Trials both communal and personal highlight a 2008 that for SC ends on a dark economic note
South Carolina started 2008 with a hand in shaping the nation's future. The year ends with the state battered by repercussions, from both within and beyond its borders.
Turmoil in the nation's housing market morphed into a crisis of credit and consumer confidence. Companies announced layoffs and the state's unemployment rate shot to the third-highest in the U.S. in November -- 183,000 were jobless as the holidays approached.
"The little people are suffering. It seems like the CEOs are walking away," Michael Jones, a 61-year-old former Army sergeant, as he applied for unemployment benefits earlier this month because his savings was drying up.
The state's drooping economy means fewer taxes to pay for the services expected from state and local governments, and trouble is in store for some schools and universities. State employees are losing pay through furloughs. For the state's low-income residents, programs that provide care for HIV patients, the terminally ill and the hungry are being slashed.
Economic forecasters believe it will get worse. They predict double-digit unemployment for 2009.
But in a year that for many ended with intensely personal economic travails, others had memories far more frightening.
A family in Anderson was slaughtered in April, and their teen son now stands accused of the murders. High schoolers in Chesterfield worried for their own safety this spring after authorities say a classmate planned to blow up the building.
A Hilton Head Island couple vanished in March and their former accountant committed suicide as suspicion fell on him. A boy in Sumter was gunned down as he and his family did the most innocent of activities: trick-or-treating on Halloween. Four people died and two musicians suffered burns when their private jet ran off the end of a Columbia runway in September and burst into flames.
There were moments when the state's dismay was communal, too.
Months after it opened, the $400 million Hard Rock Park filed for bankruptcy protection as the economy dashed the cheery predictions made before it opened. The owners now hope to sell it off.
The high price of gas this summer surely hurt the Myrtle Beach attraction. There was a sense of shared burden as drivers stood, cringing, in lines to pay $4 per gallon and then watched pumps run dry after hurricanes Gustav and Ike shut down refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. State prosecutors issued 37 subpoenas for price gouging and say the investigation continues.
Weather made life tough, especially in the Upstate, as a multiyear drought dragged on.
In Greenville, hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants were arrested in October and pointed toward deportation after an investigation into a poultry plant's hiring practices. The sweep that left the city's Spanish-speaking community wringing its hands left others wondering why local officials looked the other way for so long.
Dashboard cameras allowed a look into the working lives of South Carolina state troopers, and not everyone enjoyed the view. Footage showed a trooper striking a motorcycle with his cruiser; an officer not bothering to get out of his car as he chased a running suspect across the grounds of a populated apartment complex; a trooper striking a man with a shotgun after the suspect was subdued.
The heads of the state's Public Safety Department and Highway Patrol resigned in February. One trooper was acquitted of a federal charge in 2008, while a second awaits trial.
But the state also banded together to set the nation's course during the presidential primary season.
South Carolina's Republicans boosted John McCain on his path to the nomination, as the Arizona senator avenged his loss in the state to President George W. Bush in 2000. A week later, Democrats gave Barack Obama a resounding win and momentum the history-making candidate would never relinquish.
In all, the state hosted three debates between presidential contenders, and after vaulting Obama and McCain into a General Election showdown, a record 1.9 million state residents cast ballots in November.
But those days of presidential primaries are almost a year old. The focus now is on the economic troubles expected to cut a wider and deeper swath in the coming months.
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