South Carolina voting rights under the axe
By Chuck Saylors SCSBA President and Greenville County Schools Board Member In America, choosing our government is a sacred right and duty. Our vote is our voice, guaranteeing that we are stewards of our communities and our state and our nation. It’s the essential expression of what it means to be American. That’s why every…
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Let’s make 2020 the year of the community
By Quint Studer If you looked only at the big picture, you’d have to say we live in deeply troubled times. It seems we’ve never been more polarized. Political discourse feels more like a war zone than a thoughtful national conversation. But what happens when you zoom in closer? That’s the question I ask myself…
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South Carolina – A Decade in Review
By Alan Cooper Publisher WhosOnTheMove.com As South Carolina turns the page on the decade, I’d like to paint a picture of where we were in 2010, where we are now, and whether we are well positioned strategically as we start the next decade. There has been a seismic shift in the South Carolina economy…
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Better Together: How Meals on Wheels of Greenville is so much “more than meals”
By Catriona Carlisle, Executive Director of Meals on Wheels of Greenville In 2019, Meals on Wheels of Greenville sought to better emphasize a simple mantra that we long embraced – we are so much “more than meals.” Yes, our volunteer meal delivery service is the cornerstone of our mission, but I’ve been lucky enough in…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: on-the-move, op-ed
The inflation mystery
By Robert Samuelson The virtual elimination of inflation is one of the great uncovered stories of our time. If you go back to the 1970s and the early 1980s — a period when, admittedly, many of today’s Americans weren’t alive — surging inflation seemed unsolvable. From 1975 to 1980, the consumer price index (CPI)…
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Why the global economy remains so weak
By Robert Samuelson We’ve seen this movie before. The top economists at the International Monetary Fund — the global agency created after World War II to promote stability and growth in the world economy — unveil their latest forecast, which is almost always weaker than its previous forecast. The economists hold out the possibility…
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Is Trump’s tail wagging Erdogan?
By Kathleen Parker So let me get this straight: President Trump ordered the removal of American troops from northern Syria, knowing that Turkey would invade, seize and occupy Kurd-occupied land. But now, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did just that, killing Kurds who had been U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic…
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Stop naming things after politicians
By Richard Eckstrom, S.C. Comptroller They’re a staple of the incumbent politician’s toolkit: the countless recognitions, resolutions, proclamations, ribbon-cuttings, and photo-ops which are more ceremonial than anything else, but which nonetheless pay dividends for elected officials. Certainly, these ceremonial activities can be a good way to recognize someone’s good deeds or bring attention to a…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: government, on-the-move, op-ed
The malevolent aura of Donald J. Trump
By Kathleen Parker COLUMBIA, S.C. — As the world seems consumed by all things Ukraine, it’s time once again to dust off the ever-popular, evergreen headline: Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. As in, what happened to the nation’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani? He held so much promise. He was the prosecutor and leader who cleaned up New…
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China won’t die laughing
By Kathleen Parker Dictators. Always so humorous. Take China’s communist officialdom. You’ve probably heard about the “South Park” episode last week that the Chinese government didn’t find amusing. And the fake apology from the comedy show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. No? Well, then, you must live in China, where free speech isn’t…
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Quids and quos gone wild
By Kathleen Parker It’s fair to say at this juncture that America’s Quid and Ukraine’s Quo have been caught in bed together. The fevered search for a damning quid pro quo since the White House released a readout of Donald Trump’s July 25 telephone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — in which Trump…
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Democrats, show me the message
By Kathleen Parker We long ago established that Donald Trump is a bad guy. We’ve multiple times said, “This is it. They’ve got to get rid of him.” So what’s so new and awful that the president of the United States must now be impeached? Maybe a lot; maybe not so much. The Department of…
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Dissent at the Fed
By Robert Samuelson The battle to control the Federal Reserve is being waged on many fronts. There’s President Trump’s relentless tirades against Fed Chairman Jerome Powell — and Powell’s low-key rejoinders. There’s the clamor from investors (aka Wall Street) for easy credit to prop up stock prices. Some economists favor cheap credit to sustain…
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The other victim of the Kavanaugh saga
By Kathleen Parker Every good story needs a hero, and the saga of Brett Kavanaugh’s rise to the Supreme Court has provided one: Leland Keyser. She also became a victim when her longtime friend, Christine Blasey Ford, decided to hit refresh on a decades-old high school incident that apparently only Ford remembers. Keyser is…
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The odd couple: Trump and Powell
By Robert Samuelson If ever there was a case of political miscalculation, it’s the collapsing relationship between President Trump and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome (“Jay”) Powell. Trump seems to have believed that he could easily manipulate Powell into embracing an aggressively easy monetary policy whose main objective was Trump’s reelection.…
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Boomers crush millennials. Read all about it!
