Politics

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the first Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Dr. King was only 39 years old when he was shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Rarely has anyone in history packed so much into 39 years.

Dr. King is best remembered as an outspoken advocate of civil rights.

He became the voice of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus in December 1955.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation on public buses unconstitutional in 1956, the doctrine of “separate but equal” was truly dying. This decision followed on the heels of the Brown v. Board of Education, decided in 1954, which was the first major chink in the armor of Jim Crow laws established after the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the Court in 1896.

Dr. King was the Montgomery boycott’s protest leader and official spokesman, a position which thrust him onto the national and international stage for the remainder of his life.

In 1957, Dr. King was joined by other ministers and civil rights activists in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC was committed to achieving full civil rights for African Americans through nonviolent means.

Perhaps Dr. King’s most remembered moment is his “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in August 1963.

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HCSWA Asking for Fee Increase

The Horry County Solid Waste Authority (HCSWA) will ask Horry County Council to approve an increase in tipping fees at the authority’s Hwy 90 landfill site.

The increase will be part of the HCSWA budget submission to council for the coming fiscal year which begins July 1, 2017.

The requested increase results from a Cost of Service and Rate Study recently completed for the HCSWA by independent consultant HDR Engineering.

According to that study, HCSWA has one of the lowest tipping fees in the state for municipal solid waste (MSW). The Hwy 90 landfill currently charges $29 per ton for MSW while the average MSW tipping fee at public and private landfills around the state is $42.71 per ton.

The HCSWA tipping fee has not increased in 18 years.

According to the HDR study, if the tipping fee at the Hwy 90 landfill does not increase, by 2024 the HCSWA will experience a cumulative budget deficit of over $32 million.

This calculation is based on a test year of 2016, with projected revenues and expenses at the HCSWA for years 2017 through 2024 inclusive.

What is interesting to note is the HCSWA had excess revenue of $4.093 million in 2016 with $8.46 million in tipping fee revenue against a revenue requirement of $4.369 million for the authority to break even.

In 2017, the excess revenue required jumps to $11.397 million against tipping fee revenue of $8.624 for a deficit of $2.77 million. The projected deficit increases year by year from that point.

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Thoughts for 2017

As we move into 2017, there are some random thoughts I wish to share about what I foresee as potentially newsworthy.

First and foremost for South Carolinians, congratulations to Clemson for making it back to the National Championship game. It took an entire season of play to get the same result for the final game.

The Tigers will again face Alabama in a game many think they can’t win. Something about this season feels more like 1981 than last year did. Clemson to win its second National Championship and move Dabo Swinney into the same breath as Danny Ford.

A new law heralded as tougher on ethics says public officials must disclose the sources of their private, taxable income. Not the amounts, just the sources.

We are watching a corruption investigation on state legislators play out with the recent indictment, on 30 counts, of former House Majority Leader Rep. Jim Merrill. This law would not have changed anything I can see about what Merrill did to allegedly break the law.

The investigation will continue and I believe we will see more indictments of current legislators.

What will be more interesting is to see what organizations get named in the indictments. One of the counts against Merrill alleges money was laundered from the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to Merrill through his brother’s firm, Pluff Mud Public Affairs, LLC.

A cursory look at the internet showed the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce wrote checks to Pluff Mud Public Affairs, LLC in 2011 totaling just over $60,000. That information comes from the Chamber’s own reporting of its public fund expenses.

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Happy Hogmanay

Happy Hogmanay

Forty-three years ago, I was preparing to celebrate my third and last Hogmanay in Scotland, an event that is celebrated as widely as Christmas in that country.

For those of you not familiar with Hogmanay, it is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the New Year’s Eve celebration that lasts until the next morning. It is an experience you never forget nor never totally remember.

For a little perspective, four decades ago the western industrial world was still in the grip of an Arab oil embargo. Many Americans were still sitting in lines to buy gas and the price of that commodity was beginning its steady rise that led to the 1973-74 stock market crash. Prices of oil helped fuel hyperinflation for the remainder of the 1970’s.

