SC small biz chamber opposes Amazon tax break

… – AP State – Wire – SC – Wire – State & Regional – Wire

Monday, Apr. 04, 2011

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce is the latest group to oppose a sales tax exemption for an Amazon.com distribution center that could employ 3,000 people in Lexington County.

The group says the state should not be encouraging people to buy online instead of from South Carolina stores.

Amazon has hinted it might not build the distribution without the tax break. The company wants lawmakers to exempt state residents from paying sales tax when buying from Amazon.

Gov. Nikki Haley doesn’t support the tax break worked out by former Gov. Mark Sanford.

Amazon was also offered a free site, property tax reductions and state job tax credits. The South Carolina Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a group representing local retailers and national chains, also opposes the tax exemption.

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Spartanburg Republicans to host three likely presidential hopefuls at county convention

Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum to address local GOP

By Jason Spencer
jason.spencer@shj.com

Published: Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 4:14 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 4:14 p.m.

It’s starting to feel like there’s a presidential race on the horizon.

Three likely 2012 presidential contenders — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — will address hundreds of local Republican activists Saturday at the Spartanburg County GOP Convention. County conventions feature a litany of speakers, the sometimes contentious election of party officers, and votes on delegates and resolutions to send to the state convention in May.

And in the buildup to a presidential contest, one that has been admittedly slow to start, conventions give candidates and their supporters a chance to meet and mingle with neighborhood-level activists.

“That’s why it’s so important for them to come to these early conventions, especially….Read more

Worth the Read: How Obama Thinks

An interesting, perhaps even scary assessment in Forbes Magazine of what makes Obama the way he is….

Forbes Magazine/Sept. 27, 2010

By Dinesh D’Souza

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government’s control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama’s approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President’s actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling.” Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling–but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama’s backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro–not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

More strange behavior: Obama’s June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans “consume more than 20% of the world’s oil but have less than 2% of the world’s resources.” Obama railed on about “America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world’s resources?

The oddities go on and on. Obama’s Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed’s “stress test” was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.

Read full article here.

Worth the Read: Most partisan Senate ever? Why it’s been worse

By NBC’s Ken Strickland, Senate producer

About the series: With a sour economy and an increasingly anxious American public, the workings of Washington are inextricably linked to electoral politics headed into this year’s midterms. NBC’s Ken Strickland sat down with nine lawmakers who will depart from the Senate after this year. Together, they represent 158 years of Senate service and offer unique insights into how the Senate works and how it has changed. Read more about the series here.

The U.S. Senate’s polarizing debate and passage of three monumental bills over the past two years have led most Americans to believe that Republicans and Democrats simply cannot — or will not — work together. The economic stimulus, health care, and financial reform bills — trillions of dollars worth of legislation that touched every citizen — were all essentially party-line votes.

An examination of senators’ voting practices last year inspired this headline from a Congressional Quarterly analysis: “2009 Was The Most Partisan Year Ever.”

But ask the men and women who have actually served in the chamber and you’ll hear a less rancorous tune.

Almost all of the senators who are retiring or were defeated in their primary elections this year say that it’s hardly the most partisan of times. One goes so far as to call such a notion “absurd.” History is replete, they say, with more intense periods of animosity, more anger, and violence.

To read full article, click here.

Worth the read: Is the Tea Party Becoming the New Grand Old Party?

By LIZ SIDOTI AP National Political Writer

WASHINGTON September 2, 2010 (AP)

Is the tea party the new Republican Party? The grass-roots network of fed-up conservative-libertarian voters displayed its power in its biggest triumph of the election year: the toppling of Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska’s GOP primary. Political novice Joe Miller is the fifth tea party insurgent to win a GOP Senate nominating contest, an upset that few, if any, saw coming.

With the stunning outcome, the fledgling tea party coalition and voters who identify with its anti-tax, anti-spending sentiments proved that democracy is alive and well — within the Republican Party. Don’t like who is representing you? Rise up, fire them and choose someone new.

The tea party has taken hold in the Grand Old Party, unseating lawmakers, capturing nominations for open seats and forcing Republicans to recalibrate both their campaign strategy and issues agenda. Out is talk of delivering federal dollars back home; in is talk of fiscal discipline.

Within minutes of Murkowski conceding late Tuesday night, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., was among the conservative Republicans cheering Miller.

“He pulled off the upset victory of the year because he ran on principles and because Alaskans, like all Americans, want to stop the massive spending, bailouts and debt that are bankrupting our country,” said DeMint.

Read full article here.

Worth your time: WSJ article on DeMint

By STEVE MOORE

‘I’d rather lose with Pat Toomey than win with Arlen Specter any day.” That’s South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint defending his Senate Conservatives Fund, a new PAC that has taken Washington by storm.

