Blatant Reality

South Carolina’s General Assembly is having an emergency session to dea with the budget shortfall. The cuts have been proposed in House Bill 5300 and as of right now, there are 11 amendments that have been proposed. These amendments will be debated today which means that it could be a long.
-
On an interesting note, 7 of those amendments have been proposed by James Smith.
-
UPDATE
Amendment #4 proposes that Suth Carolina only spend based on the previous year’s collection. The House voted 59-49 to table the amendment to later debate.
-
UPDATE 2
Amendment #8 proposes that South Carolina affix a stamp to cigarettes that help to track the collections of cigarette taxes (doesn’t raise the tax). The House voted 68-39 to table the amendment.
-
UPDATE 3
Amendment #9 proposes the identical cigarette tax increase that was passed by the House and Senate but vetoed by the Gov. Sanford this past spring. This tax increase will supposedly cover roughly 1/3 of the budget shortfall. Voice vote tabled the amendment.
-
UPDATE 4
Amendment #10 proposes that if state agencies have to lay off employees, the state has to re-employ these members if the economy rebounds. Amendment was tabled because there is a law like this already on the books.
-
UPDATE 5
Amendment #11 proposes that the nonprofit Protection and Advocacy for the Handicapped, which got a 100% funding cut, get roughly a 14% cut instead which leaves roughly $249,000 for funding. The House voted 66-50 to table the amendment.
-
UPDATE 6
Amendment #13 proposes that the cuts for the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities be lowered to 3.6% since these schools receive no local funding. House voted to table the amendment 80-31.
-
UPDATE 7
Amendment #17 proposes to transfer $1,000,000 to the Department of Health and Environmental Control for HIV Prevention from the Department of Health and Human Services. Voice vote tabled the amendment.
-
UPDATE 8
I’m heading to class for a bit but I should be back up there a little later to give more coverage.
-
UPDATE 9
Well it seems that the House passed the Budget Cut Bill overwhelmingly with only one amendment addressing some number errors.

I’m considering cutting back the amount of posts I have on this website because of time constraints. Between my college courses and doing things for SC Statehouse Blog among other project I have, I don’t know if I have enough time to fully devote to this site without taking away from my other endeavors.

Now, I know that I have never really been a prolific blogger but I have enjoyed doing stories on this site. I’m definitely not going to stop blogging and who knows, maybe the frequency of my posts won’t decrease that much. However, I just wanted to let everyone know that this site has now been relegated to a much lower level of importance.

With that in mind, I’m hoping to up the level of posts and interviews on SC Statehouse Blog so if your from South Carolina and want to keep in the know with some of the topics being discussed in the legislature, be sure to check it out.

Other than that, you can count on me to bring you articles dealing with algae biofuel, global warming, South Carolina politics and other random stories that I find interesting and would like to pass along.

Last night I attended a debate between former DNC Chairman Don Fowler and current RNC Committeeman Glenn McCall. This event was advertised as a “post presidential debate debate” and mainly consisted of a moderator asking each representative to pick apart the presidential candidate’s statements from the third and final debate.

Overall, I thought the debate was well done. Both Fowler and McCall actually answered the questions and the moderator actually asked good follow up questions along with making sure each participant answered the original question.

The following is the debate in whole in chronological order, which I broke it into eight parts with each part dealing with a certain topic/question. It might be good to watch the first video just so you know the set up and the introductions, otherwise you can jump around from video to video. Just to let you know who is who, Don Fowler is located on the right and Glenn McCall is located on the left of the moderator.

First topic, after the introductions were made, was their thoughts on the Bailout.

Next, the moderator asked about ‘Joe the Plumber’ who’s name each candidate invoked during the debate.

Following that, each participant spoke about the idea of allowing the President line item veto power.

Next they discussed energy policy and in particular offshore oil drilling and nuclear. (Both Fowler and McCall are pro-nuclear).

They each discussed the idea of negative campaigning in this election and how it compared to past elections.

Next they discussed fair trade policy.

Education was tackled next with Glenn McCall giving some interesting insight into the problem.

The last topic discussed was Health Care, with each participant articulating what exactly the healthcare industry will look like under their respected candidates.

South Carolina State Representatives Nathan Ballentine, Jeff Duncan, and Nikki Haley all received stellar marks (A’s and A+’s) on this year’s South Carolina Club for Growth Scorecard. Not only are these three legislators excellent examples of fiscal conservatives, but they also have helped me out a lot with my other website, SC Statehouse Blog. Thanks again for all your help and keep up the good work. We are going to need some strong fiscal conservatives while the General Assembly discusses the South Carolina’s budget cuts.

