Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mcalister. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mcalister. Sort by date Show all posts

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Mystery group cheerleads for Boeing: cui bono?

The Greenville News has an article about a big new economic study claiming Boeing will generate billions in economic activity over the thirty years after it's up and running.

The Greenville News has no link to it. They have a number of links in the story, and all lead to ads for Ford and various stock trading services.

Miley & Associates, which actually did the study, has a website under "reconstruction."

The Alliance For South Carolina's Future's website is at best rudimentary. It lists a board of directors by name but with no description who they are or what their interests might be.

Anybody know any of this lot?


Bill Stern, Chairman
Bob McAlister, Alliance Co-Founder
Ed McMullen, Alliance Co-Founder
Larry Wilson
John Russell

The only illustrations on the site are a big pic of a Dreamliner and the Boeing logo.

Charleston Regional Business Journal reports the organization has morphed through several identities over the last year and a bit:

According to records from the office of S.C. Secretary of State Mark Hammond, the organization was formed in April 2009, but it has undergone two name changes this year. It was first registered as S.C. Action for Jobs, according to records, and the name was changed to Conservative SC on Feb. 19. That name was changed a few days later, on Feb. 26, to Alliance for South Carolina’s Future.

Under "About the Alliance" you get this illuminating comment:
The Alliance for South Carolina’s Future is a pro-business, non-profit 501-c-4 established to promote economic growth across the State of South Carolina.
Both tabs are closed to comment


Bob McAlister's a longtime conservative media guy who used to be a regular contributor to the very conservative blog SC Conservative, which became the social conservative networking site ConservativeSC, which, interestingly, has the same  Dreamliner pic and caption as the Alliance For South Carolina's Future site.

FITS News has linked McAlister to the Richard Quinn & Associates consulting firm in another PR effort in which former Palmetto Scoop editor and Quinn employee Adam Fogle was the placeholder.

Ed McMullen, the other co-founder, appears to be a Columbia-based PR-lobbying firm head who led the SC Policy Council, a right-leaning think thank for 18 years.

Another director, Larry Wilson, seems to be tied in with various USC-related entrepreneurial efforts including the drive to develop hydrogen fuel cell technologies.

Bill Stern is also the name of the SC Ports Authority chief, but that's as far as we can get. Nada re John Russell. .


The News story does indicate the report was prepared by a former chief economist to former GOP governor Carroll Campbell.

Boeing distanced itself from the study's methodology and conclusions but said it thought the net result of its presence would be positive.

The study itself, a pdf. file attached to the Alliance site, seems mostly to argue for lowering corporate property taxes in NC/SC border counties as a means of attracting more business, then juggles all sorts of numbers to argue Boeing will generate business and revenue all over the state. Arguing benefit to the Upstate, for example, the study cites one company based in Greenville that will have something to do with construction of the North Charleston plant.

This press release story has already generated 225 media news hits on Google. Given the sketchy, murky background of  the venture (where did the money come from?) and that it's the only thing the Alliance has on its plate, you gotta wonder what the agenda is behind this big wet kiss to Boeing.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Week in Blogdom: God and Bazoombas, and the Amazingly Vanished Racial Slag

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2008

"...and did I mention he's black?"

Over at Harare Grocery, Bob McAlister just can't help himself, bless his heart:

So I have a simple question: Who are these people who can’t make up their minds about 2 men as different in every way as their skin colors.

How can they be undecided after a two-year campaign that birthed 2 men who cannot be more different in every way? 

Bless your heart. Bob. And he's still black. And you left in the black voodoo princess joke.

Mike's America has a solution to the taxpayer investment in the financial markets.

It's drilling in ANWR. 

Drilling in ANWR solves everything. Some think ANWR is one of the names of God.

Aside from that, Mike continues to shill for Raging Bullshit, sounding more and more like one of those geeky high school debaters who scores a point and pumps the air with his arm because he's got a thousand times more index cards than anybody else.

The Blogland of Earl Capps has an interesting- really interesting- item on  employee health benefits in South Carolina. As befits a free market state, employees are paying more than national averages and getting less for it.

The big week-end Republican outrage story is best summed up at Columbia Conservative, Harare Grocery's Mini-Me:

According to a local York County Republican volunteer, who provided us with these pictures, the vandals painted "Republican means Slavery" on the front door, as well as what appear to be gang-related or tagger signs.

The racial angle is never one to let slide by, of course. Then The Grocer- who always seems to need to let you know the important people who know him, added:

I spoke this afternoon with former York County Republican Chairman (and current Republican National Committeeman) Glenn McCall, who reminds those involved that Republicans were the ones who abolished slavery.

