Haley attacks Rainey, hides behind secrecy rules

Despite his service as chairman of the state's Board of Economic Advisors, John Rainey is likely best known in South Carolina politics as the man who recruited Mark Sanford to run for governor in 2002. To put that decision in context, Sanford's reputation in 2002 was as a principled ultra-conservative -- even Libertarian -- Republican who was famous for limiting himself to three terms in Congress and sleeping in his Congressional office to save federal dollars.

As Sanford's mentor, Rainey cemented his reputation as a conservative godfather. So, say what one may about Rainey, but no sentient being would ever accuse him of being liberal, even progressive.

Yet Governor Nikki Haley has attacked Rainey this week in the most vicious political and personal terms to date. Through her mouthpiece, Haley called Rainey "an embittered old man with a political vendetta."

Haley is lashing out at Rainey in large part because of his principles on ethics -- principles that were, unfortunately for her, reinforced by Sanford when critics questioned his use of public funds during her term in office. At that time, Sanford waived his rights to confidentiality throughout the ethics investigation, ensuring that the media and the public would have access to findings.

Now that Haley is the focus of ethical questions -- questions posed by Rainey in the form of litigation -- her legislative critics have asked Haley to follow Sanford's lead and cooperate fully and openly.

But Haley has chosen a very different pair of strategies: First, stonewall and hide; second, attack Rainey.

Gov. Nikki Haley on Tuesday rebuffed House Democrats’ call for her to waive confidentiality in a possible ethics investigation, calling questions about work she did for a pair of her pre-gubernatorial employers a “waste of time.”

Through a spokesman, Haley said she would abandon confidentiality only if lawmakers want to change state law so that all past and future ethics complaints are public.

Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Harry Ott of Calhoun, said the first-term Republican governor who made increasing transparency a central plank in her 2010 campaign should “let some sunshine in.”

“Nobody is here to say that any laws have been broken, but the public has a right to know,” he said.

“It is time that we hold ourself to a higher standard.”

Democrats are pushing Haley to drop confidentiality after a circuit judge last week dismissed a complaint by GOP activist and former state Board of Economic Advisers Chairman John Rainey.

The complaint alleged that Haley used her state office during her time as a state representative from Lexington County to lobby in violation of state law while serving as a fundraiser for the Lexington Medical Center foundation.

Let's keep in mind that when she was hired by the Lexington Medical Center as a fundraiser, she had no experience as a corporate fundraiser and no background in the health care industry. Her only qualification for the job seems to have been that she occupied a seat in the state legislature.

The filing also accused the governor of failing to disclose her work for another pre-gubernatorial employer on state campaign disclosure forms.

The judge didn’t rule on the merits of Rainey’s complaint, instead deciding that under state law, the House Ethics Committee must handle ethics issues involving a current or former state House member.

Any investigation of Haley by the committee would have to be triggered by a formal complaint, which any South Carolinian can file.

But the public is kept in the dark throughout much of the process.

By law, committee members and anybody who’s filed a complaint cannot comment on any investigation or complaint or face penalties.

Rainey cited that law in declining to comment Tuesday on whether he’s filed a complaint with the committee.

The longtime committee chairman, state Rep. Roland Smith, R-Aiken, said Tuesday that the subject of any investigation can drop confidentiality, making the process “open.”

Democrats said Haley should follow in the footsteps of her one-time political mentor, former Gov. Mark Sanford, in waiving confidentiality in the event of a committee investigation, which would likely center on the charges presented in Rainey’s lawsuit.

A spokesman for Haley said Tuesday that Rainey is “an embittered man with a political vendetta.”

“He has already wasted the time of the courts,” Rob Godfrey said in a statement. “He can try to waste the time of the General Assembly. He will not waste any of the governor’s time.”

Godfrey said questions about the allegations lobbed by Rainey already have been answered and that the regular procedures should be followed if there is an ethics complaint.

This response fits the definition of a "fig leaf." Go back to the date that these questions were originally asked, and you'll find that Haley and her ilk dismissed the questions as baseless, just political theater. Now, when questions are raised, the response is that the questions are old and were addressed long ago. This is taught in Basic Political Obfuscation 101.

“We’re confident that the ethics committee will come to the same conclusion as every other entity that Mr. Rainey has shopped this nonsense to — that it is entirely baseless,” Godfrey said.

House Democrats unveiled a package of bills last week that included a measure to eliminate the state House and Senate ethics committees and turn investigations of previous and current lawmakers over to the State Ethics Commission.

Reporter Robert Kittle of WSPA added a bit more to the day's coverage, further illustration of the obfuscation strategy:

"If there is an ethics complaint about matters that took place years ago – and that have already been answered again and again – the regular procedures should be followed," Godfrey wrote in a news release Tuesday. "Regular procedures" mean the public won't know whether a complaint has been filed.

In other words, it's the same-old, same-old -- the very status quo that Haley campaigned against, when transparency was her favorite word.

The possibility of an ethics complaint stems from a lawsuit against the governor by John Rainey, a leading Republican fundraiser and former chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors under Gov. Mark Sanford. He filed the lawsuit in state Circuit Court, but Judge Casey Manning dismissed the suit last week, saying the matter was for the State Ethics Commission or legislative Ethics Committees to decide.

The suit alleges Haley illegally lobbied state lawmakers and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control while she was a member of the House and was working for Lexington Medical Center, which was trying to get state approval for a new open-heart surgery center.

The suit also claims she failed to disclose on her campaign filings that she also worked for Wilber Smith, an engineering firm with state contracts. Haley has denied any wrongdoing, and said previously that state law did not require her to report her work for Wilbur Smith.

Since the lawsuit was dismissed and the judge explained the proper venues for the complaints, it's expected that Rainey will file a complaint with either the State Election Commission or House Ethics Committee.

House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon called on the governor to waive confidentiality.

"Nobody is here today to say that any rules were broken, but we are here to say that the public has a right to know," said Rep. Harry Ott, D-St. Matthews, House Minority Leader. "We believe Gov. Haley, particularly after running on a platform of transparency in government, needs to be the transparent governor that she wants to be and say to the people of South Carolina, 'I have nothing to hide. I'm going to waive my confidentiality clause and let the public know what is or is not going on.'"

It has happened before. Then-governor Mark Sanford waived confidentiality when he faced ethics charges before the State Ethics Commission over his use of state airplanes and state travel money.

When asked by 7 On Your Side Tuesday morning whether she would waive confidentiality, Gov. Haley said she wouldn't talk about it unless there was a complaint. When told there was no way to know whether a complaint had been filed, she said, "Well, when there is one you can let me know."

This is laughable. Our state's chief potentate does a two-step around the media, inviting them to let her know if a confidential ethics investigation is initiated against her.

Why are ethics complaints confidential? Rep. J. Roland Smith, R-Warrenville, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, says it's state law. Don't taxpayers have a right to know whether the elected officials being paid by their tax dollars have ethics complaints against them?

"I will not disagree with you, but we have to abide by the law and the law says that it's confidential," he says. "I can't even acknowledge if there is a complaint at any time or if there's not a complaint."

Godfrey, Haley's spokesman, says of the lawsuit and possible ethics complaint,

"John Rainey is an embittered man with a political vendetta. He has already wasted the time of the courts. He can try to waste the time of the General Assembly. He will not waste any of the governor’s time. If there is an ethics complaint about matters that took place years ago – and that have already been answered again and again – the regular procedures should be followed, and we’re confident that the ethics committee will come to the same conclusion as every other entity that Mr. Rainey has shopped this nonsense to – that it is entirely baseless."

Baseless.

As baseless as were Haley's qualifications for South Carolina's highest public office?

Sanford-Haley advisor denies critique of state's economy

A couple of old adages come to mind here. One is that a kicked dog barks. The other is that figures lie and liars figure.

I think the average South Carolinian feels the truth as it's described in an economic report issued by TD Economics recently, which says that our state lawmakers' budget decisions over recent years contribute to our inability to rebound after the recent recession.

