As is the case every holiday season, we've been getting bombarded this week with Christmas greetings from dozens of politicians who spend the most of the year ripping off your tax dollars (or campaigning for the opportunity to rip off your tax dollars). As it turns out, Christmas is more than just
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The City of Columbia, S.C. says it will begin enforcing anti-profanity ordinances within its city limits ... as evidenced by the appearance of numerous anti-profanity signs at city parks. WTF, right? The city ordinances cited on the new signs are 14-91 (disorderly conduct) and 15-1 (rules of a
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The Occupy Columbia movement - such as it is - is supposed to be leaderless. It was also supposed to gradually fade away into irrelevance given its dwindling numbers and lack of a cohesive agenda. That's not the case anymore. Walid Nicola Hakim (pictured above with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
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For years, this website has railed on the spectacular failure of the "Innovista" boondoggle - which has squandered tens of millions of tax dollars on an ill-conceived speculative economic development deal in the heart of South Carolina's capital city. The brainchild of S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell
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After using the issue of transparency to get elected in 2010, South Carolina politicians have kicked it to the curb in 2011. "Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am," basically. In fact, it looks as though S.C. Sen. Glenn McConnell - a status quo defender who has fought transparency reforms tooth and nail
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Earlier today, FITS posted a story that incorrectly associated Columbia, S.C. Mayor Steve Benjamin with a taxpayer-funded gym that's being built in Camden, S.C. As Benjamin is not the mayor of Camden, S.C., he obviously has nothing to do with that colossal waste of taxpayer money. We apologize to
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S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt and Columbia, S.C. Mayor Steve Benjamin will lead a massive South Carolina delegation to Paris, France next month. Their excuse for going? The Paris Air Show, which will be held from June 20-26. Billed as the world's largest gathering of aircraft
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We do our best around here to keep government (at all levels) honest ... exposing unnecessary spending, shady deal-making, inefficient management and other forms of taxpayer-funded tomfoolery. It's what we do, and unlike the mainstream media we don't stop at reporting - we aggressively lobby on behalf
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Columbia, S.C. has been named one of America's "drunkest cities," according to Men's Health magazine. The list was based on several factors including death rates from liver disease, alcohol-related car crashes, binge-drinking frequency, the number of DUI arrests and severity of DUI penalties. South
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Not content with raising people's energy bills to pay for a cash guzzling, government-run bus fleet, Columbia mayor Steve Benjamin now wants to hand out $20,000 a pop to downtown building owners who agree to improve the "aesthetics" of their properties. Benjamin will roll out the specifics of his
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So ... we promised that we would try to make this daily "post" thing a regular feature on our website, and after dutifully (and painfully) shaking off the holiday hangover that's exactly what we're doing. As always, if you’ve got a link you would like us to include in the "post," feel free to email
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City of Columbia, S.C. residents are pissed off about a plan that would raise their energy bills by $1.61 each month to pay for a money-losing, government-run bus system. In fact, we stumbled upon this old campaign sign for City Councilwoman Belinda Gergel (above) - who along with Columbia mayor Steve
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