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Well, it must be Election time here in Irmo again.

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 19:08:19 GMT

Yes, I got a campaign brochure in my newspaper box the other day, I guess there is a good reason to keep those things. And thank you Councilwoman Barbara Waldman for it — you have my vote. Some things have changed and some things stay the same. Years ago, when you first ran, and being a neighbor of an individual who I assumed talked to you into running for his benefit, I did not vote for you. But over the years of your service, especially after seeing you stand up to the “bully” attempting to pressure you into seconding some ridiculous item he had on the agenda — and you refused — my opinion of you changed.

Since your election, and seeing you do what you truly believe is in Irmo’s best interest, you have gained my trust and therefore my vote.

I won’t spend much time commenting on the other candidates — that will be their job to introduce themselves and attempt to convince you to vote for them.

But I will mention two of them. One, Gabriel Penfield , who has my other vote, has worked hard during his years of service to the town — improving and making better the things that he could. He is a great council member, has a good heart, and is there to make Irmo better. I will write more about him later.

The other candidate, whom I will also write more about later (not too positively, however), is the one I wrote about before — being deceitful about where he lived and not residing at the address he listed on his candidate form. If you remember, he claimed to live in a house in Rose Oak that he hadn’t lived in for a couple of years, and at that time was actually living outside the town of Irmo. Anyway you look at it, it was not honest — it was deceitful. And even if someone who evidently doesn’t know the difference between dishonesty and being truthful tried to claim it was a “minor clerical error,” we all know better. We aren’t ignorant as he believes we are — that’s why he was a one and done.

We’ve got two great candidates who have proven they put Irmo first. I urge you to vote to reelect Councilwoman Barbara Waldman and Councilman Gabriel Penfield.

Thank you for your consideration.
— Hardy King

American Virtues – 2025 Commencement Address

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:49:15 GMT

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 10, 2025, at Hillsdale College’s 173rd Commencement Ceremony.

Before we begin, let me offer a brief contemporary observation. Has anyone noticed how the eyes of the nation have now turned to Hillsdale? This recent interest surpasses even the past considerable attention that Hillsdale has garnered.

One reason for this, of course, is that Harvard University suddenly wishes to be free of Washington, D.C.—at least as long as the current administration remains in office. And yet, in its confusion, Harvard still wishes to maintain over $9 billion in federal subsidies.

In answer, the public has been directing Harvard to consult Hillsdale, whose model disavowal of federal funding is long-standing and principled. Hillsdale’s declination of government money does not hinge on any particular administration, Republican or Democrat, being in power. Instead, Hillsdale has taken the position that the federal government should not dictate to private colleges, and that to ensure its independence, Hillsdale will neither seek nor accept taxpayer subsidies.

Another reason for the attention being given Hillsdale is that the Department of Education, in seeking to restore civic and classical education, looks in Hillsdale’s direction. If, in the past, Hillsdale was an atoll of common sense—a sanctuary of all that remains good in the largely lost and aimless landscape of American higher education—today it is more the nation’s guide to the rediscovery of personal integrity, gratitude to the old breed that came before, and happiness and hope about the future. In other words, Hillsdale College has become the nation’s 21st-century example of what higher education should be—and might still become.

So today, I would like to reflect on these three sometimes-forgotten American virtues—honor, tradition, and optimism—which are embodied on the Hillsdale campus and will serve to guide today’s graduates in the years ahead.

For 21 consecutive autumns, Hillsdale has graciously hosted me as a visiting professor of history and classics. Looking back on my first time here, in 2004, I was immediately struck by three observations that seemed unique in my decades-long associations with a number of other college campuses.

First, on my first full day here, I realized that I had left a bicycle unlocked on campus overnight. I walked to campus that morning expecting my bike to be either vandalized or stolen, yet there it was in the center of a now crowded campus—just as I had left it. That was something I couldn’t imagine happening on a modern college campus. I had certainly never seen anything like it in California where I had then been teaching for over two decades.

Second, that same day, when I visited the bookstore to check on the book orders for my two classes, I scanned the shelves and was equally stunned. I did not see a single course listing with the usual faddish “studies” suffix. There were no therapeutic course titles like peace studies, environmental studies, leisure studies, film studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, or sexual studies. Instead, there were courses listed in all classical aspects of philosophy, literature, languages, history, mathematics, and science. Here at Hillsdale I found only the disciplines that have endured for centuries and that, ironically, have encompassed and grounded the content of the “studies” classes not found on the Hillsdale campus.

What a strange thing, I thought, given the current landscape of higher education, for this contemporary American college to trust in the brilliance of some 2,500 years of prior Western educators—who in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem founded the disciplines and boundaries of their all-encompassing knowledge. And how much odder that at Hillsdale, almost uniquely, these classes remain constant and unchanged from their inception—even as academia as a whole believes that modernistic courses and novel therapies are needed to explain a supposedly new and ever-changing human nature.

And my third observation upon first arriving here was that students, faculty, and staff at Hillsdale College are happy. They smile. They say hello to strangers. They shake your hand. A shared confidence is entirely natural here. It is innate to the point that when I, the stranger, initially remarked on the rare upbeat mood of the campus, people here thought I was the strange one for expecting anything else.

We might shrug over how trivial this observation seems. But in fact, it is a glimpse into the fundamental Hillsdale notion of confidence in our civilization and the need for fellowship and positivity to preserve it. Such happiness is quite different from what one finds on most other campuses, where the youthful frown is now the normal expression. People pass each other by with a cold absence of greeting—as if proof of pseudo-sophistication. They often express a dourness of contrived seriousness and maturity. Students elsewhere seem to think that they alone—unlike electricians, farmers, and assembly line workers—bear the weight of global grievances and imperfections, past, present, and future. But not at Hillsdale.

Behind these three seemingly mundane observations of a bicycle left alone overnight, a bookstore unaffected by academic fads, and a buoyancy within the Hillsdale community remain larger truths.

Honor

You students of the Class of 2025 have been instructed in, have absorbed fully, and will pass on a code of honorable conduct that has become a natural part of who you are. And it will remain with you on the long road ahead. Hillsdale has taught you not to worry if you are not one with the current majority of youth, because you are certainly one with most of the past—and future—generations. Your confidence in your code of ethical comportment and personal standards will be your legacy to help guide future cohorts to come. Because your values are real, permanent, and ancient, you will not be won over by those who justify their lapses of behavior by situational ethics or feelings of victimization. Without such individual vows of honesty and compassion for others, civilization in aggregate cannot be sustained. It instead descends into the age-old banes of tribalism, disunity, and chaos.

Students at Hillsdale do not steal bicycles because their personal code of honor forbids it; because they are concerned that the poor victim would suffer without his property; and because they know that if this was common practice, then their own culture and civilization would crumble—as indeed it has in many places in America today.

Much of our society’s current crisis derives from this personal refusal or inability to respect the property of others, to tell the truth, to stand up to the bully, to protect the weaker, and to end each day in contemplation that you were more a moral force for the common good than either a neutral observer or on the wrong side of the ethical ledger. When individual behavior and decorum falter, so does a country, which is, after all, only the common reflection of millions of its individuals.

Tradition

The character of the Hillsdale student is nurtured and sustained by tradition—a word derived from the Latin noun traditio , meaning a transmission or handing down. So often in the age of presentism, we in our narcissism and arrogance confuse our technical and material successes with automatic moral progress. We seem unaware that thinkers of the past—as early as the Greek poet Hesiod, some 2,700 years ago—worried about just the opposite: they worried that material progress and greater wealth would result in moral regress, given the greater opportunities to gratify the appetites with perceived fewer consequences and to use sophistry to excuse the sin.

Likewise, without traditional reverence for the past, an ungrateful nation not only suffers a loss of knowledge but is plagued by hubris—so often the twin of ignorance—believing that it alone has discovered ideas and behaviors unique to itself and its own era, when they are in fact ancient. This closed mindset seeks a kind of perfection, a heaven on earth, instead of the good—and it ends up obtaining neither.

Are we not instead the sum total of all those who came before us, who for the most part here in America left us a constitutional system and infrastructure that allowed us to start our lives both materially and civically, in terms of freedom, far ahead of those in the past and those elsewhere today? Key to the endangered idea of reverence for the past is a recognition that it is neither fair nor just to dismiss easily those of earlier generations based solely on the standards of the present. Instead, we must remember the different circumstances faced by previous generations—circumstances like incurable illnesses, short life expectancy, and work entailing existential danger and physical drudgery. Yet our ancestors were able to endure suffering and challenges that we now can scarcely imagine.

The Hillsdale reverence for the Western tradition and the American past is a reminder that we should not easily condemn and erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged capriciously by future generations and found wanting—whether for the medievalism of our dangerous cities, the electronic cruelty of the Internet, or the fragmentation of the family.

Optimism

I wish to end on a happy note, in the manner I first encountered the Hillsdale College community.

Your generation is now witness to a counterrevolution of sorts. Millions of Americans are asking for a reexamination of our culture and society with an eye to restoring ancient decency and looking to the good of past generations. Critical to this restoration is your optimism. Such positivity is the child of gratitude for all that we have inherited and all that we wish to enhance and pass on to others not yet born. With optimism and confidence in the citizenry, a civilization grows rather than shrinks. It becomes secure, not depressed or beset by self-loathing. It looks to the future with reverence for the past, rather than with shame or hatred.

Of course, it is now chic to be moody and pessimistic and uncool to be upbeat and cheerful. But the strength of this country—even in its darkest days like those of April 12, 1861, or December 7, 1941, or September 11, 2001—has always been its singular ability to remain not just unshaken, but confident in its values, its resilience, and its inherent strength to overcome all challenges.

In this current counterrevolution of sorts, it is neither the duty nor the desire of Hillsdale to become a political player. Nonetheless, the nation looks for guidance and the reassurance of the old wisdom. Therefore it is only natural, as I have said, that Hillsdale College and its moral and intellectual architecture have become preeminent to a degree scarcely imaginable in the past.

So you, the Class of 2025, as Hillsdale graduates, will be asked by your peers to provide guidance as never before. And I am confident that by your education, your code of comportment, your reverence, and your optimism, you will become natural leaders and exemplars in whatever paths you follow—in the era to come that will be America’s greatest renaissance and also, I think, its most decent.

Thank you, and may God bless you all.

The Significance of the Recently Released Russia Hoax Documents

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:29:32 GMT

Within hours of her 2016 presidential campaign loss, a devastated Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat not to the American voters who rejected her, but to Russia, echoing a campaign theme she had been developing for months. “Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss” and “kept pointing her finger” at Russia, according to Shattered, a 2017 book about her campaign—“Her team coalesced around the idea that Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign.”

The corporate media were also devastated, as they had spent the entire campaign mocking the idea that Trump and his anti-establishment positions on foreign policy, trade, and wokeness could appeal to voters. To the extent possible, they would help promote Clinton’s blame game.

In early January 2017, the Clinton campaign’s “Steele dossier”—a secretly funded collection of made-up stories and gossip alleging that Russia had dirt on Trump and that Trump was colluding with Russia against the United States—was published. Washington would be consumed by the Russia collusion hoax for the next two-and-a-half years. The investigations it spurred would bankrupt Trump associates, destroy lives, and hamstring Trump’s ability to govern. It led to draconian censorship campaigns against conservatives. It hurt Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 general election. But no evidence was found that a single American, much less Trump himself, conspired with Russia.

Fast forward to today. Six months into Trump’s second term, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have declassified and released long-suppressed documents detailing how President Obama and his spy chiefs laundered the Steele dossier and other falsehoods in an attempt to destroy Trump’s first presidency. The response from Democrats, the media, and many establishment Republicans has been to say that these suppressed documents contain nothing new or significant. Not true.

The Russia collusion hoax was anchored to two central claims: first, that Trump was a compromised agent of Russia, and second, that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. The first claim was completely debunked after years of investigation. It is on the second and far more plausible claim—which was just as key to the hoax—that the newly released documents shed new light. And the revelations are shocking.

The documents show that in early December 2016, the intelligence community planned to publish a top secret presidential daily brief holding that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” Once published, this brief would have been read by Obama and his top officials, as well as President-Elect Trump and his designated National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn. But the day before publication, the FBI—which had co-authored the brief—announced that it was pulling its support for the brief and would be drafting a dissent. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced that the brief would be held for the following week.

In the end, the brief was never published. Instead, Obama ordered his top spy chiefs to put together an Intelligence Community Assessment—known as an ICA—on “Russia election meddling.” The chiefs were directed to look at how Moscow sought to influence the 2016 election—including with hacking, leaks, cyber activity against voting systems, and “fake news”—and to answer the questions, “Why did Moscow direct these activities?” and “What have the Russians hoped to accomplish?”

Prior to this order from Obama, the spy agencies had assessed that Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election were consistent with Russia’s previous and long-standing election-year meddling and cyber-hacking efforts. They found that Russia’s goal was to mess with and decrease confidence in U.S. elections, rather than help elect particular candidates. But on the evening of December 9, 2016, The Washington Post published a story sourced to unnamed senior Obama officials claiming that the CIA had “concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.” That was a lie. The process by which such assessments are made by the CIA hadn’t taken place, much less concluded anything. The same false information was leaked to The New York Times : “American intelligence agencies,” it reported, “have concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia acted covertly . . . to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.” Both papers were awarded Pulitzers the next year for their willingness to participate, without a bit of skepticism, in this disinformation operation.

A few days later, Obama poured gasoline on the fire by publicly expressing concern that “potential hacking . . . could hamper vote counting and affect the actual election process itself.” Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, and FBI Director James Comey were working furiously to throw together the ICA Obama had ordered. Typically, such an assessment would take a minimum of several months and include a wide variety of perspectives. This ICA was prepared in two weeks using only five CIA staffers to draft it. Comey, Brennan, and Clapper overruled strenuous objections from senior intelligence officials who were aghast at the inclusion of unsubstantiated claims and unverified gossip. Some who complained had their promotions threatened. Others were told they were not privy to secret intelligence reviewed only by top leadership.

The finished ICA was reported on to Obama on January 5, 2017, and to Trump the next day. In addition to findings that were credible and substantiated, the report said Putin had developed “a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help his chances of victory.” It also included, contrary to the public testimony of Obama’s spy chiefs, a two-page summary of the Clinton campaign’s Steele dossier in the most classified version of the report. Comey met privately with Trump at the end of his briefing to tell him about unverified allegations that Russia held proof of salacious sexual and financial impropriety on the part of Trump. Four days later, CNN reported extensively on the meeting and what Trump was told. At this point, the Russia hoax was fully operational and would do severe damage to our country for years to come.

***

One document Ratcliffe released is a “tradecraft review” of the January 2017 ICA. Conducted by career officials at the CIA, the review found that the dishonest leaks by the Obama administration in December 2016 created an “anchoring bias” that polluted the entire document. The review also expressed concern about the ICA’s frantic production timeline; the refusal to allow analysts reviewing the document to see the intelligence its conclusions were based on; and the over-involvement of Comey, Brennan, and Clapper. It found that the assessment gave a “higher confidence level than was justified” to the claim that Russia preferred Trump and that it was tainted by a “potential political motive.”

Gabbard released an even more explosive report. Authored in 2017 and 2018 by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, it had been hidden in a top secret vault for seven years. It conclusively debunked the ICA’s “key judgement” about Putin’s preference for Trump, excoriated the ICA for using the preposterous Steele dossier as a basis for its claims, and detailed how the views of career intelligence officials were overruled and dismissed.

Brennan had long publicly claimed that he had secret knowledge—separate and apart from the Steele dossier—to support his view that Russia interfered to help Trump. In August and September 2016, he had individually briefed the “Gang of Eight,” the top Senate and House officials who oversee the CIA, and it turned out that Brennan’s so-called secret knowledge was laughable. It was based mostly on three reports that “contained flawed information” and “became foundational sources” for the claim that Putin aspired to help Trump. Veteran CIA officers had said the reports “contained substandard information that was unclear, of uncertain origin, potentially biased, implausible,” and “odd.”

Brennan hadn’t allowed some of the information to go through normal vetting procedures when it was collected. And he “personally directed that two of the most important reports not be formally disseminated when he first learned of them,” supposedly because they were so sensitive—a questionable explanation given that the CIA has a special reporting channel for sensitive reports that are restricted to the president and other named individuals.

The only classified information cited in the ICA for the claim that Putin “aspired to help Trump’s chances of victory” was a fragment of a sentence that came from someone who did not personally know Putin. The fragment, consisting of the words, “whose victory Putin was counting on,” had been collected prior to the July 2016 Republican National Convention. So who could even know to which victory it referred? Furthermore, it is not known whether the fragment reflected the sub-source’s opinion of Putin’s thinking, Putin’s actual statements to his sub-source, or the views of someone else reflecting on Putin’s thinking to the sub-source. Its meaning was so unclear that “five people read it five ways,” according to the report.

For these reasons, experienced CIA officers initially omitted the fragment from the ICA. But Brennan ordered that it be included. One senior CIA officer, alarmed that it was the only evidence offered for the ICA’s main conclusion, noted the lack of “direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.” The ICA also failed to address the strong anti-Trump bias on the part of the source of the fragment.

The ICA claimed that “a Russian political expert possessed a plan that recommended engagement with [Trump’s] team because of the prospects for improved US-Russian relations.” This claim was viewed as “lacking authoritativeness” and the CIA decided not to publish the intelligence even internally when they received it in February 2016. That’s probably because the so-called “plan” was in fact only an anonymous email with “no date, no identified sender, no clear recipient, and no classification”—not to mention that it was passed along by a foreign country with a noted anti-Trump bias.

The ICA then claimed that Putin’s inner circle “strongly preferred Republican over Democratic candidates because they judged that Republicans had historically been less focused on democracy and human rights.” The phrase “strongly preferred Republican” never appeared in the raw intelligence report and the ultimate source for the claim is unknown. What’s more, the claim that Republicans cared less about democracy and human rights in Russia was implausible. The Select Committee report noted that President Reagan was famous for his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech, but a myriad of other examples could be cited.

The ICA claimed that the “clear preference” report was corroborated by liaison, diplomatic, and press reporting, when in fact none of that was true. The liaison reporting was from 2014 and “didn’t mention Trump at all.” The diplomatic report was a post-election overview from the U.S. ambassador noting that a Russian pundit said Trump and Putin should “work together like businessmen,” hardly corroboration for the claim that Putin’s inner circle preferred Republicans. Indeed, that same ambassador’s note quoted a Russian foreign minister saying that “we do not feel any euphoria” about Trump’s win.

The ICA also omitted intelligence that Putin was telling people he “did not care who won the election,” that he had “outlined the weaknesses of both major candidates,” and that Russia was “strategically placed to outmaneuver either [candidate].” If anything, Russia was preparing for Clinton’s victory and felt she was more predictable. The Kremlin worried that Trump officials would “likely adhere to conservative anti-Russian positions.” Putin “took exception” to a “favorable view” of Trump and said there was “no basis for enthusiasm” for Trump.

The original New York Times report on the CIA’s assessment said that although Russia had allegedly hacked both Republicans and Democrats, it had only released Democrats’ embarrassing emails. In fact, the CIA had no evidence that Russia held embarrassing emails or information on Republicans. It did have evidence that Russia had embarrassing information on Clinton that was never released. This included the fact that Obama and other party leaders thought Clinton’s health to be “extraordinarily alarming,” that Clinton was suffering from “intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness,” and perhaps that she had been placed on “heavy tranquilizers.” If Putin favored Trump, it would be odd not to have released this information in the closing days of the campaign.

