Now flying to an Appalachian Trail near you – for less! (Photo Credit: CC BY-ND/Dean Morley/Flickr)

When Southwest Airlines comes to town, competing airlines take notice. According to USA Today, it’s called the “Southwest Effect,” and it is a powerful market force. It is so powerful, writes USA Today, that within an hour of Southwest Airlines’ announcement that routes are being extended into South Carolina, the competition dropped its fares into the state by 30 percent or more.

Southwest Airlines comes to town, consumers win

Within an hour of announcing routes to destinations in South Carolina – Charleston and Greenville-Spartanburg – Southwest Airlines shook up the industry and forced competitors to offer cheaper air travel rates. Those looking to enjoy what the Palmetto State has to offer will be able to more easily afford air travel now that the Southwest Effect has blown in like a warm southwesterly wind. According to Charleston’s The Post and Courier, “within an hour of Southwest Airlines’ revealing details of its service launching from Charleston International Airport next year, local airfares plunged to $59 each way to Southwest-bound destinations — but only after March 13.”

Travel agents anticipate added business

John Powers of Travel Management Group in Charleston told local media that the move by Southwest Airlines has caused a veritable tsunami of savings. “All major carriers cut their rates by at least 30 percent,” he said. “And most slashed prices considerably more.” For instance, one-way flights for which competitors used to charge $228 have dropped all the way down to $59 to match Southwest Airlines.

ABC affiliate News 4 of Charleston shared similar reports of lower airfare for flights originating after March 13. One flight from Charleston to Chicago was $219, but dropped to $99. Even flights with stop-overs, like one to New York City, went from $400 to $129 one-way. Flights out of Greenville-Spartanburg should also see dramatic decreases, say travel industry experts.

Sources

USA Today

Symptoms of the Southwest Effect include lower fares

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford attempted to defend payday lending with his veto of the H.3790 bill, but the SC House overturned his veto. (Photo: Wikipedia)

On June 7, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford issued a veto of H.3790, a payday loan bill that would have extended the payment term of the standard loans to an untenable 120 days or more while still requiring the same fees. Furthermore, H.3790 would have eliminated unsecured loans in South Carolina and outlawed the common practice of a customer presenting a lender with a post-dated check. However, S.C. Politics Today reports that the South Carolina House of Representatives has overridden Gov. Sanford’s veto. The bill also affected regulation of licensing fees for the state’s mortgage industry.

Why Mark Sanford said no to payday loan-crippling H.3790

In a letter to the state House, Governor Mark Sanford writes regarding his veto of the payday loan bill that

“Although this type of regulation is intended to protect the public, these kinds of laws ultimately decrease the number and type of available financing options and make it harder for new lenders to enter the market. In other words, consumers have fewer choices and the available options become more expensive. … Some people will benefit from payday–style loans and some will not, and we continue to believe that individual consumers are better equipped than a government bureaucracy to know whether a short-term loan is a wise decision in any given circumstance.”

Allow the people to decide

As state legislators are less likely than credit-constrained consumers to have ever had the need for a payday loan or similar loans with no credit check – whether they are unsecured loans or not – it seems more logical that consumers should be allowed to decide whether the payday loan is a good deal for them. Governor Sanford clearly sees the matter in those terms, even if his state’s legislature does not. Currently, the payday loan regulation in South Carolina limits borrowers to $550 at a time, and they can only have a single active loan. This activity is tracked in an electronic database.

Another bill, another overturned veto

Another overturned veto ventures into territory of Mark Sanford’s alleged history of impropriety with South Carolina taxpayer funds. The House nixed Gov. Sanford’s veto of a bill that would “allow information to be made public in a state ethics investigation of the governor when it indicates possible cause that a violation may have occurred,” reports S.C. Politics Today. The vote against Sanford’s veto of the governor investigation bill was a landslide, 102-2 in favor of overturning his veto. Sanford has gone on record as saying that he vetoed the bill because he wanted the language of that bill expanded to include all state lawmakers, not just the governor.

Sources:

S.C. Politics Today

State of South Carolina – Office of the Governor

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Rep. Nikki Haley and husband. (Photo: India Unfinished)

South Carolina Rep. Nikki Haley has aspirations to become the governor of the Palmetto state in the upcoming election. However, it appears she’ll have to contend with allegations from former Gov. Mark Stanford staffer Will Folks that Folks and Nikki Haley were involved in “an inappropriate physical relationship” that occurred during her current marriage. According to the Daily Caller, Will Folks dropped the Nikki Haley bomb on his website.

Was Rep. Nikki Haley ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail,’ too?

