Tag: crony capitalism

Hypocritical Attack Ads Target Reese Boyd

Reese Boyd is making a strong run for the open SC Senate District 34, enough that the Stephen Goldfinch campaign and its cohorts are resorting to absolute hypocrisy in these final days of the campaign.

Reese Boyd and Stephen Goldfinch are both seeking the Republican nomination for SC Senate District 34 in Tuesday’s Republican Primary voting.

If you are following politics at all in this primary season, you have seen, either in your mailbox or on Facebook, Reese Boyd being called a fiscal liberal.

These attacks are coming in mail and on broadcast media from something called the Citizens Alliance for Fiscal Responsibility, which, from everything I can determine, is run by Tom Swatzel of Swatzel Strategies LLC.

Swatzel Strategies has also received payment from the Stephen Goldfinch campaign for campaign consulting. There is an obvious direct tie between the PAC and the Goldfinch campaign.

If Citizens Alliance for Fiscal Responsibility is acting as an independent PAC, even under the Citizens United decision it must have no direct coordination with the campaign.

Why is Boyd being attacked as a fiscal liberal? Because Boyd has refused to sign Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

I support Boyd in not signing Norquist’s bogus pledge, which has never been anything more than a gimmick for elected legislators to claim they are fiscal conservatives.

But, the hypocrisy currently being practiced by the Goldfinch campaign is much worse than just mislabeling Boyd because he wouldn’t agree to forfeit his decision making power if he is elected to the senate.

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UNC Cheating Scandal – Microcosm of America

I was surprised and saddened to read the scope of the UNC cheating scandal that spanned 18 years, but I should have expected it.

Full disclosure requires me to say I am not a Tar Heel fan, don’t bleed Carolina Blue and don’t even like the color.

Nevertheless, I always had a certain respect for the fact that UNC generally fielded highly competitive athletic teams while maintaining a solid academic reputation.

Now we know that is so much smoke and mirrors.

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Accommodations Tax Fuels MB Chamber Greed

When Horry County Council begins in-depth considerations of next year’s budget later this week, the question of how much accommodations tax revenue goes to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce will be a major point of discussion.

While the accommodations tax concept is to help meet the costs of expanded services required by the introduction of millions of visitors to an area, the state law allowing accommodations tax collections requires 30 percent of the revenue generated to be spent on tourism marketing. This provision was one of the trade-offs put in the law to get the buy-in of the tourism lobby.

For a number of years, that 30 percent, approximately $2.3 million from the unincorporated areas of the county, has gone to the Chamber in a block to spend on its marketing efforts.

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