Well, It Was Interesting Last Night...

Local Candidates and Delegates Come Out in Waccamaw Neck, But the Guy From FairTax Seemed Incapable of Telling the Truth...


     It was back on the road again last night - this time to totally foreign territory. Welcome to Waccamaw Neck, Georgetown County, folks!   Basically, it's the Pawleys Island/Litchfield Beach area of G'town.  Once solidly in the 1st Congressional District, we had never been here before, so it was no surprise that we had not met anyone before until we saw RL Port from Pleasant Hill.  Small tidbit of SC6 info: Pleasant Hill was the only sizeable precinct that we won in 2004, and RL Port was the reason why.   Aside from him, there were a lot of new acquaintances for me to make.


    While it seems like the 7th Congressional candidate debate in Conway would be a better place to lobby delegates, the Tommys and Elijah Jones have spent time there before, whereas Waccamaw Neck IS basically the G'town delegation.  It would have been more interesting for me, but there will be other debates to catch.  The ironic part also is it's the home of Jerry Rovner,who is also running for Vice-Chair of the 7th - although he had some odd comments about it.  We're not really sure how much interest he has in the Vice-Chair gig, stating he was kinda talked into it. But, we'll see what he has to say Saturday in Florence.  For a GOP subgroup, Rovner did have a good crowd of about 50...


   In attendance were Senator Ray Cleary, and a slew of candidates for County Council, Treasurer, Auditor (2) and State Representative.  But, the most interesting part of the night were a couple local reps from the FairTax Group.  To say the least, it was an odd night.... I've heard the FairTax people for years now, and though they have a habit of telling the truth of half of the story - and not much else - the guy they had last night had some of them signed, sealed and delivered.  The rest of us were howling in a mixture of laughter and outrage...
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   Maybe it's the time we've spent in politics and learning all the ins and outs of policy that make us more attuned to total bullshit, but we heard more flat-out lies by the main speaker, who's name we didn't get, than anyone we've ever seen at a GOP event. We've heard John Steinberger a few times, and even though we obviously disagree on FairTax, he's been honest about it. This guy was flat out lying.. My personal favorite? We don't need a Flat Tax because our current system is ALREADY a Flat Tax!  Uhh, what are all those different brackets for - along with the 1600 pages of Tax Codes?  Oh, and we won't need the IRS to collect it either... Really? Exactly WHO collects the money?


   Then we have deceits about affects between taxes between the varying stages of production, and taxes will be levied on new home purchases, but not new ones  - but it won't affect the overall price?  Maybe not, because you will basically eliminate ALL new home building and new car sales in South Carolina...  It was ridiculous. The other guy was a bit more honest, by at least admitting that 'adjustments need to be made'.  If that is the case, then we don't need to implement this plan until the bugs are worked out.  My right arm was quivering, wanting to blow a shotgun through this plan in public, but I was there to help these guys get delegates, so I held off. Besides, I had lots of help from people who actually understand the ludicrousness of this plan..


    The other oddity was them spending 30 minutes on the Federal Plan, which has been dead in Congress for 10 years, and five on the State Plan, which is very weak.  Why? Because we already have a Flat Tax in place in South Carolina.. Steinberger himself admitted that the net effect would be 7% lower taxes, so a much simpler plan would be to just cut the Income Tax by 1/2 point, and avoid all the government intrusion of the Prebate checks - which we will no doubtedly screw up at some point. 


   The important part I took out of last night is that I spent the night with a group of dedicated Republicans, and most of them smelled the BS like I did!  Tom Grimes and Elijah got to speak and Tommy Phillips was introduced as well.. As for who the delegates came out for, who knows.  Obviously, this is Jerry Rovner's home group, so both Phillips and Brad Richardson will have little luck here.  The one thing I got out of it is a reminder of just how FAR AWAY Litchfield and Pawleys Island are from Florence!  At least we only had one deer on the roadside during the 1100pm ride back..

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