NEWS FLASH: Big Hard Rock Park Meeting on Monday!

That guy who runs Horry County's impotent economic development cabal - see it's such a do-nothing joke that we don't even know what the heck it's called, nor do we care - Hugh Owens, is all a-twitter and scurrying all over town whispering to anyone who'll give him the time of day, that he's locked-up a buyer for the tanked Hard Rock Park.

He's telling folks that he has a "secret" meeting setup for Monday morning at the law offices of Nexsen-Pruet at the Market Commons on the old Myrtle Beach Air Force base, with local govenment officials and the "deep pocketed buyers," to discuss incentives and concessions.

Glory hallelujah, and thank you Jesus!

Hugh Owens has single-handedly saved the Redneck Riviera!

What a guy!

The Myrtle Beach Insider ace investigative team has found out that one of Owen's alleged investors is the nephew of the fourth cousin to the great grandson of the now deceased Herve Villechaize, Mr. Rourke's diminutive sidekick from the old late 70's TV show Fantasy Island, who wants to rebrand the bankrupt park "Erotic Fantasy Island."

Word is also on the street that Mark Whittle, the recently exited head honcho of the floundering South Financial Group, and personal financial advisor to Governor Mark Sanford, is prepared to invest $18 million dollars, that he found under a rock, in the park deal.

Break a leg on Monday Huey!

"Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope." Dr. Seuss

Ah, and so the fun continues on the Redneck Riviera!

The U.S. Recession: Federal Reserve Confirms CCU and Sun News Economic Incompetence!

In October the Myrtle Beach Insider began taking Coastal Carolina University, the Myrtle Beach Sun News, and in particular CCU’s so-called “research economist,” Donald Schunk – known fondly here as “The Skunk” - to task for incessantly ginning up their “everything’s rosy” economic forecasting instead of properly reporting the obvious realities of the floundering economy.

See: Coastal Carolina Economic Research: The Joke That No One is Laughing At and Myrtle Beach Sun News Scrambles to Cover for Their and CCU’s Economic Incompetence

Based upon everything the Myrtle Beach Insider team was seeing, hearing and reading, we were unanimously of the opinion that we were most certainly in a Recession, and had been for quite some time.

But au contraire mon frere, because according to every cooked-up economic spin piece being spit out by those nattering nabobs of bogus Pollyanna at Redneck U and the Un News, everything was just peach keen, and we woefully unenlightened plebeians didn’t have a clue from whence we spoke.

Well surprise, surprise lonely reader, today the Philadelphia Federal Reserve released their latest Survey of Professional Forecasters, which confirmed that the Myrtle Beach Insider crew was right and that the orotund spinmeisters at CCU and the Spun News where full of it, and we quote, “The Philadelphia Fed's survey said the U.S. economy entered a recession in April.” See: Reuters – http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AG54L20081117

Right is might, so we humbly rest our case!

Note: While the Fed Survey is predicting an end to the Recession as early as June of 2009, the Myrtle Beach Insider crew are, regrettably, not so optimistic.

“The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They’re about ratings, about making money and about doing stories that are easy to cover.” Al Franken

Ah, and so the self-serving shenanigans sadly continue on the Redneck Riviera!

Vote “NO” to Coastal Carolina University’s Financial Bungling on November 4th!

On Tuesday, when you go into that voting booth be sure to cast your vote against raising the local sales tax to 7% to fund the financial wastrels and inept stumble-bums at Coastal Carolina University who have been pissing away hundreds of thousands of precious taxpayer dollars on ineffectual and over-paid consultants, mouthpieces and staff - including over $1 million dollars paid to a bogus consultant who simply copied reports off the Internet. See Coastal Carolina University: The Low-lifes of Higher Education.

With the State budget in free-fall, and people losing their jobs everywhere you turn, these big spending bozos are spending over $250,000 annually on a lobbyist and a PR hack, and are, for some mysterious reason, paying their Number 2 twit $13,000 more annually than they are paying their Number 1 twit. See the Myrtle Beach Insider Wednesday, October 1, 2008 posting - Coastal Carolina Economic Research: The Joke That No One is Laughing At.

The campus grapevine is also buzzing about how they have also mismanaged, mangled and hidden massive financial over-runs on their luxurious and extremely limited-use field house fiasco to the point that – even after surreptitiously slipping as much State, scholarship, general and other funds as they possibly could purloin into their field house slush-fund - they still can’t figure out how to even come close to covering up their out-of-control spending overages without getting their share of the new 1% additional sales tax referendum windfall.

How about how these clowns arrogantly thumbed their collective snouts at the $54 million dollar grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s for the now defunct Coastal Arena project that Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative John Spratt busted their keisters to obtain? See the Myrtle Beach Insider Friday, October 12, 2007 posting - Morons Continue to Rule at Coastal Carolina Punyversity.

Or, how about how these irresponsible chuckle-heads have allowed the Redneck U campus to become a constant headache and chaotic mess to their hapless and unfortunate neighbors, and a virtual “Crime Central,” to the point that they may have to start having their athletic team meetings at the J. Ruben Long Detention Center?

Of course, we’re prejudiced because their over-paid and incompetent executive vice president, Edgar Dyer, instigated a fraudulent SLED investigation to out one of our contributors. See SLED Cowboys and Dimwitted Judges Trample Laws and the Constitution – Bloggers Threatened.

But, forget about our ire and just concentrate on how these pompous numskulls endlessly mismanage and screw-up everything they touch and then, on Tuesday vote a resounding “NO” to the so-called 1% “Education” sales tax because, "Taxpayers' hard earned money is a terrible thing to waste on the pathetic joke that is Coastal Carolina Looneyversity!"

“Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.” H.L. Mencken

And so the waste and backroom shenanigans continue on the Redneck Riviera!

Contrite Campaign Manager Rips Van Winkle!

POLITICAL NEWS FLASH:

With only two weeks to go in local electioneering, the campaign manager for District Three County Council candidate and cabbie, Keith Van Winkle, Mark Minervini, has quit, after becoming very uncomfortable with Van Winkle’s candidacy, and has posted his resignation and public apology on his “VoteVanWinkle.Com” website - http://www.votevanwinkle.com/

Of course, like most folks in Horry County, we already knew that Van Winkle was a gargantuan bag of hot air, but in his epistle Minervini says…

“During the course of the campaign I have learned some things that have made me very uncomfortable with continuing my support for Keith. For those reasons, I have officially resigned as Keith’s campaign manager and no longer support Keith in his effort to seek political office.”

Like what, Mark?

What have you “learned” about Van Winkle that has made you so “uncomfortable?”

Don’t you think the voters of District Three deserve to know what you have learned about the candidate that has been so maliciously sliming incumbent District Three County Councilman, Marion Foxworth?

Minervini also says…

“I feel that I am doing what is best to reverse an unfortunate mistake and what is best for the community.”

Obviously, we congratulate Mr. Minervini on his candor and courage in coming forward to let the voters of District Three and the citizens of Horry County know he has lost faith, confidence and trust in his former candidate’s qualifications to hold public office, and as a person.

Integrity is the key word here. Sadly, South Carolina Ethics Law does not require anything a candidate says or mails to be the truth. There is no “truth test” in South Carolina politics, because if there was we know of at least five members of Horry County Council that would not be perched up there on that dais.

The only thing that has to be factual on campaign materials is an address for the candidate and a statement of how the materials were paid for. On the stump, anything goes. A candidate can fabricate and say anything they want about themselves and their opponents and not one word of it has to be true, and Mr. Van Winkle has gone great pains to take that nonexistent restraint to the maximum possible extremes.

Such reprehensible conduct leaves the unsuspecting voters having to ferret out a candidate’s “truthiness” for themselves, and one need only look at the line-up of vacant mugs on the Horry County Council dais, and follow their vacuous antics and the stark reality of “fooling all of the people” is all too obvious.

Horry County needs more people like Mr. Minervini with the intestinal fortitude to confess the error of their ways and to step out from behind the safety of the political campaign curtain and say, “Hey, I screwed up! I found out that the guy I was backing is a bum who isn’t fit to carry his opponent’s briefcase, much less hold any elected office, and I sincerely apologize for my part in promoting his candidacy!”

We hope that any voters in District Three that have been taken in by Van Winkle’s scandalous campaigning will carefully consider Mr. Minervini’s courageous actions and words and follow his lead by abandoning the Van Winkle candidacy, as we have already more than filled our quota of liars, scallywags and dimwits on Horry County Council.

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” – British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke.

Thank you Mr. Minervini for, finally, bringing a bit of light into the dark political sky over the Redneck Riviera!

Myrtle Beach Sun News Scrambles to Cover for Their and CCU’s Economic Incompetence

In one of the most hilarious and pathetic attempts at a Podunk newspaper trying to salvage a tiny modicum of journalistic integrity from the ashes of their inability to get things right, the Myrtle Beach Sun News (better known here as the Un News or Sun Snooze) today published a desperate piece (Economists Caught Off-Guard) trying to do a double ass covering about how Coastal Carolina University’s bumbling economic forecaster, Donald “The Skunk” Schunk, completely missed the biggest economic meltdown of our lifetime, and continued to foolishly spout off in the rag’s pages that everything was just peachy as recently as 52 days ago.

The rambling cover-up piece was cooked-up by the humiliated CCU administration and their henchwomen at the Sun Snooze in a panicked response to The Myrtle Beach Insider’s October 1st posting, Coastal Carolina Economic Research: The Joke That No One is Laughing At, which took Redneck U, The Skunk and the Un News to task for their incessant bungling, total lack of creditability, responsibility or ethics and for continually spewing out the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, Goof Holiday and CCU’s perpetual lie that everything is rosy, when, in fact, things on the Redneck Riviera have never been worse.

The piece was authored by that Jacquiette of Jabberwocky, Lisa Fleisher, the cloneish newspup who replaced Dawn Bryant as the resident Sancho Panza to the area’s three Don Quixote’s, Brad Dean, Bill Golden and Eddie Dyer (normally we would have included Dave DeCenzo in this rat pack, but as Dyer is actually the top mutt at the Redneck U dog pound, we’re henceforth removing DeCenzo from our Circus of Clowns), and who always relies on Schunk’s hyperbole to fill up her perky little propaganda pieces on behalf of the Chamber of Comedy, Goof Holiday and Redneck U with his little pearls of contrived positivity.

And how about that equally duplicitous real estate spinmeister, Tom Maeser, and his perfidious hogwash?

By the way, did you catch that wild-eyed “racist columnist” (according, that is, to those lunatics slinking amongst us in their hooded robes and flaming crosses), Isaac Bailey’s piece (Facts are Best Bet in Bad Times) in today’s fish wrapper taking the South Carolina Association of Realtors and their top prevaricator, Nick Kremydas, to school for their countless tractor-trailer convoy loads of likewise fabricated hooey?

Now, while we certainly understand and appreciate that the spin doctors for all of the foregoing associations and business groups are doing their jobs, it is unconscionable, even in the toughest of times, for Redneck U and especially the Sun Snooze and the rest of the media to lemming-like regurgitate their biased hoopla as fact, and is an insult to professional news coverage and the basic tenets of journalistic integrity.

So what, you say? What’s wrong with cooking the news, because, after all, we all depend on vacationers to drive virtually every aspect of our economic engine here, and we don’t want them to know that the economy here is in the crapper?

Just how stupid do our peckerwood community poobah’s think the public is? Don’t these morons know that our visitors have televisions? Don’t they know that the vast majority of them can actually read? Don’t they know that they also have some new-fangled thing-a-ma-gig called the Internet?

Don’t these blockheads know that all of the traveling golfers already know that 23 golf courses have closed here; that the golf industry is now, sadly, only a pitiful shadow of its former self and that wasting millions of dollars on embarrassing crap like Goof Holiday’s Road Kill TV bomb only further diminishes, cheapens and makes a joke of what’s left of our once great golf industry’s tattered and tarnished image?

How about all those “families” that all of those brain-dead Chamber-types preach incessantly about?

News Flash: This is 2008, not 1958, and while families are indeed a very important market segment, they are nowhere near as important as the “couple’s market,” which comprise better than 60% of our total vacation base. So, all of that “family vacation” palaver is nothing but out-dated and out-of-touch rubbish that is negatively impacting our area’s marketing focus and thereby our ability to successfully fill hotel rooms, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.

Sadly, Fleisher’s piece was itself nothing but another pile of self-serving baloney, because right there on the front page of the very same birdcage liner, she and Bryant once again rely on the obviously unrepentant Schunk as he continues his sucking-up by saying that that the economy could “start improving in the Spring,” when the rest of the “real” and “credible” economic forecasters say that it will be late 2009 at the earliest! Apparently, CCU’s absent-minded professor is a big fan of Lenin, who famously said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

We, however, prefer Mark Twain who said, “Honesty is the best policy – especially when there’s money in it!”

Obviously, that’s not the way the hicks at Redneck U, the Chamber of Comedy, Goof Holiday and the Un News think, and because of their ignorance our area’s economic future will continue to suffer and decline because of this crowd of under-achiever’s ceaseless conspiracy of Pollyanna propaganda, so, to paraphrase Betty Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve, Fasten your seatbelts Myrtle Beach, because, sadly, 2009 is going to be a very, very bumpy year!

Ah, and so yesterday and small-time thinking lives on today on our struggling Redneck Riviera!

Horry County’s Airport Insanity: A Lesson in Irresponsibility, Contempt and Monumental Government Waste

The prevaricating con artists at M.B. Kahn, led by their pompous front-man, Rick Ott, along with their co-conspirators, the floundering Sun Snooze and the conflicted and biased radio gabber, Debbie Harwood, are in a panic and desperately pressuring the dumbest members on Horry County Council to give them a multi-million dollar blank check to fund their 2nd attempt at building yet another ill-advised and terribly timed Taj Mahal terminal on the Eastside of the Myrtle Beach airport, and they’re counting on enough fools to vote to make their asinine financial boondoggle a reality at tomorrow night’s Horry County Council meeting.

Why, with the Myrtle Beach resort occupancy rates down 5-6% in 2006 and 2007, despite the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy tripling their advertising budget to $12 million dollars and Myrtle Beach Goof Holiday doing the same, and the occupancy rates tanking by 8-10% this year (even with the opening of the ill-fated Hard Rock Park) are those brain-dead lemmings on Horry County Council being suckered into throwing away another $200 million dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money after the multi-millions they’ve already squandered on their Westside terminal debacle?

The reasons are totally self-serving and as plain as the nose on one’s face, except, of course, to the simpletons on Horry County Council supporting this financial fiasco.

1. M.B. Kahn is rumored to be in dire financial straits, and needs Horry County’s blank checks to keep coming in order to stay afloat.

2. M.B. Kahn and Horry County will be opening bids within the next few days on the Myrtle Beach General Aviation (FBO) facility, which Kahn has already bungled several times and caused costs to escalate by more than $60,000, and the word on the street is that once again they will (surprise, surprise) be over budget, with even more surprises waiting in the wings.

3. M.B. Kahn has, and continues to use contrived and extremely out-of-date numbers, like oil prices at under $49 dollars a barrel, to cook-up their bogus projections, and need to get a majority of suckers on Horry County Council on the hook before the real numbers, which airport expert, responsible community activist and reality checker, Douglas Decker, has well documented, begin to be accurately reported by the extremely biased Un News and gain the traction and long-overdue attention they deserve.

4. The public has yet to hear that additional infrastructure costs for their scheme to be completed will add yet another $20-30 million to the costs. The improvements to Harrelson Blvd. alone will be in excess of $11 million dollars.

5. The contract Ott and Kahn are demanding is completely open-ended without the County requiring any penalties for construction delays or cost over-runs.

6. A handful small-minded and self-serving Horry County Council members want to use this opportunity, and $200 million taxpayer dollars, to essentially spit in the faces of Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes, Senator Luke Rankin, Delegate Alan Clemmons, Myrtle Beach City Council, the Myrtle Beach Community Appearance Board, the Myrtle Beach Herald, Alternatives and Mr. Decker.

Over the last couple of weeks Ott and Harwell have been scurrying all over town brow-beating and coercing every possible easily-swayed and uninformed business entity and dimwitted County Council member they can find to make telephone calls and write letters supporting their nefarious scheme, which they will be dragging out tomorrow night in a desperate attempt to bolster their bogus claims to the more gullible Council members.

Ott, who arrogantly called Mr. Decker and others concerned about County Council’s pending rush to financial ruin “Chicken Little’s,” will himself don his own chicken feathers tomorrow night and assume the role of the real Chicken Little as he clucks madly about how the sky is falling and if Council doesn’t act then and there the world as we know it will come to an end.

What an absolute crock!

Call Sarah Palin, Council wants to buy that bridge of hers next!

Normal people would certainly take into consideration the stark and scary realities of just how insane it is for any community, much less one in a tailspin like we are, to consider such a costly and wasteful undertaking for at least two more years…

10 airlines have shut down so far this year (and the Wall Street Journal is saying that a major carrier may be going out-of-business soon); Las Vegas and Orlando have put their airport projects on hold; every carrier has, and is, continuing to cut countless routes, especially to tourist destinations; the World economy is in free-fall with no end in sight (some financial experts are already worrying about the remote but terrifying possibility of another Depression); while the golf industry only accounts for less than 10% of the Myrtle Beach tourism revenues, 23 golf courses in Myrtle Beach have closed, and experts predict that it will take at least 75 additional flights per week to have any dramatic impact on the remaining 90+ courses; the Hard Rock Park has tanked with virtually no possibility of reopening; the three-fold, $25 million dollars, increase in annual marketing expenditures has failed miserably, and occupancy rates and average daily rates are plummeting; 2009 is expected to be dramatically worse for Myrtle Beach than 2008, and 2010 is projected to be equally as bad as 2008; Horry County revenues are already in the crapper with even darker clouds looming on the horizon, and still a coven of brain-dead fools on Horry County Council arrogantly and blindly want to piss away another $250 million of sorely needed taxpayer dollars on an airport memorial to themselves in what can only be regarded as total contempt for common sense and fiscal responsibility.

In closing, we want to be emphatically clear; we wholeheartedly support a new general aviation facility, as long as the total price does not exceed $4.5 million.

We also support cleaning up and renovating the current Eastside terminal, but not with unqualified spendthrifts like those currently steering this Titanic Gong Show toward a massive financial iceberg at the helm, nor without the proper financial penalties for delays and cost over-runs, and definitely not if the total final cost exceeds $60 million dollars, including all of the costs for the required infrastructure improvements to complete it.

But hey, these are just our opinions!

"Thank God men cannot fly and lay waste to the sky as well as the earth!" Henry David Thoreau

Ah, and so the insanity continues to infect the Redneck Riviera

Coastal Carolina Economic Research: The Joke That No One is Laughing At

Grab any copy of the local bird cage liner, the Myrtle Beach Un News, and virtually every ad therein is desperately hawking twofer specials, deep discounts, buy one get one free, early bird discounts, no money down, no interest, going out of business sales and shady banks pushing reverse mortgages to unsuspecting home owners, not to mention bankruptcies, foreclosures, bank failures and a $700 billion dollar mega meltdown on Wall Street and it is painfully obvious that America and, especially, the Myrtle Beach area is in really deep financial doodoo, with virtually every market segment struggling to stay afloat.

In sharp contrast to the stark realities of Myrtle Beach’s area-wide recession, the spinmeister editors and reporters at the Un News, and the 1950’s talking hairdos at the local TV stations continue their lemming-like regurgitation of the “everything’s cool” and “tourism will save us” mantras, which is spoon-fed to them daily by their incestuous and bungling pals at the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, Goof Holiday, Horry County and especially those numerically retarded peckerwoods at Redneck Looneyversity.

To illustrate just how ass-backwards all this stupidity is, just consider this - the Chicago Sun-Times has a stock picking monkey by the name of Mr. Adam Monk, whose picks have beaten the market four years straight, Monk’s Myrtle Beach counterparts at Coastal Carolina University, Gary Loftus and Donald Schunk, by comparison, have an abysmal prognostication record.

Yep, that’s right our two local yokel and dubiously anointed economic forecasters fare far better at picking their noses than predicting our area’s crucial economic future.

Chicago has a winning monkey while we have “skunked” economic pretenders, and that really STINKS. (Sorry, for the “cornball” punning, but we just couldn't’t resist)

“It boggles one’s mind just how totally inept Don and Gary are,” groused one CCU professor. “Their ‘cooked-up’ spinning’s have made Coastal the laughing stock of the economic research and marketing community, and they are constant embarrassments not only to Coastal, but to BB&T and the greater Myrtle Beach area as a whole. Clemson and USC researchers run rings around these two and they snicker to our faces about how far out of touch with reality these guys are. It’s really humiliating,” she continued.

Now, in defense of Loftus, he really shouldn't even be allowed on the Redneck U campus, much less have a made-up faculty position, because, while the guy has a Princeton degree, it’s in engineering, and he’s never even had his own train. Besides, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, he’s never really worked that much, he just toddles to meetings, never taking a note and then tells everyone how "really busy" he is.

Seriously, this ex-mon 'n pop motel manager, got his cushy $67,000 charity job from his good old boy cronies, like Billy "Where's my Bridge" Alford, on CCU's integrity deficient Board when he lost his family motel gig, so we need to cut the old fellow some slack, because he’s doing the best he can with what faculties he has.

No lonely reader, the real doofus here is the imperious Donald L. Schunk.

“The Skunk,” a graduate of that bastion of academic excellence and prestige, Bemidji State University, Minnesota’s answer to M.I.T., was well known by the media and associates as a rather self-important know-it-all during his stint at the University of South Carolina prior to his arrival at Redneck U in early 2007, and, except for his big step down from having a job at a “real” university, nothing has changed talent or personality wise since his arrival at Redneck U.

Schunk was tapped by the corn pone poobah’s at Redneck U to fill the “research void” created when the red-suited clown that the judgment-challenged Myrtle Beach area mucky-mucks had relied on for more than a decade for their economic forecasting, “Fat Al” Parrish, got indicted and sent away to the Graybar Hotel for fraud and other criminal charges.

In making the announcement of Schunk’s arrival at Redneck U, Loftus proclaimed that Schunk would “advance the mission of the Coastal Federal Center for Economic and Community Development (now the BB&T Center for Economic and Community Development) significantly by helping to serve as a bridge between the university and the business community.”

Cool! Now we too have one of those popular "bridges to nowhere!"

Our opinion of Redneck U hiring someone to “advance” RU’s “mission” and to be a PR “bridge” for the area’s businesses, and paying them with public funds, is ill-advised, inappropriate and wasteful, especially when they’re always shooting blanks like Schunk and Loftus consistently do.

Regrettably, “waste” is certainly not a word that appears on Redneck U’s ethical radar, primarily because they don't actually have an ethical radar.

After all, those highfalutin “big spenders” at that crime and corruption infested Conway campus are also paying ex-pol Mark Kelley $75,000 a year as a part-time lobbyist, and, far more shockingly, they’re paying a local political and PR hack, Mary Eaddy, the unheard of and monumental windfall amount of $140,000 a year to build the same “bridges of incompetence” that Loftus, and the Skunk have been working on so successfully.

That’s right, Coastal’s dimwitted duo of Dave DeCenzo and Eddie Dyer, along with the spendthrifts on the CCU Board, are paying a whopping $140,000 a year to a PR hack that pocketed her arena clients retainers and then sold them out, and, furthermore, she hasn’t had a successful campaign since 2002. By the way, her $140,000 largess is an $80,000 raise over her arena pay.

To illustrate just how totally asinine and wasteful that is, Horry County Administrator, Danny “Do Nothing” Knight, and Myrtle Beach City Manager, Tom Leath, are both paid slightly over $141,000.

This is ABSOLUTELY INSANE, so what’s up with this lunacy? Does she have copies of the Board and Administration’s kickbacks and dirty dealings on their field house and arena shenanigans? Has she got compromising photos of Dyer and DeCenzo with a possum?

Here’s another one for you, why does the inept No. 2 Bozo, Dyer, get paid $168,000, while El Presidente, DeCenzo, only makes $155,000? What kind of photos does Dyer have of the Board members? They must be some real doozies.

Oh yeah, paying those two clown more that Leath and Knight is yet another illustration of just how clueless and out-of-touch with reality the Redneck U Board really is.

What bodies are they hiding over at that crime and corruption ridden campus? What are they afraid of the public and governmental officials finding out about? Obviously, it’s something’s verrrry fishy, and the local rumor-mill says that when the facts finally come out we’ll be able to smell the stench all the way to Columbia!

All of this financial smoke 'n mirrors while at the same time Redneck U's bumbling VP of Finance, Will Garland, is sniveling on the front page of the Un News, about how Governor Mark Sanford is demanding financial responsibility. How ludicrous!

But we've digressed, so let’s get back to the Myrtle Beach area's floundering economy and CCU’s stumble-bum forecasting.

Now, one should rightly ask, “Why pick on insignificant little bean counters like Schunk and Loftus?”

The answer is very simple, because some people, businesses and governmental entities are actually relying on these guy's half-baked prognostications to chart their future – like realtors, developers and the folks that invested their capital and futures in real estate and businesses around the ill-fated Hard Rock Park - and they and their media promoters are all habitually, categorically and unrepentantly out-to-lunch!

Internationally renowned New York University economist, Nouriel Roubini, has been saying that we are in a “severe recession,” and we will continue to be in one “well into 2009,” as do the likes of Warren Buffet, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and virtually every other major player in the economic and financial arenas.

While The Skunk says, “Recession? Duh, what’s a recession? Is that like one of them weird ‘meltdown’ things I’ve been hearing about on TV?”

“You’d be much better off consulting Madam Zora “The Gypsy Fortune Teller,” or your trusty Ouija board to chart your economic future than trusting any of CCU's forecasts,” advised one prominent local financial planner. “Better yet, just take whatever advice Don offers, and do exactly the opposite and you’ll probably do really well,” he chuckled.

Seriously folks, let’s let the "professor" speak for himself…

Talking about how he also failed to see the last recession in 2000 he said, “It was a hard recession for anyone to predict.” August 19, 2007

“Conditions will improve during the first half of 2008, and economic growth will fuel home sales.” August 29, 2007

“The Myrtle Beach area should start to see the housing market stabilize in mid-2008 with steady gains in home sales and construction.” December 11, 2007

“I’m not going to say there is a recession because it’s too trivial to call right now.” March 20, 2008

“Families will indeed be forced to take shorter trips, and spend less on their vacations; these very trends can work in Myrtle Beach’s favor.” April 26, 2008

“Despite common perceptions, the U.S. economy has not met the official definition for a recession.” August 9, 2008

“Most economic trends, including recessions, are only apparent in hindsight.” August 21, 2008

“It seems like we are at that point where things are starting to turn around.” August 21, 2008

“It’s just a handful of areas in the U.S. that are weighing heavily on the national (economic) numbers.” September 17, 2008

1999 to late 2008? Man, that Recessionitis must be a really tough malady to shake.

Now look, we believe that if Schunk stopped playing the monkey for the Chamber of Comedy, Goof Holiday, Un News, Redneck U and the Horry County organ grinders he could possibly be an asset to the Myrtle Beach area, so we would hope that he’ll study up, man up and do just that, but, based on CCU’s dismal track record of getting anything right, we sure won’t be holding our breath.

So lonely reader, whenever Schunk steps forward to deliver his next load of economic asininities in the ever dwindling pages of the Sun Snooze, be sure to wear your oxygen mask and your highest waders, because you can be sure that the spin will make you dizzy and the BS will be really deep.

But hey, that's just our opinion!

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” John Kenneth Galbraith

Ah, and so it goes at Redneck U and on the Redneck Riviera!

Sun Snooze: Myrtle Beach Airport Insanity Continues

Friday, August 15, 2008 Myrtle Beach Sun News Editorial - Build New MB Terminal - http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/opinion/story/555289.html

Response By: Gary Baugh

What an absolute load of crap!

When will the joke, which is the Sun Snooze Editorial Board (or is it “Bored”), wake up and smell the coffee on this farcical money pit?

The "joke," continues to flog this long dead horse that has become know far and wide as “Gilland's Folly.”

Despite the latest landing fee rate reduction ploy, which is our area’s answer to Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s bogus Summer Gas Tax Holiday, every airline, still able to get flights off the ground, is continuing to emphatically say that they have “no interest” in any service expansion to our dinky little “insignificant” market, these numbskulls continue to chant, "Build it at any cost! Build it and they will come."

Of course, they don’t even have the remotest inkling as to who “they” are, but ignorance has never been an impediment for them before.

What an absolute Bob Kemp snowplow load of bovine excrement.

The “they” are certainly not going to be coming anytime in the next 5 years, and even then the odds of any new carriers coming is still only a hollow pipe dream!

Sure, Myrtle Beach’s one-trick pony, Bill Golden, the mouth of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, says that “they” will come. Well, Bungling Billy has been spreading that manure for years WITHOUT ANY SUCCESS, while he and Brandon Advertising’s monumental marketing incompetence and rampant no-bid expenses have virtually wiped out the once flourishing Myrtle Beach golf industry. Golden has the creditability of Jack Abramoff, and the sad fact is that we'll be darn lucky to keep the few remaining flights we have!

Sure our existing terminal is indeed "terminal," but only because the dunce running it has been counting on his Taj Mahal, Gilland's Folly, getting the green light from the sycophants on Horry County Council for the last several years, so he has sat on his useless keister and let it waste away into the dingy dump it is.

Add yet another cup of economic hemlock to this cauldron of corruption by stupidly hiring the area's own Halliburton, M.B. Kahn (M.B. CON is more appropriate) to advise the Horry County "Ship of Fools," and this recipe for continued waste, cost over-runs and financial disaster becomes even more "terminal!"

Thank God for smart, honest and concerned “Chicken Littles” like Mr. Doug Decker and many others, who continue to joust at the Horry County windmills of waste.

It’s certainly apparent that Mr. Decker knows more about airports than any of the hicks on County Council, the flagitious "John Boat of Fools," the Airport Advisory Committee and 100 M.B. CON's and their “Foghorn Leghorn,” Rick Ott.

Fortunately, there is a simple, economical, practical and state-of-the-art solution to this debacle, if only the simpletons on Horry County Council had the sense to pursue it.

Alaska Airlines just completed a total cutting edge, state-of-the-art renovation of their 21 gate terminal in Seattle, WA, for $24 million dollars, while our crew of local ignoramuses, the Sun Snooze and Golf Holiday continue to advocate a $100 million dollar plus expansion of our pint-sized pretender.

Did I mention that the Alaska Air facility, which handles over 7 million passengers a year, cut their airline's operating costs by 50%?

How about how they cut the passengers’ door to gate time down to under 30 minutes?

Or, how about how they slashed their per passenger processing cost down to less than $0.40, while Myrtle Beach's 700,000 passenger dwarf's per passenger processing cost is almost $4? The Alaska Air solution would instantly save us over $2 million dollars a year in per passenger processing costs alone.

The down side of the Alaska Air solution is that all of the existing graft, corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and stupidity enthusiastically endorsed by Gilland, Horry County Council, the Sun Snooze and Golf Holiday would end, and we’d have the finest airport on the East Coast, so I expect Gilland’s Folly to continue to be “monkey business as usual!”

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools!” Douglas Adams

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Myrtle Beach Slamming the Door on Visitors

Beach Town Considering Drawbridges as a Crazy Bunch of Local Whackos Hang Out the “No Visitors” Signs

First it was North Myrtle Beach airheads running off the Spring Breakers in the early 1990’s.

Next it was the thousands of hair dressers, that flocked to Myrtle Beach in late May every year being treated like a migration of hookers by locals, before finally saying, “Forget about you Myrtle Beach!”

Then it was those wild ’n crazy Shriners, who were the next to fall victim to the “vacationer go home” trailer park mentality that has so disgustingly permeated the tourist town known far and wide as the Redneck Riviera, and subsequently left for the more hospitable and open-minded resort town of Virginia Beach, never to return.

Well loyal reader, now the “anything for a vote” pinheads on the Myrtle Beach City Council and the corn pone hicks on Horry County Council are again groveling at the feet of a small but viciously vocal crowd of pea-brained nutcases who are now hell-bent on running off the vacationing motorcyclists that bring zillions of much needed dollars to the Myrtle Beach area each May.

The “Ban the Bikers” klan of kooks, in homage to their deceased whacko zealot hero, Jerry Falwell, are all scurrying around town dressed in their silly little lime-green t-shirts, that make them all look like a bunch of portly, blue-haired Dipsy’s, (Dipsy, “The Dipstick,” was considered by Falwell and his minions to be the “gayest” of all the Teletubbies), emblazoned with sophomoric drivel like, “Stop the May-hem.”

Last week, while the "Ban the Bikers" dimwits and the empty-headed suck-ups on Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach and North Myrtle Beach City Councils, along with the rocket scientists on Horry County Council were holding an anti-biker session, and whining about being inconvenienced and bemoaning the noise, their unanimous Presidential pick, John McCain was, at the very same time, at the Harley-Davidson Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, telling 50,000 Harley aficionados that he preferred the roar of 50,000 Harley's over the cheers of a couple hundred thousand Berliners, and that the sound of 50,000 roaring Harley's was, “The sound of freedom!” (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRD4xseju44).

