The State tracks the money trail to House voucher vote

Following the money led Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the Nixon Watergate scandal, and the Washington Post to a Pulitzer Prize.

This Easter weekend, The State newspaper hopped down the money trail to last month's vote on the House voucher bill and found dozens of voucher bunnies collecting their own Cadbury eggs from donor Howard Rich of New York.

More than half of the S.C. state representatives who voted in favor of a school choice bill that passed the House have received campaign donations from New York businessman and school-choice advocate Howard Rich and his affiliated companies.

Rich has made campaign contributions to 38 of the 65 House members – 58 percent – who voted for the bill, which passed 65-49.

Collectively, those representatives, all Republicans, received $188,000 in campaign cash from Rich and his limited liability corporations, or LLCs, from 2008 to 2011. That dollar figure does not include dozens of contributions totaling thousands of additional dollars made by Howard Rich associates who also favor school choice.

And more donations from Rich could be on the way.

All House members and state senators are up for re-election this year and are raising campaign cash now. Lawmakers must report new donations next week to the State Ethics Commission.

The House-passed proposal now heads to the state Senate, where it faces an uphill battle. Any one senator effectively can block consideration of a proposal, but school-choice opponents likely will not have to resort to filibustering to kill the idea. While the Senate is controlled by Republicans, the body’s ruling majority actually is a loose confederation of Democrats, most of whom who oppose the House-passed school choice bill, and moderate Republicans, many representing areas with good public school districts that they are determined to protect.

Also, Rich has directed little of his financial clout toward the Senate thus far.

Rich has given to only 11 of the Senate’s 46 members, and one of those recipients said late last week that he will oppose the House proposal.

In the House, two members, state Reps. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, and Curtis Brantley, D-Jasper, accepted donations from Rich but voted against the school choice bill, which aims to give tax deductions to parents who send their students to private schools or who home-school their students.

Which reminds me of Arthur Ravenel's old dictum: If you can't take their money and vote against their interests, you have no business in politics. Cracks me up every time, imagining how Ravenel delivered the line.

The remaining 47 House members who opposed the bill – all but five of them Democrats – did not receive donations from Rich.

Critics of the school-choice legislation point to Rich’s donations and the late March House vote as proof that outside influence continues to shape education policy in the Palmetto State.

“It’s very sad that a large amount of money has come in from out of state to pressure legislators into doing something that most South Carolinians are against,” said Molly Spearman, director of the S.C. Association of School Administrators, which opposes the bill. “(This bill) erodes the support for public education in South Carolina.”

But lawmakers who voted for the legislation say it only makes sense that they would get donations from contributors, including Rich, who agree with their school-choice stance.

“What can he possibly gain from this? Other than he understands that education is important and requires out-of-the-box thinking? He gets no financial benefit from this,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, who received $6,000 in Rich donations in 2010 and 2011.

Herbkersman, who says he has talked to Rich on the phone a few times but never met the New Yorker, added: “You can send as much (state) money as you want to any school. But if you don’t have a full parking lot on parent-teacher night, it’s going to be a failing school.”

He added, “This bill gives parents and students, who are really interested in an education ... a choice. The status quo is not working. It’s time to try something else.”

I'm in full agreement on this point: The status quo is not working.

What is the status quo?

Simply put, the status quo has been that South Carolina consistently under-funds public education and consistently diverts support and resources from public schools to any number of alternatives, effectively offering incentives to parents who will leave public schools and propping up private education, where profits can be made by corporate interests and campaign donors. Results of this status quo have been damaging to the state's public education system, and to the state's standing in the nation.

Obviously, the status quo isn't working.

And just as obviously, the solution is to foreclose the diversion of public funds to private alternatives, fully fund the base student cost for at least the length of one student-cohort's term in public school -- 13 years -- and then weigh the outcomes.

But that's not the solution that privatizers and voucherites prefer.

Libertarian-leaning and low-profile, Rich has been hesitant to speak with the S.C. media about his school-choice advocacy.

