Anderson Farm and Food Association to Extend Season

By popular demand, the Anderson Area Farm and Food Association has decided to extend the Community Farmers Market season through September 24. The group says the move will provide four more weeks of farm fresh food, crafts, patio diningand live music.

Located at 402 North Murray Avenue at Tribble Street the AAFFA is opened  Tuesdays, 5pm – 8pm.

This week's Market Chef match features two chefs, new to the competition, Chef Chet Newsome from the Pompous Pig, and Chef Matt Black from the Blue Marble Bakery & Cafe. The cost is $2 to taste and judge. Tickets go on sale at 5:00 but sell out quickly, so arrive early.

AP: Four of of Five Americans Struggle with Poverty

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.

The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as experiencing unemployment at some point in their working lives, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

"It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty.

He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's election, while struggling whites do not.

"There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.

Full Story Here

News: S.C. Delegation United Against NSA Spying

The debate was brief and the amendment was defeated, but the entire South Carolina House delegation used a big vote this week to express concerns that a national security program that collects huge amounts of communications data on Americans is a threat to privacy.

 Rarely do all seven of them — six Republicans and one Democrat — align on such a controversial and high-profile issue.

But their in-state bloc of votes illustrated the unusual alliance of liberals and conservatives that was large enough to rattle the White House and congressional leadership, which defend the metadata collection as a critical anti-terrorism tool.

The House, by a surprisingly close vote of 205-217, killed an amendment by Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan that would have curtailed the National Security Agency’s ability to sweep up huge amounts of information from phone and Internet records and sift through it for clues of terrorist networks.

The details of the program were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and the vote was the first by Congress in response to the revelation.

All seven members from South Carolina voted for Amash’s amendment.

“There is a balance between public safety, national security and privacy — all of which are of constitutional significance — but the pendulum has swung too far away from privacy,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-Spartanburg, said Friday about his vote.

Both political parties — like the American public — were strongly divided on the NSA program.

Full Story Here

S.C. Uses Electronic Monitoring on More Offenders

South Carolina relies on electronic monitoring to keep track of hundreds of offenders after they are released from prison. Through the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, the state contracts with two different companies that use GPS technology to track offenders' movements and ensure they are complying with release conditions.

— THE LAW: All types of offenders in South Carolina are eligible for electronic ankle bracelets, but most are sex offenders. In 2006, the South Carolina Legislature passed the Sex Offender Accountability and Protection of Minors Act, which provides for lifetime GPS monitoring of offenders convicted of committing a sex offense against a minor. Based on the offense, the court may have discretion of imposing lifetime monitoring or such monitoring may be mandated.

— HOW MANY?: As of May 2013, South Carolina was tracking 616 offenders using GPS monitoring provided by one of two companies, Omnilink or Satellite Tracking of People. This figure has gone up 33 percent since January 2011, when there were 414 active offenders being tracked.

— KEEPING UP: About 160 agents across South Carolina constantly monitor offenders' tracking devices and respond to any alerts or issues around-the-clock. On a given day, up to 30 of those agents are on call for duty. Most alerts are minor compliance or equipment problems, such as low battery power, and those are often handled by phone. When a violation is suspected, field agents do home visits — an average of more than 170 a month — to find the offender and figure out the source of the alert.

In addition to the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, other entities across the state also provide electronic monitoring of offenders, including county jails. This sampling included the state agency alone.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/28/3527343/a-look-at-how-sc-using-electronic.html#storylink=cpy

County Wants Most of School's Portion New Fee In Lieu Revenues

Anderson County Council Council will propose taking a larger portion of revenues from fee-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements with all future businesses locating or expanding in the county at a special called meeting Thursday at 6 p.m. at the historic courthouse downtown.

The ordinance, would shift a much larger portion of the fees away from the county's five school districts, remains unaltered since it's initial proposal, despite a general agreement by both council and education leaders that the language is vague and unclear. 

"I have to agree with (Anderson County Board of Education Administrator) Joey Nimmer that the ordinance right now is 'clear as mud," Wilson said at an earlier meeting of county and school officials. Council promised the wording of the proposal would be ideally amended by members of a new committe. 

An Ad Hoc Committee was established to discuss details of a new agreement with school officials from each district, but it remains unclear how the new agreement would impact schools.

