Sunday, March 15, 2026
URGENT – ACTION NEEDED MONDAY, JUNE 10TH
** We need to pack the meeting tomorrow!
The County Council meeting tomorrow, Monday, June 10 at 5pm in the County Council Chambers, Ribaut Street.
On the Agenda are THREE, Yes, THREE tax increases.
1% Sales Tax – Ballot Referendum
Property Tax Roll Forward – Part of the New Budget being voted on
4.86% Property Tax Millage Rate Increase – Part of the New Budget being voted on
We found out over the past week that the constitutionally guaranteed privacy, civil liberties and freedoms of U.S. citizens have been effectively assigned to the scrap heap by our own government.
Okay. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. government has sought to spy on American citizens through a variety of programs, most of which can be tied to the Department of Justice and FBI reign ever since J. Edgar Hoover got the nod from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to establish the DOJ’s Intelligence Division in 1919.
It took Hoover less than a year to collect files on over 150,000 American citizens who, through his perverted sense of propriety, were considered a threat to the U.S. government. Those files were amassed in the days when typewriters were the most modern piece of equipment in government offices, a telephone in a private house was still somewhat of a novelty and the Model T Ford was only 10 years old.
But, Hoover demonstrated how quickly a small government department, with the help of private citizens spying and informing on each other, could invade the lives of American citizens.
George Orwell’s “Big Brother” is alive and well in the U.S. government 30 years beyond 1984, but I’m not sure even Orwell ever anticipated the level of the current actions.
Another attack, by “Big Brother”, on U.S. citizens’ right to privacy and guarantees of freedom from illegal search and seizure was reported by the “Guardian” and “Washington Times” newspapers recently regarding requests for cell phone records from Verizon.
Those revelations were bad enough, but we later learned, from “The Hill”, that senators knew about these vast phone sweeping operations by the National Security Agency, which have been going on since 2007.
Once again yielding to its ‘grow big government instincts,’ Horry County government is preparing to launch an attack on strip clubs with an apparent goal of shutting the clubs down throughout the county.
The initiative is not coming from county council even though several members are now attempting to wrap themselves in a morals protection flag. This is a county government staff driven initiative as a panic reaction to a current suit in federal court.
The current county ordinance governing adult entertainment businesses is expected to be struck down as unconstitutional in federal court in the near future.
Faced with the possibility of a 3.5 mill tax increase, for those living in the unincorporated areas of Horry County, residents descended on county council chambers last night to beg for an almost double tax increase than was initially proposed.
Speaker after speaker came to the microphone, during public input on the county’s budget deliberations, to beg for higher taxes, higher even than the politicians were considering.
When the issue was settled, council voted 7-5 to raise taxes by 6 mills in the unincorporated areas of the county to fund improvements in fire services, mostly in the rural western part of the county.
In consequence of the recent illegal investigations of journalists by the FBI, the question is being asked ‘is it time for Attorney General Eric Holder to go?’
The more important question is whether it is time for the FBI to go?
Through a combination of successful propaganda and sympathetic journalism, the FBI is mythologized as the world’s number one law enforcement agency.
One look at the Columbia city budget deliberations tells you it’s an election year in the city.
Council recently pledged a two percent, across the board pay raise for all city employees in next year’s budget and even more for fire and police.
The firefighters received a 3.3 percent pay raise retroactive to January 1, 2013. Approximately 400 police officers and seventy 911 dispatchers will receive an additional 3.3 percent mid-year pay raise in January 2014.
History proves there is no better way to get city employees on the side of incumbent council members than to give them a pay raise in an election year.
This year’s legislative session is down to the last four days and members of the General Assembly are again making sure nothing meaningful will come out of this session.
The Senate killed any chance for ethics reform with a vote that refused to move the ethics reform bill up in the waiting queue. So legislators will maintain ethics investigations in house, actually that means there won’t be any investigations, and we will again not know what their private sources of income are.
Earlier, a bill to expand the Freedom of Information Act was buried in the House where it was recommitted to the Judiciary Committee after getting a favorable vote out earlier. We wouldn’t want the members of the General Assembly to have to divulge their e-mails and other correspondence to the general public. Better they remain secret.
It now looks virtually certain that the new fiscal year, beginning July 1, 2013, will include increased taxes on the unincorporated areas of Horry County.
County council is expected to raise taxes by 3.5 mills in the unincorporated areas to fund new fire equipment and to fill some currently vacant positions.
The increase will amount to approximately $14 per $100,000 valuation on owner occupied homes, which will provide approximately $3.5 million in new revenue.
If these upgrades are not made to county fire service, council members say the county’s ISO rating will increase, especially in the rural areas, causing homeowners to pay higher fire insurance premiums.
Treasurer Curtis Loftis In Hospital With Chest Pains
Click READ FULL STORY below to wish Treasurer Loftis a speedy recovery.
South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis has checked himself into a hospital after suffering chest pains.
Spokesman Brian DeRoy says Loftis underwent tests Monday and expects to be released on Tuesday. DeRoy says the Republican treasurer has been working long days recently and suspects he suffered from exhaustion.
Loftis’ fight with the commission that oversees retirees’ pension funds in the state led to a lawsuit last month that was quickly settled.
Speak Up…