His multiyear S.C. effort for school choice has sparked controversy, inspiring a now-defunct blog that tracked his S.C. campaign donations and a 2008 statewide tour by one prominent Democrat, Phil Noble, who called on candidates to return his donations.

Accused of taking tainted money, some candidates returned Rich-affiliated money, including state Rep. Deborah Long, R-Lancaster, who sent back $12,000 received from Rich’s associates.

Bill opponents also charge Rich and other school-choice proponents with nasty campaign attacks on GOP lawmakers who did not support past school-choice bills. During last month’s House debate, state Rep. Boyd Brown, D-Fairfield, said voting in favor of the bill was approving of those tactics.

“What you’re saying with this bill is that this is the way to get things done,” Brown said on the House floor. “When it comes to school choice, that’s what it took to get this passed. All it took was legally being on the take from Howard Rich. Instead of voting on the interests of Howard Rich, you need to vote in the interests of your constituents.”

In his email to The State newspaper, Rich defended his right to fund candidates and said he does not “own any property in South Carolina or have anything to gain personally from passage of school choice legislation.”

He said he supports “efforts like this because I believe in freedom of choice and a parent’s right to have a say in the education of their children. Nothing more.”

Rich also has backed other conservative causes in other states, including term limits and limited-government initiatives. “I make donations to candidates in many states,” Rich wrote. “Given the continuing low performance of S.C. public schools, I would think the benefits to more parental involvement would be self-evident.”

In a 2008 video interview by then-state GOP chairman Katon Dawson, Rich said, “If I want to do something that I strongly believe in, like empowering parents – whether it’s in South Carolina or Georgia or California or any place – I should be allowed to do that.”

I wanted to watch this video again, and would have linked it here for everyone's benefit, but the video has been deleted from YouTube and all links to it across the internet are dead.

The fight over whether to offer tax breaks to parents who home-school their children or send them to a private school has been a fiery debate in the S.C. Legislature since 2004, featuring regular bouts between the two entrenched sides.

On one side are public school groups and organizations that have argued the state’s public schools are not adequately funded. They say it is unfair to give tax breaks to private school and home-school parents that reduce the state’s income, which could go to finance better public schools. They also say private schools and home-schooling families are unaccountable, not as subject to state scrutiny as public schools are, and possibly offering subpar educations.

Well, truth is truth.

On the other side, school-choice advocates say a one-size-fits-all approach to educating students is a misguided idea ensuring that some students will fail. They say tax deductions would make it possible for more parents to consider education alternatives that work better for some students.

Ah, we must provide all options at all costs for the one percent, even at the expense of the ninety-nine percent.

Isn't it always the case?

Nationally, more than 20 states have enacted some form of school-choice legislation, ranging from vouchers to tax deductions. Last week, for example, Louisiana’s General Assembly expanded its voucher program.

I heard about this. Rumor has it that Governor Bobby Jindal promised to use his line-item veto to strike out road projects for any legislators who voted against his education package. And since Louisiana's legislators all have four-year terms, in both houses, alongside the governor, a lot of lawmakers foresaw dire times ahead for their constituents who couldn't get road repairs. Shades of ol' Huey Long.

Despite the many school-choice proposals presented over the years, all ultimately failed to pass either the state House or Senate – until last month.

The House’s 65-49 vote on March 28 marked a major triumph for the school-choice movement and could be a sign of changing legislative sentiments.

This year’s proposal is different from previous ones. It grants tax deductions rather than the previously proposed tax credits.

The proposal would:

• Give up to a $4,000-a-year tax deduction for each child enrolled in private schools.

• Give up to a $2,000-a-year deduction for expenses for families who home-school their children.

• Make poor and disabled students eligible for private-school scholarships; those who donate to nonprofits that would provide those scholarships could claim tax credits.

“Is this the legislation I would have written? No,” Rich wrote The State newspaper. “Is this an acceptable framework that has been developed to meet South Carolina conditions, created by South Carolinians with the support of a wide array of groups and individuals? Yes, I think it is.”