The use of weak, disputed, and contradicted intelligence to make the claim about Russia preferring Trump wasn’t the only problem with the ICA. Its use of the Steele dossier was another. Brennan lied publicly when he testified to Congress on May 23, 2017, that the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the [ICA] that was done.” Not only was it cited as the fourth bullet point of “evidence” that “Putin aspired to help Trump,” it was falsely described as “Russian plans and intentions” and having come from “an FBI source.” The dossier was presented in a two-page summary that implied some of its findings had been corroborated, misrepresenting “both the significance and credibility” of the dossier, according to the Select Committee report. Further, by hiding the dossier summary in the highest classified version, the Obama spy chiefs were “better able to shield the assessment from scrutiny.”

The documents released by Ratcliffe and Gabbard show that career officers were pleading with their bosses not to assert, falsely, that Russia preferred Trump and not to include the Steele dossier in any way, shape, or form. One wrote: “Based solely on what we DO know now, my bottom line is this—unless FBI is prepared to provide much better sourcing—I believe this should NOT be included in the paper.” Noting that the document had not been formally issued as an FBI product, this same official characterized it as suffering from “POOR SOURCE TRADECRAFT,” as having “extremely sketchy” sourcing, and as failing to “meet normal [intelligence community] standards.”

Career senior intelligence officials worried about the dossier’s author being funded by an anti-Trump entity, even though they didn’t yet know that the funding came from the Clinton campaign. They also worried about the lack of transparency regarding the dossier’s sub-sources—a concern validated weeks later when the FBI finally got around to interviewing primary sub-source Igor Danchenko, a Russian national the FBI had suspected of being a spy, and determined that the salacious allegations in the dossier lacked any credibility. Despite this, the FBI defended the use of the dossier for years and hid Danchenko’s identity from Congress by hiring him as a confidential informant—a ruse allowing them to claim that revealing his identity would endanger ongoing investigations.

When Comey insisted that the information in the document was good, one intelligence official wondered why, if so, it hadn’t been used against Trump during the campaign. Including the Steele dossier in the ICA, this official added, would be like taking supermarket tabloids seriously. Pointing to a December 12, 2016, National Enquirer story headlined, “Muslim Spies in Obama’s CIA,” he asked rhetorically if that report should be included in an ICA as well.

Confronted by a reviewer who wrote that there was “no intelligence to directly support” the claim that Russia aspired to help Trump, and that making the claim would “open the [intelligence community] to a line of very politicized inquiry that is sure to come up when this paper is shared with the Hill,” Brennan called him and another dissenting official into his office and told them he knew better. Confronted with demands from senior officials that the Steele dossier not be included, Brennan insisted it stay in. “[D]oesn’t it ring true?” he asked.

***

In the wake of these recent document releases, the Department of Justice announced in July that it had formed a strike force—a means of allowing federal investigators across multiple agencies to pursue criminals engaged in conspiracies. An unnamed federal prosecutor began securing additional documents from the spy agencies. After collecting the necessary documents, the federal prosecutor will begin speaking with whistleblowers and others with knowledge about how the Russia hoax operation was run. Once his team has a clear picture, they will bring in some of the targets of the investigation for interviews. With the statute of limitations at five years for most of these potential crimes, the Department of Justice may have to show that the conspiracy against Trump is ongoing, a task made easier by the fact that some of Obama’s spy chiefs continue to defend their actions.

Back in January 2017, three days before he was briefed on the Steele dossier, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer warned President-Elect Trump against criticizing the FBI and the CIA. “Let me tell you,” he said, “you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Thanks to Trump’s victory last November, it may be Obama’s spy chiefs who will regret taking on Trump.

It’s not a genocidal war in Gaza

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 20:25:25 GMT

Back in April, I read an open letter to the Irmo News that started with the writer saying “I am opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza.” I have wanted to address this highly false statement since then.

Let’s first explain what truly was genocidal on October 7, 2023. When a group of armed militants invade a country for the sole purpose of killing civilians (mostly women and children) is, by definition genocide. Brutally I will add, filming such atrocities in order to create fear, but also in order to send those videos to fellow militants, their parents and family members with the intent of getting praise from them, is below the human scale, that is not war.

War is one thing, fighting, and killing other armed soldiers is one thing, but even videotaping that for the sole purpose of bragging rights is not war. It is the definition of terrorism and terrorist acts. Anyone who overlooked that, or downplays that, I do believe, is sympathizing with the attackers.

Israel has a right to defend itself, its people, its land, its way of life, just as you and I do, and would. Yes, we as a nation, and as a people, have called for this, done this, and will do this, if a foreign militant group attacked us.

And as far as her statement “More than 50,000 civilians have been killed, most of them women and children. “ being accurate when the numbers come from the militant group or it’s government affiliates is preposterous to state as a fact. When you add that Hamas uses civilians as their shields, by launching the rockets, storing, living, fighting from hospitals and residential buildings, homes etc., then those deaths are on Hamas.

By the way, doing as Hamas did, is a war crime based on the international law describing war crimes and all that it constitutes. The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens is also a war crime because it does constitute genocide. Both of these are the word-for-word definition of what genocide and war crimes constitute.

She next makes a statement, “ Note to President Trump and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio: “ that she is not an anti-Semite, that this open letter has nothing to do with her regard for the people of Israel. Just as a reminder, this letter was written to the Irmo News, read by people in the Irmo area, not to President Trump, our Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but I guess if you want to put a political jab in here somewhere that’s about a good place as any.

The war in Gaza is in response to the actions of Hamas, which they have pretty much let it be known to all, that they want to kill all Jews in Israel and destroy them as a people group in that area. The people of Israel do want justice and expect their elected officials, their leaders which includes Benjamin Netanyahu and their military to do just that and defend Israel from future attacks such as this.

I do not read any sympathy for the Jewish people and the atrocities that occurred October 7, 23 anywhere in her very long letter. I do agree that her letter does not make her a terrorist, nor is it interfering with American foreign policy, and that she is not a threat to national security. However, as a resident of United States myself, I am simply exercising my constitutional right to express an opinion, which is, she is making excuses for Hamas , their actions and downplaying those actions, which would lead to me to believe that she does sympathize with Hamas and not Israel, but again just my opinion.

The rest of her letter is nothing more than anti-Trump bashing, which is not worth my time to address, since I do believe most readers will see through that for what it is.

Hardy King, SBO, CC, JCB

New Irmo News

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 17:18:12 GMT

New Irmo News

In this years Special Election to fill Eric Sickinger’s seat, who had to step down from Irmo Town Council, three people filed to run. One of them was George Frazier who I have done multiple articles about him filing to run in a previous election in Irmo using an address of a home that he had moved out of and not lived in for two years. He in fact at the time of filing lived at an address outside of the Town of Irmo. Since he filed to run again, I decided to write this letter below to inform the citizens of Irmo that this was in fact the same George that had lied about his address on the previous candidate filing form and, in my opinion, did that purposely and deceitfully.

On May 20, 2025

Yes, that is the same George…

Who lied about living in town and at the address he listed as his home address when he filed in October 23 to run for Irmo Town Council. He was removed from running in that election for not updating his address after he filed. But, let’s also be reminded when he filed that paperwork, he used an address of a home he had sold over a year ago and at the time was living outside of the Town of Irmo. And then he moved back into Town at a different address. None of those addresses he updated, but that’s actually beside the point of using a false address in the first place, but I guess lying and deceiving the public is OK with some voters, but hopefully not you.

There are Two other candidates running. One you may recall his name, has ran before for school district 5 and against me for mayor back in 2019, didn’t support that then, can’t support him now.

Plus, both Frazier and this candidate waited till the last day to file to run for town council. Why is that? Were they waiting to see who else might jump in, Barry, Brent, me? Were they trying to calculate their odds of winning, not sure. I never thought waiting to file had any meaningful purpose, not if you truly wanted to serve the people or run for office, didn’t care who else was running, you were going to run anyway. Weren’t waiting on someone’s blessing or approval, just decided and filed.

We need more decisive people running for office, not people who can’t decide where they stand or what to do.

Just for the record, Ed Greco did file the first day, which means he had already thought about it, prayed about it, spoke to whomever, and was there signing up, First. No fanfare, no photo op coming out of building, no prepared speech by himself or someone else, just going for it.

That is what I like about this candidate, which is why he has my vote and ask everyone else to please vote for Ed Greco.

And as far as community involvement, he has served on the Irmo Zoning Board of Appeals prior to his current service to the Town on the Irmo Planning Commission, which in my opinion is the most important of all town committees and commissions, providing more real world experience relating to what council members deal with on a regular basis.

Hardy King

___________________________________________________________________

This is the 2 ^nd Letter to the Editor I did in regards to the Special Election and in regards to as the letter states, Integrity in Elections.

On May 27, 2025

Does integrity matter in elections anymore

To me, yes, and to many others as well, it does. But to some voters who do not know what integrity, doing the right thing, having morals even means, then how can that be part of the factors in determining who they vote for? It isn’t. Those voters will decide based on color of skin, gender, sex, etc.. Worse yet even based on color of hair, eyes, age, weight, height , last name, or even the Eeny Meeny Miny Moe method.

In Congress and state capitals with multiple elected officials meeting to serve us, the likelihood that some of those elected officials having those attributes is greater. But what about small towns, cities or school boards with five, seven, or nine serving, especially non partisan? Then it does become more important amid the apparent consequences of the lack of those attributes.

That is why voter turnout is so important, especially among those who have integrity, morals, and know the meaning of doing the right thing. If you are in this group and believe elections do matter, then you can look back and see the affect of electing the right candidate or the wrong candidate.

Irmo has an election coming up next Tuesday with three candidates running. Many voters do not, in my opinion, even know this. It has been one of the quietest elections in quite some time, so I do expect a low voter turnout, which is not good for Irmo residents.

But how do you know who is the best candidate, if they are not really getting the word out or only campaigning to certain individuals and not to all Irmo voters.

Process of elimination. That is how most informed people make good decisions. Eliminate those who have been dishonest with you the voter, lied about living in town, false addresses, promises to fix the roads, etc. things that you and I know requires other elected officials decisions, limited tax dollars from other agencies and promises that they will work with those other officials, as if that has never been thought of or tried in the past. That’s called bunco bunco. Then look at who is left, what they say, how they have served you as a resident in the past.

One should start resonating better and as they say, “the cream rises to the top”.

Integrity does matter.

Hardy King

___________________________________________________________________

This is the letter to the editor Barry Walker did in response to my above 2 letters to the editor. By the way, the election was over at this time and George Frazier did not get elected.

On June 5, 2025

Rebuttal to Hardy King’s misleading claims

First and foremost, congratulations to Councilman-elect Mike Ward. Your election is a reflection of the trust Irmo residents are placing in you. Now, more than ever, your community is depending on your leadership, integrity, and commitment.

Unfortunately, not everyone has chosen to accept the results of progress with grace.

Former Mayor Hardy King, who was removed from Irmo Town Council in 2019 for good reason, continues to stir division. His past is marked by a well-documented pattern of racially insensitive and divisive behavior that brought shame and unnecessary tension to our town. Voters made their voices heard when they fired him from public office. Now, years later, he’s back to the same tactics—dragging up old issues and launching personal attacks to distract from the positive momentum Irmo is building.

Recently on the New Irmo News, Mr. King had attempted to smear candidate George Frazier over a paperwork oversight that occurred three years ago. The facts are clear: Mr. Frazier lives in Irmo and serves as chairman of the Irmo Events Committee. He is actively involved in the community and committed to its betterment. To dredge up a minor clerical error from years ago is not only disingenuous—it’s petty.

Mr. King also took it upon himself to cast doubt on candidates who filed to run on the final day of the deadline. Let’s be honest: filing on deadline day is perfectly legal and widely practiced. It reflects nothing more than a candidate’s right to carefully consider their decision amid family, work, and community obligations. To suggest that timing equates to lack of commitment or weak character is simply a baseless distraction.

Ed Greco, George Frazier, and Mike Ward are all thoughtful, qualified individuals who stepped forward to serve. Filing early doesn’t make one more prepared or more dedicated. Voters know better than to buy into that empty rhetoric. They recognize substance over sound bites.

Let’s also set the record straight: the voters rejected Hardy King in 2019, and they did so decisively. He was beaten—fair and square—and no amount of bitterness will change that fact. It’s time to move on.

Irmo’s newly elected leaders, including our new Mayor and Council members, have proven themselves through years of genuine service. They’ve volunteered, listened, learned, and grown with our community. And they’ve done it with integrity—not through racially charged language or by nursing old grudges.

This election was never about Hardy King’s feelings. It was about truth, transparency, and trust. It was about choosing leaders who show up for Irmo consistently, not just when it’s convenient or politically advantageous.

So let’s move forward. Let’s support leaders who respect the democratic process, who uplift rather than divide, and who put the needs of the people above personal vendettas.

Irmo deserves nothing less.

Former Mayor Barry A. Walker

___________________________________________________________________

My rebuttal to Barry’s Letter to the Editor. Yes, it got wordy, I call it my Irmo News dissertation. Hopefully, you will give it a passing grade, but there was so much bunco, bunco in Barry Walker’s letter to the editor that I had to respond to and I still get way too much enjoyment out of it every time I read it. I hope you do as well.

On June 10, 2025

You decide what is misleading…

Yes, congratulations to Mike Ward for winning this election to Irmo Town Council. And as I have said in the past elections, and in this campaign, integrity is always of upmost importance, to me, and I believe most voters.

Unfortunately, I do not believe integrity matters to some candidates, some voters, nor some elected officials, current or past. But I will agree based on the 2024 presidential election not everyone has accepted the results of that progress with Grace either.

First, let me say I was not removed from office in 2019, I lost that election after serving eight years as Mayor and 6 as a council member, to councilman Walker. Who four years later was removed, as he calls it, and I will add for good reasons as well.

Not sure if Mr. Walker has the position to talk about stirring division since that is what he pretty much did the entire time I served on Irmo Town Council with him. His past as well is marked by many racially insensitive statements made, including during the discussion regarding the purchase of the land for the community park. He made a comment during the council meeting that he thought he should be the one talking to the seller of the property because he could do a better job of “ jewing the seller down in price“ . I did hear from constituents living in town that are of Jewish descent how offensive that was. At another meeting discussing the video poker machines that were in convenience stores owned by “Indians” as he stated, when asked by another council member what he was referring to, he pointed to his forehead and said something to the effect of Oh you know, those Indians. Mr. Walker evidently does not know the difference between racially insensitive, politically correctness, and faith based speech, but I am not surprised. Nor should he live in a glass house.

Voters did make their choice for mayor in 2019, and again in 2023 where they voted Mayor Walker out of office after 1 term and voted for Bill Danielson to be the next Mayor of Irmo.

It is not years later. I was actively involved in the last two Irmo elections. Putting my opinion out there about candidates running and the facts regarding whether those candidates actually lived in town at that time. They were not personal attacks. I provided factual information directly from county records as to where those candidates lived, at the time of filing, to run for Irmo town council. Integrity is never an old issue and just as important as Walker stated above, now, more than ever.

I never attempted to smear George Frazier. My purpose in those letters to the editor was to remind the people of Irmo about Mr. Frazier filing to run for Irmo town council and using an address of a home that he had not lived in for years. At the time of signing the paperwork, that all the information he provided was true, he was living outside of the town of Irmo. Where Mr. Frazier lives today has nothing to do with where he lived years ago when he filed the paperwork to run in that election. The bait and switch by Mr. Walker is a hilarious attempt to deceive, but it wont catch fish here. To call using a previous address as your current address and to sign a document stating everything is true when signing it, a “minor clerical error “ is what is disingenuous, to me, and laughable by many.

As for casting doubt on candidates filing to run on the last day of filing , it is as I stated in my previous post. Yes it is perfectly legal to file on the last date prior to the deadline, never said it wasn’t, and that wasn’t the point, nor do I believe it is widely practice, that is very subjective. I will also state there have been individuals considering running for office, made up their mind to run based on their desire, prayer and consideration with whom ever that may be, then go file as soon as they can. In my opinion, anyone who waits till the last day, it’s because of some strategy, good or bad, to see who else may be running, can’t decide based on communication with another possible candidate, in deciding which of the two will file, or some strategy such as that. They may not want to run based on who else jumps in the race or waiting on someone else’s approval. All those reasons have nothing to do with sincerity of that candidate wanting to run because they want to run. I never suggested in my article May 20th, 2025 “ that timing equates to lack of commitment or weak character“. I did suggest that it had to do with indecisiveness and multiple other reasons, some mentioned above. Weak character would be what Mr. Walker is exercising here when he attempts to falsify statements in order to meet his distractions from the truth of this matter. Filing early does in my opinion mean one is more decisive and a better decision maker. Not dependent upon others whims. I have been involved in many elections for myself and in discussions with many others over the years about running for office. And when people tell me they want to run, I tell them what I know, what I think they should do and not do and when they come to that decision, go file and run. Anyone who has ever told me they were gonna wait, that decision was always based on waiting to see who else was going to run, etc. My advice has always been the same, make up your mind and go do it. You want to run, don’t let anyone talk you out of it or into it, they have a motive and it isn’t about you.

To set the record straight I ran for office 2003 and lost, Kathy Condom won that year and Harvey Hoots was reelected. I ran again in a special election in April 2004. I lost that election as well. Barry Walker won that year and that was his fourth campaign. I ran again in 2005 Barry won reelection and I was elected that year. I ran again in 2009 came in first and Barry came in second, we were both reelected. Barry ran against Mayor Gibbons in 2007 and lost. I ran for Mayor in 2011 against Kathy and Barry and I won. Barry came in third. In 2015 I ran again for mayor and won my second term. I ran again in 2019 for mayor after speaking with others about running for mayor instead of me and couldn’t convince others, because of Mr. Strife Maker, so I ran again when I had really had enough of serving with him. I really did not believe that he needed to be mayor or a council member for that matter , so I ran again. My heart was not in it and the idea of serving four more years with councilman Walker, being who he is, was not something I looked forward to. I had multiple people tell me that he had told them during the campaign that he wanted to be mayor before he died. Guess it worked for that election.

And to be “honest here”, God told me it didn’t matter if I was mayor or Barry was mayor, God is still in control and to trust in him, so I did and I backed off the campaigning as hard as I had in the past. Plus, all the other political BS that was going on at the time in regards to the senior apartments and parking in the yard issues, and multiple other factors, used by others to get Barry elected and me unelected was a major battle that time and energy to overcome was not what I wanted to do. They used Barry to unelect me and then they unelected him four years later. Yes, I was beat in 2019 after 8 years as Mayor -fair and square, as he stated and so was, he in 2023 after only 4 years. I have no bitterness and in fact was very relieved when I found out I was losing and expressed that to my wife in a conversation on the phone going from polling place to polling place. And expressed that relief and joy that night with my wife as I went to bed. And still happy today.

I do believe Mr. Walker may be guilty of nursing old grudges. I have none towards him and in fact, do pray for him weekly for his salvation and his medical condition.

Yes, this last election was never about my feelings, not even sure what that means or what he is referencing. As far as it being about truth, transparency, and trust, it is very hard to determine what truth he is referring to since he has not been truthful with his article about me, nor has he or Mr. Frazier been truthful or transparent about the fact that Mr. Frazier did not live in the home that he used as his address when he filed his paperwork. Not sure how Mr. Walker, or Mr. Frazier in those last elections being deceitful to the people of Irmo is how you build trust with people.

