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TexasTowelie's JournalIsakson & Perdue Push for $3 Billion Hurricane Michael Relief Package
U.S. Senators David Perdue (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) introduced a supplemental disaster relief package to provide critical funding for Georgia and other states recovering from recent hurricane and wildfire damage.
“Farmers in Georgia and other states across the country are hurting from historic hurricanes and devastating wildfires,” said Senator Perdue, member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “We cannot wait around for Congress to complete this year’s government funding. Federal disaster relief should be considered immediately. In October, President Trump and Vice President Pence both saw the devastation firsthand and promised to help Georgia and other states rebuild. Now, Congress has the opportunity to help them keep that promise. I will continue to fight for disaster relief until our farmers and rural communities have the resources they need to get back on their feet.”
“Georgia farmers are still recovering from natural disasters in 2017 and 2018, and they need all the support they can get,” said Senator Isakson. “We’ve got to help them and the other farm communities who have had natural disasters change their lives through no fault of their own, and I will keep working to get them the federal aid they need.”
This supplemental funding package will provide about $3 billion for disaster relief across the country, including critical funds for Georgia farmers recovering in the wake of Hurricane Michael. Perdue and Isakson plan to continue raising this issue in the Senate until Congress approves disaster funding.
Read more: http://evans.allongeorgia.com/national-politics/isakson-perude-push-for-3-billion-hurricane-michael-relief-package/
Textbook 'scam' alleged in federal lawsuit against SC's biggest technical college
A used textbook seller is taking South Carolina’s largest public technical college to federal court alleging it ran a “scam” on its own students by inking a deal with one of the country’s leading textbook publishers.
Trident Technical College and President Mary Thornley misled students about textbook pricing and prevented them from shopping around for secondhand classroom materials, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston.
The lawsuit comes as seismic shifts are restructuring the college textbook industry. Textbook prices could grow out of control in the long run if other colleges continue to sign such exclusive deals with publishers and edge out the secondhand market, according to the lawsuit.
“I think the bigger picture of what they’re trying to do here is they’re trying to eliminate competition, and once that happens they can charge whatever they want,” said Jeremy Cucinella, regional manager of Virginia Pirate Corp., which owns Textbook Brokers in North Charleston.
Read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/textbook-scam-alleged-in-federal-lawsuit-against-sc-s-biggest/article_d266c94a-262e-11e9-a6dd-ab6ac37fa3d1.html
South Carolina gets 4 legitimate offers to buy Santee Cooper. 3 would pay off VC Summer debt
COLUMBIA, SC -- The state of South Carolina has received four legitimate offers to buy all of Santee Cooper and pay off the state-owned utility’s $8 billion in debt, a consultant wrote in a report released late Friday.
At least three of the non-binding offers, subject to further negotiation, would ensure the 2 million South Carolinians who get their power from Santee Cooper would pay no more for the failed V.C. Summer nuclear project if the S.C. General Assembly decides to sell the utility, according to the report from Virginia-based ICF.
The 40-page report indicates the sale of Santee Cooper would leave its customers paying less for the V.C. Summer debacle than customers of SCE&G, the majority partner in the failed $9 billion project. SCE&G customers collectively must pay an additional $2.3 billion for two unfinished reactors over the next 20 years even that utility was bought by Virginia-based Dominion Energy earlier this year.
Currently, the customers that Santee Cooper directly serves are on the hook to pay roughly $6,200 more per household in higher rates for the unfinished reactors over the next four decades. Customers of the 20 co-ops who buy power from Santee Cooper contractually are obligated to pay about $4,200 per household for the failed project.
Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article225394705.html
South Carolina senators resurrect bill to bring back the electric chair, add firing squad
S.C. senators revived a proposal Wednesday to bring back the electric chair for the state’s death row executions, as well as add firing squads as an execution option.
The bill passed the state Senate by a 26-13 vote, split mostly along party lines. It now heads to the S.C. House, where a similar proposal died last year.
Backed by Senate Republicans, the bill is an attempt to address the S.C. Corrections Department’s inability to carry out executions because it does not have the chemicals needed for lethal injections.
Drug companies won’t sell the state the chemicals, fearing legal challenges and bad publicity, said state Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry, a supporter of the electrocution proposal.
Currently, the state’s 35 death row inmates can insist on lethal injection, effectively blocking their executions.
Read more: https://www.independentmail.com/story/news/2019/01/31/senators-legislation-wants-electric-chair-firing-squad-south-carolina/2730176002/
Tensions flare in South Carolina State House over proposal to allow liquor sales on Sunday
COLUMBIA — A proposal to allow expanded Sunday liquor sales in 10 tourist-heavy S.C. counties sparked a tense debate Thursday between evangelicals and a state lawmaker who called them hypocrites.
“Judge not, (lest) ye be judged,” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, quoting the Bible as he began a minutes-long, heated response to a Republican lawmaker who said South Carolinians don’t want to see customers entering liquor stores as they drive home from church.
The proposal by state Rep. Gary Clary, R-Pickens, would allow stores to sell liquor on Sunday in 10 counties, as long as local leaders or county voters approve the expanded sales. The 10 counties are Beaufort, Charleston, Florence, Georgetown, Greenville, Horry, Lexington, Richland, Spartanburg and York.
