February Business Meeting

 Oconee Democrats will meet on Monday, February 6, at 6 pm, at OCDP HQ.  Hear our plans. Share your ideas.

Dr. Michael Thorsland, Superintendent of Oconee County School District

Dr. Michael Thorsland, Superintendent of Oconee County School District came and spoke about the current state of K-12 education in our county.

Our school district is unique because although we are wealthy school district (3rd wealthiest in the state), approximately 60% of the students in Oconee County live below the poverty line. The district has about 10,000 students across 3 high schools, 3 middle schools, and 10 elementary schools.

Dr. Thorsland was excited to talk about building the new Hamilton Career and Technical Center next to the newest Tri-County Tech campus by Highway 11 and ways to support all students in the district.

Gaulin, Geren to participate in Seneca event

Posted on August 18, 2018

The Journal staff

SENECA — Two Democrats running in races in the Nov. 6 general election are scheduled to participate in an event in Seneca tonight.

Jody Gaulin and Mary Geren will be sharing the stage in a town hall-type meeting at 6 p.m. tonight at Christ Community Church, located at the corner of Bruce Hill Boulevard and Abbott Street in Seneca.

Gaulin, a Seneca resident, is running against incumbent Republican Bill Sandifer for the South Carolina House District 2 seat. Geren, who lives in Anderson, is running against incumbent Republican Jeff Duncan for the Third Congressional District seat representing South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sloan files to seek school board seat

Posted on August 4, 2018

By Greg Oliver

The Journal

SENECA — With a mother and grandmother who worked as teachers, Sandra Sloan grew up in a family of educators.

She has been involved in education for most of her professional life and currently serves as counselor for South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation on Wells Highway. 

But Sloan wants to go one step further. She filed this week to run for the Oconee County School Board District 3 seat. That seat, which represents the Seneca area, has long been held by school board chairman Andy Inabinet.

“I just made the decision (to run) because, as an educator, I am concerned as well as interested in our school system and would just like to be part of the decision-making and help be part of the process in guiding our schools as they move forward,” Sloan said Thursday afternoon. “It’s about being another voice in looking at our school system and our children and doing the right thing for our students as they pursue their career and technical objectives.

“Today, many students in technical and career markets have a higher salary than bachelor or graduate students or Ph.D.s,” she added. “I just want students to understand and be aware of all the opportunities for certification in career and technical aspects.”

A 1979 graduate of Seneca High School, Sloan earned her associate of arts degree in business education from Anderson College, which was a two-year junior college at the time before becoming Anderson University. Sloan then went on to receive her bachelor’s degree in human resource management from Southern Wesleyan University and two masters degrees — in school leadership and community counseling, as well as a Ph.D. in school leadership with a focus on secondary education at Capella University.

Sloan taught in high schools for 17 years, focusing on business education, and has also taught at Tri-County Technical College. She also worked at Duke Energy for 13 years.

For the past year and a half, Sloan has worked at Vocational Rehabilitation — an agency that serves 100 high school students from Oconee and Pickens counties. 

Sloan also wants to see the School District of Oconee County become more diversified in its employee pool.

“I feel Oconee needs to look at diversifying our school staff more,” Sloan said. “This will allow us, as a society, to respect and value diverse backgrounds, world views and overall gain an appreciation for diversity. Our world is suffering today from a lack of diverse understandings about our fellow man. I believe that diversity education should begin in our homes and continue into our schools.”

She said she also wants to hear from residents.

“I would love to hear the concerns from residents of Oconee County in regards to our school system — the things they’re proud of and the things they have concerns about,” she said. “I’m just happy to have an opportunity to run in this position on the school board.”

The school board election will be part of the Nov. 6 general election. Candidate filings will continue through noon Thursday at the School District of Oconee County office on Pine Street in Walhalla.

goliver@upstatetoday.com | (864) 973-6687

Follow on Twitter @JournalGO 

Clemson expert says tariffs, protectionism won’t add jobs

From The Greenville News, Greenville, SC, August 2, 2018

Economics professor Scott Baier discusses effects of taxes and what long-term damage they might have on economy

Anna B. Mitchell Greenville News USA TODAY NETWORK – SOUTH CAROLINA

SPARTANBURG – The chairman of Clemson University’s economics department says tariffs and the threat of tariffs are an unreliable tool at best for negotiating better trade deals for the United States.