And just to keep the record straight, when Mr. Walker was sworn in 2023, in his speech he gave that night as his vision for Irmo, was plagiarized from three or four different sources. That was, “let’s be honest”, not truthful, that was not transparent, that brought shame to Irmo, but as they said, that’s just Barry.

So yes, let’s move forward. In the future, let’s support candidates who are honest, about where they live, transparent about answering those tough questions, because they will be asked and we deserve to know those answers. Nor listening to others making excuses or condoning that behavior as a “minor clerical error “. Let’s support those that put the needs of the people of Irmo above their personal desires and egos.

Hardy King

Since Truth Matter

The Sky Is Not Falling...

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 18:02:21 GMT

The Sky Is Not Falling...

Regardless of what some on Lexington county council are attempting to distract constituents during reelection campaigns. Growth is not the issue, and some on council have even admitted it. It’s residential growth they say, not commercial growth. Yes we all want those large companies and the employers, just not the people that would come to those jobs. But can’t have one without the other. So it’s not growth, and even not residential growth, just can’t be smaller, denser cookie cutter affordable homes. It’s the fact that inflation, cost to provide services over the years has risen more than the revenue to provide the service has.

They are blaming developers, builders for putting up too many homes for the record number of people moving into the county. Supply meeting demand. Your past county council members worked to make the county a better place to live, everyone shares that with others and lo and behold others want to move here, and they are. Read the news, Charlotte is the fourth fastest growing city in the US, Rock Hill I believe was number 13 in the US, South Carolina in top 10 fastest growing state in US and Lexington County is one of the top counties in the state, so is Lexington Richland school District 5.

Everyone wants to be in the best school district that they can, even if retired, resale values and all that.

So what do you do?Well as a resident or voter, you want and expect your elected officials to think and use common sense, do what needs to be done, what has to be done, without considering it’s election time, or it will be next election cycle. Worried about your reelection is short-term thinking and not what is best for the county residence down the road. That is why this problem is here at their feet today. Others and some long-term current council members have passed the buck, kicking the can down the road and the road is a dead end. Now it’s current council’s job to fix the problem, not look for scapegoat (builders/developers and municipalities). Which sounds good to current residents sitting in traffic. But it doesn’t fix roads, provide for those same services (EMS, fire, police) as the revenue did 10 to 15 years ago.

So let’s discuss the fallacy of new resident cost more money than current residents. If every current residential home in the County is paying the correct amount of property taxes per 100,000 value of home to provide proper road maintenance, EMS, Fire, police services, then each new home would be paying the same and all is well. But each current residential property isn’t paying enough nor hasn’t for a while. Let’s not talk school taxes, that is for schools and they have their own elected officials deciding that tax rate.Discussing how much of your tax bill goes to the school district it’s just a distraction and a way of saying we can’t pay anymore in taxes because of how much we already paid to the school district. Saying fire, EMS police can’t handle growth is a fallacy as well, you just add more fire, EMS, police staff, equipment etc. as needed. But that would require county council to raise their tax rate to provide for those needs. And yet county council members claim they can’t raise taxes to cover the additional cost to provide those services, why? It’s an election year for some and will be soon for the others. If they can’t vote to raise county taxes, but do vote to approve school tax increases, then they being disingenuous. Yes they say people can’t afford it, but they still vote to approve the other taxes on your annual bill. And some can’t truly afford it, but if you need more fire, EMS, police then you need more revenue to properly maintain roads and they’re the ones whose job it is to do so. Yes all say they can’t afford more taxes as I do myself. Yeah, it does cost more to eat out and eat at home, utility bills go up everything goes up and so does the cost to provide fire EMS police services and properly maintain County Roads.

So county council wants to provide those services at a proper level, it can’t do it when all those cost associated with providing proper services is rising and when the tax revenue for those services isn’t increasing as well. Road improvement cost has increased from 100 to 400% since the county last increased taxes for that service.

Look at your county tax bill, not the bottom total, not the school tax, not the zoo nor library, just the County total and look back 10 years ago, see what the the tax millage was then compared to now. Not the tax amount itself because that has risen with the increased value of your home. What was the county millage 5– 10–15 years ago compared to today. Or better yet ask your county elected officials for that information and asked him how much road repairing was per mile back then, how much did it cost to provide for fire, EMS, police services back then compared to today.You will quickly see cost have increased tremendously, but not the revenue, not the millage rate. Yes revenue will increase as new homes were built and more taxpayers pay in, but compare the millage rate for those services then and now. Don’t let them distract you with blaming on others, kicking the can down the road, the can will fall into a big pothole.

Building up or out, urban sprawl and how county council delusional 4 homes per acre policy will create more urban sprawl, more costly homes for residents. But won’t stop growth, only creates more issues down the road, another kick the can reaction. Same as concurrency policy, just another look what we are doing, to look like we are doing something. Distractions from what must be done, provide the additional needed increased revenues.

Tax Buck

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 21:52:38 GMT

Tax Buck

If growth is the problem that some Lexington County representatives say and believe it is, they can address that by passing ordinances to not allow any more growth. But they know they can’t, in fact some have even mentioned in past, growth is good, and it is.

So how much growth is good? You’re either growing or you’re dying. They are elected to figure that out, just have to decide and do it. But not continuing the 1978 agreement doesn’t stop growth, just changes who controls it. Remember one of the standards, if it’s not about the money, it’s about control, right.

In the WLTX article it was stated “ The penny tax did not pass, or the capital project sales tax did not pass in 2022. Wessinger said.” But the county council can raise property tax to pay for the escalating cost to cover road maintenance, but not get reelected, most likely, from a constituency that said no to those taxes.

So again what do you do? You “pass the tax buck” to others. How? You come up with some flaky idea that sounds good to some, but really doesn’t stop “growth “which is your constituents concern and maybe some of the county council members, now, nearing an election, but shifts the tax burden to some other County residents , that they represent as well. Well should be anyway, incorporated county residents are still county residents . But oh yeah, you won’t have to raise taxes to pay for the cost, municipal officials will. The ones that can, all municipalities legally can’t.

But it still won’t stop or slow growth in the county and that is where the majority of the residential growth is coming from in the first place.

I will have more data from 2022 and 2023 at sincetruthmatters.com , but the short version is in 2022, 2931 permits were issued in unincorporated Lexington County, a total of 1155 in all Lexington municipalities combined, and some of those in the municipality numbers are permits issued by the county, built in the county and later got annexed into a municipality, due to an agreement that residents sign when they purchased property adjoining a municipality and receive municipal services, such as water and sewer. If the county really wants to be in control, they can build their own water and sewer services and provide it. But then they have to deal with constant rising cost to provide those services, due to ever increasing regulations and then have to deal with complaints about rising monthly bills. Not aside from the tax rate to pay for it, and well, as it is now, they don’t even want to raise taxes to pay for proper road maintenance and improvement. So, that’s really not a solution, so let’s just stick to somehow concocting an idea, “the towns need to pay for it.”And by the way, of course we, Lexington County will keep the gas tax dollars and the road tax, paid by the incorporated county resident and not share it with the municipalities.

So let’s discuss that now, since it wasn’t done before by the county with municipalities as Debbie Summers stated in the WLTX article.

How do you divide up the gas tax appropriately to the county and all 14 municipalities? One, you start with a C tax committee as law prescribes, with appropriate number of municipalities represented from all municipalities and County representation. Then you decide (yeah right) how much the county gets and how much the municipalities get. Based on (population, miles of County roads, State Roads, municipal roads,percentage of how much county tax was paid by each incorporated and unincorporated county residents, How many miles the municipality residents drive in the county and how many miles County residents drive in the municipalities, plus back taxes for years since roads last repaved, etc) and you get the picture. No wonder why the 1978 agreement was done in the first place, no one could decide how to divide the money correctly. So it was settled by the county, keeping all the money and maintaining all the roads. That agreement has work very good since 1978.

It was stated in an article by Al Dozier for Lexington Chronicle that “county officials have discussed ways to raise money to combat the problem, including through a user fee and a sales tax hike”. Well, the Penny tax failed, the user fee is being discussed, a sales tax could be done, as well as a property tax increase dedicated to road maintenance and improvement. Wonder where those discussions about those taxes ended? Evidently with county council not deciding, but passing the proverbial “tax buck”.

The best comment I have read was from Councilman Todd Cullom who said maybe the county should go back to the 1978 agreement, have the discussion with the towns first and then decide how to cover the escalating cost of road maintenance and then control growth which was according to some, their real concern.

Road Maintenance Shenanigans

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:32:10 GMT

Road Maintenance Shenanigans

Lexington County Council Road maintenance “Shenanigans “

Yes, Lexington County council has decided after 46 years to not renew an agreement to maintain Roads in a city that has worked well, unless …. blah blah blah. Hidden in some county council members statement is the real reason for their actions but not out there where we all can understand, because it’s a “fast one“ they are trying to pull. By the way, has the constitution, declaration of independence, the Bible, been rewritten in the last 46 years? No.

So what’s wrong with the 1978 agreement, nothing really. But according to Lexington County Council statements in the February 28, 2024 WLTX Rachel Ripp article, Lexington County “ it can’t keep up with the cost of paying for this”. So is this a tax issue, the county council, who some will be up for re-election this year, don’t want to deal with ? Raising taxes before an election brings out opponents, and those anti-growth opponents have earned some power and lots of support. So how do you please a loud, vocal constituency and resolve this issue of cost escalating to maintain roads, without an accompanying escalation in revenue to pay for it? Especially when that constituency did not vote to approve the past Penny tax or the capital project sales tax. You blame it on someone else, shift the blame and the cost to others. Sounds brilliant, until the others say no. Then the other side of the story the county council members left out, comes out.

Being my past as a municipal elected official and knowing more of the story that some county council members are not being truthful about, I decided I would speak to some of those comments being made and finish their statement.

Will be addressing at least four articles and or posts I have read including the WLTX article, Lexington chronicle article and from a couple social media sites. Will be long and may be four separate articles here at any LINC publications that they run it in and will put more data about housing permit in Lexington County versus municipality, county millage rate for the years since 1978 and escalating cost of repaving road since last millage rate increases And other factors that show their explanations and statements don’t add up on a website sincetruthmatters.com . along with my articles.

But for now, let’s go back to the WLTX article comments made by Lexington County council members. It was stated in that article “unincorporated areas of Lexington County didn’t want to continue to be annexed into municipalities“. That may be true for a majority of residents and some areas, but I also know many resident who do want to be annexed into municipalities and get the added services that the municipalities offer. Not all municipalities are the same, offer the same services or can even annex in the first place without permission of the property owner. Another reason the old agreement worked and the new one doesn’t, it penalizes some municipalities for what the some county council members misbelieve is an issue with other municipalities. More about this issue and Swansea in another article. “She explains when property becomes annexed, the new agreement is a tool to help preserve the Lexington County ordinances“. Not sure what she is referring to, but if the property or subdivision is annexed Into a municipalities after it is developed, the road and the development density meet the county standard/ordinances when completed, then nothing about the property or development has changed, all is “preserved “, as was in the county or in a municipality. So why not continue to maintain the roads for those county residents?

If the land is zoned and undeveloped and the county denies the development, let’s say a subdivision out in the county and then the developer goes to the municipality adjoining that property and ask to be annexed so they can build and the property owner and the municipalities agree, then this is the “boom “that someone reacts to. Cause and effect, but we should expect better out of our elected officials, right? Well OK, maybe not, yes, we are all human. But reactions have to be countered by understanding of consequences of those actions. That did not happen, in my opinion, occur, before the decision by Lexington County council to not continue the 1978 agreement.

You’ve heard it said in the past to “follow the money“ and I will remind you throughout this debate “ it’s always about the money, it’s always about the power and if it isn’t, it’s about the power to control the money”.

According to the WLTX article it will be “up to these towns and cities to figure out how they take care of the roads“ in other words they can raise taxes to pay “for this” but not us.

So I will continue the next few weeks with articles about passing the “Tax buck “ on to others, the “ us versus them “ mentality that some county council members and the anti-growth mentality is creating in the county between incorporated and unincorporated residence of Lexington County, proper planning and higher density levels (building up or building out).

According to all data, census track prediction, people are moving to the south, to South Carolina and to Lexington County. Growth is coming, will come and this is not going to stop it.

DO “ WE GET HIM” March 10, 2024

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 23:50:35 GMT

DO “ WE GET HIM”

Part one

I wanted to share something here that I haven’t done in the past, but I do have a department titled “Biblical“ in order to post stuff from a “biblical“ perspective, and that is where I believe truth does originate and grow from.

You may or may not know that I am a Christian, maybe not the purest or most knowledgeable, but I do have faith, and I do believe that, as Jesus said, we are to go and make disciples of all men. Some may believe this is where missionaries come in, but if we have love for our family, friends, and neighbors, then shouldn’t we share our core beliefs with others? We share great food recipes, great restaurants to eat at, great mechanics, HVAC companies, plumbers, doctors, dentists, etc. Why shouldn’t we share the “great news"? And by the way, great churches and great pastors.

This is not an ad for my church, but I do enjoy the church I attend, the fellowship, the people, and the pastor. His name is Jim Reese, and the church is Decided Church in Irmo, South Carolina.

All that to say, you are invited any Sunday if you are looking for a great church. If you are happy at your church, great. But this is more about his message from a previous Sunday, February 18th, 2024, in case you want to watch online. I believe it is there, but I am not sure. I am not very fluid with online tech stuff, iPhone or iPad, or anything like that.

I am not going to plagiarize his sermon, but parts of it I do want to talk about and add my two cents. Most people have seen John 3:16, whether in the Bible or watching an NFL game on TV. “For God so loved the world...” and most can repeat the rest. His sermon was on John 3:1–21. The before and the after of 3:16—that is what he spoke about, and this is what I want to talk about as well.

The before, John 3:3

Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.“. I believe this, but many don’t. Some have even said, “There is nothing in the Bible about being saved, about going to heaven, going to hell, etc. But there are plenty more scriptures besides this one.

I want to highlight this scripture because it answers something a friend and I were discussing not too long ago. Heaven and Hell: “No one goes to hell; we are all saved because God is love." Yes, he is love, and he did. Does “so loved the world refer to his creation? But... the rest of the story is “his son, Jesus, his crucifixion, and his resurrection, but that’s for later.

There are commercials on TV and at this year‘s Super Bowl about “Jesus, he gets us.“ Yes, he does, and I understand the whole story, not just the “so loved the world” part, but the other part about being “seeing the kingdom of God“ (heaven). And if there is a heaven, then a hell, as well. Yes, Jesus gets us; he is, after all, God in the flesh, born of a virgin, lived among us, was tempted, and gave up his life for us. Why, none of us should perish (die eternally without forgiveness of our sins, which are plentiful; even I am a Christian, not pure, not sinless, before or after my being “born again”). Despite my disobedience, stubbornness, and even my non-understanding or misunderstanding of scripture, I, we, as Christians, still learn something new every time I, we open the Bible, attend church, study the Bible with friends, etc. It is a walk, a journey, and a lifelong process. But back to the scripture, John 3:3, “Unless someone is born again.”.

Part Two

Nicodemus could not understand this, and if you know a lot about Nicodemus, who he was, etc., it was confusing, even to him. Yet he came; he was searching for understanding, for truth. Even though he didn’t know it, he found “truth.“.

Have times changed over all these years? Well, yes, in a lot of ways, but no in many ways as well. One way it hasn’t changed is that man is still confused about being “born again” about heaven, hell, or “seeing the kingdom of God.“.

Many religious people of different faiths and denominations of the Christian faith still don’t understand being “born again,” having eternal life with God, or being separated from God.

Heretical faiths, gnostics still live today, believe Jesus is not the son of God, weren’t born virginally (but today a woman can be a virgin and have male sperm implanted and become pregnant, give birth, yet believe an all-powerful Creator God couldn’t do this), weren’t crucified for their sins, and weren’t resurrected (yet there are more and more cases of people dying and coming back to life, and they believe this or acknowledge that it is possible).

As Jesus responds to Nicodemus, in short, he asks, with all your knowledge, How come you don’t know these things? And then he answers his own question and replies; in short, you hear all this stuff, but you do not believe it. If I told you earthly things, things seen by others, facts that can be sought after and verified by others you know, what they saw or witnessed, you still wouldn’t accept them as “truths.“. Then how can I expect you to understand spiritual, heavenly realm things? You won’t.

It can be called denial, stubbornness, a hardened heart, or simply illogical. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t understand it, so I won’t “accept it." What is missing is trust and stepping out in faith. I was that way once; I didn’t believe, didn’t want to, didn’t believe in heaven or hell, and didn’t even take the time to stop and figure it out. Nicodemus was at least searching, trying to understand something that went completely against his knowledge, his understanding of his faith, his God, and his teaching.

We do not know what happened to Nicodemus; did he die without knowing? But we do know from other scriptures about his actions and his devotion to Christ’s body. I personally believe he was the second individual to the other man on the other cross to know and accept who Jesus was saying he was. I do believe he is in heaven with Christ. Whether it came with a public profession, a cry of “God help me," “save me a sinner,” or a quiet time of reflection that ended with an “oh my God“ bingo moment, I do believe his sincere, earnest search for truth was answered by Jesus. The Bible teaches that God gives us the desires of our hearts, and if we ask honestly, without selfish ambition or agenda, he is there. He meets us where we are. Yes, “he gets us.”.

16 “For God so loved the world in this way: He gave us his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but may have eternal life.“.

Part Three

The After John 3:17–18

In short, in my translation, Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn people, but to save people; we are condemned already. All are sinners, destined to hell because of sin. Yes, “Jesus gets us"; he forgives us if we ask, if we repent, if we acknowledge we are sinners. But if we don’t, we die in our sins and transgressions. That's in the Bible as well. Jesus accepts us as we are, where we are, and if we accept Jesus as who he says he is, as the Bible teaches he is and God says he is, then he says, “Your sins are forgiven “or “go and sin no more." If not, then at judgment, we could hear, “Get away, I never knew you.“.

Yes, Jesus “gets us. “He gave his life for us, and if we “get him," accept him as savior, give our lives to him, and accept him as lord. Then one day, we can hear, “Today, I will see you in paradise.”.

Or John 3:19–21.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light.

No one comes to the Father except through him.

Are we Equal?

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 23:50:01 GMT

Are we Equal?

A friend shared with me a question he was asked about a conversation he had became a part of. I thought his answer was a great response, and his perspective was worth sharing. I will not say who, what, or where, but I will bring his words and thoughts into this article.

But let’s first talk “Equal “. What does that mean? Does equal mean all the same, does not being equal mean some are “better” than others. Well yes and no, depending upon the topic and the issue.

Are all people “created” equal? According to our constitution, yes. Do I love my children equally, the same, yes. Is each child born with different talents, gifts, abilities, yes. Do we raise, teach our children to be all they can be, pursue their dreams? Well, we should be, but no, not always and some fail, yes. And some achieve, and or, then achieve.

As a Christian who believes the Bible, I have a perspective. Those that don’t believe the Bible, don’t believe in a God, have a different perspective. And this is where the beginning of differences in thoughts and actions begin. Yes “we are all equal in God’s eyes“. He created man, woman, mankind in his image. But we are all born different, unequal, as well. Different sexes, different races, different places, to different people. Some are born with different physical, mental handicaps that will bring hardship that others do not have to contend with. So we are not even born equal, in that regards. And under different economic conditions, under different forms of government. But let’s just stick to America, since this is where the conversation took place.