McCain even talked about entering his surgically enhanced Barbie doll wife, Cindy McCain, in the bikers’ x-rated Miss Buffalo Chip contest (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4X6XqNeF1o).

Besides being really stupid, this obvious stupidity is really scary, because some of these Dunes Club based scalawags are so far out in left field that sometimes their utterances can make, Joseph Goebbels, sound like Mr. Rogers. It’s amazing to us that these reprobates are actually allowed outside without their protective helmets, much less allowed to play with sharp objects.

Add to all this anti-tourism insanity South Carolina’s rampant and widely publicized homophobia, and the local yokel politicos are now considering erecting medieval-like drawbridges over Myrtle Beach’s man-made moat, known as the Intracoastal Waterway, to prevent any of “those kind of people” from entering the Myrtle Beach area.

The Myrtle Beach Insider crew just learned that Myrtle Beach Mayor, John Rhodes, and the nutzo ringleader of the "Ban the Bikers" circus, Tom Rice-A-Cronie, just returned from a secret fact-finding mission to Germany, where they and their wacko delegation of fellow isolationists, met with former East German Soviet border guards to gather first-hand information on how to construct “visitor-proof” barriers, watch towers and guard houses; how to profile “those kind of vacationers;” how to train jack-booted crossing guards and vicious attack poodles and to begin recruiting Gestapo-like cretans to man their new Myrtle Beach Visitor Barricades at the new drawbridges.

The Myrtle Beach Insider crew hired a team of preschoolers to conduct a survey of members of the Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach and North Myrtle Beach City Councils, along with the Horry County Council about their new “No Visitors” policy. We chose preschoolers to conduct the study because their intelligence level came the closest to mirroring those of the anti-biker Council members and their rabid, bug-eyed supporters.

The results of the survey was best summed up by Mayor Rhodes when, after he finished soliciting everyone within a 100-yard radius about more funds for his personal taxpayer “honey pot,” the infamous Beach Ball Classic, said, “Sure Myrtle Beach is in a recession, in fact, we’re actually in a depression, but we’re politicians so we don’t give a rat's patootie about business, we only care about votes. Hell, we’d all sell our first born for a few votes, and if that means killing the Myrtle Beach tourist industry in the process then that’s just tough toenail pal, so deal wid it Bro!”

“It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.” Henry Miller

Ah, and so the insanity continues on the Redneck Riviera!

Gay Black Biker Group to Descend on Myrtle Beach Next July 4th

At a joint news conference held today on a historically gay beach in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina tourism officials announced that the International Brotherhood of Gay Black Bikers (IBGBB) has selected Myrtle Beach as the site of their annual Hogs, Ho’s & Queens festivities.

The 9-day event, which is expected to draw between 350,000 and 500,000 gay black bikers and their partners to South Carolina's Grand Strand, will kick off on Friday, June 26th and will continue through Sunday, July 5th 2009.

For the past 10 years the annual event has alternated between San Francisco, California, Key West, Florida and Fire Island, New York.

The Hogs, Ho’s & Queens organizers joined with theme attired Myrtle Beach and South Carolina tourism officials in making the announcement.

The news conference was kicked off by the Director of the South Carolina Department of Parks Recreation and Tourism, Chad Prosser, resplendent in a Laura Ashley pansy print frock with matching bag, pumps and parasol. In making the announcement “Penelope” Prosser credited his recent “So Gay” advertising campaign with being instrumental in landing the long term contract with the IBGBB. "Girl, we’re so absolutely thrilled that the IBGBB has chosen South Carolina and Myrtle Beach for their simply marvelous event,” Prosser gushed giddily.

Next up was the President of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, Brad Dean, dressed in a revealing pink tutu and matching ballet slippers laced to the knee. “Daphnia” Dean, with his mascara running down his chubby cheeks from his tears of joy, was all atwitter at welcoming the IBGBB. “The Hogs, Ho’s & Queens event truly complements our other two wonderful bike festivals, the Memorial Day black biker event and the Harley Davidson Spring event, so I want congratulate and thank “Penelope” and her team at PRT for making this sweet event a long overdue reality. We also need to recognize all of the hard work done by the members of the Horry County and South Carolina Closet Caucus in landing this colorful event for South Carolina and, especially, Myrtle Beach,” Dean continued.

Prosser and Dean both credit the success of South Carolina's “So Gay” campaign, and now tourism officials statewide are pressing for similar campaigns targeting other niche marketing demographics that naturally fit into the Palmetto State’s low information, blue-collar, redneck base. “Our crack advertising agencies in Colombia and Myrtle Beach are already suggesting campaign themes that take advantage of the success of our “So Gay” campaign. To the point that our Chamber's ad agency has recommended that we institute “So Toothless, So Homely, So Fat, So Hairy, So Tattooed” and, of course, “So Broke” niche market follow-ups, and our Board of Dilberts is really excited by the financial possibilities and guaranteed media coverage these campaigns could generate for our ‘in the crapper’ tourism economy,” Dean babbled.

The President of the International Brotherhood of Gay Black Bikers, Keshawn “Chantel” La Moure, said, “San Fran, Key West and Fire Island have been great, but we think that it's time that we found a location that best fits our member’s interests and predilections. Chad, Brad, Frans Mustart and Woody Crosby convinced us that Myrtle Beach is absolutely that place. The four of them certainly deserve most of the credit for bringing us here, and to show our appreciation I am happy to announce today that the IBGBB has unanimously selected our sisters “Daphnia” Dean, “Penelope” Prosser, “Francine” Mustart and “Wilhelmina” Crosby as the very first Co-Queens for our first Hogs, Ho’s & Queens event in Myrtle Beach.

When asked about the potential economic impact of the Hogs, Ho’s & Queens event on the Myrtle Beach tourism economy, Don Schunk, one of the comedic and numerically challenged gas bags from Redneck University replied, “Why are you asking me? Hell, Gary Loftus and I haven’t been right about anything since I got here. You’re better off calling the Federal Penitentiary and asking “Fat Al” Parrish, because, at least some of his guesses were occasionally correct, while old Gary and my guesses have never even been close. It’s gotten so humiliating that old Gary is going to be a Horry County Councilman, and I’m thinking about becoming a weatherman, at least in those jobs nobody expects you to get anything right.”

“I publish right or wrong. Fools are my theme, and satire my song.” Lord Byron

Ah, and so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Golf “Toothless” Without Tiger?

How Will “Woodsless” Golf Impact the Myrtle Beach Golf Biz?

Despite the almost 100° temperatures on the Redneck Riviera there is a cold, foreboding chill circulating throughout the Myrtle Beach golf industry as one question looms large with respect to the future of the Myrtle Beach golf vacation economy, "How will ‘Tigerless’ golf impact Myrtle Beach?"

Since 1999, the once booming Myrtle Beach golf industry has declined every year to the point that 23 courses have closed resulting in an estimated annual revenue loss of $45 million dollars; close to one million annual paid rounds of golf have been lost resulting in an additional estimated annual revenue loss of $60 million dollars; an estimated 2,000 golf industry personnel have lost their jobs resulting in an estimated annual payroll loss of $50 million dollars and, thus far in 2008, despite the Myrtle Beach area's peckerwood golf marketing laughingstock, Golf Holiday, better known here as “Goof Holiday,” tripling its advertising and promotional budget, the industry is experiencing even deeper declines.

Now, another huge nail may be being hammered into the Myrtle Beach golf industry coffin. Tiger Woods, the real driving force and the king of all things golf, has exited the stage. Woods has opted to take a sabbatical from the PGA Tour in order to repair his fractured and badly injured knee. For just how long golf will be Tigerless is, at this point, unknown, but every day that passes without Woods, worldwide interest in golf wanes.

Already the PGA Tour's golf ratings have plummeted, and in sports bars around the nation golf tournaments are already becoming dull also ran’s to other less traditional televised sports like soccer.

On a national level the number of golfers has been virtually stagnant for almost 20 years, with the total numbers barely fluctuating between 24 and 26 million.

Over the years the number of people taking up golf vs. those giving up golf each year tended to be pretty much of a wash, but recently more than 3 million golfers have been giving up the game each year, citing time, expense and other issues.

The executive director of the Tampa-based Florida State Golf Association, Jim Demick, in an article in a June Florida Today said that while golf has a short-term problem with the economy; it has a bigger, longer-term issue with constraints on players' time.

Since 2004 an estimated 62 U.S. golf courses have closed. Of those 62 closings 23, or 37%, of all closings have occurred in the Myrtle Beach area.

While the American recession is the most often blamed culprit for golf's most recent decline, the realities of the deterioration are far more complex.

Sure, gas prices are a concern, but they are, in fact, almost inconsequential in vacation planning, and here's why. In July of 2007 the average cost of a gallon of gas was $3.08, today it’s $4.08, so contrary to all the hoopla, we’re only talking about $1, not $4.

What that means is that for the average vacationer to bypass the I-95 exits to Myrtle Beach at Florence, SC, and to drive the additional 463 miles to Walt Disney World in a vehicle that averages 20 MPG, their additional round trip (926 miles) cost for gas this year, over July of 2007, is only $46.30, which is less than $10 per day on the average 5 day vacation.

Unfortunately for Myrtle Beach, the Redneck Riviera is your basic blue-collar destination, and that demographic is being hit the hardest by the escalating recession, therefore, travel time and food costs are far bigger concerns in their vacation planning than fuel costs.

Back to golf, our assessment is that the primary reason for the bottom falling out of the Myrtle Beach golf economy is the total incompetence, laziness and bush-league advertising by the clowns at Myrtle Beach Goof Holiday and Brandon Advertising.

Add to that the golf industry's propensity for bait ‘n switch scams and under the table shenanigans, the excessive development now lining most courses, the aging and subsequent limited participation and eventual retirement from the game of loyal repeat golfers, limitations on leisure time activities, the much higher costs related to golf than other sports and the fact that young golfers are becoming more and more interested in the instant gratification of video games and other less traditional recreations, and the future certainly looks extremely bleak for the golf industry, especially for golf destinations like Myrtle Beach.

As with any glaring problem, there are indeed a plethora of positive solutions, but, regrettably, none will be forthcoming from those nincompoops at the helm of Goof Holiday who, for almost a decade, have decimated the once flourishing Myrtle Beach golf industry.

Everywhere we turn today we hear about how it's time for a change. Well, it's been a time for change in the leadership, marketing and ceaseless advertising bungling of Goof Holiday for almost 10 years, but the spineless membership still refuses to step up and dump those 30-hour per week deadbeats and, instead, they prefer to sit on their collective butts and cry in their beers.

It’s painfully obvious, to anyone with an IQ over 12, that, if these milquetoast members, with their heads stuck deep in the proverbial sand, had the good sense to understand Cicero’s point when he said, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” then they would have to admit that they have no one to blame for the destruction of the Myrtle Beach golf economy except for themselves, but don’t hold your breath waiting for those wimps to do so!

Therefore, with Tiger now missing in action and even darker clouds looming on the horizon with no relief in sight, Myrtle Beach will, sadly, continue business as usual – make that less and less business than usual.

"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air." John Quincy Adams

And so the sameness continues to go on the Redneck Riviera!

Horry Councilman’s Back-Stabbing Backfires - Again

Horry County’s resident windbag and self-proclaimed Grand Poobah of Aeronautical Expertise, Howard “Propeller-Boy” Barnard, has once again put his foot in his big mouth and is wiggling his toes!

Barnard, who loves to brag, to anyone foolish enough to listen to him, that he is the be all and end all expert on all things airport and air travel related, and that everyone else are ignorant fools and should just shut the hell up and bask in his bombastic genius.

Sadly, Barnard is also well known for being extremely vindictive towards anyone who disagrees with him or has the audacity to confront him in any way, and, regrettably, his propensity for vitriol has spiked dramatically since he foolishly set his sights on being the next Horry County Council Chairman.

“Howard used to be thoughtful, conscientious and a real team player, but over the last few months he’s become a real embarrassment to be around. He’s brags constantly and is, in my opinion, a very loose cannon who is totally out-of-control,” a long-serving, high-level County staffer confided.

Tales about Barnard flying off the handle are legendary. Some of the better known targets of his hysteria include Horry County Pride; Surfside Beach residents; casino boat representatives and, of course, he was the ringleader, along with Loony Liz, the Weasel, Pee-Wee Al, Bonehead Bob and Clueless James, of the failed retaliation against Myrtle Beach Insider contributor, Donald Wizeman. See our Friday, December 21, 2007 posting - SLED Cowboys and Dimwitted Judges Trample Laws and the Constitution – Bloggers Threatened.

However, the most damaging and talked about episode, which one Conway wag has dubbed “Mr. Barnard Goes to Washington,” occurred when a peeved “Propeller Boy” launched into his patented, self-aggrandizing “hot shot fighter pilot” drivel with officials in Washington, D.C. over airport funding, to the point of threatening them with retaliation if they didn’t deliver the excessive funds he was demanding.

They must have had “Crazy Howie” in mind when they said, “You only get one chance to make a BAD first impression!”

Our loose cannon’s latest feeble attempt to discredit someone who disagrees with him began in yet another bloviated meeting about the ill-advised over expansion of the Myrtle Beach airport, held at the airport, on Thursday, June 19th, where, out of left field, “Propeller Boy” began grilling aviation expert, Douglas Decker - who had just, once again, exposed the latest load of bovine excrement being shoveled out by the pro airport expansion wastrels’ expensive consultants - about Mr. Decker’s ownership of an airplane.

Then, the very next day, an “anonymous” tipster contacted the Horry County Auditor’s office and accused Mr. Decker of being a tax dodger for not paying property taxes on an airplane that Decker holds a 25% share in. WOW, what an amazing coincidence! How do you think something like that could have happened?

The real fun part of this latest lunacy is that Crazy Howie and his nefarious little crew of airport miscreants’ dirty little scheme totally backfired, not only on Barnard, but on Barnard’s butt-buddy and chief lapdog on the Airport Advisory Board, Chairman Bill McKown, because - surprise, surprise - it turns out that those two clowns haven’t been paying property taxes on their own airplanes.

“Howard and Bill should have had Al Allen charge their taxes to his Horry County credit card, like he does for the fuel purchases he makes for his aircraft, before they tried to slit Decker’s throat,” quipped a grizzled mechanic at the North Myrtle Beach Airport.

For more information see: Airport Critic Surprised by County Tax Bill - http://myrtlebeachherald.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=8685&wpage=&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1072&hn=myrtlebeachherald&he=.com

"The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, the other the tongue. The former is worst than the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation." Tyron Edwards

And so the pettiness continues to go on the Redneck Riviera!

Un News Says, Horry County Airportlians are not Federal Criminals

They’re Just Stupid and Incompetent Bunglers Who May Only Be Guilty of State Crimes!

In an effluence strikingly similar to Richard Nixon's famous line, "I am not a crook," the local Myrtle Beach area fish wrapper, the Un News, in their latest suck up editorial once again extolling the nonexistent benefits of pissing away millions of taxpayer dollars on a Taj Mahal airport, gleefully proclaimed that a United States Department of Transportation investigation found that the pin heads in Horry County government that were behind the botched westside airport terminal debacle are not crooks, at least not Federal crooks anyway.

What a great and proud declaration for the Myrtle Beach area, and how wonderful it is that the pro-airport at any cost spinmeisters at the Un News are so condescendingly informing we unenlightened rubes of the Myrtle Beach area of just how fortunate we are to have a bunch of stumblebum's leading Horry County, and the entire Myrtle Beach area, down the road to financial ruin.

Sure they’re sloppy, unprofessional, stupid, incompetent and spend taxpayers’ money like drunken sailors, but they're not Federal criminals!

What the lemmings on the Un News editorial board conveniently neglected to mention is that the rat pack behind “Gilland's Folly” may very well be guilty of state crimes, especially as it relates to nefarious bidding procedures and possible misallocation of state funds.

So sleep well good citizens of Horry County, because, as that bastion of unbiased journalism, the Un News, has so graciously enlightened us, we're in good hands with the morons at the helm of the sinking “Ship of Fools” that is Horry County.

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff gets printed." Elbert Hubbard

And so it continues to go on the Redneck Riviera, and with those two “Ships of Fools” that are Horry County government and the Un News!

Myrtle Beach Community Appearance Board and Others are Taxpayers’ Heroes and Sheroes!

While the pea-brained officials in Horry County, their equally brain-dead cronies in the media and the eternally aero-anal chumps at Myrtle Beach Goof Holiday continue to weep in their Kool-Aid over the shocking derailment of their asinine $350 million dollar westside airport terminal debacle, better known as Gilland’s Folly, by the seven brave souls on the City of Myrtle Beach’s Community Appearance Board (CAB), Myrtle Beach area taxpayers are, in contrast, singing the CAB’s praises.

Despite the moronic palaver of a few high profile dunderheads in Horry County government - led by the always confused fact-muddler, Liz Gilland, the self-proclaimed air expert and the area’s most pompous windbag, Howard Barnard, the ever imperious obfuscator in residence, John Weaver and, of course, the County’s preeminent wastrel, Bob Kemp - thanks to those courageous folks on the CAB, area taxpayers will not be afflicted by the lunacy and massive tax burden endorsed by these ethically, morally and fiscally irresponsible spendthrifts.

Area taxpayers should also be singing the praises of Myrtle Beach Mayor, John Rhodes and all of the members of the Myrtle Beach City Council, excluding, of course, the perpetually out-of-touch, Randal Wallace, for their leadership and unwavering support for the selfless volunteers serving on the CAB and for putting those clowns in Conway in their place.

Dedicated and concerned citizens like Messrs. Douglas Decker, Bill Darby, Lou Krieger and Paul Gable likewise deserve tremendous kudos for having the guts to speak up and to shine the bright light of reality on the lies spewing out of Conway, Goof Holiday and the self-serving media, along with the rampant incompetence and corruption that permeates Horry County government.

What if City Council and the CAB - with the entire airline industry in an economic free fall; seven airline bankruptcies thus far this year and counting; airline schedules being slashed to what’s left of the proverbial bone; major leisure travel destinations like Orlando, Hawaii and Las Vegas having flights scrapped almost daily; airline ticket prices and add-on expenses soaring out of control; construction costs skyrocketing; Myrtle Beach tourism circling the drain and the Myrtle Beach area already in a major recession - had knuckled under to the Conway Mafia, Goof Holiday and the myopic media?

We shudder at the costs, taxes and consequences!

Thank God, the CAB, the Myrtle Beach City Council and that coterie of smart, concerned and dauntless citizens for standing up and for doing the right thing for the entire Myrtle Beach area.

So the next time you see CAB Chairman Larry Bragg, CAB members Brown Bethune, Ben Brown, Birgit Darby, Jeff Edens, Mayur Jeram, Sandra Rutenberg, Mayor Rhodes, Myrtle Beach City Council members Michael Chestnut, Chuck Martino, Susan Means, Phil Render, Wayne Gray or Doug Decker, Bill Darby, Lou Krieger or Paul Gable give them a smile, a pat on the back and two “thumbs up” along with a hearty “THANK YOU” for stepping-up, standing-up and stopping the Conway Mafia’s $350 million dollar westside airport terminal insanity.

“Our heroes are those who act above and beyond the call of duty and in so doing give definition to courage and thereby elevate all of us. America is the land of the free because we are truly the home of the brave.” David Mahoney

And so, thankfully, there are still some real heroes and sheroes on the Redneck Riviera!

Un News Denies Deceased Death With Dignity

“Dying is a very dull and dreary affair, so my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.” W. Somerset Maugham

OK, we get it the local fish wrapper, the Myrtle Beach Un News is floundering – See the Myrtle Beach Insider posting http://myrtlebeachinsider.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-tank-can-we-save-myrtle-beach-sun.html#links – and they are doing whatever they can to cut costs, and that certainly makes good business sense.

Regrettably, the Un News management is apparently ill-equipped to orchestrate the ongoing downsizing with any semblance of common sense, respect or compassion.

We are referring, of course, to the Un News’ horrible new policy of spreading the daily obituaries throughout their “Local Section,” so that their ever shrinking reader base is now forced to thumb through every page of the Local Section to find all of them.

Isn’t this the same slimy marketing con that they instituted months ago; which so asininely spread the Classified Ads throughout their rag solely for the money-grubbing purpose of forcing their dwindling readership to waste more of their time rummaging through the entire rag to find whatever classified ads that they may be seeking?

Now it appears that your loved one’s passing will allow those mercenary bean counters at the Un News and their advertisers to “body surf” on the deceased to unashamedly market their products and services. No wonder the American public now views ad agency types and media marketers with more disdain and distrust than they do time share and used car salesmen.

Now, thanks to this disgusting policy of spreading out the bodies, our precious grandparents, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, cousins and dear friend’s sad passing can help the local flea market tout their homemade poultice for jock itch, or help some shady home improvement company hawk their questionable “bait ‘n switch” scams.

Hey, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t everything about making a buck?

When questioned about this terrible practice one Un News staffer told the Insider, “Sure it sucks, and it certainly makes us look like a bunch of uncaring bastards, but the financial aspect is not the real reason the obituaries are spread out like they are. The main reasons are that too many people are dying on the same days, they're dying too late in the day and that their families are buying lengthier obits. How can our layout folks plan for that? People are damn lucky that we can squeeze them in.”

OK, so what can the bereaved do about this insanity?

Here are our recommendations as to how you can get your loved one’s obituary on the obituary page where it belongs…

1. Don’t let any of your loved ones die on the weekend, because the Un News has always had a “nobody works on the weekends” policy, and their subsequent “no news on the weekend” sad reality has only worsened as their revenues have dried up.

2. Store your loved one in the freezer in the garage until the Un News can guarantee your loved one their rightful place on the obituary page.

3. The Un News, like all newspapers, lays out their obits in alphabetical order, so put an X, Y or Z, followed by a hyphen, in front of your loved one’s last name so that the new first letter in their last name falls at the end of the alphabet, which will guarantee them their spot on the obituary page.

4. Forget about those long farewells. Sure they’re heartfelt, and help say good-by, thank you, “we love you” and “we’ll miss you,” but do you really want that heart-wrenching eulogy that you and your family struggled and cried over appearing next to some tacky ad for Bubba’s Bait Shack & Chitlins Emporium? Besides they’re too damn expensive, people only read parts of them and people rarely read a rerun.

5. Call the Un News’ overworked and under-paid obit writer and find out what day they prefer that your love one die on. Then you and your family can use that information to properly schedule your loved one’s demise to fit into the Un News’ obituary page space allocation.

Another more realistic solution is for the bereaved, whenever possible, to deal directly with the Un News obituary department - NOT WITH THE FUNERAL HOME – and to pay for the obituary themselves with their credit card. That way, if the loved one’s obituary does not appear on the obituary page they have a direct, legal and financial link to the source of the problem.

If the decease's obituary does not appear on the obituary page the bereaved should, at their earliest convenience, contact the Un News obituary department – FORGET TRYING TO EVER REACH ANYONE IN THEIR UNREACHABLE, OUT-SOURCED AND NON-EXISTENT CUSTOMER SERVICE (OXYMORON, OXYMORON, OXYMORON) DEPARTMENT – and inform them that they refuse to pay for the improperly placed obituary and that they will be contacting their credit card company to demand a charge-back.

If the Un News refuses to issue a satisfactory refund – DON’T LET THEM SHORT-CHANGE YOU WITH A “FREE RERUN,” BECAUSE NO ONE EVER READS ANYONE’S 2nd INSERTION - the bereaved should then follow-up by sending the Un News a Certified Mail letter reiterating their demand for a refund.

Of course, the best remedy is for the honchos and honchoetts at the Un News to simply set aside two full pages each day for the obituary pages, then they can simply fill up any empty space that they might have with ads, self-promotional materials, space available ads, public service ads or editorial filler like police blotters and restaurant health department ratings, but that’s probably much too simple of a solution for them.

But hey, that’s just our opinion, and so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

“I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.” Mark Twain

Will the “Get Rid of Liz” Vote Cost Rankin His Senate Seat?

Everywhere we go lately we’re hearing people talking about voting to replace Senator Luke Rankin with Horry County Council Chairman, Liz Gilland, simply to get rid of her as a constant embarrassment to Horry County.

“Look, we really like Luke, and we think he’s done an outstanding job for us in Columbia, but we’ve got to get rid of Liz before she does any further damage to Horry County. If we can ship her off to the Statehouse, and let Senator Glenn McConnell and the legislature deal with her antics, so that we can replace her with someone with some common sense and leadership skills – not with that blowhard Howard Barnard - then Horry County will be much better off,” explained one local politico.

Horry County voters are fed up with Gilland’s litany of questionable deals, constant ethics problems and her half-baked, sometimes spiteful and self-serving behavior.

In particular they are disgusted with Gilland’s costly and endless airport fiasco; putting privacy gates on public roads; shenanigans with out-of-control County staffers and the constant embarrassment she causes to Horry County and County Council in particular.

“We don’t want to throw Senator Rankin under the bus,” said one GOP activist, “but we can’t continue to allow Liz to continue her meddling and disruptive ways another day. She’s got to go and if sending her to Columbia is the fastest way to accomplish that, then so be it.”

Another group of influential voters is angry with Gilland and Councilman Harold Worley for refusing to fire Horry County Administrator, Danny Knight, who, they say, has become a pawn of Horry County Attorney, John Weaver, Horry County Administrative Director, Anne Wright, and Horry County Director of Airports, Bob Kemp.

“For years Danny ran the County as the consummate professional, now he just sits alone in his office doing nothing while Gilland, Wright, Kemp and, especially, Weaver run the County into the ground. He just doesn’t seem to care about anything anymore. He’s become Horry County’s Nero, fiddling while the County burns,” a former County staffer railed.

So will the “get rid of Gilland at any cost” vote materialize on Tuesday, and will it cost Rankin his Senate seat? Your guess is as good as ours.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.” Ernest Benn

And so it continues to go on the Redneck Riviera!

In the Tank: Can We Save the Myrtle Beach Sun News?

Do We Really Want To?

Like their parent company, the McClatchy Company, our local fish wrapper, the Myrtle Beach Sun News b.k.a. (Better Known As) the Un News, is struggling to stay relevant and to stay financially afloat.

Has it ever been relevant?

Can we save it before it sinks?

More importantly, do we really want to save it?

While it’s hard to believe that the Un News could possibly become “Unnier” than it was, it certainly has.

As with the welcomed exit of the Un News publisher, Paula Ellis, a couple of years ago, we were again hoping that with the departure of her bumbling successor, Gary Wortel, the paper would, under the new publisher, Pam Browning, finally begin to evolve into a publication that the Myrtle Beach area could finally be proud of.

Obviously, we should have known better than to be so naively optimistic, especially when it comes to the growing embarrassment that is the Un News.

“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” A.J. Liebling

Why, besides the obviously incompetent management and bush-league editing, is the Un News floundering like a gasping carp flopping in the hot sun on the shore of the Waccamaw? Here’s the scuttlebutt we’ve heard…

· Record setting declines in ad revenues.

· Outsourcing their customer service to some rude, incompetent, unresponsive and half-baked crew of cretins located in Appalachia or Outer Mongolia, or someplace like that.

· Cutting staffers overtime while at the same time forcing them to increase their workloads while they’re “off the clock.”

· Offering insulting employee buyouts of either $2,000 for each year of servitude and a pitiful 3-months of health insurance, or $1,000 for each year of servitude and only one month of health insurance.

· Illiterate editors that either can’t read, or flunked basic English or Jr. High journalism classes. In one obit we heard about they actually named the poor deceased “Manure Derelict.” We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried.

“Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.” Elbert Hubbard

· Rambling and disjointed editorials that slobberingly endorse any backwater, half-baked scheme that Loony Liz Gilland, Bungling Brad Dean, Schlockshot Scott Brandon or Blundering Bill Golden can cook-up with their equally inept cliques of sycophants to squander taxpayer money.

“Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.” Walter Kerr

· Cooking or intentionally not reporting the news by…

a. Refusing to publish area police blotters.

b. Refusing to publish photographs of the criminal and lewd behavior becoming more and more prevalent at events like the recent Memorial Day Crime & Filth Fest.

c. Refusing to publish area restaurant health department ratings.

d. Editing and removing blog postings that they disagree with, or ones that don’t support their positions.

e. Failing to research in any way any issue that they support, like the ongoing Myrtle Beach Airport expansion fiasco.

“Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.” Norman Mailer

f. Refusing to allow ads from any entity they deem to be possible competition.

g. Cherry-picking the news to suck-up to the tourism industry.

While it’s a given that the Un News is the obedient and servile mouthpiece and sanitation service for the incompetent and bungling rubes at the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy and Myrtle Beach Golf Horrordays, it does still have some redeeming qualities, like the funnies, TV listings, community calendars, recipes for hog jowl pudding and info on whose dogs just had puppies.

The most heartbreaking chapter of this sad story is that the majority of talented writers, photographers and staffers have opted for greener, and more professional media pastures, with their places sadly being taken by minimum wage, GenX, iPoders.

“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele.” Bagdikian’s Observation

The good news in this sorry tale is that there are still a few very talented scribes there doing stellar work that continues to motivate us to continue subscribing to the ever shrinking Un News.

There’s Jessica Foster’s unvarnished reporting on the area economy/recession; David Wren’s outstanding investigative reporting; Isaac Bailey’s courageous and insightful columns; Al Blondin’s golf coverage and Bob Bestler and Celia Rivenbark’s humor.

“Being a newspaper columnist is like marrying a nymphomaniac - It's great for the first two weeks.” Lewis Grizzard

On the darker side of the coin, the Un News' tourism reporting has been a fawning, self-serving farce for years.

Therefore, since the Un News is the official spinmeister and media monkey for the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, Myrtle Beach Golf Horrordays and the reality and numerically challenged book cooking retards at Redneck University’s economic forecasting loony bin (Hey lofty schmucks, can you say “recession?”), we recommend that as a time and cost saving initiative the four of them consolidate their incestuous little spinfest at one location.

This centralization of propaganda would also allow the area’s television stations to more expeditiously continue to regurgitate the Un News articles for their equally sycophantic newscasts.

“There are people in this world who seldom pick up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an anchorperson, emerging from their mental seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great national significance.” Joe Keenan

Despite all of the foregoing rock-solid reasons for just letting the Un News continue to shrivel up and die, as they are trying so very hard to do, we would really miss our groggy-eyed morning stroll out to the curb for our morning dose of drivel.

Therefore, we should really try to save our insignificant little rag by supporting it with our subscriptions and advertising, if only in the futile hope that one day someone there will have the cajones to finally step up and clean up the amateurish and boorish mess that is the Myrtle Beach Un News.

But hey, that's just our opinion, and so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson

Lowes Foods Disrupts the Peace and Safety of Murrells Inlet Neighborhood!

Wynbrooke, in the Murrells Inlet area of South Carolina, was once a quiet, peaceful neighborhood where residents walked the streets freely, able to calmly chat with one another about the everyday matters of life in their community.

Laughing children rode their bicycles safely on the boulevard without fear of becoming human hood ornaments, as they labored feverishly to attain that ever-so-important skill of learning how to ride a bike without those embarrassing training wheels.

Did you catch that line about “without fear of becoming human hood ornaments?”

The neighbors could talk normally to those sitting next to them on the stoops, or at the pool. They could hail one another from the street without having to scream, “good morning.” They could sit in their backyards and enjoy the birds chirping, and listen to the inlet breezes as they wafted gently through the swaying pine trees.

Yes, Wynbrooke was quite an idyllic little neighborhood.

Well that was then, and, sadly, thanks to runaway development and Horry County incompetence, this is now!

The recent construction of the new Lowes Foods store at the intersection of Highway 707 and Tournament Boulevard put an end to the peacefulness that was Wynbrooke.

Residents, who once watched the tall pines sway in the wind, saw those same trees ripped from the earth by Lowes bulldozers, tractors and cranes.

The normally still evenings became an endless cacophony of ear-splitting noise from the clanking, banging and roars of the developer’s heavy machinery.

The incessant glare of the developer’s construction lights obscured the bright stars that were always sparkling over the neighborhood, as the floodlights lit up the neighborhood like one big high school football field on a fall Friday night.

Then, one day, to the shock and sorrow of the residents of Wynbrooke, the purpose of Lowes’ carnage became horribly obvious. Lowes had built a delivery road for their tractor-trailers and delivery trucks at the entrance to peaceful – and SAFE - Wynbrooke Boulevard.

How could something so obviously damaging be even contemplated, much less come to such a terrible and dangerous reality.

The Wynbrooke community was, and continues to be, devastated!

The citizens of the development crazy Myrtle Beach area are sadly well aware of how scorched-earth companies, like Wal-Mart and Lowes Foods, rip the hearts out of our forests and communities up and down the Grand Strand with their ruthless and relentless pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Of course, we are all too well aware that organizations like Lowes Foods could care less about their neighbors, because their executives don’t live where they’re constructing their “big ugly boxes.” They don’t lose any sleep about the diesel smoke belching tractor-trailers and noisy delivery trucks rumbling past their homes and bedroom windows at all hours of the days and nights. They’re not the least bit worried about the danger their greed presents to the communities their “build it at all costs” policies devastate.

If accidents spike, people lives, especially children’s lives, are endangered, so what? They don’t live there.

