, we’ve proposed just such an action in years past,” Ben Fox, communications director for Sanford, said in an e-mail Monday.

The House on Thursday gave key approval to a plan that eliminates the corporate income tax, as a way to make the state more attractive to business, making a cigarette tax increase this year even more likely.

That is a plan I can support.  If the state were to inversely eliminate the corporate income tax in exchange for an increase in the cigarette tax then that is something I can probably roll with.  Unemployment in South Carolina just hit 12.6% and we need a more competitive business environment.  Eliminating the corporate income tax would definitely put us on that path.

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

ESPN

Of course it was a charade. Obama doesn’t give a damn about what the public thinks about anything. He’s demonstrated that pretty consistently throughout the past year.

So what is the point of this? The states have been managing the use of their waterways with little to no problem for over 200 years. Well, it turns out that this whole unconstitutional power grab is being orchestrated by the radical left environmental movement.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

The commercial and recreational fishing industries have already been taking a big hit in both North and South Carolina and the last thing we need is further encroachment by the Federal government.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already exhibited plenty of incompetence in the way it enforces U.S. fisheries laws such to the effect that Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC-03) has called for a halt to all prosecutions of fishermen by the NOAA and a complete overhaul of how the laws are enforced.

Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

In the wake of the task force’s framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the administration.

“Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic,” said CSF President Jeff Crane.

Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, “There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

“Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable.”

This is not the only access issue threatening the public’s right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

“With what’s being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans,” he said. “Under the guise of ‘marine spatial planning’ entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.

“Every angler needs to be aware because if it’s not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.

This is what happens when you put an out of touch ideologue beholden to radical special interests in the highest office in the land. The fact that Obama intends to implement this with an Executive Order completely bypassing Congress gives credence to the accusation that he is becoming an elected dictator, much like Hugo Chavez.

This won’t be used to just regulate fishing either. Rest assured that the bureaucratic entities created to manage all of this will also be used to thwart any oil or natural gas exploration off our coastal waters, thus effectively reinstating the Federal drilling ban that just expired less than two years ago.

There is already talk of a ban on bottom fishing all the way down the North and South Carolina coasts to Georgia.  Thousands of jobs in these states can potentially be effected by this at a time when they are experiencing double digit unemployment rates. That aside, there is also the element of this being yet another chipping away at the block of individual freedom and liberty that Americans have enjoyed for over two centuries and that the President and this Congress spit on daily.

If this is put into place it seems like El Presidente will get to decide when and where you go fishing. With the industry being so large I am hoping this will end up in the Supreme Court with a Constitutional challenge if Obama makes good on this move.

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior’s real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

Read more at The Washington Times

The Antiquities Act of 1906 was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt (R) initially to stop the raping of American Indian artifacts in the southwest.  It gave the President the power by executive order to declare any government owned public land as restricted.  The problem is that it’s since been used over 100 times since its conception and one person should not be allowed to have that kind of authority.  The Office of President was purposely made weak by the Founders for a reason.

I can see instances in which the Federal government may need to restrict public land use at times, but that should be done by a vote of the full Congress so that there is input from the American people.  The proposals shouldn’t be sealed away in a secret document and then carried forth through executive order by one man.  That’s simply not the way America was designed to work.

But Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent working with Graham and Kerry, said a detailed outline of a bill could come within days and that it will have to include a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions that drops in future years.

Last June, the House narrowly passed a climate change bill with cap-and-trade as its centerpiece and a carbon-reduction target of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.

But the initiative has stalled in the Senate, despite Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval of a similar bill.

But, as a result of work in the past few months, Kerry said he was feeling “more confident” that a climate change bill could be presented to the Senate for passage this year.

“We’re looking at a new way of coming at this that we think can attract greater support,” Kerry said.

Environmentalists have speculated the bill the senators will produce could take a “sectoral approach” by imposing a new carbon-pricing mechanism on utilities, which account for about 40 percent of the emissions blamed for global warming.

Sources also have said there is talk of a transportation tax. Pollution controls on manufacturers could be put off for a few years to give time for more affordable alternative energy sources to come on line, they have said.

