Roosevelt Institute exposes privatization's motives

The more I know about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the more I love who they were, what they did for America, and the legacy they left behind.

One more example is the Roosevelt Institute, a nonprofit organization "devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt by developing progressive ideas and bold leadership in the service of restoring America’s health and security."

That's a mouthful, and there's no better time than now for such an institute to be doing this work.

This week, the Roosevelt Institute and Salon.com have teamed up to publish a series of articles on public policy, and the first of these is an incisive essay on privatization found here.

Educators especially, but all public employees generally, should pay close attention to privatization proposals, as essayist Mike Konczal explains.

Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century.

Everything we once expected the government to do — from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management — it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

Does this sound familiar to public employees in South Carolina? Contracting out services that once provided jobs for public workers? Vouchers to pay for children to attend private -- for profit -- schools instead of public schools? Selling off state assets, such as timber in 40 counties, rather than letting public employees do the work?

Privatization is one of the few political projects that enjoys bipartisan support: Conservatives cheer the rollback of the state, and liberals like to claim that the virtues of the free market are being used towards the egalitarian ends of public policy. The fraud and waste that often come with outsourcing these services has been well-documented. The private management in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the lobbying efforts of corporate prisons have all provided horror stories of what happens when cronyism guides decision-making on behalf of the state. But privatization as standard government practice has problems that go far beyond the abuses of any single incident.

Rather than solving problems with government, privatization often amplifies those issues to new extremes. Instead of unleashing market innovation, it often introduces new parasitic partners into the decision-making process.

Are these the vulture capitalists that Rick Perry mentioned?

Instead of providing a check on the power of the government, it allows the state to circumvent constitutional and democratic accountability measures by merging with the private sector. And ultimately, the practice replaces the set of choices and constraints found in democracy, with another set found in the marketplace. Today’s political conversation is blind to these problems out of a mistaken faith in the efficiency and fundamental equality of markets, contrasted to the ineffectiveness and corruptibility of the state.

What advocates miss is that the logic of markets creates private-sector coalitions capable of extracting just as much from taxpayers as the state.

No kidding. Once private industry has tapped a vein of public revenue, it's a matter of time before that vein is stretched wide open to catch every dime of the state's life blood.

Corporations, lobbyists and other market actors can have just as much political agency as the government, and privatization can mobilize businesses to rewrite market practices.

This political process plays out in the quality of the services provided and the structure of the companies providing them.

Hey, school bus drivers and food service workers, this guy is talking about you, or the jobs you once had, or the jobs you're about to lose. When a privately-owned, for-profit bus service, or a privately-owned, for-profit food service company moves in and gets the contract in your school district, they MAY offer to hire you, but at lower pay, and with fewer health-care benefits, and little or no retirement benefits.

And the quality of the work? You know what happens to the quality of the work. We're talking about profit margins, the bottom line. Contracts go the lowest bidders.

Privatization has sometimes meant that the most lucrative and easiest parts of these government obligations go into private hands, creating private profit, while the most difficult and dangerous parts remain with the public. This can range from the “privatizing the gains, socializing the losses” of various parts of the financial sector to the “cream-skimming” that goes on in many other industries.

If privatization is meant to put a check on the size and power of the state it often backfires, as the practice can be used to circumvent normal mechanisms that exist to hold the state accountable. A whole array of transparency laws and constitutional checks don’t carry over when the government outsources its responsibilities and activities to independent businesses.

This is where "right-to-work" turns to "right-to-work-for-less-with-no-rights."

Privatization as a way of avoiding constraints and accountability measures has two particularly troubling consequences. First, the government can use independent agents to do things that they themselves cannot do, betraying the whole point of keeping government in check. Especially in the world of surveillance, this practice can act as a way to get around constitutional protections enjoyed by citizens.

Second, accountability measures that have evolved through decades of public law are jettisoned when a service leaves the public sector, allowing companies to do the government’s work in a network of secrecy. Ways the public keeps a check on the government, from the Freedom of Information Act to the Administrative Procedure Act to whole regimes of other transparency laws, do not bind outside businesses.

The Constitution prohibits the delegation of significant state powers, but the Supreme Court currently puts few constraints on the government to outsource many of its important duties. What today’s discourse ignores is an understanding of the liberal conception of what public and democracy itself is good for — as a way to check private and government power, and promote accountability and responsiveness.

These blur into dark scenarios where private-public relationships give public agents maximum discretion in exchange for giving private agents advantages over their competition. For example, after FedEx’s CEO announced that his company would be cooperating with the government following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the firm received a number of rewards. Ranging from special access to security databases, to a prize seat on a regional terrorism task force (the only private company represented) and special state licenses, these benefits amplified the firm’s power in the marketplace over noncooperative competitors like UPS, all in exchange for amplifying the power and reach of the state.

Defenders of privatization also argue that the marketplace creates innovation. Competition, the profit motive and the “creative destruction” of the market system can be deployed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government services. But what this outsourcing really does is move constraints from one space to another. It transforms the strengths and weaknesses, the limits and the constraints, from government to the market.

And leaves workers behind in the process. How many private companies doing business in South Carolina guarantee health insurance benefits and a defined benefit retirement plan?

That's the difference between public employment and private employment. And to tamp down the ambitions of private-sector workers to have better pay and better benefits, our leaders decide to undermine and dismantle the rights of public employees, so that nobody has nothin'.

Except the owners, the operators and the overseers, that is.

Privatization replaces the democratic role of citizens finding solutions to collective problems and transforms it into consumers trucking and bargaining in a marketplace. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self. The market emphasizes cost-benefit thinking, profit-seeking strategies, bargaining and the satiation of individuals’ wants; good things in many circumstances, but not necessarily when it comes to the powers of the state.

A regime of privatization shifts the debate away from the functions of government towards the allocation of those functions. For all the talk about innovation by outside contractors, what privatization largely does is preserve the scope of government services while looking for efficiency gains. And since the scope of what the government does is held constant, the real gains come from minimizing costs.

Take prisons, for example. With the addition of privately run prisons, the debate narrowly focuses on how much to spend on prisoners. Minimizing costs here will often be the result of simply providing less of a good at a worse quality, and the debate will focus on the optimal extent of these privatization contracts. Meanwhile, the greater question of when the state should imprison people fades to the background.

It's all about the money, boys.

How much work can we get out of these people, at how little a cost?

What’s actually public about these responsibilities disappears from the conversation. Privatization assumes that cost quantifying solutions are more fundamental to government than any discussion of ethics or values. The move away from democratic accountability is particularly worrisome because in many of these fields, the ultimate motivator of private markets, the profit motive, is in direct conflict with the public administration. The basic values, concepts and institutions of liberal democracy — political participation, elections, equal distribution of individual liberties, checks on concentrated power — do not work towards economic competitiveness.

The ideology that the government is just one among many providers of goods and services is a seductive one in this age of markets. But the government isn’t simply just another agent in the market, and firms that are empowered to carry out the role of the state can be as abusive as the worst bureaucracy.

But we never hear about corporate power being the problem; we hear about government being the problem.

Funny thing: When Franklin Roosevelt was president, government did a fine job of getting America back on its feet.

We need new arguments for the government, with all its strengths and weaknesses, to be allowed to do its jobs knowing that it won’t always be perfect. The alternative is government by cronyism, delegated marketplace winners exploiting what works about markets with none of the normal checks we expect on a functioning democracy. There are no doubt weaknesses in the current functions of government, but for those who resist privatization, that is a call to political reform rather than one of abandoning the public arena altogether.

