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Outrageous Behavior

WHAT IN THE HELL ARE S.C. LAWMAKERS THINKING?

FITSNews - April 9, 2008 - Over the past year, we’ve called the men and women who serve in South Carolina’s General Ass-embly “morons,” “ass-clowns,” “communists,” “mouth-breathers,” “numbnuts,” “retards” and “dipsh*ts” (among other things).

Well, today we’re apologizing for everything … it turns out we were giving them way too much credit.

How else can one explain what happened yesterday in the brainless void known as the South Carolina State House? Seriously, these idiots have turned f*cking up into an art form over the past two centuries, but this time they’ve truly “done gone and outdid demselves,” to borrow a popular phrase from their own vernacular.

We’ll start with the South Carolina Senate, which decided yesterday to cut $10 million worth of tourism advertising and $7 million in economic development money from the state budget so that it could keep $18.5 million in a legislative slush fund that doles out money for worthless pork barrel projects.

Of course that outright display of contempt for the best interests of the taxpayers was downright commendable compared to what the S.C. House of Representatives did …

One day after state revenues were downgraded by $90 million, the House decided to give itself a nice little backdoor pay raise yesterday as part of a bill which will add another $2.4 billion to the unfunded liability of our state retirement system.

But what’s even more egregious than legislators sweetening their retirement packages at a time when funds are being drained away from tourism and economic development needs is the cowardly way the House accomplished its self-serving boondoggle.

Put simply, they did it precisely the way you’d expect a bunch of worthless pussies to do it - anonymously.

Despite the best efforts of Rep. Gary Simrill and several of his conservative allies in the House (Reps. Nathan Ballentine, Mick Mulvaney and Eric Bedingfield, to name a few) Speaker Bobby Harrell unilaterally steamrolled parliamentary procedure and dictated that House members were going to pass this controversial measure on a “voice vote.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the daily evasion of responsibility that your government perpetrates using these seemingly innocuous procedural terms, Harrell’s insistence on a “voice vote” meant there would be no public record of who voted “Aye” and who voted “Nay” to slip themselves a little extra cash while the rest of the state suffers - and suffers as a direct result of their recently-concluded three-year spending orgy, lest we forget.

In fact, just seconds before Speaker Harrell determined all by himself that a majority of the House of Representatives had shouted “Aye, give us our secret backdoor pay raises” as opposed to “Nay, we want to look out for the taxpayers for a change,” the exact same House of Representatives voted by a 3-to-1 margin (on the record this time) to keep alive an amendment that would have done away with this boondoggle.

Seriously, what a bunch of parliamentary pussies.

They took one vote with their names on it to make it look like they were standing up for your best interests, then they turned around literally seconds later and took another vote without their names on it to screw over your best interests and put your money in their pockets.

But hey, at least they got the fat new retirement benefits they wanted all along, right?

Seriously, people. This sh*t has got to stop.

We should never allow these people to run up another $2.4 billion we can’t pay for without at least making them put their damn names on it.

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