Reuters

I would really like to wonder exactly when it was that someone beat Lindsey Graham with the stupid stick because that guy has nothing but shit for brains.  A transportation tax?  It’s not clear as to what exactly that would entail, but one thing is for certain.  The result will not be good for South Carolina.  Any tax on transportation, but whether its an increase in the gas tax, a tax on transportation companies, on the airlines, etc is going to smack everyone in this state in their back pocket.  A tax on truckers transporting goods would be absolutely criminal because it would cause prices to rise in just about every sector, socking the poor and the middle class harder than anyone.

And yet Graham can’t figure out why he keeps getting booed when he speaks around his own state, oblivious to the fact he is alienating his own constituents in the name of junk science.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Wake Forest University was given a grant for $71,623 to “study the effects of self-administering cocaine on the glutamate system on monkeys.” Ah, but that’s not all.  Wake Forest also received a grant in the amount of $147,694 to study “preliminary data on the efficacy of integral yoga for reducing menopausal hot flashes.”  Wake Forest lies in Congressman Mel Watt’s (D) district.  I wonder who appropriated those earmarks.

There is also $50,000 for the American Dance Festival, Inc. and $250k to preserve an insect collection.

Can anybody tell me how any of this is supposed to stimulate the economy?  That was the purpose of the stimulus bill after all, hence the reason it was referred to as the stimulus bill, or more appropriately, the Porkulus bill.  Perhaps this is why after spending billions of dollars it hasn’t done jack.

Many months ago when I was expressing my dismay about the Porkulus bill and referred to it as such, our dear friend Lynn told me I was sounding too much like Rush Limbaugh.  Well Lynn, you haven’t commented in a while, but in case you are still popping by, I told ya so.

All I have to say is thank God for John Pope and the Civitas Institute for taking the time to expose this kind of crap because Lord knows I certainly don’t have the resources to.  Maybe some day.

The so-called “jobs” bill passed the Senate by a vote of 70 – 28 and will result in throwing away another $15 billion in money we don’t have and in the end will do absolutely nothing to help our ailing economy.  It is estimated by some that the bill will create 250,000 jobs, a smidgen of the 8 million that have been lost, but what happens when the money runs out?  Well, so do the jobs and that’s the main problem.  These are temporary jobs that are nothing more than band-aids.  In the long run our economy will still be in the crapper.

Part of the incentive that will allegedly create these jobs is an exemption from the payroll tax for businesses that hire new workers and an extra $1,000 credit if they employ them for at least a year.  So let’s think about that.  If I hire a new employee for, say, $40,000 a year, I don’t have to pay the 6.5% payroll tax on their salary and I get a $1,000 credit from the Feds a year from now.  Perhaps my math is fuzzy, but I’m still out $39,000.  In a down economy the demand for my services isn’t picking up, so what good will it do me to bring on this extra employee?  Legislation like this is living proof that anybody off the street can run for office.

Your two North Carolina Senators, Richard Burr (R) and Kay Hagan (D), supported wasting your hard earned money and adding more to our already chronic national debt.

The organizers at Freedom Works, like most of us in South Carolina, are rightly peeved with Senator Grahamnesty over his support of Cap and Trade which would not be in the best interest of our state and which he is supposed to be representing first and foremost.  This rolls right along with what I wrote about just a few days ago.  They are organizing a protest this Saturday in Greenville.

South Carolinians are tired of Senator Lindsey Graham’s support for “cap and trade.” For some reason Sen. Graham thinks that imposing a massive tax increase on our energy supply is a good idea. He has been partnering with left-wing senators to come up with a plan that would be devastating to our economy and would increase the cost of energy for all consumers. If you are like us, you have had enough of Sen. Graham’s position on cap and trade.

Please join us as we gather together this Saturday, Feb. 27th to send a message to him that we dissapprove of his stance on this important issue. We will be gathering to write letters to Sen. Graham, and then we will hand deliver them to his district office in Greenville. After that, we will protest his support of cap and trade outside his office.