Ordinary South Carolinians -- members of the hard-working class -- would likely agree that times have been hard in our state, especially hard on people who work for their living, and that any recovery being felt elsewhere in the nation is taking its sweet time getting to our neck of the woods.

So it seems a little odd to hear an old ally of former Governor Mark Sanford taking issue with this new economic analysis and defending the priorities of Sanford and his legislatures.

A recent TD Economics study, which is disputed, paints a bleak picture of South Carolina’s ability to recover to pre-recession levels anytime soon, based on a gap between the revenue the state needs to spend on services and the amount it needs to account for inflation, population growth and potential cuts in federal spending.

“South Carolina, for example, has one of the largest adjusted-revenue gaps in the country, with Georgia and Florida not too far behind,” the TD report says.

“In fact, South Carolina’s fiscal hole is so deep that even if revenues were to grow at 7 per cent a year, the state wouldn’t close its adjusted-revenue gap until 2021.”

Chad Walldorf, chairman of the South Carolina Board of Economic Advisors and budget director during Gov. Mark Sanford’s first term in office, said TD economists used “misleading” revenue data by focusing solely on the state’s general fund.

If memory serves, Walldorf is also a co-founder and former co-owner of the Sticky Fingers barbecue restaurant chain, featuring locations in Mount Pleasant, Charleston, North Charleston, Hilton Head, Columbia and Greenville, and elsewhere in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, now headquartered well beyond South Carolina's borders, in Atlanta.

And he's the man tapped by Governor Nikki Haley to replace her principled nemesis, John Rainey, as chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors. This must be why Greenville-based Community Journals turned to him for a response.

Walldorf, who was asked by the Journal to read the TD report, was particularly concerned by the conclusion that South Carolina’s “real per student K-12 education funding is 24 percent below 2008 levels,” which TD said was the largest cut in the nation and will take time to restore.

That, Walldorf said, “is just not true. Per pupil spending has consistently gone up, whereas the report states the opposite.”

In fact, he said, spending was $10,566 in 2008 and “every year it has been increased. In the current budget, it is $11,754 per student.”

Walldorf added that in defense of the TD economists, education funding “is just so convoluted that unless you’ve spent a lot of time looking at it and talking to people, it is going to be very difficult.”

Yes, it's very complex.

Tax revenue is collected and deposited in the General Fund, including the full revenue from the one-cent sales tax implemented by the Education Improvement Act of 1984.

The Education Finance Act of 1977 dictates by formula the amount that will be appropriated from state funds annually as a "base student cost." This amount is to be transmitted to school districts, from which these districts adopt and implement their own budgets.

Additional revenue from local taxes can be added to those local budgets, and funds from the federal government are intended to be passed through the state to districts, too.

So far, so simple.

Where it gets complex is here: Conservative ideology encourages the dismantling and privatization of public schools, because wherever dollars flow, private-sector profits may be realized.

Public education, when appropriately funded, represents the largest part of any state's budget -- a pretty big pot of honey to tempt the average corporate bear.

So, to undermine public confidence in public schools, ideologues conspire to underfund them, starve them of resources, over-burden them with bureaucratic red tape and paperwork, complicate them with overbearing high-stakes testing models, strip the rights of their employees and encroach on the authority of local school boards.

At the same time, these ideologues invent and promote every sort of alternative to public education, from charters to vouchers to virtual schools, to give lawmakers optional channels through which to get public dollars into the private-profit sector.

And, as propaganda demands a skewed truth to fit this alternate universe, it must be insisted that public schools are better-funded than ever, leading the ordinary observer to the most obvious question: If we're spending all this money, why aren't we getting results?

Therefore, former Governor Mark Sanford's former advisor is absolutely correct in his complaint that education funding “is just so convoluted that unless you’ve spent a lot of time looking at it and talking to people, it is going to be very difficult.”

I bet George Orwell would understand it in an instant.

Could Glenn McConnell become Governor?

If John Rainey gets his way, it will be so: Glenn McConnell -- now less than a week into his service as Lieutenant Governor -- may succeed Nikki Haley before her first term ends in January, 2015.

As widely respected as McConnell is for his whipsmart political mind, today's news from Columbia may show that McConnell is also the cleverest person in the entire legislature.

The news? It comes from Columbia's Free Times, which broke the story last fall of Lt. Governor Ken Ard's ethical challenges.

A judge heard oral arguments on March 12 in a public corruption lawsuit brought on behalf of a prominent GOP fundraiser against Republican Gov. Nikki Haley.

Fifth Circuit Judge Casey Manning has yet to make an official ruling on whether the case will move forward.

If ever answered prayers might prove beneficial to the people of a state, now is the time to pray that Judge Casey Manning grants time and space for justice to blossom in his courtroom. In the spirit of last year's Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, let's pray for a Carolina Spring.

Reached by phone, Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the governor's office had no immediate comment on the matter.

Of course she hasn't. That doesn't stop the rest of us from considering it aloud, in public places.

Former Board of Economic Advisors chairman John Rainey, who recruited Mark Sanford to run for governor in 2002, filed the lawsuit in November. It asks whether Haley broke any laws as a House member either by lobbying a state agency on behalf of her employer Lexington Medical Center or by doing secret consulting work for Wilbur Smith and failing to properly abstain from legislation benefitting the engineering firm. Both occurred during the time she represented Lexington County as a Republican in the S.C. House prior to becoming governor in 2010.

Regardless of how the judge rules, a complaint could still be filed with the S.C. House Ethics Committee, a six-member panel of House members that regulates the conduct of current and former House members and candidates.

Complaints brought before the committee can end up in front of Republican State Attorney General Alan Wilson. On March 9, Wilson indicted former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, a fellow Republican, on public corruption charges.

“I believe Governor Haley is the most corrupt person to occupy the Governor’s Mansion since Reconstruction,” Rainey has said. “Put it another way: I think she is corrupt to the core of her being.”

To the core of her being.

I don't know for sure about Haley's anatomy, but I believe that when the House proposed improving its appropriation to public schools, she excoriated House members and demanded they use that money instead for corporate tax breaks. If that represents being corrupt to the core of her being, then she's corrupt.

Rainey's lawsuit also alleges that Haley filed false claims on her ethics reports, failed to disclose her association with lobbyists; neglected to disclose conflicts of interests when voting on bills; illegally voted to benefit a business she was associated with; and used her office to solicit money from lobbyists.

Whew. That's a lot of failing and using.

The House Ethics Committee is charged with regulating its own members and former members. The State Ethics Commission does not have jurisdiction over current or former state legislators.

Oh, no, no -- this is too big an issue to leave to the House Ethics Committee. That's a recipe for delay, distraction, disappointment and dissatisfaction. A Haley investigation would be buried there, and we'd never hear of it again.

Aiken Republican Rep. Roland Smith chairs the House Ethics Committee. The retired rural mail carrier and minister says he is not aware of any complaint against Haley before his committee.

If his committee received one, Smith says, he would refer it to staff attorney Emma Dean to determine if it’s valid. Dean has been there about a year, he said. She is also assistant counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. If Dean decides the complaint deserves an investigation then she would refer it to the committee for a vote on whether to proceed.

The committee has a staff of two, according to its researcher Adam Anderson. After staffers make recommendations on a complaint, the committee members serve as “the judge and jury,” Smith said.

See? Recipe for disappointment. When was the last time the House Ethics Committee ruled against a sitting governor and called into question the legitimacy of his (or, now, her) claim to the office? I wager it's never happened.

Smith says his committee could be fair and impartial if it had to investigate a sitting governor – and a fellow Republican.

“We would certainly have to entertain that,” he said March 16 about what would happen if he received a complaint about Haley. “We have to be fair … that's our motto: to see that House members are treated fairly as well as people in the public that may be dealing with whatever is being dealt with.”

Smith said if the committee found probable cause in an investigation it would refer the findings to the attorney general.