However, the U.S. national debt was still below one trillion dollars and would not breach that benchmark until seven years later with the economic policies of Ronald Reagan and the total lack of fiscal discipline in Washington since.

Watergate was still much in the news and Richard Nixon was in his downward spiral which ended eight months later when he became the only American president to resign from office.

Scotland and the entire United Kingdom would shortly experience a second coal strike in three years, which would lead to a general election and the downfall of the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, but also to the eventual rise of Margaret Thatcher five years later.

And the Soviet Union was still perceived to be a colossus threatening world peace while China was not far removed from its Cultural Revolution, its backyard steel furnaces and its ‘Great Leap Backward.’

Much has changed in the intervening forty plus years, but those changes are a mere microcosm of the changes in the world since the Scottish poet Robert (Rabbie) Burns wrote his Hogmanay and New Year’s classic “Auld Lang Syne” in 1788.

May you all have a blessed, prosperous and Happy New Year in 2017.

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Local Reflections on 2016

Reflecting back on the year’s events in these last days of 2016, several local issues stand out that will carry over unresolved into the New Year.

The International Drive project is a perfect example of what many citizens find wrong in the country today. The project is highly popular with a vast majority of citizens because of the ‘back door’ ingress and egress it will give to Carolina Forest neighborhoods.

Horry County spent the year winning one court hearing after another over environmental groups trying to block the project. Some construction work was done in the fall after permits were issued by SCDHEC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

However, a temporary stay issued by a federal court, since removed, and now a stay against the permits issued by the state court of appeals leaves the project once again stalled awaiting further court dates.

I first rode with General Vaught in his four wheel truck on what is now called International Drive when it was nothing more than a dirt track through the woods. There is no vast environmental disaster waiting to happen if construction of International Drive is completed.

Nevertheless, a small group of environmentalists continues to thwart the wishes of a vast majority of the citizens while completion of a much needed road continues to be delayed.

Staying with the county, much needed changes in the Horry County Police Department have begun with the hiring of a new chief in the fall.

After a year in which the county and its police department was hit with a series of lawsuits over the conduct of officers, notably those in the detective division, over a series of years, hopefully those transgressions will be ending.

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Curtis M. Loftis Jr., South Carolina’s treasurer

Public Pension Fund Contribution Increase Approved

South Carolina government employees will be paying more into their public pension fund in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017.

This is a result of a 3-2 vote by members of the State Fiscal Accountability Authority to approve an increase of 0.5%, the maximum allowed by state law in any one year. Voting to approve the increase were Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Hugh Leatherman and Rep. Brian White.

S.C. Treasurer Curtis Loftis and Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom voted against the increase.

The increase will take employee contributions from their current 8.66% earnings to a new rate of 9.16%.

In addition, the state’s taxpayers will contribute more to government workers pensions. The current employer rate of 11.66% of an employee’s salary will increase to 12.16% for state and local governments and school districts.

The increased revenue for the pension fund will be little more than a finger in the dike of future liabilities. The total of 1% increase in contributions is estimated to bring in $100 million in new revenue for the Public Employees Benefit Association.

For the fiscal year completed June 30, 2016, the actuarial firm of Gabriel Roeder Smith and Co. estimated a shortfall of $1.4 billion in unfunded liabilities just for that fiscal year.

The overall future unfunded liability for the state employee pension fund is estimated at approximately $25 billion.

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More Action Needed to Combat Community Violence

Two different shooting incidents in Longs over the weekend again highlighted the need for a comprehensive plan to combat community violence in Horry County.

Horry County police have responded to numerous shooting incidents in the Longs community over the past year.

But, it isn’t just the Longs community that is suffering from this type of violence. Conway, Myrtle Beach, Loris, Carolina Forest and Socastee, to name a few, have also suffered from shooting incidents in their neighborhoods.

Horry County Public Safety Committee chairman Al Allen appointed a special Community Violence Subcommittee to investigate violence in our communities last spring.

At the time, Allen charged subcommittee members to identify the causes and influences that lead to violence in the community as well as visit with all public, private and church groups presently operating to reduce violence and crime in Horry County to rank their effectiveness.

