jacob news

Governor McMaster endorsing Personhood SC Representative Trey Gowdy  announced   today   that he will not seek reelection this year and that he plans to leave politics and instead reenter the justice system. He is the 38 th Republican to announce that he will not return to the House next year. This number is much  higher than it has been in previous years. It�s also unique to the Republicans. There are only 17 Democratic representatives leaving Congress this year. What could be the cause of this mass exodus? Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina             It�s like when a big ship starts to sink. People start to jump into lifeboats and get out as quickly as possible. Perhaps these Republicans foresee something bad happening in the future and they do not want to be around to deal with it. After all, Special Counsel Robert Mueller might be interviewing President Trump in the next few weeks which means the...

A few moments ago, Governor McMaster  delivered his state of the state address in Columbia. I read through the transcript of the speech before I sat down to write this article hoping to find some inspiration from it. I did not, unfortunately. McMaster does not really seem to have a good answer for the education problem in our state. He stated that, �poverty is the enemy of education,� which is true. He added that the best way to improve education in areas stricken with poverty is to hire �Good teachers and good principals.� What a novel concept.             He then transitioned into an endorsement of charter schools which is not a solution for struggling families who cannot afford to send their children to an institution of that kind. He also pushed for adding police officers to all schools as a safety measure against shootings. As a student, I am not a fan of this idea because it creates an environment where school feels like...

Top Row: Catherine Templeton (left), Henry McMaster, James Smith (right) Bottom Row: Kevin Bryant (left), Yancey McGill, Phil Noble (right) It�s been a busy week. I�ll start off with an update on the offshore drilling debacle that I discussed on last week�s blog. As of a few hours ago, Governor McMaster appealed , for the second time, to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his �good friend� President Trump to remove South Carolina from the list of states whose coastlines will be opened up to oil drilling under a new proposal. The hesitance of Zinke to respond to McMaster does not bode well for those against oil drilling in our state. It�s astonishing to me that Zinke moved so quickly to spare Florida but has yet to answer the calls of the rest of the states effected by the proposal.             In other news, Senator Jeff Flake gave a powerful speech on the floor of the Senate today. Fox News  called it �absurd� while CNN  ...

Last week, President Trump  proposed a plan that would open up the Atlantic Ocean along the east coast to exploratory oil drilling. This is the next push by the Department of the Interior to deregulate and reverse Obama-era energy regulations. Under Obama, 87% of the United States� coast was off limits to oil drilling (the Gulf Coast and northern Alaska were open). The proposal put forward by President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would open up a portion of the East Coast extending from Florida to Delaware to offshore drilling.             As expected, the people living in the states that would be affected by this proposal were not happy, including pro-Trump politicians like Rick Scott in Florida. In South Carolina, both Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott were skeptical of the plan and Mark Sanford was strongly against it. This is one of the rare incidents where there is bipartisan backlash on an issue. If you ha...

I�ve been snowed in for the past three days and because I can�t go anywhere, I�ve had a lot of time to follow the news, digest information, and think. There�s a lot going on in the news right now, but in my hourly news sweeps this week I came across two misconceptions in both the articles that I�ve read and the comments under those articles. I usually would not care about the many false, sometimes vulgar, claims in any comment section considering that many residents in the comments do not have the highest IQ. But when our President and some news anchors push these misconceptions, it gets my attention. Misconception #1: President Trump is the reason that the economy is so good right now.           This is a trap that is easy for anybody to fall into. Since Trump took office there seems to be new records on the stock market everyday and unemployment continues to fall ( 4.1% in December. Down from 4.6% in January 2017). 2.7 million jobs were ...

Rep. Mike Burns  There�s a lot going on right now. Here�s a list of the things that I considered talking about on tonight�s blog: 1.      Donald Trump (his �bigger� nuclear button, among other things) 2.      Steve Bannon (accusing the President of committing treason, among other things) 3.      Logan Paul (the YouTube star who recorded and laughed about his encounter with the dead body of a suicide victim for millions to see) 4.      The deadly protests in Iran 5.      Michael Wolff�s new book  about the Trumps (It turns out that Melania Trump cried when she found out that her husband had won the election, and they were not tears of joy.) 6.      Paul Manafort suing Robert Mueller (a gutsy move) 7.      The Dominion merger with SCANA (It�s too early to tell whether this is a positive development.) 8.      Snow (I measu...