Five Republicans make up the six-member panel.

“We’ve got honest people on the Ethics Committee that really take their job seriously,” Smith said.

We had an honest governor who cheated on his wife and lied to South Carolinians about leaving the country to be with his mistress.

We had an honest state treasurer who was using and dealing cocaine.

We had an honest agriculture commissioner who held illegal cockfights.

We had an honest 66-year-old assistant attorney general who was caught on a Monday at 3:15 in the afternoon sitting in his car with some adult toys, some little blue pills and an 18-year-old stripper in Columbia's Elmwood Cemetery.

We have two honest state representatives serving today, one under indictment for failing to file tax returns, and another arrested for harrassment; and a third state representative suspended from office, under indictment for failing file state tax returns.

Our government is full of honest people. They're so honest, they rarely seem able to find fault in the crimes and ethical lapses of others like them.

Which, luckily, our judicial system is designed and empowered to do for them.

As it related to any complaint against Haley, Smith said in November, “I’m interested if there is substance … If that’s brought before the committee.”

He also said his Ethics Committee doesn’t comment on any investigations -- or about whether it is even conducting them.

Common Cause of South Carolina director John Crangle, whose watchdog group has observed state government for decades, doesn't have much faith in the panel.

“The House Ethics Committee in my opinion is little more than a fraud,” he says.

Little more than a fraud. I don't know John Crangle, but I respect his intelligence and judgment. He seems to know a bit about our state government.

Crangle says the panel has historically accomplished little more than receiving reports filed by House members related to their campaign fundraising and says anything it does is confidential.

Options for sanctions against a House member under the committee could include a private or public reprimand, depending on what the members find.

“Historically I can't recall a single case in which they have publicly disciplined a House member, and that even goes back to Operation Lost Trust where a number of House members were indicted and convicted of bribery,” Crangle says.

Not a single case, he says, in all these years. There's been just too many honest people serving in government, obviously.

Lawmakers are proposing a bill that would abolish the respective House and Senate ethics committees and instead put legislators under the jurisdiction of the State Ethics Committee.

“Right now you have the fox guarding the hen house,” says bill sponsor Rep. Boyd Brown, a Fairfield County Democrat. “It's like delivering lettuce by way of the rabbit. It's anything but ethical.”

Candidly, I don't see this proposal going far. South Carolina doesn't have a good record of abolishing bad ideas.

As for John Rainey and his corruption charges: After what happened this week to our former Lieutenant Governor, momentum would seem to be on the side of investigation and resignation.

Onward!

Could Scientologists open a charter school in South Carolina?

Let's see: We have a charter school law that gives interested parties a way to get around local school boards to open charter schools.

And we have a legislature that seems bent on adopting voucher laws that would funnel public money to parochial and private schools, eliminating any wall between church and state.

So, I think the answer is yes, Scientologists could open a charter school in South Carolina, and nobody could principly oppose it. Or, for that matter, a charter school with a focus on any variety or stripe of quasi-religiosity, cloaked in mumbo-jumbo and "research-based outcomes." Oooh.

And then we just might wind up with the situation that Tampa, Florida, is facing today.

The Life Force Arts and Technology Academy in Dunedin, a charter elementary school serving low-income children, has sold area parents a bill of goods.

Sounds like South Carolina already.

It promised an enriching arts and technology program and delivered a school stripped of resources by its management company and laden with Church of Scientology teaching methodology. The school's actions raise serious questions about fiscal control and church-state separation. Pinellas County schools superintendent John Stewart is right to recommend to the School Board that it be shut down as soon as possible.

Ah, but under our own charter school law, a local superintendent has no authority to influence a charter school, if that school was chartered by the state charter authority.

Remember: This was former Governor Mark Sanford's proposal to get around local school boards who didn't want to open charter schools of questionable capabilities and means. The legislature gave him what he wanted, a state charter school board with the authority to grant charters anywhere in the state.

Does this sound familiar?

Almost since it opened in 2009, Life Force has been riddled with problems. Its first principal was fired, charged with stealing from a family trust. By last summer the school had debts of more than $400,000. Facing possible closure by the school district, which oversees the county's charter schools, the Life Force board enlisted Hanan Islam's Art of Management company to overhaul the school. The school also filed for bankruptcy, giving it protection from the district terminating its charter school contract.

As reported by Tampa Bay Times staff writer Drew Harwell, since Islam came to Life Force some parents and former teachers charge that the school's children have been targets for recruitment by the Church of Scientology. The student body of about 95 students was taught using the "study technology" of Scientology's late founder, L. Ron Hubbard, according to former teachers. The school's children attended a Christmas party at a Scientology church in Tampa's Ybor Square, where they were given Scientology books and DVDs. And another endeavor of Islam's was as executive director of the World Literacy Crusade, a California organization that promotes Scientology education methods.

All of this exposure to Scientology-related material violates prohibitions in the U.S. and Florida constitutions on religion in public schools. The school may claim that the material is secular in nature, but since Scientology insists it is a religion, anything produced by it or by Hubbard should be considered religious. The church may freely open its own private schools, but it cannot infiltrate public schools like charter schools or have its teachings influence the curriculum. Life Force receives about $800,000 in taxpayer support per year.

See, our state's solution around that particular obstacle is to grant vouchers to parents who want to send their children to parochial schools, and to give tax deductions to parents who already send their children to such schools. Our state Constitution, of course, prohibits spending public dollars on private, parochial schools, but since when does South Carolina abide by the spirit and the letter of its own Constitution?

The Constitution also guarantees an elected state superintendent of education, but our leaders have been trying for years -- and they're still trying, now -- to get an appointed superintendent, so the governor will control the Department of Education, too.

In addition to the church-state problems, Islam's management is highly suspect. She generously rewarded her company even as the school was foundering. Islam's management company was paid more than $56,000 for the three months following the school's bankruptcy filing, which is nearly double what Islam told the courts she would charge. Meanwhile the school stopped paying for bus service, teachers couldn't get classroom supplies or get paid on time, and the school's academic performance failed to meet many of its self-written goals.

The debacle at Life Force points up the dangers of charter schools. The freedom given these privately run schools using public money can be easily abused in the wrong hands. On Tuesday, the Pinellas School Board should give Life Force its 90-day notice of termination as Stewart recommends. The sooner this school is shut down and Islam is given her walking papers, the better.

That sums it up, doesn't it? "The freedom given these privately run schools using public money can be easily abused in the wrong hands."

"Study": Charter progress suffered for lack of state funding

Two of South Carolina's charter school advocates who left our borders for opportunities elsewhere have reached back to deliver a new report on the stresses and strains suffered by the charter movement in South Carolina since former Governor David Beasley signed the first charter law in 1996.

One of their conclusions is half-comical: That charter schools struggle in their early years because they rely on the state's base student cost -- the per-pupil expenditure appropriated by the legislature annually -- and the base student cost is just too low.

Sshh: If you listen closely, you can hear tens of thousands of public school educators and administrators across South Carolina playing tiny violins in sympathy.

The authors of the "study" include the former state charter school district's "director of accountability" and the former director of the charter school office at the state department of education. One left to take over North Carolina's Office of Charter Schools; the other left to become "education director" for the Goldwater Institute. Google "Goldwater Institute" and you'll find it's a think-tank that "studies public policy with an emphasis on privitization." (That's the institute's spelling of the word, not mine. I know it's spelled "privatization." I'm shaking my head just like you.)

When they show all of their cards up front like that, it makes the game much less interesting to play.

The real benefit of their article is its encapsulated history of the charter movement, and since they were participants in it, it offers a delightful insider's view of the situation.

[C]harters and their authorizers still spend their first several years in a fight for survival. Nowhere is this more true than in South Carolina, which was among the first states to adopt a charter statute.

Founders of charter schools sign contracts (or “charters”) with an authorizer, such as a school district or higher-education institution, that stipulate the rules and regulations from which charters are exempted in exchange for accountability for results. In other words, a charter school can be closed if it does not meet certain reporting requirements and student achievement goals.