Here's the lesson for the day: Private means profit. Public means people.

I put my faith in people, not profit.

Lawmakers: League of Women Voters dangerous to democracy

Let's remember that although the Constitution was amended in 1920 to grant women the right to vote, South Carolina did not ratify that amendment until 1969.

Context is important, and we live in South Carolina, where an evolving elite aristocracy has ruled state matters -- and attempted mightily to prevent, avoid and delay federal intervention in those matters -- for more than 340 years.

Now it appears that our modern aristocrats can no longer tolerate allowing some people to vote, and they're moving aggressively to block that right.

The dust has barely settled in South Carolina since the Department of Justice refused to approve the state’s voter ID law, a discriminatory measure which would disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters, many of them African-American, elderly and young people. And yet, undeterred and brazenly determined, the state legislature is already taking another bite at the voter suppression apple.

This time, the legislature is rushing through a law that will severely restrict community-based voter registration drives.

House Bill 4549, modeled after a Florida law that forced the League of Women Voters and other civic organizations to abandon voter registration efforts in the state, would effectively shut down community-based voter registration drives in South Carolina, requiring any individual or organization to register with the state before assisting other South Carolinians in registering to vote, and subjecting those individuals or organizations to up to $1,000 in fines, even for honest mistakes like sending the forms to the wrong county or not putting enough postage on the envelopes.

The bill would discourage churches, teachers, colleges, and community centers from helping people to register to vote; it would discourage people like James Felder who, in 1963, while serving his country in the military, helped carry President John F. Kennedy’s body to Arlington National Cemetery, and who in 1970, became one of three black men elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives for the first time since reconstruction. Felder has since made his life’s work registering others to vote and with this new voter suppression bill in effect, he would likely have to give up that work.

The bill would also discourage teachers like Dawn Quarles who, since 2008, has helped her students register to vote as part of the government and politics classes she teaches in high school. As we’ve already seen in Florida, restrictions to voter registration will result in discouraging almost all voter registration drives throughout the state.

In 2008, South Carolina was an abysmal 42nd in the nation in voter turnout. Instead of wasting time and resources erecting additional barriers to voting, the state legislature should be encouraging greater participation in elections.

Broad political participation strengthens our democracy and ensures the preservation of all our other rights and freedoms. Voter registration groups play an important role in the process, making voter registration more accessible, especially for minority, student and low-income voters. The South Carolina legislature should abandon HB 4549 and focus instead on helping protect the right of all South Carolinians to vote.

Care to guess who's behind the state-based efforts to restrict voter registration?

A fellow named Paul Weyrich -- not coincidentally the co-founder of one gang called the American Legislative Exchange Council and another called the Heritage Foundation -- poured a lot of institutional effort and resources behind this "movement" before his death in 2008.

What's Weyrich's angle?

"I don’t want everybody to vote," Weyrich admitted while addressing a right-wing Christian audience in 1980. "[O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down," he added after denigrating those who seek "good government" through maximum, informed voter participation as people who suffer from the "goo goo syndrome."

This is shameful. As the South Carolina League of Women Voters aptly puts it on their website, "Voting is the most basic way that citizens participate in our political system, the foundation for the concept of representation, and a central tenet in the make-up of America's government."

How shameful that our state, for so long a bulwark of exclusion and discrimination, continues in the twenty-first century to push exclusionary tactics to maintain power among a small, wealthy and powerful elite.

Part 2: FreedomWorks peddles vouchers in Spartanburg

The second half of Dennis S's first-hand account of last Thursday's FreedomWorks dog-and-pony show in Hub City.

After loading up with enough school choice propaganda to do Pravda proud, I surveyed the room for a table with a close-up view of both the speakers and an escape route.

I spotted a partially filled table about 10 feet from the speaker’s podium and 5 feet from the door. I surmised the table hadn’t been completely filled because it was occupied by 3 little kids, ages in the 5-8 range. Who would want to sit with three little kids at a school choice meeting? Also seated at the table were mom and I would guess, grandma. I put down my propaganda haul and sat down. Two other chairs remained empty. The adults at the table were nice enough during our exchange of maybe 10 words. The youngsters were well behaved and very quiet.

At the podium, the local Tea Party head gave a brief welcoming speech before giving way to the inevitable radical anti-public school rhetoric. The first speaker was America’s most conservative senator, Jim DeMint. He teleconferenced the group from Washington via a TV monitor.

DeMint threw out about 2 minutes of predictable red meat and then fled as if Sarah Palin was waiting just off camera in her running shorts.

After one other irrelevant TV public education basher, the meeting was finally treated to a live human being – too live for my taste. He was an overweight, twenty-something Dick Armey protege in the employ of FreedomWorks. His name was David Spielman and he was a campaign coordinator for school choice. He bragged about standing with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as he fought the unions. Though young, Spielman was the perfect mouthpiece for the subject of the night, ripping ‘government’ schools. The right-wingers call public schools ‘government’ schools in adopting a meaningless advertising agency name that’s supposed to evoke a fearsome image of jack-booted ‘government’ administrators.

Spielman informed the crowd that his wife was a teacher in Maryland. His mother, father and had also taught. Teaching in Maryland, his wife most likely belongs to either the American Federation of Teachers or the Maryland State Education Association. A fact not shared from the podium.

Young David said he didn’t remember the last time our schools were kid-focused. Has this ‘expert’ even set foot inside a classroom? How about the most recent school day being the last time our schools were kid-focused. Let’s check out the Winter edition of NEA Today, a quarterly from one of those teachers unions he castigates. In the magazine, President, Dennis Van Roekel’s column is about the union’s Priority Schools Campaign dedicated to accelerating student (kids) learning. There’s an article on the price children pay in the budget-cutting orgy initiated by state legislative Tea Party types. There was a story on the questionable efficacy of No Child Left Behind and how being forced to teach to the test impacts ‘kids’. The NEA is attacking that problem. There were at least a dozen more articles and columns that were “kid-focused”. The overwhelming majority of this union magazine is dedicated to kids.

Spielman knows this, of course, but he’s got a future to think about and borderline operatives like his boss can eventually lead him to millions as a lobbyist. That’s where Armey made most of his money after leaving Congress. Later, Spielman lamented that the Democrats were in bed with the unions to the clueless cheers of people who want their kids in schools where teachers are less educated, get paid less and the boss is in it for the money. For a guy who claims all those ties with teachers, his ignorance of the profession is staggering. I confess to a huge bias for public schools. My dear wife is a Special Ed teacher of the emotionally disabled. She holds a Masters degree. She and her colleagues are 100% kid-focused. She works at least 10 hours in the school setting, often longer. She sits in front of her home computer another couple of hours and puts in the equivalent of an 8-hour-day over the weekend.

Spielman was followed by Chad Connelly, the South Carolina Republican Party Chair, who may just be the most annoying man on the planet. He talked a mile a minute for way too many minutes and felt constrained to tell us his first wife committed suicide (no comment).

He insisted his education enmity was not about the teachers who he described as scared to death of the system and the union working against them. In this state, the union can mail out literature, lobby and email to their heart’s content, run a website and bitch. Neither the NEA nor any other union has any collective bargaining rights. What teachers are ‘scared to death’ of is school policies being driven by a bunch of uninformed, pseudo- religious hypocrites like Spielman and Armey who couldn’t answer a single Masters level question about education if their lives depended on it.