Earlier, Nimmer said that one key to the proposal is that it does not impact in any way current school funding based on fee in lieu of tax structures.  He said that while Anderson County schools were eager to take a greater role in support of economic development, education remains an essential part of such efforts.

"When new folks come here, we have a responsibility to educate their children and it's important we have the funding to do so," Nimmer said.

Currently, public schools receive almost 70 percent of fee in lieu of taxes revenues, although that number does not take into account tax revenues potentially lost from such agreements. 

State: Taxpayers Spend $635,400 on Sporting Event Traffic

South Carolina taxpayers spend about $635,400 yearly on traffic control provided by highway troopers, with three college football teams accounting for three-quarters of that.

For each game at Williams-Brice Stadium and Death Valley this fall, 90 troopers will work 12-hour shifts to direct the tens of thousands of reveling South Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers fans to and from their tailgating spots for home games. Seven troopers will control traffic flow at each South Carolina State home game.

According to the Department of Public Safety, troopers' time will cost taxpayers a combined $469,000 at the rival universities in Clemson and Columbia, as well as $10,850 for the S.C. State Bulldogs' season in Orangeburg. No other school sport gets the game-day service aimed at keeping drivers and pedestrians safe.

The agency can't bill the schools.

Since at least 1996, legislators have inserted a clause in the state budget barring the agency from charging for their special event services. Exactly how long it's been in the budget is unclear.

Senate President Pro Tem John Courson, R-Columbia, said efforts to remove the prohibition pop up every few years.

“This has ping-ponged back and forth almost as long as I've been in the Senate,” said Courson, who was first elected in 1984 and believes the public safety effort should continue at no cost to colleges. “With the security problems we have in this country, it's certainly appropriate to have state law enforcement at large sporting events.”

A proposal allowing DPS to charge a fee arose briefly during the budget process in May, but it was pulled before the Senate Finance Committee could debate it.

“The universities win the argument before it even becomes an issue anymore,” Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, said Friday.

Next year, he said, legislators could try to break out the cost on a specific line in DPS' budget.

Over his tenure, then-Gov. Mark Sanford tried three times – in 2003, 2004 and 2009 – to get rid of the billing ban with his veto pen, arguing that colleges and other beneficiaries should pay for the service out of the revenue their events generate. Each time, legislators overrode the vetoes.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/07/28/2886302/sc-agency-spends-635k-to-provide.html#storylink=cpy

S.C. Behind Other States in Organ Donation

About 22 percent of people who get a new driver’s license in South Carolina sign up for organ donation, a rate well below the national rate in this year’s National Donor Designation Report Card.

The national rate is about 45 percent, according to the report card compiled annually by Donate Life America. Montana (82 percent) and Alaska (80 percent) have the highest rates.

Of the 36 states that allow organ donor registration through drivers licenses, only New York (12.7) and Texas (19.1) have lower rates than South Carolina (21.7). South Carolina has 1,169,331 registered donors.

If you want to sign up as an organ donor but don’t plan to get or renew your driver’s license soon, you can sign up online at http://www.donatelifesc.org.

More than 120,000 people nationwide, including nearly 1,000 in South Carolina, are awaiting organ transplants, according to the report.

In South Carolina, 103 people became organ donors at their deaths during 2012 and helped save more than 300 lives in South Carolina and across the nation.

South Carolina did not have an Organ and Tissue Donor Registry prior to December of 2008. The heart on many S.C. driver’s licenses obtained before then only indicated intent to be a donor but did not put individuals in a registry.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/07/28/2884881/sc-lags-in-organ-donor-registration.html#storylink=cpy

Remembering Our Korean War Veterans

Friday was the 60th Anniversary of the Armistice ending major hostilities in what's been called "America's Forgotten War."

It was the first conflict of the Cold War--the free West opposing the communist East on the tangled landscape of the Korean Peninsula.

It began with 75 thousand North Korean troops pouring across the 38th parallel. The men who would eventually fight them and the Chinese to a standstill are now in their 80's.

Some were gathered Friday at Reno's Veterans Administration Hospital for the dedication of a memorial plaque listing Nevada's 37 war dead and a luncheon honoring local Korean War veterans.

