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If you’ve followed our coverage over the past few months, you know we’ve been keeping close tabs on multiple issues making their way through the South Carolina General Assembly – as well as several looming primary elections involving competitive S.C. State House seats.
Among the issues we are tracking this year? School choice, judicial reform and the push to decriminalize medical marijuana in the Palmetto State.
This week, we welcomed back to our studios Candace Carroll – South Carolina state director for Americans for Prosperity. Carroll’s group has been intimately involved in all of the issues mentioned above. As I have often noted, Candace is one of those rare guests who can seamlessly weave policy and politics into her analysis – breaking down complex legislative processes and assessing their impacts within the corridors of power and on the campaign trail.
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Candace updated us on the status of multiple major pieces of legislation moving through the state legislature – including an expanded education scholarship bill, a health care agency consolidation bill, medical cannabis legislation and various proposals to reform the way judges are screened and selected in the Palmetto State.
On each issue, she offered insight as to where these bills currently stand, where they are headed and which elected officials are standing for (or against) them.
To view our conversation, click here …
Lawmakers are fast approaching the midway point of their 2024 session – which will coincide with a key date on the electoral calendar. Filing for partisan primary races in South Carolina begins at 12:00 p.m. EST on March 16, 2024 and closes on April 1, 2024.
Partisan primary elections will be held on June 11, 2024, and if no candidate receives a majority of ballots in a given race, runoff elections would be held two weeks later – on June 25, 2024.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina and before that he was a bass guitarist and dive bar bouncer. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven (soon to be eight) children.
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1 comment
And here’s the free commercial space for “Americans for Prosperity.” AFP is run by the billionaire Koch brothers who control the GOP. They don’t mean prosperity for the average American–they mean prosperity for their billionaire buds. And that’s working out just great for them, we’ve never had more billionaires or millionaires in the US. But as recent studies have shown, the promised return to the average middle class citizen, aka “trickle down” hasn’t worked. You wanna know why we don’t have good schools and roads? Look at AFP’s grip on the SC Legislature (and the US GOP at large). You want real prosperity? Think back to the 50’s and 60’s when America was at it’s most prosperous. A single middle-class salary could pay for a home. Today, it’s a stretch for double-income families. The marginal tax rate between 1945 and 1981 for those at the very top of the income bands was 70-91%. Reaganomics was ushered in during the 1980’s and the pay gap and increase in billionaires and the real war on the middle class income began. If you make over $168,000 a year, you don’t have to pay social security taxes–nothing, nada. And what was Fox pushing yesterday? Rand Paul with the “We have to cut social security and medicare” mantra so they can cut taxes again on the 1%. Don’t believe for one single second they wouldn’t do it because they are telling you right now in plain English, what they plan to do–more cuts for them and no social security–which the average worker has paid into all their lives, will be gone. Think about that before you go to vote this year. I mean, I do have to give the Koch’s some credit here for coming up with a name for their little tax lobbying scam as it sounds as if it should benefit ALL Americans, but the last 45+ years of the war against the middle class suggests otherwise. Just remember that the next time Will decides to give the AFP more space here to spew their propaganda or you hear someone on Fox or a GOP politician flogging the “cut entitlements” crap.