Here are the details of the events:

9:00am FreedomWorks breakfast and letter-writing at Soby’s restaurant
22 East Court St, Greenville, SC 29601
Map

10:30am Protest outside Sen. Graham’s downtown office
130 South Main St., 7th Floor, Greenville, SC 29601
Map

To rsvp for this event, please contact FreedomWorks regional director Allen Page at a.page@mindspring.com or 336-213-1167. You can also click here to rsvp online. We hope you can join us this weekend on the first anniversary of the tea party protests!

Will we ever be rid of this guy?

For those concerned about warming, it’s time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.

The Washington Post

There are people that claim they are sick and tired of the bipartisanship in D.C.  I personally see nothing necessarily wrong with partisanship in government because I tend to view reaching across the aisle as a selling out of your beliefs most of the time and what your constituents elected you for.  Graham has tried to play Mr. Uniter throughout his Senate career, but unfortunately keeps choosing the most inopportune times to do so.  First there was the big blow back on his support for McCain’s illegal immigration bill, the origin from whence came the nickname Grahamnesty.  Now he’s running around the country chapping his lips on the butt of Senator John Kerry (D-MA) over this climate change bill, much to the dismay of many South Carolinians.

Graham is correct that our heavy reliance on foreign oil is a serious issue, but we don’t need to cripple our economy through the Cap and Fraud bill to resolve that problem.  We just need to start drilling our own oil which we have plenty of.  We need to start building more nuclear power plants, which the Obama administration seems to be warming to.  Green energy investments in the private sector have been steadily growing as well.  We can do all of these things now without legislation.  None of them are illegal.

Instead of barking up the Cap and Fraud tree, Graham should simply be making a public push to pressure the administration to accept these other initiatives and move faster on them.  It’s highly unlikely that that the Waxman-Markey bill will ever become law at this point, but there has been talk of the Obama administration going around Congress and instead having the fascist EPA regulate green house gases.  This would essentially produce the same economic disastrous results on our nation by an unelected body, which in my opinion is unconstitutional.

A cap-and-trade system necessarily harms the economy because it is designed to raise the cost of energy. Given the current economic crisis, an expensive energy policy is a bad idea.

Almost all acts of economic production are powered by combusting fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), a process that emits greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming. A cap-and-trade system is simply a mechanism to put a price on emissions in order to compel businesses and consumers to emit less. That is, it’s essentially an emissions tax. But greenhouse gas emissions are virtually synonymous with energy use, so it’s actually a roundabout energy tax. In fact, economists agree that the simplest, most efficient way to reduce emissions is a direct tax. Politicians, however, are terrified of the “t-word,” which is why they have embraced a cap-and-trade system.

The numbers are staggering. President Barack Obama’s recently unveiled cap-and-trade plan would raise $645 billion in revenue from the government-run emissions auctions over eight years. Everyone would feel the pinch. Businesses would compensate for higher production costs and diminished markets by slashing jobs. Consumers would have to pay more for energy and energy intensive goods.

Expensive energy is bad enough, but the real danger of a cap-and-trade policy is a global trade war. A cap-and-trade system would give a competitive advantage to industries in countries that aren’t subject to a de facto energy tax. Jobs would flow overseas, but so would emissions, a dynamic known as “carbon leakage.” To prevent this, a broad coalition of industry, labor, and environmental groups have expressed interest in a tariff that would tax the emissions content of imports from countries without stringent climate policies. Naturally, these countries would retaliate if such a tariff were enacted. Protectionism deepened the Great Depression, just as climate protectionism would worsen the current recession.

William Yeatman – Council on Foreign Relations

A lot of economists and other financial minded folks around the country, including myself, have spoken out against the monetary policy of Congress and the current and past administrations.  The alarming rate of spending and currency printing is quickly reaching a catastrophic level that will eventually collapse like a house of cards if not reined in very soon.  South Carolina State Representative Mike Pitts (R-Laurens) has come up with his own eccentric solution.  Outlaw the American dollar in South Carolina and switch to a state gold and silver currency.