No longer can folks walk peacefully along Wynbrooke Boulevard, quietly discussing the day’s events.

No longer can children ride their bicycles freely without any fear of becoming an accident victim, or traffic fatality.

No longer can the Wynbrooke residents whose backyards border Tournament Boulevard enjoy the swaying pines, or their once peaceful days and nights.

No longer is the air fresh and clean, thanks to the constant belching of diesel and truck exhausts.

Unfortunately for the resident of Wynbrooke, because of others’ blunders, the “promised” berm that they were assured would be constructed to protect them from the noise, and the ceaseless glare of shopping center lights, is only a shadow of what was required to do the job properly.

Did you know that one loaded tractor-trailer has the potential of weighing as much as 50 automobiles? Obviously, Wynbrooke Boulevard wasn’t designed, much less constructed to bear these excessive loads, and increased traffic flow.

The adjacent Tournament Boulevard is already in desperate need of repair, and that damage was only caused by ordinary automobile traffic.

So what’s next for the beleaguered residents of Wynbrooke?

Their only legal recourse now is to petition Horry County Council to have Wynbrooke Boulevard classified as a private road and turned over to the Wynbrooke community.

Normally, they would be fighting a losing battle, but since Loony Liz Gilland, and her flunkies on Horry County Council are already promising to allow Myrtle Trace, and the other developments that have illegally constructed private gates on public roads, to privatize their gated roads, Wynbrooke may have a good chance of getting their “legal” roadway privatized.

That victory would certainly prove beneficial to this now at-risk community. For starters, the residents of Wynbrooke could return to their peaceful way of neighborhood life and Horry County, and therefore the Horry County taxpayers, would not be responsible for the maintenance of Wynbrooke Boulevard, maintenance that, as a result of the incessant pounding of over loaded tractor trailers and delivery trucks, will quickly become an expensive and unending necessity.

Obviously, time is of the essence as Wynbrooke Boulevard is expected to officially become the sole responsibility of Horry County taxpayers in mid-April, when, as Ross Perot used to say, “It will become a giant sucking sound,” as it drains the County’s already seriously “at risk” bank account of monies sorely needed for other County roads.

Of course, the Myrtle Beach Insider Crew thinks that the “terribly wronged” residents of Wynbrooke should put up their own illegal gates like Myrtle Trace and other developments did on their public roads, include a guard house with armed guards – armed with shotguns, buckets of tar and chicken feathers, right SLED? - and charge each tractor-trailer and delivery truck a $1,000 toll!

Problem solved!

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Lewis Carroll

And so it continues to go on the Redneck Riviera!

Horry County Council Postpones Book Burning – For Now

In 1933, Nazi Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels began the synchronization of culture, by which the arts were brought in line with Nazi goals.

The government purged cultural organizations of Jews and others alleged to be politically or artistically suspect.

In Berlin, on May 10, 1933, upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books were burned, including the works of Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, as well as the Bible, presaging an era of ruthless state censorship and iron-fisted control of "Aryan" culture.

The Nazi promotion of "Aryan" culture and the suppression of other forms of artistic production was yet another Nazi effort to "purify" Germany, and eventually led to World War II and the extermination of over 6-million Jews, gypsies, Poles and others who spoke out against Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Obviously, that could never happen in America, or South Carolina, because we have the Constitution, and expressly the First Amendment, to protect us from such jack-booted oppression and fascist censorship, right?

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Shockingly, six members of Horry County Council, led by Chairman Liz Gilland, Councilman Howard Barnard and Councilman Al Allen, apparently view the Constitution, and our First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, as having the same value and import as toilet paper, so on Tuesday night the six of them raised their hands, and instead of shouting “Sig Heil,” they voted “Yea” to a resolution, drafted by Barnard, to remove Myrtle Beach Insider contributor, Don Wizeman, from the Horry County Accommodation Tax Advisory Committee, because of his participation in our highly opinionated blog and our “un-Horry County Council” posts.

The Conway 6, were, as always, vociferously supported in their attack by their in-house Goebbels, John Weaver.

Fortunately, for Mr. Wizeman, and the citizens of Horry County, there were six tried and true Americans on the Council, Paul Prince, Harold Worley, Marion Foxworth, Mike Ryan, Kevin Hardee and Brent Schultz, who, in striking contrast to their Gestapo-like counterparts, courageously voted, not only to protect Mr. Wizeman’s freedom of speech, but to protect everyone’s Constitutional right to free speech.

Here’s the gory details as ably reported in today’s Myrtle Beach Herald…

County Council keeps blogger on panel

By Paul Gable
The Herald

Horry County—Horry County council member Kevin Hardee said a council vote Tuesday night was too close a call for free speech in the county.

A vote of 6-6 narrowly defeated a resolution to remove Donald Wizeman from the Horry County Accommodations Tax Advisory Committee for “his inappropriate and derogatory comments made regarding, not only members of Horry County Council, but also other public officials and entities throughout Horry County...”

Council chairman Liz Gilland and members Howard Barnard, Carl Schwartzkopf, Bob Grabowski, Al Allen and James Frazier voted yes. Council members Kevin Hardee, Marion Foxworth, Harold Worley, Mike Ryan, Brent Schulz and Paul Prince voted no. A tie vote defeats a motion to approve.

Wizeman was identified as “The Watchman,” a contributing author to the internet blog “Myrtle Beach Insider” after an investigation instigated by Coastal Carolina University Vice President Eddie Dyer and carried out by State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) officers, Special Agent William Howsare and Lt. David Roper.

According to a SLED report of the investigation, “On October 17, 2007, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) received a request from Greg Weisner, Chief of Public Safety at Coastal Carolina University, to investigate allegations of threats made against University President David DeCenzo and University Vice President Edward Dyer. The alleged threats were generated through the Internet Web site Myrtle Beach Insider and were authored by ‘The Watchman.’”The alleged threat on the blog referred to a closing sentence in a posting about CCU officials that read, “Where the Hell is my shotgun, my bucket of tar and bag of chicken feathers?”

According to the report, the two SLED officers, who responded to CCU, also visited with 15th Circuit Senior Assistant Solicitor Burt Von Herrman on October 17. Von Herrman read the incident report and a copy of the Web posting and determined “no crime has occurred.”

In spite of Von Herrman’s conclusion, the report says a recommendation was made by Lt. Mike Prodan of SLED to find out the identity of “The Watchman.” The report also says Prodan “came to the conclusion that it (the blog posting) was merely freedom of speech by the author.”

Howsare obtained two search warrants on October 24, 2007 and another on October 29, 2007 to obtain information from various Internet providers to help identify “The Watchman.”

The two SLED officers conducted an interview with Wizeman on November 9, 2007 during which Wizeman admitted to being “The Watchman”, according to the report.

Appointed to the Accommodations Tax Advisory Committee in 2003, Wizeman was reappointed unanimously by county council in October 2007.

After his identification as “The Watchman”, the resolution to remove Wizeman from that committee was placed on the council agenda for the regular meeting of Tuesday Jan. 8.

Worley made a motion to remove the resolution from council agenda, but failed by a 6-5 vote.

Last Friday, Worley sent an e-mail to eight council members explaining, “Councilman Barnard and I both asked Chairman Gilland to remove this item from our Tuesday night agenda, yesterday before it was printed and again today. So far she refuses ... This is a battle we don’t need to be fighting.”

County attorney John Weaver e-mailed nine council members last weekend urging them to remove Wizeman.

“Consider Mr. Wizeman’s derogatory comments regarding council, the CCU officials, the Chamber, the business and tourism leaders,” reads Weaver’s e-mail in part. “It is not the comments — you are all open game. It is the tone, the language, the blatant falsehoods, the profanity. The council is no more credible than the appointments that are made — they speak and act for each one of you. Your integrity is strengthened by distancing yourselves from those who secretly speak as Mr. Wizeman has done. To allow his continued service is to publicly say that he’s OK, he meets the council’s minimum standards for public service and ethical behavior and we condone his slanderous comments.”

After the vote, Foxworth referred to a 1964 U. S. Supreme Court decision in the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

In writing the unanimous opinion of the court, Justice William Brennan said, “We consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.’’

“The unanimous decision of the court is considered a landmark, upholding a citizen’s right to say just about anything, especially with respect to public officials and issues.” Foxworth said. “I am a strong believer in the First Amendment and removing someone from a committee for something he said or wrote is just not right.”

Wizeman said he was happy with the result, but criticized council for ever considering it.“This is a perfect example of the type of foolishness the council wastes its time on, trying to inhibit free speech, when there are many more important issues, such as roads and a declining county economy, which it should be working on,” Wizeman said.

Here’s the link to the Myrtle Beach Herald article… http://myrtlebeachherald.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=7552&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1072&hn=myrtlebeachherald&he=.com

And so it disgustingly continues to go on the Redneck Riviera!

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution

SLED Cowboys and Dimwitted Judges Trample Laws and the Constitution – Bloggers Threatened

Law breaking, corruption, government waste, purgery, incompetent judges, trampled privacy rights and collective crapping on the Constitution. Sounds like just another day in Washington, D.C. doesn’t it?

Well Toto, were sorry to report that we’re not talking about the circus in Washington, we’re talking about the scary freak show in South Carolina, and Horry County in particular.

On Friday, December 7, 2007 we posted a story - Myrtle Beach Sun News and Coastal Carolina University Join Forces to Muzzle the Myrtle Beach Insider! - about Redneck U, d.b.a. Coastal Carolina University, and the local fish wrapper, The Un News, d.b.a. the Myrtle Beach Sun News, joining forces to out one of the Myrtle Beach Insider’s contributors, Don Wizeman, in hopes of shutting down our pesky blog.

The story ran on Saturday, December 8, 2007. Here’s the link… http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/politics/story/275665.html

Obviously, as you can see here, their nefarious conspiracy failed miserably, and, instead, has motivated the Insider Crew and our supporters to redouble our efforts to shine the bright light of truth on the widespread corruption and dirty dealings that infect our governmental bodies and so-called civic organizations!

In our posting we closed saying, “After we have had time to properly digest and discus the Un News story, we will certainly have a follow-up for our handful of lonely readers, so if you have any further interest in this silliness, please feel free to check back.”

Since then, to our great surprise, we have received overwhelming support and encouragement from the public, and some very savvy people have generously taken it upon themselves to dig into these asinine shenanigans, and the following article, published in today’s Alternatives Magazine, details their findings…

Watchman Investigation Violates Constitutional Guarantees

By George S. James

A recent story in the Myrtle Beach Sun News identified Myrtle Beach businessman Don Wizeman as the “Watchman” of the Myrtle Beach Insider internet blog.

Wizeman’s “outing” in the story caused comment by local officials, many of whom he has criticized over the past four years. It also seemed to cause much pleasure among Sun News reporters and editors who thought they provided a real inside scoop to readers.

The problem is the paper missed the real story which is how state law and the U. S. Constitution were tramped all over by investigators whose sole goal was to obtain the Watchman’s identity.

According to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) documents associated with the investigation, two SLED investigators responded to a request for help investigating a threat to Coastal Carolina University officials. The request was made by the Coastal Carolina University Public Safety Department.

“On October 17, 2007, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) received a request from Greg Weisner, Chief of Public Safety at Coastal Carolina University, to investigate allegations of threats made against University President David DeCenzo and University Vice President Edward Dyer,” reads the SLED investigative report. “The alleged threats were generated through the Internet Web Site Myrtle Beach Insider and were authored by The Watchman.”

The case was assigned to Special Agent William J. Howsare at the direction of Lt. David Roper, according to the SLED report.

Howsare and Roper met with CCU Deputy Chief Phillip Moore and received a copy of a Police Incident Report, taken by Moore from Dyer, and a copy of an internet article titled “Morons Continue to Rule at Coastal Carolina,” authored by the Watchman.

In the article the final line said, “Where the Hell is my shotgun, my bucket of tar and bag of chicken feathers?”

Dyer, evidentally considered this final line a threat to himself, DeCenzo, CCU Foundation officials Davis Singleton, Stanleyarne Godshall, Charlie Hodge, Billy Alford and CCU public relations consultant Mary Eaddy, all of whom were mentioned in an earlier paragraph of the article.

Interestingly, CCU Foundation official Hal Holmes, also mentioned in the same paragraph of the article, was not considered to be threatened because he was not mentioned as a victim in the incident report.

This draws the first question – How can six officials be threatened by a sentence, but a seventh, included in the same context in the article, not be threatened?The Investigation or SLED Ignores The Constitution

SLED’s purpose in life is to conduct criminal investigations.

Armed with the incident report and the article, Howsare and Roper visited with 15th Circuit Senior Assistant Solicitor Burt Von Hermon, according to the report. Von Hermon determined that “no crime has occurred.”

A copy of the article and report was also provided to Lt. Mike Prodan of SLED. Prodan is a member of SLED’s Behavioral Science unit, in other words, a profiler.

According to the report, Prodan “came to the conclusion that it was merely freedom of speech by the author.” Again, it was determined no crime had occurred. Prodan did, however, “recommend obtaining the identity of The Watchman,” according to Howsare’s report.

One week after it had been determined no crime had occurred, Howsare obtained two search warrants. One was for Yahoo Custodian of Records in Sunnyvale, CA for “any and all information related to the screen name thewatchmanusa@yahoo.com. This warrant was on a County of Lexington Search Warrant form but was signed by Horry County Magistrate Bradley Mayers.

The second search warrant was to Google Legal Support, Blogger DMCA Complaints in Mountain View, CA and was on a search warrant form headed County of Horry but containing information pertinent to Lexington County. The warrant was signed by Horry County Magistrate Chris Arakas.

A third search warrant was obtained by Howsare on October 29, 2007. This warrant was for RoadRunner Director of Security in Stamford, CT. This warrant contained only Horry County information and was signed by Horry County Magistrate Gerald T. Whitley, Jr.

Each search warrant included an affidavit signed by Howsare quoting “Where the hell is my shotgun, bucket of tar and chicken feathers” and states “to secure the identity of the watchman” as the reason the property (information) is being sought.

Each warrant also states that Howsare personally appeared before each judge and swore “That there is probable cause to believe that certain property subject to seizure under the provisions of Sectiopn 17-13-140, 1976 Code of Laws of South Carolina, as amended is located on the following premises in this County.”

The problems with SLED’s actions are many.

Search warrants are supposed to be issued to obtain property when “probable cause” of a criminal act has occurred. A determination that no crime had occurred was made by solicitor Von Hermon on October 17, 2007 and no new information was uncovered after that date. The same quote that was determined to be the exercise of free speech by Lt. Prodan was used in the “reason for affiant’s belief” in the affidavits sworn to by agent Howsare.

The legal definition of probable cause is “A reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime.” In addition, “The test the court of appeals employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. U.S. v. Puerta, 982 F.2d 1297, 1300 (9th Cir. 1992).

In terms of seizure of items, probable cause merely requires that the facts available to the officer warrants a “man of reasonable caution” to conclude that certain items may be contraband or stolen property or useful as evidence of a crime. U.S. v. Dunn, 946 F.2d 615, 619 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. Denied, 112 S. Ct. 401 (1992).”

What “man of reasonable caution” would conclude that the facts available to the officer gave any indication of a crime when two conclusions had already been drawn, one by a prosecutor, that no crime had occurred?

Requesting the search warrants not only violate the above mentioned state law but also tramp all over the 4th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

The 4th Amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The 4th Amendment was ratified December 15, 1791 and has been the law of the land ever since. But, being the law of the land evidently does not prevent SLED from ignoring it when they choose.

Writing under a pen name is not a crime. Some of the same founders of the U.S. who passed the 4th Amendment used pen names in writing articles for various pamphlets and newspapers of their time.

There was no justifiable, legal basis for going forward with a search just to find out the identity of the Watchman.

An Added Problem

The answer to the search warrant to Yahoo said the user name on the requested e-mail account was “Doug Decker.” In making its response to the SLED search warrant, Yahoo cautioned that because the company offers many free services, the information contained on the accounts is not verified to be true.

In fact, it is quite easy to change the user name on a free e-mail account or to provide a totally fictitious identity when setting one up. The key is to find the IP code related to the computer that logs into the account.

Doug Decker of Pawley’s Island, SC has been a critic of failed west side airport passenger terminal project at Myrtle Beach International Airport.

He was contacted by the Sun News about being named in the SLED investigation into the identity of the Watchman. Decker vehemently denied being associated with or contributing to the Myrtle Beach Insider Blog.“I have never been associated with or contributed to Myrtle Beach Insider,” said Decker. “Every criticism I have made has been open in either a presentation by me or paper or letter with my name on it. I am not the Watchman, associated with the Watchman or a contributor to Myrtle Beach Insider.”

Decker did speculate on what local officials would like to see him discredited. “You have to wonder if all this comes from my criticism about the airport,” said Decker.

To SLED’s credit, its report did not contain Decker’s name. However, the information received from Yahoo was included with the investigation report and other information sent back to Coastal when the investigation was concluded.

Coastal leaked that information to the Sun News and the Sun News printed Decker’s name along with his denial. No independent verification to the accuracy of the information from Yahoo was performed by the reporter or the paper.

Wizeman said Decker was never associated Myrtle Beach Insider. He [Wizeman] did say that he was a contributor along with others and the Watchman did not refer to any single individual.

Even though no crime had occurred, search warrants were sought and received to identify the Watchman, according to the SLED report. The names of two people, Wizeman and Decker, were received in information responding to those warrants.

SLED traced one IP address back to Wizeman and none to Decker. SLED interviewed Wizeman in November 2007, over three weeks after it was decided no crime had occurred. They never interviewed Decker.

Wizeman admitted to having a connection to the blog, but said no threat was generated by the article nor one intended. SLED officers agreed.

The use of search warrants without evidence of a crime was not reported by the Sun News.It seems that the whole purpose of the initial police incident report and the subsequent investigation was to “out” the Watchman.

The local paper was complicit in this endeavor by printing, the results of the investigation without doing any checking of the information provided in the report and associated information.
Even worse, the paper included Decker’s name in its story even though SLED did not include him in the investigation report or, at any time, consider him to be associated with the blog.

One must also question the seriousness of the initial incident report. Can the leaders of our local university not distinguish the difference between a crime and criticism? Or is criticism of them a crime in their eyes? Have they never heard of the 1st Amendment provisions for Free Speech or the 4th Amendment provisions against Unreasonable Search and Seizure?

The whole episode makes you wonder about the priorities at Coastal Carolina University, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and The Sun News.

Here’s a link to the Alternatives Magazine article… http://www.myrtlebeachalternatives.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=79&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=205&wpage=&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1143&hn=myrtlebeachalternatives&he=.com
Obviously, the Myrtle Beach Insider Crew, especially Don Wizeman, are very grateful to the fine folks at Alternatives Magazine who researched and exposed this network of law enforcement cowboys, judicial slackers and yellow journalists.

Needless to say, we hope that these authors’ labors will cause Governor Sanford and the SLED leadership - are you listening Chief Stewart and Chief Keel - to rein in their loose cannons, and that Sanford and his minions in the State judicial system will hold these lazy, rubber-stamping judges accountable for their blatant negligence.

More on this soon! Please check back after the Holidays!

“Free speech is intended to protect the controversial, and even the outrageous, and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need any protection.” Colin Powell

Myrtle Beach Sun News and Coastal Carolina University Join Forces to Muzzle the Myrtle Beach Insider!

Welcome curious Sun News reader to the Myrtle Beach Insider Blog!

Warning: We a pretty raunchy crowd, so if you’re easily offended, please exit the Myrtle Beach Insider – Immediately!

Somehow the local Myrtle Beach fish wrapper got wind of a pending post on the Myrtle Beach Insider about the struggling Sun News constantly cooking and spinning the news, their mismanagement and other problems, so in a pre-emptive effort to discredit our little blog the Un News is publishing a story about our postings, which blasted the incompetent leadership at Coastal Carolina University and detailed some of the shady shenanigans there (See: Coastal Carolina University: The Low-lifes of Higher Education, October 3, 2007 and Morons Continue to Rule at Coastal Carolina Punyversity, October 12, 2007), and in their scurrilous attempt to intimidate and stifle the Insider’s ramblings the Un News is outing one of the Myrtle Beach Insider’s contributors, Don Wizeman.

Don, who has primarily contributed golf and tourism statistics to the Insider, has never denied contributing to our insignificant blog, and is the only member of the Insider group to admit to his association with our blog, so he is a convenient target for the Un News and CCU vindictive retaliation.

Over the four years that the Insider has been on the Web, the Un News and their foolishness, especially Liz Gilland’s ill-advised airport fiasco, the unending cooking and spinning of economic statistics and the blatant incompetence of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, have been some of the primary content providers for the Insider’s postings. Examples:

New Airport Terminal Plan – Terminal, October 16, 2005,

Welcome Lauren Miller, We’ll Miss You!, May 17, 2007

Gilland's Folly Going Far Beyond a Pathetic Fiasco!, May 14, 2007

Myrtle Beach City Council Sends Gilland’s Folly Back to Mommy!, May 23, 2007,

Chamber of Comedy Honcho Preparing Annual Excuse List, May 24, 2007,

Newspaper Headline Writers on Crack, May 26, 2007

Crack-Head Headlines 2, May 28, 2007

MyBeach Ad Campaign Bombs – Ad Agency Canned, June 1, 2007

Un News Really Lives Up to Its Name, June 3, 2007

RICO Leads New Myrtle Beach Chamber Membership Bendover, June 28, 2007,

CDC: Rare Brain Attacking Virus Found in Horry County, July 30, 2007,

Myrtle Beach Growth Summit Focuses on Continued Stupidity, August 11, 2007,

Myrtle Beach a Destination Disaster, October 22, 2007

Starting in 2003, Don had several conversations with Jerry Ceppos, Vice-President for News at Knight-Ridder, the former owner of the Un News, about management incompetence here and especially their bush league tourism reporting.

Later, in 2006 he had similar conversations with Lynn Dickerson, the Vice President of Operations of McClatchy Newspapers (the new owner of the Un News) about the same concerns. He also contacted Patrick Talamantes, McClatchy’s Chief Financial Officer, and expressed the interest of a group of investors in purchasing the Un News. Needless to say, his actions royally pissed off the bumbling Un News management.

We understand that the Un News story was initiated when Coastal’s co-president, David “3rd Place” DeCenzo ran crying like a baby with a load in his diaper to his pal Gary Wortel, the rag’s publisher and Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy’s Vice-Chairman for Membership, about the Insider’s Redneck U postings, and the CCU officials subsequently coercing the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) agents into tabling the criminal cases they were working on to instead become CCU’s errand boys to sniff out and try to intimidate the Insider crew.

Wortel is said to have sprung from his chair and vowed to, “Get ‘em,” and from what Don tells us, they’ve certainly been giving it their best shot.

With Lisa Fleisher as the reporter we doubt there will be anything even remotely resembling "fair, honest, coherent or balanced," but hey, we call it the way we see it, so we can't moan or groan about what someone else writes about any of us, and we'd certainly never, ever waste our precious law enforcement resources on personal agendas.

Don tells us that he told Fleisher that from time to time we get leads, submissions and input from employees at the Un News. Bet that info won't be in her piece.

After we have had time to properly digest and discus the Un News story, we will certainly have a follow-up for our handful of lonely readers, so if you have any further interest in this silliness, please feel free to check back.

“Experience has shown, that even under the best forms those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Thomas Jefferson

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Horry County’s Smoking Gun?

Updated: Friday, November 16, 2007, 10:44 AM

Shades of O.J. in Las Vegas, there’s some really weird shit going on in the backrooms of the Horry County law enforcement community.

People are whispering, eye contact is fleeting, fingers are being pointed, big names are being dropped and an eerie air of foreboding, that is almost palatable, is everywhere one turns, and it’s all because of a very hushed-up civil rights civil case – Southern Holdings, Inc. v. Horry County et. al.

Why is this five year old civil case, out of the almost 100 cases that Horry County is a party to (See our September 22, 2007 posting Catching Up With the Horry County Clowns), causing such a panic?

Is it because Horry County and the Horry County police defendants stand to lose $66 million dollars if the plaintiff prevails? Is it because the case involves some of the biggest names in area law enforcement? Is it because it involves possible lying to a grand jury? Is it because of doctored video and audio tapes? Is it because of the contents of a “fixer’s” black book of secrets? Is it because of a series of $1,500 bribes? Is it because of missing evidence, including a police cruiser? Is it because of allegations of forged documents? Is it because of rumored money laundering through a church? Is it because of alleged Abu Ghraib style torture? Is it because if the plaintiff wins their victory would set the stage for major criminal indictments and hard time for several highly placed officials? Is it because of all of the foregoing, or, is it just the Horry County grapevine run amuck?

When we started hearing the buzz about the Southern Holdings case, we started asking around, and everywhere we turned we got icy stares and the coldest of cold shoulders. So, is it really true that, “Where there’s a chill there’s an iceberg?”

We found the following account of the Southern Holdings matter, dated February 23, 2007, on the Internet by a 30-year old guy from Austin, TX with the screen name "Shanks," and decided to post it here as neither fact nor fiction, but rather as a talking point and a possible lead generator.

”On June 7, 2000, Horry County, SC, Sheriff’s Deputies illegally entered the home of the CEO of Southern Holdings, Inc., in a surprise raid. The only individual at the home was the CEO’s terrified eighty three year old mother.

After searching the small home for a documented four plus hours the deputies produced a property search warrant which solely listed the CEO as a sought after piece of personal property subject to seizure.

Southern Holdings, Inc., is an international company with over seventy shareholders in five countries that was valued in excess of seventeen million dollars as of June 7, 2000, by independent experts.

The Sheriff’s Deputies were in the company of and under the direction of a former member of the Southern Holding’s Board of Directors and other non-law enforcement individuals who had failed in an attempt to take over Southern Holdings, Inc., through blackmail and extortion just before June 7, 2000.

During the search, the Sheriff’s Deputies kicked in an office door and confiscated corporate records found at the home without any legitimate paperwork and without any legal authority.

This was the initial overt act in a documented series of direct and at times violent actions that were simultaneous, coordinated and part of an apparent coupe d'etat against unwitting, law abiding and peaceful corporate officers, directors, key shareholders and their families by local law enforcement personnel in three states, facilitated by planned and deliberate misuse of the FBI-NCIC system.

The illegal pursuit of the CEO in three states by personnel with three law enforcement agencies from two states involved an unprecedented type of abuse of the FBI-NCIC system by the intentionally false listing of the CEO as a fleeing felon with an accompanying Be-On-The-Lookout (BOLO) characterizing the CEO as 'Armed and Extremely Dangerous.'

Judge Sydney T. Floyd of South Carolina’s Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court, after determining in open court there was no basis for the arrest warrant, rescinded the arrest warrant on July 10, 2000.

In a separate action attorneys in North Carolina had the CEO removed from the NCIC on July 17, 2000 after it was determined there was no legal basis for the NCIC listing.

Deliberately ignoring Judge Floyd’s ruling, Horry County law enforcement personnel continued the illegal pursuit of the CEO. On August 5, 2000, on his day off and on his own time, Horry County Sheriff’s Deputy Sydney Rick Thompson (who participated in the illegal search of the CEO’s home) was following the CEO.

The CEO was in the company of a Myrtle Beach Police Officer Rodney Lail and the former long-term head of the NC State Bureau of Investigation, Haywood Starling.

On August 6, 2000, police audiotapes captured the voices of two law enforcement officers, one of whom was Deputy S. Rick Thompson, both on their day off setting up the CEO for the use of unjustifiable deadly force by on duty Horry County law enforcement officers.

These same two law enforcement officers participated in the illegal search of the CEO’s home on June 7, 2000. Police videotapes captured the results of the setup later that day as the life threatening circumstances of the arrest of the unsuspecting CEO unfolded on August 6, 2000.

Evidence in the victims’ possession includes a recently discovered videotape recorded on August 6, 2000, that captured the police, and an extortionist illegally disguised as a police officer, physically torturing the CEO of the beleaguered corporation.

The videotape also captures law enforcement officers in the background fabricating evidence against the CEO. The fabrication of the evidence was an attempt to justify a felony charge the CEO was ultimately arrested and imprisoned for after being incarcerated in handcuffs at the arrest scene for a police reported seven and a half hours.

After an eight-month delay by the state, a preliminary hearing was held. During the less then ten minute hearing, the charge was dismissed by Judge Margie B. Livingston when no probable cause was presented by the State.

One police officer on the scene of the August 6, 2000, arrest reported the corruption and illegal arrest he witnessed to his superiors. Subsequently, the police officer was fired for reporting the corruption.

The CEO was left with a partially and permanently paralyzed right hand from the torture administered at the arrest scene and captured on videotape.

Civil RICO and U.S. Code: Title 42: Section 1983 aspects of these circumstances are being litigated in SC Federal District Court.

The case has been delayed for six years by the defendant's tactics. The Defendant Horry County Police Officers appealed the Federal District Judge’s decision in favor of the Plaintiffs regarding a Summary Judgment striping the Police Defendants of their claim they were protected by police immunity.

The Defendants lost their appeal in a unanimous decision and on July 21, 2006, the case was remanded back to SC Federal District Court resulting in the Police Officers being stripped of their immunity and forcing them to face trial.

Local, state and federal law enforcement officials from offices in the geographic areas where the documented corruption occurred have refused to initiate a criminal investigation despite the overwhelming evidence warranting such an action.

Law enforcement authorities refused to initiate an investigation despite the evidence being validated and confirmed by renowned experts’ opinions.

The complaints were filed by half a dozen victims with several different law enforcement agencies with jurisdictional responsibility. The complaints documented alleged acts of extortion, blackmail, criminal violations of The Hobbs Act, U.S. Code: Title 18: Section 1030 and violations of civil rights laws.

Additional documented evidence shows that law enforcement personnel participated in the tampering of evidence, and committed obstruction of justice in cases brought before both the South Carolina Circuit Court and the Federal District Court regarding these matters.”

Here's a link to an article about this case from the Myrtle Beach Herald (the area's only "real" and "unbiased" newspaper) on November 16, 2006 - Federal Lawsuit Against County Law Enforcement Officers Will Proceed -
http://www.myrtlebeachherald.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=4799&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1072&hn=myrtlebeachherald&he=.com

Here is a very biased video that we found on YouTube that we also found interesting - Tales of Corruption in Horry County, SC, Fact or Fiction! - http://youtube.com/watch?v=zevw0L7rvSg. Horry County’s legal beagle, John Weaver (TheCid69) just added his two-cents to the comments on this posting. Here’s what he said, “Absolutely a complete lie by one of the worst and deceitful con man that I have ever crossed paths with.” Yes, we know, it should have been “con men.”

Now to add to all of this craziness, the word is that a legal watchdog group from Las Vegas, The Center for Legal Reform, with a website (http://c4lr.org/) that looks like it was designed by the KKK, the GOP or Tom Herron, has gotten involved on the plaintiff’s behalf and has allegedly spent over $300,000 on it’s investigation thus far, and will be dramatically supplementing their filings within the next two weeks.

We’ve also been told that when the top echelon of the Horry County legal departments learned of one of the plaintiff’s Freedom of Information filings the originally quoted $21 document copying fee suddenly jumped up to $2,100.

Horry County's legal Einstein, John Weaver says, “This case was settled some months ago for a total of Thirty Thousand ($30,000.00) Dollars. This information is available for perusal from public documents on file with the United States Court for the District of South Carolina. Immediately upon the case being settled, a process server, in behalf of a prior judgment creditor, served the primary individual plaintiff with a levy - effectively ending the possibility of the primary plaintiff ever receiving a dime of the money. In defending this frivolous suit over a period of more than four years, Horry County's defense counsel amassed attorney fees and costs approaching $300,000.00.”

See what we mean? Isn’t this fascinating! It’s he said, they said, so who does one believe?

Let’s wait and see if there really is a Rule 60 (b) filing!

One more very important question that the rubes and rubette on Horry County Council and County Administrator Danny “Do Nothing” Knight should be asking themselves is, “Why is Horry County paying Weaver, when he has serious capability issues, is overly confrontational, causes lawsuits, doesn’t do any legal work, habitually lies to and misleads Council and runs up millions of dollars in outside legal fees for the financially struggling County?”

What do you know about all this? Please feel free to jump in, if you’re so inclined!

In case you want to check it out for yourself, here’s the case details…

Southern Holdings v. Horry County, SC, et al
Case Number: 4:02-cv-01859-RBH and 4:2004-cv-22135
Filed: May 29, 2002 and September 7, 2004
Court: United States District Court – South Carolina District – Florence, SC
Presiding Judge: Judge R. Bryan Harwell
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights - Other Civil Rights
Cause: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” Marion Barry

Myrtle Beach a Destination Disaster

It would be a gross understatement to say that “Mr. Myrtle Beach,” deceased and sorely missed Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce leader Ashby Ward, would be “spinning in his grave” if he knew how his incompetent, and ethically devoid successor, St. Bradley Dean, with a handful of morally bankrupt good old boy assassins, in only four short years, has turned his beloved Chamber into a despicable Chamber of Corruption and Chaos.

Under Mr. Ward’s sure-handed guidance the Chamber, it’s members and the entire Myrtle Beach area flourished, basking in neighborly e’sprit de corps and double-digit tourism increases in virtually every one of his 29-years at the Chamber’s helm.