PetroSun recently announced that it was looking to China for algae biofuel production and today has announced that the proposed site for their commercial production of Algae Biofuel is satisfactory.

The Joint Venture visited potential algae farm system sites in YanCheng, Xiangshui County and New Zone Cixi, Zhejiang. The locations inspected meet all of the requirements for large scale commercial production of algae, biofuel processing and access to multiple markets. Shanghai Jun Ya Yan will represent the Joint Venture in the final negotiations with representatives of the aforementioned Economic Development Zones.

Things are moving along quite well.

Bjorn Lomborg, known as a skeptical environmentalist, wrote an article today that appeared in The Australian basically ripping the alarmist’s scare tactics to shreds. Here are some of the highlights:

– This decade has seen a temperature decrease of .01 to .1 degrees Celsius per year.
- The heat content of the world’s oceans have been dropping contrary to what is expected in a ‘warming world.’
- Antarctica is doing better than expected in a ‘warming world.’
- Sea levels have actually gone down in the past couple of years.

Other than those highlights, Lomborg goes after the alarmists for doing what they do best: making things seem so much worse than they actually are. All I got to say is keep up the good work Lomborg. Maybe one day you will actually find that the warming we are experiencing is completely natural (or at the very least mostly caused by natural phenomenon).
-
Read Lomborg’s whole article here

You know, when you’re reading a story or watching a movie, the author or writer normally puts the moral or lesson at the very end so the audience will more likely remember it. Well that is what USA Today seems to be doing with their front page story titled “How Congress set the stage for a fiscal meltdown.” While it puts blame on both sides of the aisle, it seems to heap some extra blame by leaving the readers with these final two paragraphs:

Rep. Barney Frank, then the ranking Democrat on financial services and now the chairman, says he and his colleagues were not soft on Fannie and Freddie. “Yes, they lobbied strongly, but I was one of the most successful ones in challenging them.”

 

Frank had no apologies. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., by contrast, offered a rare Washington mea culpa: “Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie,” he said in a statement. “Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit, when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but by a Democrat admit they were wrong about Fannie and Freddie seems to set a pretty strong “moral” for the story: Democrats are to blame for this financial mess.

As I have noted in the past, ads linking to Barack Obama’s campaign website have popped up on the Drudge Report which is often thought of as a Conservative leaning website. It should be noted that Drudge doesn’t seem pick his own ads, Intermarkets.net does. Nevertheless, it is still interesting that now they seem to have graduated from running strictly Obama campaign ads to general pro-Obama ads. Take a look:

When you click on that, it takes you the SuperObama.com, a store with everything Obama in it. All I can think about why this may be happening is that people in this election are going to Drudge for the most up to date news, from both sides of the aisle. Therefore, it would make sense from a revenue standpoint to atleast slightly cater to the other side, even if it is mostly a token gesture.

For those of you who might be depressed because you fear that this will be the end of the Conservative’s news haven, fear not, for there is a bright side. Where else on the internet would you be able to see something like this (HINT: Focus on the ads):

Irony, the true spice of life.

I’m sure you have all heard that the Dow is dropping fast with each new day taking us back to level seen farther and farther back in the 1990s. If any of you were wondering, our current level hasn’t been seen since October 1998, or ten years ago almost to the date.

For those who have been keeping track, Friday’s close means that the Dow has dropped roughly 2,330 points since the House passed the Bailout at 1:20 on Friday, October 3rd (look at this graph for the starting number I’m using). Basically, the Dow has dropped over 2,000 points in just over 5 days time. Wow. Welcome to 1998 people.

A shrimp farm in Gila Bend has been converted to produce algae for conversion into biofuel.

The project is not controlled by an army of scientists or funded with millions of dollars worth of government research grants – it’s a desert shrimp farm that is changing with the times to produce biodiesel from algae, using some of the same algae that feed the shrimp.

 

“Shrimp farmers don’t raise shrimp, they raise algae,” said Gary Wood, owner of Desert Sweet Shrimp, which is transitioning to a new name, Desert Sweet Biofuels, with its new focus.

 

(…)

 

With biodiesel prices at $4.81 a gallon, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, Wood hopes to produce it for less than $3 a gallon.

 

He said his farm has the potential to produce 5,000 gallons of biofuel per acre in two years, and he expects the first gallons of biofuel to be ready in three to four months.

Lets hope that wood will be able to produce it for under $3/gallon. If that is possible, we may just just be able to break foreign oils hold on our society.