As Nikki Haley and anyone else who has paid attention to South Carolina politics knows, the office of governor has been a veritable hot seat that has attracted its fair share of attention. Gov. Mark Sanford “hiked the Appalachian Trail” on taxpayer dollars (rather than easy cash loans) in order to be with mistress Maria Belen Chapur. Lt. Governor Andre Bauer publicly compared poor people to stray animals. Now gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is dealing with her own alleged affair. Her campaign team has denied Folks’ allegations. Haley has told the press that “I have been 100 percent faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage.” Folks’ subsequent marriage (after the alleged affair) has reportedly been less successful. There was a domestic violence incident in 2005 where Folks shoved his wife into the furniture.

Folks is feeling the pressure

There are “several impending news stories” in the South Carolina press involving this alleged affair between Nikki Haley and Will Folks, and this, according to the Daily Caller, is what prompted Folks to speak out. “I am told that at least one story based upon this information will be published this week,” he said. “Watching all of this unfold, I have become convinced that the gradual release of this information is deliberately designed to advance this story in the press while simultaneously forcing either evasive answers or denials on my part or on Nikki’s part.”

In other words, the press is having a field day

Here’s a thought: Perhaps South Carolina politicians could behave in a more upright, honest manner. Clearly the claims against Nikki Haley have not been proved, but does South Carolina need any more negative publicity? Their political cupboards have been full for some time. One wonders if Sarah Palin and Jenny Sanford – both of whom have endorsed Nikki Haley – did their due diligence before taking the podium. While there are plenty of people like the author of the India Unfinished blog who have positive things to say about Nikki Haley – i.e. “Nikki’s greatest gift to voters is herself. She represents fusion, ambition, integrity and perseverance” – even a potentially unfounded allegation against Haley look bad for a state that lately has been burned by its politicians a great deal.

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I do believe the guy who wrote this book, Mathew Honan, created Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition. Image from Amazon.com.

During the eight years of Republican reign that preceded President Barack Obama’s election, fans of President Bush often fought criticism of him by saying that the critic was “unpatriotic,” “anti-American,” you know what I’m talking about.

So liberals got a reputation of being unpatriotic, but my how the tables have turned. The new web site “Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition” shoots back at the Republican representative from South Carolina after his decidedly disrespectful and debatably unpatriotic outburst during the president’s health care speech last night.

JoeWilsonIsYourPreexistingCondition.com

Someone started Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition very shortly after Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” while the president was speaking about health care reform, the most important and most expensive issue facing the nation right now.

While Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing condition did become an overnight sensation, the bare-bones site’s creator obviously didn’t need overnight loans to get this text-only, no background site up and running. There are no photos, no headings or borders or any design elements at all, except the underlined, all-caps words in about a 72-point font.

Joe Wilson stole your newspaper

The web site makes ridiculous and obviously false claims such as “Joe Wilson is on your death panel.” They range from silly lines such as “Joe Wilson let his dog poop on your lawn” to more topical ridiculousness like  “Joe Wilson laid off your dad right before his pension kicked in.” At least one claim, though, is simply true: “Joe Wilson yells while adults are talking.”

I get it. The creator of Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition is making ridiculous, false (or at least impossible to prove) and disrespectful claims, just like Joe Wilson did when he yelled “You lie!” at the president. The tag line at joewilsonisyourpreexistingcondition.com says “You dissed America, we’ll dis you right … back.”

I think there is a difference between being disrespectful to the president and “dissing America,” but — damn that site is funny! How can you help but laugh at “Joe Wilson traded the dead batteries in his walkman for the fresh ones in your TV remote“?

The kicker

I have no proof, but given the design aesthetic and undying loyalty to President Obama, I assume that Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition was created by the same man who created “Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle” to promote his book of the same name.

The man’s name is Mathew Honan, and if you spend enough time clicking through laughter-inducing, brief quips such as “Joe Wilson talked on his Blackberry all through your favorite movie” and “Joe Wilson yells Free Bird at concerts,” you’ll find out what the site’s creator really thinks:

“Joe Wilson is an elected official who seems to be using party-line rhetoric as a tool rather than thoughtful debate and is actually hindering real progress in society which is a shame as we’re a smart country and should expect more of the people we elect.”

Watch video: Joe Wilson yells “you lie!” at president

After you’re done reading all the hilarity at Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition, check out the moment that tipped off this madness.

(Photo: pinoyspy.com)

There’s something dreadfully wrong with that. That C Street House, C Street Band, The Family, or whatever you want to call them knew that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was having an affair with Argentine reporter Maria Belen Chapur. The super-secret religious organization knew before Jenny Sanford did. But perhaps what’s even more heinous from a media point of view is that most of what we’ve heard about this “hiking the Appalachian Trail” affair has come from the perspective of Mark Sanford. Jenny Sanford has remained mostly silent, until now. She recently sat down with Vogue for an interview, and it’s telling of her inner strength during this storm.

Overheated vs. clear thinking

Vogue describes Jenny Sanford as “petite, clear-eyed, strong-willed, pious without being smug, smart without being caustic.” She wasn’t caught up in the emotional frothing at the mouth that her husband succumbed to when he spoke of soul mates and poetry. Perhaps that’s because their marriage, by her admission, was always one of friendship and comfort rather than passion. But Jenny Sanford has focused on the most important thing throughout – her legacy, the Sanford children. No secured loans or unsecured loans can buy something so valuable and irreplaceable.

