The level of dysfunction and inaction in South Carolina’s state legislature was clearly on view last week in published articles detailing the end of the general session. Lawmakers failed to pass a budget or fund 4-year old kindergarten, new school buses and raises for state employees. Instead they passed a bunch of stupid meaningless measures that are superfluousness at best. The kind of crap you do to make people think you are working, when you are clearly just dicking around.

The hypocrisy of Republicans was demonstrated once again by their rejection of a $25.00 increase for the purchase of a concealed weapons permit (CWP). SLED Chief Mark Keel says it cost his agency $62 to process the applications which are currently priced at $50.00. An estimated 25,000 new applications for CWP’s are pending and Keel supported an increase in the fee to offset a deficit of $1 million. (192,641 CWP’s have already been issued and another 18,763 applications are pending.) To his credit State Rep. Mike Pitt’s R-Laurens filed a bill that would increase the CWP processing fee by $25. Seems logical especially since Republicans are so fond of saying that “government should be run like a business.” So far so good…here’s where the GOP’s ideological abhorrence to any increase in taxes or fees rears it’s head. State Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley, succeeded in convincing legislators not to raise the fee. Instead according to The State newspaper, lawmakers will use money from the state’s general fund to cover the shortfall. That’s right folks, the Republican dominated legislature will take a million bucks from the general fund without a second thought rather than ask gun loving citizens to pay the cost of vetting their CWP applications. These are the same elected officials who refused to expand Medicaid in this session, a move that would have extended health care to an estimated 350,000 poor people in our state.

We have Democratic Senator John Scott of Richland County to thank for helping to kill a bill that would have allowed people to carry guns into bars and restaurants. Senator Scott piled on so many amendments to the bill that senators didn’t have time to vote on the measure before the session concluded. “Some would say they feel more safe carrying a gun in a restaurant or a bar, but I would say to you that guns and alcohol don’t mix,” Scott said. If only there were more common sense representatives like Scott and fewer ideological nut cases like Rep. Jim Merrill. If only…