After mercifully shutting down his one-man distortion speech, Connelly gave way to the featured speaker of the night, Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks.
...
Armey informed the local audience that his wife had once been a teacher, but quit. He claims her principal told her, “It’s always the good ones that leave.” I wonder if she was that same ‘good’ one who left Armey?

Armey claimed that for 200 years “we did education better than anybody; better because we did it ourselves.” In the period Armey is apparently referencing (beginning roughly with the signing of the Declaration of Independence), schooling was so diffuse throughout the states, there would have been no way to quantify a national performance model. Secondly, school attendance was almost the exclusive domain of the rich until the mid-1800’s. Jefferson would have made the move to public schools many decades earlier.

Armey kept talking; somebody whose life has been dedicated to enriching himself from the public teat (he once sued to keep his government health care) is now hustling the Tea Party crowd. As he launched into his latest extremist tirade, I got up and walked out. I hope it looked like I was walking out on the speech because I was. I wonder if Armey shared the facts that bills like HB 4576 only benefits those with incomes high enough to declare such credits and parents of public school students essentially pay the tab estimated at nearly $100 million Carolina dollars the first two years of this farce.

I apologize to my dedicated teacher wife for Armey and his band of opportunistic BS-peddlers. Armey and company should have been hooked up to polygraph machines.

Dennis S, thanks so much for attending this event in person and giving us a bird's-eye view. You stayed a lot longer than was healthy.

Dog-and-pony show pushes vouchers in Spartanburg

Pleased to share a first-person account of last week's voucher rally in Spartanburg, sponsored by the Koch-funded Freedomworks organization, an astro-turf outfit that pretends to be a grassroots concern.

After several consecutive years of watching their voucher legislation defeated voucher legislation in Columbia, our corporate overlords who wish to privatize schools and every other public institution chose to begin a new offensive in Spartanburg. That city and county is home to six House members who, as the Herald-Journal reminded us last week, voted against the voucher bill last year. This being an election year, convention wisdom suggests those six might be a little more open to the idea if a few dozen rabid voucherites gnaw on their public image a bit.

FreedomWorks, which estimates it will spend between $500,000 and $1 million this year in a statewide school choice campaign, will co-host a Thursday evening rally at Spartanburg’s Cleveland Park with the Spartanburg Tea Party and South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

FreedomWorks and its grass-roots supporters, of which the group claims 20,000 in the Palmetto State, are betting that its financial and organizational muscle will force legislators to do something they’ve failed to do in every session since 2004: Pass a bill implementing the system.

The top priority is turning the votes of six House Republicans from Spartanburg who voted against last year’s bill, which was killed by one vote, or backing challengers who will support the legislation.

“We were asked by our activists and by people on the ground to come in and help drive that grass-roots support so we could put pressure on those guys to actually pass something this time,” said David Spielman, campaigns coordinator for FreedomWorks.

That last bit is laughable -- "We were asked by our activities and by people on the ground to come in..." -- on its face.

Adopting a statewide voucher bill has been on the right wing's bucket list for a decade, and the aging funders of that agenda -- who live far, far from South Carolina's borders -- are getting desperate for a win. They smelled it last year, could taste victory in their gold fillings, but had their meal snatched from them by a single vote. So they -- not any activists and not by any people on the ground -- likely began planning this dog-and-pony show as soon as the legislature finished its business last summer.

Why is this a reasonable speculation?

The six House members, Derham Cole, Steve Parker, Doug Brannon, Rita Allison, Eddie Tallon and Mike Forrester, were dubbed the “Spartanburg Six” by tea party supporters after they voted to table last year’s bill that would have provided tax credits to families to send their kids to private schools.

The six have said their votes centered on a lack of support from constituents and cost concerns.

Ching-ching. It's all about the money, boys. The so-called Spartanburg Six looked at the financial impact statement of voucher legislation and saw the mile-long costs down the road. They voted the will of their constituents rather than the will of Deep Pockets From Off, including the funders of FreedomWorks -- which sounds vaguely fascist, doesn't it? -- and our own South Carolinians for Reprehensible Government.

An estimate by the S.C. Board of Economic Advisers, the state’s official economists, showed the state would save $2 million in the first year of the bill’s implementation because of students transferring out of public schools. But the proposal would cost the state in each subsequent year, leading to an annual cost of more than $133 million starting in 2023-24, when all of the tax credits associated with the legislation would be fully implemented.

Hard to defend putting your children and grandchildren in hock for $133 million in annual deficits. Everybody has a limit.

Voucherites -- and Deep Pockets from Off -- were incensed, but that's natural. You see, the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-righteous in America -- and the very worst among them, the ultra-wealthy-righteous of America -- have what we might call an inflated sense of entitlement. They want what they want, and they're used to getting it, by hook AND by crook, and usually through fear so they don't have to actually pay for it.

Representative democracy is the fly in the ointment for these ultra-wealthy-righteous people. Simple folk such as you and me have simple expectations, and among these is the expectation that we elect people to represent us in the state government. When this does happen, it infuriates the ultra-wealthy-righteous, and they're inclined to send their dragoons into our midst to tell us what we should do and say.

So they got incensed, and they commenced to jabbering at us: Jabberjabberjabberjabberjabberjabber, they said in Spartanburg last Thursday night. (This is truly what they sound like.)

As the Herald-Journal wrote, in part, "Supporters of the bill, including Spartanburg Tea Party organizer Karen Martin, say the potential savings" jabber jabberjabber jabberjabber jabber! and "FreedomWorks is pushing a new version of last year’s" jabber jabberjabber jabber "authored by House Ways and Means Chairman Brian White" jabberjabberjabber "cost the state more than $30 million" jabber jabber (give me your money now for my private school vouchers) jabber jabber.

Now listen to this. Chris Connelly leads the conservative party in South Carolina. He's new in the job, relatively, so he may not know that citizens have been bombarded with pro-voucher propaganda since 2002 when Mark Sanford ran for governor, and that lawmakers have been inundated with calls and letters from their people every year since then on this issue. So when Connelly makes a foolish statement like the one below, we must smile and shake our heads together.

Get ready for it:

FreedomWorks is using its money to pay for grass-roots training, voter education events and promotional materials in the run-up to the General Assembly’s vote on the new tax credits bill.

The group says it has distribution centers statewide armed with “tens of thousands” of door hangers, yard signs, district-targeted palm cards, T-shirts and bumper stickers. Spielman confirmed some of the materials highlight votes of the six Spartanburg House members.

He calls five of the members’s support of deductions instead of tax a credits a “cop out.”

“Tax credits are always a fiscally conservative thing to do,” he said.

Spielman is scheduled to speak Thursday night, along with FreedomWorks chairman and former U.S. House Speaker Dick Armey, Martin and state Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville is set to address attendees via video.

Connelly said the state party won’t recruit challengers to its incumbents, but the party believes competitive primaries are healthy for the party. He said school choice is a platform issue for the state party.

“I think the people that vote against it don’t really understand the issue, and all too often the school boards and the teachers unions are heavily influential,” Connelly said. “The party’s always going to be pushing people to support the platform.”

Did you see it? He said, "I think the people who vote against it don't really understand the issue."

