Shrimp and Grits

Living where I do in South Carolina - between the suburbs and the sticks - I don’t get many political canvassers. The ones that do show up at my door are almost always from the more rabid side of the Republican party. Since I’m usually not home when they come by, I just get a packet of scary literature left at my door.

A little while ago, I had a visit from a canvasser that surprised me. He was representing a Democratic candidate. For president, even. This in spite of the fact that South Carolina going Democratic in 2008 is about as likely as a collision with a giant Earth-obliterating asteroid. Maybe I exaggerate, but I remember how … depressing the Democratic booth at the State Fair was during the last presidential election cycle.

So, what Democrat is getting the word out to the “sticks” here in South Carolina?

Obama!

I like Obama. He realizes that the Iraq war was a bad idea, and he realizes that we’ve got a serious problem with our heathcare delivery system here in the USA. I don’t think he goes far enough to address our healthcare problems (his proposal isn’t a single-payer system and doesn’t get rid of bloodsucking for-profit insurance companies), but it’s a start. And a start is all we’re likely to be able to get in the short term.

About the only thing that bothers me about Obama is, well, “faith, faith, faith“! I realize that here in the Deep South, politicians have to pander to the pious, but … sheesh! Look at the Obama events in the link above. How about a “environment forum” or a “healthcare forum” instead of an endless stream of “faith forum”s?

Unlike some voters, I’m not really interested in what god Obama worships - as long as he understands the concept of separation of church and state. I do care about the policies he plans to put into action if elected. More works, less faith, please!

Here’s a hypothetical situation.

Let’s say you’re a Republican-controlled Congress. You start a school voucher program in the capital of the United States. You decide to funnel federal tax dollars into private schools. Since you believe in the magical power of the free market, you don’t bother to worry much about what actually happens to the money. You simply take the word of people who claim to be running private schools that they’re doing what they are supposed to be doing - providing quality education to kids in acceptable facilities.

What could possibly go wrong?

Steve Benen fills us in:

Republican lawmakers crafted a policy whereby federal funds would flow to private schools with no checks to certify whether all of the participating schools had the required operating permits. The results put kids at risk.

What’s he talking about? The Washington Post reports that

A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor’s degrees, according to a government report.

So, we’re spending tax dollars to send kids to schools that aren’t even hiring minimally-knowledgeable teachers? How’s that possible?  Part of the problem is that nobody bothered to check to see that the free money was even being sent to, well, actual schools.

In a random sample of 18 schools reviewed by the GAO, two lacked occupancy permits, and four lacked permits needed for buildings used for educational purposes. At least seven of the 18 schools were certified as child development centers but not as private schools. In one case, a school was operating in a space designed for a retail store, the report says.

“Child development centers”. In other words, day-care providers. Not schools. While I don’t think vouchers are a good idea, would it kill voucher proponents to recognize the need for some oversight on where taxpayer money actually goes? Ensuring the money actually goes to schools might be a good first step on the long road to accountability.

Kellie sent me a link today to a news story describing a new study comparing public and private schools.

Students at independent private schools and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public high schools when income and other family characteristics were taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

That’s probably not what the South Carolina voucher lobby wants to hear, but anyone with any education experience at all knows that there are simply lots of factors that go into student success.  Trashing schools because they’re “public” (and have a different mix of students than the top-tier private schools) isn’t useful.

Oddly enough, there actually was one kind of private school that outperformed others:

[...] the only kind of private schools that had a positive impact on student achievement were Catholic schools run by holy orders such as the Jesuits. Such schools have more autonomy from the church than most Catholic schools, which are typically run by a diocese and are overseen by a superintendent in the local bishop’s office.

Score one for the Jesuits?

Rant up ahead. You were warned.

I regularly read the Internet, which means that I’m constantly bombarded by stupidity. So, sometimes it’s hard to determine what the silliest or stupidest thing I’ve come across actually is. But sometimes, something jumps out as so … dumb … that it just begs for comments.

Remember when the Iranian president came to speak at Columbia University - where he didn’t exactly receive a warm reception? In fact, he was introduced as “a petty and cruel dictator” and “astonishingly uneducated”. He then proceeded to make himself look quite foolish with his ideas about the Holocaust and homosexuals. It’s very doubtful that he made any friends among the faculty or students of Columbia University that day.

Despite this, the very fact that Iran’s president was invited to a university to be heard at all has made one second-tier Republican presidential candidate - Duncan Hunter, a representative from California - wet himself all over the Congress. He’s introduced HR 3675 - the “Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act”. See for yourself:

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Here’s something South Carolina’s legislature recently passed: S484.