Seated among them, wearing a blue cap proclaiming him as a veteran of the Forgotten War and a member of the "Chosin Few" was Paul Weller.

Weller was a 19 year old Marine Corps veteran, a civilian with a young family when the war broke out in 1950.

Expecting activation he transferred into the Marine Corps Reserve and a month after call up found himself in the middle of the battle that would change the course of the war, the Inchon landing.

"When we landed behind them that broke their will because they didn't know if they were going to get cut off. So they were bailing back north so they wouldn't get trapped," he remembers.

With momentum in their favor United Nations troops surged far north. That advance ended in the searing cold of the Korean winter at the Chosin Reservoir facing the Chinese Army.

"We were running about 20 to 30 degrees below zero for 10 to 15 days never sleeping inside," he says.

Then the Chinese entered the war.

"On the night they hit us and half of the weapons didn't want to keep shooting."

It was so cold the lubricants on their weapons jammed the mechanism. Even the flares they fired to try to illuminate the nighttime mass charges by the Chinese wouldn't light properly.

The battle and the cold were deadly. Somehow Weller escaped unscathed.

"Of 15 thousand people when it was over we had 13 thousand casualties and I wasn't one of them. I didn't have a scratch."

And later returning home like other Korean War vets, Weller slipped quietly back into civilian life.

There were no parades and it would be decades before a memorial was built in Washington. Weller's war became America's Forgotten.

"We had a deal. We went and did it. I came home. I had a family to feed I went to work. I never felt neglected."

Today, the Korean Peninsula is still divided, the boundary between North and South set by the front lines when the fighting stopped 60 years ago, but the world might have been a much different place, but for men Weller and others remembered today.

ThinkProgress: Haley Under Fire for Taking Gifts from Clemson

Under fire for receiving cash and gifts from a tobacco executive, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) apologized this week for the embarrassment he and his family brought to his state. But he is not the only governor who has allowed wealthy benefactors to lavish him with generous gifts. According to her disclosure forms, Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of tickets and suites at sporting events over the past two years — much of which came from people with interests before the state.

Haley, who was elected in 2010, is an alum of Clemson University. In her mandatory 2012 and 2013 Statements of Economic Interests, she reported receiving hundreds of gifts, large and small. The most significant items were disclosures of a dozen people identified as “friend/supporter” providing her with access to their Clemson Football Suites — a benefit worth more than $58,000 over two years.

Many states prohibit interested parties from giving gifts to elected officials or cap gifts at a nominal maximum. South Carolina law does not, though it does state that no one may “directly or indirectly, give, offer, or promise anything of value to a public official, public member, or public employee” with the intent to influence their official responsibilities.

Six of Haley’s benefactors are members of Clemson’s board of trustees. They include David E. Dukes, John “Nicky” McCarter Jr., E. Smyth McKissick III, William C. Smith Jr., Joseph D. Swann, and the board’s chairman, former Speaker of the South Carolina House David H. Wilkins (R). Since Haley took office, Clemson has benefited greatly from its alum. The university relies on state funding for about 10 percent each year. After several years of declining state revenue, Clemson received a several-million-dollar increase after she took office, and appears poised to receive another significant boost for this coming year. While the university has not gotten everything it wanted from her administration, she provided the university with another key perk: she repeatedly loaned her state plane to Clemson’s president and its football recruiters — a practice that ended only after state legislators objected.

The controversial McCarter had another reason to help the governor: he is president of Defender Services, Inc., a Columbia, SC-based staffing company that calls itself a “national leader in outsourcing services.” Defender Services has received more than $300,000 worth of state contracts from the South Carolina government since Haley took office.
And as a state representative, Haley voted for McCarter’s 2010 reappointment to the Clemson board of trustees, as well as Swann’s.

Two others — Dukes and Wilkins — are partners in Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, a prominent lobbying firm. Nelson Mullins received a $60,000-a-year contract extension with the state in March to provide federal lobbying services for Coastal Carolina University. In fact Wilkins himself appears on the firm’s federal lobbying disclosure form as one of the two lobbyists handling the contract.

Haley’s other gifts included a $1,700 basketball ticket from health care magnate Vivek Garipalli, a $2,500 painting from artist Jeffrey Callaham, and $100 in earrings from a benefactor listed as “unknown.”