Scott Baier, a specialist in the causes and consequences of trade liberalization, offered his assessment of the current trade war during a gathering the Upstate Chamber Coalition. The Trump administration has since the beginning of the year imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, raw steel and aluminum, and a range of Chinese raw materials and components.

Taken together, said Kris Denzel of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Presi dent Trump’s 2018 tariffs affect $75 billion in goods, $34 billion of them from China alone. The president has also called for an investigation into automobile and auto parts imports and the pos sibility of a 25 percent tariff on those.

“The current administration uses the notion that we’re going to threaten to put tariffs on or we won’t put tariffs on because we want you to behave better,” Baier said. “In the history of the United States, its ability to use this negotiating tactic to help people behave in a better way, it doesn’t really show up in the data.”

Managers and financial officers from a host of regional small- and medium-sized businesses and manufacturers — including Berger turning tools, Röchling engineering plastics, Tietex industrial fabrics, Hogan construction, Trelleborg tires and the Elliott Davis accounting firm — came to the Spartanburg event with questions about how long existing tariffs might last, whether new ones are likely and what long-term damage they might do to the state’s economy.

Denzel and Baier agreed that no one will know the impact until negotiations conclude and the costs of import taxes work their way throughout America’s complex, globally integrated supply chain.

Uncertainty prevails locally

Charles Johnson, chief financial officer of Leigh Fibers, said much of his company’s business is tied to the auto industry. Leigh Fibers recycles textiles, converting them into lint-like sounddeadening and fire-retardant materials that manufacturers like BMW use to insulate vehicles.

“So far the tariffs have had a minimal impact,” Johnson said. “It’s wait and see.”

Allen Smith, president of the Spartanburg Chamber of Commerce, said the evolving issue has caused unease in the business community.

“There’s one thing that business people value probably above all else,” he said, “and that’s certainty.”

Melody Horton with Elliott Davis said she works with many foreign companies in or considering opening shop in South Carolina. She asked Baier whether he believed Trump’s tariffs and threats of more were just a negotiating tactic.

“We all thought maybe this is just a short-term issue,” Horton said. “But now it’s beginning to feel like it’s the beginning of a trade war.”

“I’d like to believe this is a negotiating tactic, that the Trump administration wants to lower the barriers for our exports,” Baier said, “but it does seem like it’s escalating on our part and the response by other countries seem to be escalating as well.”

Though not good for the economy, he said, the overall costs of the current tariffs — assuming Trump does not follow through on threats to tax the foreign auto industry and billions of dollars of Chinese consumer goods — are about 0.1 to 0.2 percent of America’s gross domestic product (which totals $18.6 trillion compared to China’s $11.2 trillion, according to the World Bank).

“So the costs aren’t large, but they are there, and they will impact certain industries quite hard,” Baier said.

Oft-cited research says tariffs a no-go

In his presentation, Baier referenced an oft-cited 1994 book by Kim Elliott and Thomas Bayard — Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy — that examined American protectionist trade investigations going back to the Reagan administration. The authors assessed the success of those investigations, seeing if they opened up foreign markets for U.S. exporters, reduced foreign subsidies or produced better protection of U.S. intellectual property, Baier said.

The Trump administration launched another such an investigation, under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act, to justify the tariffs on China.

“So Bayard and Elliot found that of the 72 investigations filed in the U.S., negotiations were ‘successful’ less than 50 percent of the time,” Baier said. “Of the 12 cases where the U.S. retaliated against foreign competition, success was achieved in only two of the 12 cases.”

Tariffs also have a net-zero effect on jobs, Baier said, because protectionist policies tend to preserve jobs in one sector while threatening those in another.

