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Cheer up, folks! The sky is not falling, we are not in a major ecenomic recession, especially here in the Palmetto State. Let's give you a couple examples, one on the national level, and another locally.
The juggernaut that is Google continues on, exceeding expectations by grossing $5.1 B , and making a net profit of $1.3 this past quarter. It's no surprise... Use me as an example. My blog is part of a subsidiary of Google, and like most people, I search almost everything with Google. The news sent Google stock to jump 17% in a day to $525 a share. Pretty hefty, yes, but it is still making money at a record pace.
While blaming other countries may be an easy target for job losses, the fact is that only 3% of all losses are due to exporting of labor. Most of them are from domestic failures, and they eventually get replaced by another expanding business that innovates and succeeds. And that's what is going on here in Florence.
The SC Dept of Labor announced that the unemployemnt rate in Florence County has dropped to 5.9% - about 3 full points less than a year ago. The work by business and local government to make Florence a more attractive place to build a business has succeeded, and the area is now reaping the benefits.
So, instead of being negative all the time, we need to realistically look at how things are, and just focus on how to fix the little problems, and not magnify them for political gain. Things are okay - not pefect, but okay. Employment is decent, except for a few overpriced areas, the real estate market is solid. If we can figure out how to lower gas prices, I think we'd be in pretty good shape.
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SC6 Unveils a Three Part Series on the Jim Clyburn Campaign Finances
I stole this picture from Palmetto Scoop, I have to admit. If I saw it sooner, I probably would have used it earlier. It's time for me to not focus on all the fluff that I've been writing about lately. I read the Press Release from Linda Ketner about her fundraising , so I decided to check up on our buddy Jim to see how he's been doing. Let's say Jim has been a busy beaver. A VERY BUSY BEAVER.......
For the next few days, I'm going to sound a lot like Sunny Philips. We're going to take a real hard look at the numbers... How much is coming in, where it's coming from, why, and what the donors want from Clyburn. Granted, the people running against Clyburn should be the ones doing this, but as 6th District Vice Chair, I'll get the ball rolling for them. I won't have all the answers, but I've got a ton of questions that maybe the MSM can take from here. After all, I've a day job...
We have two suceeding parts coming up:
Part 2: Which SC Businesses Suddenly Are Giving Money and Why.
Part 3: Who Is Fulbright & Jaworski, and What Do They Want.
But first, our beginning installment:
Part 1: Jim Clyburn, Not the 6th District's Candidate Financially.
If you're interested to verify the numbers, feel free to go the the FEC website, or you can go to OpenSecrets.com .. The first thing you'll notice is how much more Clyburn is raising since his promotion. Where he used to raise 500,000 to $1 Million, he has already raised $2.1 million this election cycle. Sure, he's more important now, so the numbers are going to jump some, but this is pretty startling.
More importantly than the totals is to take a close look at the numbers themselves. True to form, Jim has raised over $1.3 million from PAC's - about twice as much as he has gotten from John Q. Citizen. But what about the 6th District ??
It's pretty pathetic. Clyburn had a grand total of 54 donors come from his home district. Yep, 54. That's about 1 in every 12,000 citizens. Nine of those donors came from one company !! Combined, they gave a total of $62,250, so a paltry 3% of all his donations came from his home district. That puts his total a tick above fringe District 2 candidate George Lotz. To show even more how pathetic his home showing is, I included all donors from Charleston, Columbia, Orangeburg and Sumter - all of which are split between two or more districts, so there is a real possibility that even more of that cash crossed district lines. And what about my home town? Not a single donor. NOT ONE....
So where are the donations coming from ? The DC circuit is no surprise ($206k), but how about Miami ($38k), Chicago ($35k) and ...get ready.... New York ($36k). Who in NY is donating? Stay tuned.... Perhaps Jim would be better off moving to the First District - after all, he raised more than $81k from his buddies at Burroughs & Chapin, with whom he was tied in a business partnership with Benedict Shogaolu, the deposed head of the Myrtle Beach Transit system.