No stranger to ethical controversy, Haley ironically has made ethical government and reform a major push for her administration. This year, she pushed a bill she said would “determine whether South Carolinians get to know who is paying their legislators, and whether legislators get to continue to police themselves.”

In a speech in May, Haley declared:

Never has there been a time where the people of South Carolina wanna see [SIC] ethics reform. Never has there been a time where the people of South Carolina deserve to see ethics reform. Never has there been a time where elected officials are gonna be held accountable and we’re gonna see that happen… We need to show the people of the world that we don’t have issues in South Carolina, that we are not afraid of ethics reform, and that we’re gonna pass a strong ethics reform bill this year.

While there is no evidence that they violated South Carolina’s lax ethics law, it’s hard to believe that the suites did not provide these people with both access to the governor and goodwill from her that the average South Carolinian would not enjoy.

AnMed Adds New Cardiologist to Network

AnMed Health Carolina Cardiology is pleased to welcome Dr. Jeremy Parker, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Parker joins Drs. Jerry Champ, Paul Jones, Scott Phillips, Brett Stoll, Satish Surabhi, and John Wendt at AnMed Health Carolina Cardiology. 

Dr. Parker is a graduate of Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina. He completed his residency at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte and went on to complete fellowship training at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. 

AnMed Health Carolina Cardiology provides specialized care for patients with a wide range of heart and vascular conditions. Each physician has an area of specialization in addition to general cardiology. The practice is located in the AnMed Health Cardiac and Orthopaedic Center at 100 Healthy Way in Anderson and can be reached at 864-224-2465.

Tech Offers Small Business Startup Class Aug. 1

A one-day class, Small Business Start Up, will be offered Thursday, August 1, at Tri-County Technical College’s Pendleton Campus. The class will be held in the Industrial Business and Development Center from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. There is no charge for the class.

The class is offered in partnership with Tri-County Technical College, Clemson’s Small Business Development Center, SCORE and area Chambers of Commerce. Topics will be discussed to allow students to evaluate their ideas for business, and assess its viability. In addition, students will learn some of the key aspects of preparing to own and manage their own business. 

For more information or to register, call (864) 646-1700 or visit www.tctc.edu/learn.

Government Renews Clemson Watershed Project Contract

Federal and state environmental officials renewed an agreement with Clemson University’s Center of Excellence for Watershed Management for another five years, recognizing its work to help protect and improve water quality in South Carolina.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) marked the renewal of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) in a ceremony Tuesday at EPA regional headquarters in Atlanta. Clemson is the first of 10 centers across the Southeast to be renewed. 

“Clemson’s center has established itself as a leader in water resources management in South Carolina and across the Southeast — leveraging millions in funding to support priority projects,” said Stan Meiburg, EPA’s acting regional administrator. “The center is unique in that it focuses on using remotely sensed monitoring data, providing watershed information that can be used in real time to better protect local communities and improve water quality across the state.”

"DHEC is pleased to have a part in renewing Clemson's center," said Elizabeth Dieck, DHEC director of environmental affairs. "We believe that our continued partnership will increase awareness and facilitate improvements in water quality across the state.”

To become a recognized Center of Excellence, the institution must demonstrate technical expertise in identifying and addressing watershed needs, involve its academic community in watershed planning, protection and restoration, be self-sustaining and partner with other institutions. EPA recognition offers technical and promotional assistance and agency support for grant applications.

“Being named a Center of Excellence is a distinction and responsibility,” said John Kelly, Clemson University’s vice president of economic development. “Ensuring clean water for our state's communities and businesses is a vital part of Clemson University's mission.”

S.C. Dropout Rate Falls for Fourth Year

The state Education Department reported Wednesday that more than 5,200 high school students dropped out in 2011-12. That's nearly 670 fewer students than a year earlier and 2,800 fewer than in 2007-08.
 
The agency says the dropout rate for 2011-12 was 2.5 percent, down 0.3 percentage points from the previous year.
 
The year-to-year dropout rate is different than the graduation rate. The dropout rate reflects how many teens officially withdrew over a federal fiscal year or became too old to return. Students can legally drop out at age 17. They cannot stay in school past age 21.
 
The graduation rate measures students earning a regular diploma in four years. South Carolina's graduation rate for 2012 was nearly 75 percent.