To date, the subcommittee has been stuck with comparing Horry County crime statistics to similar counties in four other states. There has been no effort by committee members to have meetings with community leaders throughout the county as of yet.

Community violence is not a problem that can be cured just with policing and suppression. The root causes and solutions require efforts from parents, students, teachers, preachers and other community leaders to combat.

As one community leader has stated on numerous occasions, it takes a collaborative, coordinated, communicative effort from all segments of the population to combat the causes and find the solutions for violence in our communities.

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Donald Trump Pulls Off Election Surprise

Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States after pulling out the biggest election night surprise since 1948.

Trump clinched his election victory with surprising strength in the “Rust Belt” states, an area where Hillary Clinton and the Democrats miscalculated their strength especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The presidential result emphasizes the deep dissatisfaction voters feel with Washington and what is called ‘politics as usual.’ Trump’s victory can be credited to his ability to sell himself as an outsider from the political establishment of both parties.

The Trump victory brought immediate uncertainty to financial markets as world stocks began tanking around 9 p.m. on election night and Dow futures dropped 650 points overnight. This is not the reaction of the stock markets that one would expect with a Republican candidate winning the presidency. The markets rebounded later to recover most or all of their losses.

This is not the reaction of the stock markets that one would expect with a Republican candidate winning the presidency.

However, voter rejection of politics as usual only extended as far as the presidential race. Most members of Congress seeking re-election were returned to their seats without a problem, some without an opponent.

So, if you’re expecting big changes in Washington with Trump as president, get ready for a disappointment. Congress still controls the domestic agenda as well as the purse strings.

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H.L. Mencken Knocks Congress Out of the Park

Occasionally you come across a piece of writing that is timeless in its message. The below column by H.L. Mencken is such a piece of work.

He expounds all the faults of Congress in his time, but his message is just as applicable to Congress today.

As everyone focuses on the presidential election in two days, many forget the elections of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 members of the U.S. Senate are at least as important to the future of the country.

For example, we wouldn’t have a 20 trillion national debt if Congress had not passed the funding legislation and continuously raised the debt ceiling to pay for all the wars, social programs, corporate welfare and pure pork that makes up the federal budget each year.

Congress is where most of our problems lie and where voters know very little of what goes on. Yet, 400 or so of these incumbent Congressman and 25 or more of the incumbent Senators up for election will be sent back to Washington with little thought by the voters.

The problem with Congress has been with the country for a very long time as the column below demonstrates.

H.L. Mencken was one of the most influential journalists of the first half of the 20th Century. I don’t know the date of the below column, but Mencken suffered a stroke in 1948 and did no writing thereafter. This would make the column nearly 70 years old at least.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

H.L. Mencken: Choose Legislators Like We Do Jurors

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Chicago Cubs and Brexit on the Same Day

The Chicago Cubs broke the “Billy Goat Curse” last night by winning the seventh and deciding game of the 2016 World Series.

Being a long-time fan of the Boston Red Sox, I understand a bit about what Cubs fans are feeling today. I felt the same mixture of happiness and relief when the Red Sox broke the “Curse of the Bambino” in 2004 to win the World Series for the first time since 1918, a stretch of 86 years between championships.

For Cubs fans it was longer. The Cubs had not been champions since 1908, a stretch of 108 years, or 39,466 days if you prefer.

Theodore Roosevelt was president when the Cubs won their last championship and New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii and Alaska were not yet states.

The Cubs opponents, the Cleveland Indians, have not won a world series championship since 1948, the longest stretch of non-winning after the Cubs.

But, big as news of the Cubs victory is, it may not be the day’s big story, outside of Chicago.

Remember when the British electorate voted in a June referendum to leave the European Union?

A three judge panel on the London High Court said not so fast. The court ruling said that the British Parliament must first pass legislation approving Brexit (British exit from the European Union).

“The most fundamental rule of the U.K.’s constitution is that Parliament is sovereign and can make and unmake any law it chooses,” the judges wrote. “As an aspect of the sovereignty of Parliament it has been established for hundreds of years that the Crown — i.e. the Government of the day — cannot by exercise of prerogative powers override legislation enacted by Parliament.”

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