McCall also spoke with the Rock Hill Herald:
“It just goes to show the election is much closer than folks would have you believe,” McCall said. “We have probably the most liberal ticket on the Democratic side that we’ve ever seen. When I look at the polls, it’s within the margin of error. There are people who are just getting nervous about that. As a result, they do desperate things.”
No word from local law enforcement yet as to suspects or arrests.
Stay classy, Democrats.
South Carolina is So Gay takes up the story as well, but has to Fogleize it with lurid, utterly unsupported details:

THUGS TAG DOOR, BANNER WITH POLITICAL SLURS, STEAL SIGNS

In an act of vandalism that was almost certainly politically-motivated, anonymous thugs struck the York County Republican Party’s Rock Hill headquarters overnight causing roughly $500 in damages.

“Republican means slavery” was written with on the office’s outside door, while a banner in front of the building was tagged with a few illegible scribbles and presidential nominee John McCain’s eyes were whited-out. Party officials also estimated that more than 40 yard signs had been stolen.

“This was just a move of intimidation,” said Joe St. John, Catawba Regional Director for Victory. “As we all know, the Republicans actually abolished slavery.”

South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson called the acts cowardly, saying, “The destructive actions of these vandals should be taken as a sign of desperation. They clearly lack the energy, ideas and candidates to compete in this election - and are running scared.”

The office is located across the street from Winthrop University and next to the offices of the county Democrat Party vice chair and a Democrat candidate for county solicitor. Oddly, the county Democratic chairman was reportedly one of the first to come to the office and apologize for the destruction.

But Republicans vowed to press forward. “We will not use cheap political tactics to win elections,” St. John said. “Instead, we put boots on the ground, people on the phones, and win elections based on facts.”

Here's the strangest thing we've seen this week: The Palmetto Family Council continues to be asleep at the switch, having posted nothing on its Family Life blog since December 15, 2007, and on its public policy blog since July 4 and little else but a press release explaining away Bristol Palin's little accident and how voting is Christian stewardship.

But Council honcho Oran P. Smith is also a Fitshead: a fan of the sex- and bazoomba-soaked, lesbian action and large-penis-obsessed "public policy" blog, Anaconda:


Oran P. Smith
Name:
Oran P. Smith








Not the sort of thing you expect from the Christianists, eh? Are the kids fans, too?

The Other Brooks Bros. maunder on about how Howard Rich, the man who wants to buy the SC legislature, is sending letters to liberal political activists saying "I'm watching what you do and will make trouble if you displease me" isn't a cheesy attempt at prior restraint because George Soros, the old bugbear of the right, does the same sort of thing.

So let's recap: if a thing is bad, it stops being bad if you can find an ideological opposite who does it more.

Alrighty then.

The Sunlit Uplands is so far out there it maintains Lindsey Graham is Massachusetts' third senator, and leads today with the Barack Obama isn't a native American thing. Oh, and comparing Obama campaign posters to Hitler's, which means the Illinois senator is a "Commufascist." SC Hotline continues as the Flat Earth Society news aggregator- it'll never trouble you with a thought that conflicts their world view.

Vierdsen is flummoxed at what a stupid campaign the Republicans are running for president. Sacraments Wholesale says world government has arrived, but it's by and for banks.

The 7-10 has an interesting analysis of why the Republicans are running such a stupid campaign for president. The Ninth Frame's calling out Raging Bullshit for, well, frankly, raging bullshit:

Another double standard

Let me see if I got this straight.

John McCain and Sarah
Palin sit idly by while people at their rallies call Obama a "terrorist" and a "liar." Some even say "kill him." And then McCain finally gets the courage to call Obama "decent" after someone calls him an Arab.

Then Democratic Congressman John Lewis calls McCain out on his rhetoric and compares it to that of segregationist George Wallace. McCain then calls on Obama to 
repudiate the remarks because they are "shocking" and "beyond the pale."

Say what?

Never mind that McCain once called Lewis "
one of the three wisest men" in his life. And never mind the fact that Lewis was speaking the truth and that McCain's outrage is laughable and phony.

What a joke. It's like it's okay for McCain and
Palin to break all the rules until their opponents' surrogates do the same. But Lewis didn't even break any rules to begin with. I guess the truth hurts.

McCain 2000 could have won this election. McCain 2008 deserves to lose humiliatingly.

Voting Under the Influence is peddling the ACORN story. That and another Ware Shoals football game.

Indigo Bunting continues its nascent campaign to turn SC blue. Tim Kelly is counting candidate badges at the state fair. Conservative blogs continue to ignore them. As Kingsley Amis said, if you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.

FITSNews is peddling photos of Our Lady of Wasilla's gams, Stephen Garcia, the USC QB who gets Adam Fogle all moist even though he's got a foreign name like 'Obama' (would you give a mortgage to that kid?), and a story about how, with a $400m budget shortfall looming, sixty state employees have gotten thousand-dollar bonuses. "Ironically, some of the folks receiving bonus payments are employed by the State Housing Authority, which is obviously the last place we should be rewarding people given the government-inspired collapse of our nation’s housing market over the last few months," Anaconda hisses.  'Cept, of course, that's not what the Housing Authority does. 