This is 2012. For a decade, these same legislators have been hearing about this issue, year-in and year-out. If after ten years, you say they don't understand it, you're calling them stupid. You're saying they don't comprehend plain English and may not be able to calculate elementary math.

How about this: What if they're not stupid? What if they comprehended plain English all this time, and did calculate the elementary math, and concluded that stealing public revenue to pour into private schools through vouchers is a stupid idea?

Who's stupid then?

But Connelly’s ties to the push for tax credits run deep. He’s a former director of the nonprofit South Carolinians for Responsible Government, one of the sponsors of Thursday’s rally, and has continued to serve as an SCRG officer and a member of the group’s board since leaving the position after 2007. He made more than $90,000 as an SCRG director in 2006-07, according to the group’s tax records.

SCRG is one of the South Carolina groups closely tied to Howard Rich, a New York developer and activist who’s funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state since 2004 to push the legislation.

Well, as I mentioned at the top, I'm pleased to share a first-person account of the dog-and-pony show that rolled into Spartanburg last week.

Blogger Dennis S posted a great note at PoliticsUSA, and I'm happy to share it with you here.

A progressive mingling with Tea Partiers? Guilty! I gritted what teeth I have left and headed for a local TP rally in honor of National School Choice Week, mainly because the featured speaker was going to be the individual who gave the party its national voice, Dick Armey. The event was scheduled for the evening of Groundhog Day, February 2nd.

Groundhog day was a little odd since the dates for National School Choice Week were actually January 22-28. The National School Choice Week website was still up post-event and I noticed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) icon prominently displayed at the bottom of the page as a supporter. My guess is that ALEC’s support extended to major bucks.

The rally was held in a Chateau-like structure located in a public park. I felt like I should have arrived by ski-lift. Instead I wound my way around the park and backed my pickup into a space about a half-block away from the host building. The lot was already filling up 30 minutes before the official opening.

I had no sooner weaved my way to a stop when a scruffy, somewhat ill-kempt fellow approached my Dakota. He reminded me of those aggressive car salesmen that grab your door handle the minute you stop your engine. I rolled the window down as he greeting me and handed me a single sheet of paper with the heading ‘Preschools Are Using a Marxist’s Theories to Manufacture Collectivists’. I had no idea. The piece was written by one Chuck Roger with a snooty accent aigu over the ‘e’. Seems Chuck is convinced our kids are being ruined by a long-dead psychologist named Lev Vygotsky, 77 years removed from this earth.

The other subject matter on the page displayed a website that listed 24 things that government schools dare not teach. Examples 1, 2 and 3 were staring back at me. The first ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that all men were endowed with certain unalienable rights (I’ve compressed a bit). The second ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men and finally, schools DARE NOT TEACH the meaning of liberty.

I’d like to give you the address of the website so you can read the entirety of these first 3 of these forbidden fruits and the remaining 21, but I DARE NOT!

I quickly thanked this poor wretch and headed in a fast walk to the Chateau.

When I took one step inside the door I felt an immediate thump on my lapel. A lady had affixed a decal on my sports coat like the one with your name on it at gatherings where most of the attendees are strangers. I never bothered to write my name. Upon returning home, I discovered that for the night I had been a human billboard featuring the words ‘SCHOOL CHOICE is the RIGHT choice. So, for this one night, I was a decal-wearing school choicer.

The decal was far from the only school choice propaganda of the night. Tables lined the entire length of one wall, all stacked high with assorted literature, mostly glossy, colorful and expensive.

I quickly skipped over the dessert table, loaded with every high-fat cookie imaginable and its frosted first cousins. And these people want to repeal health care?

The first table piece I ran into was a cryptic single-page in black, white and orange that had Speak/Act in giant letters. The page referred repeatedly to the website of South Carolinians for Responsible Government. SCRG is most obsessed with Superintendent pay and further down the table, SCRG literature headlined Top Ten Overpaid Non-teaching “Educators” named names and showed pictures. Note to SCRG. If you’re competing with the private sector, you’re going to have to pay a fairly high wage to get good people. The average hospital CEO makes $450,000 as of last year. The top Superintendents listed don’t make half that, some far less.

I'll pause here to comment on the dissemination of rational thinking with this disclaimer: The opinions represented herein, rooted in rational thinking and fact data, are applauded by those who have been starved of such thinking for a long time.

Now, to continue:

The piece also described how far below the national average the district’s SAT scores were and how lousy GPA’s were and criticized shortfalls in graduation rates.

Let’s get something else straight. If a child comes from an impoverished background, teachers can have no more than a 15% impact on that youngster’s future. There are many other factors involved in the success or failure of these young people. That’s why many private schools cherry-pick the best students, giving an artificial picture of their SAT, GPA and graduation numbers. Given the odds, it’s extraordinary what public school teachers still manage to do for those unfortunate socio-economically challenged students.

Still further down, SCRG also offered a ten-page mini-tome breaking down the costs to the state and locals of every school district in South Carolina, plus a boatload of every educational expenditure extant. The distorted explanation of teacher job losses was painful to read. If there are fewer teachers, it’s because they leave of their own accord. Firings? Maybe a few. Ignored is the fact that over the past two years public schools have lost over $750 million in state funding. Lemme see – what page was that on? Thousands of teachers were laid off, with salary freezes in the offing for those who remained.

In August of 2011, The South Carolina Superintendent of Education Mick Zais and his fellow birdbrain, Governor Nikki Haley, refused to go after $144 million in federal money from the federal Education Jobs Fund. It was money for school districts impacted by the economy and forced to lay off teachers. No other state, red or blue, was that ignorant or insensitive to the lives of school employees. Zais said the money would result in unwanted ‘federal intrusion’.

But the piece de resistance of the table top displays was a glossy, 33-page, full-color booklet with pictures of every member of the state General Assembly and their contact information. At least 500 copies had to be printed given the crowd estimates of 350-400.

And the final item, rather nice T-shirts (you can guess the screenprints) weren’t cheap either.

I’ve got a call in to a printer friend of mine. I’ll share his estimates in part two of my school choice visit. You’ll also hear what Armey and his sycophants had to say about your horrible public (government) schools after I sat down with three little kids.

Ooooh, I hate a cliffhanger. But rest assured, I'll bring you Dennis's second part, too.

Stay tuned.

Bryant: Unemployment benefits "wasted" on teachers, others

America's best-known personal-finance guru, Suze Orman, made some bold statements to Piers Morgan on CNN last week, and they bear repeating. She said:

I think no private school should be out there. I think everything should be public. I think everything should be that way. But, we don't honor our teachers. We don't pay them enough. They are the first people that we cut. And so, what do people do? They start spending money to go to private schools. It's ludicrous. It's not the American way.

Wow.

An expert on personal finance and a best-selling author on economic issues says that American democracy and values are undermined because America doesn't honor its teachers, because our lawmakers don't appropriate funds sufficient to compensate educators justly, and because lawmakers first cut public education and education jobs when an economic downturn occurs.

And, therefore, the undermining of American public schools and educators leads to a lack of faith in that system, which leads parents to opt for private schools. Which, Orman emphasizes, is "ludicrous. It's not the American way."