So created equally in God’s eyes, but at inception we are given different gifts, talents, abilities or disabilities, and still in my belief loved equally by God. Just like most fathers and mothers love their children, equally, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. And if they don’t, that is on them, not the child. So yes, created equally, born different, not the same, and therefore unequal, at the same time.

Yes some have opportunities that every child doesn’t have. So what. That doesn’t mean every child can’t achieve what others do. They can. Might be harder, more difficult, but we all know, read of some who have wasted those opportunities, squandered that opportunity, and some have risen to great achievements in all realms of life.

I remember as a child when I realized I wouldn’t be a white hat cowboy, a baseball superstar, a rockstar, a great artist or “dancer”, a Steve Jobs, a Bill Gates. But once I realized that, I had to do the best I could, with what I had to work with. And I squandered some opportunities as well. But I am loved by some, liked by some, still today. And yes not liked by some, most likely hated by some. But again that is on them, not on me.

It was said, something to the affect “you are you, I am me, I cannot be you, and you cannot be me”. So yes we are different and therefore not equal.

What is wrong with not being equal? Who wants all, “equals”. I enjoy seeing, knowing “unequal “ people. Imagine how boring it would be if all were equal, no great singers, dancers, athletes (all games ended in ties), doctors, scientists, preachers, authors, poet, artist, racecar drivers, mechanics, plumbers, homebuilders.

Yes the conversation also talked about income, sharing of income. So let’s address that, sharing of income. Yes it would be great (for awhile) if Bill Gates shared half his income with me, and then I had to share..... either all that income with others, or one. Which would be equal?

If I shared all the gifted income, I would be equal to Bill Gates. If I shared half that gifted income as he did I would be equally sharing as him, but wouldn’t be equal with what he shared, so I would not be equal with him. Whoa. And if you can decipher from here, the conundrum of that philosophy, not really working out well.

And if people had to share a large portion of their income with others at some point, why achieve, sit back and receive. and you end up with, as you see around the world, failed communist, socialist societies that have not proved their point, but have proved just the opposite. It doesn’t work, never will it, ever.

As a Christian and my belief in God’s word, the Bible, I do believe we are all created in the image of God, equally. Can be born to same parents, in same conditions, environment and one works the land, one raises livestock. Both have talent, gifts, abilities. But also given free will to make choices, decide our future, our fate. One kills and one dies at an early age. We are not equal , we are not the same.

Church Health

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 15:55:52 GMT

Church life, growing, the ups and downs

Let’s talk about churches, the health of churches, the life of churches. yes churches do die, close, get sick, go through things, issues, just like you and I get sick, go through trials and tribulations.

Many books in the Bible and parts of revelation are written to churches. So why do we not expect churches today to experience the same things as those churches written to in the Bible.

Some of it is growing pains, some of it is, yes, people, it’s members, it’s body of believers. Could be its pastors, leadership, lack of leadership, lack of direction, lack of unity, lack of vision. And you can think of more, but this is enough to get the picture.

As with most issues, it is hardly ever the one issue, at least not the first one, maybe not the second or third one, but always the last one, the last straw that causes some strife in the body. But really it’s usually not the issue, it’s a disagreement on how that issue was handled. Some say this, some say that and we disagree. That’s human and churches are made up of, well mostly humans. Yes there are chairs, pews, tables etc., But when do they disagree, never. It’s just us, the body, the members. We are all sinners, at different varying degrees of spiritual maturity, wisdom and faith.

But all is well, as Christians we know God gives us, allows trials, tribulations and troubles, in order to grow us, strengthen us, mature us. And His word tells us we should walk through this with great joy, just like we know we should walk through our own individual personal trials, tribulations and troubles. God’s word tells us, to consider it great Joy. But it’s still hard, still difficult and it still hurts. We are again, human.

I have quit jobs, been fired, been hired, fell in love, been divorced, lost friends, survived broken relationships, attended weddings and funerals, buried friends and family, remarried, had kids, grandkids, being elected, lost elections, joined churches, attended many, left some.

And I know God is good and greatly to be praised. He works in all things to his glory and moves people where he needs us. It is all his plan and we are blessed that we are a part of his plan.

Let us not grow weary, but rejoice again God says rejoice. Job had it tough, we don’t. Joy comes in the morning and each day starts with a morning.

Be thankful and grateful, God is with you, us, the body, the bride, the church and nothing will prevail against his bride, the church.

Don’t forget to vote

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 23:21:44 GMT

Don’t forget to vote

Yes, it has been very quiet this Irmo election. Some even ask, is there, or who is running? Is he “that guy “, is he really running? What’s going on?

Well, let’s talk about this. Yes, there is an election for Irmo Town Council next Tuesday the 27th. Yes, there are two candidates running, Gabriel Penfield and George Frazier. Yes, George is “that guy“who lied on his filing papers in the November 2023 election and didn’t live in town when he filed. Already discussed that in numerous other articles. Then why is he running now? Well, he said he would run again back in October 2023 when asked by Al Dozier Irmo News, but so did Barry Walker after he lost the November 2023 election.

My guess is, that they both wanted to run, they both said they were. But based on Barry‘s prior racial thinking and strategies, they would hurt each other’s chances of winning if both ran. So decisions had to be made as to who would run. Coin toss, short straw or odds, not sure which, but it is evident by the one candidate filing on the very last day and hour that it was a strategy of waiting to last minute to be secretive, confuse the other candidate, or neither actually wanted to run.

My guess again is, one was afraid of losing, but never wanted to let Gabriel Penfield run without a challenger. So it wasn’t because either wanted to serve Irmo, just wanted to cause more strife, and trouble for others. This is not a great reason to run, nor is it about serving. But with some, I don’t expect more.

So moving on, to why he is running, why is he not out there campaigning? Where is George’s platform, mailouts, posts on social media, and signs? Well maybe a handful of signs, but really no true, hard, honest campaigning.

What about a sneak campaign? That’s where you don’t campaign hard, work quietly behind the scenes, have no mail outs, no social posting, stick up a few signs, and hope to “Lull” the other candidate into not working hard and the other side to not voting. If you can get a sizable number of your opponent’s voters to stay home and not vote, then maybe you can get your 50 votes, 100 votes to show up and make it close, maybe pull off an upset.

So yes, this is, in my opinion, their campaign strategy.

But don’t be fooled, don’t be “lulled” into thinking your vote doesn’t matter. Get out and vote for Gabriel Penfield, he is out there campaigning, knocking on doors, doing mailouts, and advertising.

Honestly campaigning.

Honestly asking for your vote.

Honestly wanting to serve you.

And not some foolish trickery.

IS HE THE GUY THAT……..?

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:20:56 GMT

IS HE THE GUY THAT……..?

Yes, there are two candidates that did file to run for the vacant seat of Irmo town council. But what was left out is one of the candidates, George Frazier, is the same one who filed to run last August and used the address of a home he hadn’t lived in for a year.

You read that right. George Frazier sold the house at 142 Rose Oak Drive, Irmo in September 2022. When he filed to run for Irmo town council in August 2023, he used that address as his current address, why you may ask? According to whitepages.com he lived on Ashland Road at that time, not in the town of Irmo. Even if that was not correct, he didn’t live at 142 Rose Oak Drive either. And if he had lived at an in-town address, he would have used it, he didn’t.

Now let’s talk about the form he filled out and signed that said “I attest everything in this form is correct or will be by the time of the general election. “ His address wasn’t his true, correct, actual address when he filled out the form, nor was it likely that he was going to live there by the time of the election. In fact he was in the process of moving into another address off Archers Lane in the town of Irmo, when he got caught and disqualified.

As stated before all this was turned over to the SLED election fraud department for them to determine what election laws have been violated, but you and I already know what is wrong here.

Yes, it is not unusual for candidates and politicians to lie, and others, as well. But don’t you think we, the residents of the town of Irmo deserve better? If a candidate would lie about an address, lie about living in town when they don’t, perjure themselves on the form, just to run for office, possibly getting elected, as some do, but that’s another story, how can we trust them with anything they say to us ? “I care about….., believe me ….., I didn’t say……., I didn’t……”

Of course, some voters may not care, and will overlook stuff like lying, keeping your word, and being honest . Again some don’t care about integrity and character, maybe just looks, what they can get, what’s in it for them, who knows?

But I believe most residents in Irmo do care, do you want someone serving them that they can believe, can trust , when they are speaking and when they vote for what is best for you and for Irmo? That leaves one.

Kneeling, Standing, For prayer

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 14:17:45 GMT

Kneeling, standing, For prayer

A friend asked me a question the other day on a Facebook meme I had posted about the man on the cross with Jesus when he was crucified. His question was “I’ve wondered something a long time. In your years on council, everyone is asked to stand to pray? Now in my religion we always kneel before God. And I do. Do you have a comment about this topic? “

Now before I get into this topic, let’s look at his statement and question. It starts with “I wondered “which eludes to his thinking, pondering and I am honored that he asked me to help him here. But I also understand by the entire statement that this is a set up, for arguing only. But will respond because I enjoy this. “Wonder something a long term “, again honored and grateful to help, but we’ve known each other a while and he never divulged to me in person that he had this “stuck theology “on this issue. But again, happy to help my friend move forward in his life.

“In your years on council “is a slight of hand statement ,not really important to the issue about standing, other than being an example, which could be stated just as easy “at council meetings people are asked..“. But I will take it in stride where he was coming from, disregarding the agenda here. Then ends with “To stand to pray? “

Not in agreement with “everyone is asked to stand to pray “or for that matter stand for prayer. To stand to pray is more of a command, which not sure that is how I did it, nor others. But a presumptive statement by him without proof or evidence. which is his tactical way of handling or starting an argument, Causing one to debate a position that is not a factual position, just to argue.

Now a “ stand for prayer “may not be much different, but it is less demanding. Basically asking others to stand (out of respect) while someone is praying, not stand TO pray. One denotes “stand to “as an order. One denotes “stand for “as a respect for the action of others. Also he ends that statement with a ?, when there was no question asked, only a statement or an observation. Again I will move on and help him with his non-understanding of kneeling or standing and praying, etc.

“Now in my religion we always kneel before God. And I do. “ I have asked multiple times what is your religion and still to date no answer. So I do question what is his religion, as you most likely did as well and yet no answer to such a simple question. Makes me wonder too, not for a long time, however . But all this is nothing but distractions or fodder, since it is only a set up for him to argue my faith.

But let’s look at “ we always kneel…And I do.“ There are religions that kneel before God for prayer and biblical references for doing so. There are many Biblical references to standing and praying as well. There is the story of the Pharisee praying on the street corner and the other man praying “Father forgive me a sinner “. Which one in your opinion was God more impressed with, both are standing,not kneeling. Yes, in my opinion the one admitting he needed God and his own shortcomings.

In some churches and sometimes in that same church, you are asked to stand while the word is read and to stand while praying. Other times and or other churches, not. And yes some churches have kneeling pads in the pews and up front for communion, some don’t. Is one more religious, more accurate to God’s teaching? Does pews or fold up chairs mean more to God, does standing, kneeling mean more to God as opposed to bowing your head during prayer.

If kneeling only counts, does that mean I can’t pray while driving, while walking my dog, climbing a ladder, taking a shower, laying in bed at night or in the morning when I rise. what if I am disabled or old and can’t get on my knees. Should I refuse to pray, stop praying or pray twice as long to make up for not getting on my knees.

Jesus said the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on the mountain or in Jerusalem. Praying is a form of worship, so it doesn’t matter where or how, not according to Jesus, nor God, since they are one in the same. and everything above, that he has asked or said leads to this point for his post. My Faith says they are, his I believe from my understanding and prior conversations with him, says they are not.

Our posture or position while praying it’s not important, but the position or attitude of our heart is what is important. The position or posture of your body is just that. Yes kneeling denotes humbleness and if you can kneel, depending upon ability and space, that is great, if you can’t praying is more important.

The actual actions of kneeling and bowing of the head has lots of meanings in that action alone. And that is a whole study into itself. But communicating with God is obedience and that is more important to God than even sacrifices. Depending upon which religion and if it believes in God in the first place, not a statue or an ideology, which isn’t a god but an idol. so yes again what religion you follow could make a difference to someone, maybe?

To answer the only actual question he asked ,my answer is no,I do have a comment. None of this has anything to do with my or his religion. However, prayer is about relationship with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I now wonder, if he kneeled, at the council meetings he attended????

Ep. 325 — You Know Who Wasn't Colorblind? Nazis. | Fireside Chats | PragerU

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 21:44:43 GMT

Ep. 325 —

You Know Who Wasn't Colorblind? Nazis. | Fireside Chats | PragerU

The New England Patriots have their first black coach in the team’s history. While the owner said he doesn’t see color and picked “the best man” for the job, the new coach immediately contradicted him by saying, “If you don’t see color, you can’t see racism.” In an era where colorblindness is vilified, Dennis provides a much-needed perspective. After all, if the Nazis had been colorblind, there never would have been the Holocaust.

The Middle East Problem | 5-Minute Videos | PragerU

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:28:15 GMT

The Middle East Problem

Well, one thing Israel did, a little more than a decade later, in 1978, was to give the entire Sinai Peninsula -- an area of land bigger than Israel itself, and with oil -- back to Egypt because Egypt, under new leadership, signed a peace agreement with Israel.

So, Israel gave land for the promise of peace with Egypt, and it has always been willing to do the same thing with the Palestinians. All the Palestinians have ever had to do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state and promise to live in peace with it.

But when Israel has proposed trading land for peace -- as it did in 2000 when it agreed to give the Palestinians a sovereign state in more than 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza -- the Palestinian leadership rejected the offer, and instead responded by sending waves of suicide terrorists into Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinian radio, television, and school curricula remain filled with glorification of terrorists, demonization of Jews, and the daily repeated message that Israel should cease to exist.

So it’s not hard to explain the Middle-East dispute. One side wants the other dead. The motto of Hamas, the Palestinian rulers of Gaza, is: “We love death as much as the Jews love life.”

There are 22 Arab states in the world -- stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. There is one “Jewish State” in the world. And it is about the size of New Jersey. In fact, tiny El Salvador is larger than Israel.

Finally, think about these two questions: If, tomorrow, Israel laid down its arms and announced, “We will fight no more,” what would happen? And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced “We will fight no more,” what would happen?

In the first case there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and the mass murder of its Jewish population. In the second case, there would be peace the next day.

As I said at the outset, it is a simple problem to describe: one side wants the other dead -- and if it didn’t, there would be peace.

Please remember this: There has never been a state in the geographic area known as Palestine that was not Jewish. Israel is the third Jewish state to exist in that area. There was never an Arab state, never a Palestinian state, never a Muslim or any other state.

That’s the issue: Why can’t the one Jewish state the size of El Salvador be allowed to exist?

That is the Middle-East problem.

I’m Dennis Prager.

Link to the video: https://www.prageru.com/video/the-middle-east-problem

HAS HIS DREAM DIED

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 14:31:43 GMT

HAS HIS DREAM DIED?

Have we moved forward or is racism not only accepted in some aspects of our lives, but encouraged. I was taught growing up that it was wrong to vote for someone solely on the color of their skin, their race, their gender, but on who they were, what they stood for, represented, their views, words, actions, their character.

Martin Luther King said in his 1963 speech “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by their character. I have a dream today.” And yet today, it is encouraged and spoken that we should vote for someone based on the color of their skin, gender, not on their character.

I did for years collect comic strips out of newspapers. One strip I particularly liked was Shoe by Jeff MacNelly. Shoe was a bird-like character reminded you of one of the DC politicians. This particular comic strip he was a reporter. And he walks up to a fellow on a tractor and asks “who do you like for President?” The farmer responds “Gary Hart”. Shoe responds “really? You think he has dealt with the character issue adequately?” The farmer responds “oh sure, no question”. And then the farmer responds “he is a character alright”. But this is not the character that myself or Martin Luther King are referring to.

I saw a facebook meme, where one of the females on the View was complaining about Republicans not practicing identity politics. Which does in fact judge others by the color of their skin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other factors. But it is accepted as good, on factors such as these, but not character or integrity or any other moral attribute.

So someone “judging” others on their character, integrity, or moral values is wrong. Often reminded by others not to judge others, (least ye be judged) yes, they love to throw in scripture whenever possible and the few they have been taught to use. But their “judging” is acceptable, since it, since they ……………, well, not sure why they think it’s acceptable. Many other biblical scriptures come to my mind here, but let’s get back to Martin Luther King’s dream of not being judged by the color of one’s skin, and the multiple elections across the nation, even in South Carolina and in Irmo where people, parties, organizations, inform voters to vote according to skin color, race, gender, still today after 60 years.

Does this mean some do not agree with Martin Luther King and his dream? Does this mean this election is more important, we will go back to the dream, after this election? Does this mean they didn’t believe the dream or don’t believe it’s relevant today because it’s “history”?

It’s Not About Race, It’s About Truth and Character

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 22:46:26 GMT

It’s Not About Race, It’s About Truth and Character

Actually, the hearing held on 11/22/23 by Lexington County Election Commission failed to verify Phyllis Coleman’ true residency in City of Columbia because it failed to follow the law 7-1-25(D). But only verified that she changed her address to 7336 Mowers Street from her City of Columbia address on 8/17/23, and I had already provided the documents to them, SLED, Citizens of Irmo facebook page, that she had changed her voter registration to Town of Irmo on 8/11/23.

There are 10 items under 7-1-25(D) that decide an individual’s “domicile”, not 2, and that law says you can only have one “domicile”. Homes, residences, are not the same as “domicile”, and no one, not me or others ever said she couldn’t have two or more homes. I, we, the law says you can only claim one as your domicile, but we’ll get to that later.

What is truly appalling and more than “borderline racist”, is voting for someone or supporting someone for an elected office, because of the color of their skin. Martin Luther King stated that he hoped Americans one day would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,”. I was raised to vote for people based on their character and who is best, not based on the color of their skin. It seems now it is acceptable to promote or vote someone, solely, on the color of their skin. That was racist years ago, it’s racist today, period.

I have gone to great lengths, if you call it that, to verify that someone who wants to serve me and the remainder of Irmo actually meets the qualifications of being a resident in the Town of Irmo based on what the law states. Not what a candidate states. Yes, I turned in a complaint to SLED and a few emails to the State Election Commission because of the questionable dates she claimed she lived here in Irmo while living in another municipality and paying a 4% legal residence tax rate for 2022 instead of 6% non-resident rate and voting in the City of Columbia in 2022 as a resident all while claiming to live in Irmo since 2018. Yes, there is a lie somewhere. You can’t live in one town as your “domicile” legal residence and vote in another town, that is voter fraud. Nor can you live in one town (Irmo) and pay the 4% rate as a legal resident of another municipality, that is tax fraud and perjury.

I wouldn’t call any of these actions honorable, but I guess some don’t understand the definition of honorable.

She may have honorable intentions of serving Irmo, but that is not what has been challenged. Her claiming to be a resident of Irmo when living in Columbia and voting in the City of Columbia is what is being challenged. Serving as President of the Hyatt Avenue Homeowner’s Association, changing her driver license and voter registration of August 2023 is more evidence of why I believe something doesn’t jive. Yes, she was born here, attended high school here, but as Susan Walker stated in her response Phyllis then moved away to go to college in Chicago, worked there, then moved to other areas in the U.S. before moving back to Irmo. And Susan failed to mention that before moving to Irmo in 2018 or 2020 or 2023, whichever is the actual date, she moved to Columbia SC and then to Irmo.