For years, South Carolina charters struggled mightily after their launch. Far fewer charters are now in operation in South Carolina than in some of the other states that were early adopters... and charter students make up only 2 percent of the state’s public-school enrollment.

Isn't that interesting? In one breath, they allow that charters can be closed for not meeting requirements and goals; in the next breath, they lament that South Carolina has fewer charter schools today than in other states. Yet it is true that many, many organizations and groups have filed applications to open a charter school in South Carolina. One must conclude that too few entities are capable or willing to take on the monumental responsibility of educating children -- of even offering them a (dare I say it?) "minimally adequate" education.

O, South Carolina.

The authors attribute the state's heel-dragging on charters to a "recurring set of obstacles."

In 1996, then governor David Beasley signed South Carolina’s charter law, but few schools had opened by the turn of the century. This is surprising, considering the state’s record of low student achievement.

Is it surprising, really? Or might parents understand intuitively that public schools are dramatically under-funded, and that our state's charters were designed to drain more public dollars out of the public system?

According to commonly accepted performance indicators, South Carolina’s public schools are among the nation’s worst.

Strange that Education Week magazine, issuing its own annual report on state rankings according to "commonly accepted performance indicators," gives South Carolina's educators substantial credit for accomplishing what they do with meager resources.

And isn't it easy to throw stones at the system after leaving the state, rather than to stay and help build, strengthen and improve it, as millions of others do?

Persistently low graduation rates, dismal SAT results, and low NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores, especially in reading, have long been the norm. In a historically red state with low-performing schools, a free-market education reform such as charters should be in demand and find strong support from lawmakers. What happened?

Well, Buttercup, that's easy to explain. The same lawmakers who wanted a charter school system to help starve the annual appropriations to traditional public education were loathe to appropriate just as much funding to an alternative system.

But, as this is a "study" produced in part by a "think tank," the authors answer their own question.

When the first decade of South Carolina’s charter history concluded in 2006, there was little to show. Twenty-nine charter schools were operating, and few of these had a track record of success. Some 14 others had opened and closed. The average life span of the closed schools was 2.7 years, with most not even completing a second year. As is the case nationally, many of the closures were the result of financial problems or poor planning at the outset.

There you have it: Lack of real interest in opening charters, and incompetence on the parts of many who did open them.

But the authors don't accept this as the answer. They offer a far grander conspiracy theory: It was the local school boards!

While the state board of education addressed the planning concerns through regulation, other policy issues emerged, as certain districts developed a reputation for stonewalling reform efforts. For example, Greenville and Charleston, home districts for two early charter success stories, Greenville Tech and James Island, respectively, are the two largest districts in South Carolina, and each developed an adversarial stance toward charters.

Blast it: People who held responsibility for educating all of a district's public schoolchildren took their responsibilities seriously! They were united in supporting their local traditional public schools, and didn't want to see their precious few dollars skimmed off for some boutique charter academies.

So, the authors say, charter advocates tried a different strategy with help from their dismantler-in-chief, Mark Sanford:

The prolonged period of fits and starts forced charter advocates and their allies in the statehouse to seek a separate peace with their opponents in well-entrenched teacher, superintendent, and school-board associations. In responding, legislators created an alternative authorizer, the South Carolina Public Charter School District (SCPCSD, here CSD), with a plan to commence operations in 2008 under the leadership of an appointed board representing the governor’s office, House and Senate leadership, and various state associations. The new authorizing district proposed to relieve pressure on local districts as the only avenue for a charter. This, plus the authorizing district’s spartan funding provision, helped quell opposition—for a time.

This is a soft-light way of saying that charter advocates won approval for a dodge bill: A plan that allowed charter groups to get around local school districts and win charters with low standards and little accountability from a statewide authority.

Notice, though, that they mentioned their new authority's "spartan funding provision." That's going to come back in a second.

Even this twisty scheme failed, the authors report.

The CSD opened in 2008 with five schools... By the end of the 2008–09 school year, though, one school’s charter had been revoked, two others had asked for loans to make payroll, the district office was operating with barely enough on the balance sheet to make it month to month, and the hybrid administrative concept had been abandoned in favor of a more traditional district model. Further complicating matters, leadership changed, as the inaugural superintendent, Tim Daniels, and board chair, Terrye Seckinger, were replaced at the end of the year. What began as a hopeful new charter authorizer for South Carolina teetered on the brink of oblivion after only one year.

Twenty percent of the schools lost charter authority, forty percent couldn't cover payroll without loans, the adminstrative model radically changed and leadership changed hands, all in the course of one year.

If this were a private business, the same conservatives who advocated for the charter dodge in the first place would have been satisfied to see it fail. That's called free-market capitalism. But this wasn't private business, this was ideological politics.

But isn't that pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and do-it-yourself-for-less mentality the core of the charter movement?

Nationally, charters embrace this challenge by vowing to do more with less, but there is a distinct difference between whether a school can stock an additional computer lab or barely pay the electric bill.

Ah, so it's not so much do-it-yourself. Charters are, in fact, just another mouth for the General Fund to feed.

I guess that came as a shock to the ideologues who saw charters as a cheap way to dismantle traditional public schools. When the charter advocates come begging for more money, the whole charter idea loses its flavor.

From the beginning, the South Carolina Charter School Act provided CSD schools with little more than the Base Student Cost (BSE), which varies from year to year depending on the state budget.

Uh-oh, I see what's coming.

The most significant source of funds for South Carolina’s traditional public schools -- as well as for charters authorized by a local district -- is the municipality in which the school is located. CSD schools do not have a local tax base and thus must operate without these funds.

So, are you saying that charters needed more money to educate children than the state was willing to appropriate? I hope that's not what you're saying, because that's what traditional public schools have been trumpeting from the mountaintops for years. I thought charters were supposed to be different.

“It [the charter school allotment] was certainly inadequate,” says current CSD board chair Don McLaurin, an entrepreneur whose private-sector experience enabled him to recognize immediately the CSD’s precarious financial situation. McLaurin joined the board halfway through the 2008–09 school year and has already been voted chairman twice. “It just wasn’t enough money to run a school. I think we can do things at a more reasonable price than traditional public schools, but the mechanism that was in place in the beginning didn’t allow for the realities of the world.”

"The realities of the world." I suspect the realities of the world find that educating children costs money, educating them well costs more money, and that ideologues in the legislature are stingy with funding, which yields sub-standard results.

So -- wait, don't tell me -- the charter advocates begged for more money AND GOT IT.

Understanding the policy shortcomings in CSD’s creation, legislators added a $700 per-student proviso to the 2009–10 state budget to aid the district. But the proviso, Title I funding, and federal IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) funding failed to offset worsening financial conditions in 2009–10. The $700 proviso survived reauthorization in spring 2010 and was available to the district for the 2010–11 school year, but its benefit evaporated when BSE was cut to $1,757 per pupil.

Wowsa. Charters begged for special treatment and got it, to the tune of $700 per child above the base student cost, and still couldn't make the grade.

This time, it was the recession's fault.

Statewide, general-fund revenue collections—for all state services, including education—dropped by nearly 25 percent between 2007 and 2010. The state faced a budget shortfall of $560.9 million in 2010–11, projected to reach $1.4 billion in 2012–13 unless spending was cut. In July 2010, midyear cuts slashed the BSE even further, to $1,630.

And the state's charter school chief admits he always intended to go back and ask for more money, once the legislature had demonstrated its willingness to declare a separate base student cost for charter students.

Superintendent Brazell knew the proviso could only be considered a short-term solution. “My thoughts were that this was done just to get our foot in the door and other funding would become available later,” he says.

The old foot-in-the-door.

How funny it is that charter advocates have moved from a message of "We can do it ourselves, cheaper and better," to "If we can get our foot in the door, we can get more public funding down the road."