Wesley Donehue sheds some light on Anaconda: "Everyone is asking me - what is Twitter? This week Will Folks started using Twitter, but still doesn’t know what it is. " Not Very Bright drank the Twitterade some time back, but first warned that s/he'd never twitter anything interesting, then abandoned his/her blog for Indigo Bunting. South Carolina is So Gay thinks one-sentence Twittercomments are kewl, presumably because one-sentence posts require even less sourcing than his usual stories.

Lib'rul Vet's not shopping at McCain & Palin:

We must not allow the redneckish intolerance that has sprung up around McCain/Palin rule the vote, and we must send a message to the Republican party that they do not have a stranglehold on patriotism by a long shot.

John McCain can shove that "country first" slogan up Sarah Palin's ass. As Barack said, we all put country first.

Walk-On Legislator runs a 9/11 slideshow next to his anti-Obama talking points. Subtle.

Kevin Bryant quotes Senator Jim DeMint on how it's more important for Bryant to toe the party line than to think“In politics, it’s hard to stand up for principle. But Kevin never fails to stand firm for the conservative cause.”

Tony Trout, arrested and indicted for bugging the Greenville County administrator's computer, is uncharacteristically silent on his blog. Ironically, his last post was on jail conditions.

Dogwood Dell's profiling the changing voters of Virginia and asks what's your fave gum flava.

Shrimp & Grits argues, " If you elect people who sincerely believe that government can’t work, you will most certainly get a government that doesn’t work."

Leonardo is all over congressman Henry Brown's oyster fetish.

Snead's been offering up debate drinking games, but the way to get mad smashed and not give a rip about what they say is this: a shot for every "my friends."

Trust me. It works, my friensd. Uh, frriends. Frinz. Aww, fuck it.












Monday, May 31, 2010

Suckering in a paper that ought to know better

The Post & Courier- arguably the best among the sadly diminished lot that is the newspaper world in SC- has gotten pwned by an economic "study" unveiled by a former economist to GOP Governor Carroll Campbell and promoted by Campbell's chief of staff, Bob McAlister.

Fortunately, though, there really is some very encouraging economic news for our community -- and our state: A new study has re-confirmed the well-grounded expectation that Boeing's ongoing move to North Charleston will provide a powerful economic uplift, not just in the Charleston area but throughout South Carolina.
That research was conducted by Miley & Associates for the Alliance for South Carolina's Future, a Columbia-based nonprofit. Professor Harry Miley, author of the study, concluded that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner expansion here will produce more than 15,000 jobs and roughly $6 billion a year in "direct, indirect and induced" economic activity in the state over the next 17 years.

In this space the interests of the men behind the group have been questioned. Basically, it's a lot of guys with ties to GOP consulting firms like Richard Quinn & Associates, the Port System, The SC Policy Council. As Cotton Boll Conspiracy noted in a comment, they're people who have a vested interest in the state's 1950s economic development strategy of corporate tax bribes and guaranteeing little regulation, low taxes, and a workforce desperate to be paid less than Boeing pays workers in its other plants.

The study is the only thing the group behind it has produced, despite several name changes, is the pie in the sky Boeing report, which contains more doubtful assumptions- and conclusions- than you can shake a stick at. Anytime somebody tells you what's going to be in thirty years' time- well, they're either crazy or selling you a bill of goods.

It's regrettable that the P&C's editorial is nothing but a regurg of the press release the group sponsoring the report.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Who's on first?

It's only Tuesday and the robust world of the SC blogdom is achurn. A reader whose blog we love madly chides Waldo for self-aggrandizing posts in the manner of FITS News and The Palmetto Scoop, suggesting we three are kindred spirits. Having been officially defined as Not Conservative by Blog Net News' ratings service, and defined as Someone They Do Not Read by FITS and TPS, Waldo's not sure the shoe fits.

FITS News zinged Waldo yesterday for calling him out to prove his accusations that the housing /mortgage crisis stems from Congressman Barney Frank having had a past "homosexual relationship" with an executive at Fannie Mae? Or was it Freddie Mac? Doesn't matter; FITS sets it up as a stalking horse for, of all people, Bob McAlister of SC Conservative for likening FITS to a mutant organism while uplifting The Palmetto Scoop as a rational life form (we're not even going there). SC Conservative has blasted Waldo as a tool generally, and one of the homosexual persuasion more particularly, and we've never met anyone of that site's clerks. Another unlikely alliance. In fact, one that doesn't exist. FITS News and TPS- well, they don't much like each other. So Waldo's puzzled how he's become part of the MSM crusade against FITS News (since, as noted by FITS on other occasions, he's never heard of Waldo).

SC Hotline bannered a Waldo story about its banishment of three conservative bloggers- including FITS News. FITS News says SC Hotline's owner is a nut.

Oh, and FITS completely ignored the call-out to prove his allegations against Congressman Frank. And while Waldo will cop to one charge of self-aggrandizement, it was one that died aborning. We couldn't afford enough bare-chested men to spell out "Lydecker" on their torsos.