The fund-raising group has already helped eight underdog Reaganite candidates win Republican Senate primaries this year. In two years, the fund has raised and spent nearly $2 million from nearly 50,000 individual contributors.

Mr. DeMint’s mission is to bring more Jim DeMints to the Senate—that is, people with an unfailing antagonism to big government. But his string of victories, often against establishment candidates, has many of his Republican colleagues grumbling. They say Mr. DeMint is pushing candidates through the primaries who are too far to the right to take back vulnerable seats from Democrats in November. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott recently spoke for many in the party when he said it didn’t need anymore “Jim DeMint disciples.”

Over the past five years, Mr. DeMint has established himself as the pre-eminent conservative in Congress—he has a near perfect National Taxpayer Union rating—with Tom Coburn of Oklahoma a close second. As we eat lunch at Mr. DeMint’s favorite restaurant in his hometown of Greenville, our conversation is often interrupted by well-wishers thrilled to see their senator in person and all with pretty much the same message: “Keep fighting those big spenders.” Read full article here.

2010 Elections: Big Potential for Republican Governor, Redistricting Wins

POLITICS DAILY, by Lou Cannon, Correspondent – 8/22/10

It is a recurrent conceit of Democrats and Republicans alike that a great political realignment that will produce a lasting majority lurks just around the corner. In the more than two decades since Ronald Reagan left the White House, the U.S. electorate has been divided roughly equally. But when President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, his strategist Karl Rove interpreted the outcome as a harbinger of long-term Republican control. Rove wasn’t alone in this view. With the GOP holding the White House and Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, some Democrats feared that all three branches of government might be irretrievably lost. Instead, the Democrats in 2006 regained both houses of Congress, a prelude to Barack Obama’s victory two years later.

After the “change election” of 2008, the new fad was that the Democrats were the party of the future and Republicans the party of the past. Democrats and their cheerleaders indulged in puffy analysis about how Republicans were demographically doomed because their base was old, white, and male. In this realignment narrative, Democrats were ascendant because they were the choice of women, gays, younger voters, Latinos and independents. But with economic recovery stalled and independents disenchanted with the Obama administration, this theory looks increasingly half-baked. No one knows what the future holds, but with less than 80 days to go before the 2010 midterms, Democrats are scrambling to hold the House and keep Senate losses to a minimum. Charlie Cook, an independent political analyst, expects Republicans to gain between 35 and 45 House seats in November, more probably in the upper range of this forecast. They need 39 to retake the House.

Read full article here.

Bill Clinton: Another comeback for ‘Comeback Kid’

By LIZ SIDOTI and RON FOURNIER

The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2010; 10:52 PM

LAS VEGAS — Bill Clinton‘s back.

The former two-term president may have finally found a role in Obama world after struggling to fit in after the caustic Democratic presidential campaign that sullied his reputation.

Clinton is heading up special projects for Haiti and outreach to North Korea for the White House. He was the closer in rural Pennsylvania last month, helping Democratic Rep. Mark Critz win a special election. His campaigning was a factor in Sen. Blanche Lincoln‘s narrow victory in Tuesday’s Democratic runoff in Arkansas.

Now, he’s hoping to rally voters for vulnerable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the swing state of Nevada. Clinton was the headliner at a rally Thursday night, wondering out loud why Reid’s seat is in jeopardy.

Photo by William Fernando Martinez

“Why would you give away the Senate majority leader who has delivered time and time and time again?’”‘ Clinton asked about 700 Nevada voters at the Andre Agassi College Prepatory Academy. Reid was in Washington.

Democratic candidates up and down the ballot are requesting his help, seeking his backslapping politicking and high-dollar fundraising prowess. And there’s little doubt that this political creature is basking in the attention, if not coveting the opportunity to campaign for Democrats where President Barack Obama may not be as welcome.

“He is very effective,” said retiring Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder of Arkansas, who praised Clinton’s understanding that the party should be a big tent. Still, Snyder added: “He recognizes he’s not effective everywhere, and there are some places where he plays better than others.”

Just like there are some places where Obama plays better than others.

It’s not been easy for Clinton to find his political niche since Obama was elected in 2008 and instantly assumed the spot as the party’s top dog. The 63-year-old, still popular former president faced the challenge of trying to feed his love of politics – and of the spotlight – without upstaging the new guy.

And, of course, there were fences to mend with Obama following the bitter presidential primary campaign that the former president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost.

