Sic Willie Has A Posse

MAINSTREAM MEDIA JOIN SIC’S FIGHT AGAINST SOUTH CAROLINA’S IDIOTIC LAWMAKERS

FITSNews – July 6, 2008 – It’s been said that all we do around here is criticize people without offering any solutions of our own.

Obviously that’s bullshit, but it is nice when our friends in the mainstream media here in South Carolina show some love to what we’re saying.

Several such epiphanies took place over the Fourth of July weekend, as newspapers in every corner of the Palmetto State rose up against the anti-intellectual inbreds currently in charge of our favorite little ass-backward, upside down triangle.

Most of the editorial angst was directed at South Carolina’s so-called “competitive grants” program, which doled out about $10 million in utterly useless spending last week at a time when we’re cutting $11 million in funding from our state’s tourism agency – one of the few government expenditures which actually produces a solid return on investment.

Thanks again, Hugh Leatherman and Dan Cooper.

Anyway, it was nice to have some company this weekend in our ongoing attempts to talk some sense into these idiots …

Let’s start off with the Charleston Post and Courier , which had this to say about the controversial “competitive grants” program:

While the state prisons and schools face state funding shortfalls in a tough budget year, a legislative grants program is paying for a variety of festivals and other local projects throughout the state. A detailed list of beneficiaries of the “competitive grants” program shows funding at variance with the state’s priority needs.

… it’s hard to defend the general expenditure of $10 million when the state’s prisons and schools face what Gov. Mark Sanford says is a $30 million deficit. Amply providing for prisons and schools is an essential responsibility of state government. Providing grants to balloon festivals, and the like, isn’t.

Up the road at La Socialista , the ire was similarly strong:

HANDS DOWN, this year’s award for most ridiculous use of state tax dollars has to be the $10,000 that the board of the Legislature’s Competitive Grants slush fund handed to the town of South Congaree “to purchase Inflatables to be used at the Western Weekend Festival, Trunk & Treat, Kids Camp, etc.”

But as absurd as it is to think that such “investments” spur tourism — that folks in are Ohio saying “They’re having a Western Weekend Festival down in South Congaree, South Carolina, and they’ve even got $10,000 worth of new inflatables. Gas up the SUV, and let’s go” — the problem isn’t so much that the state is paying for community groups to put on festivals, for local governments to prettify their downtowns, for the Junior League to fix up its consignment shop.

The problem is that the state is throwing around $10 million on local and even private extras while the prisons are understaffed and there’s not enough money to run the school buses — or any other state vehicles, since lawmakers didn’t provide for soaring fuel costs.

The Beaufort Gazette also weighed in on the legislative slush fund, decrying the pattern of budget-busting waste and the impact it has on core governmental functions:

Which is more important in South Carolina, festivals and pet projects or transporting students to school without running a deficit?

Of course, the real issue here is that South Carolina has absolutely no clue how to effectively tax and efficiently spend money as a state.

We absolutely cripple any shot we might otherwise have at economic growth with our antiquated tax code and socialist tendencies, and then we exacerbate the problem by failing to fund “first things first,” as Gov. Mark Sanford is fond of saying.

From the Spartanburg Herald-Journal this weekend, we have a particularly tidy recap of the problem on the tax side:

Over the past couple of decades, the General Assembly has passed a series of poorly considered, piecemeal tax changes that have had unintended consequences. Those consequences have added up to shift the tax burden and create the unstable and inequitable system the state has today …

What the General Assembly has discussed but never really accomplished is to take an overall look at the tax system and redesign it. South Carolina needs a tax system that is fair, less complicated and allows school districts and local governments to raise their own revenue so they are not dependent on the state.

Columbia has been going the other way. Lawmakers’ half-baked reforms have made the system more complicated, less fair and less stable while concentrating power in the legislature. While they are home, they need to see the results of their actions and change direction when next year’s legislative session begins.

And in a rare nugget of wisdom from La Socialista , we have this encapsulation of the spending problem:

The responsible way to run a government is pretty simple, even if difficult: You figure out what’s most important and provide enough money to do it well. Then you do the same with the second priority, and so on until you run out of money.

In other words, whether it was the immediate insult of the “competitive grants” or the ongoing insult of their chronic failure to reform the way we tax and spend, lawmakers got their asses handed to them all over the state this weekend, and deservedly so.

… and Sic Willie saw all that he had wrought, and he pronounced it “good.”

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