Here in the Independent Republic of South Carolina, which doesn't consistently adhere to anything labeled the "American way," South Carolina's lawmakers have proven her point in spades, leading to teacher layoffs for the past three or four years running. In fact, without knowing this for sure, I'd bet that during the past decade, we've experienced a net decline in teacher employment more years than we've had net increase, thanks to laying off public school teachers and other school district employees.

This year, to add insult to injury, our lawmakers are looking for ways to harm those laid-off educators even more. You know, because they have nothing better to do.

Some call it a business-friendly way to safeguard the ability of the state’s unemployment system to pay benefits to jobless South Carolinians who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Others say the S.C. Legislature has declared war on the state’s unemployed workers.

Either way, big changes could be on the way governing who receives unemployment checks and what they must do to get them.

Several bills working their way through the State House would eliminate unemployment benefits to some workers who are fired from their jobs. Other bills would require those who get unemployment checks to pass drug tests and meet other guidelines.

Supporters say the bills would help businesses by reducing their taxes while also ensuring benefits go to only workers who have lost their jobs through not fault of their own.

The proposals include:

• A Senate bill, to be considered by a committee today, that would require any unemployed worker to pass a drug test before receiving an unemployment check. The committee also will consider other bills that would require the unemployed to volunteer in their community to get a jobless check, and deny benefits to part-time workers as well as workers fired for misconduct.

• A House bill, to be considered by a committee next week, would allow companies to inform the state when a prospective employee fails a drug test. That failure would trigger the loss of unemployment benefits.

• A House bill, which passed a committee last week, would penalize more harshly those who fraudulently receive jobless benefits.

Sure, this is necessary.

Because if I'm an unemployed teacher, laid off because of education budget cuts -- and because Mick Zais and Nikki Haley refused to accept federal dollars to keep educators employed -- then I'm likely laid up at home, drug-addicted and lazy, thinking of ways to defraud the state government of unemployment benefits.

Yeah.

“I keep thinking the victims of this economy are the people who have lost their jobs and are struggling,” said Sue Berkowitz, director of the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center, which advocates for low-income South Carolinians. “Now, they find themselves the target, as if they’ve chosen to be unemployed.

“It’s very disconcerting. We’re so worried about the employers that we forget about the people.”

About 200,000 South Carolinians are unemployed, according to the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce. The average laid-off worker gets $236 a week from the state’s unemployment trust fund, money paid in by businesses.

Two hundred thirty-six bucks a week is a king's ransom, y'all. After praying that the car runs another month without breaking down, an unemployed educator can probably stock up at Wal-Mart on store-brand frozen vegetables, hot dogs and rice, and whatever laundry detergent is cheapest this week, plus fill up the gas tank once, pay part of one utility bill and with the remainder, get high as a kite on somebody's surplus prescription medication.

According to some lawmakers, this is a travesty -- not that educators are unemployed, but that unemployed people get subsistence benefits so they can eat Wal-Mart brand foods.

For state Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, it boils down to the numbers.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates South Carolina paid $86 million in unearned unemployment checks last fiscal year to people who defrauded the system – 18 percent of all claims paid. The state also paid about $50 million in benefits to workers who were fired.

“That’s $136 million that was wasted. We’ve got to do a better job of safeguarding the system and helping our businesses,” said Bryant, who said he has heard from many frustrated business owners who say they have had to pay unemployment benefits to workers who were fired for sleeping on the job, using alcohol or using firearms.

“I have dozens of examples, and we need to fix it,” Bryant said, adding helping businesses is the best way to help workers. “If you lower taxes, they can hire more people and grow the economy.”

It also is not too much to ask those getting unemployment checks to submit to drug tests or volunteer in their community, said Bryant, who is co-sponsoring some of the bills. Last year, he led a successful effort to cut the amount of time that the jobless can collect state unemployment benefits to 20 weeks from 26 weeks. (Federal benefits extend payments over a longer period.)

“We’re paying them to stay home. There should be some activity required,” Bryant said. “It also gets the (prospective) employee out in the community, making contacts and helping our nonprofits.”

The foregoing facts suggest that Senator Bryan is a saint among men.

Businessmen, certainly.

In the context of Christian theology, however, not so much. In fact, the Good Book has a whole lot to say about helping people in need, and what destiny awaits those who don't.

I don't recall that it advocates taking away the one lifeline that is available to many who don't have jobs, incomes, prospects or hope.

Perhaps those who advocate punishing the unemployed, the poor and others are reading from another book:

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

While we breathe, we hope.

Congratulations to 100 inexpensive laborers in Laurens

Good news for up to 100 unemployed men and women in Laurens: It's the Year of the Dragon!*

Thanks to a poor economy, a very low (and, if you're lucky, non-existent) corporate tax rate, an abundance of cheap labor and the vocal support of a governor and legislature dedicated to selling out South Carolina's human resources, you're going to get some low-wage jobs in a year or two.

Don't count on great health care plans and retirement benefits, though. They depress corporate profit margins. Bad for business.

LAURENS — A Chinese company that makes plastic film often used to package food is building a new plant in Laurens County.

The state Commerce Department said Tuesday that Uniscite Inc. will invest $70 million in the new plant and hire up to 100 workers.

The company hopes to open the plant in the first few months of 2014, with the first workers hired about a year earlier.

Uniscite currently has offices in Greenville.

General Manager Fang Wang says his company chose Laurens County because of its excellent business climate and work force.

General manager of a Chinese corporate concern praises Laurens County for its "excellent business climate and work force."

English translation: Low corporate taxes; cheap, obedient workers and state laws that protect corporate interests make good business investment. One worker dies from lack of health care, hire another. So cheap!

One worker complains about poor working conditions, fire him and hire another. So easy!

South Carolina gives incentives to bring corporations to locate here, and expects little or no corporate income tax in return? So affordable!

Laurens County's working families and children get left behind with nothing to show for their work? So what!

Sorry to burst the champagne bubbles at Nikki Haley's Commerce Department and the Laurens County unemployment office, but has anyone asked any questions about who "Uniscite" is?

Here's a clue: Google "Uniscite Inc." and you'll get about 3,000 response options -- all of them referring to the opening of a new plastics plant in Laurens.

Try to find out where else Uniscite operates its plants and you'll come up empty. Look for who owns Uniscite, and there's no answer. How many people does Uniscite employ elsewhere in the world? Dry.

Did Uniscite even exist before it filed with South Carolina's Secretary of State's office on August 3, 2011 -- through, by the way, a Tallahassee, Florida-based records-filing agency called NRAI Corporate Services Inc.? Maybe not.

In fact, use the Secretary of State's own website to do a "corporation search" of Uniscite, and see if it doesn't bring you right back to this page.

So, is it possible that Uniscite is wholly owned and operated by the Chinese government?

If not, let's see the corporation's history, with particular data on employment and wage figures, and environmental impact. It is a plastics manufacturer, after all, so let's just make certain it has a spotless bill of chemical health.

But if so, does this mean that Nikki Haley's Department of Commerce has actively engaged in economic development with the leaders of a Communist nation?

Nikki Haley? Lover of American liberties and freedoms and ideals?

The same Nikki Haley, defender of the free market, who escorted presidential candidate Mitt Romney for two weeks across New Hampshire and another two weeks across South Carolina? That Nikki Haley?

Would it be possible to get some answers about this? And to assure South Carolinians that our governor isn't negotiating with a Communist nation to sell our labor cheaply in order to pump up some employment numbers, could we get those answers posted on the same state website that trumpeted the original Uniscite announcement?