Pitts, a fourth-term Republican from Laurens, introduced legislation earlier this month that would ban what he calls “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

If the bill were to become law, South Carolina would no longer accept or use anything other than silver and gold coins as a form of payment for any debt, meaning paper money would be out in the Palmetto State.

Pitts said the intent of the bill is to give South Carolina the ability to “function through gold and silver coinage” and give the state a “base of currency” in the event of a complete implosion of the U.S. economic system.

The Palmetto Scoop

I don’t know if Pitts is serious or simply trying to make a statement.  His concerns are certainly real, but his solution is not practical nor legal.  A state government does not have the legal authority to determine Federal monetary policy or ban the U.S. dollar within the state lines.  Even if it could, it’s not a practical thing to do.  Everyone in the state would have to be in possession of two different currencies, the state currency for use in the state and the Federal currency for use when leaving the state.  Plus anybody passing through the state would not be able to spend their money here, which is not good tourism promotion.

Oddly enough, it is actually not illegal to create an alternative currency, however.  There are actually a few neighborhoods around the nation that trade a home grown currency that some businesses in the area will accept in lieu of the U.S. dollar and even some  local banks will accept.  This is probably as close as Representative Pitts is going to get with his vision for South Carolina money.

On March 3rd, 2010 the North Carolina Chamber will be holding it’s 68th Annual Meeting.

Don’t miss the Preliminary Special Session: JOBS Forum on Federal Issues at 9:00 a.m. Registration for the JOBS Forum is included with the Annual Meeting registration, but space is limited so reserve your spot early!

The Annual Meeting is the North Carolina Chamber’s flagship event. Historical keynote speakers have included North Carolina Governors, Fortune 100 Company executives, and several other business leaders.

This year, the keynote speaker is Jason Jennings, one of the most successful and prolific business and leadership authors in the world. Plus, presentation of the Distinguished Public Service Award to Senator Howard Lee and presentation of the Distinguished Citizenship Award to Robert Ingram. Like many Chamber activities, this is an event you simply don’t want to miss.

Some of the more pro-business and conservative groups in North Carolina have gotten their feathers ruffled over Governor Perdue’s decision to expand talks with the SEANC and other union advocacy groups of state employees.  Currently, North Carolina, along with Virginia, has a ban on public employees unionizing and some interest groups throughout the state want it to stay that way.  They feel this move by Perdue is a way to slowly sneak this in the back door and pave the way for public sector unionization in North Carolina.  There is nothing wrong with groups like Civitas and others being vigiliant, but I’m not sure this is as alarming as they make it out to be.  The law is still the law and it still has to be changed.

When it comes to the private sector, I am not opposed to unionization.  I think if a group of employees want to be represented by a union then that is their right as an American.  I do not support compulsory unionization, however, which was the way of things back in my native northeast, because nobody should be forced to join one.  Up north if 50% plus one of the employees in your shop vote to unionize, everyone has to unionize, including the 49.9% of those who voted no.  I think most sensible people would agree that is just plain wrong, but many union folks are not all that sensible and the leaders of these unions see more dollar signs by forcing it on those who don’t want it.  Hence, I prefer Right to Work states, like most here in the south, where people have the right to unionize, but can’t be forced to.

Regarding the public sector, however, I am vehemently opposed to unionization.  When dealing with employees who are paid for with tax dollars and have their wages and benefits negotiated by politicians you are opening yourself up for a total economic disaster.  California is sadly an excellent example of this.  Public sector unions in California are bankrupting the state.  Steven Greenhut of the City Journal wrote an article just a few months ago revealing how firefighters in Orange County, California make an average of $175,000 a year with a gold plated pension package that provides them with 90% of their salary for the rest of their lives during retirement and that of their spouse.  This is typical compensation for a public employee in California.  This is a stark reversal of the past in which public employees would typically make less than private sector employees, but would be balanced out by more job security and better retirement benefits.  Today, they are instead turning into a special elite class of citizens in the state.  California is on the verge of true, blue bankruptcy and the state unions have so far successfully done their damndest to keep from having to make the same sacrifices that everyone else in the state has.