So what does this tell us? That Jim Clyburn , like most DC insiders, has become distracted from the responsibilities of his district, and has has lost the trust and confidence of the voters he represents. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked, and we intend to ask them. For those professionals who get paid to do this, maybe they'll read this, and take it from there....
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Obama Fatigue: An overall sense of tiredness and malaise, due to overexposure of Barack Obama commercials...
The CDC has issued a bulletin of a localized epidemic..... Obama Fatigue has officially set in in Pennsylvania. Yes, thousands of prospective voters are vomiting, turning green and have a state of melancholy in the Keystone State. The cause? Long term exposure to Barack Obama commercials on local TV.
We know all about Obama Fatigue, or Romney Fatigue or John Edwards Fatigue, depending on what state you live in. After raising millions of dollars, campaigns buy literally ALL available airtime on local TV prior to a Primary or Caucus.. In South Carolina, we had a pretty annoying three weeks before our Primary. Well, in Pennsylvania, they've had to endure seven weeks of this crap - no wonder they're bitter !!!
Sure, Obama has the money for it, and the ads do work initially... But eventually, advertising hits a certain point that it just becomes blabber - and it looks like it is there. The flood of ads got him to close the gap, but with three days to go, it appears to be just wasting money at this time. Of course, there is no such thing as wasting money in politics - you can justify any spending....
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Time to address something that has been tossed around a lot this week. After his 'Bittergate' speech in San Fran last week. The question has been tossed around quite a bit - Is Barack Obama an Elitist ??
I'll try to be brief on this - I only have til 600PM anyway... To be an elitist, one usually has to have a certain amount of wealth, power and prestige. Obama has a little bit of each, but it's all been recently attained. One can hardly consider him an 'upper crust' type. So, to use the term elite is incorrect.
Here's what Obama's problem really is. He's not a rural-to-suburban type. Just being poor as a kid with a white mother and white grandparents doesn't make you 'country'. I've been in SC for 11 years now, and I'm not country, and I'll likely never be country..... His experience is more of an urban poor life. That is where his experience is from. He just doesn't understand those people, and he makes assumptions and generalizations - one may call it prejudices.
Is calling him prejudiced an insult? Maybe, but it seems like the truth. We all have prejudices, because we all have different experiences. I may have grown up with lot of black friends, but I can't say I understand their problems fully, simply because I am not black. Makes sense? It should. Obama's prejudices seem to be coming more to the forefront as he speaks more. Things like 'my typical white grandmother' are examples of prejudices, and it shouldn't be a surprise. No candidate is a one-size fits all person. Hillary isn't a common person, no matter how hard she tires, and John McCain has a military pedigree as strong as anyone in America.
Does this make any of them bad candidates. Not at all.. John Stewart was pretty right when he said that we don't really want an ordinary person as President. They should be special in some way. Being president is taking place in some pretty rarified air, so we should be picky to a degree. But, then again, having the common touch is important too, and Obama showed that he might not quite get it with real Americans. It's not being eliteist - it's being a urban liberal...
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Call this one an omen. A Bad Omen.... On Friday, the Terre Haute , Indiana headquarters for the Clinton Campaign caught on fire, and were burned down. Luckily, the two employees in the office got out unharmed.
The cause of the fire was leectrical related - either by lightning or a wiring malfunction. No word yet if the office was hooked up to an American Airlines MD-80 or not... More important than the loss of the office is it being another sign that the Clinton camp is suffereing from Bad Mojo.
Add this to the dismissal of chief strategist Mark Penn, the news that Obama outraised Clinton by a 2-1 margin, and Sen. Clinton's recent comments about the terrorist attack by a nine yr old Bosnian girl in 1995, and you can't help but feel that Team Hillary is suffering from bad ju-ju..... Where is my Voodoo Doll when you need it?
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