Should the bill become law, it would cost the state about $37 million in lost revenue in its first year, 2012-13. That cost would continue – and could increase if more families opt for private or home schools – in future years.

Indeed, a number of lawmakers who spoke against the voucher bill last month said it represented only the beginning. As soon as the barnyard gate is thrown open, watch for the wolves to be back at the henhouse door next year, asking for more meat.

School-choice advocates say there has been inappropriate influence in the school-choice debate, but not by Rich and his allies. Instead, they point to emails, acquired through the state’s open records law, that show principals and other school officials have encouraged public school teachers to phone lawmakers to express their opposition to school-choice legislation.

“No matter one’s stance on school choice, this practice is fundamentally threatening to democratic institutions,” said Neil Mellen, spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Government, a school-choice advocacy group. “It replaces rule of law with political patronage. It makes voters and taxpayers subservient to the government.”

Spearman, of the Association of School Administrators, and other public school advocates say the law is followed in those communications and educators have the right to be informed.

“School personnel are extremely careful in following the letter of the law on that,” Spearman said. “SCRG has harassed school districts on this topic, hoping to keep them from staying informed. We won’t let that happen.”

Firing back, school-choice opponents long have called on the Responsible Government group to reveal who pays for its operations.

Mellen said his group has a range of individual and institutional donors but provided no specifics. He added his group does not receive any money from public sources, as opposed to some of the education groups fighting school-choice legislation whose members are dues-paying school districts.

This is comical: The gang who demands transparency and accountability offers no transparency and accountability, all the while impeding professionals from knowing what's happening to their professions.

In family counseling, the person demonstrating this behavior is called an "undisciplined disciplinarian." On the playground, he's called a "bully." In either case, his credo is simple: Do as I say do, not as I do.

The bill next heads to the Senate, where it faces a more difficult path as Democrats and moderate Republicans easily could join forces to block the bill.

Asked if he thought the choice bill could pass the Senate, Rich wrote: “I don’t know. Of course, I hope the bill passes out of the Senate, but I am not a lobbyist and certainly don’t have a crystal ball. If it does, it will be a huge opportunity for a lot of middle and low-income families. That would be great.”

Based on his contributions, Rich’s Senate influence is not strong.

Of 46 state senators, only 11 have received money from Rich, including two Democrats, Sens. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, and Darrell Jackson, D-Richland. Collectively, those 11 senators have received $102,000.

Jackson, a former Richland 1 school board member, said he does not support the legislation that passed the House and doubts it can pass the Senate.

“It’s late in the session. You would need nearly a consensus to get it passed before time runs out,” Jackson said of the legislative session that ends in June. “And this will likely be controversial.”

Jackson said he only has met Rich briefly once, a couple of years ago when the New York millionaire made a rare stop by the State House to meet lawmakers. Jackson added he is not sure why Rich donated $9,000 to his campaign in 2010, but suspects it is because of his advocacy for charter schools, consolidating school districts and other non-traditional approaches to help failing schools.

But, Jackson added, “I’m a longtime supporter of public education. This bill won’t help our kids.”

Purge at DOE concerns education leaders

News that Superintendent Mick Zais has initiated a purge of staff members at the Department of Education has left state education leaders concerned about the loss of programs and services, not to mention the loss of more jobs.

Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, the first Republican to hold the post since 1998, is evaluating and overhauling the department and consolidating two of its five divisions.
...
Those 50 employees represent nearly 13 percent of the agency's non-transportation employees. Their jobs ranged from administrative assistants to office directors to deputy superintendents.

Zais has not released "a breakdown of employee positions by division." But word is circulating, naturally. Each "voluntary resignation or retirement" represents an educator without a job.

"We're very concerned that personnel in the Office of School Safety are gone," said Molly Spearman, director of the S.C. Association of School Administrators. "That affects mentoring, character education, bullying prevention, federal rules to make sure homeless students are being taken care of."