This is what North Carolina needs to be mindful of.  Public sector unions and the politicians that pander to them think that the taxpayers can provide an endless flow of cash to meet every demand they want and they hold the taxpayers and city government hostage in order to get it.  Need I remind you of the Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981?  Fortunately, President Reagan was prepared for that, but it still caused plenty of chaos.

Evidently public employees in North Carolina are feeling a bit disenfranchised right now.

“If you are anti-union this waves a red flag at you,” he said. “But from another perspective, state employees are feeling downtrodden. They have not had raises in two years and salaries are falling behind the private sector and there is no indication of any improvement in the near future.”

The Daily Reflector

Oh waaaaaaahhh!!!!  The poor babies.  A lot of private sector employees haven’t gotten raises in the past two years.  I work with people who haven’t gotten raises in the past two years.  A lot of people haven’t had a job in the past two years.  We’re in a recession people!

Now imagine if they had the power of a California public sector union.  Scary, huh?

This is Haley’s opening statement from the January 28th Republican gubernatorial primary debate in Charleston.

Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC-13) wrote a column for the Huffington Post over the weekend in which he referred to the Republicans in Congress as hypocrites for opposing Obama’s tax on “too big to fail” banks because they posed a similar plan just a few years ago.  Well, that may be true and they probably are hypocrites.  I have met very few politicians who aren’t, but hypocritical or not, this tax should not be implemented and that’s the bigger picture Miller isn’t seeing through his partisan eye glasses.  He quotes a 2000 testimony by Stephen Moore of the CATO Institute.

“The user fee is a partial payment for the implicit guarantee it receives from Uncle Sam,” Moore said. “The rationale behind such a fee is that since taxpayers are bearing an implicit risk on Fannie Mae activities, it is reasonable that the federal government recoup fees to pay for that assumption of risk. The main advantage of such a fee is that it would help level the playing field between Fannie Mae and its fully private competitors.”

What I am reading there amounts to double taxation on you and me.  First of all, Moore is right about Fannie and Freddie.  We, the taxpayers, are bearing a huge risk on backing their overly risky and poor business activities.  We are already being taxed to pay for their recklessness.  The question that should be asked here is why?  Why is the government continuing to take responsibility for Fannie and Freddie with our tax dollars?  That’s what should be addressed.  Miller also notes that the tax will go to help reclaim $120 billion in tax dollars that were lost through the TARP program.  Again, it begs the question, why was it done in the first place?  Adding a 15% tax on all banks to cover this stupidity is what amounts to the second round of taxation on people like you and me because as Congressman Miller and many in the Democrat party don’t seem to understand, businesses don’t pay taxes.  They pass their tax burden on to us  through increased fees and prices and we pay for it when we patron them so I don’t see how Obama’s bank tax is good for anybody other than the power brokers in D.C. steering our nation into the crapper.

And the results, surprise, surprise, are absolutely pitiful, though somewhat better than years past.

In the State Senate, 13 members achieved a grade of a C- or better.  That’s one more than the 12 from the 2008 session. I guess some improvement is better than none.  In the State House 24 members achieved a passing grade, including gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley who received an A grade.

These grades are calculated based on specific key votes in the state legislature that promote responsible economic growth throughout the State of South Carolina.  Certain votes are weighed more than others based on their impact.  All of the 13 Senate and 24 House members who scored a C- or better were Republicans.  I have them listed below:

Senate

• Lee Bright (R-Roebuck) A+
• Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) A+
• Mick Mulvaney (R-Indian Land) A+
• Greg Ryberg (R-Aiken) A+
• Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) A
• Mike Rose (R-Summerville) B+
• Phil Shoopman (R-Greer) B+
• Shane Martin (R-Spartanburg) C+
• Ray Cleary (R-Murrells Inlet) C-