South Carolina buyers who imported a total of $550 million in steel last year would see costs increase about 20 percent if they were to purchase that same amount of steel now, Baier said. Steel prices have gone up 45 percent since Jan. 1, he added, and aluminum 23 percent.

Consumer product companies such as Coca Cola, Polaris and Sam Adams have announced tariff-related price increases in the wake of these supplychain increases, and the cost of washing machines jumped 16 percent from March to May after Trump imposed a tariff on that industry’s imports.

Carolina auto jobs

Auto tariffs are still on the table, Denzel said, though talks between the Trump administration and the European Union last week look promising and have placed a pause on their going forward.

“This is the big one,” Denzel said of the proposed auto tariffs. “We figure it would have an economic impact maybe about 10 times the size of what we see on steel and aluminum. So you are looking at possibly applying tariffs on about $350 billion worth of imports.”

Car prices would go up $2,500 to $4,500, Baier said, and 1,000 to 2,000 South Carolina jobs in the auto-manufacturing sector would disappear.

Allen Smith, president of the Spartanburg chamber, said people in his county, the home of BMW, are all about talking to trade partners and working out better deals.

“We think it’s necessary that government officials do things to support free trade; however, we don’t think that should be done at the cost of local jobs,” he said. “And unfortunately, based on today’s presentation, that could be an unintended consequence of some of these tariffs.”

Outside or in? S Carolina Democrats have choice for governor

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Outside-or-in-S-Carolina-Democrats-have-choice-12980878.php

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Democrats in South Carolina face a familiar choice Tuesday when they choose their candidate for governor - do they pick a legislator trying to woo independents and some Republicans? Or do they go with a candidate outside the Statehouse less interested in moderation? 

State Rep. James Smith is the front-runner, a veteran who went to Afghanistan and spent 22 years in the South Carolina House before stepping aside for a run for governor. 

One opponent, Charleston businessman Phil Noble, who talks at about every appearance about his "big, bold and audacious ideas" for South Carolina, such as doubling teacher pay but having strict accountably goals in place to weed out poor teachers. 

The other opponent, Florence attorney Marguerite Willis, said she was driven into the race by "the racist, sexist president of the United States" and said a woman is needed to take on the good old boy network and fight for better lives for women and the poor. 

Republicans in South Carolina like outsiders. In The past two primaries with open seats, the eventual winner has charged from the outside and soundly beat the more established candidates. 

Democrats have been the opposite. A legislator who has been the favorite from the start has won the nomination each election since 1998, while the GOP has won four governor's races in a row as the state turns more Republican. 

"Every time they nominate somebody who gives some rah-rah speeches trying to be Republican light and he gets beat," Noble said. "How many more times do they have to lose before they figure out that doesn't work?" 

Each of those legislators who lost at the polls is a man, Willis said. 

"Every four years they find a legislator - it's his time; it's never her - his time has come they all get behind him they all endorse him they push him forward and they lose," she said. 

That criticism missed a few important points to Democratic success: the party can't win by turning off voters and electing someone without any experience in government, Smith said. 

"We've seen what a lack of experience does in the White House. I think we want some experience here in the Statehouse," Smith said. 

All three candidates support unions, Medicaid expansion, better pay for teachers and other Democratic staples. They disagree on how to implement their visions. Noble talks about blowing things up and starting all over, while Willis and Smith take a more cautious approach of bipartisanship in a state where President Donald Trump received 55 percent of the vote in 2016. 

In traditional political measures, Smith is well ahead. He has raised $1.1 million from individual contributors and $162,000 as the race heated up in April and May. Donors have given $171,000 to Wills, but just $40,000 in the past two months. She did loan her campaign $300,000 on March 30, but not given it any more of her own cash. 

Noble has raised $207,000 from individual donors with $56,000 coming in the past few months. 

Smith also touts his endorsements from a wide range of groups from the social activists in the South Carolina Progressive Network to the environmentalists in the Sierra Club to the gun control supporters at Moms Demand Action. Individually, Smith has support ranging from former Vice President Joe Biden to South Carolina's only black congressman Jim Clyburn to the state last two Democratic governors and more than 20 African-American state senators and House members. 