Ragley said the functions of the department will not be impacted by the cuts.

"The work is still going to get done," he said. "The responsibilities have been added on to other people's jobs."

That's a long-revered strategy among overseers of labor in South Carolina, one called "the stretchout." Cut your workforce as a cost-saving measure AND as an intimidation tool against those left with jobs: Do the extra work, or you'll be cut in the next go-round.

It's why we'll likely not hear anyone still employed at the Department complaining of their predicament. No doubt this round of cuts has put a chill on any dissent there may have been. No doubt, too, that Zais has eyes and ears on every floor of the Rutledge Building.

Those outside the building aren't afraid to speak up, however.

Debbie Elmore, spokeswoman for the S.C. School Boards Association, said her organization wished the department had done a better job of communicating news of the changes to school districts.

"It's not unexpected for personnel and other changes to occur anytime there is a change in leadership," Elmore said. "However, what has been disappointing is the department's lack of transparency and communication about the state superintendent's ongoing restructuring plan, personnel changes, and more importantly, how they may or may not impact support services to districts and schools."

The South Carolina Constitution guarantees that the state will provide a system of public education to all the state's children.

This is what happens when apathy and ignorance on Election Day installs at the helm of that system someone without experience in South Carolina's public school classrooms, who has never supported public schools and who actively works to dismantle the programs and services they provide to children.

And we're only seven months into his four-year term of office. If Zais can inflict this much damage in seven months, will there be a system left when his term ends?

Is that his goal?

Educators: Zais 'cutting off our nose to spite our face'

Having failed to convince Superintendent Mick Zais and Governor Nikki Haley of the most appropriate course of action, leaders of the state's school boards association and school administrators association are taking their argument to South Carolina's opinion leaders and citizens.

Paul Krohne and Molly Spearman, executive directors of the School Boards Association (SCSBA) and Association of School Administrators (SCASA), respectively, have published a joint opinion-editorial in at least two newspapers today, The State and the Myrtle Beach Sun-News, to argue that Zais should try, at least, to compete for up to $50 million in federal "Race to the Top" funds.

"Race to the Top" is an Obama administration initiative, administered by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to target federal resources to states that agree to various education reforms. The recipe of reforms favored by the Obama administration would suggest that South Carolina is an ideal candidate for the funding, if only the superintendent would apply for it. But Zais isn't interested.

The effective result is that federal taxes being paid by South Carolinians will be used by states that do apply for, and win, the funding.

Krohne and Spearman write,

South Carolinians, in the tradition of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, have always recognized the folly in sending our own tax dollars to the federal government only to have them forwarded to other states. The baffling tendencies of today's state leaders to stand rigidly on their ideology, even when federal money can be used for the good of our people, is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We understood the illogic of this approach two years ago when Gov. Mark Sanford protested the federal stimulus by attempting to leave South Carolina's share on the table, even though our taxpayers would pay the cost.

Unfortunately, our current leaders are following exactly in his footsteps.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this pattern best when he wrote, in "Self-Reliance," "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

The announcement by State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais that he will not pursue up to $50 million in funding under the federal Race to the Top program, quickly noted and celebrated in the eight other states invited to apply, will hamper educational progress here and fuel it elsewhere, for no good reason.

His excuse - that federal money means federal dictates - has little relevance in this case. Unlike many federal initiatives, Race to the Top was designed specifically to encourage state-level ingenuity, and is remarkably hands-off and state-driven.

Our state's application in fact reflects our state's own longstanding needs, priorities identified and wished for long before federal funding made them a possibility. Several of the innovations we have proposed are exactly the kinds of reforms Zais supports, including improving the quality and transparency of education data, encouraging our best teachers to work in schools that need them most, and creating a system of teacher pay that is based less on credentials and more on performance. Many of our priorities are infrastructure needs suitable for one-time funding, not new bureaucracies that impose ongoing costs.