House

• Eric Bedingfield (R-Mauldin) A
• Joey Milwood (R-Landrum) A
• Rex Rice (R-Easley) A
• Jeff Duncan (R-Clinton) A
• Nikki Haley (R-Lexington) A
• Tommy Stringer (R-Landrum) A
• Tim Scott (R-North Charleston) A-
• Nathan Ballentine (R-Irmo) A-
• Wendy Nanney (R-Greenville) A-
• Thad Viers (R-Myrtle Beach) A-
• Ted Pitts (R-Lexington) B+
• Michael Thompson (R-Anderson) B
• Dan Hamilton (R-Taylors) B
• Garry Smith (R-Simpsonville) B
• Tom Young (R-Aiken) C+
• Chip Huggins (R-Columbia) C+
• Jim Stewart (R-Aiken) C
• Mark Willis (R-Fountain Inn) C
• Mac Toole (R-West Columbia) C
• Kris Crawford (R-Florence) C
• Deborah Long (R-Indian Land) C-
• Murrell Smith (R-Sumter) C-

Let’s take a look at the leadership of the general assembly, shall we?

• House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R) – A big fat F!
• Speaker Pro Tempore Harry Cato (R) – A big fat F!
• House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham (R) – A big fat F!
• Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell (R) – A big fat F!
• Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler (R) – A big fat F!

Well, it’s really no wonder why South Carolina’s economy is one of the worst in the nation when our state’s leadership is steering us right over a cliff, is it?  South Carolina may be a reliably Republican state, but if I were a member of the state Republican leadership be it in the general assembly or the state party, I’d take a warning from what is happening in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts right now.  In one of the most Democrat states in the nation, a Republican is on course to win the U.S. Senate seat that was just vacated by the death of Massachusetts icon Democrat Ted Kennedy.  This is a state with only 15% of its state legislature comprised of Republicans and the last time that state elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate was in 1972 and he was incredibly liberal for a Republican.  My point is that the folks up there are sick and tired of the corruption and incompetence of the Democrat Party that dominates their state and has for decades.  Don’t think the same thing can’t and won’t happen here with the GOP in South Carolina if they don’t start delivering what the people of this state are expecting from them.

As for the 37 members of the Republican caucus above who are at least partially working to improve the economic prowess of our state in these difficult times, they need to go a step further.  Their efforts are fruitless if they allow our state government to continue to be ran by the likes of the self-serving Bobby Harrell and Glenn McConnell.  These two and the other noted above need to be voted out of the leadership.  They are ineffective and not willing to do what is necessary to move this state forward.

The Bureau of Labor Statisitics has North Carolina still in the top 10 of unemployment. In fact we are 9th at 10.8%.

Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers is 16.5% in North Carolina.

This calls for a changes in government spending and tax policies. The time for common sense to return to North Carolina is now! The $1.1 Billion tax increase on N.C. has not succeeded in lowering unemployment through the creation of jobs. Isn’t that what this is all about? Government should should be the referee that keeps us all honest. This is true, but the government needs to step back and allow us to succeed or fail based on our own merit.

Our American dream of equal opportunity is under continuous siege by those who wish to run our lives for us. Let us create the jobs and let us create the prosperity for all. Prosperity for all and not government handouts is the American and North Carolinian way.

Yesterday, the Democrats in the U.S. House voted to raise the nation’s debt ceiling from $12.1 trillion to $12.39 trillion resulting in an increase to $40,300 for every man, woman, and child in America.  The very folks who rightly railed against the Bush deficits in 2006 have not surprisingly exposed their hypocrisy throughout the past three years as they continue to spend more and more money we do not have, bringing about the slow bankruptcy of America.

According to the Washington Examiner, the debt as a percentage of GDP has risen from 41% to 53% in just this past year alone.  At current projections the debt will reach 85% of GDP by 2018 and 100% by 2022.  Although, we may not even make it that far.

Long before the debt reaches such stratospheric levels, the commission warns, “Fears of inflation and a prospective decline in the value of the dollar would cause investors to demand higher interest rates and shift out of U.S. Treasury securities. The excessive debt would also affect citizens in their everyday lives by harming the American standard of living through slower economic growth and dampening wages, and shrinking the government’s ability to reduce taxes, invest, or provide a safety net.”