AN ACT TO AMEND SECTION 59-113-50, CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, RELATING TO THE DEFINITION OF INDEPENDENT INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING FOR PURPOSES OF PROVIDING TUITION GRANTS, SO AS TO INCLUDE IN THE DEFINITION AN INDEPENDENT BACHELOR’S LEVEL INSTITUTION CHARTERED BEFORE 1962 WHOSE MAJOR CAMPUS AND HEADQUARTERS ARE LOCATED WITHIN SOUTH CAROLINA.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

Definition revised

SECTION 1. Section 59-113-50 of the 1976 Code is amended to read:

“Section 59-113-50. For the purposes of this chapter, an independent institution of higher learning means an:

(1) independent eleemosynary junior or senior college in South Carolina whose major campus and headquarters are located within South Carolina and which is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools; or

(2) independent bachelor’s level institution chartered before 1962 whose major campus and headquarters are located within South Carolina.”

Nothing much to see here, right? But this legislation was sponsored by Mike Fair, who is not known to be much of a friend to quality education. With that in mind, what does this legislation actually do? It …

approved $2.5 million to help low-income students attend Bob Jones University, a private school in Greenville.

… according to the Charleston Post and Courier. (It does this by adding the unaccredited-by-any-reputable-accreditation-board Bob Jones to the list of private schools eligible to receive grant money for students with financial need. Bob Jones is the only new school to qualify under this legislation!)

Rev. BigDumbChimp has more details on why you should be irritated at this legislation, especially if you prefer your tax dollars to be kept away from anti-science nutjobs.

Longtime readers of this little blog are probably aware that I don’t really have a lot of respect for South Carolina’s current governor - given what he’s tried to do to public education in this state. I felt that he won the last election “by default” - simply because it seems impossible to elect anyone with a (D) behind their name to a statewide office.****

Sanford might have been helped by the Democratic choice of candidate. They chose longtime state senator Tommy Moore to oppose Sanford in the last election. I never thought Moore was a particularly exciting or memorable candidate, but I think that I might have something to remember him by now. He’s resigning from the state legislature to take a new job. Here’s a statement from Moore, as reported by The State [Link may be busted soon - this seems to happen a lot with links to The State]:

“At this point in my career, I saw an exciting opportunity to take on a new challenge that builds on my long history of supporting and protecting consumers,”[emphasis mine]

At this point, you might be thinking “So what? People take new jobs all the time!”

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On the subject of Republican Ted Pitts’ attempt to get rid of South Carolina’s antiquated “blue laws”, Eric (in the comments on my earlier post) had this to say

just add it to the list of sanford vetoes … and general assembly overides.

Have I got a surprise for you! Sanford vetoed the measure, but the legislature upheld the veto. So, we’re stuck with the blue laws.

Presumably, this veto and the support of it allows both the governor and members of the legislature to pick up some cheap fundie support at the expense of only the smaller counties in the state - since the richest counties can already ignore the blue laws. FromThe State:

“I don’t think it had to do with religion, but my mom raised me to go to church on Sunday,” said Rep. Nathan Ballentine, R-Richland. He said he voted against the Pitt’s proviso because, “There’s certain things we don’t need to be messing with.”

That’s an interesting statement from a legislator from a county whose stores can ignore the blue laws thanks to the accommodations tax exception. But I’m inclined to agree with what Bellentine is saying here. His vote probably had very little to do with his religion. It likely had more to do with his benefactors not wanting competition in neighboring counties opening up on Sunday morning!

A while ago, I posted about what a few of 2008’s Presidential hopefuls were planning to do about the sorry state of health care here in America. Democratic candidates were tight-lipped on what they planned to do about health care, but Republican candidates weren’t even acknowledging that there was a problem.

My question is … why isn’t the state of the health care system in America of more importance to these Republican candidates? Is it some ideological blindness - something akin to “people who don’t have health care don’t work hard enough to get it”? Do they simply not recognize that our health care system is as vital to our prosperity as any other piece of infrastructure? Do they (the wealthy ones, at least) think that health care is simply not their problem, since they can go see a doctor?

We’ve trained ourselves to avoid medical care. Even those of us with an insurance plan know that getting sick can mean huge bills or bankruptcy. For people with low incomes, even simple things like a round of antibiotics to treat a bronchial infection are often out of reach. Simply going to a doctor’s office for a prescription can cost a hundred dollars - and that’s before actually filling the prescription. The prescription could tack on another hundred to the bill, unless the medication’s available as a generic. So, people try to stick it out when they get sick and avoid treatment.

