Are you as amazed as we are by what the candidates for governor are promising?

The candidates have promised ethics reform, term limits and other ideas voters want but the governor has no power to do.

In a strong legislative state, he’s relatively toothless and lawmakers want it to stay that way.

The last governor who found a way to work with all-powerful lawmakers was Carroll Campbell. Campbell was a Republican with Democrats in control of both chambers. Yet his negotiating skill got a lot done.

Our Republican governor’s own party holds sway and still can’t seem to get much done.

We give Gov. McMaster credit for one smart move. He has not antagonized the lions as Mark Sanford unwisely did.

Our state lacks the problems of free-spending states such as California and New York.

That doesn’t mean our state government is a model of thrift. Our legislature fritters away millions of tax dollars.

We spend almost $1 million operating the Public Disservice Commission with its $108,000 a year salaries and fancy offices at the former Koger Office Park.

If we deregulated utilities as Texas has done, we could use that money to repair our roads and improve poor schools.

The smartest thing the debaters agreed on was state spending. That’s our problem. And you can lay that one at the feet of the legislature.

Legislative control is a lot like socialism. When no one owns the problem or will admit creating it - such as the grand larceny bill SCANA lobbyists sold 11 years ago - nothing gets done.

Look at the way they wasted the entire 2018 session holding hearings yet allowing SCANA to continue to rob its 700,000 ratepayers of $37 million a month.

The governor has only two terms - eight long years. Career politicians can stay until we carry them out feet first.

A former politician told us he decided to retire because he thought he knew all the answers. He didn’t even know all of the questions, he said.

We need more like him.

– JerryBellune.com

Some politicians think they know all the answers. Most don’t know the questions yet.