So what happened? "...CSD schools struggled to survive, and the threat of closure loomed."

Sounds grim. Still, charters had the steadfast support of parents, right?

Compounding the problem, CSD schools experienced significant student turnover in their first two years, making enrollment unstable.

Gee, even parents abandoned the untried, untested, unaffordable, unstable experiment that charters represented.

What the authors describe next is stunning.

In an effort to save newly opened charter schools, the CSD extended loans to two of its five schools in 2008, but only one of the loans was repaid. This caused consternation among the authorizing district’s board members, especially as new requests for loans came in, and led to a swift reversal of district policy. “We violated what many of us thought we should have been doing as an authorizer, but we had to either help the schools or watch them all close,” says Brazell. With the damage done, the district and its schools were convinced that a funding scheme relying on BSE and Title I funding was untenable. For the next fiscal year (2009–10) the CSD aggressively cut costs, trimming office accounting fees and downgrading budget lines set aside for a legal retainer. As the district rebuilt its depleted reserves, schools again asked for short-term loans. Having learned a hard lesson, the district helped schools make payroll by advancing funds equal in amount to dollars due from the state. When the state funds arrived (typically at the end of the month), the district simply deducted monies already provided to the schools.

This became a shell game. In other quarters of the world, it's called "creative accounting."

The authors unintentionally describe other areas of incompetence.

Simple operational procedures, which existing traditional schools had mastered, were an enigma to CSD charters. How do they order textbooks? How can they order diplomas?

To cover for these inadequacies, they say, the state's charter school administrators had to become shepherds, helping new charter schools set up their operations -- in essence, to become like another traditional public school district, facing the same issues that under-funded traditional public schools face: "The financial circus kept school budgets in flux, making it difficult to prepare for additional student services, hire teachers, and develop strategic plans," they complain.

To make matters worse, the S. C. Charter School Act requires board elections at each charter school annually, resulting in the loss of institutional knowledge every year.

That sounds an awful lot like what happens when traditional public school teachers are laid off, and their veteran teachers are forced into retirement.

But the authors see a happy ending. Despite what they characterize as "hasty, temporary measures to help resolve problems" and "a haphazard set of practices, inconsistently applied, with plenty of doubt to go around," they see the charter movement as a roaring success in South Carolina.

Today, the CSD oversees 13 schools that serve more than 10,000 students. In 2010–11, Superintendent Brazell finished his second school year with the district and has filled key staff positions with knowledgeable personnel, many with a history at the South Carolina Department of Education. CSD staff experience has proved invaluable to the new charter operators.

Isn't that great? Folks who built their careers at the state department of education -- and who may have lost them in the recent purges of the administration -- now provide a knowledgeable support network for the charter movement that once despised them as education bureaucrats. It's nice that everything comes together in the end.

"Only one charter has been revoked," the authors report.

There are still financial issues, and the legislature continues to be stingy with funding, they lament.

In addition, the 2011–12 state budget included a funding increase for CSD schools. Virtual schools received an additional $1,750 per student, while brick-and-mortar charters received an additional $3,250.

But isn't that a good thing? After all, it honors the charter movement's guiding principles, that they can provide equal and better education at dramatically lower costs, which saves the state's taxpayers a lot of money.

In August 2011, the CSD approved seven charter-school applicants to open in the 2012–13 school year. Perhaps the strong leadership in the state and district superintendents’ offices, along with more experience among district and school staff, will result in more effective operations and better student outcomes in the future.

And who knows? Pretty soon, maybe these charters will complete their conversion to private schools and leave public funding behind altogether. That would, after all, be the ultimate expression of saving South Carolina's taxpayers more money, right?

Media: Romney kicks "toxic" Haley to the curb

Do you reckon this means Governor Nikki Haley's chances of joining the Romney ticket as a vice presidential nominee are down the drain? This is depressing; I was looking forward to the discussion of Lieutenant Governor Ken Ard's succession.

For the two weeks leading up to January's S.C. Republican primary, presumptive nominee Mitt Romney and S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley were seemingly inseparable.

They appeared together at events in Romney's adopted home state of New Hampshire, as well as multiple events across the Palmetto State: she was campaigning with her husband after her endorsment in mid-December, she was on the stage in Charleston when former VP candidate John McCain mistakenly called Romney by the name Obama and she repeated the mistake herself on her birthday, the day before the primary at a Greenville event.

But when Romney, leading in the state's polls throughout January until four days before the Jan. 21 vote, took the stage that night to congratulate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on his victory — his only to this point — Haley was nowhere to be seen, instead staying home to celebrate her 40th birthday with her family.

I noticed that too! But I assumed that it was Haley's decision, that she didn't want to be seen with the loser and have those indelible images posted for all eternity on the internet, like the shots of her with ol' Sarah Palin.

So it was really Romney's choice?

And she's been absent ever since.

Instead of stumping for Romney through other important Southern states, where her name recognition would be high, Haley has stayed at home while heavy campaigning has taken place in Florida, Georgia and Virginia. Other prominent national Republicans — including Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have taken her place.

Haley, through her spokesman Rob Godfrey, said that she remains in contact with the Romney campaign and plans to continue campaigning for Romney.

Remains in contact. Have you spent any time in our criminal courts recently? The dockets are full of cases of men or women trying to "remain in contact" with their former boyfriends or girlfriends after some acrimony. Judges call that harrassment or stalking, and sometimes they issue restraining orders against it. Is Her Man Godfrey trying to say that Haley is having difficulty giving up on that relationship? Our governor?

The governor's office also points to local responsibilities as the main reason she has been absent from any Romney campaign stops for the past six weeks.

News flash: There were plenty of local responsibilities to hold the governor's attention during those two long weeks in arctic New Hampshire, and during those ten long days that Haley spent escorting Mr. Inevitable from Greenville to Charleston. Those local responsibilities weren't enough to tear her away from her political meal ticket then, so why now, if it isn't that Mr. Inevitable has declared her Ms. Unnecessary?

"South Carolina is on the cusp of passing the largest government restructuring bill in two decades — that, our budget, and economic development is where the Governor's focus has been since the South Carolina presidential primary," Godfrey said in a statement.

Is that it? We need her more than Romney does? Forgive the chuckling in the background, but I somewhat doubt that. If the past decade has demonstrated one thing to the kiddies in South Carolina, it's that we're perfectly capable of running things without an effective governor, or his or her presence in Columbia. Uh, does the Appalachian Trail ring a bell?

We're on "the cusp," he says. The cusp. Such words. How about "the precipice"?

Comparable conflicts, like a pair of controversial abortion bills in Virginia and a gay marriage debate in New Jersey, haven't kept McDonnell and Christie off the trail, but Haley's office insists she will still play a role in the campaign.

"We're in constant contact with the Romney campaign," Godfrey said, "the governor intends to continue to campaign for him both before and after he's the Republican nominee, and her belief that he is the right person to occupy the White House is unwavering."

Uh-oh. We're veering into "Fatal Attraction" territory here: "I won't be ignored, Dan -- er, Mitt!"

Your Honor, what I'm doing is not harrassment or stalking. It's just that I know deep down in my heart that we're right for each other, and I'm willing to be patient until he realizes it too, but I have to keep letting him know that I'm here, so he doesn't forget what we once had -- and what we're destined to have again, forever.

Romney's campaign office did not return multiple phone calls and emails asking for plans to use Haley moving forward. And former S.C. House Speaker David Wilkins, another prominent Romney supporter, declined to comment on Haley's apparent lack of campaign involvement.

Ooh, that has to sting. Former House Speaker David Wilkins won't comment on Haley's status in the Romney campaign? Former Ambassador to Canada Wilkins, who has former President George W. Bush on speed dial? He's still in, but she's out?

College of Charleston Political Science Professor Kendra Stewart said the reason Haley has disappeared from the campaign trail may have to do with her novelty wearing off.

"There was initially a lot of interest in her," Stewart said. "She was new, a woman who was able to capture the top elected office in South Carolina, but a lot of that has died down as the national party tries to prop up their candidates."