Saving money by avoiding medical treatment is “just what the doctor ordered” - if you happen to be a communicable disease.

Let’s say that you’re one of many middle-class families where both parents work to make ends meet. If that’s the case, you might have to make use of some sort of day care facility for your children. Day care facilities are not known for providing lucrative benefits packages (i.e. health insurance) for their workers. Chances are, the people you pay to care for your child while you’re at work don’t have access to adequate health care. When they get sick, they will be sick longer than if they would have had proper care. They’ll handle your child, too - unless they happen to get so sick that they’re completely unable to come in to work. That means your child is much more likely to get sick.

If you talk to these day care workers, they’ll tell you that most doctors won’t even see them. The ones that will see them demand a large chunk of money up front (which they can’t pay). They’ll also tell you that the hospital emergency rooms will often turn them away if they don’t seem to really be an “emergency” case.

So where’s the moral outrage, here? Or - at least - the enlightened self interest?

The State had an article today about a proposal to exempt all counties from South Carolina’s ridiculous “blue laws”.

The House and Senate this week voted to exempt each of the state’s counties from the century-old law. Under the blue laws, apparel sales, for instance, cannot begin until 1:30 p.m. on Sundays.

For those of you who don’t live in South Carolina, we have laws that state that certain stores can’t be opened until an couple of hours after church services end on Sunday. Some stores open, but they’re restricted to what items they can sell until after church is over. The local Wal-Mart, for instance, opens at a normal time on Sunday, but ropes off the vast majority of the store - which contains the items you’re not allowed to buy until Sunday afternoon.

Some counties - the ones who collect enough taxes from tourism - are exempt from the blue laws.

Six counties now earn enough motel tax revenue to skip the blue law restrictions — Horry [the Myrtle Beach area], Charleston, Georgetown, Beaufort, Greenville and Richland.

The tourism exemption is comical. It’s as if South Carolina is trying to hide its bass-ackwardsness from the rest of the country.

the bad news about this new proposal to exempt all counties from the blue laws? It’s only for one year, because nobody in the Legislature appears to have the guts to get rid of these idiotic laws permanently. Heck, some of them don’t even want to scrap them for a year:

“My personal belief is I think we should respect Christianity more and during the hours when the church is open, let’s keep the shops closed,” said Rep. Bob Leach, R-Greer. “I didn’t know it was in there.”

Are the churches really frightened that people, if given the choice to attend church or go buy a new Wii game from the local Gamestop, will stop going to church? No, don’t answer that.

I’ve not had much time for local news the past few days, but I notice this morning that Steve Spurrier (head football coach at the University of South Carolina - for those of you who don’t follow South Carolina’s dominant religion) has blasted the flying of the Confederate flag on State House ground.

Spurrier feels that

“No one had ever asked me about my opinion on the flag, but if they had I would have told them it needs to come down. I don’t know anybody that disagrees with me, but obviously there are a lot of South Carolinians that do.”

[...]

The flag issue, according to Spurrier, is an obstacle to the state’s improving its image.

Sounds pretty sensible to this Tiger fan. If you want to convince the rest of the country that South Carolina isn’t a state full of ignorant, bigoted rednecks, a good place to start might be that flag and the racism it has come to symbolize.

I actually learned about Spurrier’s remarks from taking a glance as the letters to the editor page of The State. One letter caught my eye. It said:

Coach Steve Spurrier’s claims that removing the Confederate memorial flag would “make us a more progressive, better state.” This is akin to a coach saying that if the team would change its uniform colors or mascot, the team would score more touchdowns.

[...]

Removing a flag that commemorates history to solve the state’s problems makes as much sense as rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic to save the ship.

In a sense, this letter writer has a point. Removing the flag would do little to ease the burdens of folks living in our poorest counties. It would do little to improve infant mortality, or to better fund our schools.

But I’ve learned something from being an educator all these years. For a student to rise to the challenge of learning something new, he must first realize that his ignorance is not something to be proud of. Once he realizes that, he has a motivation to invest the time and effort necessary to learn something new.

For this state to become a “more progressive, better state”, it has to do the same thing. We have to stop being proud of the ignorant things some of our forefathers did. The flag is just a small step, but it’s an important one.

The letter writer got his metaphor wrong. Removing the flag isn’t rearranging the deck chairs. It’s taking the first, small step towards the lifeboats.