Message: Some people just can't take 'yes' for an answer. To collaborate with educators -- which certainly would be interpreted by Zais's base as buckling to the status quo -- would only encourage educators to expect future collaboration. This defies the command-and-control manner to which Zais is accustomed. (Word from Newberry seems to support this view...)

And it gets worse. If there is little sense in opposing the Race to the Top initiative, there is none at all in rejecting direct assistance to schools to retain teaching positions. South Carolina has the distinct title of being the only state in the nation to leave on the table millions of dollars designed specifically to preserve teaching jobs in the leanest economy any of us can recall, preventing the devastating layoffs and furlough days nearly every district has experienced in recent years.

The $144 million allocated under federal "Edujobs" legislation is enough to save more than 2,500 teaching jobs, or two thirds of the positions lost over the course of the recession. Thanks to last year's massive cuts in higher education spending, South Carolina can't access that badly needed funding without a congressional waiver, sought by our delegation last year at Superintendent Jim Rex's request. Zais has abandoned any such effort, which his staff has described as "a dead issue."

Every point made by Krohne and Spearman here is valid because they are rooted in logic and reason. But we do not function in a system governed by logic and reason; Haley, Zais and their sycophants operate in a parallel, Bizarro universe where the goal is to reduce the number of teachers teaching in public school classrooms, not to increase them; to raise the teacher-student ratio, not to lower it; to weaken the public education system they swore to support, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, South Carolina is not our world -- it's theirs. We only live in it.

Of course, until they change the Constitution to exclude us, we get to vote in it.

It's clear that Krohne and Spearman understand this. Their message isn't to the saved but to the uncommitted:

And yet, like Gov. Sanford before him, Zais apparently leaves significant wiggle room in his ideology to support the projects he favors. He has been quick to applaud the millions of dollars in federal funding awarded to South Carolina to establish charter schools, with no talk of bureaucracy, Washington footprints, or "pieces of silver" exchanged for federal "strings."

At best, there is an alarming confusion in the priorities of an administration that won't take federal assistance to sustain the teachers and schools we already have, but is happy to accept it to support a political agenda.

It's an undisputed fact that few states have educational needs as pressing as South Carolina's. Poverty rates, high at the beginning of the recession, are rising every year, creating new challenges for schools even as state funding has declined. We are losing teachers, increasing class sizes, and cutting academic programs, at a time when we urgently need to improve achievement.

Our state and national leaders need to recognize that South Carolina's resources are far too limited and our needs far too great to help fund schools in other places at the expense of our own. There is no acceptable reason not to give our schools and students our strongest support.

Indeed. Educators, unite.

Spearman: Out-of-state interests governing our government

Molly Spearman, executive director of the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, was featured this week in the Orangeburg Times and Democrat, advising South Carolinians of the insidious influence of out-of-state ideologues governing us by proxy.

Public school supporters in communities across South Carolina need to know that the free-flowing funds from out-of-state interests are filtering through the State House and influencing the agenda on K-12 education. House and Senate members are being pressured by millionaires and in some cases, billionaires from across the country to put in place a program to give tax incentives for students to leave SC public schools. They say that the new program would save the state money and improve public education.

Should parents have the right to send their children to private schools with strong religious foundations? Yes. Should private groups and church organizers have the right to set their own school policies, admission requirements and classes for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other religious training? Yes. Should they be able to hire uncertified teachers, give their choice of tests, diplomas, and select students based on whatever criteria they choose? Yes. The urgent question - Should public tax dollars and incentives support and subsidize these schools? No.

Proponents of the tax credit bill say, "Yes, parents have a right to choose and they should be helped with a tax incentive, especially those who can't afford the private school choice." When asked if the accepting private schools should be accredited and be required to adhere to same standards or oversight, the supports answer, "No, there should be no government intrusion, or additional requirements." That is why public tax dollars and incentives should not be given and why this legislation is a bad idea.

Many families want their children to be involved with religious training during the school day and that is fine. However, tax incentives should not support these religious programs. These same schools often evaluate the personal testimony and faith of potential students. That is fine; but, tax incentives and subsidies should not support these K-12 programs!