This sounds an awful lot like an assessment of the gubernatorial campaign of 2010. Haley was a novelty, there was initially a lot of interest, she got a lot of attention, then she won office and, whoops, South Carolinians got a big case of buyer's remorse. Conservative temple priests like John Rainey start asking uncomfortable questions. Former employers start telling inconvenient truths. Angry, double-crossed lawmakers reveal backroom deal-cutting. Facebook friends post barbed comments and get unfriended. It's a mess.

What's shocking, really, is that Romney wanted to swim in that tainted pool at all.

Stewart said that Haley doesn't have as much in the way of leadership experience as some of the other big names lining up behind candidates on the campaign trail, and that is a potential reason she has fallen out of the spotlight now that the race has moved on from South Carolina.

"The other names popping up tend to have lots more leadership experience because that's one area where (Pres. Barack) Obama is polling the weakest, so they are looking for people with a lot more leadership experience," Stewart said. "They're looking for someone who can beat Obama in that area."

Oh, the unkindest cut of all! A comparison of inexperience between former U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Haley! Yikes. Medic!

The only thing worse than that would be to craft a reference to our governor using some Britney Spears lyrics!

At least one S.C. Democrat says the reason Haley is no longer at Romney's side is obvious.

“She’s absolutely toxic,” Democratic strategist Tyler Jones. “[The primary] exposed her. She’s the second most unpopular governor in the South and the national media didn’t realize that until they got into South Carolina.”

She's toxic!

Can anything be worse?

Jones said Haley’s fluctuating national reputation mimicked that of another female governor.

“The more people get to know Nikki Haley, the less they like her,” Jones said. “That’s sort of the same with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin.”

Nooo, not Palin!

“You will not see Nikki Haley on the same stage as Mitt Romney again this primary season,” Jones added. “She might be able to raise money behind closed doors but the Romney campaign will not allow her to take a role in the campaign if he has any desire to win.”

How the mighty have fallen.

Stewart at the College of Charleston, meanwhile, sees some truth to Jones' assessment of Haley.

"Her endorsement of Romney didn't carry much weight with South Carolina voters," Stewart said. "That is indicative of her standing with South Carolina voters."

"She's not that popular at home now."

Stewart said Haley is making some of the mistakes that her predecessor Gov. Mark Sanford made in alienating legislators in the General Assembly. While Haley can point to the government restructuring bill, if it passes, as a win, she has burned many bridges already in the S.C. House and Senate.

"It's hard to rise any higher nationally if you can't get support at home," Stewart said. "And she's not making a lot of friends in the legislature."

Stewart said Haley has some popular ideas, but she has yet to be able to convert them into policies. She said people in the state are also getting tired Haley consistently turning down federal money available to the state, and her apparent refusal to listen to anyone who does not agree with her, and points to a recent Post and Courier article about Haley deleting Facebook comments that were critical of her.

"If she's not listening to anyone, that could hurt her re-election chances," Stewart said.

Governor, now might be the time to buck up, admit some neglect and misplaced priorities, and get on board behind South Carolina's 700,000 public schoolchildren. They could use a governor in their corner right now, because they haven't had one there in a long time.

Mark Sanford knocks Nikki Haley: "Lost her focus"

In a freshly-minted item published in the conservative National Review -- William F. Buckley's old magazine -- by Wall Street Journal editor John Fund, former Governor Mark Sanford expresses a strange thought about his protege, Nikki Haley: “She’s taken her eye off the ball and lost focus.”

What's strange isn't the substance of Sanford's opinion; Haley has certainly been all over the map -- including Paris, though not yet to Argentina -- since taking possession of the Governor's mansion. What's strange is that Sanford voiced his opinion aloud, and in the context of Fund's topic, Haley's endorsement of Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy.

One of the aces that Mitt Romney believes he holds in the Palmetto State is the endorsement of Nikki Haley, the new 39-year-old governor who rocketed to political stardom last year by challenging the good-ol’-boy political network in the state. Fueled by endorsements from both Sarah Palin and Romney, Haley was able to marshal tea-party support to crush a sitting attorney general, a sitting congressman, and the state’s lieutenant governor, winning the GOP nomination and then the general election.

It was classic political Cinderella theater, with the story of the state’s first governor from a minority group (Haley is Indian-American) taking place on the 150th anniversary of its secession from the union and providing a powerful symbol of just how far the South has progressed. But one year after she was sworn in, enough of the luster has worn off that former governor Mark Sanford, her immediate predecessor and political mentor, is discouraged. “I wonder if she’ll be more of a liability to Romney than she is an asset,” he told me.

Fund brings baggage of his own to his work; he was a pioneer in the Libertarian Party in California in the 1970s, which might explain his affinity with Libertarian-leaning Sanford. And, like Sanford, Fund's baggage includes some unfortunate personal choices.

Still, Fund's critique includes some objective data:

Haley certainly has seen her approval ratings slump since being sworn in, although just how much is a point of dispute. According to a December Winthrop University poll, the governor’s approval rating is 35 percent, with only a little more than half of Republicans giving her a thumbs-up. Since every statewide official in South Carolina is a Republican, the GOP controls the legislature, and Republicans have a seven-to-one advantage in the congressional delegation, the Winthrop survey rang alarm bells everywhere.

The governor punched back. Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, she dismissed this “local poll” because it also showed that President Obama would today win South Carolina, which would be a bizarre result since he lost the state by 9 percentage points in 2008.

But the poll in question didn’t test President Obama’s general-election prospects in South Carolina, only his statewide approval rating. This came in at 45 percent — higher than Haley’s. The governor’s office was forced to admit she had misspoken.

“She sure didn’t have a problem with this ‘local poll’ when we correctly predicted her gubernatorial victory in 2010,” Scott Huffmon, the director of the Winthrop poll, commented, noting that his survey predicted Haley’s defeat of Democrat Vincent Sheheen in the general election. Nonetheless, Team Haley has a point when arguing that the survey is somewhat suspect. “I have consistently found a durable ten-point Republican-party affiliation edge in South Carolina elections,” says Haley strategist Jon Lerner. “The Winthrop poll surveyed 3.6 percent more Democrats than Republicans, so there was an inaccurate partisan weighing.”

That appears correct, but fixing it would still leave the governor with an approval rating only in the 40s, which is what recent private polls I was shown all pegged her at. A Public Policy Polling survey in September had her at 41 percent approval.

Seems self-evident that South Carolinians regret their choice last Election Day. Surely South Carolina's public schoolchildren regret it, as they're well into a second decade without an advocate in the top office. But it's shocking to hear one of Sanford's surrogates say it so bluntly, as his former communications man, Chris Drummond, did:

"I regret my efforts to help her get elected,” Drummond told me.

And Ashley Landess, who leads the South Carolina Policy Council, another old Sanford support team, didn't hold back:

“Nikki agreed with us that there is a great disconnect between the people and the governing elites in South Carolina,” Ashley Landess told me. “We have an electorate that mostly supports small government, but most of the legislative leaders are slavish supporters of corporate welfare who think they are the conduit to prosperity.” She says that, far from breaking up that system, the governor has increasingly coddled it.

Haley, coddler of corporate elites. It has a ring.

As for her signature issue, transparency in government? Fund found a gem of a quote:

Columnist Isaac Bailey of the Myrtle Beach Sun News concludes that “she’s done just about everything to make it impossible for the public to know what she is doing and why, even going out of her way to hide or delete emails or using personal accounts to dodge open document requirements.”

No pulling punches here.

Fund's summary assessment after talking with Sanford? Haley is "just another politician."

Many of Haley’s original supporters say they understand she entered office without executive experience, and they expected some rocky moments. But they say hiring a very young staff known more for its loyalty than its competence has compounded her problems. Mark Sanford has an edge of sadness in his voice when discussing her first year with me: “She’s on the cover of national magazines, her book will be out in April — I think it can be confusing, and all this has led her to punt on some of the really big issues she ran on.”