A House Judiciary Committee panel passed the proposal to allow expanded sales after nearly an hour of debate in which state Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, and S.C. Baptist Convention representative Joe Mack decried liquor as a danger to public health and safety.
Read more: https://www.independentmail.com/story/news/2019/01/31/sunday-liquor-sales-debate-sparks-tension-south-carolina-legislature/2733185002/
Does Beto still have lightning in his bottle?
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump will deliver his State of the Union address, Gov. Greg Abbott will deliver his State of the State speech, and Beto O’Rourke will reveal his current state of mind to Oprah Winfrey in an interview in New York’s Times Square.
When it airs, in the weeks that follow on the Oprah Winfrey Network (Feb. 16, 8 p.m.) and in a podcast (Feb. 27) as one of “Oprah’s Super Soulful Conversations,” O’Rourke’s interview will be the most public appearance of the former congressman from El Paso since he somehow barreled out of a losing campaign for the U.S. Senate last November into what post-election polls indicated was the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 alongside old-shoe septuagenarians Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
In the interim, O’Rourke has done some solo roaming in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. He talked to folks at bars, cafes, museums and classrooms about their lives and the future of the country, obliquely looking for an answer about whether he should run for president, but without the self-defeating clamor and crush of media that would have inevitably ensued if he had done it in more of a public way than he did.
And then, as is his wont — he does have a literature degree from Columbia University — he wrote about the travels and posted it on social media, in this case on Medium, to the mockery of some who considered his earnest quest an act of white privilege or emo self-indulgence or Kerouacian quackery. But he seemed to find what he was looking for, a reason to run for president if that’s what he wanted.
Read more: https://www.statesman.com/news/20190201/does-beto-still-have-lightning-in-his-bottle
Former Dallas Cowboys assistant coach Wade Wilson dies at 60
Wade Wilson, the former longtime NFL quarterback and Cowboys assistant coach who helped mold quarterbacks Tony Romo and Dak Prescott, died Friday at his home in Coppell, the Cowboys announced. It was his 60th birthday.
Coppell Fire/EMS responded to a 911 call about 9 a.m. Friday but found Wilson deceased, according to a news release from Coppell police. The caller had advised that Wilson was not breathing and CPR was in progress.
Authorities will investigate the cause of death, but police said there was no indication of foul play.
News of Wilson's passing prompted an outpouring of tributes for Wilson, known affectionately as "Sticks," by his former teammates, players and colleagues.
Read more: https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-cowboys/cowboys/2019/02/01/former-dallas-cowboys-assistant-coach-wade-wilson-dies-60
Richland County Failed to Count Hundreds of November Election Ballots
Ballots cast by 1,040 Richland County voters were not counted in last November’s election — another voting mishap in the state’s capital county.
While the missing ballots did not affect the outcome of any races and accounted for less than 1 percent of the 142,805 votes cast in the county, the failure to count all votes damages public trust, experts said.
“It sends a very bad message that people cast a vote, and it might not matter,” Duncan Buell, a University of South Carolina professor who researches voting machines, said Thursday. “This is a big deal.”
Richland County missed 832 in-person absentee votes from two voting machines that malfunctioned and 208 votes from two machines at two precincts that were closed incorrectly, Richland County Elections Director Rokey Suleman said.
Read more: https://www.free-times.com/news/local-and-state-news/richland-county-failed-to-count-hundreds-of-november-election-ballots/article_d0857260-262a-11e9-9d0e-dbc1a2fa8cc5.html
Overrun by "racist homophobes," the South Carolina Secessionist Party is breaking up, leader says
The leader of a group that led public demonstrations of the Confederate flag across South Carolina says the group has become so dominated by racists and homophobes that he can no longer be associated with it.
The Anderson Independent Mail reported Friday that James Bessenger, leader of the S.C. Secessionist Party, said, "The organization was taking a turn I didn't want it to take."
"The people genuinely interested in the history are less in number than people who are blatant and racist homophobes," Bessenger told the Independent Mail. "I don't want to be associated with an organization or movement riddled with those types of people."
The group's Facebook page has reportedly been deleted.
For anyone unfamiliar with the S.C. Secessionist Party: The group is not actually an organized political party, but rather mobilizes around general individual liberty issues, including prominently flying the Confederate flag in public places.
Read more: https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2019/01/28/overrun-by-racist-homophobes-the-sc-secessionist-party-is-breaking-up-leader-says
Nikki Haley said to be asking four-times the median S.C. household income for a single speaking gig
CNBC reported this morning that Nikki Haley, the former S.C. governor and U.N. ambassador, is asking $200,000 for speaking engagements less than one month removed from her Trump administration job. Oh, and a private jet, please.
Back home in South Carolina, those single $200,000 speaking gigs are each the equivalent of more than four times the state's median household income of $48,781 per year. And with a quick hop on a private plane, that compensation could actually be significantly more.
Haley has reportedly signed on with Washington Speakers Bureau, which would help book the engagements.
Of course, Haley isn't the first once-and-future government official to charge top dollar to say a few words as a private citizen. During the 2016 campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was lambasted for raking in millions in speaking fees, along with her husband. Same with Obama and many other formerly powerful people now in private life. And that's just the ex-government officials who were once charged with guarding the public interest.
Read more: https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2019/01/30/nikki-haley-said-to-be-asking-for-four-times-the-median-sc-household-income-for-a-single-speaking-gig
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
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