Sadly for the Myrtle Beach area, on Dean’s watch that was then and this is now, and NOW REALLY SUCKS!

Dean, with what he calls his “Kitchen Cabinet,” comprised of the usual rocket scientists the likes of Frans Mustart, Woody Crosby, Shep Guyton, Tom Herron, Leigh Meese, Wayne Gray and “Dirty” Dorothy Anderson, have in only a scant 4-years destroyed virtually everything positive that Mr. Ward worked so diligently and honorably for 29-years to build.

While other destinations continue to progress, Myrtle Beach, with Dean and his cronies bungling the marketing and screwing the members, has languished with hotel occupancy declining or, at best remaining flat, and the average daily rate falling $14-$65 behind the ADR’s of the competing destinations. Actual occupancy numbers thus far in 2007 are down anywhere from 3% to 22% depending upon the property.

The all important summer 2007 occupancy rates were again down or flat, with many of the smaller properties reporting declines in excess of 20%. Across the board ADR’s again remained flat or dropped 3-6%. For some pertinent related reading, check out our May 24, 2007 posting, “Chamber of Comedy Honcho Preparing Annual Excuse List.”

As is his standard operating procedure to grasp at any possible stat that might make him appear competent, like his 100% BS 97,000 lodging units, 14 million tourists, overly inflated “inquiries” and his convenient, yet unsubstantiated, “surveys,” Dean, in another feeble attempt to cover for his constant failures, now touts an up-tick in accommodation tax revenues, which is all just more of his usual “smoke and mirrors” misdirection.

The sad reality is that everything Dean touches is an abysmal failure, and despite all the “spinning” and “book cooking” from his flunkies, especially Myrtle Beach’s own “Fat Al” Parish wannabe, Gary Loftus, at Crooked Coastal Carolina, the dismal hotel numbers clearly evidence his inability to lead or market our floundering tourism industry.

The pride, integrity, successes, good will and concern for Chamber members, the Myrtle Beach area and South Carolina are all now, like Mr. Ward, just fond memories, sacrificed by Dean and his henchmen on their alter of corruption and unbridled greed. See our June 28, 2007 posting, RICO Leads New Myrtle Beach Chamber Membership Bendover.

Mr. Ward was all about teamwork, where Dean is all about how he can scrounge up the next “buck,” and blaming others for his inadequacies.

To be fair, Dean is just an accountant, who’s career highlight was managing the Hard Rock Café, so to expect someone with such mundane credentials to understand destination marketing, or to expect them to have the leadership qualities required to continue in Mr. Ward’s footsteps is truly a flight of absurd fantasy, and based upon Dean’s atrocious performance, one that regrettably the Myrtle Beach area is paying a very heavy price for so foolishly taking.

Sadly, this Bozo and his clown posse can’t even build a sandcastle without screwing up. Hell, they even brought in a bunch of red-robed monks, and even those guys couldn’t improve this circus’ ghastly performance.

One disillusioned Chamber Board member said, “With Ashby we were a team, with everyone having a good time, and pulling together for the common good of the entire Myrtle Beach area. Now it’s all about money, money, money. How much can we get, how fast can we get it and what hair-brained scheme can we spend it on? Its deplorable!”

Another former long-serving Board member who resigned in disgust stated, “Even when we had huge problems, like Hugo, Ashby made sure we all pulled together as a team for the common good. Brad and his crew, on the other hand, spend all of their time grubbing for money and stirring up petty intrigues and fostering divisiveness. I don’t understand it. We used to set goals, and we had fun working for them and accomplishing them, but those days are long gone. I’m very proud of my Chamber service, but I’m appalled and ashamed of today’s Chamber, and that’s why I quit the Board.”

Another Vice President of Marketing Quits after Only 5 Months

Recently the Redneck Rivera’s poster boy for tourism and marketing incompetence and the pudgy poobah of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, announced that the Chamber’s newest Vice President of Marketing, Lauren Miller, was, after only 5-months, resigning.

While Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise,” we at the Myrtle Beach Insider must sadly say, “We told you so!”

In our May 17, 2007 posting – Welcome Lauren Miller, We’ll Miss You! - we outlined precisely what a den of honky-tonk tourism twits she would be subjected to, and that she would quickly realize that she had made a monumental career blunder and swiftly depart.

To Ms. Miller’s credit, she wised-up to Dean and his posse’s incompetence and sleazy shenanigans a heck of a lot faster, than her equally unfortunate predecessors. Like the previous swinging door of predecessors, Ms. Miller, obviously refused to buy-in to Dean’s self-serving “Cash is my Jesus” agenda, and instead courageously threw his tainted Kool-Aid in his Howdy Doody puss and said, “Adios!”

On Dean’s 4-year, bush-league watch there has already been three Vice Presidents of Marketing to hit the road.

One of the few members of the Chamber’s dimwitted Advertising Committee with an IQ over 12 recently remarked, “Brad thinks nothing of playing Russian Roulette with people’s careers, and anyone foolish enough to think that there’s a future working for him will wake-up and find themselves sitting out on the curb with the homeless.”

Don’t you find all of these fall departures to be amazing coincidences? Do you see a pattern here? What’s the common denominator in all three of these marketing experts rapid exits?

The answer is obvious, the problem is Brad Dean and his simple-minded ship of fools.

Another abysmal year of Chamber bedlam, another fall and another Marketing VP exits, while we’re still stuck with the metastasizing cancer.

Brad Dean Crying Poverty While Cashing In Big Time

By the way, did we mention that in 2005 the Chamber’s mentally retarded Board led by then Chairman, Wayne Gray, shelled out a 30% raise, totaling $36,425, to the inept Dean, bringing his annual salary to $158,636, to go along with his $11,440 annual pension plan payment and his fat cat expense account.

To put Dean’s windfall in prospective, the Chamber’s budget in 2005 was only $6,248,395, with $5,212,917 coming from governmental sources, and only $929,578 coming from the Chamber membership.

The City of Myrtle Beach, on the other hand has an annual budget of $116, 996,675 – almost 19 times larger than the Chamber’s budget - and City Manager, Tom Leath’s salary is only a bit over $141,000 per year.

Horry County’s annual budget is $409,653,000 – almost 66 times larger than the Chamber’s budget - and County Administrator, Danny Knight’s annual salary is only slightly more than $142,000.

Did we mention that out of the Chamber’s $6,248,395 annual budget additional salaries and other employee benefits, excluding Dean’s gravy train, total another ridiculous $1,304,355?

That’s right, out of a budget of only $6,248,395, while Dean is simultaneously crying poverty and fleecing the Chamber at the same time, he’s blowing $1,474,431, or 25% of the Chamber budget on salaries and employee benefits.

So let’s get this straight, despite Dean’s litany of failures, the Myrtle Beach tourism industry in deep distress, and the Chamber always pleading poverty, the idiots on the Chamber’s Board think Dean deserves to be paid more than Leath and Knight for doing one-tenth of the work either one of them do, and that its just peachy to blow 25% ($1,474,431) of the Chamber’s total budget on salaries and employee benefits. Shades of Ken Lay and ENRON right here in our own backyard.

Dean’s big bucks bonanza is like paying the squeegee guy washing your windshield at the red-light more than the President of Wachovia Bank.

That’s not only insane, it’s downright criminal and the criminals are all sitting right up there on the Chamber Board!

Dean and His Henchmen Turn a Bloodsucker Loose in the Chamber Henhouse

Do you remember the “fantastic, great, brilliant” MYBeach advertising campaign that Dean and his henchmen rolled out to great fanfare in January of 2006 at the Marriott Resort?

Do you know how quickly it bombed, and how Dean and his minions scapegoated then Chamber Marketing Vice President, Theda Jackson, for its failure, when the real blame lies fully on the shoulders of Dean, Wayne Gray’s big spending Chamber Board, and the ignoramuses, like Leigh Meese, on the Chamber’s Advertising Committee. See our June 1, 2007 posting, “MyBeach Ad Campaign Bombs – Ad Agency Canned.”

Since May there has been no marketing strategy – not that there ever has been, since we prefer to fly by the seat of our pants with “Wrong Way” Dean at the stick - and in what can only be termed marketing suicide, Dean and his crew of rubes recently quietly awarded the Chamber’s precious advertising account to the biggest putz in the ad game, Scotty “Daddy’s Boy” Brandon.

That’s right the dunderhead who, with the help of Frans Mustart (See our June 16, 2007 posting, “The Destructions of the Ocean Forest Hotel and Myrtle Beach Golf Industry – Who Dunnit?”) destroyed the Myrtle Beach golf industry, resulting in nine straight years of losses (with still no relief in sight), the loss of an estimated one million annual paid rounds of golf, the closing of 23 golf courses and over 2,000 people losing their jobs, is now handling the Chamber’s ad account. Grab your ankles Myrtle Beach, because it’s going to be a very nasty night!

Now, again to be fair, Brandon, like Dean, has delusions of adequacy, and like Dean he has no business messing around in advertising or marketing. He graduated from law school, and when he couldn’t cut it in the legal field, his daddy, Cecil, who had a lifetime choke-hold on the areas most sought after license to steal, the Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday honey pot, took Scotty into the family business. Besides if the pussies that run Golf Holiday don’t have the balls to fire this catastrophic loser, then they deserve the screwing they’re getting.

To say that giving the most important marketing account in the area to the guy that eviscerated the Myrtle Beach golf industry is irresponsible and suicidal, is unquestionably the grossest of understatements.

One Golf Holiday Board member when he heard the shocking news said, “Holy cow, you’re kidding right? That’s impossible! The Brandon’s have plucked Golf Holiday to the bone, and have been sticking it to the golf industry for about 40-years, while they feathered their own nests. Now, I’d expect something dumb like this from Brad, because he’s always playing the suck-up card, but I would have hoped that somebody on the Chamber Board would have had more sense than to allow something this stupid from happening.”

Another Golf Holiday member quipped, “All you have to do to see who profits, and who gets shafted in dealing with the Brandon’s, is to compare offices, Golf Holiday operates out of a nondescript office, while the Brandon’s operate out of a palace. Every time I ride by it on the Bypass two words come to mind – rip-off. Now that the foxes are being turned loose in the Chamber’s henhouse, they’ll probably be adding a new wing onto their palace.”

To compare the poor foxes of the world to a pompous advertising pretender like Scotty Brandon is a terrible insult to the foxes, a vampire bat in the henhouse is a much more apropos description, because you can bet that, like Daddy and he have done to Golf Holiday, Junior will suck the Chamber’s coffers dry, without generating anything positive for the millions he and Dean will blow.

One very close friend of Mr. Ward summed up the Chamber’s latest incestuous marketing alliance this way, “Despite all that Cecil Brandon did to undermine him and the Chamber, Ashby was always a perfect gentleman to Cecil, and supported Cecil whenever he actually had a good idea, that others, beside Cecil, could benefit from. He told me, and others, for years, that the biggest setbacks that the Chamber’s marketing efforts ever experienced were when ad committees foolishly allowed Brandon to handle any of the Chamber’s marketing, and Brad knew that better than anyone. If Ashby were alive today I can guarantee you that the Chamber account would definitely not be in the hands of a Brandon, especially not Scott.”

Dean and Brandon Blow $225,000 for “Fun”

In what can only be termed sheer insanity, the first stupid thing Dean has already done to allow Brandon to start lining his pockets with Chamber cash, was to condone buying 20 billboards costing $11,250 each on I-95 that tell motorists how far they are from Myrtle Beach.

That’s right boys and girls, these morons are gleefully pissing away $225,000 on “mileage markers.” Yep, you heard me correctly, $11,250 “mileage markers.”

“We’re targeting the parents who were absolutely tired of hearing ‘Are we there yet!’ from the kids in the backseats,” gushed an obviously brain-dead Dean. What? Have you lost what’s left of your minimal grip on reality? Vacation decisions based upon kids whining in the backseat? That’s not only preposterous, its schizophrenic, and you’re an absolute idiot!

Blowing $225,000, “Was kind of a fun way to say, ‘Hey, we’re right here, we’re closer, and we’re just as much fun,” said a grinning Scotty Brandon as he rushed to cash the Chamber’s check.

Oh yeah, you’re right, let’s just keep on forgetting about sound research driven marketing ‘cause we’re all about “experimenting” with $225,000, and, more importantly, we’re all about “fun.” Whoopeeee!

Yes sir Mr. B, we get a real kick out of flushing $225,000 down yet another Brandon Advertising toilet.

Not only is this lame-brained farce blatantly wasteful, its kindergarten stupid advertising that Scotty says is, “Occupying our brains.” What in the hell are you talking about? Are you on Crack? $225,000 worth of Myrtle Beach Mileage Markers, what genius, what “fun!” What asses!

Shut-up and Suck it up!

So pathetic Chamber members, try and forget about the terrible realities of the Dean Debacle, as you sit there among the audience of grinning, glazed-eyed lemmings on Thursday at the Chamber’s Annual Back-Patting, Nose-Picking & BS Spinfest. Just sit there silently and choke down your $35 cold leg of capon, as Dean and his minions enlighten your small minds with what a magnificent job they are doing for you and all of the other equally clueless Chamber of Comedy members.

Forget about how your revenues and income have fallen, while your Chamber costs and Dean’s Wall Street salary have skyrocketed, because you’re damn lucky to have such enlightened, highly-paid visionaries leading your poor, ignorant souls out of the wilderness and into the glory of their collective genius.

Don’t sit there like a lump in the “cheap seats,” and worry about how your business is going to survive all of the Chamber’s failures and the ever worsening Grand Strand economic picture. Just sit there and listen to how “rosy” everything is going to be TOMORROW, and just keep on humming the theme song from Annie, and praying that the “sun really will come out tomorrow.”

Just because, the hype of MYBeach and all of other BS, pie-in-the-sky promises you’ve swallowed a thousand times before, have all turned out to be bold-faced lies, don’t panic, because this time it really is “going to be different.” This time St. Bradley, his rat pack and Scotty Brandon really are going to lead you down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and “the land of milk and honey,” so shut the hell up, pay your jacked-up Chamber dues and surcharges and drink your damn Kool-Aid!

“Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid.” John Wayne

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Morons Continue to Rule at Coastal Carolina Punyversity

Just when you think that the idiots at Redneck U couldn't be more backwoods, insane and corrupt they outdo themselves by instigating an even bigger clusterf%#k than any of their previous chicanery.

Yes, lonely reader despite a verbal agreement a week ago to extend the Coastal Arena group's lease until March of 2008, and to issue a joint news release announcing that, the crooked, back-stabbing mouth breathers at Redneck U instead voided the lease with the Coastal Arena group.

In a move that one can only called blatantly idiotic, considering the fact that the arena group has a $54 million dollar commitment in-hand from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build the sorely needed facility at Coastal, instead these morons summarily sentenced Coastal to permanent local yokel status, because their small-minded actions have now assured that Redneck U will certainly remain the same backwater wannabe university it is for years to come.

That’s right, Redneck U’s shady administration, Board of Trustees and the dirty dealers on the Education Foundation collectively pissed on the legs and heads of not only the arena group, their supporters and sponsors, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the City of Conway, Horry County, U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim Clyburn, U.S. Representative John Spratt, Coastal’s head basketball coaches, Cliff Ellis and Alan LeForce, the entire Coastal Athletic Department and the floundering Myrtle Beach area tourism industry as well.

Their stupidity also amounts to them taking a major dump on the alumni and, more importantly, the hapless students, who will, thanks to this pack of retarded rats, never have an arena, and will continue to languish in the basement of indoor college athletics, instead of moving up to the Southern Conference.

In what has disgustingly been the norm for eons in Horry County, the slimeballs at Redneck U, held a couple of clandestine meetings earlier this week, where they mapped out their insidious plan to drive their self-serving stake into the arena’s heart, along with orchestrating their media manipulation strategy to cover their miserable asses.

Inside sources say that the ring leaders of this despicable conspiracy were all the usual suspects including Redneck U’s President, David “3rd Place” DeCenzo, Executive Vice President, “Backdoor” Eddie Dyer, Education Foundation President and Executive Director, “Dirty” David Singleton and Stanley “What Money” Godshall, nutzo Foundation member “Charlie “Leatherface” Hodge, integrity challenged Burroughs & Chapin Board member and Foundation Board member, Hal Holmes, everybody’s pal and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Billy “You’re the Greatest” Alford and of course Redneck U’s crack new media mouthpiece and long-time B&C flunky, “Typhoid Mary” Eaddy.

Question: Is anyone surprised to find the bloody fingerprints of B&C all over these dirty dealing?

The ethically challenged Eaddy deserves the Benedict Arnold Award for pocketing thousands of dollars from the arena group as their bungling PR person, and then, after they wised up and canned her, quickly becoming one of the ringleaders in Coastal's arena conspiracy, and joyfully made the media announcement of Redneck U's treachery after the rigged vote. What a gal!

Commenting on Coastal's reneging on their agreement to move forward with the arena group, and to work together to fund Coastal's bungling of the funding of the arena practice facilities one campus wag said, “You have to have really good kidneys to serve on any Boards or Committees here, because if you leave to go take a leak, when you come back there be blood all over your chair, and it will be yours!”

Now get this, the fix was so "in" that these dirty bastards didn’t even allow the arena group to utter a single word, much less to update the Coastal rabble on the arena’s current status and positive financial achievements. Instead, as prearranged, they went into so-called “executive session,” in an effort to continue their snow job on the media and the public.

After they thought a reasonable amount of time had passed to con the public and media into believing that they were actually doing something, the rats emerged and, as planned, they summarily voided the arena group’s lease, immediately adjourned and scurried back to their respective subterranean burrows.

One long-serving faculty member was overheard saying, “Of course the fix was in. It’s always in, and it always will be in. These guys don’t want anything that might interfere with their little Hicksville agendas. John (Gandy) and his team were fools to think that this crowd could ever have any vision, e’sprit de corps or concerns about anything but themselves. To say that this was truly a heartbreaking and disgusting mistake, would be a huge understatement.”

Where the Hell is my shotgun, bucket of tar and bag of chicken feathers?

“Remember, Mr. Gandy, when someone stabs you in the back, you are walking ahead of him.” Arabic Proverb

And so it continues to pathetically go on the Redneck Riviera!

Coastal Carolina University: The Low-lifes of Higher Education

Updated: 10:11 AM, Thursday, October 4, 2007

I saw an ad in the local fish wrapper that a local production of Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” is being staged at Redneck U a.k.a. Coastal Carolina University, and with the sleazy way the ignorant mouth-breathing peckerwoods in Coastal’s administration, and on its Board of Trustees and Education Foundation operate, I was struck by just how true it is that life really does imitate art! Sadly, in this case, it’s really, really bad art.

Reckless spending, paying a so-called consultant $1 million dollars to print stuff off of the Internet, leasing one of the crappyest golf courses on the East Coast with an annual lease equaling about $20,000 per student per year, dirty dealings on student housing, highly suspect financial shenanigans by administrators and board members and the disgusting attempts to derail the Coastal arena and Redneck U is unquestionably the higher education haven for self-serving low-lifes.

Did I mention the FBI is investigating this rat pack for shady contracting? Maybe the Feds will give us a discount since they're already working on other cases in Horry County.

While Senator Lindsey Graham, U.S. Representatives John Spratt and Jim Clyburn, Horry County Council and the City of Conway have, and are, all enthusiastically supporting and doing everything they possibly can to make the Coastal Carolina arena a reality, the pea-brained, backwoods bumpkins in Coastal’s administration, and on the Board of Trustees and the Education Foundation have done every contemptible thing they could possibly conjure up to sabotage the arena opportunity.

Redneck U is probably the only institution of higher learning where the students have higher IQs than the leadership. Since its founding its administration and the leadership of the Board of Trustees and Education Foundation have continually been controlled by a slimy pack of small-minded, self-serving nincompoops who’ve lacked the talent to even run a Cub Scout meeting, and the current crop of rubes is without a doubt the worst yet.

Redneck U’s administration is led by two certified losers, their President, David “3rd Place” DeCenzo and the Executive Vice President, “Backdoor” Eddie Dyer.

To call DeCenzo a de facto president is being extremely generous since the University's first and second choices to replace former president and unrepentant wastrel, Ron Ingle, both told Coastal’s Board of Trustees to take their job and shove it.

Then when the Board of Trustees finally gave up and said something along the lines of, “Listen, it's obvious that real educators are wise to us, and won't give us the time of day, so let's just give the damn job to Dave,” Dyer went boo-hooing to a couple of his hayseed cronies on the Board and coerced them into running a backdoor power play to steal the job for himself. Dyer and his slimy henchmen’s end run failed miserably, and DeCenzo got the job. The end result being that these two clowns hate each other, and are constantly doing everything and anything they can to slit each other's throat.

As disgusting as these kinds of nefarious dirty dealings are, they are, in fact, the norm among the so-called civic and governmental entities here on the Redneck Riviera, but the Coastal rabble take the cake in the Redneck Rivera’s “Screw your buddy” agendas, because their trashy double-dealings negatively impact what little positive image the university may enjoy, and, more importantly, they undermine the quality of education and the college experience for the students.

The Coastal Cul-de-sac

Someone once said that boards and committees are cul-de-sacs where good ideas go to die, and the Redneck Riviera is without a doubt the unchallenged graveyard of good ideas, and the fertility clinic of moronic ideas – like pissing away $225,000 on “cute” billboards on I-95, and the pathetic “MyBeach” advertising bomb – and Redneck U is the home church of idiots with no integrity and patently bad ideas.

A couple of years ago a nice young fellow by the name of David Despain approached some local businessmen about building an arena to host sports and entertainment events here.

The locals saw this idea as an opportunity to help Coastal Carolina University move from a pretender to an actual university with the potential of becoming part of the Southern Conference. The group embraced Despain's idea and began working hard to make the arena a reality.

Almost immediately, the local double-knit, backstabbing sharks, including Burroughs & Chapin and the Un News began circling the arena group.

Ron Ingle, B&C’s pocket monkey immediately summoned Despain to his office for a meeting. When Despain arrived he was surprised find Ingle had some of his handlers from B&C waiting for him. At that meeting Ingle and his B&C handlers told Despain that his group, if they wanted to be successful in their effort to build an arena at Coastal, would have to…

1. Build a flyover from the arena to B&C’s property across Highway 501.

2. Give B&C the arena parking concession.

3. Give B&C’s Myrtle Beach Trips the arena booking concession, and

4. Book all out-of-town teams, visitors, etc. in B&C related properties.

To his credit, Despain told Ingle and his B&C cronies to stick their extortion where the sun don't shine.

From that point on, Ingle, his flunkies on the Coastal Boards, B&C, the Un News and the rest of usual seedy suspects began their despicable campaign to abort the arena plan.

In a futile effort to soothe Ingle’s bruised ego the arena group, despite their better judgment, agreed to retain the areas most prolific campaign also ran, Mary Eddy, as their PR person, which, as is usual with “Typhoid” Mary, proved to be a big mistake and a waste of the groups funds, as is evidenced by the fact that on Eddy’s watch the Un News did a sleazy smear campaign on Despain resulting in local politicians being misled and Despain having his leadership role diminished. Welcome to the Redneck Riviera Mr. Despain.

Then, as the arena group was working hard to recruit investors and obtain sponsors, the ass-heads at Redneck U, in their usual infinite wisdom and weird love of sniffing footballer jocks, decided to build a field house, which directly completed with and negatively impacted the arena group’s funding efforts and timetable.

While the Redneck U mouth-breathers were doing their dirty deeds Horry County Council and the City of Conway were working hard to make the arena a reality.

Along with “Big Time” Ronnie, the first pompous ass to show his colors on the arena was some ambulance chaser named Charlie Hodge, who was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Just like every two-bit shyster this jerk strutted around like a bantam rooster crowing about how “smart” he was to anyone dumb enough to listen. “Every homeowner’s association has a Charlie Hodge,” one Board member said. “You know the type, a self important jerk with all of the answers who loves to run his mouth. The problem with old Charlie is, he doesn’t know the questions, much less when to shut-up.”

“I really don’t know why Charlie has this vendetta against John Gandy (one of the arena group’s principals) and the arena,” commented another insider, “but he sure made a lot of folks very uncomfortable with his conduct. Thank goodness he’s no longer Chairman.”

During Hodge’s tenure, Ingle reneged on his agreement for Coastal to pay for the rerouting of University Drive, then lied about it, which resulted in a million dollar surprise for the trusting, make that foolish, arena group. The delay caused by Ingle’s treachery provided Hodge and his gang with much sought after “red meat,” as well as additional time to escalate their attacks.

Unfortunately for the arena group, Hodge’s replacement, Billy Alford, wasn’t much better, and the arena group shouldn’t have expected him to be. After all, Alford is the guy responsible for sticking the community and Coastal with Gary Loftus.

One local mover and shaker said in describing Alford, “Billy’s is probably the best con man in town. He lathers on the compliments while playing up his ‘I’m just a country boy’ act, and everybody falls for it hook, line and sinker. You can bet that when the shit hits the fan Billy will always come out as clean as Colonel Sanders, while everyone else will need to be hosed down.”

Another life long Conway resident said, “If the arena backers think Billy Alford is their friend, then I’ve got a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn for them.”

The latest cracker obstructionists to show their ignorance by piling on and trying to thwart the arena project are the new prez of Redneck U’s Education Foundation, David Singleton, who’s claim to fame is that he married some ex-Governor’s daughter, and a resident dimwit named Stanley Godshall, the Foundation’s ethically challenged Executive Director.

While the afore mentioned mob of miscreants have been taking every cheap shot they could, especially “Backdoor” Eddie Dyer, in their relentless campaign to sink the arena, the arena backers kept on working to make the arena a reality, when most folks would have long ago told Coastal to stick the arena up their collective asses.

One would have thought that when one of America’s top basketball coaches, Cliff Ellis, signed on as Coastal’s new basketball coach, the evildoers would have backed off from their vile agenda and supported the Coach’s agenda, but not that petty pack of rats.

Even when the arena group went to Washington and garnered the support of Lindsey Graham and John Spratt, the backstabbers continued to slash away.

Despite Redneck U having a signed agreement clearly stating that the arena group was only responsible for providing a shell for the arena’s practice facility, and that Coastal bears sole responsibility for its completion, the dirty saboteurs lied and told the local fish wrapper that the arena group was reneging on their agreement, and the chumps on the Un News editorial board fell for their bullshit and published an erroneous and snide editorial attacking the arena group.

One of the most recent example of exactly how devoid of even a modicum of ethics, morals, integrity and honor this gang of cut-throats is occurred when both sides agreed “not to talk to the media,” and that very same day “Backdoor” Eddie and “Shady” Sam Godshall were both continuing their efforts to undermine the arena group by feeding the Un News another pack of lies, which, as usual they blindly printed like the gullible small-timers they are.

I think that it would be a good idea if, like real schools, the peckerwood administration could read, but apparently they can't. They missed the practice facility details, or just lied about it. Now they say that the arena group doesn't have a title sponsor, when YRT2, a Charlotte based technology company, signed on last year to great fanfare. I guess these hayseed were out behind the barn visiting their sheep.

A prime example of the mentally challenged goobers they have serving on the boards is Franklin Blanton who after learning that the arena group had their financing in place, and were ready to move forward told the Un News, "I'm very concerned about the delay." What about the FBI investigation you moron?

Throw these retards out!

So what now?

Here’s what I’m hoping will happen….

◊ That Gandy and his partners will pull the arena rabbit out of their collective hat, and with their financing in-place it appears they have, if they can get past the saboteurs that is.

◊ That the ass-heads at Coastal and the Un News will be forced to eat tons of foul-tasting and humiliating crow.

◊ That the kids and coaches at Coastal will get the first-class arena they and the Myrtle Beach area needs and deserves.

◊ That the backstabbing saboteurs will get their asses kicked out the door, never to set foot on the campus again, much less to ever be allowed inside the arena itself, and that none of them will ever be asked to serve on another board or committee for the rest of their miserable lives.

◊ That Coastal will get into the Southern Conference and win many championships under Coach Ellis.

◊ That the arena will generate millions of dollars in tourism revenues for the Myrtle Beach area.

◊ That Horry County and Conway will reap tremendous benefits for their vision and support of the arena.

◊ That locals and visitors alike will enjoy world-class sports, entertainment and other fun events in the arena for many years to come.

◊ That Mr. Despain will receive the recognition and respect he so richly deserves.

◊ And finally, that the arena investors make millions and receive proper recognition for their vision, courage and perseverance.

So, this time, that’s how I hope it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.” Thucydides

Catching Up With the Horry County Clowns

Greetings lonely reader!

I'm back from my three-week vacation rested and ready to hop back in to the frying pan.

During my hiatus, I took a few days with my wife to fly across the pond for a few days, to follow Horry County Council Chairman, Liz Gilland, and the other NESA freeloaders on their pretend economic development junket to Ireland, Germany and Paris, which culminated in a one-a hour meeting about bogus pie-in-the-sky flights from Germany to the Redneck Riviera.

For more on this sleazy fun-filled taxpayer paid junket, see… http://fitsnews.com/2007/09/19/fitsnews-exclusive-hugh-yanceys-european-vacation/)

FYI: While Gilland, Saint Bradley Dean, the portly poobah of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, and the local media hacks were jubilantly touting the “flights of fantasy” from Germany, the local business community were all shaking their heads in disgust, because they remember former Myrtle Beach Airport Director, Pete Winters, floating the exact same hot air filled lead balloon, and its failure, way back in 1996, when the airline industry was flourishing. Sadly, Gilland’s lame reincarnation of Winters’ German pipe dream can’t even pass the laugh test today.

Upon returning to the Redneck Riviera a couple of days ago, I began digging through the pile of back issues of the local fish wrapper, and catching up on the latest Grand Strand insanity with my fellow curmudgeons and newsies at Eggs Up.

After quickly eliminating the rag’s usual fare of two day old news; whose cats had litters; what “big spender” civic groups had so generously forked over a few embarrassingly pitiful crumbs to area charities and the standard potpourri of corn pone household tips and pallet wrenching recipes, which comprise 95% of the fish wrapper’s daily fodder, I believe I'm ready to pick up from were I left off.

First, I’m happy to report that The Myrtle Beach Insider is receiving rather odd e-mails from an amusing little fellow by the name of “John Weaver” with the e-mail address thecid69@hotmail.com.

Now we’re not sure if this is Horry County’s legal beagle, John “The Weasel” Weaver, but since this clown has been making pathetic attempts to intimidate us, and because he has the bad taste to have “69” in his e-mail address, we’re inclined to think it might very well be him, which can only mean that we’re right on the money with the content of our postings, and that we’re airing some dirty laundry that he and his cronies obviously don’t like us hanging out in public.

It goes without saying that e-mails from clowns like thecid69@hotmail.com gives us encouragement and motivation to persevere in our small efforts to shine some sorely needed light into the Horry County rat holes.

Here's an update on some of the issues of interest:

Gilland's Folly: The Myrtle Beach airport story got a lot more interesting as the investigative audit team from the Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Department of Transportation arrived on the Grand Strand as predicted in our previous August 17, 2007 posting, and stayed longer than expected.

The audit team was originally scheduled to go from Myrtle Beach to the Atlanta Regional Office of the FAA to play “follow the money” with Horry County’s pal and potential co-defendant, FAA District Manager Scott Seritt. Instead, the Inspector General dispatched a second team of auditors to Atlanta, while the original team stayed in Myrtle Beach to gather more evidence.

Rumor has it that “The Weasel” is trying to retain Ken Moss to represent him and the rest of the currently unindicted co-conspirators.

It is also our understanding that Gilland's Folly will be the featured scam before a Congressional committee in November. The committee is investigating fraud and other nefarious deeds relating to questionable and criminal activities at the FAA, and at the Myrtle Beach airport in particular.

Sources say that when Saint Bradley Dean heard the news of the Congressional investigation he immediately instructed his minions at the Chamber of Comedy to scurry out and spread the word to their media flunkies that, "Myrtle Beach is going be on national TV, which will certainly increase area tourism by at least 50%."

When asked about who watches CSPAN, and why anyone in their right mind would be trumpeting a scandal, Dean is said to have giggled and gushed, “Who cares, we’re gonna be on national TV, Yee Haw!” More on the Chamber of Comedy soon.

On the brighter side of this mess, the new Eastside terminal expansion is beginning to move forward, and the manly men on Horry County Council wisely and courageously voted 9 to 3 to officially do away with the ludicrous second runway stupidity.

However, concerns are being raised about whether or not those working on the expansion will be able to navigate around Howard “Propeller Boy” Barnard’s big head.

On a brief personal note, we'd like to extend our wishes for a speedy recovery to “Propeller Boy,” because along with his swelled head, he also recently sustained injuries to both of his arms and shoulders when he got too carried away patting himself on the back. We’re all pulling for you Howie!

Horry County’s Legal Tsunami: Holy Mackerel, just when you thought things couldn't get any more insane, Horry County's can of legal worms just keeps getting wormier and slimier, with no lid in sight.

To add to the County's already overflowing docket of misdeeds (which was touched upon in our August 17, 2007 posting), during my hiatus the situation has unbelievably gone from bad to “can you believe this shit?”