Nikki Haley remains a political superstar in national Republican circles, and her charm and fighting spirit are undeniable. But it’s increasingly clear that many of the people who elected her are worried that because of either national distractions or an unwillingness to fully confront the power structure she ran against, she is becoming what last year she said she loathed — just another politician.

What can it mean that a pre-eminent arch-conservative journal is sharpening its talons on one of its own progeny? Is the bloom forever off Haley's rose?

Or, could Haley salvage her term in office by rejecting her elitist tendencies and advocating for South Carolina's children?

Disproportionate poor not to blame for South Carolina's ills

Readers of Andy Brack's Statehouse Report will recognize below a letter to the editor published in the most recent edition of that newsletter. (Those who do not subscribe are encouraged to do so.)

Since the young man signed his letter, it's revealing no secret to repost that information here:

To Statehouse Report:

I took note of your recent post ["The numbers tell a story of challenges," 6/25] listing the abysmal percentages that SC ranks in comparison to other states in certain categories. I am unclear on your intent and who your intended audience is in reporting this highly skewed and extremely pessimistic list, especially in the forum which you chose. How does a piece like this serve any positive purpose?

SC is a state complete with talented and educated people as well as unskilled and uneducated people ... as with every state. What SC does have, which is different than many other states, is a disproportionate percentage of a lower socioeconomic population (both black and white). It is very clear that a piece like this speaks heavily and directly to this economic and social class difference. To say that your “list” is a reflection on this lower class is accurate, but to say (and print) that this is a reflection of SC as a whole, is misleading and does the entire state and it’s educated population a huge disservice.

Others view SC as an uneducated and backwards state because that is the information that we provide to them. If we can begin to frame our negative statistics and attribute them to where they belong, you and others will see that we are not very different from other states and might even be a bit better.

-- Craig Delk, Charleston, SC

The summary of "abysmal percentages" to which Delk refers is found here, and I posted a similar set of abysmal data here.

It is easy to dismiss Delk's letter as the cranky angst of a promoter who wants to sweep our defects under the rug and focus attention only on South Carolina's sunny patina. But to dismiss it, I think, is a mistake; I suggest Delk's letter is worthy of intense consideration. In fact, the young man may be, perhaps unwittingly, giving voice to the base instincts of many others.

Consider his points:
-The list of data collected and published by Brack is "highly skewed and extremely pessimistic," he says. Delk does not question the data itself, only the collection and publication of it. Why? Because it is easier to criticize the dissemination of the information than it is to address the problems reflected by the data.

-South Carolina, like other states, is a mixture of "talented and educated" and "unskilled and uneducated people," but it suffers from "a disproportionate percentage of a lower socioeconomic population (both black and white)," he says. Delk offers no census data or other evidence to demonstrate the disproportionate percentage he perceives, and I have no interest in doing his research for him. But his assertion -- and his language -- is telling: Rather than face and address the individual South Carolinians reflected in Brack's summary of data, it is easier for Delk -- and likely of others who share his values, else he would not feel comfortable airing his view to a general readership of Brack's newsletter -- to group those individuals together and label them as he did, by their class. By establishing people of lesser means as a sort of "other" and grouping them together, it's easier to attach stereotypes to them, to dehumanize them, and to disregard their needs.

-Brack's summary of data, Delk writes, "speaks heavily and directly to this economic and social class difference." The charge -- a simple charge of "class warfare" -- underscores his earlier animus toward Brack's dissemination of information; to wit, Brack isn't interested in solving problems, he's engaging in class warfare, and for what purpose?

- Delk's next sentence is the revelatory one: "To say that your 'list' is a reflection on this lower class is accurate, but to say (and print) that this is a reflection of SC as a whole, is misleading and does the entire state and it’s educated population a huge disservice." Delk, speaking for himself but comfortably representing the view of friends and intimates, is offended that Brack or anyone else would post data reflecting the misfortune of others -- though they live in our communities, towns, cities, counties, and our state -- and leave open the possibility that readers outside our state would lump us all together. Underlying the offense is a well-known set of tropes: Education imputes rightness and, more importantly, goodness. Lack of education imputes wrongness and, indeed, badness. Good things come to good people, who deserve them for being good; bad things happen to bad people, who deserve them for being bad. Those of us who are educated, the logic follows, have a right to be offended when the other/bad/undeserving/lower socioeconomic class impedes our view of ourselves as a state. And we hold a special sense of offense when one we presume to come from our own class -- think of Franklin Roosevelt, called a "traitor to his class" -- like Brack, in this case, gins up a portrait that mars the view we hold of ourselves, as we represent our state.

-Delk repeats his point-of-view in his penultimate point: "Others view SC as an uneducated and backwards state because that is the information that we provide to them." Again, in his view, the data itself is not the problem; rather, the problem is the dissemination of the data.

But, in fact, the data is the problem. Observers don't see us as "uneducated and backwards" because that's the only face we show them. It's because that's our face.

For example, we chose to elect a state treasurer, Thomas Ravenel, some years ago who was criminally unsuited to the role, and was a cocaine dealer besides. I doubt it was our "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population" who forced him to traffic in cocaine, or even who elected him. Ruling them out leaves the guilt on the presumably educated class which Delk offers to represent.

Likewise, we elected a lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, who drove recklessly through downtown Columbia and berated a police officer for applying the law equally to all citizens, and who later equated the poor to yard animals. We elected Governor Mark Sanford, who carried on an extramarital affair while in office, even sneaking out of the country to be with his mistress, and lying to us and everyone else. One of our elected representatives to Congress, Joe Wilson, shouted down the president of the United States in the middle of a live broadcast of a State of the Union address.

And it isn't just our elected officials; appointed ones have done their part, too. Only two years ago, a Columbia police officer found our assistant Attorney General Roland Corning parked in a cemetery with a prostitute -- or stripper, depending on which official source you consult -- and a variety of adult toys and Viagra in his car. Our assistant Attorney General explained that he "always had" these things in his car, "just in case."

Lest we mistakenly believe South Carolina's vulnerability to misfortune is a recent affliction, or an affliction of our "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population," we should consult history.

We elected Rep. Preston Brooks to Congress, who in 1856 beat down Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the Senate with a walking cane -- beat him unconscious, and continued beating him -- leaving Sumner with permanent damage, so badly injured that he couldn't work for three years. We hailed Brooks as a conquering hero. A marble plaque in his honor is installed in the foyer of our Caroliniana Library on USC's Columbia campus.

We chose to secede from our nation, and persuaded other states to leave with us; it turned out badly for us and for them, yet we continue to honor and celebrate the cause for which we seceded. It's hard for out-of-state observers to ignore a state holiday -- or the flag we continue to fly in front of our State House.

We elected former Governor Ben Tillman to the U.S. Senate after he participated actively in the murders of innocent black militia members in Hamburg in 1876, and later made the entertaining and psychotic threat that he would drive a pitchfork through President Grover Cleveland's gut. And when he died, we erected a statue in Tillman's honor on the State House grounds, where it stands today.

When we were prohibited from keeping slaves, we excluded minorities as much as possible from our growing industrial economy, using impoverished women and children in our factories instead. We fought the progressive movement of the early twentieth century that led to child labor laws in other states, keeping our own 10-, 11- then 12-year-olds on mill payrolls until 1905.

Our elected lieutenant governor in 1903, James Tillman, angry at the truthful reports and editorials being published in The State newspaper, shot and killed, on the State House grounds, the newspaper's editor. He was appropriately charged with murder, but his uncle -- the same U.S. Senator who murdered innocents and threatened to maim a president -- intervened to move the trial from Richland County to Lexington County, and attended every day of it, at the end of which the jury unanimously voted the younger Tillman innocent of the charges.

We fought the campaign for a constitutional amendment allowing women the right to vote. Our legislature never ratified that amendment until 1969 -- 49 years after it became federal law without us.