(*What's the signficance of the Year of the Dragon for Laurens County workers? Nothing! Now get back to work or you will be replaced!)

FL lawmaker IDs her puppeteers; who pulls our strings?

This would be comical if it wasn't so important.

Remember: The difference between citizens and elected lawmakers is that lawmakers have the Constitutional authority to make laws that govern the rest of us, and to raise and spend funds (or not) to honor the state's commitments to its people.

Across the country, there are state lawmakers who choose not to do the people's bidding, but choose instead to do the bidding of a corporate-funded ideological interest group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. I've mentioned the crowd before.

Last week, in Florida, a young woman in the State House slipped up and revealed that she takes her orders from ALEC:

Progressives have long tried to expose the influence the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) wields in state house across the country, but one Florida lawmaker is making it too easy.

Funded almost entirely by large corporations, ALEC produces “model legislation” favorable to industry that state lawmakers can introduce as their own bills. Usually, the legislators tweak the language of the bills to make them state-specific or to obfuscate their origins. Usually, but apparently not always.

In November, Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin (R) introduced a resolution that would officially call on the federal government to reduce corporate taxes, but she apparently forgot to remove ALEC’s mission statement from the top of the bill, which she seems to have copied word-for-word from ALEC’s model bill.
...
As the government transparency group Common Cause reports, “Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph.” Apparently no one noticed until this week.

While it’s no secret by now that conservative lawmakers in state capitals everywhere have used ALEC’s legislation to tear down environmental and labor regulations, curb voting rights, and coordinate a business-friendly agenda nationwide, it’s rare to see it on display so clearly.

Her accidental revelation caught the attention of her constituents:

Citizens decry the involvement of shadowy special interests and lobbying groups in our politics, so it's quite surprising that Rep. Rachel Burgin, a Republican from Tampa, tried to pass the actual mission statement of such a group into law.

It's not exactly a secret that lawmakers often don't actually write the laws they introduce. Sometimes they rely on aides, but sometimes they just pretty much copy and paste language pre-written for them by outside groups. Most, however, aren't as lazy about it as Burgin.

Burgin introduced a bill written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (more on what that is later), but she made one mistake. She forgot to delete a portion that included the groups mission statement. Yes, she tried to introduce the following language into the Florida statutes:

"WHEREAS, it is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council to advance Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty..."

Burgin realized her mistake, pulled the bill, and reintroduced it under a different number 24 hours later, but not before Common Blog found the mistake.

So, yes, Burgin had introduced a bill that was written word-for-word by ALEC, but what exactly is ALEC? It describes itself as "a nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers," and boasts that about a third of state legislators across the country are members. However, state lawmakers aren't the only members. The group boasts several corporate members.

"Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights," claims the site ALEC Exposed. "These so-called 'model bills' reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations."

How much influence exactly the corporate members have over the bills that are crafted, and the group claims that corporate members get no vote on which model bills the group adapts.

Regardless, Burgin's dumb mistake inadvertently gave Floridians a clearer peak into how our legislative sausage is made.

However, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Burgin isn't writing her own legislation. She doesn't have much of a proper education in the law. The 29-year-old majored in biblical studies at the Moody Bible Institute.

And it has drawn attention to the lawmaker's curious background, and the route she took to her seat in the legislature.

Politicians like Rachel Burgin are the exact reason Americans no longer have faith in the institutions of government. After working as a legislative aide, Burgin made enough corporate friends to get herself elected to the Florida State House in 2008. At 25, Burgin was elected to the statehouse two years prior to completing college. Her voting record shows a propensity for the conservative extreme.

Do we have anyone in South Carolina who fits this description?

Do we have any South Carolinians in our legislature carrying ALEC's water, and doing its bidding?

And what exactly is ALEC's interest in our states, and why should that matter to us?

With some justification, you might ask why this really matters: even if this bill passed it wouldn’t force Congress to act. However, I think it matters because the states play a very significant role in setting the national agenda. Corporations know this, which is why they frequently use ALEC to secretly introduce their model bills, creating the impression of widespread popular uproar in the state houses. In recent years they have used this mechanism for both attacks on the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases (ALEC bill introduced in 22 states) and in pushing back against the Affordable Care Act (ALEC bill introduced in 44 states).

It also matters because the question of whether corporations should pay more or less in tax is an issue that gets to the heart of politics in America. Common Cause board chair Robert Reich writes about this tension between corporate influence and America’s economic trajectory in an op-ed published in today’s Chicago Tribune.

Rep. Burgin’s (revised) bill to reduce corporate taxes has already been voted out of the Federal Affairs Subcommittee, and is due to have a hearing in the State Affairs Committee soon. Only one external voice was heard at the subcommittee hearing, a lobbyist from the Associated Industries of Florida (AIF), a lobby group who themselves have links to ALEC. AIF is now run by notorious ex-Congressman and Florida Speaker Tom Feeney, who not only was caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, but was once named one of the “20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” by the organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

It matters who writes our laws and it matters who stands to benefit from them. When these are the very same entity, then we as citizens should have the right to know this.

So, who has ALEC assigned to South Carolina?

Alabama's McGill doubles down, questions critics' faith

Last week, I brought to your attention the lunatic remarks of one Shadrack McGill, a first-term legislator in Alabama who defended pay increases for legislators like himself but opposed pay increases for public school teachers.

He said paying lawmakers more protected them from lobbyists' temptations. He said paying teachers more would violate Biblical principles, but he didn't cite any specific Scripture.

(I assure you, the photograph at the right is an accurate portrayal of young McGill; nothing has been done to cause him to look pointy and narrow, the photograph appears precisely as it was found at the website of WAAY-TV.)

Well, it appears that what odd lawmakers in Alabama say sometimes makes it to the attention of the national media. McGill's story did and, just as stars once fell on Alabama, a rain of hellfire has fallen on McGill's tiny little corner of the state.

Here's the news from the coincidentally-named Fort Payne:

Ft. Payne, AL - Alabama State Senator Shadrack McGill is in the national spotlight this week after making some controversial comments about teachers at a function in Ft. Payne last week.

According to the Ft. Payne Times-Journal, the first term Republican from Jackson County was asked a question about a recent salary hike for lawmakers, and how it might relate to increasing teacher salaries. According to the Times-Journal, McGill argued that paying lawmakers more made the less likely to accept bribes, but then turned around and said increasing teacher salaries would attract undesirable candidates to the profession. "If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach ... and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em." McGill is quoted as saying by the paper.

Mind you, McGill was speaking to a friendly crowd; this was no heated campaign debate. He was under no pressure to think quickly. He had plenty of time to consider a response before speaking.

And it appears that McGill is known for this sort of behavior.

In addition, McGill has been taking heat for comments he made in a WAAY 31 FirstNews exclusive story earlier this week about the Jackson County "Bible Man". In an interview with WAAY 31's Ellis Eskew, Senator McGill said "I don't believe you keep God out of state. Church represents the body of Christ, Christ being the head of that body. No, I don't believe in that separation,"

McGill was raked over the coals by commenters here on waaytv.com, and on the nation-wide political sites as well. On Thursday, McGill sat down with WAAY 31 to clarify his remarks, and stand by them as well.

"Some things got taken out of context. I'm not hearing any negative feedback out of those who were there." McGill told us Thursday afternoon.

