HorryCounty.com

  Malfeasance - Reassessment Hey folks, I've got unwelcome visitors coming to my house this year.   If you live in Horry County, they're coming to see you, too.   Who could it be now?   Why, it's the tax assessors, armed with a clipboard and a gleam in their eye. Yes, it's that magical time again when we get to reassess the value of our homes and brace ourselves for the inevitable sticker shock when the tax bill arrives. It's like a twisted game of Monopoly, except instead of passing Go and collecting $200, we're passing the buck straight to the county coffers. Now, I'm no mathematician, but even I can tell you that when property values skyrocket faster than a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July, so do our tax bills. It's as if our humble abodes have suddenly transformed into beachfront mansions overnight. Last time I checked, my backyard wasn't equipped with a private yacht dock, but who am I to argue with the whims of the tax gods? And let's no...

  Federal Government to Reclassify Marijuana By Dennis Mitchell A bill to allow the sale of medical marijuana in South Carolina failed again in the SC House this year. Opposition to the bill is strongest in the law enforcement communities, objected to by, among others, Chief Mark Keel of SLED and the S. C. Sheriff’s Association. The federal government recently announced it would reclassify marijuana from its current status as a Class 1 substance to a Class 3 substance, putting it on the level of medical drugs such as cough syrup with codeine. This change by the federal government could give renewed push to legalizing medical marijuana in South Carolina. The bill that failed in the General Assembly this year is reported to be one of the strictest on the uses of marijuana for medical purposes. Smoking of the product, for example, would not be allowed. However, providing relief through topical use and liquid dosages could go a long way toward bringing relief to cancer patients, those ...

  Polecat of the Week goes to the proposed Surf Park in Myrtle Beach which just requested its third one-year extension from the city to buy the land. It's tough competing against all that free surf on the oceanfront.

 

  Malfeasance - Illegal Aliens Are Really Voters Recently, the greatest president in our lifetime, Joe Biden let the cat out of the bag. Can you believe that Biden accidentally referred to "illegal aliens" as voters during an interview on a Spanish radio show.   Yikes.   (The New York Post called this a "freudian slip".)   Biden also went on to say the following, “One of the reasons [why] we’re growing so much is we have a significant influx of immigrants coming into our country, [which is] the only reason our economy’s so good."   So, immigrants are the only reason that we have a good economy?   Who says we have a good economy? That's just plain stupid, but I've come to expect nothing but stupid comments from Biden and his administration. For the record, the previous president, Donald Trump, who says mean things and hurts the feeling of overly sensitive people, had a better immigration policy and tried to get the Census takers to only count actual citi...

  Horry County Road Funding By Dennis Mitchell Horry County Council passed first reading last week of an ordinance to establish road projects, funded by a one-cent local option sales tax, for up to the next 25 years. This is the most ambitious consideration of future road projects ever discussed by council. If approved, this initiative would replace the more common seven-year project lists such as RIDE II and RIDE III. The final approval for institution of the one-cent local option tax will be voted on in a binding referendum question on the November 2024 general election. Therein lies the first big question the voters must answer – do they wish to approve a list of road projects in November which will restrict new projects over up to 25 years? The local option tax is projected to raise approximately $5 billion over 25 years. This amount could be bonded against to speed up construction of the projects rather than the pay as you go system used with the last two RIDE plans. However, ...

  Protests Then and Now By Dennis Mitchell There is some irony in the fact that last Saturday was the 54th anniversary of the Kent State University shootings and we now have the biggest protests on college campuses since those Vietnam protest days. There is also irony in the fact that many of those condemning the student protests of today the loudest are of the baby boom generation which was the protesters against the Vietnam War. Now, the baby boom generation is interesting. The first generation to come of age after the invention of the birth control pill, it forged the sexual revolution. It was also the generation that made drug experimentation almost a right of passage. By the time this generation hit 50, it had done a 180-degree turn into virtual opposition to many sexual choices and freedoms and was the strongest for wanting a war on drugs. Some would call those changes maturity, but maybe hypocrisy is a better word. I heard an interview with a man who was a student at Kent St...