Mark Sanford is the prototypical person who chomps at the bit to cast the first stone. That’s exactly what he did when he condemned President Bill Clinton’s philandering as “reprehensible.” He cut the image of wholesome, which for his wife and children was accurate. However, Mark Sanford clearly never grew up; he made the commitment to marry for friendship, believing he could find the fire elsewhere

Enter Maria Belen Chapur.

Hardly the home wrecker, Chapur lit Sanford’s fire. It also appears that she didn’t know quite what to do with such a powerful man pursuing her like a lovesick teenager. Mark Sanford decided to hike the Appalachian Trail in his pursuit of her. Perhaps it was the excitement, or the flame of passion that Mark Sanford wanted. Perhaps if Maria Belen Chapur hadn’t been there, it would have been someone else. Yet as Jenny Sanford sees it, Mark is suffering from an addiction.

“Over the course of both pastoral and marriage counseling, it became clear to me that he was just obsessed with going to see this woman. I have learned that these affairs are almost like an addiction to alcohol or pornography. They just can’t break away from them,” she told Vogue.

I see that as a weak defense of his irresponsibility

Mark Sanford has children with Jenny Sanford. You do not introduce poison into a relationship based on the upbringing of children. You act responsibly because you owe it to your children. You do not disappear “on the Appalachian Trail” (or in the case of my ex, to California). You take responsibility as a parent, because that is the most important job a human being can have.

And where’s Jenny Sanford’s comments on the C Street Band’s involvement in Mark Sanford’s passionate affair? She conveniently neglects to mention them during the Vogue interview, which indicates to me that she’s being influenced not to talk about certain things. Thus, I take Jenny Sanford’s entire interview with a grain of salt. It’s image-making, it’s theater of a sort. There’s some truth, but perhaps the heart of the matter remains obscured. And in this case, it should not be obscured. The Family (C Street Band, C Street House, etc) is involved in this crime against the Sanford children and Jenny Sanford. And while these crimes may not in themselves be punishable by law, they should be. Such harmful secrecy masquerading as religious freedom should be squashed in the interests of children. It is their right not be deceived by an important caregiver.

Midlife crisis and all that

My response to C Street House and those who "leave it in the Lord's hands." (Photo: flickr.com)

“My husband has got some issues that he needs to work on, about happiness and what happiness means. You wish it wouldn’t come to a crisis like this, but I think when a lot of men get to this midpoint in life, they start asking questions that they probably should have asked a long time ago,” says Mrs. Sanford. Maria Belen Chapur has been drawn into Mark Sanford’s crisis of maturity, and unfortunately for her, life may never be the same again. Now, is Jenny Sanford perfect? Hardly. By her own admission, “I don’t have a wild past, but I don’t have a perfect past. I worked hard, and I played hard. There are things I probably shouldn’t have done, but I was human. The question is what you learn from them.” That was her experience as a former Wall Street type, a real numbers runner.

In a nutshell, Jenny Sanford says of her marriage to Mark Sanford that “We weren’t madly in love, but we were compatible and good friends. I like to think we balance each other out. I am a conservative at heart, but I’m not passionate about ideas like he is. I am better at making the trains run on time.” Mark Sanford, as a powerful white male, mistook his station in life with the right to stomp on loved ones in pursuit of passion. Incidentally, he’s stomped on Maria Belen Chapur, too, which is something he likely didn’t intend. But his hot and heavy behavior has burned her. Not as much as it has Jenny Sanford and her children, but it has charred the earth.

She is willing to forgive

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But I wish she would have taken a harder line against him. Mark Sanford is getting off much too easily, even if it is hard for politicians to remain grounded and not stoke the fires of ego. Political enemies, commentators and comedians are taking their share of pot shots, however. Politicians need to take the lead here, because Mark Sanford’s use of taxpayer dollars to chase after Maria Belen Chapur (some of it not even itemized) is in violation of the public trust. He must be impeached, and elected officials are the only ones who can truly get that ball rolling. If money is needed to start a grassroots movement to get him out, unsecured loans and secured loans are available. Apply here by clicking the button.

Jenny Sanford says that “Mark is not a bad person,” he’s just struggling. I can see that as well as anyone else. However you may choose to forgive him (likely as C Street has directed) is up to you. However, as a politician, Mark Sanford’s career should be over immediately. Yes, Jenny Sanford may be right when she tells Vogue that “If you don’t forgive, you become angry and bitter.” For the children, however, it’s best that she moves on from this hot mess of a “friend” and do what is best for the youngsters. Invoking the Lord means that you give up responsibility for your own actions. Take action, Mrs. Sanford – don’t join those with blinders on. Make a difference for your children.

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