McGill says that his remarks at the prayer breakfast made sense to those in attendance, but came out wrong when printed in the paper. "The point that I was trying to make in the speech is simply that .. Things ought to be in balance. I believe God made everything to be in balance. He weighed the Earth and the valley and the mountains and the hills on a scale to keep them in balance because he knew he was going to be spinning it real fast, so that's the jist of it."

Now, I have studied Genesis and the subsequent works of the testaments -- o, how I've studied them -- and I'm utterly convinced that McGill's edition bears no resemblance to any I've seen. He clearly refers to Isaiah's concept of Jehovah measuring creation. But who in the name of holiness has read that the Almighty "knew he was going to be spinning it real fast"?

'Tis McGill who is spinning it real fast, I conclude.

Back to the point -- which is, for the casual reader, that individuals so tenuously bonded to reality ought not wield even a fraction of Constitutional power over the affairs of state:

Still, the comments caught some off-guard. Many commenters online asked if McGill thought he deserved more money, or if there was some irony to saying that paying teachers more will cause problems, but paying legisators more won't. McGill doesn't see it that way.

"Legislators pay ought to be in balance. They don't need to make too much, they don't need to make too little, both lead to corruption. Likewise, I think with teachers salaries, things need to be balanced on their education, based on the performance, class size, etc.. Work load. But by no means was I insinuating that a teacher should make less."

McGill didn't "insinuate" that teachers should earn less, he said so plainly and directly. To insinuate means to suggest obliquely without saying a thing in a straightforward fashion.

Nor did he insinuate that Alabama's public employees and retirees shouldn't be concerned with their retirement benefits. He said plainly that he expects the world to end before such benefits would be paid out to those who have earned them:

McGill was asked repeatedly about changes to the Retirement System of Alabama. Nearly two and a half hours into the breakfast a man asked McGill another retirement question. McGill replied, "Well, you know what? I think we're going to get raptured out of here before it comes that time for you anyway."

McGill said what he meant to say, which reflects what he believes.

McGill says he's learned from his first major brush with controversy, and he now has a better understanding of why politicians say the things the say. "I have learned from the situation, and I understand why politicians become politicans and how they answer questions. It's hard to be human and answer questions straightforward and truthful with someone because they have a tendency to want to turn that into a dagger and stab you with it. Hence, politicans sidestepping direct questions." McGill said with a smile.

Thus, a young man with political ambition learns to hide his true thinking from the public and to "spin" in order to keep a grip on the reins of power -- AND to discount the rational thinking of others, in one fell swoop:

"I'd say I've had more positive feedback than I've had negative, but it's amazing that those would claim to be Christians would give me negative feedback in regards to that, so but never the less, it's where I stand."

So Christians who recognize the fatuousness of his commentary are not quite fully Christian?

Bless his heart.

Y'all make sure one another is registered to vote over there, now, and has a way to the polls this year. We'll be praying for you.

Richland 2 social studies teacher wins national award

It's good to see a South Carolina public school teacher honored for doing great work.

It could be a daily occurrence, given that South Carolina public school teachers work miracles every school day. But South Carolina doesn't honor its miracle-working public school teachers; it browbeats them, adds greater burdens to their backs and begrudges them every dime appropriated for their substandard salaries, shrinking health insurance benefits and meager retirement benefits.

Yes, God bless the public school teachers who live and work in right-to-work-for-less states like ours.

And congratulations to social studies teacher Jason Yaman, whose work drew the attention of an organization beyond our borders.

“What I love about history is telling the stories and making the connections as to how this caused that,” said Yaman, who has been with Richland 2 since 2002.

But that passion for history wasn’t always something shared by his students, who would often come to class with a negative view of the subject.

“That was a real area of growth for me,” he said. “I enjoyed social studies so I thought everyone did. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

After attending various education conferences, which included information on how the brain processes information, Yaman began thinking about the way we learn.

“There is brain research out there that supports that we think visually,” he said.

For the benefit of lawmakers, let me explain. After graduating high school and earning baccalaureate, and often advanced, degrees in college, and qualifying for certification as a public school educator under the laws of South Carolina and the policies of its Department of Education, these public school teachers often attend conferences, seminars, workshops and trainings that are designed to offer "professional development."

"Professional development" represents the philosophy that human beings are life-long learners, and that we have an infinite capacity to learn, grow and improve in our professions over the course of a career. So long as a good educator remains active, that good educator wants to know what more is being discovered about the many different aspects of teaching and learning.

Physicians and attorneys, and a great many other professionals, understand the same thing: You cannot rest on the belief that you know all there is to know about your field of work, or you'll stagnate and lose your effectiveness. Hence, physicians and attorneys attend their own professional development conferences and events.

This is why education professionals ought to be supported in attending as many of these occasions as possible.

Let's be clear: "Professional development" events are not the same as vacations or junkets, such as when corporate entities plan golfing getaways for lawmakers in the Caribbean, where they can "consult" on major issues of the day over the fourth hole. And they're not the same as when lawmakers attend conferences of the American Legislative Exchange Council, to network with like-minded conspirators and receive this year's sheaf of viral legislation.

Instead, "professional development" helps education professions get better at doing what they do, and become more effective in the classroom. For example, the award-winning social studies teacher, Mr. Yaman, learned about developments in brain research, and his new awareness led him to devise new teaching strategies that reflect the latest research.

In a nutshell, Yaman’s approach takes the state-adopted history textbook and guides students through it using pictures. He says he wants to get away from the idea that history is just memorizing dates and facts and “cramming before tests.”

“I tell them you need to have the timeframe of history,” Yaman added, “not the timeline.”

Tuesday, students were asked to draw images of what the Japanese thought of an American battleship when it was first spotted off the coast of that island nation in the late 1700s.

Students drew dragons and erupting volcanoes, as accounted in a letter by a Japanese fisherman that Yaman read out loud in class.

Over the years, Yaman said as he has developed and adjusted his style, he has seen a difference in the way his students respond.

“I think they go into the test with better recall,” he said.

Do you see this? As a result of professional development, a teacher devised new teaching strategies, and these strategies are yielding greater results in student achievement. Investment made, dividend collected.

That's how education works.

It must be working.

In January, Yaman was presented with the Beveridge Family Teaching Award at the American Historical Association’s national conference in Chicago, an award he shares with another teacher from Ohio. Established in 1995, the award is given to recognize excellence and innovation in teaching history.

Blythewood Middle School Principal Brenda Hafner said it’s an approach that’s “infectious.”

“These are the things we look for in all of our teachers but particularly how do you ignite that passion for learning,” she said. “It’s how do you encourage students to dig deeper, or delve further, and Jason is able to do that. You can’t help but feel it when you’re in the room.”

Look at that. Great teaching and learning is "infectious." Isn't that what we want in all of South Carolina's classrooms?

Isn't it?

Dusten Asplin who has sketched a fairly decent dragon on his computer screen, said he enjoys drawing in “Mr. Yaman’s class.”

The pictures, the 12-year-old said, have helped him remember his history lessons.

“It helps me to learn,” he says.

Of course it does.

Thanks, Mr. Yaman.

Alabama Sen. Shadrack McGill: Bible justifies poor teacher pay

Thank God for Alabama Senator Shadrack McGill, who diverts attention from the foolishness of South Carolina's own legislators, if only for a moment.