For those of you that ignorantly voted for President Obama last year, ask yourselves if this is the hope and change you expected to get.

Every Republican in North and South Carolina voted against fiscal bankruptcy.  They were joined by Democrats Mike McIntyre (NC-07) and Larry Kissell (NC-08).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its rankings of the happiest states in America and South Carolina has come in a smiling sixth place.  Interestingly enough, Louisiana has come in first.  Maybe everyone there is considerably happier now that all the trash got washed out of New Orleans during the hurricane four years ago.

If you look at the list you will see a distinctive pattern.  Overall, the states with the happiest people are those that practice freer economic policies and maintain an environment of lower taxes and costs of living, allowing people to thrive and succeed.  The states with the most miserable people are mainly up in the northern midwest and northeast where folks are still stuck in an old New Deal mindset that creates hostility to business, effectively erecting barriers, dampening one’s hope of prosperity.  As someone who grew up in the northeast, I can attest that they are incredibly miserable S.O.Bs up there.

North Carolina placed 13th.

Senator Jim DeMint has taken the lead in the Senate over the past couple of years to promote responsible government spending and sound the warning siren on the waste and excess in the Federal government that is slowly bankrupting our nation.  It is for that reason that I am supporting his reelection next year to the U.S.  Senate.  There are only a handful of representatives in Congress that are taking up this cause and we need to hang on to each and every one of them.

Bloomberg has a featured article on DeMint today that goes over his plan on actions he thinks the government should take in order to save our nation.  Here is a piece of that:

Against Bailouts

Thus, he believes that the bailouts of New York-based American International Group Inc. and probably Citigroup Inc. were a mistake, and that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan to purchase toxic assets was a fraud.

He doesn’t spare Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. “If you look at his mission, which is to protect the value of the dollar and to protect employment, the grades aren’t good,” DeMint says. He plans to vote against extending the Fed chief’s term for another four years.

Fiscally, he wants to balance the budget and cut taxes, while acknowledging that defense spending will have to increase. “You’ve got the Air Force flying around in 50-year-old airplanes right now,” he says, “and we don’t have anything scheduled to replace the antiquated things.”

Flat Tax

On taxes, DeMint advocates a flat rate of 10 percent on the first $100,000 of income for a couple, and 25 percent on income above that. He would eliminate all taxes on interest income, capital gains, dividends and estates and end the alternative minimum tax.

For businesses, DeMint would kill the corporate income tax and substitute an across-the-board 8.5 percent consumption tax.

He would balance the federal budget in 10 years and then constitutionally require it to stay balanced.

This would call for draconian changes in the big entitlements.

DeMint would allow those currently 55 and older to receive Medicare benefits at 65. The program would be discontinued for younger Americans, who would get a $9,500 yearly stipend when they turn 65 to pay for private health insurance. The federal- state Medicaid program, which covers health-care costs for poor people, is “financially unsustainable,” he says.

‘Socialist Solutions’

DeMint considers Social Security a “socialistic” measure and blasts the American Association of Retired Persons for promulgating “socialist solutions.”

“What’s the harm of your grandma getting a Social Security check every month from the government?” he asks in his book. “It seems harmless enough, but that check changes the relationship between your grandma and the government.”

In the interview, he talks of reviving President George W. Bush’s failed plan to partially privatize Social Security by having workers put a small percentage of the current levy in a personal savings account.

Now this is an agenda I could get behind wholeheartedly.  Medicare and Social Security expenditures are consuming more and more of our Federal budget each year.  Today they eat up 44% of it.  By 2050, they are projected to account for 18.6% of GDP.  Federal revenues as of 2007 were 18.8% of GDP.  As you can see, that path will be completely unsustainable.  We’ll have to kill the programs or gut them to a fraction of what they provide today, cheating the people (which will include me) who will have paid into it our entire lives or raise taxes so astronomically that we will wipe out the middle class and create an elite aristocracy of the few that have money while the rest of us are serfs on the manor.

