Better Together: How Meals on Wheels of Greenville is so much “more than meals”
November 26, 2019
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 –…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: on-the-move, op-ed
The inflation mystery
October 23, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Why the global economy remains so weak
October 16, 2019
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…
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Is Trump’s tail wagging Erdogan?
October 15, 2019
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…
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Stop naming things after politicians
October 14, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: government, on-the-move, op-ed
The malevolent aura of Donald J. Trump
October 14, 2019
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.…
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China won’t die laughing
October 9, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Quids and quos gone wild
October 5, 2019
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…
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Democrats, show me the message
September 30, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Dissent at the Fed
September 30, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
The other victim of the Kavanaugh saga
September 25, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
The odd couple: Trump and Powell
September 23, 2019
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”)…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Boomers crush millennials. Read all about it!
September 18, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
The heresy of hearsay
September 18, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Should we love or hate ‘negative’ interest rates?
September 16, 2019
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,…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Trump won — again
September 16, 2019
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…
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Will the real poverty rate please stand up?
September 11, 2019
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…
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Through Mark Sanford’s looking glass
September 11, 2019
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…
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The globalization backlash
September 6, 2019
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…
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A needed step toward improving S.C.’s beleaguered prisons
September 6, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: government, on-the-move, op-ed
Should the Fed fight back?
September 4, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Waiting for Dorian
September 3, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Have we lost our economic dynamism?
September 3, 2019
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…
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The Old South gets a new college president
September 2, 2019
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…
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A world on fire
August 27, 2019
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…
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The elderly aren’t so poor after all
August 27, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
S.C. must act wisely with $350 million surplus
August 26, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: on-the-move, op-ed
The great deficit gamble
August 26, 2019
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…
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To heck with profits!
August 21, 2019
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…
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Learning from the Great Depression
August 19, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Here’s why we may be underspending on defense
August 14, 2019
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,…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
Is the economy turning against Trump?
August 12, 2019
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…
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The shaming of America
August 12, 2019
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…
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The China-America trade crackup
August 7, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
A tale of Zorro and Little St. Jeff’s
August 3, 2019
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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
The Fed’s jobs machine
August 3, 2019
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…
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Donald Trump’s rhetorical race war
July 31, 2019
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…
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The indestructible welfare state
July 31, 2019
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…
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A waste of Mueller’s time
July 29, 2019
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.…
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Are we shortchanging the military?
July 28, 2019
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…
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The Fed’s dreary choices
July 24, 2019
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…
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Plant a tree, hug a bee
July 23, 2019
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…
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Community newspaper column by S.C. Comptroller Richard Eckstrom
July 22, 2019
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…
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Here’s how the internet attacked me
July 22, 2019
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.…
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The color of her skin
July 22, 2019
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…
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Will the global debt bomb explode again?
July 17, 2019
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,…
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Watch out for falling rocks
July 17, 2019
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…
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Caslen should be fully embraced, not demeaned
July 11, 2019
By Bill Connor AN OPEN LETTER TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA: I am a 2005 University of South Carolina School of Law graduate. I was commissioned…
Read MorePosted in: midlandsbiz Category: education, on-the-move, op-ed
It’s the economy, stupid. Again.
July 10, 2019
By Robert Samuelson The conventional wisdom holds — with good reason — that the economy may well settle the 2020 election. If it remains strong, President Trump stands a…
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Acosta displayed rare cowardice before justice — and needs to step down
July 10, 2019
By Kathleen Parker It helps to know people in high places, especially if you’re a sex offender and your name is Jeffrey Epstein. Some might say that Epstein, the…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: op-ed
