REVIEW: Yo Rocky! Gritty, soulful ‘Creed’ goes the distance A7
Family farm tries to keep going with its 9th generation SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2015
| Serving South Carolina since October 15, 1894
FLOOD RECOVERY
In season of thanksgiving, 11 travel to Sumter to volunteer
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75 cents
S.C. Amazon shoppers to pay sales tax In-state purchases will be affected beginning Jan. 1 BY SEANNA ADCOX The Associated Press COLUMBIA — A salestax break the Legislature gave Amazon in 2011 expires Jan. 1, making South Carolina the last state to collect among those where officials cut similar deals with the online retail giant. Taxing Amazon’s in-state sales could add tens of millions of dollars to South Carolina’s coffers in 2016, said Max Behlke, the National Conference of State Legislatures’ manager of state and federal relations. State Revenue Director Rick Reames declined to give estimates beyond saying, “We expect a significant increase in sales tax revenues.” For years, the Seattlebased company fought col-
lecting sales taxes from its customers. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled — in 1967 and 1992 — that a state can’t require a company to collect and remit the tax unless it has a “physical presence” in the state. As Amazon expanded, rather than collect taxes in states that tried to force it, the company severed ties with affiliates and scrapped plans for distribution centers. South Carolina was among 10 states that gave Amazon a temporary tax reprieve in exchange for jobs and investment, Behlke said. In all, South Carolina loses out on an estimated $254 million in taxes from out-of-state sales — mostly
SEE TAXES, PAGE A9
An Afghan man carries a sack of wheat distributed to poor displaced families of Helmand province in Kandahar, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2009. AP FILE PHOTO
PHOTOS BY ADRIENNE SARVIS / THE SUMTER ITEM
KJ Bernard, a volunteer from Natchitoches, Louisiana, checks the measurements of a board Monday evening before cutting and using it to cover the roof of a home on Dogwood Drive that was damaged during the recent rainstorm.
College students use part of holiday break to help out BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com
D
uring the season
BY LYNNE O’DONNELL The Associated Press
for giving and being thankful,
one out-of-town group traveled more than 10 hours to help strangers in need. The group of 11 individuals traveled 16 hours from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to Sumter to help a family affected by the recent flood. The group consisted of several college students who gave up part of their Thanksgiving vacation to help people in another state, Louisiana volunteer Joshua Docter said. Docter said he and the others were interested in helping flood victims in South Carolina but did not have any contacts in the state. The Holy Spirit told him to
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Investigator says U.S. must address waste, fraud in Afghan aid
KJ Bernard, left, and Joshua Docter work on the roof of a house on Dogwood Drive on Monday. Bernard and Docter are members of a volunteer group that traveled from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to Sumter to help flood victims. go ask Facebook, he said. Docter made contact with Sumter United Ministries Executive Director Mark Champagne and Alice Drive Baptist Church Outreach Pastor Jock Hendricks.
At the time, Docter did not know the two men knew each other and had already planned out most aspects of the group’s trip.
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Thomas Smith Charlie E. Shaw Mitchell Roberts Jr. Moses Green Jr. Alex Chatman Jane H. Brice George McCray
SEE VOLUNTEERS, PAGE A8
KABUL, Afghanistan — With Washington set to send billions of dollars in fresh aid to Afghanistan despite the military drawdown, the U.S. official in charge of auditing assistance programs says “it’s not too late” to address the fraud and mismanagement that has bedeviled the 14year effort to rebuild the country. The military intervention launched after the Sept. 11 attacks has cost the United States $1 trillion, including some $110 billion in aid aimed at rebuilding one of the poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries on earth. To this day, Afghanistan relies
on foreign aid as it battles an increasingly potent Taliban insurgency. But John Sopko, who has spent more than three years probing U.S.-funded projects as the special investigator general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), said the U.S. government is partly to blame for the misused funds. “What I’m identifying are not just Afghan or Afghan-related problems, they are problems with the way the United States government operates,” he said. He said the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development suffer from corruption as well as poor planning, oversight and accountability. He said
SEE AID, PAGE A8
WEATHER, A10
INSIDE
ANOTHER NICE DAY
2 SECTIONS, 18 PAGES VOL. 121, NO. 38
Pleasant with clouds and sun; partly cloudy tonight HIGH 72, LOW 48
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