By Robert Samuelson As a case study in the workings of modern democracy, the handling of Social Security by successive presidents and Congress over recent decades is a deeply disturbing exercise. The facts are not in dispute. Congress and the White House have agreed to benefits for retirees and the disabled that are woefully…
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The heresy of hearsay
By Kathleen Parker The recent fiasco at The New York Times, which last weekend published the latest uncorroborated sexual-assault accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was a monument to hearsay and a travesty of journalistic ethics. The story, since modified to include crucial information, was an adapted excerpt from a book — “The…
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Should we love or hate ‘negative’ interest rates?
By Robert Samuelson The idea that interest rates could be “negative” seems so counterintuitive that it defies easy understanding. Yet, here we are. Some foreign central banks (among them, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Denmark and Sweden) have adopted them. No less a figure than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan…
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Trump won — again
By Kathleen Parker Watching the Democratic presidential debate Thursday night left one clear impression: Donald Trump won. Please don’t shoot the messenger. My left index finger recoiled a bit as it reached for the “T” on the keyboard. But it’s true for this reason: Democrats are too earnest. They care too much. They’re too…
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Will the real poverty rate please stand up?
By Robert Samuelson It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse. Consider the Census Bureau’s latest estimates. In 2018, the official poverty rate was 11.8%, down from 12.3% in…
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Through Mark Sanford’s looking glass
By Kathleen Parker Once upon a time, Mark Sanford might have been a contender, but there’s too much water under the bridges that stretch from this city of steeples to his erstwhile home on Sullivan’s Island. The disgraced former South Carolina governor and congressman announced Sunday that he’s running against Donald Trump for the…
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The globalization backlash
By Robert Samuelson The verdict of history is that the trade war that’s now raging between the United States and China will lead to no good — with consequences that could go well beyond trade and threaten the world’s geopolitical and economic stability. How this plays out is anyone’s guess, but we should not…
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A needed step toward improving S.C.’s beleaguered prisons
By Richard Eckstrom, S.C. Comptroller First, let’s acknowledge the obvious: All is not well in South Carolina’s prison system. Its troubles have been pretty well-documented over the past few years, from inmates acquiring contraband – such as cell phones, drugs and weapons – to a deadly riot last year at the Bishopville, S.C. prison.…
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Should the Fed fight back?
By Robert Samuelson “To the barricades.” That’s one way of characterizing Bill Dudley’s recent proposal that the Federal Reserve fight back against President Trump’s unrelenting attacks. Although it’s a phenomenally bad idea, it has the curious and paradoxical effect of revealing the primary defects of Trump’s economic policies. First, some background. Dudley — a…
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Waiting for Dorian
By Kathleen Parker For the Eastern Seaboard, Dorian has become the Godot of hurricanes. Barely moving after hovering over the Bahamas for what seemed an eternity, the former Category 5 storm has occupied weather watchers and coastal observers for several days now. It has potentially forever altered the topography and shape of some Bahamian…
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Have we lost our economic dynamism?
By Robert Samuelson On this Labor Day, the American economy — the source of jobs for almost all of us — is full of promise and peril. It is hard not to be impressed with its job-creation capacity. Since the low point of the 2007-09 Great Recession, payroll employment has increased by 21.7 million…
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The Old South gets a new college president
By Kathleen Parker From a childhood laboring in China’s cotton and wheat fields to the presidency of the College of Charleston, Andrew Hsu’s story is anything but ordinary. His extraordinary vision for the college, including the addition of a top-notch engineering school, speaks to shifting demographics, job markets and the need for greater diversity,…
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A world on fire
By Kathleen Parker A question for this moment: If the Earth’s lungs were on fire and the doctor refused to treat it, would there be cause for a third-party intervention? This is a rhetorical query for now, but it surely nags the conscience of an outraged international community as the Amazon rainforest is ablaze…
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The elderly aren’t so poor after all
By Robert Samuelson It was probably inevitable that we would have a “retirement crisis” as hordes of baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) sprint and stumble into their “golden years.” But it’s a fake crisis, even though it’s already becoming a staple of journalism and politics. It presumes that most Americans can’t…
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S.C. must act wisely with $350 million surplus
By Richard Eckstrom, S.C. Comptroller I’ll start with the good news: I recently closed the books for the fiscal year that ended June 30, and even after some additional “contingent” spending at year-end the state finished with $350 million in surplus revenues. Annual tax revenue totaled $8.8 billion, an increase of 8.6 percent over last year.…
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The great deficit gamble
By Robert Samuelson It’s getting harder and harder to write these budget columns, because it must be obvious to almost everyone by now that hardly anyone in Washington (or perhaps any place) cares about the budget deficits. The assumption is that we can raise spending and cut taxes forever — or until some crisis…
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To heck with profits!