Cases in point…

The outlawed casino boat operators are suing the County, and there’s a lot of talk about the highly suspect backdoor boogaloos going on between “The Weasel” and the casino boat's svelte fashion plate, media mouthpiece and political flack, Tom “The Windbag” Herron.

In the $200 million Cricket Cove case the plaintiffs, in a "good faith" effort to work out a settlement with the County, attempted to set up a meeting between them and members of County Council, but, as usual, “The Weasel” stuck his snout in, and screwed the pooch by dashing off yet another of his nasty signature e-mails to members of Council ordering them NOT to meet with the Cricket Cove people.

On a positive note, again the 9 manly men on Horry County Council finally had the cajones to vote 9 to 3 to remove all of the illegal gates currently blocking public roads in subdivisions like Myrtle Trace and Forest Lakes. Of course, their long overdue action caused the “Gate Nazis” in Myrtle Trace and Forest Lakes to file a lawsuit and petitions for injunctions against the County to keep their illegal private gates up on the Horry County taxpayers’ public roads.

In a move that would make any competent attorney puke, “The Weasel” didn’t even attempt to challenge the injunctions, so the Court granted them, and now the County will continue to have private gates blocking public roads until the cases are adjudicated at some distant date in the future. Not to mention the thousands of dollars in legal fees the County will have to fork over.

Why didn’t “The Weasel” defend against the injunctions you ask? Was Ken Moss the “Gate Nazis’” attorney? No one knows why, but hey, what do you expect when you hire a guy that got his law degree from Bubba’s Bait Shop & School of Law?

The County's ethically and morally challenged Public Safety Department has, in essence, become Horry County’s “Crime Central,” as every day more and more illegal shenanigans, like this one: http://media.myrtlebeachonline.com/smedia/2007/09/19/09/clardy_-_070914_-_complaint.source.prod_affiliate.78.pdf, come to light. More on Horry County Public Safety soon.

Dumping Danny “Do Nothing” Knight: Sorry, no good news to report on this front as yet, but things are certainly stirring. As of this posting, however, he's still busily acting busy.

“I don't know jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.” Will Rogers

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Worley and Prince Screw the Pooch While Horry Burns

Just when we thought there was finally some hope on the horizon for cleaning up the governmental abortion that is Horry County government, Councilmen Harold Worley and Paul Prince, “screwed the pooch,” and performed a public “suck-up” and “ass-kissing” of Horry County’s ineffective and incompetent administrator, Danny “Do Nothing” Knight, and in doing so derailed the chances of ending what many are calling “The Cluster F%#k in Conway.”

Thanks to these two morons, a critical opportunity to finally purge the nepotism, meddling, incompetence and corruption, which has so incessantly permeated Horry County government since Liz Gilland picked up the Chairman's gavel, was allowed to slip by at the last Horry County Council session.

While the rest of “The Boys” on Council sat with disgusted looks on their faces, these two schmucks “brown-nosed” Knight to the point they had to use snorkels to enable them to breathe.

While we expect “Pathetic” Paul to be clueless and to ramble incoherently on like a drunken sailor, we had hoped for more from Worley, especially after his handling of the casino boat issue.

Everyone not only hoped that Worley would support the removal of Danny Knight, upon whose watch all of the despicable goings on in Horry County government have occurred, but would actually be one of the leaders in Knight's long overdue removal.

Alas, the hopes of purging the rampant mismanagement and corruption from Horry County government were again dashed because of these two babbling and self-important ass-heads.

Legal Problems Threaten to Bankrupt Horry County

Currently, Horry County is in the process of defending close to 70 lawsuits, one of which relates to interference and lying by County staff resulting in the failure of the Cricket Cove development in Little River. The wronged developer is rightfully seeking damages in excess of $200 million dollars, and, according to area legal minds, the County will probably lose the case.

One prominent area attorney said, “The plaintiff’s counsel, Ken Moss, was a former attorney for Horry County, so he knows where all of the dirty laundry is stored, and how to air it. Combine that with the fact that Kenny always makes County Attorney, John Weaver, look like a legal retard, and I would expect that the County Treasurer will be stroking a gigantic check to the plaintiff in the very near future.”

A Federal racial harassment/discrimination lawsuit has been filed against the County’s Infrastructure and Regulation Division Director, Steve Gosnell – the same guy who was suspended from his job in 2003 for diddling with one of his employees.

Rumors of lawsuits against two other County Division heads are swirling all over the County. One is an extremely disgusting and highly volatile sexual harassment lawsuit, which, if the charges bear out should result in a subsequent criminal case, with prison time on the table.

The other potential cases involve County Administration Division head, Anne Wright, who one courthouse wag calls, “A bad hairdo escapee from the 1950’s, who I describe as being clueless in Conway.” Wright a.k.a. “The Dragon Lady” is unquestionably the County’s top meddler and disruptor.

“Anne is so mean, even Michael Vick and his posse are afraid to get into her kennel,” continued another laughing bystander.

She has harassed and driven off several talented department heads, and has other key staffers looking for the exit. Her latest sleaze involves her “without cause” firing of the hard working and conscientious director of the Horry County Museum, so that Wright can replace her with one of her own personal pals. Makes you wonder what kind of quid pro quo this nepotism will cost the County don't it?

How about our illustrious leader, Loony Liz Gilland’s ongoing legal peccadilloes?

According to the South Carolina Ethics Commission’s Case No. C2005-032, “On December 5, 2004 the State Ethics Commission issued a Decision and Order against Elizabeth D. Gilland, Chairperson of the Horry County council. It was further ordered, pursuant to Section 8-13-320 (14) (Supp. 2002), that a Judgment be entered against Respondent Elizabeth D. Gilland and that the Clerk of Court of the County in which Respondent Elizabeth D. Gilland was last known to reside enter the Order in its Judgment Rolls.” Since then two other ethics complaints have been filed against Gilland, and are under investigation. If both of the pending complaints are proven valid, Gilland could face a grand jury.

While Gilland’s principal co-conspirator on her ill advised, ill-fated and stupid westside airport terminal fiasco, best known as “Gilland’s Folly,” the Myrtle Beach Un News, continues to quash any negative publicity relating to the criminality involved in the airport malfeasance, a full blown FAA/DOT/FBI investigation - with rumored indictments of Gilland, Knight, Weaver, County airport czar, Bob Kemp and the FAA’s District Manager in Atlanta, Scott Seritt – steamrolls on.

Already there are two DOT Inspector General “Demands for Documents” relating to the ongoing investigation into the possibilities of falsifications, fraud and profiteering on the westside debacle sitting on Weaver's desk in Conway.

To add to the County’s mountain of airport related legal issues, a full audit team, dispatched from Seattle, WA by the United States Department of Transportation Inspector General, is expected to setup shop here next week.

One case in particular best illustrates precisely how ass backwards the County's priorities are.

The case involves the highly questionable firing of a volunteer fireman - only in Horry County can you fire a volunteer? The fireman is suing the county for a piddly sum amounting to less than $10,000, and wants to be reinstated. Obviously, this is a case that should be quickly settled without wasting any valuable time or County assets on it, but because Weaver's nemesis, Ken Moss, is the fireman's attorney, Weaver has stubbornly and stupidly sworn to personally fight this case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Those in attendance at the last County Council session are still buzzing about how Weaver made a complete ass out of himself over this nickel ‘n dime case.

One Council regular said, “Man you should've seen Weaver. He went absolutely berserk. His face was blood red, the veins were popping out of his neck, and he was spitting and sputtering like a ruptured boiler on an old steam locomotive. Apparently Kenny Moss really knows how to push Weaver's buttons, because John totally lost it, and really showed himself to the Council, media and the public as the arrogant, egotistical and vindictive SOB we all know him to be. Everyone’s still talking about his performance.”

So let's all thank Worley and Prince for their self-serving ignorance, and for being the clowns responsible for the continuation of “The Cluster F%#k in Conway.”

“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.” Bess Myerson

One more thing...

How in the Hell could County Councilman Marion Foxworth be so damn dirt dog stupid as to nominate that smart-assed stuffed suit Don Wiseman for reappointment to the County's important A-TAX Committee?

This is the bastard who organized and ran Myrtle Beach Forward, which is the group of big hoteliers that met secretly and then morphed into the Myrtle Beach Lodging Marketing Co-op, and created the slimy $1 and 1% add-ons, that Saint Bradly Dean, Frans Mustart, Woody Crosby and the rest of those scumbags at the Chamber of Comedy are illegally trying to screw out of the Chamber's unsuspecting membership.

To add insult to this disgusting nomination County Council unanimously approved Wiseman's reappointment. Talk about idiots putting the fox in the hen house - this is insane!

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Horry County Council: Will “The Boys” Keep Their Balls?

At tonight's Horry County Council meeting its not what’s on the agenda, but what Loony Liz and The Weasel have refused to put on the agenda, and what dead issues they are going to try and resurrect.

Again, Horry County Chairman, Liz Gilland, who has sworn a solemn oath to never allow the illegal gates on the County roads in Myrtle Trace to come down, has again refused to place the nefarious issue on Council’s agenda.

Gilland, who’s faltering political life depends upon the block vote she gets from Myrtle Trace, has even gone so far as to guarantee in a letter to Myrtle Trace homeowners that the illegal Myrtle Trace gates will not come down.

For months, Gilland, and her number one partner in crimes against the citizenry, John “The Weasel” Weaver, have refused to put their Myrtle Trace criminality on Council’s agenda. While they know that allowing any gates on public roads is illegal, these clowns refuse to accept that rules and laws apply to them.

Gilland and Weaver know that if the gates come before the right-thinkers on Council, “Gilland’s Gates” will be summarily removed. So sandbagging, misdirection, procrastination and arrogance are the dirty duo’s only options in their feeble attempt to delay yet another stinging defeat for yet another of their slimy backroom deals.

After what was another of Gilland and Weaver’s illegal escapades - when they illegally cancelled County Council sessions so that no County business would be conducted while the meddlesome Gilland was on vacation - the sane members of Council (Harold Worley, Marion Foxworth, Brent Schultz, Paul Prince, Carl Schwartzkoph, Kevin Hardee, Al Allen and Mike Ryan), who have been dubbed “The Boys,” called for a special County Council session on June 26th to keep Loony Liz’s self-serving edict, and Weaver’s legal incompetence, from causing Council to break South Carolina law.

At the June 26th session, which was boycotted by Gilland’s Three Stooges, James Frazier, Bob Grabowski and Howard Barnard, “The Boys” rightfully allowed other developers to proceed with their requests for additional private gates on County roads. Like “Gilland’s Gates” at Myrtle Trace, the proposed Waterford and Stonebridge gates will prevent the public from using County roads, and that is patently illegal.

To add to her bungling and misguided mismanagement, Gilland is trying to resurrect another one of her backroom deals. This one is with the shady casino boat operators.

She wants to allow these unregulated gaming operations to operate unfettered forever, while the current provisions, instituted by Councilman Worley, collect the appropriate fees and taxes, and, more importantly, allows the South Carolina Department of Revenue to shut these characters down if they fail to pay. Well done gentlemen!

While the Three Stooges will probably allow Mama Gilland to continue making them her bitches, hopefully, Mr. Worley and rest of The Boys will “Man Up, Stand Up” and “Shut Down” Gilland’s incessant “revisiting” BS and her constant dirty dealing.

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” James Bryant Conant

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Myrtle Beach Growth Summit Focuses on Continued Stupidity

On Friday, August 10, 2007, the local fish wrapper, the Myrtle Beach Sun News, along with the area’s higher education wannabe, Coastal Carolina Loonyversity of Shady Dealings, sponsored their 6th installment of their backwater snooze-fest, which they laughingly dubbed the Growth Summit.

This gathering of usual cheap-suited suspects was again held in the dirty, dingy and depressing bat cave they call the auditorium at Coastal’s Wall School of Graft & Corruption at 1:30 PM.

That’s right, these self-anointed “visionaries,” scheduled a meeting on a Friday afternoon on a busy summer weekend on gridlocked Highway 501. To add to the torture of anyone dumb enough to attend, these brain-dead rocket scientists brilliantly scheduled the adjournment of their hot-air chinwag to precisely coincide with the daily rush hour. Now, doesn’t that speak volumes about the “vision” of these morons?

One must remember that this is the same bunch of so-called business and community lemmings who for 12-years relied on that criminal lard-bucket, Al Parish, to advise their incompetent asses on our area's future. Now the same clan of dimwitted nabobs are relying on has-been motel manager and pompous windbag, Gary "The Freeloader" Loftus, for the same clueless "book-cooking" BS as the fat man in the red suit conjured up.

Now if all of the foregoing lunacy isn’t enough of this gang’s bungling for you, then how about this: Their lead speaker was a real estate consultant and right-wing political vagabond from Newport News, VA. Barry DuVal.

Note: The Myrtle Beach area is known to be queer for consultant’s named “Barry.” By the way, anybody seen our old pal Barry Landreth lately?

A former Mayor and Virginia Secretary of Commerce, DuVal came here to shill for the resurrection of the Gilland’s Airport Folly. That’s right, another backdoor hump by those sore losing cry babies at the Sun News as they continued their pathetic and obsessive fixation on pissing away $300 million dollars of the taxpayer's money on a Taj Mahal to governmental and the Sun News' self-serving arrogance.

While no one with an IQ over 25 supports their asinine obsession, these condescending twits won’t abandon their long-lost cause. Obviously, the “Fantasy Island Bug” (See CDC: Rare Brain Attacking Virus Found in Horry County posting of Monday, July 30, 2007 below) has devoured more of their pitiful little brains than we thought.

What’s more, the Un News touted DuVal as a regional cooperation guru, and cited his stint on the board of the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance as his shining credential in that area. The fact is, the HREDA, along with it’s other identities (Hampton Roads Partnership and Forward Hampton Roads) were all ill-conceived and ill-fated multi-million dollar co-op marketing efforts in Tidewater, Virginia that, while still in existence, bombed like a 2-ton turd in the Dunes Club swimming pool on the 4th of July.

Now, ain’t that the Summit of Stupidity?

“The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.” Oscar Wilde

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

CDC: Rare Brain Attacking Virus Found in Horry County

In what can only be described as a medical abomination, the South Carolina branch of the Centers for Disease Control today confirmed that they have found the most virulent strain of the insidious brain boring Villechaize Virus, commonly called the “Fantasy Island Bug,” in the area, and that is has infected the brains of several Horry County officials and the upper management of the Myrtle Beach Sun News, along with two of the newspaper’s reporters.

At a hastily called press conference, held in one of the empty AvCraft Aviation hangers at Kemp Gilland International Airport, the CDC’s leading neurovirologist, Dr. Ricardo Roarke, described the Villechaize Virus, as “the rarest of the brain boring viruses know to science. In fact, until now there has only been two other documented infestations in the medical archives. The first occurred in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 but was confined to two eccentric brothers well known for their excessive use of hallucinogens. The second, and last outbreak, until now that is, occurred on an isolated Pacific island in January of 1978.”

Until the discovery of the virus in the brains of the Horry County officials and the newspaper staff, scientists believed that they had eradicated all strains in 1984. “Obviously, we’re shocked and appalled at this sad re-infestation, and are working with the poor souls at the County and Sun News to salvage what’s left of their emaciated craniums,” Dr. Roarke continued.

“To date, the Villechaize Virus has been found in what’s left of the gray matter of at least six County officials, along with the entire editorial board of the Sun News, its publisher, editors and two hapless reporters,” reported Dr. Herve Montalban, the CDC’s Neuro-Viral Quarantine Team leader.

Along with the Sun News management and staff, the CDC officials have confirmed that the virus has also penetrated the skulls of Horry County Council Chairman Liz Gilland, County Attorney, John “The Weasel” Weaver, County Airport Director, Bob “The Blowhard” Kemp, County Administrator, Danny “Do-Nothing” Knight and County Councilmen Howard “Propeller Boy” Barnard and Bob “Loony’s Lackey” Grabowski.

“It is our belief that the virus was brought to the Myrtle Beach area by Mr. Kemp several years ago, and the bacterium, which is especially virulent in small brained individuals, has spread to what we are calling “The Myrtle Beach Cluster,” Dr. Montalban explained.

The most pronounced symptoms of the "Fantasy Island Bug" are rampant paranoia, incessant prevarication, delusions of grandeur, Napoleonic hallucinations and pathological obsessions with airplanes and airports.

While the antics, and mental stability of individual members of the Myrtle Beach Cluster had long been suspect, the group was finally outed by a random, late-night Myrtle Beach airport security patrol several months ago as the cult gathered under a full moon on the site of Gilland's Folly, on the west side of the Myrtle Beach airport.

“Man I tell ya, it was the weirdest thing I ever seen. All these crazy people dressed in little white suits, shirts and shoes, with little black ties dancing around that fire, pointing up at the sky and chanting, 'De plane boss, de plane,” said Dwain DeBoozer, one of the guards who discovered the group. “I ain’t never seen nothing like that before, and I hope I never do again,” he continued. “Mr. Kemp was nekked and all oily and stuff. I think they was all on crack or something.”

To date, while the vast majority of the Cluster remain delusional and in denial, Gilland, to her credit, used her County credit card to check herself into Astral Promises rehab center in Seattle, and has taken a pledge of “airport abstinence.” Of course, her Lindsay Lohan-like move toward aero-sanity has left her lap monkey, Grabowski, so perplexed and off-kilter that his family has had to install training wheels on his Harley for his own safety.

Sadly, the only Cluster member at the Sun News to take a proactive treatment approach has been reporter, Travis Tritten, whose case has been so pernicious that he has elected to leave the country, and to seek help in Japan at the world renowned Pearl Harbor Aero Rehabilitation Sanitarium & Journalism School.

More later, as news bulletins become available from the CDC’s Neuro-Viral Quarantine Team.

“Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they’re crazy.” Nora Ephron

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

The Vanna Solution

North Myrtle Beach’s hometown gal and Wheel of Fortune letter turner, Vanna White, was too busy lately to be the “celebrity spokesperson” for South Carolina, as suggested by the area’s top Dick, Senator Elliott.

Ain’t it pathetic, that the best South Carolina, and Myrtle Beach can do in the “celebrity" department, is a 50-year old 2nd banana game show host?

Sure, Vanna White, is a wonderful person who worked hard to make a name and a handsome living for herself. She’s always remembered her roots, family and her friends, and has maintained her values – except for that gawd awful “Goddess of Love” bomb, of course.

Unquestionably, Ms. White has been the best ambassador and greatest asset creepy little “Shagtown” could ever have, and is still a babe at 50, but, sadly, she really doesn’t fit the real image of The Redneck Riviera.

OK, so who do we get?

I nominate the Queen of Myrtle Beach tourism, Dorothy Anderson!

That’s right, Dorothy Anderson, the ruthless old broad who operates what TripAdvisor.Com named as “The 7th Dirtiest Hotel in America,” the Poindexter in Myrtle Beach, along with several other similar rattraps here. She loves casino gambling, and with the grizzled looks of a “ridden hard ‘n put up wet” Tugboat Annie, the warmth of Dick Cheney, the vocabulary of the late Sam Kinison, ethics that rival those of ENRON’S Ken Lay, the loyalty and integrity of Benedict Arnold, and with a kid nicknamed “Porn Boy,” she’s the perfect “face” for The Redneck Riviera.

Remember Ole Dot’s hair-brained Christmas lighting fiasco, where the Chamber of Comedy and the City of Myrtle Beach pissed away hundred’s of thousands of dollars on an asinine holiday light program that didn’t even draw enough visitors to pay the electric bill?

Of course, the crowning jewel in Ole Dot’s tarnished tiara is undoubtedly her establishment and leadership of that COMBO thing? You remember, that cast of local clowns who anointed themselves the Council of Myrtle Beach Civic Organizations, and then passed themselves off as some brilliant leadership, visioning and lobbying group that all of the local media hacks sucked up to and quoted like slobbering little lap-monkeys.

COMBO was Ole Dot’s private fiefdom and bully pulpit (pulpit and Dorothy Anderson, now there’s a blatant contradiction in terms for ya), and she ruled it with a zirconium-encrusted iron fist – just like she does her hapless family and browbeaten employees.

One former employee, who managed to escape from Stalag Andersonville, was fond of saying, “Dorothy is so mean, she keeps her pantyhose up with barbed wire!”

Under Ole Dot and her henchmen’s rule, COMBO was never legally incorporated and never opened a bank account – all the money paid in by the Chamber of Comedy, Golf Holiday, PARTNERS, Myrtle Beach Hospitality Association, Myrtle Beach Convention Bureau, Santee Cooper and all of the other suckers Ole Dot and her cronies could strong-arm into poneying up, went into some unknown bank account overseen by COMBO’s executive director. To add insult to it’s larceny, COMBO never maintained any books and never filed any tax returns.

Question: Did all of those organizations that funded this sham, claim their payments to the non-existent COMBO as tax-exempt contributions on their tax returns?

Finally, after several years of these sleazy shenanigans, a couple of foolish souls started asking questions about where the money was going and why there were no books or records, which resulted in the scapegoating of the executive director, who subsequently killed himself, COMBO quietly disappearing like rats into the night, and the Chamber of Comedy fittinly naming “Dirty Dorothy” their “Woman of the Year.”

See, she’s perfect!

All we need now is for Myrtle Beach’s own Director of South Carolina’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism, Chad “Hi, Sailor” Prosser, to gleefully squeal, “Lights, camera action,” and the show is on!

“I haven't committed any crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.” David Dinkins

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

The Watchman: “I Was WRONG – TWICE!”

On Friday, June 8, 2007 I published a posting entitled, Burroughs & Chapin’s New CEO Suspects (see below), in which I named the four “suspects” that the local rumor-mill was bantering about.

Well, as St. Bradley Dean's favorite actor, Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise," the rumor-mill was absolutely, positively, unequivocally wrong. Hell, my information wasn't even close to being correct.

Instead, B&C selected a guy that no one in Myrtle Beach had ever heard of, much less had any information on. His name is Jim Rosenberg, a CPA with a potpourri background in various and a’ sundry real estate related projects and businesses.

The fact that Rosenberg is a fresh face on the Redneck Riviera, and is therefore, hopefully, untainted by small time, pea brained mentalities, which are the norm here, is probably one of the smartest things the Burroughs & Chapin Board of Directors has ever done.

The Burroughs & Chapin Board of Directors did precisely what the Chamber of Comedy Board of Directors failed to do, when Ashby "Mr. Myrtle Beach" Ward passed away, which was to bring in out-of-town talent and fresh ideas instead of promoting from the bottom up, and I sincerely congratulate them on their vision.

Welcome Mr. Rosenberg, we look forward to a world-view elevation of B&C’s game!

Now as to my second, and most recent faux pas, I owe “The Boys” on last Tuesday night’s Horry County Council dais an apology for flogging them over the handling of their extremely important agenda in my Tuesday, July 10, 2007 posting entitled, Horry County Council’s “Boy’s Night” Will Be a BUST! (See below)

While “The Boys” did exactly as I predicted in my posting, I totally missed the brilliance of their strategies.

While the most obvious "atta boys" is for the seven councilmen having the courage to step up and call for the legally required session, instead of violating South Carolina law, as Chairman Gilland’s cancellations would have done.

A feisty Harold Worley led off the fun, when he and “The Boys” wisely derailed yet another odious backdoor Chamber of Comedy end run, when they voted to again limit the Chamber of Comedy to a one-year option to continue serving as the County's designated recipient of the 30% A-Tax marketing funds. The Chamber’s chief bungler, St. Bradley Dean, is said to have turned ashen, then purple when the vote came down, crushing his nefarious six-year funding scheme.

Then came “The Boys” chance to remove the gates illegally blocking the County roads in Myrtle Trace, which, of course, is Chairman Gilland's number one vote buying cause célèbre, but in yet another surprise move, they totally ignored the illegal Myrtle Trace gates, and instead discussed new illegal gates, which have been requested on even more public roads in Carolina Forest by the Waterford development.

Once again, “The Boys” played their cards masterfully by making it emphatically clear that, if the County is going to allow illegal gates in one community, then they must allow illegal gates in all of the other communities that request them. Hey, that's only fair, right?

Then as to the matter of Danny “Do Nothing” Knight, “The Boys” played him like a Stradivarius. Before they could do anything, Knight jumped to his feet and demanded an open forum on his pathetic - make that nonexistent - job performance, and “The Boys,” being the gentlemen that they are, all smiled and obligingly scheduled an August 14th "public" Council workshop to discuss Mr. Knight’s future.

One local wag who was in attendance remarked, “That was more activity and commentary out of Knight than Council has gotten out of him in the last year. In fact, I don't think that the new Councilmen, Brent Schultz and Al Allen, even knew that Danny could actually talk.”

Another Conway regular chimed in, “I was so surprised that Knight said something, I thought it was the real County administrator and County Council Chairman, John Weaver, showing off his talents as a ventriloquist.”

Needless to say, those in attendance last Tuesday night said that it was a shining moment in the normally embarrassing County Council sessions, and I pray that “The Boys” responsible for such a stellar performance will have the courage to stand together and stay the course, and to, finally, start leading Horry County kicking ’n screaming into the 21st Century.

“The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.” William Clayton

Finally, some glimmers of hope on the Redneck Riviera!

Horry County Council’s “Boy’s Night” Will Be a BUST!

The whole towns, especially the county staffers, are all abuzz about tonight’s Boys Night County Council session. Rumors are swirling. It’s even gotten the Sun News’ Travis “Airport Boy” Tritten to wake up and start acting like a reporter (don’t worry, it won’t last).

“They’re going to fire Danny Knight!”

“They’re going to finally knock down Liz’s illegal gates in Myrtle Trace!”

“They’re going to fire that asshead Bob “The Blowhard” Kemp!”

Baloney!

Mr. Bill Darby’s Alternatives (always an interesting, informative and entertaining read) article, on page 5 of his current issue, asking, “Where are our County Leaders – Certainly NOT Working,” provides great details and insight into the farce that is our pathetic County Council, and their gutless lack of leadership

While it was refreshingly courageous, as well as the right (and legal) thing for "The Boys" to call tonight's County Council session, I believe, Mr. Darby, that I have your answer.

While "The Boys” on County Council are here, sadly, their balls are in Loony Liz’s purse in Seattle. Except of course for those belonging to Liz's 3-Stooges Howard “Propeller Boy” Barnard, Bob “Kemp Kisser” Grabowski and James "The Puppet" Frazier, because their balls are exactly where they always are – nestled away in Liz’s apron pocket.

So to all of you foolish optimists out there, don’t expect anything courageous tonight from “The Boys,” because they’ll probably…

1. Give John “The Weasel” Weaver his usual “pass,” despite his cover-up of Gilland’s illegal cancellation of the required (by South Carolina law) County Council sessions. Hell, they’ll probably take a break to give him a round of “manly” hugs.

2. Despite his horrendous performance, the areas’ continually declining tourism, and the rampant rebellion of the Chamber of Comedy’s members over Saint Bradley Dean’s extortion, they’ll once again wimp-out and give Mr. Incompetence 30% of the County’s A-TAX funds to blow on yet another year, or two, of his half-assed loser ideas. I’d also expect “The Boys” to do some more sucking up here as well.

3. They’ll leave the illegal gates in Myrtle Trace untouched.

4. And finally, “The Boys” will tuck their collective tails, and wait for Mommy to come home before dealing with Danny “Do Nothing” Knight.

“Never go to a doctor who’s office plants have died.” Erma Bombeck

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

RICO Leads New Myrtle Beach Chamber Membership Bendover

“In 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961-1968. At the time, Congress' goal was to eliminate the criminal affects of organized crime on the nation's economy. To put it bluntly, RICO was intended to destroy the Mafia.

Throughout the 1970's, RICO's intended purpose and its actual use ran parallel to each other. Seldom was RICO used outside of the context of the Mafia, and it is not an overstatement to say that civil claims under RICO were simply not brought.

In the 1980's, however, civil lawyers noticed section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows civil claims to be brought by any person injured in their business or property by reason of a RICO violation. Any person who succeeded in establishing a civil RICO claim would automatically receive judgment in the amount of three times their actual damages and would be awarded their costs and attorneys' fees. The financial windfall available under RICO inspired the creativity of lawyers across the nation, and by the late 1980's, RICO was a (if not the most) commonly asserted claim in federal court. Everyone was trying to depict civil claims, such as common law fraud, product defect, and breach of contract as criminal wrongdoing, which would in turn enable the filing of a civil RICO action.

RICO's broad application was the result of Congress' inclusion of mail and wire fraud as two crimes upon which a RICO claim could be brought. Given the breadth of activities that had historically been criminally prosecuted under the mail and wire fraud statutes, it was not difficult for creative civil attorneys to depict practically any wrongdoing as mail or wire fraud.

During the 1990's, the federal courts, guided by the United States Supreme Court, engaged in a concerted effort to limit the scope of RICO in the civil context. As a result of this effort, civil litigants must jump many hurdles and avoid many pitfalls before they can expect the financial windfall available under RICO, and RICO has become one of the most complicated and unpredictable areas of the law.

Today, RICO is almost never applied to the Mafia. Instead, it is applied to individuals, businesses, political protest groups, and terrorist organizations. In short, a RICO claim can arise in almost any context.” Jeffrey Ernest Grell, RICO Attorney

Now you’re probably saying, “Great, thanks for the boring legalese history lesson Watchman, but what the hell does RICO have to do with the Redneck Riviera?”

Plenty my friends, plenty. You see, the Redneck Riviera has its own Mafia outfit; it's called the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy. That's right boys and girls; the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy is apparently operating its own multi-million dollar shakedown schemes.

Okay, here it is plain and simple, Saint Bradley Dean and his carnival of unkempt clowns and clownettes at the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy is apparently extorting, blackmailing, coercing and conspiring against their primary membership base, while at the same time they’re also conspiring to destroy the businesses of yet another important membership segment by establishing a Chamber advertising and publishing monopoly, which constitutes restraint of trade, which is a Federal crime!

That's right, extortion, blackmail, coercion, conspiracy and restraint of trade and here's how:

The Chamber’s 2007-2008 membership requirements - which were nefariously crafted in the middle of the night by Dean, Woody “The Rodent” Crosby, Frans “F#%k ’Em” Mustart, Wayne “The Snake” Gray and a few other of the usual cheap-suited assheads who hang out in Dean's closet - require that all accommodation members must collect a $1 per rented room night fee from their unsuspecting guests, and then fork over those ill-gotten funds to the Chamber to blow on any hair-brained scheme they can come up with. If the accommodation members refuse to agree to the Chamber's extortion they are then barred from joining the Chamber.

The accommodation members must also submit to yet a 2nd bendover, by being forced to put the Chamber’s antiquated, child-like, piece of crap guidebook in all their guest rooms - “EXCLUSIVELY.” Again, if the accommodation members refuse to agree to this Chamber edict they will be barred from the Chamber.

To me, and everyone else I’ve talked to with an IQ over 20, these Stalinesque membership demands constitute taxation without representation, extortion, blackmail, coercion, conspiracy and restraint of trade. Therefore, we believe that the Chamber of Comedy’s actions to be criminal acts, and thereby constitute violations of the RICO Act!

Furthermore, it's apparent to us that the Chamber, by requiring publication “exclusivity” in the accommodation member’s rental units, is also in direct violation of United States Code, Title 15, Chapter 1 - § 2. Monopolizing Trade, which, my friends, is also a felony.

The Code states that, “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.”

Whereas the Chamber of Comedy is actively involved in interstate and foreign commerce on virtually a daily basis, they are certainly subject to Federal as well as state laws, and it's painfully obvious to me that they are in direct violation both state and Federal laws here.

I'm no lawyer, and I don't play one on TV, but if I were an owner of accommodations, advertising firm or publishing business, I’d already be at my attorney's office screaming, “Extortion, Blackmail, Coercion, Conspiracy, Restraint of Trade,” and my lawsuit against the Chamber would have already been filed.

Next, I'd be gathering up everyone else with businesses affected by the Chamber's dirty dealings, and have them join with me in filing a class-action lawsuit against the Chamber, and the bastards who led this slimy conspiracy.

Finally, I’d load up all my fellow screwees on a fleet of buses, and head over to the United States Attorney's office in Columbia and ask Mr. Thurmond to look into that RICO thing.

But hey, that's just me!

“Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.” Robert Heinlein

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Fallen Heroes Farewell a Wonderful Reflection on South Carolina's Bravest

Early last Friday morning my wife and I headed for Charleston to pay our last respects to the nine valiant firefighters who gave their lives fighting what one bystander called “a 30-foot tornado of flames” at the horrific Sofa Superstore warehouse fire last Monday evening, June 18th.

We didn’t talk much or even play the radio on the hour drive from Pawleys to the Charleston Coliseum where the memorial service was being held. As we came into the Mt. Pleasant area we began seeing that virtually every message board at the businesses we passed had posted poignant messages like, "Pray for Charleston's Bravest and Finest" and "God Bless Our Courageous Firefighters and Their Families."

We arrived at the Coliseum about an hour before the 10:00 AM memorial service was scheduled to begin. The parking lot was already about one third full, and there were a lot of people heading towards the building, but what really struck us was how quiet it was.

We were fortunate to be allowed in, and to get a couple of seats in one of the balconies. While there was some disgusting and inappropriate political glad-handing going on down on the Coliseum floor, the vast majority of the people in attendance stood or sat quietly out of respect for the nine fallen heroes.