The legislation being debated in the House Ways and Means and Senate Education Committees this week also sets up scholarship programs that will be funded by businesses or citizens who direct their income and business tax dollars from the state general fund to send needy students to private schools. It is always a nice idea to help needy students; but, there are two major problems with the set-up. First, most needy at-risk students will not be able to meet the admission requirements of these private schools even if there were one located within walking or driving distance (transportation is not included). Secondly, this "scholarship gift" program will allow businesses or citizens to keep their taxes from going into the S.C. General Fund. That means millions of dollars subtracted from the pie to pay for health care, roads, highway patrolmen, and other safety needs. This is at a time that South Carolina is $700 million short in our state budget and cutting jobs, health care, and critical programs.

Similar voucher and tax credits have been in place for a while in Washington, DC, and Florida. Wisconsin just released a report on comparing student achievement after both private and public schools administered the same test. The students receiving the tax credit trailed the regular public school students.

Florida has had a wide-based program for several years and students there are scoring better on standardized tests. Proponents claim that the tax credit program is the reason. It may have had some affect as research has showed that the threat of vouchers and accountability cause school folks to work harder. However, Florida educators in the trenches say that the improvement is based on hard work, more time on task for at-risk students, strong reading intervention programs, after-school sessions, and tremendous professional development training for teachers and school leaders. Those are the "silver bullets" that really make a difference in student achievement.

A strong public education system is important to the future of our county, state, and nation. Everyone has a duty to support public education, whether you have a child in school or not. Shifting tax incentives to encourage students to leave the public system and allowing supporters to transfer their needed tax dollars to private school scholarships is a terrible idea - especially when our charter and regular public schools are struggling financially to exist. If you agree that this pending legislation is a bad idea, please contact your legislators now.

Spearman: South Carolina cannot afford vouchers, tax credits

Molly Spearman, executive director of the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, published an opinion-editorial in yesterday's The State newspaper opposing the resurrected Sanford voucher proposal, now cast as the Haley-Zais tuition tax credit proposal.

Spearman says that after hearing high-paid consultants praise Florida's tuition tax credit plan for their impact on student achievement, she called Florida education officials to ask for their analysis. Their conclusion was that a list of factors led to student gains: "a state-wide comprehensive reading plan, intensive professional development for principals and teachers, reading intervention, more time on task for students, reading coaches..."

No mention was made of vouchers or tax credits. And here we are in South Carolina cutting those very programs while considering a plan to commit $400 million to a program that has no research-based support that is works.

Appearing before a Senate panel recently, Adam Schaeffer, a paid consultant from the Virginia-based Cato Institute, claimed his group wants to “help poor students in ‘failing’ schools who have no choice but to attend public schools.” But as Schaeffer has made clear elsewhere, what he and the Cato Institute really want is to “get control of education, wipe out your tax liability, so that you owe the state nothing.” (See Adam Schaeffer, Youtube Dec. 27, 2010).

Spearman is a sharp lady, and clearly did her homework.

She goes on:

Motivation aside, would students in rural South Carolina who are at-risk actually be accepted in private schools? I visited the websites of the private schools along the I-95 corridor. There are about 50 schools, and only 35 of them are accredited by the S.C. Independent School Association or the S.C. Christian School Association. Each of these schools requires an entrance admission test. Some state that they serve only “average or above average students.” Some require a statement of “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Others conduct entrance interviews with parents and students so that an admissions committee can “determine the authenticity of personal testimonies of faith.” As a Christian and an American, I defend the rights and liberties of any faith-based school to set requirements for admission, and of parents to choose that school. However, I seriously doubt that these schools will accept the very students whom the tax-credit legislation purports to help.

Finally, supporters argue that providing tax credits to parents who send their children to private schools would represent a “savings” to South Carolina. They define “savings” in the legislation as “equal to the amount of the student-based per-pupil state funding to each district less the value of tax credits taken” and tax-supported scholarships given. Well, that would actually produce a savings if all the students leave from the same class or the same school; then, a district could hire fewer teachers. The problem is, that’s not how it happens. The exodus might cause a class size to change by one or two students, but the teacher still has to be there, and the lights and heat still have to be turned on in the classroom.