By Robert Samuelson We’ve been here before: one of those portentous moments when corporate America promises to be more socially “responsible.” These episodes are, it seems, a permanent feature of modern capitalism. Just this week, the Business Roundtable, a group representing the leaders of major corporations, issued a “statement on the purpose of a…
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Learning from the Great Depression
By Robert Samuelson What is striking about the latest bouts of financial turmoil — the recent wild swings in global stock and bond markets — is that they provide a sobering reminder of the potential hazards of economic instability. There are parallels between the present tumultuous situation and past episodes of economic disruption, including…
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Here’s why we may be underspending on defense
By Robert Samuelson I’ve written several columns this year on military spending, contending — against conventional wisdom — that we don’t spend more than the next eight countries combined, including China and Russia. That startling claim is often made, and if it’s untrue, we’ve been deluding ourselves for years. Rather than overspending on defense,…
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Is the economy turning against Trump?
By Robert Samuelson To have a recession or not — that is the question. It also encompassed last week’s most important political news, notwithstanding all the public attention understandably focused on the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. There is growing evidence of a possible recession. If one materializes, President Trump could lose…
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The shaming of America
By Kathleen Parker One of the everlasting social forces in directing human behavior — shame — has become part of the 2020 presidential race. And one of the most shameful things in these times is to be thought or labeled a racist. As it should be, if true. Thus, some Democrats and others hoping…
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The China-America trade crackup
By Robert Samuelson Donald Trump sold himself to the American public as an expert deal-maker. At the top of his list was a promised trade bargain with China that would boost U.S. exports and remedy some of the more egregious examples of discrimination against American firms. It isn’t working as planned. To the contrary:…
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A tale of Zorro and Little St. Jeff’s
By Kathleen Parker The more we learn, the more Jeffrey Epstein resembles an evil comic book character for the developmentally arrested intellectual — the charming-but-lurid mastermind with a plot to take over the world by impregnating scores of women on a remote desert estate. Last Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the financier/convicted…
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The Fed’s jobs machine
By Robert Samuelson Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has not been shy about saying what he’s trying to do: prolong the economy’s expansion so that it creates more jobs for those who, in the past, have often felt left out. The Fed increasingly sees itself as a social agency dedicated to job creation. That…
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Donald Trump’s rhetorical race war
By Kathleen Parker The idea of a race war has long animated white supremacists, who seem to think that such a conflict would result in a white victory, whatever that would mean. Dylann Roof — the white man-boy who murdered nine black parishioners during Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church here four summers…
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The indestructible welfare state
By Robert Samuelson It seems unavoidable. Like it or not, the U.S. welfare system is bound to play a big role in the 2020 election. The recent Democratic debate on health care is just a prelude to a broader discussion. The battle lines are clearly drawn. Democrats deplore rising inequality. They see a revitalized…
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A waste of Mueller’s time
By Kathleen Parker The picture that spoke far more words than former special counsel Robert Mueller uttered during last week’s hearings was taken by renowned photographer David Hume Kennerly. The close-up of Mueller’s face was a portrait of rare depth, the sort one is more likely to find on a Leonardo da Vinci canvas…
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Are we shortchanging the military?
By Robert Samuelson The military-industrial complex isn’t bankrupting us — though some on the left still cling nostalgically to the belief that it is. It’s fiction. We need to be clear about this. As I’ve written before, one of the great uncovered stories in Washington is the defense budget versus the welfare state. Defense…
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The Fed’s dreary choices
By Robert Samuelson It’s a done deal. Almost everyone, or so it seems, believes the Federal Reserve will cut short-term interest rates next week when its main decision-making body meets. President Trump favors lower rates. So do many economists, including some fierce Trump critics. Similarly, Fed Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell says the Fed wants…
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Plant a tree, hug a bee
By Kathleen Parker Sometimes big problems can be solved simply. At the moment, our biggest problem — climate change — can be ended by simply planting trees. OK, so a trillion trees, according to a Swiss study published earlier this month in the journal Science. But how hard is that, really? An equally serious and…
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Community newspaper column by S.C. Comptroller Richard Eckstrom
By Richard Eckstrom S.C. Comptroller Most of us probably remember learning things in high school that we rarely if ever use as adults – like how to calculate the area of a trapezoid or how to solve a quadratic equation. Yet nearly all of us do, at some point, need to take out a…
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Here’s how the internet attacked me
By Robert Samuelson I got hacked. It was scary. In this age of cybereverything, we all live in dread that we’re going to be somehow attacked by the internet. Nearly everyone seems vulnerable. The internet is changing how we work, play, socialize, shop — and what we love and fear. We’re all exposed to…
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The color of her skin
By Kathleen Parker Going out on a limb here: Donald Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things. Not to name call or anything. And all of those observable facts seem to sit quite well with his base of supporters, most Republicans of Congress and, apparently, with the…
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Will the global debt bomb explode again?
By Robert Samuelson Debt is the crux of the matter. If you want to understand what makes the world vulnerable to a global recession or, possibly, something much worse, you’ve got to come to grips with the worldwide debt buildup. It’s not the only candidate for calamity, but it ranks first among the possibilities.…
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Watch out for falling rocks
By Kathleen Parker Don’t breathe a word, but President Trump is up to something. His insulting, too-dumb-to-fail comments about four freshmen female members of Congress has the civilized world’s trousers in a twist, and it’s not a pretty sight. The president tweeted that the four women of color, ” … who originally came from…
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