When our mill workers sought to organize themselves as a union and negotiate for better working conditions, we watched them murdered in Honea Path in 1934, and we watched their factory shut down and themselves booted from their jobs in Darlington in 1956.

In part because of President Harry Truman's executive order integrating the armed forces, our Senator Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform. We and three other southern states gave him our electoral votes.

In 1952, in anticipation of Supreme Court rulings prohibiting segregation, we adopted a constitutional amendment empowering the legislature to close public schools, if necessary, to prevent integration. When the Court ruled in 1955 that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, our Governor Olin Johnston announced to a special session of our legislature that we, as a state, would defy that ruling. We appointed a School Segregation Committee, chaired by Senator Marion Gressette, to maintain that position for as long as possible. To honor Gressette for his long service, we named our state Senate Office Building for him.

Though we've existed as a colony, then a state, for 341 years, it was only 34 years ago that we adopted a law providing a formula and a mechanism by which to fund annually our state public school system. Yet even that proves too great a commitment; we've fully funded our own 34-year-old, outdated formula only a handful of times.

We were so preoccupied in the 1990s with maintaining the supremacy of the racist policies of our heritage that our lawmakers wasted months, perhaps years, of time debating the placement of the Confederate battle flag, which still holds a place of prominence on our Capitol grounds. So important was the single issue to us that it became a topic of conversation in the presidential primaries of 2000.

So peculiar is the issue of race in our history that a single impolitic remark about Strom Thurmond's run for the presidency cost Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott his party position. And so peculiar was it still that after Thurmond's death in 2003, we heard the rumors of a biracial daughter called, by our still-sitting Congressman Joe Wilson, a "smear on the image... [of] a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina." Indeed, the rumors proved to be accurate, and the granite base beneath the nine-foot-tall bronze statue honoring Thurmond was revised, with Essie Mae Washington Williams's name carved elegantly beneath the names of her much younger half-siblings.

And all of this occurred before our Governor Sanford carried two piglets up to the lobby outside the House chamber, where they soiled the rug, woven on historic looms at Oxford Mills of Mississippi, that had been installed as part of the multi-million-dollar restoration of the Capitol only a few years before.

It is arguable that none of these deeds or developments were the fault of South Carolina's "disproportionate percentage of lower socioeconomic population." Yet these are the pieces that give observers from outside South Carolina their view of our state.

In his final point, Delk proposes in his letter of criticism to editor Brack that we accentuate the positive, with regard to the awful data reflecting the status of South Carolina's poor and unfortunate: "If we can begin to frame our negative statistics and attribute them to where they belong, you and others will see that we are not very different from other states and might even be a bit better."

Sadly, neither lies nor obfuscation, nor ignoring, nor "reframing" facts and figures, will produce silk purses from sow's ears. Neither Brack nor the other sensible reporters and editors of our pitiful reality are to blame for what is. If our goal is to produce and disseminate news of wonderful outcomes, we as a state -- our educated middle- and upper-class, too -- might succeed by focusing on addressing our problems at their roots.

What vetoes? Haley threatens focus on education next year

Classroom teachers will recognize this behavior: Student ignores effective instruction for a semester, performs poorly on occasional tests and blows off the final exam entirely, earning a failing grade. When the class resumes for the second semester, the student pretends nothing was wrong, that despite the albatross of a failing grade weighing down her prospects, she will continue last semester's poor study habits, inattentiveness in class and general disregard for instruction, fully expecting to complete the course with an A.

Governor Nikki Haley took a thumping at the hands of the legislature late last month, after wielding her veto pen without necessary prudence and expecting her subordinates in the chambers to fall in line.

Now, without having addressed fully the deeper meanings of those events, and apparently pretending they never occurred -- which means no learning took place -- Her Excellency has announced she "will use her first executive budget in January to take a “back-to-basics” approach to a range of issues vital to the long-term future of the state."

Back to basics, she says. This can't be good news for South Carolina's public schoolchildren.

“You will see me focus on things like law enforcement, like infrastructure, like education, like mental health and rehabilitation,” Haley said Monday in Columbia. “Those are the things we really need to focus on so that we can start to get South Carolina really moving again.”

Indeed, South Carolina's public schoolchildren are on next year's menu.

But where? The appetizer? The main course? The dessert?

When it comes to issues such as education, infrastructure and law enforcement, Haley said too much attention is focused on how much money is spent, rather than how the money is spent.

Haley said her focus will be to move state education “in the right direction.” That means, among other things, changing the funding formula, she said.

It's the main course. Haley presumably intends to strike directly at the heart of South Carolina's public school system, aiming squarely at the Education Finance Act.

The mother of two children attending public schools in Lexington County, Haley, responding to a question about school vouchers, said she has “always been a strong proponent of options for parents” in schools.

There we find the proof that Haley has learned none of the lessons of the past decade in South Carolina politics and education policy. How many times have lawmakers defeated voucher legislation since Haley's mentor, former Governor Mark Sanford, first dragged them out of Libertarian think tanks and into our public discourse in 2003? Five? Six? Seven? How many public hearings have been held on the topic? How many polls have been taken? How many rallies have dragged little home-schooled children and their parents to the State House steps for the airing of cathartic declamations and demands for public subsidies of private choices?

The lessons taught time after time, the opinions voiced by our collective consciousness in poll after poll, the will of lawmakers expressed in vote after vote, are so crystal clear: Parents want high-quality public schools for their children in their communities, wherever they live. Parents in every city and town, crossroad and glade want the same access to opportunities for their children as exist for the children of other parents, elsewhere, across our happy land. When beaten about the head and neck with messages of public schools' inadequacies, parents have not yielded and said, Yes, close the schools and give me a voucher to Heathwood Hall. Rather, parents have rejected those messages and said to state leaders, Fix the problems, repair the schools, treat my child as you would treat your own, and let public funds serve the public good.

But Haley learned none of these lessons, read none of the polls, apparently knows nothing of all those previous votes. Next year, she declares, she will push our system of public education in right direction, using "vouchers" as her compass.

One grows weary.

In the same article, buried well beneath the lead, Haley announces to the citizens of South Carolina that they have no governor to focus on state interests. Rather, they have a governor focused on matters of national import. This, of course, does nothing to help the moms and dads and little children of South Carolina's communities. Perhaps we were fooled into thinking we'd elected a governor.

First, Haley returns to the horse she hobbled and bled out months ago, to administer additional lashes.

As she has in the past, Haley roundly criticized the National Labor Relations Board for its suit against Boeing for locating a 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina rather than Washington state, citing anti-union motivation.

Haley has been out front in some national media outlets defending Boeing’s decision, and deriding the Obama administration for not speaking out against it.

“I am not gonna stand by and allow any of our companies to be bullied, especially by unions,” Haley said to a round of applause by the Rotarians.

The Rotarians love a show.

What might the Rotarians have done if South Carolina's governor had declared, "I am not gonna stand by and allow any of our public schoolchildren to be bullied, especially by their governor"? Might the applause have rocked the walls?

Or this: "I am not gonna stand by and allow any of South Carolina's workers to be bullied, especially by their elected leaders"?

Or perhaps this: "I am not gonna stand by and allow any of our citizens' rights and freedoms to curbed or dictated by out-of-state corporate interests through ideologically-motivated campaign contributions, especially by those who supported and continue to support my political aspirations"? Surely the roof would spontaneously combust.

Then comes the abdication of any responsibility for what occurs, or doesn't occur, to promote the general welfare of our own friends and neighbors who pay taxes in South Carolina:

“Being a governor is no longer about leading on state issues,” Haley said. “What I’ve noticed is we have to deal with a lot of federal issues, and that’s OK.” Haley has taken criticism for inking a book deal and catering toward national media exposure, perhaps harboring national political ambitions.

Translation: We have no governor. We are materially supporting, instead, a candidate-in-waiting for federal appointment or election.

And another term of office is wasted, while our children want for leaders.