I do question her integrity when she pays 4% tax rate on property in Columbia as her legal residence and “domicile”, votes in Columbia, while claiming to live in Irmo at the same time. And by the way, yes I moved here to Columbia from Alabama, but was born and raised in North Carolina, and I still visit my Dad who still lives there. But that doesn’t entitle me to run for office there. I live here. And Susan and Barry moved here from Connecticut, so I guess Susan is stating they have no roots here. And if Gabriel is from Louisiana, at least he lives here and has records to prove it.

Yes, many people own multiple homes, but only one qualifies by State Law as your “domicile”, and you can only have one, not two or more. This is the Law, have to follow unless you are special or above the law. Yes you can “establish residency where they wish to establish residency” but again only one at a time, not two at a time.

Moving in to take care of someone is legal, but not claiming that address at the same time you claim another as your legal residence, that is illegal. If it is your “limited knowledge” as you state, then why are you responding before verifying and becoming knowledgeable.

What I have said from day one, which is being ignored by yourself and others, is claiming to live here while living in City of Columbia. Gabriel and the other candidates do and did actually live here when they filed. George Frazier didn’t, and I don’t believe Phyllis did, and they both seem to be connected to your, yours truly, Barry Walker. And so was Jeanne Bennett back in 2021.

So for the reader, if Ms. Coleman lived in Irmo from Dec 2018 as she stated at the LCEC hearing on 11/22/23 and voted in Columbia in 2022 then that is voter fraud. And paying property tax to Richland County on that Columbia address at the 4% rate is tax fraud and perjury.

If she actually moved to Irmo in 2023 then she hasn’t committed voter fraud or tax fraud, but committed perjury at the Lexington County Election Commission hearing when she claimed to move here in 2018 and lived her since. It can’t be both.

Again, Susan Walker stated “having faith and confidence in Phyllis Coleman to carry out her duties as the first Black elected councilwoman” sounds racist to me. Her duties are the same as every council member male or female, regardless of the color of her skin, or at least it should be.

EDUCATION AS A BATTLEGROUND

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 14:23:30 GMT

EDUCATION AS A BATTLEGROUND

November 8, 2023

The following is adapted from remarks delivered on November 3, 2022, at a Hillsdale College reception in Santa Clara, California.

If you want to see the problem with American education, look at a chart illustrating the comparative growth in the number of students, teachers, and district administrators in our public schools in the period between 2000 and 2019. (See the chart below.) The number of district administrators grew by a whopping 87.6 percent during these years, far outstripping the growth in the number of students (7.6 percent) and teachers (8.7 percent).

In illustrating the difference in these rates of growth, the chart also illustrates a fundamental change that has come over our nation as a whole during this period—a change in how we govern ourselves and how we live. To say a change is fundamental means that it concerns the foundation of things. If the foundation changes, then the things built on it are changed. Education is fundamental, and it has changed radically. This has changed everything else.

One way of describing the change in education today is that it provides a different answer than we have ever known to the question: who owns American children? Of course, no one actually owns the children. They are human beings, and insofar as they are owned, they own themselves. But by nature, they require a long time to grow up—much longer than most creatures—and someone must act on their behalf until they mature. Who is to do that?

Not many people raise this question explicitly, but implicitly it is everywhere. For example, it is contained in the question: who gets to decide what children learn? It is contained more catastrophically in the question: who decides what we tell children about sex?

Are these decisions the province of professional educators, who claim to be experts? Or are they the province of parents, who rely on common sense and love to guide them? In other words, is the title to govern children established by expertise or by nature as exhibited in parenthood? The first is available to a professionally educated few. The second is available to any human being who will take the trouble.

The natural answer to this question is contained in the way human beings come to be. Prior to recent scientific “advances,” every child has been the result of a natural process to which people have a natural attraction. “Natural” here does not mean what every single person wants or does—it means the way things work unless we humans intervene.

In its essence, “nature” means the process of begetting and growth by which a mature, living thing comes to be. Not quite every human being is attracted to the natural process of human reproduction, but nearly all are—and when the process works to produce a baby, it works that way and no other way.

This process of human reproduction and growth works for two reasons. The first is that human beings, when mature, are capable of so much more than other creatures. Almost from birth we learn to talk, a rational function that indicates decisive differences from other creatures. Because of reason and speech we are moral beings, capable of distinguishing among kinds of things and therefore of knowing and doing right and wrong. Also because of them we are social beings, able to understand and explain things to one another that other creatures do not understand and cannot discuss. This draws us closer together than even herd or swarm animals.

We are unique in possessing these capacities, and it is in this specific respect that our nation’s founders declared that “all men are created equal.” This equality has nothing to do with the color of anyone. Its source is the unique, immaterial, rational soul of the human being. One of my teachers used to respond to the claims of animal rights advocates that one must not be cruel to any creature, but that only those who can talk are entitled to vote.

The second reason in nature that makes human reproduction unique is our especially long period of maturation. For months, human babies are simply helpless; without constant attention they will starve. For years afterwards they must develop the skills and knowledge that are uniquely available to the human being. Both the skills and the knowledge are natural, meaning all human beings can obtain them, but both take time. Each child does the work of obtaining them, but each child needs help. Modern educators often mistake the work of helping them to learn for actually doing the learning for them. The second is impossible.

The skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic are direct exercises of the rational faculty. They are in principle the same thing as talking, and in principle every child will learn much of them unassisted. Just watch a child grow up to the age of two. He or she begins very early to respond to things with comprehension. Words soon follow. Children copy adults for the use of words, but they are doing all the work of learning. Little wonder that human beings take a long time to mature: they have so much to learn.

Raising a child has always been difficult and expensive. With rare exceptions, it has always been true that the parents who conceive the child raise him the best. And throughout American history, it has been thought that the family is the cradle of good citizenship and therefore of free and just politics. Public education is as old as our nation—but only lately has it adopted the purpose of supplanting the family and controlling parents.

***

The political successes of Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, and many other politicians in other states have largely been won on this battleground of education. One can look in history or in literature to see the danger of where the idea of supplanting the family might lead. Study the education practices that existed in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and that exist today in Communist China. Or read the terrifying account in Orwell’s 1984. They tell us that children, by distorting their natural desire to grow up and end their dependence, can be recruited to the purposes of despotic regimes, even to the extent of denouncing their parents to the state.

We do not yet have this in America. But we do have children being turned against their country by being indoctrinated to look on its past—of which all parents, of course, are in some way a part—as a shameful time of irredeemable injustice. We also increasingly have children being encouraged to speak of their sexual proclivities at an age when they can hardly think of them.

To cite just one example, Christopher Rufo has discovered, on the website of the Michigan Department of Education, detailed instructions for how teachers should open the question with students of their sexual orientation—or maybe I should say sexual direction, since “orientation” implies something constant, whereas children are now being taught that sexuality is “fluid” and can take them anywhere.

Also on the website are detailed instructions on how to keep this activity from the parents. And as we learned last year, when parents get angry and complain of things like this, the FBI is likely to become interested.

Who “owns” the child, then? The choice is between the parents, who have taken the trouble to have and raise the child—and who, in almost all cases, will give their lives to support the child for as long as it takes and longer—or the educational bureaucracy, which is more likely than a parent to look upon the child as an asset in a social engineering project to rearrange government and society.

***

The revolutionary force behind this social engineering project is a set of ideas installed in just about every university today. Its smiting arm is the administrative state, an element of America’s ruling class. The administrative state has something over 20 million employees, many of them at the federal but most at the state level. Directly and indirectly, they make rules about half the economy, which means they affect all of it.

Most of the bureaucrats who staff the administrative state have permanent jobs. The idea behind this was that if they do not fear dismissal and have excellent pay and benefits that can’t be reduced, then they will be politically neutral. Today, of course, the public employee unions that represent this administrative state are the largest contributors in politics and give overwhelmingly to one side. They are the very definition of partisanship.

The fiction is that these bureaucrats are highly trained, dispassionate, nonpartisan, and professional, and that therefore they can do a better job, of almost anything, than somebody outside the system can do. They proceed by rules that over time have become ever more hopelessly complex. Only they can read these rules—and, for the most part, they read them as they please.

Judges have up to now, for the most part, given deference to the bureaucrats’ reading of their own rules. It is a rare happy fact that this judicial practice is under challenge in the courts. If it should ever become settled doctrine that the bureaucracy is constrained by the strict letter of the laws made by elected legislators and enforced by elected executives, that will exercise some restraint upon the administrative state. That explains why, after decades of defending judicial supremacy, progressives are beginning to question the authority of the courts and speak openly about packing the Supreme Court.

***

Public education is an important component of the prevailing administrative system. The roots of the system are in Washington, D.C., and the tendrils reach into every town and hamlet that has a public school. These tendrils retain some measure of freedom, especially in red states where legislatures do not go along automatically. In some red states, the growth of administrators has been somewhat slower than average. But this growth has been rapid and large everywhere. In every state, the result has been to remove authority and money away from the schools where the students learn. In every state, the authority and money drained from the schools have flowed toward the bureaucracy.

The political battle over this issue is fraught with dishonesty. Any criticism of public education is immediately styled as a criticism of teachers. But as the numbers show, the public education system works to the detriment of teachers and for the benefit of bureaucrats. The teachers unions themselves, some of the largest of the public employee unions, claim to be defending teachers and children. That cannot be more than half true, given that they are defending an administrative system that has grown by leaps and bounds while the number of teachers has grown very little.

Worse even than this is the tendency the system sets in all of us. Bureaucracy is a set of processes, a series of prescribed steps not unlike instructions for assembling a toy. First this happens, then that happens, and then the next thing. The processes proceed according to rules. It is a profession unto itself to gain competence in navigating these rules, but nobody is really competent. Today we tend too much to think that this kind of process is the only thing that can give legitimacy to something. A history curriculum is adopted, not because it gives a true account of the unchangeable things that have already happened, but because it has survived a process. The process is dominated by “stakeholders”—mostly people who have a financial or political interest in what is taught. They are mostly not teachers or scholars but advocates. And so we adopt our textbooks, our lesson plans, and our state standardized tests with a view to future political outcomes once the kids grow up.

I have said and written many times that the political contest between parents and people who make an independent living, on the one hand, and the administrative state and all its mighty forces on the other, is the key political contest of our time. Today that seems truer than ever. The lines are clearly formed.

***

As long as our representative institutions work in response to the public will, there is thankfully no need for violence. As the Declaration of Independence says, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”

The Declaration guides us in our peaceful pursuits, too. In naming the causes of the American Revolution, it gives a guide to maintaining free and responsible government. The long middle section of the Declaration accuses the King of interfering with representative government, violating the separation of powers, undermining the independence of the judiciary, and failing to suppress violence.

And in an apposite phrase, it says of the King: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

So it is today. And so it is our duty to defend our American way of life.

Larry P. Arnn

President, Hillsdale College

Published: November 2022 on Imprimis

Reference: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/education-as-a-battleground/

IMPERIALISM: LESSONS FROM HISTORY

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 14:09:52 GMT

IMPERIALISM: LESSONS FROM HISTORY

November 7, 2023

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner on June 30, 2023, during a Hillsdale College educational cruise from Istanbul to Athens.

The word “imperialism” comes from the Latin word imperium. It refers to a nation or a state implanting its rule on other states, treating them as subordinates and in an inferior fashion. Some suggest today that America is behaving imperialistically—we do, after all, have some 600 military bases around the world. So it is worth recalling some historical examples of imperialism to understand what the idea entails.

Looking at empires through history, we can identify several things that most of them have in common. One is that their leaders often say or seem to believe that their imperialist policies have little to do with self-interest.

We can see an example of such denial in Pericles’ famous funeral oration as recorded in the second book of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. The speech was delivered in 431 B.C., at the height of the Athenian Empire. Athens was expropriating tribute from its subject states and had built the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and soon the Erechtheion on the Acropolis. In other words, the Athenians were diverting a good portion of their allies’ tribute paid to them—which was supposed to be devoted to mutual defense—to enhancing their city. And what does the imperialist leader Pericles have to say of his grand visions? He calls Athens “the school of Hellas” and proclaims that it will enjoy “the admiration of the present and succeeding ages.”

Athens won’t need a poet like Homer to memorialize it, Pericles continues. Why? Because, he says, “we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us.” In other words, Athens is proud of its mission to uplift the other Greek city-states—by force.

Likewise with the Roman Republic and Empire. Caesar went into Gaul in 58 B.C. and in a nine-year period killed perhaps one million Gauls and enslaved another million. And yet in Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and in later Roman literature, we read that Rome brought civilization to Gaul. The elite of Gaul were to wear purple togas, enjoy habeas corpus, and have aqueducts, so it was all for the good.

Similarly with sixteenth century imperialist Spain, which variously sent a force of 1,500 soldiers into Mexico in 1519 under Hernán Cortés. In two years they destroyed Tenochtitlán, ancient Mexico City, wiping out probably 200,000 people. And was the purpose to gain land, gold, and riches to help in the fight against Protestantism and Islam in Europe? Not exactly, according to Bernal Díaz, who was on the expedition. Rather it was more to convert souls to Christianity and to stamp out sodomy, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. To be sure, the conquest had these effects. But were the death and destruction really all for the sake of the conquered?

“The White Man’s Burden,” a long controversial poem by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1899, was addressed by a citizen of imperial England to the United States, which was currently fighting what many saw as an imperialist war in the Philippines. One of the poem’s stanzas reads, “Take up the White Man’s burden / In patience to abide / To veil the threat of terror / And check the show of pride / By open speech and simple / An hundred times made plain / To seek another’s profit / And work another’s gain.” This sense of duty sums up the common imperialist mindset: imperialism is a burden, undertaken reluctantly and for the good of the uncivilized. There is little self-serving about it.

Another trait empires have in common is obviously their dependence for enforcement on some type of superior military power—most often a navy. True, the Spartans controlled a land empire, as did the Soviet Union; but those empires were confined with self-imposed limitations. If a state becomes a naval power, as Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out in his classic works on the influence of sea power on history, then it can move troops around to the rear of an enemy, impose boycotts, or modulate trade and supplies to help allies or hurt recalcitrant colonies.

The greatest empires have always been maritime. The Mediterranean, which the Romans referred to as mare nostrum or “our sea,” has been the seat of empires throughout history because of its geography—it is a convenient sea for imperialists in the middle of three land masses. The British Empire, of course, was entirely a result of British naval superiority.

A third characteristic empires share in common—perhaps the most interesting and thoughtworthy—is that for all the supposed advantages to be had through imperial rule, a historical case can be made that it has never quite penciled out. The costs of control seem to outweigh the benefits, even though—human nature being what it is—the imperialists tend to be oblivious to the expenses, perhaps because of the power and grandeur that come with empire.

One reason imperial policy seems superficially advantageous in terms of costs and benefits is the seduction of absolute power, as implied by the Caledonian (Scottish) nationalist Calgacus in 85 A.D. As recounted in Tacitus’s history, Calgacus complains of the Romans in addressing his troops: “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.” In other words, if imperial powers can’t conquer a country and bring it into the fold peacefully, they wipe it out as a signal to others. So much for benefits to either the imperialist power or its subjects.

One corollary to the unprofitability of empire is that it tends to corrupt the character of the imperial power.

The Athenian Empire was based on the idealism of 180 subject city-states being offered the advantages of democracy. City-states conquered by Athens were required to become democracies—and what can be wrong with that?

But in 415 B.C., a large Athenian naval force went to the island of Melos and demanded that the Melians submit and begin paying tribute. Thucydides recounts what ensued, the famous Melian Dialogue, in the fifth book of his history: You’re either with us or against us, the Athenians threatened, and if you are against us we will destroy you. The Melians countered that they should be able to remain free and to maintain neutrality in Athens’ war with Sparta. The Athenians rejected the idea of neutrality. The Melians further argued that destroying Melos would result in anti-Athenian sentiment in Greece. The Athenians replied that it would instead result in fear and awe at Athens’ power. In the end, the Melians refused to submit. Following a siege, the Athenians massacred the adult men of Melos and enslaved the women and children.

As an aside, when I was 18 and just beginning my study of the classics, I was astonished when I read in Thucydides that when the Peloponnesian War broke out, most of the Greeks wanted Sparta to win. Was not Athens a democracy and Sparta an oligarchy? Athens was the home of Socrates, Pericles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Sophocles. Sparta was rural and backward with no navy or beautiful temples or walls. It represented Doric severity as opposed to the Ionic cosmopolitanism of Athens. Why would the Greeks prefer that Sparta win? I didn’t understand the anomaly when I was 18, but the simple answer soon became clear: Sparta was not then imperial—or at least not as imperial as Athens. Empires like to think of themselves as having a lot of friends, but they are often naive in forgetting the depth of the ill-will they incur.

As if the destruction of Melos wasn’t enough to show the hubristic corruption of imperial Athens, the following summer, Athens sent a force of 40,000 troops to Syracuse to conquer or destroy the largest democracy in the Greek world. The Sicilian Expedition, as it came to be known, was a complete disaster. Thucydides says at the end of his seventh book, “they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their fleet, their army—everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home.” For all practical purposes—although the Peloponnesian War would go on for another nine years—the Sicilian debacle marked the end of the Athenian Empire and illustrated the follies of unchecked imperialism.

It can be argued that the Roman Republic underwent a similar kind of imperial corruption. In historian Arnold Toynbee’s two-volume work, Hannibal’s Legacy, he argued that the period in which Rome fought the three Punic Wars—an era during which Rome achieved mastery of almost the entire Western Mediterranean—was ultimately calamitous for Rome because it undermined Rome’s republican habits, virtues, and character.

The Roman people, Toynbee argued, especially the independent yeoman farmers, were sent off for long periods to fight as legionaries in places like Spain and Numidia (present day Libya). Their places were taken by some two million slaves from conquered provinces who were shipped back to Italy. Huge amounts of money extracted from conquered lands poured into Italy and enriched an elite class, whose members consolidated the farms of the soldiers who were fighting abroad and forged them into large estates worked by slaves.

In time the troops overseas—whose successes had been due to the Italian virtues of hard work, independence, autonomy, and agrarianism that one sees emphasized in Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics—became accustomed to plunder. When Carthage finally fell in 146 B.C., its population of 50,000 (down from 500,000) was enslaved, and the city was razed to its foundations. That same year the Romans looted and destroyed Corinth, the cultural capital of Greece.

The Rome of Virgil, Catullus, the younger Cato, and Cicero was now busy obliterating defeated cities that posed little threat to Rome’s security. The success that made Rome an empire, Toynbee argued, destroyed Rome by degrading the elements that made it great. Toynbee may not have been right in every respect, but there are certainly parts of his argument that ring true about corrupting the center through incorporating the periphery or diluting a republic by imperial ambitions.

This might remind us also of Britain, whose empire probably reached its peak sometime between 1850 and 1860. But if we read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, published in 1852, we see that at the heart of the empire in London, there were vast numbers of people who were in poor-houses at the same time the country was spending its resources far and wide on its great imperial civilizing mission.