That's a great point. Say that one student from every school in the state chose to leave and go to a private school, thanks to the new tuition tax credit. How does that save the state any money?

First, the loss of the one student would mean a reduction in funds available to that school by one per-pupil unit. But the other students remain, now with slightly fewer resources. No savings there.

Second, at the end of the tax year, now that student's parents get to take their tax credit as a deduction on state income taxes. That means the state's general budget for public education has that many fewer dollars to invest in the 1,100 public schools we've obligated one another to support. No savings there either.

So any discussion of savings, I've concluded, must be rooted in old voodoo economics.

Supporters get around the fact that tax credits don’t help poor children, whose parents don’t pay enough in income taxes to take advantage of the credit, by encouraging the creation of private, tax-supported scholarships. The tax support comes from allowing businesses and citizens to direct their taxes to these scholarship funds. Of course this “gift” is not really a gift. If you want to give and actually help, give generously to after-school programs, reading interventions -- things that have worked in Florida and communities across this great country.

This is yet another sop to right-wing corporate interests. Take Wal-Mart as an example, as it has funded scads of pro-voucher studies and programs across the nation. Now, I have no idea whether Wal-Mart even pays a nickel of corporate income taxes in South Carolina, but if it did, this proposal now gives Wal-Mart the option of designating an amount equal to its corporate income tax for the year to a "scholarship" program for children to attend private schools. Result: Wal-Mart gets to support private schools through vouchers, the state's general treasury is deprived of legitimate tax revenues, and the rest of South Carolina's public schoolchildren get fewer resources.

Who, exactly, do our lawmakers represent and serve?

Spearman makes a last point:

More importantly, South Carolina faces a $700 million deficit. The current level of basic state funding for students has fallen to nearly half of what our law requires. Our charter schools and traditional school districts are struggling to exist. State agencies are cutting basic safety and health services. Our roads are filled with pot holes. We are falling behind our neighbors in North Carolina and Georgia. We cannot gamble on this legislation.

Pretty straightforward statement, all in all. A cogent analysis.

But the Cato Institute analyst that Spearman mentioned in her column took issue. No, it's worse than that: He called her a liar and said she offered no evidence in her column.

Yes, I was shocked too, that someone from Washington, D.C., would come all the way to Columbia, stand on our front porch and ridicule the way we conduct our business, then go back home and call us liars from a safe distance. I Googled the young man and found that either Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia is overly liberal in handing out doctorates these days, or that this man collected no manners during his studies there.

Schaeffer received his Ph.D. in American politics, with a focus in political behavior, media effects, and coalitional politics, from the University of Virginia and his MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago. His dissertation assessed the potential for different combinations of private school choice policies and messages to expand and mobilize elite and mass support. Schaeffer has an extensive background in online survey development, messaging experiments, and the strategic analysis of message, policy, and audience interactions.

I also notice that the Cincinnati, Ohio, native matriculated at Colgate University in central New York and took his master's degree at the University of Chicago before coming to Virginia. So we are free to presume what we will from this.

We do not have to presume the fellow's intellectual pretenses. He lays them out for the reader himself in an online colloquy from some years ago about renaming "consequentialist libertarian" politics. Apparently being seen as, or called, Libertarian in the modern age is gauche. So Schaeffer offers an alternative. (Yes, it is a diversion from the point of this note, but it is a revealing one about the speaker. Indulge, get a drink, and read this part slowly. You might try reading it aloud to a loved one.)

I’d like to ask everyone to propose a name for this consequentialist libertarian approach—paying attention to stylistic concerns and possible associations that others may bring to the name, in addition to how well the name conforms to the ideas it represents.

