Recent Posts

Glider Pilot Illegal Arrest in South Carolina

Darlington County Sheriff’s Department officers made national news when details of their illegal arrest and detention of Robin Fleming, the pilot of a glider aircraft, was reported in Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association magazine this month.

The article details another example of totally screwed up police procedure, illegal arrest and detention and total disregard for the law, by law enforcement officials in a South Carolina jurisdiction.

A combination of invented charges, contradictory incident reports, total disregard for a private citizen’s civil rights and generally screwed up policing are evident from the details of the Fleming arrest. The old 9/11 standby excuse was even used at one point to justify the officers’ illegal actions.

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Elizabeth Moffly Declares for SC 1st District

Elizabeth Moffly declared her candidacy for the open 1st Congressional District seat last Thursday to a gathering of her supporters at Geechie Seafood at Shem Creek.

Moffly, currently a Trustee on the Charleston County School Board, combines a history of independent thinking with the courage to speak out on issues.

She told her supporters she considers public service a higher calling – “to be a voice for the people where decisions are being made that have a direct effect on our lives.”

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Addresses, Donations and SC House District 17

What is it about a certain candidate in the SC House District 17 special election that runs for office with varying addresses?

Can you run for office out of a PO BOX? Apparently in Greenville County you can.

In the race for House District 17 in North Greenville County, five people are running for office. All of them have street addresses except one, Christopher Sullivan. This is the same Christopher Sullivan that ran for Senate District 6 against incumbent Mike Fair in the 2012 GOP primary and lost.

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SCDOR Cyber-Hacking Scandal

A S.C. House special committee investigating the cyber-hacking scandal at the S.C. Department of Revenue heard shocking testimony from former SCDOR security officer Scott Shealy yesterday regarding incompetence at the agency.

Shealy worked as an IT security officer for DOR from 1997 – 2011 when he resigned to go to work for the S.C. Judicial Department. His testimony described an agency that was more interested in pinching pennies than assuring security of the records it was responsible to protect.

Maybe Shealy’s most shocking revelation was that the data security chief position he held went unfilled for 10 months after his departure while the data security team that worked for him was effectively dismantled.

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Election Filing Mess Leads 2012 Stories

As we look back on the news of 2012, the top story in South Carolina this year was the election filing mess that kept nearly 300 candidates off the ballot.

Most candidates affected were challengers to incumbent Republicans, although many Democrats got left off too, in the June primary. They were ineligible to be certified as candidates because the state and local Republican and Democratic parties did not understand, and did not make allowance for, a minor change in state law that required electronic filing of the candidates’ Statement of Economic Interests.

The party leaders never saw it coming and they blew it. I don’t believe it was a big conspiracy to keep new candidates off the ballot. Some newcomers did file properly and did get certified, too few for a real democratic process, however.

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Martin Luther King Day Seeks Musical Talent

Carolina Has Talent, a musical tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is included in the three-day Martin Luther King Celebratory Weekend, Jan. 19-21, 2012, in Myrtle Beach.

A latecomer to recognizing Martin Luther King Day as a holiday, Myrtle Beach has quickly closed the void by combining traditional celebration events with non-traditional events to promote a spirit of unity throughout the community.

One of these is the Carolina Has Talent event, which will be a musical talent competition with cash prizes and other rewards to the top competitors.

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The Military and the Fiscal Cliff

As 2012 winds down, we are hearing hourly about the fiscal cliff that the U.S. economy is approaching if our current do-nothing Congress can’t reach a deal on taxes and expenditures.

While much of the present focus is on not raising any new tax revenue and cutting entitlement spending, an overall concept of a budget for the entire U.S. government seems to be seriously absent.

The current fiscal cliff crisis, if you wish to call it that, is two philosophies, left and right, banging heads while no one in Washington attempts to see the bigger picture.

One area which I believe needs further investigation, as well as a reasonable long term plan for what we wish to accomplish, is defense spending.

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Boost Holiday Spirit at Coastal Ale House

If you need a boost in your holiday spirit, a lunch, dinner or two at Coastal Ale House is the perfect remedy.

In a throwback to Christmas’ past, general manager Steve Award went all out decorating the restaurant for this holiday season.

“We wanted to spread holiday cheer and get everyone in the spirit,” said Award. “There are so many distractions to the holiday spirit now. We wanted to give people a place where they can get more involved with that spirit.”

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Getting Economic Growth Back on Track

Economic growth continues in Asia while it stagnates in America. Even though Singapore and Hong Kong have the heavy hand of government involved in infrastructure planning, their private sector continues to boom.

I cast my ballot early because I had to be in Hong Kong and Singapore when Americans voted for president of the United States on Nov. 6. I’ve been following the election closely, but I was struck by how closely everyone in Asia paid attention, also. It seems to those in Asia that we have lost our way.

I didn’t have to look far beyond my hotel window to see the expanse of cranes erecting new buildings, too many to count, across each country.

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Beyond Venture Socialism

It’s a safe assumption that American citizens, no matter their party affiliation, believe government is wasteful. Government programs never come in on budget, as the recent and predictable example of the Affordable Care Act demonstrates. The American people were told that the ACA would cost $900 billion in ten years, but the latest estimates by the CBO indicate that it will cost a staggering $2.6 trillion in its first in that same time period. This does not even begin to include the multitudes of anecdotal stories we have all heard about government agencies spending hundreds of dollars on relatively inexpensive items such as hammers. We hear these accounts and accept them as, perhaps, exaggerations of actual government waste.

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