The Wire: 1/18/2013

TIPS, COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, SNIPPETS
Welcome to the wire!
Today’s big South Carolina news will be the release of the latest unemployment numbers from the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce – the agency’s final report from the 2012 calendar year. This will be the last jobs report for some time, too, as unemployment data from January and [...]

SC House “Republicans” Fall Short On Fiscal Conservative Votes

FISCAL LIBERALS DOMINATE PALMETTO STATE’S “GOP-CONTROLLED” HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Last week we took a look at the abysmal scores recorded by “Republican” members of the S.C. Senate on the S.C. Club for Growth’s 2012 legislative scorecards. This week we look at the scores put up by the S.C. House of Representatives – which is also controlled (in [...]

Mike Forrester = What’s Wrong With SC

SC LAWMAKER DRAWS BIG BUCKS FROM TAXPAYERS FOR “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT”
S.C. Rep. Mike Forrester (RINO-Spartanburg) isn’t your typical “big government Republican.”  He’s much worse.  He’s a member of the infamous “Spartanburg Six,” a group of Upstate lawmakers who have habitually voted to dump more money into our state’s failed public education establishment.  He’s also one of [...]

Spartanburg SC: Axis Of (Educrat) Evil

They own the local politicians … that much we already knew. Now the sprawling educrat establishment in Spartanburg, S.C. is getting some love from the city’s “conservative” mainstream media.
Once among the state’s most forward-thinking editorial boards, the opinion-makers at The Spartanburg Herald-Journal are now inexplicably ripping into a market-based parental choice plan, arguing that state [...]

Spartanburg Schools: Not All That

The academic prowess of Spartanburg County’s public schools has been lauded of late by local “Republican” lawmakers as a way of justifying their ongoing special interest-driven betrayal of parents.
According to these legislators, Spartanburg doesn’t need parental choice because it’s schools are among South Carolina’s finest.
The only problem? That’s not saying much. Also, Spartanburg’s public schools [...]

One Vote Could Sink SC Educrats’ Exploitation

We hear excuses every day from status quo backers in Columbia as to why South Carolina’s public education system is so atrocious.
It’s poverty, they say. Or racism. Or insufficient funding. Or it’s the fault of parents. Then there’s our favorite excuse – that the ongoing debate over parental choice has “shifted our leaders’ focus away [...]

Spartanburg Six: Destined For Defeat?

Scrolling through Sunday’s editions of The Spartanburg Herald-Journal did our hearts good.
Why? Because several weeks after a group of Spartanburg county “Republicans” chose to put the financial interests of our state’s failed status quo above the academic interests of South Carolina school children, the pressure they are facing over this deplorable vote isn’t relenting.
If anything, [...]

The “Spartanburg Six”

By “The Voice” || A powerful letter to the editor was published in Sunday’s Spartanburg Herald Journal.
It asked the question: Why did six Republicans lawmakers from Spartanburg County vote against school choice?
After all, school choice has long been a cornerstone of the state’s Republican Party platform, and popular with Republican voters and politicians across the [...]

SC: Where One Size (Still) Fits All

By one vote, South Carolina’s “Republican-controlled” House of Representatives killed a universal school choice bill that would have provided expanded academic options for all parents and a lifeline for more than 100,000 children trapped in failing public schools.
The debate took less than half an hour – which is interesting when you consider that lawmakers spent [...]