AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT As South Carolinians hit the roads for summer vacations, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to discuss the state’s poorly maintained roadways. The potholes, crumbling bridges, and highways last paved during the Nixon administration will likely raise the topic in many a vacation-bound car. State House politicians, too, have been …
WHERE’S THE MONEY GOING? HOW MUCH? WHAT FOR? The federal health care law known as “ObamaCare” gets more unpopular every week, but the question for citizens and policymakers is the same: What can be done about it? Many of the law’s critics contend that it can be nullified. What many advocates of this approach …
‘NULLIFYING’ COMMON CORE WON’T MAKE IT GO AWAY, BUT A BILL NOW IN THE LEGISLATURE WOULD GIVE TAXPAYERS SOME SAY IN THE MATTER The first step toward removing Common Core requirements from the South Carolina education system – strangely enough – would have nothing directly to do with Common Core. A bill prefiled for …
WHAT COMES AFTER THE WELFARE STATE? Today the welfare state is omnipresent in every part of the United States. The federal budget is dominated by entitlement spending, with 45 percent of federal spending in 2012 going to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (among other health care entitlements). Simultaneously, the states are struggling under the fiscal …
SOUTH CAROLINIANS ARE PAYING BILLIONS FOR UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE. IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE? On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce, and Industry met to discuss a massive debt owed by the state unemployment trust fund to the federal government. Like many programs imposed on the states by the federal government, unemployment insurance, with its ever-expanding …
IT’S A QUESTION WORTH ASKING Earlier this month, the Policy Council issued our annual guide to the year’s legislative session, The Best & Worst of the General Assembly. In the introduction to this year’s booklet (which we comment to your attention), we reminded readers that, in our view, the proper goal of legislation “isn’t to …
MAYBE, BUT IT MAY TAKE MORE THAN PASSING A LAW Opponents of Common Core, the nationalized set of academic standards currently being imposed on South Carolina public schools, are wondering how to stop it – or indeed if it’s too late to stop it. While four states refused to implement these standards in the first …
OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE SUGGESTS POINTLESSNESS OF MORE GUN LAWS South Carolina, as we contended in an August commentary, doesn’t deserve its fiercely pro-gun reputation – at least, not if the criterion is state law rather than general attitudes. Unfortunately, however, state law isn’t the only thing South Carolina gun owners need to be concerned about. Another …
DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A CURRICULUM YOU WOULD CHOOSE? In Part I of our analysis of Common Core-based curriculum material, we discussed some problematic lesson plans disseminated by Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit organization founded by three contributing authors of Common Core State Standards. In the present analysis we discuss Common Core-aligned Homework/Test Questions and …
A RECENT EDUCATION OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETING SUGGESTS JUST HOW MUCH POWER WE’RE GIVING AWAY “Security has asked me to advise that they are in attendance. If there are any outbursts from the audience, they will be escorted out of the meeting.” That’s how this week’s Education Oversight Committee (EOC) meeting was kicked off. In its …