I think his Medicare idea has a lot of merit.  I also agree with the main principles behind the Bush Social Security plan, however, the main flaw with that is that it would have created a trillion dollar budget deficit off the bat and that is not acceptable so something would need to be done to address that issue.  As for his tax plan, I would prefer a national consumption tax to replace the income tax, but a two-tier income tax, much like Reagan had implemented, would be a substantial improvement over the mess we have today.

Rumors have been brewing that DeMint could be a possible presidential candidate in 2012.  So far, all the potential nominees being thrown around have not enamored me.  He could be an interesting option.

Just a few hours ago the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, House Bill 4173, which if passed by the U.S. Senate will do the following:

The House voted 223 to 202 today to approve the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations since the Great Depression, a sprawling measure that would create a new agency to protect consumers and give the government broad new powers to dismantle large firms that pose risks to the economy.

Los Angeles Times

So two things are happening here.  One, we will be creating yet another bloated Federal government bureaucracy with unconstitutional powers.  Second, the Federal government will now have the right to seize and liquidate a firm that it feels is “risky” to the economy.  Well who the hell makes that determination, the people in Congress?  Most of them have never operated a business in their lives.  What the hell would they know about what poses a risk to the economy?  Take a look at the state of the American economy today and tell me that these people are qualified to make this determination.

The potential for corruption of course is huge.  For example, what if the Feds wanted to force another industry to take government funds like they did to the banks with TARP and one firm pushes back saying no?  Under this new power all the Feds have to do then is lean on them and threaten to find them too “risky” to stay in business if they don’t play ball.

When we give the Feds the power to seize private businesses we take another step closer to becoming an oppressive Socialist state like Venezuela, Cuba, or North Korea.  This is incredibly dangerous, but your average American won’t even know this happened today and many that do will think it’s a fine idea to stick it to those Wall Street goons.  Let’s not forget that it was the Federal government that opened the door to this economic crisis in the first place.

Every Republican in North and South Carolina voted against this swipe of freedom.  They were joined by Democrat Mike McIntyre (NC-07).  All other Democrats in our two states voted for despotism today.

The current laws took effect following overwhelming voter approval of a 2006 constitutional referendum.

The changes eliminated most school taxes on owner-occupied homes, raised the statewide sales tax by 20 percent in an attempt to make up for that lost revenue, and capped increases in the taxable value of any property that hadn’t been sold or substantially improved to 15 percent every five years.

Any property with a change in ownership, however, is immediately reassessed and taxed at full value the following year.

Those “point-of-sale” reassessments keep the tax base growing and help pay for the tax relief enjoyed by others because a larger tax base means a lower tax rate is needed to raise a certain amount of revenue.

The State

I don’t see the problem, frankly.  I bought my place in 2008 and when I saw how low my property tax bill was my jaw dropped.  I came here from the northeast where property tax bills were several thousand dollars a year on homes that were worth less than $100k.  My property tax bill in South Carolina is less than $700 on a home that I bought for a little under $120k.  Amazing.

I do realize that many businesses have complained of having to shoulder an unfair burden in property taxes.  If that’s the case and it’s hurting our state’s competitiveness, then raise the sales tax again.  A sales tax is the fairest there is because everybody has to contribute, which is the way it should be.  We shouldn’t have half the population getting a near free ride off the backs of the other half.

But legislation awaiting action in the state Senate would put a 15 percent cap on the assessment changes that follow a change in ownership. Supporters say the change would spur economic development. Capping point-of-sale reassessments would remove an estimated $44 million in revenue from schools and local governments annually, the state estimates, resulting in possible property tax rate increases that would affect all property owners, cuts in school budgets and local services, or both.

Oh well we can’t have that.  We can’t take money away from the children, regardless of how carelessly it’s been spent by the school districts.  I’ve touched on that plenty of times here.  The schools in this state have all the money they need to function and educate children.  The problem is that the bulk of the money they are getting isn’t making its way to the classroom and that is the fault of those administrating the school districts.  It’s not a taxation issue, but don’t worry, they’ll scream like Chicken Little as soon as any cuts look to be on the horizon and there will be weak-kneed politicians who will cave.