This in turn might make us think of present day San Francisco, where people are injecting themselves with drugs, fornicating, urinating, and defecating on the streets, and downtown businesses are closing in large numbers; or Chicago, where the murder and crime rates are making life there unbearable for so many. Our major cities are going to rot at the same time we are pledged to giving $120 billion to Ukraine, already making its military budget the third largest in the world.

And the decay goes beyond the large cities. Think of those gruesome scenes in East Palestine, Ohio, after the train crash that enveloped the town in a toxic chemical cloud. East Palestine is full of working-class people whom few of our establishment political leaders were willing to go visit. The people of East Palestine form the demographic that died at twice the numbers of the general population in our overseas wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet few in our leadership class—many of whom had made one or more recent trips around the world to Ukraine to visit the Ukrainian people and pose for photos with Mr. Zelensky—went to East Palestine. I don’t know if one can properly call the United States an imperialist power, but this phenomenon of neglected and hollowed-out cores coupled with widespread overseas investments and commitments tends to be characteristic of empires.

Looking outward, we can see two cle ar manifestations of imperialism today. One is the Chinese brand of imperialism. China de facto now controls 15 of the major ports in the world—ports that the Chinese have leased, rebuilt, and refashioned. The Chinese are very farsighted, so these ports are not just random acquisitions. They control the Panama Canal. They monitor the entry into the Mediterranean at Tangiers and the exit at Port Said. The two largest ports in Europe, Antwerp and Rotterdam, are in the hands of the Chinese, as are the artificial islands in the South China Sea, a gateway for 50 percent of global oceanic traffic.

In other words, the Chinese control 15 points at which, in a global crisis, they will be able to shut off trade and access to commercial goods, oil, and food, not to mention the influence they have gained over local governments. China has also invested in concessions of rare earth mining, oil, and other natural resources in Africa. And due to the naive policies of the current U.S. administration, the Chinese are developing very close ties not only with Iran, but also with Saudi Arabia.

China today is creating something very much like the British Empire, although the Chinese are more like the imperialists of the Ottoman Empire than those of the British, in that they are neither apologetic nor shy about what they are doing. If the Chinese have an imperial enclave in Africa, they rope it off and don’t allow Africans nearby. Nor do they allow colonial peoples, for the most part, to go to Beijing and be educated or integrated. Like the Ottomans who conquered Constantinople in 1453, China has a monolithic culture and makes no apologies for its ambition to be a global imperial power.

The other imperial power we see on the rise today is more insidious. George Orwell’s nightmare dystopia in 1984 was a world in which there were no nation-states, but rather three powers wielding absolute control over three land masses into which everyone had been aggregated. Something like this is the dream of Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum and his fellow globalists (many of them American) who meet annually in Davos. Their vision is of a transnational ruling class, consisting of elites drawn mostly from the business, political, media, and academic worlds, with the power to issue edicts on climate change, public health, diversity, human rights, and even taxes, that override the will of national majorities.

If Chinese imperialism follows the tradition of the Ottoman Empire, the globalist vision of Davos imperialism is in the tradition of utopian empires gone astray. I think of Alexander the Great, who fought his first great battle with the Persians in 334 B.C. at Granicus on the coast of Asia Minor. When he died a decade later, he had probably killed over two million people in creating what he envisioned as an everlasting Hellenistic age based on an idea of the brotherhood of man. Alexander never thought of himself as a mere killer. He was an idealistic conqueror. And to this day, if you were to go to Greece and criticize Alexander, you would earn a hostile reaction. Alexander was an effective propagandist, as is the Davos crowd with their argument that the totalitarian rule they want to impose is for our benefit and the larger brotherhood of man.

Let me close by saying that in 1897, Rudyard Kipling was asked to present a poem at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, marking her 60th year as queen. The British Empire, admittedly the most civilizing and humane of any empire in history, was in full bloom—it had 420 million people under its sway and covered 12 million square miles of territory, seven times the area of the Roman Empire. Kipling originally planned to present “The White Man’s Burden” at the event, but he decided instead to present “Recessional,” a bleak poem that includes this stanza: “Far-called, our navies melt away / On dune and headland sinks the fire / Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre / Judge of the Nations, spare us yet / Lest we forget—lest we forget!”

“Recessional” is a poem of lamentation in which Kipling, known to be a great supporter of the British Empire, seems to be warning that it is destined to fail. Maybe he had been studying history.

Victor Davis Hanson

Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College

Published: July/August 2023 on Imprimis

Reference: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/imperialism-lessons-from-history/

IS ENSURING ELECTION INTEGRITY ANTI-DEMOCREATIC?

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 18:30:54 GMT

IS ENSURING ELECTION INTEGRITY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC?

November 6, 2023

Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo ID in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation. And vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail.

Who was behind the Carter-Baker Commission? Donald Trump? No. The Commission’s two ranking members were former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, a Republican. Other Democrats on the Commission were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. It was a truly bipartisan commission that made what seemed at the time to be common sense proposals.

How things have changed. Some of the Commission’s members, Jimmy Carter among them, came out last year to disavow the Commission’s work. And despite surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support measures to ensure election integrity—a recent Rasmussen survey found that 80 percent of Americans support a voter ID requirement—Democratic leaders across the board oppose such measures in the strongest terms.

Here, for instance, is President Biden speaking recently in Philadelphia, condemning the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly but predicably, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery.

But the fact is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s democracies in not requiring voter ID. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which Northern Ireland and many localities require voter IDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide requirement, so very soon all 47 European countries will likely have adopted this common-sense policy.

When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him.

England used to have absentee voting rules similar to ours in the U.S. But in 2004, in the city of Birmingham, officials uncovered a massive vote fraud scheme in the city council races. The six winning Labor candidates had fraudulently acquired about 40,000 absentee votes, mainly from Muslim areas of the city. As a result, England ended the practice of mailing out absentee ballots and required voters to pick up their ballots in person with a photo ID.

Up until 1975, France also had loose absentee voting rules. But when massive vote fraud was discovered on the island of Corsica—where hundreds of thousands of dead people were found to be voting and even larger-scale vote-buying operations were occurring—France banned absentee voting altogether.

On the topic of buying votes, I should point out that we in the U.S. did not always have secret ballots. It wasn’t until 1880 that the first state adopted the secret ballot, and the last state to adopt it was South Carolina in 1950. Perhaps surprisingly, when secret ballots were adopted, the percentage of people voting fell by about twelve percent. Why was that? Prior to the adoption of the secret ballot, lots of people would get paid for voting. In those days, people voted by placing pieces of colored paper in the ballot box, with different colors representing different parties. Party officials would be present to observe what color paper each voter put into the box, and depending on the color, the voter would often get paid. Secret ballots put an end to this practice.

France learned in 1975 that the use of absentee ballots led to the same practice—it allowed third parties to know how people voted and pay them for voting a certain way. This same problem is now proliferating in the U.S. in the form of “ballot harvesting,” the increasingly common practice where party functionaries distribute and collect ballots.

Defenders of our current voting rules point out that in lieu of absentee voting, some European countries allow “proxy voting,” whereby one person can designate another to vote for him. And while it is true that eight of the 47 European countries allow proxy voting—meaning that 39 do not—there are strict requirements. In five of the eight countries—Belgium, England, Monaco, Poland, and Sweden—proxy voting is limited to those with a disability or an illness or who are out of the country. In Poland, it also requires the approval of the local mayor, and in Monaco the approval of the general secretariat. In France and the Netherlands, proxy voting has to be arranged through a notary public. Switzerland is the only country in Europe with a relatively liberal proxy voting policy, requiring only a signature match.

How about our neighbors, Canada and Mexico? Canada requires a photo ID to vote. If a voter shows up at the polls without an ID, he is allowed to vote only if he declares who he is in writing and if there is someone working at the polling station who can personally verify his identity.

Mexico has had a long history of election fraud. Partly because its leaders were concerned about a drop in foreign investment if it wasn’t perceived to be a legitimate democracy, Mexico recently instituted strict reforms. Voters must present a biometric ID—an ID with not only a photo, but also a thumb print. Voters also have indelible ink applied to their thumbs, preventing them from voting more than once. And absentee voting is prohibited, even for people living outside the country.

Those who oppose election integrity reform here in the U.S. often condemn it as a means of “voter suppression.” But in Mexico, the percent of people voting rose from 59 percent before the reforms to 68 percent after. It turned out that Mexicans were more, not less, likely to vote when they had confidence that their votes mattered.

H.R. 1, the radical bill Democratic Party leaders have been pushing to adopt this year, would prohibit states from requiring voter ID and require states to allow permanent mail-in voting. And mail-in voting, I hardly need to point out, is even worse, in terms of vote fraud, than absentee voting. With absentee voting, a person at least has to request a ballot. With mail-in voting—as we saw in too many places in the 2020 election—ballots are simply mailed out to everyone. With loose absentee voting rules, a country is making itself vulnerable to vote fraud. With mail-in voting, a country is almost begging for vote fraud.

If the rhetoric we hear from the Left today is correct—if voter ID requirements and restrictions on absentee (or even mail-in) voting are un-democratic—then so are the countries of Europe and the rest of the developed world. But this is utter nonsense.

Those opposing common sense measures to ensure integrity in U.S. elections—measures such as those recommended by the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission in 2005—are not motivated by a concern for democracy, but by partisan interests.

John R. Lott, Jr.

Founder and President, Crime Prevention Research Center

Published: October 2021 on Imprimis

Reference: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ensuring-election-integrity-anti-democratic/

THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION IN LIFE

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 18:23:02 GMT

The Most Important Decision in Life

November 6, 2023

Congratulations to the Hillsdale College Class of 2023. It is a thrill to be here at Hillsdale, which I have heard about for a long time. Last night I had a wonderful tour of campus, and the evening culminated in a concert in your beautiful chapel. The concert included Mahler’s First Symphony played by the student orchestra and was just marvelous.

When I was a theology professor, I taught a course on the Reformation for many years, taking seriously the works of Luther and Calvin and other reformers. I believe the questions the reformers raise, questions that still divide the churches, are important. But right now, all of us who believe in God and are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ have a common enemy in the agnosticism, atheism, and nihilism that are deeply affecting our culture and especially the minds of young people. I believe it is important for us to join together in common cause against this common enemy. And it is in that spirit that I come before you today.

It is to the permanent honor of this college that it was founded, almost 180 years ago, by Free Will Baptists who were committed to the abolition of slavery. Hillsdale’s founders were on the right side of the most compelling moral debate of the nineteenth century—and it is worth remarking that the leadership of this college today finds itself on the right side of the most pressing ethical argument of our time—namely, the protection of the unborn.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became one of the most eloquent advocates for abolition in the nineteenth century, spoke here in 1863, just after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the course of his lecture, “Popular Error and Unpopular Truth,” he remarked, “There is no such thing as new truth; error might be old or new, but truth is as old as the universe.” At the heart of the Hillsdale College curriculum is a presentation of these truths—epistemic, moral, and aesthetic—that are indeed as old as the universe, permanent things that participate in the eternity of God.

What I should like to do briefly in this commencement address is examine just one of these truths, which is articulated over and again in the great Western intellectual tradition. It is typically accessed by means of a question—not the question of what we are to do, as important as that is, but rather what kind of person we ought to be. Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness? Or do we seek our own advantage? In a way, there is no question in the moral and spiritual order more fundamental than that.

A locus classicus for studying this question is found in Plato’s Gorgias . In this dialogue, the character Gorgias is a sophist—which is to say, an expert in teaching the art of persuasive speech. Polus and Callicles are his students. Their concern is not being truthful or just but rather speaking in such a way that they appear truthful or just and hence become convincing to others. Such sophists were, obviously enough, enormously useful to prospective lawyers and politicians in ancient Greece, and it should be equally obvious that their intellectual descendants are rather thick on the ground today.

Socrates counters Gorgias and his students along these lines: if a rhetorician teaches a politician to do what is unjust, he does that man and his city far more harm than good. To this, Polus answers by means of a taunt: wouldn’t Socrates leap at the opportunity of having the power of life and death over others? No, Socrates says in response, for to put someone to death unjustly is in fact no power at all. And it is at this point that Socrates enunciates one of his most enduring teachings, a teaching that represents a watershed in the moral consciousness of the West: it is better, he says, to suffer wrongdoing than to do wrong oneself.

At this point, Callicles can no longer restrain himself. Giving clear voice to a position that endures to the present day, he says that what Socrates is calling “justice” is nothing but the constraints placed on the few strong by the many weak. It is a sort of guilt-trip imposed by the powerless to limit the capacity of the powerful to get what they want. If you notice a tight connection between this point of view and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, you are not wrong. Socrates’ argument for his position is simple: surely suffering injustice is terrible, but what is worse is the corrosion of soul that takes place when one commits injustice. In other words, being unjust is far more damaging to the moral structure of a person’s character than enduring the slings and arrows of injustice.

So there’s the question, young graduates. What kind of soul will you have? What kind of person will you be? Will you do whatever it takes to get what you want? Or will you accept even great suffering in order to do what is right? Everything else in your life will flow from your answer to that question.

I know that Hillsdale College is committed to the study of the Greco-Roman intellectual tradition, and it is for this reason that I commenced with Plato. But Hillsdale is also, and above all, committed to the Scriptures. The Bible gets at this very same issue, not so much through philosophical argumentation, but through the prophetic language of idolatry and right worship.

For the biblical authors, it is never a question of “religion” vs. “secularism.” First of all, they were not trading in what we call religion, and secondly, they knew that there really is no pure secularism. Rather, they understood that the world is basically divided between those who worship the one true God and those who indulge in idolatry or false worship. Even in our supposedly secular society, we can appreciate the appropriateness of the biblical terminology, for everyone, even the most un-churched, operates under the aegis of something he or she considers supreme, a summum bonum or highest good. No one would get out of bed in the morning unless he believed in some value that is ultimately motivating his actions and decisions. This might be bodily pleasure or fame or material goods, or it might be one’s country or family, but if it is functioning as the prime mover of a person’s activity, it is playing the role of a god and it is being, in effect, worshiped.

So the biblical form of the question we have been considering is: whom or what do you worship? Again, everything in your life will flow from your answer.

There are numberless biblical texts that are relevant to this question, but I should like to look at a particularly clarifying and dramatic one—namely, the scene described in the First Book of Kings regarding Elijah and the priests of Baal.

We recall the setting. Elijah had called out King Ahab for his worship of the false gods proposed by his wife Jezebel. He subsequently challenged the avatars of these deities to a kind of duel on Mount Carmel. Standing alone against the 450 devotees of Baal, Elijah proposed that he and they should erect altars to their respective deities and see who would respond. All morning long, the priests cried out, “Oh Baal, answer us!” But, the Bible says, “there was no voice, and no answer.”

At this point, Elijah mocked them: “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” In their frenzy and frustration, the priests of Baal proceeded to “cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them,” but it was to no avail. Then, of course, Elijah calls out to the Lord and the fire falls, consuming the sacrifice and vindicating the prophet.

What I would like to emphasize is that this is much more than a jingoistic story of “My God is bigger than your god.” In point of fact, it is an incomparably rich presentation of the dynamics of true and false worship. The altar erected to Baal should be taken as standing for all the ways in which we order the infinite longing of our hearts to something less than God. When we do this, the fire never falls, because merely worldly things cannot, even in principle, satisfy our hungry souls. And when we persist in worshiping falsely, we find ourselves, in short order, caught in an addictive pattern, hopping obsessively, as it were, around the altar of pleasure, power, or fame, desperately seeking a satisfaction that will never come.

The self-harm inflicted by the hapless priests of Baal speaks eloquently to the self-destructive quality to which any addict can attest. Only when the fondest desire of our soul is directed to the infinite God will the fire fall and addiction be avoided. So once again, young graduates, the question is simple: at which altar will you worship? Your whole life will unfold, for weal or for woe, from that decision.

If we would like to see the place where Plato and Elijah come together, we need look no further than the cross of Jesus, which St. Paul described as a divine weakness stronger than human strength and a divine folly wiser than human wisdom. Where could we find a clearer instantiation of the principle that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it than in Jesus crucified? Sinless, blameless, he nevertheless took upon himself all the sin of the world: hatred, cruelty, stupidity, violence, institutional corruption, betrayal, denial—all of it. But rather than lashing out in answering violence, he said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Laboring under the full weight of human wickedness, his soul remained inviolate. And this is why, to the consternation of all of the advocates of “might makes right,” from Callicles to Nietzsche, we hold up the cross and say, “ Ecce homo ,” behold the true man.

My intellectual hero, St. Thomas Aquinas, said that if we want to live a happy life, we should love what Jesus loved on the cross and despise what he despised on the cross. What did he despise but all of those objects of false worship to which we tend to erect altars. Many of us worship wealth, but on the cross he was utterly poor, stripped naked; many of us worship pleasure, but on the cross he was at the limit of suffering, both physical and psychological; many of us worship power, but on the cross he was nailed in place, unable even to move; and many of us worship honor, but on that terrible cross he was the object of scorn and ridicule. In short, the crucified Lord said no as radically as possible to the idols. But what did he love on the cross? He loved doing the will of his Father. The cross itself functioned as the altar on which the sacrifice of his life to the Father took place, and this is why the fire fell.

The 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, based on Robert Bolt’s play of the same name, tells the story of St. Thomas More, a man well-acquainted with the philosophies of classical antiquity and a man in love with the Lord Jesus. One of the last scenes of the film depicts the dramatic trial of More, under accusation for high treason. Richard Rich, who as a young man had been Thomas More’s friend and protégé, falsely testifies against him, perjuring himself and practically guaranteeing that More will receive the death penalty. As Rich is leaving the courtroom, More notices that the younger man is wearing a chain of office. Inquiring of the judges what the symbol at the end of the chain means, More receives the answer: “Sir Richard is appointed Attorney General for Wales.” More grasps the pendant and with a look more pitying than indignant, comments, “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world—but for Wales?” More was not so much blaming Rich, as noticing, with infinite sadness, the kind of person he had become: a man with a corroded soul.

It might have been otherwise. In a lesser-known scene from earlier in the film, More suggests Rich pursue a job as a humble teacher, but Rich, ambitious for glory at the king’s court, balks. The wise More says, “You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one.” His protégé retorts angrily, “If I was, who would know it?” More patiently responds, “you, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.” This exchange provides us a third way of asking our question: to which audience, finally, are you playing? A lost soul plays to the endlessly fickle audience of the world, hoping thereby to acquire the fleeting goods that the world can provide. The uncorroded soul plays to God and to the friends of God, seeking to please them alone.

St. John Paul II, in his writings on the moral life, observed that in every particular ethical choice a person makes, he is doing two things simultaneously. He is performing a moral act with definite consequences, and he is making his character—crafting, little by little, the person he is becoming. I have the confident hope that your years at Hillsdale College have prepared you, above all, to shape your characters, to become the kind of men and women who would endure injustice rather than commit injustice, who would never dream of worshiping at the altar of an idol, and who wouldn’t surrender the integrity of your souls for the whole world.

And if you become the persons God intends you to be, you will succeed in lighting a fire upon the earth.

Bishop Robert Barron

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

Published: June 2023 on Imprimis

Reference: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-most-important-decision-in-life/

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:55:30 GMT

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

October 26, 2023

I did receive the emails I FOIA’d on 10/2/23 from the Town of Irmo in regards to emails between former Town Administrator Bob Brown and Mayor Barry Walker. The emails date between December 31, 2020 and August 27, 2021.