Clinton’s image took a hit during the 2008 race after a series of campaign-trail outbursts. He called Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war a “fairy tale” and questioned whether the first-term Illinois senator had the experience to lead the country. Clinton fumed that Obama’s campaign “played the race card on me” after Clinton had compared Obama’s success in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson, a parallel that black leaders suggested was dismissive.

Clinton later delivered a full-throated endorsement of Obama at the Democratic convention and then campaigned for the nominee. Obama tapped Hillary Clinton for secretary of state.
Since Obama took office, Clinton has focused on his foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, though he’s gradually returned to politics.

Clinton accepted Obama’s request to lead private sector fundraising efforts for earthquake-ravaged Haiti, along with former President George W. Bush. And he visited North Korea to press for – and ultimately win – the release of two jailed Americans.

He was less successful when he served as a White House intermediary to dangle a part-time government position in front of Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter‘s primary challenger in hopes he would drop his candidacy. Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak refused and won last month’s primary.

With increasing frequency, officials say Clinton has made himself available for more political activity – aides say he gets more requests than he can fill – and party leaders have called on him for help in specific races. They are mindful that Clinton, like Vice President Joe Biden, appeals to certain voters in places where Obama may not be as warmly received.

“We look at where we believe he can be helpful, and we are thrilled that he has been so willing to do so,” said New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who leads the Senate Democrats’ campaign effort. “We look forward to his continuing engagement.”

Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna said Clinton “looks forward to being helpful around the country in the fall.”

Obama has watched his once sky-high job performance rating fall to around 50 percent. He’s pushed forward a sweeping agenda of government expansion and spending that’s given heartburn to many moderate and independent voters. His style is more academic than Clinton, once dubbed “Bubba.”

More than two-thirds of the country had a favorable opinion of Clinton the last time his popularity was measured, in October. It’s been 10 years since he left office tainted by scandals over an affair with a White House intern and last-minute pardons. Clinton’s “I-feel-your-pain” drawl and hardscrabble upbringing often plays well in conservative parts of the country.

But using Clinton also carries risks. It’s an anti-establishment year and he epitomizes the Democratic establishment.

In Arkansas, Clinton backed Democrat Chad Causey for the nomination in the Arkansas primary race to succeed his former boss, the retiring Rep. Marion Berry – a former Clinton administration official. Causey had only a quarter of the ballot share before Clinton’s endorsement.

The ex-president helped Lincoln defeat Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. He campaigned for Lincoln and filmed an ad that laid out her central argument – that outside groups and labor unions angry at the centrist senator were trying to buy Arkansans’ votes.

Snyder said it was natural for Clinton, instead of Obama, to play such a large role for Lincoln. Clinton is a former governor who counts Lincoln as a longtime friend. Obama, conversely, bypassed the state during the primary and general election and doesn’t have much of a base there.

“Bill Clinton is clearly more effective than Barack Obama right now,” Snyder said – though he quickly added that his comment was specific to Arkansas.

 See Washington Post article

New York Times articles worth your time

Carly Fiorina Means Business

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: May 31, 2010

On a cloudless spring afternoon, Carly Fiorina strode onto an outdoor stage in Pleasanton, Calif., with the happy, hungry expression of someone not just confident of an enthusiastic reception but counting on one. She surveyed a riot of signs artful and artless — “Give us liberty, not debt,” “Pelosi’s gavel is the new health care colonoscopy” — and beamed. For the stemwinder on bloated government that she was about to deliver, there was probably no better audience than these thousands of angry rebels, spread across acres of fairgrounds near San Jose for a special Tea Party rally. And there was definitely no better date than this one: April 15. Tax day. Read more

Obama, the Oil Spill and Chaos Perception

By MATT BAI

Published: June 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama is that rare politician who is also a gifted writer, and he understands the power of a good metaphor. So you had to believe, on some level at least, that the president could appreciate the poetic significance of that cloud of oil, ubiquitous on cable television all last week, spewing endlessly from a 5,000-foot-deep puncture in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Obama’s administration, too, had been breached, and the accumulating cloud threatened to obscure its considerable achievements — particularly the comprehensive reforms of health care and federal education spending — as the president heads toward the halfway point in his term. Read more

Analysis: Political parties _ evolve or fade

By LIZ SIDOTI

The Associated Press
Sunday, May 23, 2010; 12:34 PM

WASHINGTON — Since the birth of the American political party, its primary mission has been to amass power by recruiting candidates, raising money and spreading messages. In short, a holding company that elects people – with a monopoly for a century and a half by Democrats and Republicans. But a chain of events in recent history – from the Internet’s astonishing ascent and a Supreme Court ruling on political money to today’s maelstrom of voter anger – is changing things. The major political parties are inching now toward a decision point: change with the times or risk diminished influence. Read more