From the beginning to the end, the memorial service was, in a word, extraordinary. The nine flag draped coffins with poster size photographs of the fallen at their heads; the placing of the nine firefighter’s helmets; the grieving families, friends and thousands of other first responders; the tributes; the music; a heart wrenching playing of Taps and the New York City Bagpipe Corps’ playing of Amazing Grace were all at the same time uplifting and heartbreaking. Thankfully, we brought extra handkerchiefs, as the tears were virtually unending.

What struck us the most, however, was the loving and heartfelt farewell tribute delivered by the Charleston Fire Department's Chief, Rusty Thomas. With his friendly southern accent, and speaking from deep within his heart, he shared with the throng in attendance some of the special memories he had of each of his nine fallen firefighters and friends. It was truly amazing, and Charleston, South Carolina and America are so very fortunate to have Chief Thomas and his valiant men and women there whenever they are needed.

While our focus has, rightfully, been on the nine brave men who saved two lives that warm June night, then gave up theirs doing what they so dearly loved, let us not forget the thousands of courageous firefighters, especially those in our own neighborhoods, who, like the Charleston 9, are prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice for all of us.

So the next time you pass by your local firehouse, take a moment to stop in and shake the firefighters hands and just say thanks - thanks for being there.

“Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and then slip quietly away.” Tom Brokaw

The Destructions of the Ocean Forest Hotel and Myrtle Beach Golf Industry – Who Dunnit?

As I was taking my usual 15-minutes to read the current (June 2007) issue of Coastal Business Life, I found a brief article on the old Ocean Forest Hotel, which until its diabolical destruction, which occurred on Friday the 13th September 1973 no less, was along with its golf course, Pine Lakes, Myrtle Beach’s first and only true international landmark. (I still get emotional about that horrible day on every Friday the 13th.)

While the article, like the majority of those appearing in the local magazines, was basically superficial “filler” (Hell, the photographs didn’t even have captions), one paragraph did, however, catch my attention. It read, “Memories are a bit sketchy about why it was demolished: who had the final say in its demise; who could have saved the building but didn't. The exact details of the destruction are murky now.”

Needless to say, everyone (except for the folks at Coastal business Life) knows who the guilty parties were. It was “stack-a-shack” developers Tom Baugh and Les Morris, the aesthetically challenged owners of Sands Investments who were ones responsible for the dastardly destruction of the Ocean Forest Hotel, and the subsequent plague of stack-a-shack eyesore condominiums (Sands Ocean Forest Villas), which they built on the Ocean Forest site and at several other locations along the Grand Strand and Carolina coastlines, most of which they labeled “A Place at the Beach.” Today, “A Bunch of Dumps at the Beach” is their more appropriate moniker.

Morris and Baugh went on to develop construction challenged properties like the Sands Shell Island Resort on the northern tip of Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina, which has almost washed out to sea on numerous occasions and has been the subject of countless lawsuits by governmental agencies and homeowners who were misled and ripped off.

Besides their stack-a-shack projects on the Grand Strand, their other local lemons include the Sands Beach Club, Sand Dunes and Sands Ocean Club.

At this point, it's important to point out, that Baugh and Morris were not the only schlock developers on the Grand Strand. In fact, the vast majority of developers in the Myrtle Beach area built crappy projects and made a lot of money doing so.

What Baugh and Morris, along with their shifty, unprincipled and ethically challenged general manager, Frans Mustart, did to the Myrtle Beach golf market, however, stands alone as the most insidious and destructive act ever perpetrated on the Myrtle Beach tourism economy. Mustart, Morris and Baugh and, but primarily Baugh and Mustart, were the ignorant bastards who created the Myrtle Beach golf market destroying $49 and $99 winter golf packages, which resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the Myrtle Beach golf package business.

Shortly thereafter, Baugh, along with Cecil “Show Me the Money – FIRST” Brandon, and a pack of fools, led Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday to sponsor and subsequently lose an estimated $10 million on the marketing bomb that was the PGA Energizer Senior Tour Championship. Baugh, Brandon and their fellow rocket scientists at Golf Holiday, were also responsible for Golf Holiday building and subsequently losing another estimated $25 million on their asinine TPC of Myrtle Beach fiasco.

To add insult to Baugh’s litany of self-serving arrogance, he and Brandon had the audacity to do this while he was serving as the president of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, and Brandon was its Executive Dictator.

So now you know who dunnit!

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not sure about the former.” Albert Einstein

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Burroughs & Chapin’s New CEO Suspects

Well, June 2007 is finally here and the Myrtle Beach area is breathlessly awaiting the announcement of who will replace Burroughs & Chapin's man of the people, Douglas P. Wendel, as Chief Executive Officer.

So, The Watchman has been poking around, and here's the names that the rumor mills are churning out:

T. Graham Edwards – That’s right the former president and CEO of Santee Cooper and South Carolina's answer to Reddy Kilowatt is said to be on B&C’s short list. Edwards is currently the CEO of Midwest ISO, an independent, nonprofit organization that supports the constant availability of electricity in 15 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba. Edwards, still has extensive, high level business and political contacts throughout the Palmetto State, and is best known for his brawls with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford over control of Santee Cooper.

Stanley F. Gibson - This is not a name that is well known along the Grand Strand, except in the financial community. The 60-year-old Gibson, is currently the head of Commercial Banking in the Carolinas for Wachovia Bank, and has been referred to in the Carolinas as Mr. Banking. Prior to joining Wachovia he led NationsBank and Bank of America in the Carolinas, and is the former chairman of the South Carolina Bankers Association and former board member of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

Thomas Leath, Jr. - Like Mr. Myrtle Beach, Ashby Ward, this potential candidate began his career in radio. He went on to get a law degree, worked for the state of South Carolina for three years, had a private law practice in Bennettsville (he did some work for my family there), and came to Myrtle Beach as assistant city attorney. In 1987 he became the Myrtle Beach City Manager.

Saint Bradley Dean - Yes, I know that it's ludicrous to even mention Dean's name in the same context with Edwards, Gibson and Leath, but as ridiculous as that is, Dean's name has been mentioned - usually followed by shocked expressions and hysterical laughter. After getting an accounting degree at the University of Illinois, Dean bounced around various bean counter jobs, and came to Myrtle Beach in 1995 as the manager of the Hard Rock restaurant. He became the head bean counter at the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce in 1999, and in 2003, in what has become known as one of the biggest blunders in Myrtle Beach’s history, he became the Chamber CEO.

With the Myrtle Beach golf industry in a nine year free-fall, the Grand Strand real estate market completely upside down, the Myrtle Beach tourism industry floundering and Burroughs & Chapin having major financial and management problems, someone with a strong financial and problem solving background, along with the ability to think globally and to see the big picture is the logical choice, but based on past choices (think Dean, Bob Kemp, Hugh Owens, Gary Loftus, Dave Sebok, Buddy Styers, John Weaver, etc) logic and common sense is rarely applied here.

“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.” Dr. Robert Jarvik

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

FINALLY, Some Leadership on Horry County Council!

I hate it that I can’t watch the antics of Horry County Council on my Georgetown cable network, because I would have loved to have been tuned in last night when Horry County Chairman “Loony Liz” Gilland, along with her three girlfriends Howard Barnard, Bob Grabowski and James Frazier, got their comeuppance and a couple of great lessons in leadership from the smarter, level-headed and more mature majority of Council members.

While everyone in the area, except for Gilland, Bobby “The Blowhard” Kemp, the three girlfriends and the local fish wrapper, knew that Gilland’s westside airport terminal fiasco was long dead, Gilland and her shyster consigliere, John “The Jester” Weaver, being the spiteful losers they are, had plotted to present a nasty, in-your-face resolution last night blaming Myrtle Beach City Council for the dismal failure of Gilland’s moronic westside $300 million Taj Mahal fiasco.

Fortunately for Horry County and the entire Myrtle Beach area, the smarter and better-mannered members of County Council, Harold Worley, Kevin Hardee, Brent Schultz, Mike Ryan, Marion Foxworth, Carl Schwarzkoff, Al Allen and Paul Prince, immediately recognized Gilland and Weaver’s malicious Resolution for the mean-spirited and divisive missive it was, and quickly stepped-up and stopped Loony Liz and the Jester dead in their tracks.

Not only did Worley, Hardee, Schultz, Ryan, Foxworth, Schwarzkoff, Allen and Prince derail Gilland’s petulant “Up Yours” Resolution, but they had the good sense and courage to finally put a stake in the heart of Gilland’s Folly, thereby preventing Loony Liz and the County’s pompous airport dictator, Bobby “The Blowhard” Kemp, from sucking the lifeblood out of the County’s already straining finances.

As I was driving in to work this morning, I almost puked as I listened to the ill-informed talk radio heads sucking up to Loony Liz and wrongly giving her credit for Worley, Hardee, Schultz, Ryan, Foxworth, Schwarzkoff, Allen and Prince’s right-minded Resolution, when she fought against it tooth and nail.

Also last night, Worley, Hardee, Schultz, Ryan, Foxworth, Schwarzkoff, Allen and Prince slammed the door on yet another one of Loony Liz’s sleazy backdoor schemes. This one orchestrated by Gilland, Weaver and the third member of the County’s three stooges, Anne “The Hatchet Woman” Wright, was yet another load of mean-spirited, self-serving backstabbing orchestrated for the sole purpose of getting a job for one of Wright’s Yankee girlfriends.

The dastardly scheme which The Three Stooges were trying to nefariously sneak by County Council, was the arbitrary restructuring of the Horry County Museum’s Board of Directors, for the sole purpose of dumping Terri Hooks, the hard-working and caring Director of the Horry County Museum, so that The Three Stooges could replace her with one of Wright’s Yankee girlfriends.

Again, the responsible members of County Council stepped up, and derailed Gilland’s shameful scheme.

Well done Gentlemen!

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King Jr.

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Un News Really Lives Up to Its Name

Just when you think the local fish wrapper can't screw up any more than they already have, they come through with yet another bungle bigger and better than those that have come before.

I slept in a little late this morning, and therefore didn't get a chance to read the Un News until after I had taken the wife and kids to church and for our usual Sunday brunch at Eggs Up in Litchfield.

When I finally settled into my La-Z-Boy and began reading David Wren’s latest front page above the fold story on the ongoing shenanigans at Coastal Carolina University I, like every other Un News reader today, found the second half of Wren’s story had vanished. Needless to say, the little lady had to bring me a paper bag to breathe into because I was hyperventilating from laughing so hard.

Now if that wasn't enough journalistic incompetence for you, on page 11-A, where the continuation of Mr. Wren's piece was supposed to appear, there was a second half of an article entitled “Dare,” which was supposedly continued from a story on page 1-A. The funny thing is, there was no “Dare” story on the front page. Another paper bag please, Sweetie!

Of course, they did manage to get in their latest installments of their pathetic pro Gilland's Folly and Screw Myrtle Beach City Council hogwash published. Make it a "barf bag" this time, Babe!

It's apparent to me that Un News publisher, Gary Wortel, needs to change his name to Gary Twaddle, and the Editor, and I certainly use that term extremely loosely here, Trish O'Connor, needs to just get out of town and take her bungling elsewhere, because my ribs can't take much more of this sidesplitting laughter.

“They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.” James Watt

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

MyBeach Ad Campaign Bombs – Ad Agency Canned

Just when you thought former restaurant manager and Chamber of Comedy exec, Saint Bradley Dean, couldn’t bungle or mismanage the Myrtle Beach tourism marketing efforts any more than he already has, sure as shootin he tops himself with yet another catastrophic blunder.

In January 2006, after great hype, capped off by a big launch presentation shindig at the Grande Dunes Marriott, Saint Bradley was even more full of himself than usual (hard to believe ain’t it?) when he announced his, “Exciting ad and image campaign, which will establish the Myrtle Beach ‘brand’ and dramatically increase the Myrtle Beach area tourism numbers.” Dean’s “slam dunk, two-pronged” ad and image campaign was built around the nebulous play-on-words slogan “My Beach.”

Dean’s surefire My Beach campaign was created by a virtually unknown ad agency, Lindsey, Stone & Briggs. Unfortunately for Myrtle Beach, Dean, his crack advertising committee and the redneck retards on the Chamber Board all thought that LS&B was a big time Madison Avenue ad agency, when they were actually a podunk Madison, Wisconsin ad agency – Ooops!

Despite the groans heard throughout the Marriott ballroom that January day, Dean proudly declared, “Finally we have a campaign that creates an ‘IMAGE’ for the Myrtle Beach area. Our area’s lack of a cohesive image has been an ongoing drawback to all of our marketing efforts. The My Beach campaign will finally, and successfully, establish the Myrtle Beach ‘brand’ in the minds of consumers.”

The big gimmick that convinced Leigh Meese and the other rocket scientists on the Chamber of Comedy’s ad committee to go with LS&B was that, “They did a focus group, and the focus group really loved the My Beach campaign.” Meese gushed. Apparently, Meese and her fellow marketing challenged cronies didn’t notice that the focus group was comprised of people that normal people wouldn’t want sitting next to them on a bus, much less making million dollar marketing decisions. But hey, who cares that the focus group was a bunch of illiterate slobs, “They loved the My Beach campaign.”

“It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.”

Obviously, no one outside the focus group and the nitwits at the Chamber of Comedy “Loved the my Beach campaign,” because, here we are a scant 15 months later, and already Saint Bradley is again feverishly scrambling to cover his bush league butt. In what can only be seen as yet another one of his desperate efforts to shift the blame for his failures onto the backs of others, he has fired both the Chamber of Comedy's vice president of marketing, Theda Jackson, and Lindsey, Stone & Briggs. He is also dumping his botched My Beach campaign, and is looking for another ad agency.

“He who excuses himself, accuses himself."

In what could only spell more bad news for Myrtle Beach tourism, the local media grapevine is saying that Saint Bradley is in the process of orchestrating a backdoor deal to hand off the Chamber of Comedy’s advertising account to Brandon Advertising.

Brandon, a name long synonymous with schlock, is best known for their Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday advertising monopoly, which they have had without competitive bid since 1967 (yep, that is unheard of – and REALLY STUPID).

Led by failed lawyer and poster boy for nepotism run amuck, Scott Brandon, Brandon Advertising is primarily responsible for the nine year decimation of the Myrtle Beach area golf industry, which has, in turn, resulted in the loss of close to one million paid rounds of golf annually, the closing of over 20 golf courses and close to 2,000 people losing their jobs. Obviously, Brandon’s stellar track record and crappy campaigns is the perfect match for Dean and the dolts on the Chamber of Comedy board.

“An organization is successful, when it can survive the fools who run it.”

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Hypocrite Barnard Shows Both Faces

The area political hacks, especially the morning coffee klatch at Akel's, are all talking about how Horry County Councilman Howard Barnard loves to boast about what a “good Christian” he is, and how his recent scurrilous actions on County Council clearly illustrates what a phony SOB Barnard is. One official rightfully pointed out that, "Working in a church certainly hasn’t done much in the way of cleaning up Howard's obvious lack of character."

The latest example of just how two-faced Barnard is occurred when Horry County Council had a discussion about illegal aliens on their agenda, which would begin an effort by the County to deal with the growing illegal alien population in the area, and the problems this influx is causing.

Barnard, who’s opposed to any such regulations, asked Reverend Joseph Washington of Share Care, a non-profit group of volunteers that work to get health care for the less fortunate in our area, to attend the County Council session and to speak out against the resolution.

Being a good man and trusting friend, Reverend Washington did as his “friend” Howard asked, then, less than a week later Dirty Howie led the Black-Hearts on County Council who voted to stop funding Share Care and all other charities.

Sadly, I have too often found that Me, Me, Me, I, I, I people like Barnard who love to brag and hold themselves up to be so-called pillars of the community, and great “Christians,” are usually the first rats to jump ship when help, courage or leadership is really needed.

Dirty Howie’s backstabbing betrayal of Reverend Washington, Share Care and the other charities shows what a pompous hypocrite he is, and that he is certainly not a person anyone should trust or have any “faith” in.

“Going to church doesn’t mean you are a Christian, any more than going to a football game means you are a football player.” Anonymous

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Crack-Head Headlines 2

Not only are the headline writers at the local fish wrapper on "crack," but they're illiterate as well.

Consider today's contribution to "Hogwash Headlines" - "Coastal to Host Tourney Regional."

Everyone knows that scrooge-like poverty-line pay is a given at the Un News, and that their penny-pinching weekend "screw the news" policy delivers 2-3 day old news services crap to their subscribers, but you would think that they could at least find an editor or a 5th grader that can read basic English.

Sorry, I forgot that we're talking about the moronic UN news management here!

“More than one newspaper has been ruined by an incompetent in the Editor chair.” Lord Camrose

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Loony Liz’s Trashy Plan Could Double Consumer Collection Costs

In late April the Supreme Court ruled that local governments can force private trash haulers to use municipal facilities, and greedy Gilland and her nefarious henchmen moved with lightning speed to screw the Horry County taxpayers with yet another one of her “break the bank” and “screw the citizens” backroom schemes.

The ruling upholding local ordinances in upstate New York, allows counties that have built recycling centers and landfills, to setup what have been called “Trash Cartels.”

These governmental monopolies are touted by greedy political hacks like Gilland as a way to help pay off debts of such facilities, when they are actually creating an extremely expensive and uncontrolled “Trash Cartel” that transfers the County’s costs to the backs of the unsuspecting taxpayers.

Chief Justice John Roberts said, “The most palpable harm imposed by the ordinances is more expensive trash removal, which is most assuredly to fall upon the very people who voted for the law."

Historically, the governmental “Trash Cartels” double consumer collection costs within the first two-years, and continue to rise at an annual rate of 3-6%.

If you don't want your trash collection costs to skyrocket, then you need to let Loony Liz and her crew of clowns know that you don't want a "Trash Cartel" ripping you off.

“Taxpayers are now the most widely available prey on the planet, and the cruelest predator is the government.” The Watchman

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Newpaper Headline Writers on Crack

Every morning I hop out of bed, put on my robe and slippers and scurry down the lane to grab my copy of the local fish wrapper to see what backwoods lunacy the local politicos and tourism mavens have conjured up.

Lately, I have also been laughing at the headlines, and trying to figure out how the headline writers at the Un News can come up with headlines that are totally contrary to the content of the article, and I could only reach one conclusion - They must be on “Crack.”

Consider today’s installment of "Hogwash Headlines" - “225,000 Bikers Headed This Way.”

If the rocket scientists who wrote that headline or the pea-brained editor who allowed its use had actually read the article they would have seen that the bean counters at Coastal Carolina said “225,000 people” NOT 225,000 BIKERS!

“More than one newspaper has been ruined by an incompetent in the Editor chair.” Lord Camrose

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Chamber of Comedy Honcho Preparing Annual Excuse List

Former restaurant manager and current Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy nabob, Saint Bradley Dean, is reported to be frantically burning the midnight oil compiling his annual roster of excuses for why tourism numbers in the Myrtle Beach area have not increased.

During the tenure of Saint Bradley’s predecessor, Ashby “Mr. Myrtle Beach” Ward, Myrtle Beach routinely enjoyed double-digit annual tourism increases. Since Mr. Ward’s passing, with Dean at the helm, tourism, occupancy rates and ADR’s (average daily rate) have languished with pathetic 2-4% increases, while the area’s room inventory has dramatically increased. By way of comparison, despite high gas prices and numerous hurricanes, Florida (since Dean has been at the helm of the Chamber of Comedy) has consistently posted double digit increases in tourism, with 2006 increases surpassing 20%.

This year Dean is in a far greater panic than ever before, because this year he has lost his patented excuse for his usual miserable performance, which has always been, “We’re being outspent by our competition.”

The cause of Saint Bradley’s current hysteria comes from a group of hoteliers and business leaders, calling themselves Myrtle Beach Forward, who were fed-up with Dean’s “not enough money” mantra, and stepped-up and created a self-imposed $1 per rented room night fee to be used for marketing Myrtle Beach. They’ve put their money where Dean’s mouth is, and according to the local fish wrapper those funds will increase Myrtle Beach’s marketing funds “five-fold” this year, and therein lies Dean’s desperation. Who’s he going to blame when he bombs AGAIN?

Early signs indicate that Saint Bradley is counting heavily on the high gasoline prices as his primary excuse if the dramatic tourism increases expected from the massive “five fold” increase in marketing funds don’t materialize.

It’s also rumored that he’s also hoping for a bunch of hurricane scares, because they’ve always been great vehicles for Dean to cite when trying to cover up for his litany of failures.

Saint Bradley will also be relying heavily on the area’s leading purveyor of numerical bovine excrement, Gary “Cook the Books” Loftus, to assist him with his damage control. Rumor has it that in preparation for his next hand of statistical three card monte, Loftus has been spending a lot of time at the Charleston County jail, getting pointers on “how to fool all the people all the time” from his disgraced and incarcerated hero and rotund role model, Al “Howdy Suckers” Parish.

The most amazing ploy, which Dean is already rolling out to cover his ass is, “Hey, five times more marketing money is great, but (Now get this) it’s not enough.”

Ya gotta admit, this guy’s got some balls.

“Its always the best policy to speak the truth-unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.” Jerome K. Jerome

Myrtle Beach City Council Sends Gilland’s Folly Back to Mommy!

With a deafening wall of silence, the Myrtle Beach City Council yesterday sent a virtually unanimous message to Horry County Council Chairman, Liz Gilland, that her $300 million airport Taj Mahal fiasco is her monkey, not theirs, and she needs to stop her whining and trying to pass the buck, and to deal with the appalling mess she's made.

The fun started when Randal “I can to please all the people all the time” Wallace made a motion to show the City’s ass to the seven heroes on the Community Appearance Board, by voting to support Gilland's Folly despite the public's total lack of support for her westside terminal boondoggle.

One lady in attendance said that, “You could have cut the silence with a knife, as Councilman Wallace waited in vain for a second to his motion, which, of course, never came.” Another spectator said, “Randal looked like a deer in the headlights of a semi. He sat there in shock with his eyes popping out and his mouth open. He couldn't believe what he was not hearing, but then again he's never been the brightest bulb on the tree.”

Unfortunately for Wallace, City Council's resident motor mouth, Chuck “The Cat Fighter” Martino, was ill and did not attend the Council session. That was fortunate for everyone else in attendance, because, as one long time City Council observer pointed out, “Considering Martino's one-sided love of hearing himself talk, he would have probably seconded Wallace's stupid motion just so he could spend the next hour or so running his mouth with another of his babbling, time-wasting monologues. Too bad he's not absent more often.”

Mayor Rhodes and Council members Chestnut, Gray, Means and Render’s unified silence personified the Myrtle Beach area's total lack of support for Gilland's Westside Folly, and the Community's disgust at the deplorable conduct of Loony Liz and her personal Gestapo, John “The Jester” Weaver. It's too bad that the testosterone challenged boys on County Counsel don't have the balls to stand up to those two clowns.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Ambrose Redmoon

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

County Council Chairman Dislocates Shoulder - Injury Sustained While Patting Herself on the Back and Twisting Facts

A couple of days ago, Horry County Council Chairman and monument building wannabe Liz Gilland suffered a dislocated shoulder, while patting herself on the back for being the County's Donna Quixote, foolishly jousting with her personal windmill, which has become known as Gilland’s Folly.

The Watchmen consulted several orthopedic specialist, and discovered that dislocated shoulders, twisted arms and pains in the neck and butt are common injuries among politicians like Gilland who have a propensity for twisting the facts, spinning issues and patting themselves on the back.

Gilland’s injury was discovered when she first began campaigning for public office and has worsened over the years in direct proportion to the swelling of her head.

This latest injury was caused when Gilland attempted yet another of her pathetic tear-jerking airport terminal spins, the results of which was published in Sunday's local fish wrapper. In her rambling letter to the editor she detailed how ignorant everyone else is, especially the Myrtle Beach City Council, and how tough it is to be a martyr.

Furthermore, Gilland again conveniently neglects to point out that in the joint County and City airport agreement, which she continually hangs her bonnet on, clearly states that the CAB must approve any and all terminal construction.

Despite the findings of an airport study by the Boyd Aviation Group, which was commissioned by the Chamber of Comedy and Golf Holiday, and made public early last week, Loony Liz continues to ignore the real facts, while at the same time continuing to manufacture her own erroneous facts to support her fiasco.

The Boyd Group projected an increase of only 100,000 passengers into and out of the Myrtle Beach airport over the next five years. Those 100,000 passengers have to be divided in half, with 50,000 enplanements and 50,000 deplanements, which translates into a dinky 137 new passengers per day, or only one new 727 flight per day. For that we need a $300 million terminal?

Thankfully, only Loony Liz, “Propeller Boy” Barnard, Bob Grabowski, James Frazier, Carl Schwartzkopf, Randal “Where’s the Buffet” Wallace and the Un News are the only nuts supporting this insanity.

“The pursuit of truth is like picking raspberries. You miss a lot if you approach it from only one angle.” Randal Marlin

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Howie and Randy - A Tale of Two Councilmen

The local fish wrapper headlines scream, “Airport Strategy Aims to Trim Fees, and “Council to Hear Terminal Resolution.” Wow, sounds impressive don't it?

Sorry kiddies, these are just the latest installments of the Un News’ feeble and unending attempts at keeping Gilland’s Folly alive.

Two area councilmen, Howard Barnard on Horry County Council and Randal Wallace temporarily on Myrtle Beach City Council, are each in their own self-serving way trying to keep Loony Liz’s airport terminal fiasco alive.

Once again the devil is in the details.

Barnard, a pilot, is queer for anything with wings, and it's even rumored that he's been known to run around flapping his arms with a propeller beanie on his dome shouting, “I can fly, I can fly.” So for him to support building a $300 million monument to political and fiscal insanity is to be expected. However, in this case, it appears that Howie has been sipping a little too much of Liz’s Ego-Juice.

Barnard, who’s been on board with the terminal idea since day one, has now told the Chamber of Comedy that if they, along with Golf Holiday, can come up with a marketing plan to increase air service, then he will personally see to it that the County Council drops the current $8.56 per passenger airport fee to $4. Wow, what a guy! What a concept! What could possibly be wrong with Propeller Boy’s plan? Let's see…

· Asking the Chamber of Comedy to come up with a marketing plan is like asking Alberto Gonzales if he knows his own name. Those clowns haven't had a winner since Ashby Ward passed away, and St. Bradley “The Incompetent” took the helm and headed for Dead Tourism Shoals.

· Asking Golf Holiday to come up with a marketing plan is just as ludicrous, because that crowd hasn't been able to stop the eight-year free fall in paid rounds of golf, which has resulted in over 20 golf courses closing and the golf industry in shambles.

· Since neither organization has had any successes, and since Propeller Boy is totally devoid of even a modicum of marketing knowledge, how can he even begin to presume to assess whether any marketing scam they contrive could actually have any chance of success?

· County airports director, Bob “The Blowhard” Kemp, has already said that the airport fees “are reasonable.” So who’s Barnard, or anyone else, to question Bobby?

· Loony Liz and the Blowhard need the $8.56 per passenger airport fee and a lot more to build their Taj Mahal, so if Howie cuts them to four bucks how’s Lizzie and Bobby ever gonna get Gilland’s Folly built?

By the way when did Barnard become the King of the County?

As to poor old Randal “Where’s the Buffet” Wallace, he’s simply trying to appear relevant by writing rambling letters to the local fish wrapper, and attempting to introduce a resolution next Tuesday, which would require the other Myrtle Beach City Council members to confess their sins, admit the error of their ways, crap on the seven heroes on the CAB and support Gilland’s Folly.

"The first function of any organization is to control its sphincters." Neal Stephenson

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Welcome Lauren Miller, We’ll Miss You!

Recently, the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy announced that they’ve found yet another lamb to sacrifice on their bloody alter of honky-tonk tourism. After the abominable mess Saint Bradley and his team of miscreants made with that “uppity black woman,” Theda Jackson, and the bundle of cash he had to shell out to keep her from suing him, and, more importantly, to “get that woman out-of-town before she talks,” the Chamber of Comedy has found a person with impressive credentials to serve as their new marketing VP and their next sacrificial lamb.

Based upon her credentials published in the local fish wrapper, Ms. Miller is a professional who is used to working with sophisticated “big thinkers,” now the poor woman will be subjected to dealing with self-serving mouth-breathers who only care about lining their own pockets, covering their bungling asses and protecting their perceived “turf,” all to the continued detriment of the Myrtle Beach area.

Instead of hot-shot business professionals, Ms. Miller, will be dealing with a pack of pea-brained, dirty-dealing backstabbers dressed in their WalMart wardrobes, intent only upon maintaining the status quo. As usual, the Chamber of Comedy's Saint Bradley and his hand-picked cast of clowns - laughingly called the Board of Directors - will second guess everything Ms. Miller tries to accomplish, and will, like all those before her, make her the scapegoat for their stupidity, incompetence and failures.

Let’s hope that Ms. Miller has rhino-thick skin and a rare gift for dealing with spoiled brats, asylum inmates and retards, and that she’s also blessed with an extremely high tolerance for unending frustration, and will be able to accomplish something positive during her tenure.

Regardless, we wish her well, and send her our deepest sympathy.

Remember, when someone stabs you in the back, you are walking ahead of him. Arabic Proverb

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Gilland's Folly Going Far Beyond a Pathetic Fiasco!

The more people I talk to, the more I'm convinced that Horry County Council Chairman Liz Gilland has lost her mind? I refer to Gilland’s petulant antics with respect to her obsessive desire to build a $300 million Taj Mahal memorial (a.k.a. Gilland’s Folly) to herself on the back of Myrtle Beach air travelers, businesses and area taxpayers?

Loony Liz, along with her simple-minded klan of Kool-Aid drinkers - comprised of her Dick Cheney-like handler, John “The Jester” Weaver; her in-house hatchet-woman Anne “The Butcher” Wright and the County’s special needs poster-boy for incompetence, County airports czar Bobby “The Blowhard” Kemp - continues to make a complete fool out of herself, while at the same time alienating the City of Myrtle Beach officials, and embarrassing the County and the entire Myrtle Beach area with her spoiled brat-like utterances and unprofessional conduct.

Not satisfied with the damage she and her henchmen have already wrought upon the now sadly malfunctioning County government including…

· Abolishing the joint City of Myrtle Beach and Horry County airport coalition that was formed in 2003 to work together to address the needs and expansion of the airport.

· Meddling to the point of causing the resignations of some of the County's most respected and talented department heads, like the Director of Finance, Beth Fryar, the Head of Procurement, Linda Davis and the Zoning Administrator, Roland Meyer.

· A SLED investigation that has a cloud of corruption hanging over the County, and has already led to the convenient “early retirement” of the County’s Environmental Services Director and the Deputy Chief of the Horry County Police Department.

· An ongoing investigation into the potpourri of backroom shenanigans relating to Gilland’s Folly by no less than the Inspector General of the United States Department of Transportation, which has the potential for bringing Federal indictments against some, or all, of those involved in the shady awarding of the airport construction contract.

Gilland, who is used to her little pack of pet pantywaists on County Council kissing her fanny and knuckling under to whatever hair-brained scheme she dreams up, has been running around, like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off, ranting, raving and even threatening to “shake” citizens who refuse to kowtow to her costly, inappropriate, ill-advised, self-serving and highly suspect agenda.

The next chapter of “Loony Liz Does Horry” airs tomorrow (Tuesday, May 15th) at 4:00 PM at the Horry County Courthouse, in yet another episode of her disgusting displays of “up yours” political chicanery, when our ethically challenged heroine arrogantly offers up an in-your-face Resolution (No. 8807) demanding that the Myrtle Beach City Council take a public dump on the seven citizen heroes on the City’s Community Appearance Board; abdicate their responsibility to the safety and well-being of their constituents, and to get their dumb asses out of her way so she can build HER airport.

If this wasn’t so pathetic it would be funny, but its NOT FUNNY, and Gilland’s dupes on County Council need to get their cajones out of her apron pocket and join with the responsible members of County Council to STOP GILLAND”S INSANITY – NOW!

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Gilland’s Folly to Get Another “Spin” Tomorrow!

Does anyone out there in Cyberland remember those brilliant forecasters of all things great for the Redneck Riviera, the Strategic Advisory Group?

Come on, you know they were the “geniuses,” who along with Wayne Gray conned the City of Myrtle Beach into building what many locals call the “Toilet on 21st?” Obviously, I’m referring to the ill-fated, money-sucking bomb commonly known as the Myrtle Beach Convention Center Hotel.

Remember how those clowns at SAG piled on all of those pie-in-the-sky projections about how “successful” and “prosperous” the “Hotel” was going to be. Remember how the suckers on Myrtle Beach City Council, bought into that crock of bull lock-stock-and-pork barrel? Remember how the same chumps at City Hall continued to pay SAG hundreds of thousands of dollars for years as the “Hotel” was losing millions?

How about SAG’s study for Burroughs & Chapin’s ludicrous Trade Center scam? (See The Watchman’s “Burroughs & Chapin’s $258 Million Dollar Myrtle Beach Convention and Trade Center Expansion Scam” below).

Hey what about good old Barry Landreth? Oh yeah, he was a crook, never mind!