"I've brought this party together," Smith said. 

The Democratic race for governor in South Carolina also doesn't look a lot like the party in the state. In the last contested Democratic governor's primary in 2010, 59 percent of voters were black. 

Noble has picked an African-American woman, educator Gloria Bromell Tinubu to be his lieutenant governor nominee, while Willis selected black state Sen. John Scott to be her running mate. 

Smith selected a white woman, state Rep. Mandy Powers Norell. Women also made up 59 percent of the electorate in the 2010 vote. 

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP . Read his work at https://apnews.com/search/jeffrey%20collins

Dems call for 'blue tsunami' in 2018

Oconee County Democratic Party chair Paulette Keffas-Chassin encourages the party faithful to work for Democratic candidates in the 2018 elections at a meeting at South Cove Park on Sunday. Norm Cannada | The Journal

SENECA — Oconee County Democratic leaders called for a “blue tsunami” in 2018 and encouraged the party faithful to work for Democratic candidates in hopes of turning the state from a “red” Republican state to a “blue” Democratic state.

About 180 people attended the annual Democratic Party event Sunday night at South Cove Park. They heard from seven candidates, including two running for governor, two vying for Congress and three local candidates.

Paulette Keffas-Chassin, chair of the county Democratic Party, said she is seeing the local party gaining strength with more candidates and enthusiasm, though she added more effort is needed in order to make the goal a reality.

“The blue tsunami is a great phenomenon, and that could happen in this county, in this state and in this country, but it’s not a magical thing,” Keffas-Chassin said. “The only way we will take Congress back and the Columbia legislature and this state and this county is by the work of everybody in this room.”

The Democrats heard from Phil Noble and James Smith, two of the three candidates vying for the party’s nomination for governor in next week’s primary election.

Noble called for “doubling” the salaries of public school teachers.  “If you’re going to try to do something big and bold and significant in education, you’ve got to first deal with the teachers,” he said.  “What we pay our teachers now is just atrocious,” he added. “We have about 6,000 or 7,000 teachers that just leave, just never come back.”  He called Smith a “career politician who has spent his life in the legislature.” He also criticized his opponent in the room, saying Smith has been endorsed three times by the National Rifle Association.

Smith responded by saying the Democratic Party is the “party of ideas, not personal attacks.”  Smith said he did have “positive scores” from the NRA years ago. He said the scores “had nothing to do with gun safety.”  “I’m not concerned about what they think,” he said. “The fact is these scores had to do with things like hunting issues — I’ve been a hunter my whole life. They don’t have anything to do with gun safety.”

Seneca businessman Hosea Cleveland and Anderson educator Mary Geren said they have tried to show one another respect in their race for the Third District Congressional seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan. Both were critical of Duncan and said they wanted to see him defeated.  Cleveland called for more efforts to improve and invest in renewable energy and pointed to the fleet of electric buses that are in Seneca as part of the Clemson Area Transit system. He said a congressman could bring more money back to the district to provide funding for more efforts in renewable energy. He said he also supported bringing more new jobs to the area.  “We need to invest in the right kind of jobs so folks can make a decent living,” Cleveland said.

Geren, who taught English at Tri-County Technical College before leaving her job to make a run for Congress, said she grew up in poverty in Northeast Georgia and was able to get out of poverty through the encouragement and help of public school administrators and teachers.  “I am running for Congress because I believe in public education more than anything; it saved my life,” Geren said. “We are fighting for the American dream, and I have been blessed to live it. That is a real dream, but it is slipping away.”

Jody Gaulin, who is challenging Republican State Rep. Bill Sandifer in the general election, said “competition is good — it keeps everyone honest.”