I’ll get the ball rolling with a suggestion:

Neo-Modernism

I think that the popularity of the word “post-modern” is due in large part to its ambiguity. “Modern” is a difficult bundle of ideas, movements, and impressions on its own, but adding “post” adds another layer of tantalizing and mysterious associations. In terms of general impressions, however, “modern” conjures up thoughts of the enlightenment, science, progress, power, and the triumph of reason. “Post-modern” in turn calls up darker, vague notions of loss—the loss of faith in God and reason and the human projects driven by belief in them—and the embrace of nihilism and relativism. It’s a sexy word, evoking images of intellectual super-men bravely shouldering a philosophical angst that would crush lesser mortals. Although Friedman’s approach does not referee competing values, it does rely heavily on a certain faith in reason. It seems, fundamentally, a return to modern thinking.

I think that anything with “libertarian” on the nameplate brings far too heavy a bag to carry. The associations cannot be severed—with the Libertarian Party, various think-tanks, and a large collection of traditional adherents, the word “libertarian” will not be remade easily. Best to do away with it entirely.

The prefix “neo,” like “post,” has the virtue of bringing a tantalizingly ambiguous flavor to “modern.” It makes “modern” less pedestrian, while also conveying that this is a new approach to politics and society. It suggests comparison with postmodernism, which is overdue for a downgrade in popularity, while echoing the now very popular, if imprecisely used, word “neo-conservative.” These two terms are also associated with different ends of the political spectrum, which means that “neo-modernism” should be politically ambiguous at first glance. “Modern”—modern things are good, but in need of revision—Postmodernism is old news, but “neo-modern” sounds like it just might have something interesting to convey.

Those are my initial thoughts—let me know what you think. Criticize away. And please post suggestions for other labels. This needs a good name.

Cheers,
Adam

Many Southerners prefer Georgian, for the record. It cuts to the chase.

Ironic that Schaeffer disdains the Libertarian label for its associations with "various think-tanks," given his present association with the Cato Institute and its pedigree. I've come to read Cato and Libertarian as synonymous.

I tell you, I spent an hour sitting with my dictionary on the side porch and nursing a third Coca-Cola in deep study of this young man's text. I did so because this is the person who upbraided Spearman at SCASA for offering no facts and no evidence in her opinion-editorial, as either lying or suffering from "ignorance." I wanted to get a sense of the man. And I did. The greatest discoveries I made are that he's enamored of his own prodigious polysyllabicism and he prefers to pump his own gasoline in New Jersey.

As for his ill-mannered treatment of Spearman, he whimpers at her charactization of him as a "paid consultant," then demonstrates that he's both "paid" and he consults. Clearly, he's become used to being called an "expert." We're used to experts in South Carolina. They often arrive from out-of-town with briefcases, some made of carpet. Our present governor professes to rely upon them, as reported in the Rock Hill Herald:

The state is bringing in "think tanks out of Washington to help see what's the best tax structure for South Carolina."

Having accused her of offering no evidence for her own conclusion, Schaeffer takes Spearman to task for seeking out evidence by "calling someone in the Florida Department of [Public] Education to ask them why they thought academic achievement in Florida has increased."

This is precisely why I question UVA's criteria for granting doctorates in these times. We are to take it that accurate facts and "evidence" comes only from printed pages and not from dialing up an expert and conducting interviews over the phone.

Yet Schaeffer, perhaps back at home in Arlington, marvels at how many "errors" Spearman could pack into "a piece under 700 words," and chides her: "Had Ms. Spearman done her due diligence on this education issue, or had she called me and asked, she could have avoided these embarrassing errors."

Good that she didn't, say I. Best not to get caught up on the phone in "the loss of faith in God and reason, and the human projects driven by belief in them, and the embrace of nihilism and relativism." We have children to educate down here. Yes, Schaeffer likely finds that public education "is overdue for a downgrade in popularity," and would exclaim "the now very popular, if imprecisely used, word 'choice'." But we've been beating that mule for seven years, and it hasn't moved a lick yet.

Deo ac Veritati, indeed.