Well, tomorrow a new batch of “consultants,” the Boyd Group, will arrive on gilded-wings to enlighten the Redneck Riviera’s political and tourism dullards with another yet another three-card-monte of airport palaver. This pint-sized, mom ‘n pop “group” hails from the mecca of the air travel industry, Evergreen, Colorado; which is just a stone’s throw from downtown Wheat Ridge. These rocket scientists have been called “the Kmart of air travel propaganda,” with multiple websites hawking boiler-plate seminars, newsletters, reports, studies, Veg-O-Matics, Pocket Fishermen, etc. Needless to say, these folks are definitely the perfect match for the marketing backwater that is the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, and for only $17,000, who can complain about anything their “Blue-Light Special” comes up with?

So if you want some fun, be sure to show-up at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Ballroom B, tomorrow at 1:30 PM. It's adjacent to the "Hotel," and across the street from the B&C Trade Center site. Now, ain't that ironic

By way of some inside info: The Watchman has learned that the Boyd Group is considering adding local economic forecasting “heavyweights” Al Parish and Gary Loftus to their “crack” team of “beaners.”

“Have you ever heard of a consultant or feasibility study saying “DON’T” do something?” Malcolm Forbes

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

It's Time for the Annual Myrtle Beach Biker Numbers Cook-Off!

Yes boys and girls, its time for another installment of “Fun with Numbers.” You know, that special time each spring in Myrtle Beach when the local media flacks start spewing out the bogus biker rally numbers. Like Lemmings, the local media will again blindly print and broadcast whatever BS numbers the Chamber of Commerce makes up and throws against the wall.

Whether it's 14 million annual visitors, 97,000 plus accommodations or 400,000 Memorial Day bikers - all of which are totally fabrications of the Chamber, with absolutely nothing to back them up - the Redneck Riviera mediaites will again robotically spit them back out as the gospel according to Saint Bradley.

Last year, Myrtle Beach's Al Parish wannabe, Gary “The Sit-Ups Are Working” Loftus, promised the Sun News that he and his “crack” team of bean counters at Coastal Carolina were going to closely monitor the bike week attendees, and then deliver “an accurate count” shortly after their Memorial Day count was completed. Well, as Gomer Pyle so aptly put it, “Surprise, surprise” here we are almost a year later and Loftus has not delivered anything. By the way, what has he ever delivered?

So standby kiddies, because, as sure as Ron Ingle’s ass is in a sling, any minute now we’ll be hearing about how there are 500,000 Harley riders in town, and 400,000 black bikers are on the way, and it’s all just an over-sized load of bovine excrement.

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!

Has the Myrtle Beach Business Community No Shame?

A fat man in a red suit and it ain’t even Christmas!

By: The Watchman

Only in Myrtle Beach can a lardass in a firetruck red suit, and a hideous multi-colored tie not be laughed off of a stage, but that’s exactly what happened today when approximately 30 professionally-challenged business mavens sat on their collective asses when Al Parish, dressed like a white, skinhead pimp, stood up and took the podium, at the latest installment of Economic Foolishness, and proceeded to deliver yet another one of his generic, unenlightened and Mickey Mouse presentations - and people wonder why we’re looked upon as a bunch of redneck hicks by serious business people.

For years Parish, from the Harvard of the South, Charleston Southern Bible-Thumper University, has been delivering useless economic eye-wash - that any 6th grader who watches CNN could replicate in a couple of minutes - to any putz, or putzette, stupid enough to give this blow-hard more than 15-seconds. So what’s the big deal?

The “big deal” is simply this, its time the so-called Myrtle Beach business community stops suffering clowns like Parish, and start recruiting and listening to recognized industry professionals who can actually help the Redneck Rivera clean up our embarrassing act, and to start impressing the real world.

New Airport Terminal Plan – Terminal

By: George S. James

After nearly three years of overestimated financing, underestimated costs, continuously changing plans, and carefully crafting bogus propaganda to justify its need, it is time for the Horry County Council to demand that the Department of Airports put to rest plans to build a new passenger terminal at Myrtle Beach International Airport.

If such a decision was not apparent to a majority of County Council members before the winds of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew down most of the coastal property from Mobile, Alabama to Galveston, Texas, it certainly should be now.

Airlines? What Airlines?

With the airline industry in an absolute free-fall, and all of the Wall Street analysts predicting even more dire days, weeks, months and years ahead for this industry, which has become the standard for bankruptcy filings, Horry County Council, like Icarus, continues to fly blindly in to the sun.

Who in the hell are we building this insanity for? United Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002, ATA Airlines in October 2004, and both Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines and their subsidiaries Song and Comair filed on September 14th.

What about Myrtle Beach’s primary carrier, the twice-bankrupt USAirways? CNN Money says, “The new airline has numerous hurdles to overcome, including a poor industry record for mergers, continued high fuel prices, and the challenge of combining thousands of unionized pilots, flight attendants and mechanics into one work force over the next two years. Also looking over their shoulder is a handful of private investors who chipped in $565 million and will control the company. America West shareholders and the government agency holding $1 billion in loan guarantees for both companies also have measurable stakes in the merged entity.”

It’s the Fuel Stupid!

Add to all that, the whole world, except for Airport Director, Bob Kemp, County Administrator, Danny Knight, and Horry County Council, knows that fuel costs have skyrocketed, and have already caused ticket prices to virtually double, with no end in sight.

The impact of higher oil prices on the industry was recently outlined in the Economist by Giovanni Bisignani, the director-general of the International Air Transport Association. He forecast that this year American carriers’ losses would be around $8 billion, some $2 billion more than he had forecast as recently as May, when the price of oil, at $47 a barrel, was already twice that of four years ago. Today the oil price stands at $64. Facing fierce competition from relative newcomers like Southwest and JetBlue, which are still profitable, the older, “legacy” airlines, with their much bigger fixed-costs, are unable simply to pass the higher oil prices on to their customers.

How clueless can these people be? Haven’t they noticed the impact of the soaring fuel prices on the existing airport operations? Apparently not, as they just keep flapping blindly on.

Bungled from the Beginning

When the new terminal project was first introduced in February 2003, its cost was set at $110 million for the terminal building and associated infrastructure such as new parking lots, new roads, taxiways and apron construction improvements and the like.

Within six months the cost quickly jumped to $190 million and continued a slow climb to approximately $260 million in May 2005.

In an attempt to save the plans for a new terminal at Myrtle Beach International Airport, the Horry County Department of Airports head, Bob Kemp, and his "con sultants" for the terminal project made a half-hearted attempt this summer to cut costs in an unsuccessful attempt to get the overall project cost down to $200 million. As with all of Kemp’s shenanigans this too was all “smoke and mirrors.”

While these cuts included such items as replacing terrazzo tiles with carpet in the new terminal building, their overall effectiveness in providing cost control for the project remains in serious doubt.

For example, one of the cuts saved $6.5 million by eliminating a new taxiway for the proposed terminal. This cost, normally paid approximately 90% by federal grant money, may not sufficiently cut the local cost of the terminal project.

In addition, the estimates do not include the $27 million that will remain to be paid on the current terminal when the new terminal opens. They also do not include high-speed turnoffs for the new terminal, which are approximately $1 million in cost, extension of the runway at approximately $7 million, and an overpass over Highway 17 Bypass that is part of RIDE II projects and is estimated at $33 million.

One other major cost not included is the financing costs of issuing $70 million in airport revenue bonds which current financing plans call for. That cost is estimated at $210 million over the 30 years it will take to pay off the bonds. Spreading that cost evenly over the 30 year life of those bonds means the airport will have to generate revenue of $7 million per year just to finance $70 million in bonds.

Kemp, Knight and their cronies have continued to “cook the books,” change specifications and eliminate needed infrastructure from the cost of the terminal project as if it would be magically funded some other way, and the chumps on County Council keep swallowing all of it, when they should be firing both con artists.

The Hurricane Effect

With the estimated $300 billion dollars in damage stretching from Mobile, Alabama to Galveston, Texas, prices of construction materials, especially steel, concrete and lumber have shot through the roof, and supplies are virtually impossible to come by. Adding to the problem is the flood damage currently being wrought upon parts of the Northeast. Industry experts predict even higher prices, and greater scarcity of materials for at least 2 to 3 years – and that’s based on there not being any future disasters. So what does Kemp and Knight think all of this is going to do to their construction budget, and where do they think they’re going to get their materials from. When asked, one Council member said, “They don’t have a clue, but what’s even more scary is that they don’t give a damn!”

Loads of BS from BK

To say that Bob Kemp has a credibility problem is like saying Paris Hilton has a morality problem, everyone knows it but they continue to get away with it!

After Kemp and his consultants requested council approval on a reduced terminal project estimated to cost approximately $209 million. Kemp’s funding summary listed low/no risk funding sources at the same amount.

Included in these funding sources are $23 million in airport cash, $15.5 million in passenger facility charges, $6 million in rental car charges, FAA entitlement grants of $24.629 million, airport property leases of $18 million, $4 million from former airport fund of the city of Myrtle Beach, $10 million from the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base Redevelopment Authority, $70 million in county issued bonds, and $38.09 million from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Of these funds, the airport cash is no risk because it is already in the bank and the city fund and MBAFBRA money is available and earmarked for the project. The FAA entitlement grants have historically been approximately $3.5 million per year and are expected to continue.

The $70 million in county bonds will be repaid from passenger revenue at the airport. The county’s airport bond consultant Ken Cushine admitted in June that the $70 million level was based on assumptions of three percent growth of enplaning (departing) passengers per year, starting in 2005. Currently the airport is slightly above the three percent growth level, but would need to continue its current growth for the rest of the year as airline fuel has raised the cost of flying considerably and the effects of the recent hurricanes on the economy are unknown.

Note: It is not unreasonable to expect some cutback in travel by the American populace as it is hampered with paying $3 per gallon for gas in cars and all the associated costs, which are added to the basic living expenses, such as food, and heating costs, by the high gas prices.

Even if the airport maintains its three percent growth rate for 2005, passenger totals would only slightly exceed those recorded in Myrtle Beach in 2000. The FAA predicted passenger growth of 3.5 percent per year in 2000. Under that assessment, our passenger growth rate would be, essentially, flat during that time. Hardly numbers to justify building a new terminal. Needless to say 9/11 turned even those weak projections upside down.

Passenger facility charges and rental car charges are estimates of future income, while the lease of airport property is entirely speculative as brought out by Councilman Mark Lazarus during the special meeting.

The FAA funds, expected to be issued through a Letter of Intent, is also a speculative number. Letters of Intent are not guaranteed money, as are federal grants. Letters of Intent state the intent of the FAA to appropriate the money, if it is available, and may occur through a series of years.

Don Fowler, a lobbyist hired by the airport to help with FAA funding of the project, acknowledged as much at the meeting.

“It is impossible to talk with great certainty because of the wide discretion of FAA authorities,” said Fowler. “Any funds from the Feds are subject to the annual appropriations process. In tight budget years, those appropriations are in question.”

Tight budget years? How about the fact that the federal government now faces expenses in the range of $500 billion just to help the Gulf Coast areas decimated by the two above mentioned hurricanes. Fowler is a respected lobbyist. He made his statement before the hurricanes and flooding and their associated new and unexpected costs. If federal funds for the new terminal were questionable before these natural disasters, what are they now?

Oh yes, the new federal budget year technically started Monday October 1, 2005. Kemp told Council members during a series of meetings that the airport department expected to hear about the amount of federal funds, which would be provided for the project by July 15, 2005. That time frame advanced to July 30, August 15, and August 30. So far, the airport department has not heard it will receive any additional money toward the terminal project from the federal government in this fiscal year. It’s a good guess they will not receive any additional federal grants above the $3.5 million entitlement grants they have been receiving since the Air Force turned the base over to the county.

Changing the Plans to Advance the Scam

We have already covered above how the plans have changed for the new terminal. However a closer look at just one source of financing demonstrates how numbers have been filled in as necessary to keep the project alive.

Airport owned land was estimated to provide $9 million toward the project cost when the new terminal was first announced. That number grew to $18 million as costs started to rise. In the past few months, Kemp has again raised the amount available from the sale or lease of airport land to $30-$35 million. Of course, to date, no requests for proposal (RFP) have been issued by the airport department for the sale or lease of the land. Councilman Mark Lazarus addressed this issue during an airport workshop several months ago.

“We don’t know how much we can get from land leases or sales at the Grand Strand and Myrtle Beach airports,” said Lazarus. “These numbers are guesses. We haven’t even issued an RFP for the land yet.”

Spinning the Numbers

During 2004, Kemp continuously bragged that passenger growth at the Myrtle Beach Airport was in the range of 17 percent. This seems like a large increase in the number of passengers flying to Myrtle Beach.

What Kemp failed to mention was that those same 2004 passenger numbers continued to trail the amount of passengers who flew into Myrtle Beach in 2000. Yes, passenger travel increased in 2004 over 2003. However, it decreased when measured against 2000. It is all in the way you present your statistics and the airport department has continuously chosen statistics, which show what it wants them to show, not the overall picture.

The Logical Solution – Expand the Existing Terminal

Yes, we realize that "logic" is not something that comes easily in the Myrtle Beach area, but in this situation it must prevail! You see, the existing terminal facility can be easily expanded.

Parking lots for the new terminal, according to a 10 year old, would be expanded to include what are currently being used for rental car parking. The plan was to extend the old terminal south to near the current rental parking lots. That plan allows for at least 18 gates, there are now currently seven. In addition, most of the infrastructure is in place with much less needed to service an extended terminal than a new terminal.

An added benefit of this plan is that all the roads currently serving the present terminal are already built and the road plans needed for the new terminal would be unnecessary.

It is estimated that the current terminal could be expanded to 18 gates at a cost of $60-$100 million, well within the county’s funding ability with no need for federal funds to pay for the project. Any federal funds, although none are really expected, would reduce the cost to the county.

Lazarus made just this point in a keynote speech to the Horry County Republican Party last Monday night. Once an advocate for the new terminal, Lazarus has come to realize the county just can’t afford the luxury of building a new terminal and must move on with an option it can afford.

It is time for a majority of council members to join Lazarus and move airport expansion forward in a reasonable, affordable manner. Some, led by Council Chairman, Liz Gilland, are reluctant to join the enlightened majority due simply ego issues or the inability to admit they were misled.

Obviously, the fiscally reasonable thing to do is expand the current terminal. Passenger growth will be, at best, moderate in the next 10-20 years as the nation recovers from excessive budget deficits, new costs from the recent hurricanes, increased cost of fuel, and a relatively stagnant economy.

Council is charged with a fiduciary responsibility to expend public funds in a reasonable manner. It’s time for them to step-up and show the taxpayers that they can actually do that.

Horry County Council Heroes Deal B&C a Major Defeat!

Grande Dunes Marina Scam Torpedoed by Six Conscientious Council Members

By The Watchman

Robert Leroy Ripley, the founder of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, would have been shocked at what went on at last Tuesday night’s, Horry County Council meeting, because it was truly amazing. Of course, old Rip has been dead for fifty-six years, but I trust you get my drift.

If you were not in attendance at the County Council meeting, or watching it on the boob tube, then you really missed an unbelievable moment in Horry County politics, when ruthless land developer, and environmental pariah, Burroughs & Chapin Company, appeared before County Council trying to convince Council to let them add their multi-million dollar Grande Dunes Marina project to their existing Multi-County Business Park scheme.

That’s right, the millionaires at B&C wanted to dodge additional millions in taxes for themselves and for multi-millionaires, and yacht owners! What a deal! How could Council possibly refuse?

For weeks B&C’s President, Doug Wendel, and his cronies at B&C, including their Chairman, Egerton Burroughs, had been telephoning and meeting with Council members pleading their case, but the curtain really went up on this side-show when the portly Wendel stood-up before Council on Tuesday night and began his seemingly unending diatribe and shocking display of weaseling, lying, cajoling and sucking-up to the Council members.

It was truly something you had to see to believe. There stood an aging Wendel in shirtsleeves (obviously in a pathetic attempt to pass himself off as “one of the guys”) sweating and groveling before the folks that, for years, he and his minions have treated with contempt, and run rough shod over.

What in the world could bring this pompous ass to such a humiliating place, as he nears the end of his unscrupulous career? The answer is two-fold and very simple – Money and Power – because, after all, those are the only things that have ever mattered to Wendel, Burroughs and their ethically challenged cohorts on the B&C Board.

You see, despite Wendel’s denials, sources high up in the area's banking community say that B&C has been forced to actually dig into their own pockets to cover substantial financial shortfalls related to their mega tax dodge, the Multi-County Business Park, and we all know that’s contrary to everything B&C stands for. After all, it’s the taxpayers who are supposed to pay for B&C’s scams, NOT B&C!

In a panic to plug the financial rupture in the "Burn 'em & Cheat 'em" Multi-County Business Park dike, while at the same time looking to dodge additional millions in personal property taxes over the next 30 years, Wendel and his henchmen were hell bent to add their Grande Dunes Marina project to their MCBP.

Like Bush squirming as he fessed-up to bungling the Katrina recovery, Wendel was visibly uncomfortable in his new role as beggar.

While the usual pro B&C voting bloc Ho’s on Council, James “Yes, suh Mr. Egerton” Frazier, Paul “Elmer Fudd” Prince and GOP Chairman, Duane Oliver’s son-in-law and personal flunky on Council, Kevin Hardee, were all on board the B&C bandwagon from the get go, there were still a couple of other surprises yet to come.

At the end of Wendel’s rambling sales pitch Councilman Harold Worley shocked everyone when he publicly sold his vote to B&C. That’s right, in front of everyone, including the media, Worley agreed to vote for B&C’s marina flimflam in exchange for spot-zoning a 8-story height restriction agreement with Wendel for Little River. It was unbelievable! Political QVC!

Next up was the developers new best friend, Councilman Mark Lazarus, who went on record admitting that he was voting for B&C’s marina because he was “getting a six lane interchange (at the intersection of Highway 17 Business and Highway 17 Bypass) and bike paths” in his district. He then encouraged his fellow council members to cast their votes for B&C’s marina deal. While Lazarus’ vote was no surprise, since he was B&C’s only supporter when the County’s Administration Committee voted 3 to 1 against the marina, it certainly won’t serve him well if he intends to run against Liz Gilland for Council Chairman next year, which I believe would be political suicide for him.

The only other “mild” surprise was Bob Grabowski’s pro B&C vote, but he does make his living selling lighting fixtures, and B&C sure buys a ton of ‘em.

Now, as to the real stars and heroes of the evening, the citizens of Horry County should be extremely proud of the five Council members, Howard Barnard, John Boyd, Marion Foxworth, Mike Ryan and Carl Schwartzkoff, and Council Chairman Liz Gilland for having the savvy and vision to see this scam for what it was, and for having the courage to cast the six “nays,” which caused a tie vote and which, in turn, defeated B&C’s nefarious tax avoidance plan.

When asked what the folks in attendance at last Tuesday’s session thought of Wendel’s humiliation, and if there were any sentiments in his favor, one political wag summed it up this way, “Hell no! The arrogant bastard was finally reaping the whirlwind for all of his backstabbings and dirty backroom dealings he’s sowed, and 90% of the people there were overjoyed to see him get his ass whuped, especially in public!”

I'm Baaaaaccccckkkkk!

I just got back from a very short junket to Mexico (thanks Rita), and heard that I missed some fun, especially with Horry County Council, B&C and their Multi-County Business Park. Fortunately, I have a buddy up in Myrtle Beach who always tapes the antics of County and Myrtle Beach City Councils for me, and saves the local fish wrapper for me whenever I'm out of town, so, dear reader, I'll be catching up on all of the local shenanigans over the weekend. Please, stay tuned!

PARTNERS Survey – Another Project of the Burroughs & Chapin Company

By: The Watchman

We just received a mailing from Coastal Carolina University’s Economic and Community Development Center about the re-viability of the failed, publicly funded economic development arm of Burroughs & Chapin Company, PARTNERS Economic Development Corporation. The mailing included a pitiful little questionnaire about PARTNERS along with a cover letter which was signed by local yokel, and former Mom ‘n Pop motelier, Gary Loftus, that says how they want to know what we, the business community, think about economic development.

What a crock! Since when did anyone at B&C U, or any of the other B&C controlled entities like PARTNERS, LYMO, DRC, COMBO or the Myrtle Beach City Council, start giving a damn about what anyone thinks, except, of course, whatever their puppet masters at B&C think?

Note: B&C Prez, Doug Wendel, single-handedly chose the cornball PARTNERS moniker, and wasn’t amused when his lackeys on the PARTNERS board decided that "PARTNERS" SUCKED!

As to the so-called questionnaire, it’s a joke. While the content is comparable to the work of a special ed student, it still makes sure to include all of B&C’s agendas for screwing the poor taxpayer at every turn? Can you say “Trade Center?” How about “Airport Expansion” and that dirty “Anti-Development Attitude,” that B&C is so afraid of? Yep, it’s all right there in that brilliant little questionnaire. So be sure to fill it out and mail it in, and don’t worry your little heads about the integrity of the unbiased folks at Coastal, like Loftus, “cooking” the results, because stuff like that doesn’t happen around here.

And so it goes at B&C U!

So-Called Myrtle Beach Golf Marketing Groups at Each Other's Throats!

By: The Watchman

A couple of weeks ago the bumbling, self-appointed grand Pooh-Bahs of Myrtle Beach golf got together to enjoy their new favorite pastime – playing the Myrtle Beach Golf Demise Blame Game.

That’s right kiddies, those lovable, “every thing's peachy” old stumble-bums over at Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association and the Tee Time Network, who together over the last six years have destroyed the Myrtle Beach golf business by running off 755,000 paid golf rounds of golf annually, are all at each others throats.

The leadership (obviously, I am using that term very loosely here) of each organization is trying desperately to place the blame for their stupidity and rampant failures on the other two. Needless to say, “That dog won’t hunt,” because they’re all guilty as sin for killing the Myrtle Beach golf Golden Goose.

The meeting began with acrimony and then disintegrated into finger pointing, name-calling and enough blame being thrown around to fill-up the Superdome. The whiny mantras of the day were, “You guys are screwing us," and, We’re not getting our fair share!”

Boo hoo! Who's screwing who, and your fair share of what you incompetent blow-hards?

This useless, lazy, pack of brain-dead reprobates are all individually and collectively responsible for decimating not only the vitally important Myrtle Beach golf vacation economy (see the various Myrtle Beach golf articles below, for details), but they are all also the bastards responsible for all of the golf course closings and hundreds of golf course employees losing their jobs. Each and every one of them are guilty as sin, and the floundering golf courses that are struggling valiantly to survive should all be screaming with one voice, “Off with their heads, off with their heads!”

All I have to say is three things to these bush league operations, and their ineffective and moronic staffs…

Shame on you!

Shame on you!

Shame on you!

And so it goes in the heart-breaking debacle that is Myrtle Beach golf!

In Search of the “Real” Little River

Were in the Hell is the utopia the Little River Rats are whining about?

By The Watchman

Okay, I give up!

On today’s “Opinion” page of the local fish wrapper, yet another Little River Rat, by the name of Sam Breider, babbles on and on about some magical burg on the northend of the Strand called Little River. Like his fellow reality-challenged neighbors, Sam “The Sham,” spews flowery platitudes about his imaginary hamlet of Little River, as if this rundown Dogpatch were the Bethlehem of the Carolinas. Hey Sham Man, where’s the damn star, and you sure couldn’t find three wise men anywhere in that shantyville.

Here’s how Sam “The Sham” and his neighborhood “Pharaohs” describe Little River in their ludicrous palaver…

“Little River sits with the quiet dignity of a Southern lady at the northern end of the Grand Strand since the days when her harbor was nurtured by Peter Horry and the families that created and maintained this county, and gave us the Southeast's best-kept secret - the lady is Little River.”

What an absolute crock of unmitigated bovine excrement! What are those morons up there smoking? We know that they’re all wearing rose-colored glasses as thick as Coke bottles, but do they have elevator music playing in their Miracle Ears, and lavender blossoms growing out of their hairy nostrils as well?

Obviously, these chowderheads have conveniently forgotten how their little “heaven” has been a “haven” for drug runners and bank robbers. Hell, these rubes are so dumb that their Chamber of Commerce has gone broke once, and is heading for the gas pipe again.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget that Little River is also South Carolina’s Bigot Town, the home of the phony-baloney, bible-thumping, hypocrites that put 35,000 South Carolinians out of work.

Hello! Reality time - Little River is just as tacky and redneck infested as the rest of the Myrtle Beach area, except the rest don’t smell as fishy!

And so it goes in the fantasyland that is Little River!

No “B&C Ho's” Last Night

By The Watchman

At last night's Horry County Council meeting, the B&C Ho's were a no show!

Yes dear reader, I dragged my butt all the way up to Conway to watch the antics of Horry County Council, only to have them decide to table it. Damn!

While that is good news, because B&C obviously didn't have the votes they needed, the slimy land developer, and environmental pariah, like the plague they are, will definitely be back trying to again pig-out at the public trough. As soon as they think they have the votes on County Council to allow them to dodge paying millions of dollars in personal property taxes (for the next 30 years) by adding their multi-million dollar Grande Dunes Marina project to their mega tax dodge, the Multi-County Business Park, they'll be back in their cheap suits with their paws out.

While the withdrawal of B&C’s disgusting resolution, was a big setback for them, it was certainly a boon to the pro “Burn ’em & Cheat ’em County Council members who are looking to up their ante for their votes. Precisely, what is the right price for voting for no taxes for multi-millionaires, and yacht owners?

Stay tuned, as this side show will only get better, and better!

And so it goes!

Chairman Gilland Corrects The Watchman's Faux Pas!

From Horry County Council
Chairman Liz Gilland

Hi.

Someone just showed me a copy of your latest piece. I don't mind being written about --or even being called names -- but I don't like it when someone slams me with a lie.

I'm not on the I & R Committee -- I simply attend all the committee meetings possible. Barnard chairs that group all on his own.

I didn't vote (see preceding sentence) but did state, after all the discussion and voting was done, that I had not supported the MCBP when it first came through council and would not be doing so with any amendments. The quote was even highlighted in the Sun News, as well as being in the article. So maybe you don't read that paper... The members of the committee were not on Council when the MCBP came through and James Frazier, a supporter of the MCBP. They didn't know the history nor the controversy, or didn't remember it. No wonder the item went to their committee instead of Admin...

Nonetheless, since you must not remember the futile battle I fought against the MCBP, you need to pay better attention to the facts and not slam me by lying to your readers. I'd hate to have them believe what you said about me.

I'm glad I figured out how to write you. I'm pretty computer challenged and don't usually do e-mail. This was the first time I’ve seen your blog. Sorry it was incorrect and hurtful to me.

Liz

The Watchman Replies: Thank you Madam Chairman for correcting my apparent error! Yes, I certainly do recall your valiant efforts against the MCBP, led by B&C's all-time greatest flunky and closet queen, Chad Prosser. You were truly courageous, and a bright light in one of Horry County's most shameful moments. While I apologize to you most sincerely for my mistake, I must, at the same time, ask, what happened to our courageous, bright light? Perhaps, she'll shine again tonight! I for one hopes so!

Don’t Miss Tonight’s Installment of “B&C Ho's!”

By The Watchman

At tonight's Horry County Council meeting, there will be a very important public test to see which members of County Council will show themselves to be political Ho's for slimy land developer, and environmental pariah, Burroughs & Chapin Company, when they cast their votes to let "Burn 'em & Cheat 'em" dodge paying millions of dollars in personal property taxes for the next 30 years, by allowing the B&C rip-off artists to add their multi-million dollar Grande Dunes Marina project to their mega tax dodge, the Multi-County Business Park scam.

That’s right, no taxes for multi-millionaires, and yacht owners!

Every taxpayer should already be screaming for the head of whoever on County Council, or County staff, orchestrated the nefarious end-run of placing B&C’s dirty deal before the County’s Infrastructure and Regulation Committee, instead of the County’s Administration Committee, which is the body solely responsible for reviewing the financial impact and ramifications of such projects.

Note: The County’s Administration Committee actually had to demand to see B&C’s plan. When they finally were allowed to review it’s economic impact on the County, they wisely voted 3 to 1 against it, with Mark Lazarus being B&C’s sole supporter!

The apparently ethically challenged IR Committee’s intervention was a sleazy attempt to work a backdoor deal for the millionaire, puppet-masters on the top floor of “Pay-off Central,” the Founders Center. The IR Committee, led by County Council Chairman, Liz Gilland, and Howard Barnard, voted unanimously to approve the scheme, and thereby to endorse handing B&C another slab of taxpayers’ flesh.

Needless to say, every taxpayer and voter in Horry County should be watching tonight’s vote very closely, to find out which Council members will be joining lifelong B&C political whore, James Frazier, in the B&C brothel, so that when election time rolls around again, they can vote their miserable asses out of office!

If you miss tonight’s vote, you can checkout the Myrtle Beach Insider tomorrow, as The Watchman will post the names and descriptions of the heroes and Ho's. Hopefully, there will be more heroes than Ho's, but the way some council members have been conducting themselves lately, especially Lazarus, Gilland, Barnard and Kevin Hardee, I sure wouldn’t count on it!

McCamish and Golf Holiday Losing It?

By The Watchman

Yesterday afternoon, as I was cruising by the offices of Golf Holiday in my classic Stealthmobile, I happened to notice a black ambulance-type vehicle backed-up to the front door. As I rubbernecked by, I noted a couple of burly guys in white coats entering the building, carrying what appeared to be a net and a straightjacket.

You can bet that I immediately whipped old Nellie around, slipped on my shades, pulled my cap way down and drove ever so slowly back by for a closer look-see. I immediately noticed that the writing on the black van said Nutt’s Sanitarium, but there was nothing else going on, so I pulled around the corner to where I could get a good view of the front door and the black van.

Like any other nosey nabob, I began to speculate as to what was happening inside, and the best I could conjure up was, was that poor old Mickey McCamish, the Pollyanna Executive Director of Golf Holiday, had finally lost it, and was being hauled off to the loony bin.

I arrived at my conclusion based, as usual, on another front-page story about the Myrtle Beach airport in that morning’s Sun News!

As I pointed out in my August 1st piece, Uncooking the Myrtle Beach Golf Numbers (found below), McCamish and Golf Holiday, make-up statistics, like the Brothers Grimm made up fairy tales, and it’s painfully obvious, after reading this most recent article, that their BS has gotten so far out-of-hand that they actually cannot remember which lie they told the media last.

Case in point: In a presentation before Horry County Council in June of 2005, McCamish, went on the record stating that, “70% of all golfers fly into Myrtle Beach.” Less than 30 days later, in a July 24, 2005 front-page article in the Sun News, a memory-challenged McCamish stated that, “60% of all golfers fly into Myrtle Beach.”

Now, only 15 days later, McCamish tells the Sun News that, “Between 40% and 50% of golfers coming to Myrtle Beach arrive by air.” WHAT? In a scant 45 days the percentage of golfers allegedly traveling to Myrtle Beach by air has crashed from 70% to 40%.

At this rate, by the end of September no golfers will be flying into Myrtle Beach.

What in the heck are those peckerwoods at Golf Holiday smoking? It’s no wonder the boys in the white sport coats with the net and snappy jacket, that buttons in the back, were visiting the funny farm that is Golf Holiday!

Whenever I encounter yet another Golf Holiday meadow muffin, I’m reminded of the old adage which my daddy quotes so often, “Money talks, and bullshit walks,” and I, for one, think that these bullshitters are long overdue for their walking papers, but their spineless members will probably give them a raise instead.

And so it goes in the disaster that is Myrtle Beach golf!

Who’s Responsible for Horry County’s AvCraft Debacle?

Ben Bartel Busted in Bavaria!

By The Watchman

Just when you think Horry County can’t hold a candle to the Ship of Fools that is the City of Myrtle Beach, darn if they don’t do something that recaptures the Turd in the Punchbowl Award all for themselves!

French newspaper, l’agefi, and German news magazine, Focus, broke the story the last week in July that German Federal Police arrested airport director, Bobby Kemp’s, bosom buddy Ben Bartel, the ethically devoid CEO of Myrtle Beach based AvCraft Aviation, at the Frankfort, Germany airport, in conjunction with a massive tax evasion scheme totaling in the “millions of Euros.” Germany’s head prosecutor, Ruediger Hoedl, says that Bartel’s machinations involve AvCraft’s Dornier 328 airplanes and shady shenanigans in the Cayman Islands.

That’s right kiddies, lovable old Ben Bartel - the darling of Governor Mark Sanford, the South Carolina Commerce Department, Horry County Council, County Council Chairman Liz Gilland, County Administrator, Danny Knight, Horry County Department of Airports Director, Bobby Kemp, ousted PARTNERS CEO, Joe Woodle, Horry County Republican Party Chairman, Duane Oliver, Airbase Redevelopment Authority Executive Director, Buddy Stiers, the Editorial Board of the Sun News, and, of course, Joe “I love to get my ass kicked” DeFeo – is sitting in the slammer in Germany, while approximately 50 Dornier 328 airplanes, allegedly worth about $6 million dollars each, sit rotting away at AvCraft’s “World Headquarters,” (the only AvCraft facility that hasn't, as yet, gone bankrupt) at the Myrtle Beach International Airport.