McGill -- hopefully no relation to the McGill families of our own state -- illustrates the wisdom that elections have consequences. When we elect people who have no business holding Constitutional authority in their hands, this is what we get.

State Sen. Shadrack McGill defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators.
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McGill, R-Woodville, said a 62 percent pay raise in 2007 - passed first by a controversial voice vote and later in an override of a veto by then-Gov. Bob Riley - better rewards lawmakers and makes them less susceptible to being swayed by lobbyists.

To be clear, this is a real state legislator in Alabama who defended a pay raise to Alabama's state legislators, but who has now said that paying teachers a higher salary violates Biblical principles.

Come, and listen closely to this man. What he has said in Alabama is sure to be said in South Carolina, probably pretty soon.

Lawmakers entered the 2007 legislative session making $30,710 a year, a rate that had not been changed in 16 years. The raise increased it to $49,500 annually.

"That played into the corruption, guys, big time," he said. "You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren't worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting," McGill said, adding that lawmakers have to pay for their expenses out of pocket.

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.

"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.

Notice that he doesn't say that raising legislative salaries will attract people who aren't "called" to serve in elective office. He reserves this imaginary violation of Biblical principle for teachers, and teachers alone.

And, if anyone is familiar with Scripture that describes this principle, please cite it for me below.

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?

How about this: To "go in" and wield Constitutional authority to raise necessary revenues to fully fund a state's essential obligations and institutions requires intelligence, integrity, discernment and wisdom -- some of the same qualities we hope to find in our education professionals. People who don't have these basic qualities ought not seek to teach OR to serve in public office.

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

Perhaps it's likely that some Alabama lawmakers might perform their duties with integrity and honesty, regardless of the degrading influence of evil lobbyists, without a substantially higher salary, simply because they are people of principle. Since Alabama's lawmakers found it necessary to raise their own salaries -- in an attempt to ward off those bad influences -- maybe they didn't feel strong enough about their principles to perform to standard.

"If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."

Quite right, just as the promise of power attracts people into public service who aren't equipped and qualified, and who don't need to be serving in public office and holding Constitutional authority.

It IS a balance: There are bright lawmakers, and there are dim lawmakers. Sometimes the bright ones hold a legislative majority, and sometimes the dim ones do. Here's hoping the pendulum swings quickly, before real and lasting damage can be done.

Romney not concerned with "very poor," but educators are.

Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, fresh from a decisive win in the Florida presidential primary, has announced that he's "not concerned about the very poor."

...Romney emphasized, "You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus."

Thank goodness that public school educators and school district employees are focused on the very poor; many of the children enrolled in South Carolina's public schools fall well within that category.

In context, Romney attempted to assert that America provides an "ample safety net" for people who are very poor, so his focus is on America's middle class. Except that there are two flaws in his assertion. One is that what he considers an ample safety net is pretty pathetic -- if you're homeless due to home foreclosures, and don't know where your meals and health care are coming from, the poorly-funded services available through state and federal agencies, and the paltry aid offered by churches and civic groups, don't really add up to first-class American citizenship.

The second is that the policies that Romney has articulated don't really help the incredible shrinking middle class, either.

He brought up the subject of the poor in a CNN interview marking his big win in Florida's GOP primary Tuesday night, a major step toward becoming the party's challenger to President Barack Obama in the fall. A multi-millionaire former venture capitalist, Romney has been criticized by Democrats and his Republican rivals alike for earlier remarks seen as insensitive, such as saying "I like being able to fire people" and declaring that he knew what it was like to worry about being "pink-slipped" out of a job.

"I'm not concerned about the very poor." he said Wednesday. "We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it.

Mitt Romney, fixer. He'll fix the safety net for the very poor, he says. "Fix" has two definitions: One means to repair something that needs repair, the other means to freeze a thing in place, as in "price-fixing." Which do you think he means?

Asked whether his comment about the poor might come across as odd to some, Romney reiterated.

"We will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor and there's no question, it's not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor," Romney said, adding that he's more worried about the unemployed, people living on Social Security and those struggling to send their kids to college.

"We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor," Romney said.

Indeed, far from the days of workhouses for the poor, and debtors' prisons, and Skid Row.

We, in the land of plenty, have food stamps and Medicaid for the very poor, which approximates a kingly living, to be sure. And the children of the very poor, you can safely assume, are enrolled in public schools, where public school educators and school district employees see them, care for them and TEACH them every day.

Poor Mitt Romney. He deserves our sympathy, truly. Aside from the daily trials and tribulations of a presidential campaign, he has another steep hill to climb: Understanding and identifying with those who weren't born into privilege, who have had to raise children and balance a household budget on hourly wages, who have had to make thousands of compromises of principle and pride over their careers to keep their jobs and their livelihoods. We have to remember, reaching out to the mass of Americans, and asking for their votes, is a gargantuan task.

He is, after all, used to being able to buy what he wants.

Just how rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you're in Romney territory. He would be among the richest presidents in American history if elected – probably in the top four.

He couldn't top George Washington who, with nearly 60,000 acres and more than 300 slaves, is considered the big daddy of presidential wealth.
...
But it's safe to say the Roosevelts had nothing on Romney, and the Bushes are nowhere close.

The former Massachusetts governor has disclosed only the broad outlines of his wealth, putting it somewhere from $190 million to $250 million. That easily could make him 50 times richer than Obama, who falls in the still-impressive-to-most-of-us range of $2.2 million to $7.5 million.

"I think it's almost hard to conceptualize what $250 million means," said Shamus Khan, a Columbia University sociologist who studies the wealthy. "People say Romney made $50,000 a day while not working last year. What do you do with all that money? I can't even imagine spending it. Well, maybe ..."

Of course, an unbelievable boatload of bucks is just one way to think of Romney's net worth, and the 44 U.S. presidents make up a pretty small pond for him to swim in.
...
So here's a look where Romney's riches rank – among the most flush Americans, the White House contenders, and the rest of us:

-Within the 1 percent:
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A household needs to bring in roughly $400,000 per year to make the cut. Romney and his wife, Ann, have been making 50 times that – more than $20 million a year. In 2009, only 8,274 federal tax filers had income above $10 million. Romney is solidly within that elite 0.006 percent of all U.S. taxpayers.
...
-As a potential president:

Romney clearly stands out here. America's super rich generally don't jockey to live in the White House. A few have toyed with the idea, most notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom Forbes ranks as the 12th richest American, worth $19.5 billion. A lesser billionaire, Ross Perot, bankrolled his own third-party campaigns in 1992 and 1996.

Many presidents weren't particularly well-off, especially 19th century leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant. Nor was the 33rd president, Harry Truman.

"These things ebb and flow," said sociologist Khan. "It's not the case that all presidents were always rich."

-How does Romney stand next to a regular Joe? He's roughly 1,800 times richer.

The typical U.S. household was worth $120,300 in 2007, according to the Census Bureau's most recent data, although that number is sure to have dropped since the recession. A typical family's income is $50,000.

Calculations from 24/7 Wall St. of the peak lifetime wealth (or peak so far) of Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama add up to a total $128 million – while Romney reports assets of up to $250 million.

If you consider only those presidents' assets while in office, without millions earned later from speeches and books, their combined total would be substantially lower, and Romney's riches would leave the pack even further behind.

Poor Mitt Romney.

No wonder he isn't focused on the very poor. He can't imagine that they exist.