They are as expected, and typical for Barry Walker’s hostile and unprofessional responses, to Bob Brown as he has with many others, residents, myself, past supporters, and anyone not lock stepped with him and his bullying personality.

I have emailed Dennis Courtney Town Administrator and all of Council, including Mayor Walker, asking questions about the previous investigation and if these emails were requested by the investigator; they were not.

I have asked for the investigation to be re-opened with these emails to be given to the investigator, along with names of former employees, who may have had incidents with Mr. Walker. And that both former Town Administrators Bob Brown and John Hanson both be given waivers so that they could speak freely with investigator about their past experiences with Mr. Walker.

Since this is a Council decision, and not an Administrator decision he has emailed me and said that he is not re-opening the investigation, but that it is up to Council.

I have since emailed all of Council including Mayor Walker to request those emails, read them, and decide if they believe there is more to Mr. Brown’s allegations of a hostile work environment and to reopen the investigation.

I am waiting for their response. I do not anticipate one before the election and due to the fact that they do not meet again before the election, but am hopeful that this can be looked at after the election and before the end of the year.

I will be posting the emails, as I get them scanned and available to post, either at my Hardy King facebook page and/or Citizens of Irmo and Surrounding Area facebook page so that you can read his treatment of an individual and an employee for the Town of Irmo.

DOES ANOTHER CANDIDATE LIVE IN TOWN?

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 17:47:48 GMT

DOES ANOTHER CANDIDATE LIVE IN TOWN?

October 20, 2023

The short answer is no, yes, but not a qualified elector. So let’s backtrack and start with his Statement of Intention of Candidacy – NonPartisan.

That form was completed and turned into the Town of Irmo 8/28/23. With him listing 142 Rose Oak Dr as his address. According to Richland County Tax Records that property was sold September 30, 2022 to another person. According to WhitePages.com his address on October 10, 2023 was at an apartment outside of the Town of Irmo off Bush River Rd, Columbia, SC 29210. And that site also listed him living at 142 Rose Oak Drive from 2017 to 2022.

Copies of these documents along with others were given to Lexington County Election Commission at a Board Meeting I attended October 16, 2023. Another document included was a copy of a deed from 602 Timberleaf Ct, which is in the Town of Irmo with information to consider as to if this may in fact be his current address or possibly an address to be used as an in-town resident.

The Election Commission took these document to verify if in fact he lived in town and where, etc. He was contacted and from my understanding from the Election Commission he did state he did live at 602 Timberleaf Ct. And in fact, answered the door when I visited that address and knocked on the door. He stated he lived there. So all is good, so to speak, but not. Remember he listed his address as 142 Rose Oak Dr which he did not reside at on 8/28/23 when he turned in his Statement of Candidacy.

Yes, it appears he may be or is an in-town resident, but it was later determined that even though he resided there, he had not in fact changed his voter registration to that address prior to the 30-day before election rule, if at all. Since he wasn’t registered to vote at that address he claimed as his residence, he is ineligible to vote in the November 7 ^th 2023 Irmo Election. Therefore, he is not a “qualified elector”, and therefore can’t run for office in Irmo this election period.

It is beyond the 45-day time limit to remove his name from the ballot for November 7 ^th 2023, so signs will be posted at polling places to discourage voters from voting for George Frazier.

A couple other issues concerning all of this:

When the Statement of Intention of Candidacy – NonPartisan was completed by him with a false address and signed, each candidate signs the Candidate’s Oath. That oath states “I affirm I meet, or will meet by the time of the General or Special Election, the qualifications for office”. Not sure if one is stating to meet residency requirements such as in-town at any address or at the address you put on the form. But if you knew you didn’t live in town at the time of signing and knew you didn’t live at the address used for a year, and knew you couldn’t move back into that address, and the fact of filing a government form with false information, possibly and from my understanding, is fraud and a possible felony for “lying” or providing false information to government, etc.

Not sure what all that says or where it goes. I may or may not at this time turn all this over to SLED and let them determine whether voter fraud and/or election fraud has been committed.

My intentions were to get to the bottom of all that has been reported and posted about two candidates and their residency. One, George Frazier, has been found to be ineligible and disqualified for running, with possible other consequences; the other may pass muster as far as Lexington County Elections Commission is concerned, but may not pass other looks from other agencies. Will decide soon how to proceed on both, but not at this writing.

The bigger question that has arisen is, if we look at years past and other candidates who have ran with “rumored” possible involvement with or from Barry Walker who did live in town, Sarah Watson, Michael Harris, but not elected, and to others with questions about their residency, Jenne Bennett, and now two more this election.

So now I am left wondering is there some kind of conspiracy by one to commit some sort of election fraud by having people who do not reside in town run in an election, maybe knowing that if that election can be challenged and a new election be required, does that individual benefit by a new election which that individual lost?

WHO LIVES WHERE?

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:52:22 GMT

WHO LIVES WHERE?

October 15, 2023

Well, sometimes that may be difficult to say or prove since some move a lot, or stay here or there. Yes, some people move in with family members to take care of the aging, dying, or just to get re-established. But again, you do know where you live, what is called home. Temporary or permanent.

So what is all this about two candidates for Irmo Town Council and where they live in town, or not in town. What does the law say about being a “qualified elector” and how it defines “home”?

First, let’s look at candidate Phyllis Coleman since her residency came into question first. In order to run for office you must first be a “qualified elector” of the position and jurisdiction you intend to run for. Basically, you must be able to vote in that election. In order to vote in an election, you must be registered to vote 30 days prior to the election. Therefore, you must be living in that jurisdiction, town limits, etc. that you are going to run for office. When you file to run for that office, you must list your name address, etc. and your voter registration number. If that number doesn’t match the address and the jurisdiction you are seeking office for, it will get kicked out of the computer.

You can basically file to run for office, not live in Town, and not be registered to vote in Town, I guess, since the form you sign says you “affirm, you meet or will meet by the time of the general election”. But then it would be known by all that you don’t live here and aren’t registered to vote in that election. But as long as you moved here and registered to vote here prior to 30 days before election all would be legal. But yes questions would arise about not living here for very long. So it’s better to be registered to vote when you turn in your candidacy statement for office. At least you can hide that fact until someone discovers it, and puts it out there on social media and websites.

Since the post about her living at 1211 Hyatt Avenue, Columbia and tax records to show and prove that, my question that arose in my mind was, is she registered to vote here at Mower Street. I obtained a copy of her statement of candidacy she filed for Irmo Town Council which is public record through South Carolina Election Commission (through someone very technically savvy, not me). I called Lexington County Election Commission who said her registration number didn’t get kicked out, meaning that number was connected to an address in Irmo. Now if Columbia tax records are correct and she lived and claimed legal residence at Hyatt Avenue on December 30, 2022 then she abided there in 2022. If she was registered to vote in Irmo when she filed her statement of candidacy on 8-28-23, then she lived here on that date,so when did she move here? After December 30, 2022 when she paid her taxes and claimed legal residence and before she registered to vote here in Irmo. According to SC Elections Commission records which I obtained the list on Newly Registered Voters in Irmo, she registered to vote here in Irmo 8-17-2023.

All in all, yes she can run for office. But legally she moved here after 12-30-22 or she lied to the City of Columbia about not living there when she paid her taxes and claiming legal residence which means less taxes. So she can’t say she lived here in Irmo prior to that date, nor the last 5 years as she recently posted in a response to me, or she would be in trouble .

So let’s just say she moved here after 12-30-22 and before 8-17-23. All is legal, and all meets law to run for Irmo Town Council.

But does it meet your requirements? I heard it mentioned at last week’s special called meeting (10-10-23) that people shouldn’t be serving on Council if not lived here as long as he, etc.

Yes, Phyllis Coleman may have been raised here, lived here with mother while caring for her, but never changed her residence from Hyatt Ave to Mowers Street until deciding to run for Council. Who knows? Oh, just us the voters, since she has been asked multiple times by me and others to answer that and be forthright with us. She hasn’t. She has used other terms like lifelong connection, born, raised, etc. etc., beating all around the bush, spinning, etc, but not directly answering that question. And when she states “advocating for greater community engagement as a fresh new voice (which by the way many claim that during elections) for all of the residents of Irmo”, yet won’t answer these residents questions. Is this the fresh new voice that we need or just a repeat of the current mayor’s voice?

Now let’s look at other concerns and issues with being forthright, open, and transparent. As a candidate for office you are required to complete a Statement of Economic Interest, by the time of swearing in if elected. It can be completed after filing for office which most candidates do. Why? To let voters know of any conflicts of interest that the voters may want to know about. It’s called being fully transparent, let them decide if you may have a conflict of interest in any realm. Why wouldn’t you do it up front? Could be multiple reasons, but most would have to do with not wanting the voter to know of something you don’t want to divulge. Like an interest in some businesses, or other homes you may own, 2 ^nd homes, vacation homes, rental property, etc. or another home in another town that you claim legal residence to. But it all goes back to not being required to do it up front, so I won’t. As opposed to not being required to do it up front, but I will. She hasn’t filed her SOEI nor any campaign disclosures which does require an address.

It is odd as well, maybe “curious” as Wade says, as to why the only ones not completing the SOEI up front are the two that have issues with where, how long they lived here, or even if they lived here at all when filing to run for Irmo Town Council. Yes, will cover George Frazier’s residency as well in n

BILL DANIELSON’S MAYORAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 19:05:19 GMT

BILL DANIELSON’S MAYORAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT

October 8, 2023

I read back in July 2023 where Bill Danielson announced his plans to run for mayor, again, since his 2019 plans to run for mayor against me got postponed. If he would have came and spoke to me then, I may have not ran and supported him since I was talking to others about them running for mayor instead of me. They neither wanted to get involved in such a nasty environment or didn’t want to get elected and have to serve with the creator of that strife. I wanted to make sure I covered his announcement as I had covered Barry’s previously as well.

First let me say, I am planning to vote for Bill. Yes, you guessed it, I will not be voting for Barry. Never did, never will, since we ran in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Yes, he was my opponent but so were others. I didn’t vote for any of my opponents, it’s not smart to do so. But as Barry lied to me in 2004 after that election in regards to a promise he made to me in presence of a witness, and didn’t keep it; I don’t respect him, won’t vote for him. It is one thing hearing and reading about a lie, it is another being lied to. So with that disclosure done and out of the way, let’s talk about Bill Danielson’s announcement.

Yes, Bill got two in a local paper, some got one, some got none. But maybe they sent none in, or only one in. Danielson says “I want to continue to make Irmo a great place to live and do business for everyone”. Which is a good goal, better than Walker’s goal “to make Irmo the most desireable place to live, work, and raise your family … ”, since in my opinion it already is.

Starting the Irmo Growth Fund was a good idea, being involved in it (as an elected official giving out money to one-day-possible-campaign supporters), was not a good idea.

If Council as a whole didn’t want to decide on who gets how much money because of politics and the appearance of favoritism, the same applies to the way it was done. And yes I do believe, some of the people, businesses that got the funds have closer relationships with Bill than may be known. I will request those names of those recipients, not just the business names that I can’t find in articles and photo ops in a local paper. Then I will match those names to Bill’s financial supporters from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023. Will do an article to cover that story. But since some of the campaign disclosures at the StateEthics.gov site lists corporations, business names, instead of individual names, then this may be a long process. Maybe even after the election is over, maybe not. Another article, another day.

Moving the building permitting back to Irmo from Lexington County may be a good idea as well, but according to other possible “new” business prospects, working with contractor that was hired to do it for the Town, as opposed to the “contractor” we had with Lexington County has been frustrating. Was for me as well, when I called them years ago to get information about moving my business and what I may need to do depending on which building. I couldn’t get a clear answer, except, set up an appointment for a fee, and we will come see what needs to be done, at each building that I was only semi interested in. Not offered anything I could see or read to let me know in advance what may need to be done, to any particular site I was considering, so that I and the landlord could decide what may need to be done before moving in. It wasn’t the same as calling Lexington County Permitting and getting answers.

Every politician talks about cutting waste, but not sure there is any way in Irmo town budget, and since he was elected in 2020, he has been part of the 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 budget, waste should be eliminated by now.

Irmo Law Enforcement, as I mentioned in my analysis of Barry’s campaign announcement, has always been the priority, always.

And as far as first responders, fire, EMS, those are not funded by the Town of Irmo, but by Lexington County since Irmo Fire District is a part of Lexington County Fire Department. The Town of Irmo has no fire department under our jurisdiction, we contract out with Irmo Fire District to provide fire and ems services to all of the Town of Irmo, including the Richland County side. It has been that way for years, we pass through all tax dollars we get from Lexington and Richland County taxes paid by citizens of those respective counties for fire services. 1) so we didn’t duplicate services; and 2) have one fire department covering the entire town, not two (one covering Lexington portion, one covering Richland portion). Less confusion, no duplication.

How can one say he will support small business, new business growth, and say he supports impact fees on new businesses (large and small)? Impact fees cost businesses (large, small, especially new) money. It may make it impossible for some even to open, but great news, Irmo can’t do impact fees in the first place. Impact fees can be charged by municipalities to offset costs associated with upgrading etc. sewer systems, which the Town doesn’t provide, road improvements (the Town doesn’t own the roads nor maintain them), that is the counties or SCDOT. School improvements due to new growth which the Town doesn’t control. The counties, school boards, and some municipalities can charge impact fees for those things that they are responsible for and that they cover. This very issue was discussed years ago while Barry ran for office last time, and he was told and found out we cannot charge impact fees for those issues. If Bill Danielson was running for Mayor in 2019, I would have to presume that he was listening to these discussions and should be aware of it. So again, not a doable idea and contradicts helping new business growth.

“And to reduce traffic” this was mentioned years ago in one of Bill’s campaign flyers. Has traffic been reduced in Irmo? We all know that answer. And yes, all past Councils have worked “with State and Local government” to improve our roads. However, Irmo is not any higher on any county or state list than any other county or state road than any other municipality across the state or any county in the state. Nor has Irmo had any help from our State elected officials to push Irmo’s needs over other road improvement needs. Maybe Bill and other council members can build better “relationships” with State Senators and State and County Council Representatives. Maybe the new Council can get the public behind making calls to those State and County elected officials to be the loud voice that doesn’t go away. Without the larger area constituents calling those officials, pushing, emailing, knocking on their home doors if necessary, Irmo will not get the support to change our roads in or around the Irmo area without citizens calling someone other than Irmo Town Council members.

Yes, we do “need a committed mayor who will put our citizens first”, the current one doesn’t,“and will continue to listen to Irmo residents everyday that I am privileged to serve in Office” says Danielson.

This statement alone is enough for me to sorta, kinda, overlook the above concerns with his announcement and political rhetoric, and give him my vote and prayers. Yet, will do what I can in the future, to snip at his heels and take him up on the “listen to Irmo residents”, starting with this resident before election day. We will see?

MAYOR WALKER FILES FOR RE-ELECTION

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 19:02:40 GMT

MAYOR WALKER FILES FOR RE-ELECTION

October 8, 2023

I want to do an article on each candidate’s campaign announcement as I see them, and if I read false statements, mistruths, stretches of the truth, or straight out lies.

A few have appeared in different local news and/or social media pages. Will address as see fit and time permits. Some only have a few things worth pointing out, some have more. This one takes the cake, so I start here.

Walker says an opening statement “with a promise of change and progress, he worked to sett [sic] his vision into motion”. Yes, change came, but change is not necessarily good and progress has it’s own arguable definition to what is good, positive progress, and what is not.

But let’s stick to change for now. His first night as Mayor in Dec 2019 he gave a speech, that is change, all previous mayors just started a meeting and moved into the meeting with no fanfare, but not Walker. Not only did he give a speech about his vision, not Council’s vision, but a “plagiarized” speech at that. If I remember correctly he had “plagiarized” four other Mayor’s speeches. But fanfare, is what Walker is about. I read in different news sources the other day I believe “Daily Caller” a statement US Representative Crenshaw had made about the vote to remove US representative McCarthy as the house speaker. It said something to the effect of “some people (elected officials) fight for you, some fight for your attention”. I immediately thought of Mayor Walker, and not only fights for your attention, but for attention as a thing. Yes, this is change from past mayors. And actually, current and past Irmo council members in my opinion, this is not progress.

Not sure I can agree he promoted fiscal responsibility nor sound financial management, anytime since he was elected in 2004. Based on previous Richland County public records, regarding liens, etc filed against him personally back in the day, that doesn’t assure me he could do either, or would be capable of either, but let’s see.

According to him “the Town managed to save $6 million”, and did so by “Walker’s dedication to conservative fiscal decisions”. Any fiscal, financial decisions were made by all of Council. The mayor is just one vote on the budget. It is the town staff (town administrators, department heads, chief of police) who work hard to stay within the budget. Mayor has nothing to do with that, or shouldn’t unless things come up to spend over budget, then again approved by a majority of Council, or not approved.

Again, Council approves, and will approve any new construction of Town Hall. Council approves all policies including making any financial records that weren’t previously available, which most have always been listed at the State Treasurer’s Office which was approved years ago under Mayor Gibbons, when Walker and I were both serving. In fact, if I remember correctly, Irmo was the first Town to post their written checks in the State.

Public safety has always been a budget priority, it was ever since I was elected in 2005 and way before me. It was always a priority, and largest percentage of town budget. “Was fully funded, equipping of officers to protect and serve”. Has been part of Irmo budget and Council priority since, well, way back, always. Nothing new here, and again the majority of Council approves the public safety budget, town budget, not a one-vote Mayor. He didn’t manage to achieve anything, Council continued as all Councils before had same priority. Nothing new, not change nor progress, still just a continuation of past priorities.

Let me go back and address the $6 million too. Now this is a mistruth or a misunderstanding from the financial guru Mayor. At the last Town audit the town ended 2022 fiscal year $6million on hand of allocated funds for expenses to be paid before more income comes into the Town. Saying the Town saved $6 million is not true. That would be the same as me saying to my wife, as of this Friday we have $6,000 in the bank. Thank me, but not saying, leaving out that we have $3500 in bills to pay before next paycheck, which also includes money set aside for vacation, Christmas gifts, and future appliance replacement,etc. In truth we only have $2500 left over to be used as we choose. And even so that money still has to be saved for rainy day situations that arise we have no idea of. This is called undesignated cash on hand. According to the same budget for end of fiscal year 2022, the Town had on hand approx. $2.5 million undesignated cash on hand, not $6 million. So since he doesn’t share the whole truth, I wanted to.

“The ambitious project to widen Broad River Road from I-26 to Ballentine” is not on track, it has been shortened. Originally was to run from I-26 to Peak Exit. Then it was shortened to Shady Grove Rd, then to the red light at Chick Fil A, now to Koon Road intersection. And due to many factors outside of Mayor Walker, the Town Council, control it wasn’t the priority under the Richland County Penny Tax Funding list. And regardless of whether the County had stayed on track or not, that is to be seen. It was put on a list for Richland County Penny Tax because it wasn’t a priority in years past with SCDOT or Richland County. And had been on a SCDOT 7 year plan since the late 90s, early 2000s. Yes, it needs to be completed but may not be done under this Richland County Penny Tax funding program.

“He organized a series of events in community parks”. In his 2 ^nd paragraph he stated “developing citizen committees” as an accomplishment. Now again, he has take credit for the “event committee” job of hosting, creating, promoting events in the Town of Irmo. As far as the “over the fence opportunities”, can’t say when was the last time I saw one of them advertised, but maybe I’m not on the invite list?