If elected to the State House of Representatives, Gaulin said she would work for “equal pay for equal work.”  “I feel like I do have a good feel for what is going on in Oconee County,” she said. “I’ve been exposed to those who are chronically under- or unemployed, and that is a hard nut to crack, and it’s a hard problem to solve. I feel like I have some degree of understanding of those issues.”  Other priorities for Gaulin would be improving public safety, public education, workforce preparedness, maintaining and improving infrastructure, affordable higher education and expanded access to health care.  “All of these are critical to a thriving economy, strong families and livable communities,” she said.

Bill Bruehl, who is running for Oconee County Council District 1 in November, said government leaders need to “collaborate if you want to produce.”

“I believe that the fundamental problem we face here, whether it’s locally or nationally, is polarization,” Bruehl said.  He called for leaders to talk and listen with “respect” and work together.

Sandra Sloan, who plans to run for the Oconee County School Board, said she wants to work to improve education.

“Our district is doing a good job, but there is always room for improvement,” said Sloan, a former teacher. “We must never forget that the children are our future, who will serve in various capacities as we age. Therefore we must ensure that they have the education to adequately perform the lower skills as well as the highly technological jobs in the workforce in a most rigorous manner.”  She also called for more diversity in school staff.  “Everyone needs to see someone that looks like them,” she said.

ncannada@upstatetoday.com | (864) 973-6680

Follow on Twitter @NormCannada

Posted on June 5, 2018

By Norm Cannada

The Journal, Seneca, SC

Democratic congressional hopefuls face off in Anderson

Seneca businessman Hosea Cleveland speaks as Mary Geren, his opponent in next month’s Democratic primary for the U.S. House District 3 seat, listens during a forum Tuesday at the Anderson County Library. (Caitlin Herrington | The Journal)

ANDERSON — The two Democratic candidates vying in next month’s primary for the chance to try to unseat Third District Congressman Jeff Duncan took time to answer questions from voters on Tuesday night at the Anderson County Library.

Tri-County Technical College professor Mary Geren and Seneca businessman Hosea Cleveland addressed topics ranging from school safety to environmental concerns on Tuesday while pointing out the importance of voting in the June 12 primary election and making their presence known.

“People don’t even know there’s a primary,” Geren said. “Mr. Cleveland and I are running for Congress.”

The candidates took hard lines on gun control and school safety Tuesday night, with Geren telling voters AR-15-style weapons “do not belong on the streets.”

“This is not a popular stance for me to take,” she said. “We have got to have some common-sense gun legislation.”

Cleveland, a U.S. Army veteran, said a large portion of the gun control problem should be credited to how people treat one another.

“Common sense should have governed the day,” he said. “In public, in the school systems, wherever we are, we are our best friend when it comes to public safety. We’ve got to be aware of what’s going on around us.”

Both agreed some reform was needed to the Affordable Care Act but supported the idea of universal health care.

“I support a Medicare-for-all program and I do believe if (Democrats) get the majority we’re hoping to, we can move forward,” Geren said, later adding the individual mandate repealed in December was a large part of the problem with the ACA.

Cleveland noted the state opted out of Medicaid expansion, leading to larger problems for South Carolina residents struggling to afford health care. He said the uninsured and underinsured “are costing us trillions of dollars a year,” and that the subsidies should boost the program to solvency.

Cleveland and Geren would both enter Congress as minorities, and neither is deterred by that fact. Geren said women “do not have the representation they need in our government,” and Cleveland added he would love to see a day when Congress more accurately reflected the country it represents.

Both candidates acknowledged climate change, and Geren specifically took a hard line against using fossil fuels, which she said Duncan has been pushing for for years.

“Climate change is real. It is not a hoax by the Chinese,” she said, calling it a non-partisan issue.

Cleveland mentioned alternate sources of energy such as solar and wind turbines while touting Seneca’s all-electric bus fleet.

“Can we create enough energy to create so many new jobs that it would change our whole dynamics in terms of our infrastructure?” Cleveland asked voters after mentioning the buses.

The candidates ended the night encouraging everyone to get out and vote and encourage their friends and family to do the same on June 12.

cherrington@upstatetoday.com | (864) 973-6686

Follow on Twitter @GoldenCornerCat

The Journal, Seneca, SC

May 31, 2018