Conservative ideology usually pushes my buttons due to its absurdly outdated notion of how economics work with politics, but I have awoken every beautiful American morning hoping and believing that one day I’ll be able to finally witness a glimmer of reason in the standpoints or political figures of the Republican Party.
Today, I gave up.
South Carolina Lt. Gov. Ken Ard says “we desperately need tighter controls on spending” and we must “adhere to a clear budget plan.” Since his election, has Ard already forgotten these ideals written in plain view on his official website for all the voters to see? He must have or else he wouldn’t be asked by state ethics investigators to provide an explanation for approximately $25,000 of campaign money spent shrouded in mystery in the past three months.
Well, in all honesty I can’t say all this dough has been spent clandestinely. According to The State, along with buying an $800 dress for his wife, “Those expenses include Atlanta hotel rooms — for the weekend that the University of South Carolina Gamecock football team played in the SEC championship game — plus purchases at an electronics store and hundreds of dollars in meals.”
Now maybe I’m just old fashioned, but that doesn’t sound like tight controls on spending or adhering to a clear budget plan to me.
The poor folks at the State Ethics Commission must be absolutely pooped from the amount of crap they’ve had to sort through, hurled at them by recent South Carolina government officials. Former Gov. Mark Sanford certainly kept them busy as he blew thousands of dollars on personal air travel (hey, he had to get to Argentina somehow). Though he ended up paying the largest “ethics fine” in the history of our state, what are the rest of our officials getting away with? When I decided to take a look at the expenditures of current elected leaders on the Ethics Commission website, the results I found were shocking.
On Nov. 30, Rep. Bobby Harrell, speaker of the House, spent $7,755.75 on Christmas cards alone. Attorney General Alan Wilson spent $552.50 of his total contributions at our own Liberty Tap Room on Gervais Street in November. Equally as hilarious, in one day, on Nov. 2, Gov. Nikki Haley managed to spend $703.05 at Wild Wing Café and $660 at Budweiser of Columbia.
I’m glad the Ethics Commission is catching some of these clowns, but it is well-known that when it comes to ethics issues, the result of the prosecuted defendant is usually nothing more than another large fine and a shake of the head. I believe the repercussions for this exorbitant and hypocritical spending should be taken more seriously.