Lastly, “it is a goal to make Irmo, SC the most desirable place to live, work, and raise your family in America” Walker said. Well, according to old reports back in the day when I was serving NICHE.com listed various categories for great places to live, work, etc. in SC, in and around Columbia metro area, etc. and Irmo was always on those lists. Whether it be suburbs of Columbia, small towns in SC, etc. etc. Irmo was on the list. Irmo was and has been in past on Safest Cities to live and raise a family in SC as well. The last time I checked that list, Irmo had dropped down or off the Safest Cities list. Not sure if it moved up or down on desirable places … to live. Will check and do an article on those lists.

But regardless, we were at one point, prior to “his administration” as he refers to or “his leadership” as he refers to, already were a “most desirable place to live, work and raise your family”. He evidently doesn’t know this. That is not leadership, that is actually, sad.

Previously Published "Irmo News" July, 2021 HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 17:23:48 GMT

Previously Published "Irmo News"

July, 2021

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Remember all the talk about how elected officials, government, etc. should be more transparent. I agreed then, and still do.

I read the other day where at the Special Called Meeting on June 29th Council voted and approved Irmo Town Administrator Bob Brown’s “request to retire”. Never heard of that one, and knowing what I know and using my God-given common sense, I knew this was probably not accurate. So I FOIA’d the agreement Council voted on and approved four to one, from my understanding.

Paragraph (3) of the approved agreement states “the employee (Bob Brown) tenders his resignation to the Town … and the Town accepts his resignation …”. Not sure how anyone could misconstrue that to be a “request for retirement”, but as the world turns. I could believe it to be some kind of conspiracy so to speak to cover up the truth, and we do all read where governments and news get together to guide and control what you are told. But since I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt you can make your own decision. Also paragraph (2), 2nd sentence, “the employee (Bob Brown) further agrees not to pursue damages from the hostile work environment that he has endured during the recent months”.

Hostile work environment, really. That wasn’t there before …, but it does say recent months. I know it didn’t come from the staff, since the administrator would be able to handle that problem, nor did it come from a majority of council. So who created this “hostile work environment”? Ahh. Some of you also have common sense, and probably got a pretty good idea. Yet some of you are still gullible enough to believe he “requested to retire”. Be that as it may. The world continues to turn.

Now, where are all the yakkers, the complainers about transparency? I have heard through the grapevine that many have tried to convince this one that each council member has only one vote. Are other members of council or counsel speaking up against this “one vote” being only one vote. Some say listening is the problem. I remember having one council member yak all the time about how they listen and about how the mayor has only one vote, surely things could not have progressed/digressed to the point of a member of council not listening to others and thinking that they are more than one vote, maybe they believe they are now “the King”. Where are the defenders of Mr. Brown and how wrongly, evidently, he was treated by you know who, or maybe you don’t. Oh that’s right, you moved out of town, don’t care anymore, got what you wanted … well, I guess … you did get at least

As Thomas Jefferson said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve”. And Joseph de Malstre, “Every country (you could also include towns, etc.), has the government it deserves”. 8/15/1811

Proverbs 29:2 ESV “... when the wicked rule, the people groan.”

Bob Brown was an employee, but he is first and foremost a person, one who for recent months has endured a hostile work environment. One vote can’t affect much, unless the other votes don’t stand up, speak, and make themselves heard. It isn’t really that hard, it’s actually part of your job. This is shameful that other Council members, it only takes three, (a majority), didn’t stand up to one individual creating a hostile work environment for any of our Town employees.

Hardy King

Former Mayor of Irmo

Lover of Life and Enjoying It

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 16:52:26 GMT

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

September 16, 2023

Remember that resignation letter by former Town Administrator Bob Brown, in July of 2021, that stated the “hostile work environment” he endured during the recent months as reason for his resignation. He had served as Town Administrator along side Hardy King as Mayor, and John Gibbons as Mayor, and multiple council members with no issues. But serving as Town Administrator along side Barry Walker as Mayor is the only thing that changed at Town Hall starting in December of 2019.

Remember how Councilman Bill Danielson and others were going to “get to the bottom of it”? I do. But, did he, they, get to the bottom of it? No. How do I know, same as you, did you ever hear the conclusion, read anywhere about the conclusion? I haven’t. Was told, and read, they hired a company, did an “investigation”, and there is, again I was told, a two page report with nothing in it “to report”. Yes, that does sound like government, doesn’t it? But I also heard, the hired investigator doing the investigation didn’t speak with former town administrator, former employees, who I heard were treated rudely, by Walker, in town hall, numerous times.

You have also witnessed, seen him in action over the years. He has been serving since 2005. And BTW, he still hasn’t got Broad River Rd widened, but that is another “relationships matter II” article. So back to this article, sorry, had to share that.

I am going to FOIA the “hostile work environment” report, the names of all parties interviewed, and will ask both Mayoral Candidates to respond as to their thoughts. Don’t expect a lot, but I will ask.

I will give you my thoughts as to why no one “got to the bottom of it”. Coincidentally at that same time, noise was being made about this hostile work environment, Barry was making noise about the money, the applicants, the receivers of the loans, oops that got changed to grants, from the Irmo Future Development Corporation.

Funny, how the noise went away from both elected officials about the other. Barry also dropped his candidate in that election, and endorsed Bill for that 2021 race, and all got quiet on the western shore of Lake Murray.

"WHICH” RELATIONSHIPS MATTER?

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 16:07:17 GMT

"WHICH” RELATIONSHIPS MATTER?

September 16, 2023

Irmo elections are up and running, as well as the signs. “Fresh, new voice” is one, again, and again, and again, and again. These signs must be pre-printed, just insert name. Was actually used in one of the last elections by another Barry candidate, and again, this time by another Barry candidate, but this will be another article soon to come.

This article is about Barry’s signs and his slogan. So, I must ask, which “relationships matter” could he be referring to? Those relationships with Brandy, Jada, Erik Sickinger, and/or Kelly Busch. Whom are not supporting Barry this Mayor’s race? How about the relationship with Bill Danielson, which Barry “endorsed” at last moment in Bill’s election over Barry’s hand-picked candidate. Barry’s relationship with her didn’t last until the election. Nor did his with Bill Danielson, since Bill is running against Barry for Mayor.

In 2019 according to Barry’s state.sc.gov Initial Campaign Disclosure, he received funds for his campaign from various people who originally were supporters of Bill Danielson for Mayor in the 2019 election. Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? But when Bill decided not to run at that time, they switched to Barry. The 2023 Initial Campaign Disclosure for Barry doesn’t have the same financial supporters or dollar amount (2019 report $4800, 2023 $1000). Again, this leads me to believe those relationships don’t matter this campaign.

I first ran for Irmo Council in 2003, 2004, and elected in 2005, re-elected in 2009, elected to Mayor 2011, and again in 2015. So I have been in this environment awhile and can’t count the number of people who helped Barry in his campaigns over the years, but weren’t back to help him in his next election, some even came to help me. And now many of those who ran with Barry in 2019, worked with him, helped him, and supported him in 2019, are not working with him, helping him, supporting him, in this 2023 election.

By the way, while you are at the state.sc.gov website checking public reporting, you might as well check Bill Danielson’s financial disclosures for Mayor’s race in 2019, and his subsequent campaign disclosures for Town Council in 2020, 2021, and this Mayor’s race in 2023.

Yes, “Relationships Matter”, and relationship matters, but keeping those relationships, matters more.

IRMO’S MAIN STREET “DOWNTOWN” DEBACLE

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:33:59 GMT

IRMO’S MAIN STREET “DOWNTOWN” DEBACLE

September 26, 2023

I wasn’t sure if I should put this article under local, political, or comical, but I will decide that later.

I read back in December 2022 where “Bill Danielson, Irmo Town Councilman and Mayor Pro-Tem gave a presentation to Council November 29th outlining a proposed main street in Irmo.” Where did this idea come from?

It also reported that “town residents had suggested for years that a main street would be an attractive addition to the town.” Danielson said, “Now we have a way to make this happen and everyone wins”. Except, in my opinion, the current owners of the property he was describing in his presentation, and the other hospitality tax dollar benefactors whom all those tax dollars go to pay for this property instead of going to where they previously went, and currently are going to, at the time of his presentation.

So who truly benefits? One would be developers and investors that normally develop commercial properties. They have real estate agents and acquisition teams to handle that process, if the numbers work, land cost, infrastructure costs (i.e. roads, sewer, water), construction costs and can be developed, resold, or leased then they move forward. If these numbers don’t work, then they don’t move forward. Or if an investor buys and waits, when none of these are viable, nothing happens unless you can get someone else to spend their money (not the investors or the developers) to buy land, pay for infrastructure which would then make them the developer/investor.

This is not the Town of Irmo’s responsibility or expertise, never was, isn’t now, never should be.

But funny things happen when elected officials have to run for re-election or higher office and they need to campaign on what they did, and can use tax dollars (hospitality, ARPA, undesignated cash funds) to spend. Then when opposition occurs from other elected officials, (may not be their idea) for the method of moving forward or not getting credit themselves, along with town residents, existing property owners, who don’t see a “win”, you get push back and make regrettable comments about “eminent domain” etc.

That is another article about “EMINENT DOMAIN, Who said What, When and Where” and the fallacy of believing you could even use eminent domain for this purpose. Also, “where did this downtown idea originate, and what was wrong with the original idea”, besides whose idea it was.

SLIPS OF THE TONGUE? … OR WORSE?

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:03:06 GMT

SLIPS OF THE TONGUE? … OR WORSE?

September 26, 2023

While watching numerous Irmo Town Council meetings from the 2022 and 2023 time frame, looking for “who said what”, I ran across a couple things that made me laugh. Thought I would share them.

At the November 15, 2022 Irmo Town Council Meeting while discussing the purchases (1:6:15 mark) of tasers, Mayor Walker states that he didn’t know tasers quit working, etc. It was mentioned by, I believe, the Town Administrator, that some of the tasers were originally purchased in the 2004, 2005 time frame. At the 1:6:40 mark Barry states “that was before Barry”. Actually Barry got elected in a special election in April 2004, elected to a full term in November 2005. So he was most likely serving at the time of these taser purchases, if they were purchased after April of 2004 and before November of 2005.

In that same discussion when it is explained that tasers get outdated as do iphones, etc. Barry stated at the 1:7:50 mark that we (the Town) was now on iphone 29. Really, I am one of the most non-technical persons I know, but I do know the latest iphone is the iphone 15.

He should really shy away from trying to be humorous, it’s not working for him. But, I did laugh.

TOWN ABANDONS MAIN STREET … DISAPPOINTING FOR ALL, SAYS WHO?

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 14:36:17 GMT

TOWN ABANDONS MAIN STREET …

DISAPPOINTING FOR ALL, SAYS WHO?

September 26, 2023

In January 2023, an idea arose about developing a “main street” in Irmo on someone else’s property. Not a bad idea, if right, location, location, location, three real estate words that make or break an idea, a development, a sale.

Ideas do have to be sold, unless there are great ideas that “everyone” can get on board with. Again, the main street idea was good, location not so good.

An article in a local paper titled “Town abandons main street, disappointing for all”, in my mind expressed a smugness, arrogant touch by the unknown writer, and I have heard and know it did with others as well. This is why I write this article. It was stated “it’s a huge loss for the residents and for those that could have profited nicely from the Town of Irmo’s pursuit of an entertainment area ‘main street’. Due to public opposition from nearby landowners this quest has been abandoned.”

First let me address “huge loss for residents”. Which residents, the ones that live there or the ones that live elsewhere (not there)? “Could have profited nicely”, really, could have?, not would have?, and how is it profit if you have to spend those dollars buying another property at a most likely cost, and not be together as family and community, which also has a value. Very assumptive statement that doesn’t consider what the property owners consider valuable.

“Public opposition from nearby landowners”, aren’t they the residents, or not the ones the author was referring to?

One quick jab at Mayor Walker. If it is abandoned as the author stated, and no activity on Council agenda since then by other council members to move forward, why does Council need a resolution, or vote on one that says Council will no longer continue this issue, or a resolution that Council not hire a real estate acquisition firm to acquire property that Council has not approved, voted on, contracted with, hired anyone, or made any effort whatsoever to hire a real estate acquisition firm. Neither resolution was needed. It is called political grand standing, posturing, pandering, politicking from the podium, which is disgraceful. But yes, you’re up for election and you got an opponent with lots of financial support, chamber member support, and voter support, plus the anti-Barry voters. It is biblical, what we sow is what we reap. Anyway, back to the subject.

Infrastructure improvements is allowed with ARPA funds, “creating a commercial district” I don’t actually believe does, but could be wrong. My best guess it’s a 100% stretch of the rules. But then again, how does that apply to elected officials wanting to spend money. But the author can prove me wrong, if so decides. I’m always available.

Some town leaders saw an opportunity, another saw another opportunity, for their own agenda, but then again both sides had an agenda. It was called the Mayor’s Race of 2023.

“Vacant, uninhabited parcels of land”, so this land was vacant and uninhabited??? What does that mean, is there a difference between vacant and uninhabited? Don’t really care, but is was owned by people, family, to me that is the point being missed. And those people “have lost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.”? “Owners have argued”, really, argued, or just stated “their property has been handed down from generation to generation and that they are hoping to reach some sort of generational wealth by hanging on to it.” Isn’t that what is the definition of investing? Hanging onto something for future value increases, and isn’t real estate considered one of the safest investments compared to stocks, bonds, etc. *“could turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of years … “ by keeping land as well.*

“The Town was willing to offer well above appraised values for the properties”, really?, they were?, how is that known?, and how is it assumed that all of Council or majority of Council would agree to pay ‘well above appraised values’ with mine and other resident’s “tax dollars”. When the idea couldn’t get out of the gate, because one of them was fighting the idea. Maybe because he wasn’t getting credit, or didn’t like the method, doesn’t matter. We don’t know, and it shouldn’t be assumed above appraised values would be paid by majority of Council. Again very assumptive statement.

Let’s just say those numbers $150,000 invested for 25 years would be $700,000 if left untouched, how could it be left untouched if those property owners have to go elsewhere and buy another property to live in. At today’s unnormally high prices, and not including moving costs, any mortgage payoffs on the property itself. And at our age, who really wants to move?

“That land has no value to any investor but the Town”? No value, to any investor? What about the current property owner’s investment value? “Any investor but the town”, but the Town is the investor? When do towns become speculators, investors in possible current developments?

“Town could even work out a lease option or a way to share the profits from the land as it is sold to developers”? In another article, it was stated that the profits from the sale of the land along with ARPA funds etc. would go toward the development of this main street project so it wouldn’t be a cost to any taxpayer in town. So how can the profits be shared with the property owners and be used to offset the cost of the development? This can truly only happen if you’re paying dirt scratch to the property owners, not paying above appraised value. Since when can developers afford to buy land from a middle man “the town” who paid above appraisal values and has to have enough profit to give to the property owners and to pay for the development of all the infrastructure? Why not let the developer buy the land directly from the property owners, oh yeah they wouldn’t, couldn’t, numbers wouldn’t work, need taxpayer dollars to assure developers ability to make a profit.

The article’s author said “and all the concerned parties were well coached in their comments to the Council in saying that they were not interested in selling, and to take their name off the list”. So, you have to be coached, to say you are not interested, or does the author think the property owners couldn’t express that themselves. Again very arrogant and smug, in my opinion.

The article continued to state “and only one of the owners had bothered to approach the Town Council prior to things getting out of hand”. How many property owners had any Council member, Mayor included, “bothered to approach”? Other residents also said “they didn’t want a main street”. Yeah, so some residents were against it. Big deal, so what. Again, the idea at this location was not such a great idea, or a “win, win” as some stated it to be.

The train didn’t leave the station, it never arrived at the station in the first place.

According to the mayor he was for the idea, and with or without a useless non-binding resolution it can always be brought back up. Resolutions don’t prevent any council member from putting any item on any agenda at any date, or any future council member five ten years from then.

“Hope for these landowners”, really, their hope from what I can read, well coached or not, in between the lines or not, and anybody with a little bit of common sense, should know they just want to be left alone and keep their property as they have for generations.

As far as “what the condition the economy will be” in the future should be the same as your 25 year investment prediction was paragraphs above. I don’t think the future economic conditions have changed half way through your article.

Yes, changes do come. Hopefully, a new mayor, and another news source is now here. SinceTruthMatters.com

The Ultimate Real Estate Investing Podcast | Flip2Freedom.com

Well, it must be Election time here in Irmo again.

American Virtues – 2025 Commencement Address

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 10, 2025, at Hillsdale College’s 173rd Commencement Ceremony.

Honor

Tradition

Optimism

The Significance of the Recently Released Russia Hoax Documents

It’s not a genocidal war in Gaza

Back in April, I read an open letter to the Irmo News that started with the writer saying “I am opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza.” I have wanted to address this highly false statement since then.

New Irmo News

New Irmo News

The Sky Is Not Falling...

The Sky Is Not Falling...

Tax Buck

Tax Buck

Road Maintenance Shenanigans

Road Maintenance Shenanigans

DO “ WE GET HIM” March 10, 2024

DO “ WE GET HIM”

Are we Equal?

Are we Equal?

Church Health

Don’t forget to vote

IS HE THE GUY THAT……..?

Kneeling, Standing, For prayer

Ep. 325 — You Know Who Wasn't Colorblind? Nazis. | Fireside Chats | PragerU

Ep. 325 —

﻿ You Know Who Wasn't Colorblind? Nazis. | Fireside Chats | PragerU

The Middle East Problem | 5-Minute Videos | PragerU

The Middle East Problem

HAS HIS DREAM DIED

HAS HIS DREAM DIED?

It’s Not About Race, It’s About Truth and Character

It’s Not About Race, It’s About Truth and Character

EDUCATION AS A BATTLEGROUND

EDUCATION AS A BATTLEGROUND

IMPERIALISM: LESSONS FROM HISTORY

IMPERIALISM: LESSONS FROM HISTORY

IS ENSURING ELECTION INTEGRITY ANTI-DEMOCREATIC?

IS ENSURING ELECTION INTEGRITY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC?

THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION IN LIFE

The Most Important Decision in Life

November 6, 2023

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

DOES ANOTHER CANDIDATE LIVE IN TOWN?

DOES ANOTHER CANDIDATE LIVE IN TOWN?

WHO LIVES WHERE?

WHO LIVES WHERE?

BILL DANIELSON’S MAYORAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT

BILL DANIELSON’S MAYORAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT

MAYOR WALKER FILES FOR RE-ELECTION

MAYOR WALKER FILES FOR RE-ELECTION

Previously Published "Irmo News" July, 2021 HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Previously Published "Irmo News"

July, 2021

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

"WHICH” RELATIONSHIPS MATTER?

"WHICH” RELATIONSHIPS MATTER?

IRMO’S MAIN STREET “DOWNTOWN” DEBACLE

IRMO’S MAIN STREET “DOWNTOWN” DEBACLE

SLIPS OF THE TONGUE? … OR WORSE?

SLIPS OF THE TONGUE? … OR WORSE?

TOWN ABANDONS MAIN STREET … DISAPPOINTING FOR ALL, SAYS WHO?

TOWN ABANDONS MAIN STREET …

DISAPPOINTING FOR ALL, SAYS WHO?

You Know Who Wasn't Colorblind? Nazis. | Fireside Chats | PragerU