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A LAWSUIT filed in Camden might help clarify how hospitality taxes can be used, but ultimately the Legislature must make changes to address confusion and, more importantly, give cities and counties what they really need: more flexibility in what they can spend the money on.
Every year for the past 15, legislation has been introduced in our state that would outlaw your right to birth control. It’s just one of many policy attempts that put basic individual rights at risk. Nearly every day, I meet citizens who are shocked to learn just how aggressive the attacks on reproductive health have become.
IT’S EASY TO get so frustrated by all the things the Legislature is not accomplishing — or even trying to accomplish — that we fail to notice when it finally does something significant. That happened last month, when good-government advocates prevailed in a quarter-century effort to create an independent state inspector general with significant authority to not only root out the cliched “waste, fraud and abuse” but force state agencies to do things in a smarter way.
Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”
IN 2006, OFFICIALS with the S.C. Retirement System Investment Commission met with our editorial board to discuss a constitutional amendment that would let them invest in foreign companies and non-publicly traded assets, from venture capital funds and well-established companies about to go public to gold, oil and hedge funds.
Some legislators claim the S.C. Retirement System has a $17 billion liability, but the 300,000 members of the system need to take notice of the proposed reform measures.
I love the South; I love living here, having spent the first three decades of my life in North Carolina, and the past three decades here in South Carolina. I love the eccentricities, the warmth, the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work ethic, and I love the way that most Southerners can embrace the positive aspects of their history, yet realize the need to mitigate some of the negative currents that have run through our legacy.
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IF COLUMBIA and Richland County officials aren’t careful, their already-strained relationship could take a sharp turn for the worse.
IT’S EASY TO get so frustrated by all the things the Legislature is not accomplishing — or even trying to accomplish — that we fail to notice when it finally does something significant. That happened last month, when good-government advocates prevailed in a quarter-century effort to create an independent state inspector general with significant authority to not only root out the cliched “waste, fraud and abuse” but force state agencies to do things in a smarter way.
THE NATION LOOKS to South Carolina every four years to see what we have to say about the presidential race. I look to the presidential race to see what it says about South Carolina, and this year’s picture wasn’t particularly flattering.
Social Security’s disability program is a political quagmire — and a metaphor for why federal spending and budget deficits are so difficult to control. The numbers are too big; the details too complicated; and the choices, when faced, too wrenching. President Obama’s new budget, projected at $3.5 trillion or more, will raise all these problems. Experience suggests that little will be done to rein in long-term spending and deficits.
Criticism of Mitt Romney for lacking a coherent message is grossly unfair. He has been forthright, consistent and even eloquent in pressing home his campaign’s central theme: Mitt Romney desperately wants to be president.