Wind Turbine Test Facility

South Carolina is “in a race” for a 45 million dollar test facility for super size wind turbines to be funded by the federal government. Other states on the track are Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Michigan.

Oh, to win this race. It is imperative that South Carolina become energy independent as soon as possible, and such a facility could act as a catapult in that direction.  But I wonder which state will win the race. Do we really think it will be the state from which a congressman(and I do use that term loosely), at a joint session of our nation’s congress, shouted out “you lie” at the chief executive?

Though it would be a really great thing for our state, I am not holding my breath.

Joe Wilson

Maybe next time he could throw a shoe. Maybe he could run naked through the chamber.

Maybe Mr. Wilson’s representation of our state should be reconsidered.

Gresham Barrett editorial

Rep. Barrett’s editorial today states that the economy is now stabilized.

The Financial Times reports today that Caterpillar will lay off 20,000, Sprint/Nextel 8,000, Home Depot 7,000, and General Motors 2,000. Pfizer(after acquiring Wyeth) will lay off 19,000, 15% of the combined workforce.

I suggest to Rep. Gresham Barrett, of the 3rd congressional district of South Carolina, that he could be slightly off base in his analysis of our current economic situation.

Congressional Travel

To those recently outraged by the Detroit automaker’s CEO’s recent travel by private jet to hearings in Washington, I say that what we need to look at is how much congress spends on travel and on housing.

I vaguely remember a news article when Nancy Pelosi first became speaker of the house, about her request for a larger plane so she and her entire staff could fly from coast to coast without refueling. It is time to put a limit on congressional travel and here are some initial recommendations, open for discussion:

ONE round trip first class ticket per senator and congressman per congressional session. If they want to travel their families then they are welcome to pay for it. This goes for congressional staff as well. Staff works in Washington as locals, and can pay for their own travel.

Housing should be limited to five thousand dollars a month, prorated for the time that congress is in session only. Again, congressional staff works in Washington as locals and receives no money for housing.

How much do we spend on each congressional office for staff salaries, travel and housing anyway? I sure would like to see those numbers.

Debt/Bailout

The current economic crisis has been spurred by deregulated greed of mortgage lenders, dubious decisions by home buyers to accept adjustable rate mortgages without reading the fine print, and global bankers who were more than happy to overlook the underlying structural problems of these loans and spin them into investment vehicles worth many times the initial value of the paper- but the bottom line here is the problem is a problem of over extension of debt.

Bad mortgage debt in this country is just another example of how we have been living beyond our means for decades, building up government and consumer debt at unprecedented levels.

Before we come out of the current recession would be a good time for South Carolinian’s to take a good look at how they are living. To practice buying locally and regionally as much as possible, to work on getting out of debt except for a mortgage(No More Credit Card Debt), to establish peer to peer loan operations within the state so when people need to borrow money, the interest(i.e. wealth) does not flow out of the state, and to greatly reduce the amount of oil we import.

If doubling the national debt happens to staive off a recession now, we will pay for it down the road, and it is time for South Carolina to start preparing for the future.

Keep it in our back yard

I’m pretty sure we don’t want the senators from California, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, meddling in our state’s affairs. So let’s have our senator, Mmmm DeMinty stay out of municipal affairs in California, shall we?

Mmmm, DeMinty

“U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., will be campaigning on behalf of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney today in S.C. DeMint will greet voters in Greenville and the Lowcountry.”

This is the blurb from The State regarding our Senator’s swing through the state, talking the talk in support of his presidential candidate.

I’ve said before I have no problem with the Senator traveling on his own dime to do this, but what is it costing the taxpayers? Who in the Senator’s entourage is on the federal payroll? How many are traveling with him and are we paying for it all? It’s important that officials we as a state elect are clear that we expect them to have their own office’s finances in line with other efforts towards making government more efficient and less costly.

It is in the best interest of this goal that officials we elect to Washington start publishing their office’s budgets, along with a breakdown of the expenditures.

This, people, is what would be called walking the walk.

Congressman Inglis takes trip to South Pole on taxpayer’s money

Bob Inglis, global warming skeptic who has recently felt the warm breeze of political change in his face, has been taking jaunts around the world on taxpayer money to see for himself, most recently to Antarctica. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I send South Carolinians’ to Washington to stop unnecessary spending such as ‘fact finding’ trips to far flung locales, not to get on board the congressional lollipop train.

It’s time for our representatives to get serious about making government smaller and more efficient, to get serious or get out. When South Carolina sends its representatives to Washington we expect them to stay in Washington and get the job done, period.

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