How in heavens name could something like this have happened here? I mean, after all, we have the best politicians money can buy. We're supposed to have dedicated and responsible County employees to protect the lowly taxpayers from all the crooks and charlatans (except for B&C of course). So how did things go so terribly wrong? Why didn’t anyone speak up, and tell us the TRUTH about Bartel and AvCraft?

Oh yeah, I forgot! Some people did speak up!

The first person to sound the alarm about AvCraft was County Councilman Marion Foxworth. Not only did he speak-up, but he stood-up and spoke-out, only to be accused by every Tom, Dick and Denny of “playing politics,” especially by Doug Wendel and Duane Oliver’s porcine attack rat, WRNN’s Steve Porter.

From day one, Foxworth said that the AvCraft deal was “bad for the County,” and that the company had a "questionable background," and was “highly suspect,” but not one of the lemmings named in the pervious paragraph ever listened. Instead they all blindly clamored aboard Bartel’s bandwagon, greedy to advance their own selfish little agendas, and merrily road off into the sunset, and directly towards the cliffs.

How about that crazy Horry County Auditor woman, Lois Eargle? Come on, you remember, the nutty public servant who actually had the audacity to demand that AvCraft pay their taxes? Remember how the lemmings viciously attacked her as well for “playing politics” with their good buddy Ben’s wonderful company? What ever happened to that wild woman? More importantly, what ever happened to the $11 million in taxes from AvCraft?

What about that reporter guy for the Myrtle Beach Herald, Paul Gable, and his courageous publisher, Greg Everett? Not only did they have the courage to speak-up, but they did the due diligence that none of the lemmings ever saw fit to do. They documented AvCraft’s chicanery in article after article, but the lemmings just kept on sucking-up to good old Benny. Did I mention that the lemmings accused The Herald of “playing politics” as well? In their guilt and paranoia, the lemmings even accused the brave souls at The Herald of being behind my insignificant little Blog. Do you think Gable and Everett are laughing in their beers as the soulless lemmings hurl themselves off the AvCraft cliff?

Let's not forget Travis Tritten, that young reporter for the Sun News, who had his efforts to delve into AvCraft’s nefarious past quashed by his milquetoast editors, because his reporting would be “too political?” Boy, I bet he’s pissed! I’ll bet he was equally miffed at the “left-handed” headline for his story on Bartel’s arrest on the front page of Wednesday, August 3rd., Sun News. Did you notice that the Sun News didn’t see fit post Tritten’s Bartel Bust story on their website? Why do you think that was? Whimp-O-Mania, or just their humiliation at having foolishly touted AvCraft's employment numbers, while at the same time Bartel was being checked into the Graybar Inn by the German cops?

Note: I think that the Sun News should be congratulated for employing the mentally challenged, but having them write headlines is apparently too much for them to handle.

So what, dear reader, are the lemmings saying in their pathetic efforts to cover their collective asses and to “spin” the Benny in the Box fiasco, and the dismal future of AvCraft (now there’s an oxymoron for you)? It seems to me it has been something like...

“Golly gee whilikers, we’re just so totally shocked, and bummed! Like you know, just because that crazy Lois was out there trying to collect some silly little tax thingys, we never thought that a sweetie like Benny could ever actually be 'charged' with evading taxes. Besides, you know those yucky German are Nazis don't you? Remember what they did to our boys in World War II, and how about that Wall thingy? Oooo, they're so totally gross!”

“Besides, ya know, we really like shouldn’t worry because Benny B. has only been ‘charged’ with evading bazillions in taxes, and until he’s had his day in court we shouldn’t, as good Christian Republicans, prejudge him, because that would be just so totally not fair. Oh well, gotta run now, Duane O. needs us to circulate another petition for Jimmy DeFeo to run for somethingy. Ta ta, love ya!”

Well, I guess this blows Bartel being named Myrtle Beach’s Man of the Year, but with the lemmings, who knows!

On the bright side, at least the ringleader of the AvCraft con, Bobby Kemp, can finally justify his “International” claim for the Myrtle Beach airport.

And so it goes in the sideshow that is Horry County!

AvCraft CEO, Ben Bartel, Jailed in Germany!

By Paul Gable

The following is a copy of the lead story
that appeared in the Myrtle Beach Herald
August 4, 2005 edition.

AvCraft owner Ben Bartel was arrested in Germany late last week, according to a July 31, 2005 report in the French newspaper l’agefi. The story said Bartel was arrested by the German Federal Police at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany just prior to leaving the country.

A phone call Tuesday to the office of Rudiger Hodl, Attorney General of Munich (Germany), confirmed Bartel was under investigation for tax evasion. A spokesman for the Hodl said an investigation into tax evasion by Bartel had been opened by German authorities, but would provide no further details.

According to a report in the German news magazine In Focus, published Monday, Bartel is suspected of evading over seven million euros (approximately $10 million USD) in taxes to German authorities through fictitious transactions in the Cayman Islands.

Bartel is the principal owner of AvCraft Aviation Holdings, LLC which owns the AvCraft Support Services facility at the Myrtle Beach International Airport. He is also the principal owner of AvCraft Support Services.

The history of AvCraft seems to be one of continued miscalculations.

Headquartered in Leesburg, Virginia, AvCraft Aviation Holdings bought an airplane maintenance facility at the Canton-Akron Airport in Ohio and Tyler Jet Completions of Tyler, Texas in late 1999. Both businesses were renamed AvCraft.

Bartel purchased the Fairchild Dornier 328 production facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany out of bankruptcy in late 2003, changing the name to AvCraft Aerospace GmbH. At that time, he estimated there was enough interest in the aircraft to support production of 300-500 more units. Shortly after the purchase of the German factory, Bartel announced he was merging the Ohio and Texas operations into AvCraft Support Services to be located at Myrtle Beach.

Bartel announced in a February 2004 interview with Aviation International magazine that the German production facility would restart operations in March 2004. At that time, Bartel said the European subsidiary of Maple Financial Group was providing funding of approximately $100 million for the restart of the production line.

Bartel changed that story during a press conference at the British air show in Farnsworth, England during the summer of 2004, when he announced the sale of 13 Dornier 328 aircraft through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. Bartel said the Cayman subsidiary would provide tax-free money to the German production facility in order to fund the restart of the production line. The 13 aircraft were among 18 completed, but unsold, aircraft Bartel acquired when he bought the production facility out of bankruptcy.

According to early 2004 statements by Bartel, the Myrtle Beach facility planned to provide maintenance and refurbishment for existing Dornier 328’s in the United States, as well as providing paint and completion facilities for new production aircraft from the Oberpfaffenhofen plant. He estimated the Myrtle Beach plant would ultimately provide 300-400 high paying jobs in Horry County.

When the Myrtle Beach facility opened in June 2004, approximately 80 Dornier 328’s were being operated in the United States by regional airlines and private owners. Since that time, leases on Dornier 328 aircraft, both turboprops and jets, have been terminated by Independence Air and PSA, a subsidiary of USAirways.

Since October 2004, over 50 Dornier 328’s have been parked on the apron at Myrtle Beach International. According to former AvCraft general manager Marvin Euchner, the planes were here for short-term storage maintenance. The planes continue to be “stored” at Myrtle Beach today.

Bartel was provided a combined incentive package of $1,075,000, $750,000 from the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base Redevelopment Authority and $325,000 from the state of South Carolina, to relocate to Myrtle Beach.

Governor Mark Sanford joined local officials in welcoming Bartel and AvCraft to Myrtle Beach in December 2003. However, spokesman Joel Sawyer said Tuesday that the governor attends such functions at the request of the Commerce Department and is not involved in decisions to award incentive packages.

Commerce Department spokeswoman Claire Morris said Tuesday that AvCraft Support Services had not finalized the incentive package with the state.

“Our incentive packages are performance based and no money was provided up front,” said Morris. “AvCraft has not finalized the incentive agreement with the Commerce Department and is not eligible for any money from the state at this time.”

The local money was to be paid in four equal annual installments of $187,500 each, according to terms in a lease between AvCraft and the Horry County Department of Airports, if certain employment goals were met. AvCraft received the first installment in May 2005, based on employment of 40 full-time employees by January 15, 2005. AvCraft missed a June 15, 2005 employment goal of 80 full-time employees needed to qualify for the second installment due to be paid January 15, 2006.

AvCraft Aerospace GmbH, the German division of AvCraft Aviation, which owned the Dornier 328 production facility in Germany, filed for bankruptcy in late March 2005. By the time Bartel filed bankruptcy for the production facility, only two aircraft had been produced by the factory and both of those had been partially completed before Bartel bought the facility.

Oberfaffenhofen plant manager Wolfgang Walter blamed the AvCraft bankruptcy on “undercapitalization” from the time AvCraft first purchased the facility. Both Bartel and Walter signed the bankruptcy petition citing “liquidity problems”.

At the time of the bankruptcy filing in February 2005, Dr. Martin Prager, a Munich, Germany attorney appointed by German authorities as bankruptcy administrator, acknowledged court records for the bankruptcy showed 13 of the 18 completed aircraft had been sold and two of the partially completed aircraft had been completed and sold.

The AvCraft Aviation Holdings headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia were closed in late April 2005.

Bartel’s tax problems are not limited to Germany. In March 2005, Smith County, Texas, the county in which Tyler is located, attorney Tab Beall filed suit against AvCraft for unpaid property taxes in excess of $11,000.

At the time the Horry County council approved the lease and incentive agreement with AvCraft at a regular council meeting on May 17, 2005, the production facility was already in bankruptcy and the corporate headquarters closed. However, council approved the lease and incentives by a 9-3 vote, based in part on confirmation from airport director Bob Kemp that AvCraft was current on its lease payments to the county and was a significant purchaser of aviation gas at the airport.

During second reading of the lease agreement, Bartel spoke to council members about the Myrtle Beach facility. His opening comments included charges of “inaccurate and shoddy newspaper reporting” in which Bartel said he was “being accused of misleading people.”

Bartel told council “the deal was to provide quality jobs and we’ve done that.” He also asked for deletion of a clause in the lease agreement requiring county approval for “any change in the Lessee’s existence as a business entity.”

During questioning by council members, councilman Marion Foxworth inquired about the Cayman Islands connection to AvCraft. Bartel acknowledged the Cayman subsidiary, but did not supply specific information about the airplane deal.

Foxworth, who was in the middle of a re-election special election with challenger Joe DeFeo, questioned the AvCraft lease from its beginning and was criticized by some local media for using the deal as a campaign issue. DeFeo was instrumental in first introducing Bartel to local officials.

With the German production facility in bankruptcy, most of the North American fleet of Dornier 328’s stored at the Myrtle Beach airport, the company’s former headquarters closed, and Bartel now under arrest in Germany, the future appears uncertain for the Myrtle Beach facility.

However, some local officials are maintaining positive thoughts about the local plant. AvCraft Support Services general manager Mike Hill said he wasn’t officially informed about Bartel’s arrest, however he said it shouldn’t affect local operations.

“Ben Bartel is the principal owner of AvCraft Aviation Holdings and AvCraft Support Services, but he is not an officer of nor involved in the management of the Myrtle Beach plant,” said Hill. “AvCraft Support Services does not rely on cash infusions from Leesburg or Bartel. We are producing sufficient revenue in Myrtle Beach to meet our expenses and show a profit.”

Horry County Director of Public Information Lisa Bourcier expressed confidence in AvCraft Support Services despite Bartel’s difficulties.

“We received notification August 1 from Mike Hill, General Manager of AvCraft Support Services, that Ben Bartel is no longer a director with the company and Joe Reagan is the new Chief Executive Officer for AvCraft Support Services,” said Bourcier. “The Department of Airports has a lease agreement with AvCraft Support Services and not with Ben Bartel, so we do not foresee there being an issue with the agreement. AvCraft Support Services is current on all payments and honoring their agreement with the airport.”

County Council chairman Liz Gilland said she was not concerned about events in Germany unless they eventually impacted the plant in Myrtle Beach.

“AvCraft Support Services has been a great tenant so far,” said Gilland. “From my perspective, what happens with Bartel in Germany does not affect our relations with the company in Myrtle Beach. There is no cause for concern unless events in Germany do affect the Myrtle Beach facility in the future.”

Foxworth, however, had a more succinct comment about Bartel’s arrest. “I wish I could say I was surprised,” he said.

Uncooking the Myrtle Beach Golf Numbers!

By The Watchman

It is a well known fact that the bungling spinmeisters at Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, ably assisted by their incompetent cronies at the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association, were “cooking the books” long before it became fashionable on Wall Street.

Unlike Wall Street, these bozos haven’t been “cooking” their financial numbers, but rather the number of paid golf rounds played in the Myrtle Beach area, the number of golfers visiting Myrtle Beach, as well as the numbers of golfers flying into the Myrtle Beach International Airport.

Needless to say, with the Myrtle Beach golf industry teetering on the verge of virtual collapse, it’s time for the truth be told!

The last great year for Myrtle Beach golf was in 1998, when visiting golfers played 4,169,992 paid rounds on 94.2 golf courses. In 1999, Golf Holiday started adding “member” rounds to their “paid” rounds calculations. There were 526,979 member rounds played in 1998.

Therefore, using Golf Holiday’s current accounting methods, there were 4,695,971 paid rounds played in 1998, which, in turn, worked out to an average of 49,851 paid rounds per golf course.

In 2004, Golf Holiday stated that there were 3,973,947 paid rounds played on 122.6 Myrtle Beach area golf courses, of which there were 579,486 member rounds. That translates into a loss of 722,024 paid rounds per year. Therefore, between 1999 and 2004, while the number of courses increased by 16.3%, Golf Holiday’s incompetent marketing caused the number of paid rounds to drop by an astounding 15.4%.

Based upon Golf Holiday’s 112.6 golf courses, the average number of paid rounds per course was only 35,293 in 2004. That pitiful number represents a net loss of 14,558 average paid rounds per course, or a 29.3% annual loss per course.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, let’s get down to the “real” numbers, which Golf Holiday tries so hard to cover-up with all their BS. To do so one must revert back to Golf Holiday’s 1998 accounting practices, and subtract all “member” rounds, which are basically “local play,” and financially nebulous at best. After doing just that, there would have been 4,169,997 paid rounds played in 1998, for an average of 44,268 paid round per course. By comparison, in 2004 there would have only been 3,394,461 paid rounds played, for only 30,146 average paid rounds per course. The harsh reality of this is that the average paid rounds per course crashed by 14,123, for an annual average loss of 31.9% per course.

Note: As an industry-wide rule of thumb, the number of paid rounds required for a golf course to break even is approximately 36,000 rounds per year.

Golf Holiday is also fond of touting that 1.2 million golfers visit the Myrtle Beach area each year to play golf, which is yet another of their fabricated statistics. Again Golf Holiday’s own numbers reveal the truth. Here again, after removing “member/local” rounds there were only 3,394,461 rounds of paid golf rounds played in the Myrtle Beach area in 2004, which, using Golf Holiday’s claim of 1.2 million golfers translates into only 2.8 rounds played per visiting golfer.

In fact, the actual average number of paid rounds played by golfers visiting Myrtle Beach is a minimum of 3.6 rounds per visit. Therefore, Golf Holiday’s 3,394,461 paid rounds only produces 942,905 visiting golfers annually, a difference of 257,095 (-21.4%) golfers from their trumped-up 1.2 million golfer claim.

Lately, Golf Holiday has added eye-of-newt to its cauldron of numerical bovine excrement – the percentage of golfers flying into the Myrtle Beach airport each year.

In a presentation before Horry County Council in June of 2005, Golf Holiday’s head spinner, Mickey McCamish, went on the record stating that, “70% of all golfers fly into Myrtle Beach.” Less than 30 days later, in a July 24, 2005 front-page article in the Sun News, a memory-challenged McCamish stated that, “60% of all golfers fly into Myrtle Beach.”

As usual, these Golf Holiday fabrications also flunk both the “laugh” and “smell” tests!

If one were so naïve as to give any credence to either of McCamish’s bogus percentages; his “70%” claim would (using the actual 942,905 visiting golfer total) mean that 660,000 golfers would have flown into the Myrtle Beach airport in 2004, while his equally ridiculous “60%” claim would represent 565,743 golfers flying in.

In 2004, the total deplanements at the Myrtle Beach International Airport were 766,268.

Note: One must not forget that Myrtle Beach golf visitation is strictly seasonal and is confined to the spring (February – May) and fall (September – November) seasons.

The spring 2004 deplanements at the Myrtle Beach airport totaled 268,734, or 35% of all deplanements in 2004. The fall deplanements totaled 172,758, or 22.5% of all 2004 deplanements. The total spring and fall golf season deplanements in 2004 were 441,492, or 57.5% of the airport’s total deplanements for the year.

Again, if someone were foolish enough to swallow McCamish’s 70% claim to the Horry County Council, that would mean that 188,114 golfers arrived by plane in the spring of 2004, and another 120,931 arrived in the fall, for a total of 309,769 golfer deplanements for the year.

As to McCamish’s equally ludicrous 60% claim made to the Sun News that, in turn, would mean that 161,240 golfers arrived by plane in the spring of 2004, and another 103,655 arrived by plane in the fall of 2004, for a total of 264,895 golfer deplanements for the year.

Needless to say, the 309,769 (70%) falls 350,231 deplaning golfers short of McCamish’s BS to County Council, while the 264,895 (60%) falls 300,848 golfers short of the crap he fed the Sun News.

And so it goes in the cesspool that is Myrtle Beach golf!

Writer Gets Raw Deal From Local Media Censors!

Censorship in the Myrtle Beach Broadcast Media

By Will Moredock

In 2003, I published my book, Banana Republic: A Year in the Heart of Myrtle Beach, a personal narrative and journalistic account of the savage effects over-development has had on the environment, quality of life and the politics of the Grand Strand. With particular attention to the Burroughs & Chapin Company, I described how developers had cut the forests, polluted the waters, drained the wetlands, built shoddy and dangerous condos, run roughshod over public land-use and zoning regulations, corrupted public agencies and legislative bodies, engineered the firing of a county administrator and shook down the public for millions of dollars in tax breaks and other “incentives.”

I must have hit pretty close to home, because B&C flackmeister, Pat Dowling, went on a rant a few weeks after my book was released. In a lengthy op-ed piece in The Sun News, he wrote: “It remains my firm assessment that Will Moredock came to Myrtle Beach and Horry County with the general intent of trashing the community, trashing Burroughs & Chapin Company and denigrating many other aspects of life here…. After reading a borrowed copy of Moredock’s book, it is my assessment that he shares a weakness common to many contemporary writers of nonfiction – he established his personal agenda with regard to Myrtle Beach and Burroughs & Chapin first, and then wrote to support his predetermined agenda by including, excluding, ignoring and morphing facts, as opposed to allowing a fresher, more genuine agenda and story to emerge from the complete set of facts themselves.”

Needless to say, nothing could be farther from the truth. I didn’t know Burroughs & Chapin from Ben & Jerry’s before I moved to Myrtle Beach in 1999 to begin researching my book. Dowling might have known that if he had ever bothered to give me an interview. But as I detail in Banana Republic, he studiously avoided me, refused to return my telephone calls and failed to keep his promise to give me an interview. But I digress…

Sadly, it is the broadcast media of Horry County that has failed most miserably and most dishonorably in their mission to keep their viewers and listeners informed and entertained. With the exception of a taped interview with Banana Jack on WAVE 104, no broadcast outlet in the Myrtle Beach area has granted me an interview. That includes talk radio station WRNN, whose morning call-in show is supposedly followed avidly all over the Grand Strand.

When Banana Republic first came out in October 2003, the right-wing yahoos on WRNN, including Steve Porter, who fancies himself as the local yokel talking head for the Rush Limbaugh crowd, panned it viciously, so I wore their scorn as a badge of honor. Shortly thereafter, I wrote a letter to program moderator, Dave Priest, and suggested that I be allowed to respond to the charges made against me on his show. While Dave did mention my letter on the air, but – in true biased newscasting fashion – he never invited me to take part in any of his programs. The one time I tried to call in to the program, I was not allowed on the air.

Over at the local cable outlet, Time Warner Cable, I left numerous messages for programming director Mort Kahn, with the idea that I might get on for one of his station’s mid-day chat sessions. Here I sit, nearly two years later, still waiting the courtesy of a callback from Mort, or anyone else at Time Warner for that matter. Maybe I should write a collards and grits cookbook or maybe a coon dog training manual to get their attention, as that seems to be the only kind of material Time Warner Cable feels their audience is capable of comprehending. Recently, a friend told me that he had asked Diane deVaughn Stokes, the mid-day chat mistress, why Will Moredock had never been invited to sit down and talk about his book, Banana Republic, on her little show. With a perfectly straight face, Stokes declared that I was "not a suitable guest because I did not live in town!" Presumably, this also disqualified me from the courtesy of a return phone calls.

By far, the most devious and disingenuous media outlet I have encountered are the sleaze balls at WPDE-TV. Shortly after Banana Republic came out, I mailed a copy to station manager Billy Huggins, asking him to take a look at it and pass it along to his news department. As a self-proclaimed business and civic leader, Huggins would surely be interested in my findings and want to share them with his viewers, or so I thought. I sat back and waited for the telephone to ring with an invitation to appear on WPDE’s chat show.

After several weeks and no response, I called the newsroom and talked to some dingbat who said she had heard of the book but hadn’t seen a copy. I told her Billy Huggins had a copy, if it would not be too much trouble to walk across the hall and pick it up. Weeks passed, so I called again. I spoke to the same dingbat, who told me she had still not seen the book. She asked me to send her a copy, which I did.

More weeks passed and there was no word. I called back and spoke to someone in the newsroom who said she had never heard of my book, or me but she would find out something and get back to me.

This went on for months. Each phone call was handled by some underling who knew nothing and apparently had no way of finding out anything. Finally, I asked to speak to someone who actually had authority to make decisions at WPDE and found myself talking to Linda McCaskill, the rocket scientist in charge of programming. She listened patiently as I explained who I was and what I was trying to do. Then she asked, “How long has your book been out.”

“Eight months!” I responded.

“Oh,” she chirped airily. “We’re really looking for something a little more current for our noon program.”

I protested that the book was current when I first presented it to her boss and the dingbat, and when I told her that that I found WPDE’s conduct highly unprofessional. She replied, “Well, that kind of attitude will certainly not get you anywhere.” At that point, what did I care, since being a gentleman, as well as extremely patient, had gotten me bupkis for eight months.

It certainly dosen't’t take an Oliver Stone to detect a whiff of conspiracy in the Horry County broadcast community. Now I do not mean to imply that Doug Wendel or his flackmeister, Pat Dowling, actually called these hacks and told them to blackball me from the airways, because they don't have to, and that's precisely how insidious this corruption is, because as the pocket monkeys for Burroughs & Chapin, these bumpkins knew exactly what their job was without being told - spin control.

Myrtle Beach’s foremost columnist, Bob Bestler, wrote about Banana Republic several times and it was the subject of a number of letters and guest columns in The Sun News. Furthermore, it was discussed on several occasions (without any input from yours truly) on WRNN. So there was considerable interest in my observations in Horry County. Yet, the Horry County broadcasting cartel felt it had more responsibility to B&C and to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce than to the public. Shoveling out cornball palaver, while arrogantly suppressing controversial issues seems to their primary mission. While I appreciate the forum to air my frustrations, it is my real hope that the nefarious censorship of my findings will give their audiences pause to wonder what other news and opinions these characters are shoving under the rug.

Myrtle Beach Golf Executive Recuperating After Letter Writing

By The Watchman

I was fascinated to read in Sunday's fish wrapper about how Mickey "the Mouse" McCamish spent his post July 4th work week dashing off a letter to Jet Blue about the possible future opening of a new and expanded Myrtle Beach airport.

With the golf industry in the crapper (see the articles below), thanks to the blatant incompetence and mismanagement of the lazy dolts at Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owner's Association, McCamish, instead of working 60 hour weeks to turn the market around, is spending his 30 hour work week diddling away penning letters to companies who won't even return his calls.

What a guy! What a visionary! What a leader!

Perhaps this week he'll find time to send out 2 letters, but I wouldn't hold my breath!

Sun News Headline, "MB Council Talks Crime," Misleading!

By The Watchman

Today's Sun News Local Section carried the headline, "MB Council Talks Crime" was totally misleading.

When I saw it I, like 73% of the voters in Myrtle Beach, thought, "Great, the Gong Show that is Myrtle Beach City Council, is finally fessing-up to their unending litany of indefensible crimes against the taxpayers, like…

1. Closing 21st Avenue North for two years so that their handlers, Burroughs & Chapin, could drain the wetlands that became Broadway at the Beach;

2. Exempting B&C from having to pay $38 million dollars in commercial property taxes on B&C developments (including Grande Dunes, Myrtle Square Mall, Lake Shore Village and thier South Beach resort) as the City's part in the biggest reaming of taxpayers in the history of the Carolina's, the gawd awful Multi-County Business Park theft;

3. Creating the $56 million dollar TIF for B&C to build their “shopping shanty town” Broadway at the Beach;

4. Blowing $2.4 million dollars on “the road to nowhere” (21st Avenue Extension) for B&C;

5. Building a $12 million dollar baseball park for billionaire Ted Turner;

6. Blowing $42 million dollars in City bond guarantees to build the 402 room, 12 story “giant sucking sound” that is the Radisson/Sheraton/Whoever hotel, which every knowledgeable hotelier in town told them was absolutely, positively and unequivocally NOT financially feasible;

7. Creating the snotty, inept monster that is the Downtown Redevelopment Corporation;

8. Giving the incompetent management of DRC, led by the twin weasels Pete Barr and David Seabok, an "unequivocal vote of support," after they totally botched the Barry Landreth development fiasco, which set the City projects back a minimum of 18 months;

9. Greedily and arrogantly putting rip-off parking meters anywhere and everywhere (including in the woods on 19th and 20th Avenues South) so that they could rob and piss-off locals and visitors alike;

10. Allowing the fiscally challenged Hotel board (led by a banker no less) to borrow $1 million dollars to change the Radisson name on the City owned hotel at an insane interest rate of 10%;

11. Continuing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to the imbeciles at the Strategic Advisory Group after all of their multi-million dollar screw-ups on the City hotel, downtown redevelopment and B&C’s Trade Center scam;

12. Giving B&C $600,000 for a softball complex;

13. Handing B&C a $16 million dollar windfall for 40.5 acres of land for a supposed convention and alleged trade center expansion, which their own study conducted by the pea-brains at Strategic Advisory Group, said would not be feasible for 20 years. Five of the 7 Dweebs on City Council voted not only to pay B&C $1.7 million dollars more than the City’s own appraisal said the property was worth, but also voted to give their millionaire pals at B&C another $2.5 million for roads and to allow the B&C brass to take a tax credit of approximately $3 million dollars on the smelly deal.

Note: Councilman Phil Render finally relocated his backbone, and along with Mayor Mark McBride voted against this insanity. Atta boy Phil!

As even a child can see the City of Myrtle Beach truly stinks from the top down, and I for one sure hope that the voters in Myrtle Beach hold these clowns accountable in November for their insolence, stupidity and dirty dealings.

Myrtle Beach City Council – Throw the Bums Out!

While 73% of Myrtle Beach voters want B&C’s backroom deals stopped, City Council continues “sucking-up!”

By The Watchman

Remember when the biggest political joke in the area was the Horry County Council led by Burroughs & Chapin Company’s testosterone challenged pawn, Chad Prosser? Remember how corrupt it was? Remember their scurrilous multi-county business park screwing of the county taxpayers? Well, things have certainly changed lately.

Now it’s the Myrtle Beach City Council that has become the biggest joke in area politics, as well as the most embarrassing.

For years the rubes on County Council provided endless fodder for the various morning coffee clutches at Akel’s and other breakfast joints all over the county, with their “stupid politician tricks” and dirty dealings (think Airport Authority, Air Base Redevelopment, Solid Waste Authority, LYMO, PARTNERS, etc.) Now it’s the Myrtle Beach City Council that has become the Gong Show of area politics.

While controversial Mayor Mark McBride and cat-fighting councilman Chuck Martino are the most visible of this cast of clowns, all of them have made Myrtle Beach the laughing stock of area politics with their non-stop bickering, bungling and mismanagement of everything they touch (think DRC, Barry Landreath, City-owned hotel, etc.)

Case in point: Next week these Katz ‘n Jammer Kids will vote to pay B&C $42,365 more per acre than the City’s own per acre appraisal for 40.6 acres of land between Oak Street and Grissom Parkway for possible future expansion (would you believe in about 20 years) of the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. The jacked-up price means a $1,720,000 windfall for the multi-millionaires at B&C.

In November, McBride, the poster boy for “loose cannons,” is up for re-election. Thus far his announced competition is led by B&C’s hand-picked pretender to the throne, Judy “I Know Nothing” Rodman, and Arthur Volpe, an unknown taxi and LYMO bus driver. Other possible candidates for McBride’s bully pulpit are retired banker and restaurateur, Wayne Gray, City Councilman, Phil Render, as well as Horry County Council members Mark Lazarus and Marion Foxworth.

Rodman, who already has a $40,000 slush fund courtesy of her handlers on the top floor of the Founder’s Centre, is one of the ringleaders of the pro-development clique on Myrtle Beach City Council, along with Martino, Susan Means and Randal Wallace.

With recent polls clearly showing that 3 out of 4 Myrtle Beach voters want an end to the incestuous relationships between Burroughs & Chapin and City government, one can expect Rodman, and her cronies, to approve the $10 million dollar windfall to B&C next week. Then she will try to publicly distance herself from B&C’s Simon Legree, Doug Wendel, and his henchmen between now and November, while privately continuing to pocket their cash and allowing them to continue their usual practices of 11th hour slander and dirty politics on her behalf (remember their desperate last minute attacks on Foxworth in the recent District 3 County Council special election).

Render, who was elected based upon his campaign promises to stop wasteful spending and good old boy politics, has certainly not lived up to his promises, and, sadly, appears now to have joined the pro-development faction on Council. Fortunately for him, he is not up for re-election in November, because with all of his backtracking on waste, mismanagement and backroom hanky-panky at City Hall, he could very easily lose his current seat. Needless to say, he would be well advised to think twice about any thoughts of running for Mayor.

Despite being hard-pressed to run for the Mayor’s job by their supporters, as well as the public who are crying out for some integrity on Myrtle Beach City Council, Lazarus and Foxworth both say that they are not going to run, but a lot can happen between now and the filing deadline.

Martino and flip-flopping councilman Randal Wallace are also up for re-election in November, and will have to defend their pro B&C records to the disgruntled electorate.

Suffice to say, the next few months should prove to be very interesting.

Golf Tournament - Another Loser From the Screw-Ups at Golf Holiday!

When will the members of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, and the pantywaist media wake-up to the blatant incompetence of the crew of duds heading up their $7 million dollar marketing organization?

By The Watchman

Today (Sunday, June 19, 2005), in a front-page article in the local fish wrapper, Mickey McCamish, the head spinner for Golf Holiday once again touts the bogus benefits that a PGA Tour golf tournament would bring to the Myrtle Beach area. McCamish, a really nice old fella who has about as much business running a marketing organization as Paris Hilton does heading up Mensa International, wears his rose colored glasses 24/7, and can’t wait to blow millions of his unfortunate members money on any hair-brained idea that anyone sticks under his nose. I’d bet that if you asked him what he thought of Charles Manson he’d say, “Charlie made some poor decisions when he was young, but he’s really behaved himself since 1971 (when he was locked away for life in California's Corcoran State Prison), and I really like his artwork.”

McCamish and his fellow do-nothings at Golf Holiday, especially Bill Golden - their bungling VP of Marketing (now there’s a local oxymoron for you) – have NEVER had a single winning marketing idea or program on their watch. If any other “real business” were as dismal a failure as Golf Holiday, the stakeholders would have run their inept management out of town on a rail. Obviously, the stakeholders (golf course operators and lodging properties) in Golf Holiday are too naive to remember all of Golf Holiday’s multi-million dollar failures, or too damn lazy to fire the bums.

Seven Losing Years

Paid Rounds Crash by 20.4% – Prior to 1999 the Myrtle Beach area golf courses were flourishing with each course averaging better than 44,000 paid rounds annually, and laughing all the way to the bank. Then in 1999 things started going south resulting in 7 years of declining rounds to where average paid rounds have now sunk to a pitiful 35,000 rounds per course.

Per Golfer Expenditures Plummet by 19.8% – With the terrible crash in rounds, the area golf courses and lodging properties began cutting prices in feeble, ill advised attempts to generate rounds and package sales, which, in turn, created a decimating “price war” that has caused the per golfer revenues to plummet by 19.8%.

Golf Employment Drops by 24.7% – Prior to 1999 employees at area golf courses were already working for peanuts. Since then their situation has gone from barely sufficient to awful, with employment levels being slashed by 24.7%. Even the best employees have had their careers negatively impacted by the decimated golf market, with raises being virtually non-existent for the last several years, and, to add insult to their misery, most have had their work schedules cut back by as much as 2 or 3 days per week.

Customer Service at All Time Low – As a direct result of the terrible employment picture, the attitudes of too many of the golf course employees have al