Politics

Bobby Harrell’s Travel Reimbursements

South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s problems with travel reimbursements continued last week when The Nerve reported problems with travel reimbursement records since 2008.

House mileage reimbursements for legislators are generally restricted to one round trip per week while the legislature is in session.

The Nerve reported Harrell was reimbursed for nine weekly round trips for use of his airplane and 21 weekly round trips by car in 2008. However, the House was only in session for 23 weeks that year.

Similarly, in 2012 the House spent 20 weeks in session while Harrell was reimbursed for 18 round trips by car and five round trips by air.

Continue Reading →

District 56 Dirty Tricks – Part II

The “dirty tricks” effort to sway voters in the S.C. House District 56 race, with a door hanger allegedly bringing voters a message about the positions of the two candidates in the race, strongly demonstrates to what level elections in America have sunk.

Allegedly funded by Freedom Works, a Washington, D.C. 527 PAC run by former U.S. Representative Dick Armey, the real genesis of the door hanger remains a mystery.

Grand Strand Daily contacted the Washington, D.C. national headquarters of Freedom Works to inquire about the door hanger. We were told Freedom Works knew nothing about it and had no files on either candidate.

Continue Reading →

Haley Appoints Ethics Reform Commission

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appointed a special commission this week to make recommendations on ethics reform in South Carolina governments.

The 11 member commission, created by executive order of the governor, will have until January 28, 2013 to draft an “ethics blueprint” recommending new and/or stronger ethics laws.

Commission members will look into freedom of information, campaign finance and practices, conflict of interest and ethics enforcement by state and legislative ethics panels.

On the surface this sounds good and is certainly needed in South Carolina, a state that is ranked at or near the bottom of all states in ethics and freedom of information by the independent Center for Public Integrity.

Continue Reading →

Palmetto Liberty PAC Legislative Scorecard

The Palmetto Liberty PAC released its legislative scorecards for the 2012 S.C. General Assembly session completed in June.

In a state that likes to consider itself one of the most conservative in the nation, the scorecards from Palmetto Liberty PAC, a Tea Party based organization, tell a different story.

A total of 15 votes in the House and 17 votes in the Senate were tracked on the scorecards. Included were the state budget, a proposed rebate to taxpayers, government reorganization and other fiscal issues.

In a year when the state experienced an excess of more than $1 billion in expected revenue, it would have been supposed that state legislators would have put that money to good use.

Continue Reading →
House Candidate Releases Ethics Reform Plan

House Candidate Releases Ethics Reform Plan

House District 78 candidate Beth Bernstein released a seven-point ethics reform plan for state legislators yesterday.

Bernstein’s plan hits at the root causes of many of the ethics problems we find at the state level. Placing ethics investigations into the hands of an independent agency, rather than by peer panels, and term limits for all legislators would go a long way to improving ethics in the General Assembly.

When Operation Lost Trust erupted 20 years ago, putting both lobbyists and lawmakers in jail, changes were made to state ethics laws. Normally these types of changes are made to tighten laws to eliminate illegal actions.

Continue Reading →

Public Pension Fund Commission Looks to Increase Budget

The South Carolina public pension fund commission is looking for a large increase in its operating budget in the upcoming fiscal year.

Officially named the South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission, the agency is proposing an increase in operating budget from today’s $10 million to $14 million. That is a 39 percent increase.

The proposed increases come two years after the agency’s budget increased by 74 percent, from $5.8 million in FY 2011 to $10.1 million for FY 2012.

Maybe such increases wouldn’t be so bad, although an over 100 percent budget increase is hard to justify anytime, if the agency was performing well. But, the most notable achievement of the SCRSIC in the past year has been to become deeply involved in political gamesmanship.

Continue Reading →

The Case for Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson

Gary Johnson has heard it all before.

“You can’t win.” “A vote for you is a wasted vote.” “A third choice.”

And, that sits just fine with the Libertarian candidate for President of the United States.

“I’m not the third choice, I am the only choice,” Johnson told a group of approximately 500 Thursday night on the campus of IUPUI. “A wasted vote, in my opinion, is voting for somebody you don’t believe in. The way you change the country is to vote for somebody that you do believe in. So, yes, go ahead and waste your vote because if everyone in this country wastes their vote on me, I’ll be the next president.”

Continue Reading →

Bobby Harrell and His Campaign Funds

South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell has refused to provide detailed receipts of more than $325,000 he reimbursed himself from campaign contributions, according to an ongoing series of stories by Renee Dudley, AKA “little girl” of the Charleston Post and Courier.

For nearly a month, the reporter has been requesting receipts and itemized expenses, as required by state ethics law and subject to public disclosure. S.C. Code of Laws Section 8-13-1302 enumerates requirements for maintenance of expenditure records from campaign contributions.

Disclosure reports on campaign receipts and expenditures are required to be filed quarterly with the S.C. Ethics Commission. These are supposed to include a detailed listing of to whom and for what purpose expenditures are made.

Continue Reading →

Revelations Rock(er) Project Blue

New revelations this week about Covation LLC COO David Rocker’s criminal past brought further questions to the viability of the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation’s now infamous Project Blue.

Among other revelations, Rocker failed to file income tax returns for 14 consecutive years while participating in a Klein conspiracy to interfere with the lawful government functions of the IRS.

This new information comes to light as the EDC is lobbying for third reading approval, by county council, of an ordinance that would approve the issuance of $8 million in county general obligation debt as part of an estimated overall $24 million incentive package.

Continue Reading →

S.C. Legal System Stacked Against Laymen

There seems to be a de facto informal system within the S. C legal system whereby officers of the court protect each other regardless of what laws, regulations and the code of conduct require.

Those of you who have served in the military, especially the Army, may be familiar with the term West Point Protection Association.

This was a term derisively used, especially during the Vietnam War, to describe an informal system whereby West Point graduates protected the records of each other regardless of rank or other considerations. One West Pointer protected another regardless of what actually happened in the field.

Continue Reading →
1 … 105 106 107 108 109 … 117