I converted this to black and white as a cheap and easy way to eliminate red-eye (note the otherwordly gleam in Bud's eye as he introduces Rex).
Tuesday was so eventful in the contest for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010 that I didn’t have time to write about everything that happened.
I wrote about Dwight Drake’s candidacy (I talked to Dwight today, and he likes it that I called him the “anti-Sanford”), and about Vincent Sheheen’s relatively aggressive reaction to that. Then, that night, I went to a fundraiser for Jim Rex at Bud Ferillo’s house, and by the time I got home I was blogged out. Not to mention sweaty.
Not much to report. Rex says he’ll decide whether to run for governor either the first or second week in September, but of course, he was sounding very much like a candidate. If he gets in, he’ll run hard and Bud will no doubt help him do so, although it won’t be end-all and be-all for him. As his wife, Sue, noted to me, Rex has had a full career or two. He came out of retirement to run for superintendent (his first elective office), and while he gives it his all, he could always go back to retirement with a sense of fulfillment.
Consequently, don’t expect him to come out swinging against anybody the way that Vincent did in reaction to Dwight (or the way someone with apparent links to Mullins McLeod has done more indirectly, but more forcefully). He’s low-key, and prefers to stay away from such stuff. As he made a point of saying, “People are sick and tired of partisan, negative politics.” Not that I would put what Vincent did in that category; I think it was perfectly within the bounds. So does Dwight, for that matter — “He’s got to do that,” he said of Vincent today. But Rex probably won’t.
What else can I tell you, aside from how muggy it was? Well, I could tell you who was there. A partial list: Hayes Mizell, Rep. James Smith, Chris Vlahoplus, Charlotte Berry, Joe Berry, Barbara Rackes, Mike Mann, Raúl Fernandez-Carreras, Sally Huguley, Ted Riley…
… but don’t attach too much significance to any of those names; they weren’t all there because they’re supporting Rex. James Smith, for instance, is a Vincent Sheheen man all the way. There are few allies closer that those two and Joel Lourie. But as James had told me previously, he wrote a check for Rex — and wrote on the check that it was for his re-election campaign as superintendent. And he reiterated that upon his arrival at Bud’s. He and his lovely wife Kirkland had come to be sociable (and, in a sociable sort of way I suppose, check out the opposition).
While I did see at least one couple drop an envelope into the bin set by the front door, I think a lot of folks were there just to see what was happening. And to talk politics (there were rumors that yet another Democrat might run for governor, but I haven’t had a chance to check that out yet. If true, it would surprise me — although not as much as Dwight did.)
I, of course, was there in my usual mode of disinterested observer — which I always have to point out to people these days. Although I didn’t have to tell Zeke Stokes. When someone asked a question that he thought bore a little too intimately upon the not-yet campaign’s strategy, he begged off by saying “Brad Warthen is here,” so he at least still sees me as a journalist.
Best quote of the night, in response to a question about whether he would appeal to moderate Republicans and independents (which Rex noted he did already in winning in 2006): “I have become the darling of the NRA.” I believe that was intentionally ironic; he was just saying he hopes for diverse support (and that he agrees with the NRA that kids need to get into the outdoors more).
That’s about all, except to say this continues to be very interesting…
Related Posts
Interesting, indeed! Dems haven’t had this much fun in SC since… well, since a while. (Aside from our dear guvnor, that is.) I’d consider supporting Dr. Rex, but I’d also hate to see him leave the superintendent’s office. But then again, it’s another position under the thumb of the General Assembly, who can’t get anything done for tying themselves into knots while straining at gnats and swallowing camels. (Forgive the mixed metaphor; it comes from a favorite relative and I just love the images it invokes…)
The NRA has several school programs teaching respect for firearms, firearms safety, and hunter safety.
Jim Rexx is welcomed to implement these programs any time.
Lourie is top shelf. I’d love to see Lourie vs Bauer – a contrast of substance vs shallowness.
Rex had no vision for public education in 2006. He simply ran as the Anti-Floyd, savior of public education. I read through what little was on the Rex campaign site and asked ol’ Zeke Stokes about the dearth of information in May of 2006. He claimed more information was forthcoming. It never appeared because Floyd as opponent was all the information they needed.
Randy – what do you think about the Turnaround Schools project?
BTW Randy – I agree with you about Joel Lourie… he’s one of the few statesmen in the GA.
I assume you mean Rex’s project as detailed here http://www.gaffneyledger.com/news/2009/0615/local_news/029.html as opposed to the national one detailed here http://turnaroundschools.com/
Here’s a great article on school reform: http://teachmath.net/Newsweek.html
“The physicist Stephen Hawking says we can be sure time travel is impossible because we never see any visitors from the future. We can apply that same logic to the subject of school reforms: we know they have not succeeded because we haven’t seen positive results.”
I agree with this because we never get to the heart of the matter. Students have to learn how to learn – deal with epistemology. In the US we address all the marginal problems. We try block scheduling, we give students more tests, we focus on the 3 R’s, we change the curriculum, and teachers often teach the way they’ve always taught. All this to no avail.
Show kids how to learn and hold them accountable, not by following NCLB, but by making them work to contruct knowledge. E.g. don’t tell a kid what an exponential function is, have him collect data on interest earned from a bank account and develop a model.
Doug might have something to say as well.
Brad,
Can you post an updated list of all the candidates running at this point. It’s hard to keep up with them all.
Thanks.
Damn it, Randy.
Previously you made this comment:
I’m still praying for a Palin run in 2012
And now this:
I’d love to see Lourie vs Bauer – a contrast of substance vs shallowness.
Personally I’d rather two shallow candidates, Palin and Bauer, NOT have a shot at being the next President and Governor respectively. But maybe that’s because I’m being reasonable here.
Randy,
I’ve only got two more years of having to deal with public education in South Carolina and it can’t end too soon for me. I’ve been an interested parent/observer for 15 years and nothing has changed in that time.
Until the standards for behavior and performance are enforced, all the testing and feel good stuff is a waste of time. Even the supposed good public schools lose 30% of the kids who enter high school.
Jim Rex has done nothing that I can see to improve the system. They threw out PACT because it had reached the point where they couldn’t spin the results any more. I can’t comment on the replacement test (PASS) because my kids are beyond the age where it is given. But I can only assume it will be more of the same – students will be passed along despite lacking basic literacy skills. And then they will drop out when they reach high school and are presented with a curriculum that is both too difficult and offers little of interest.
Too much emphasis is placed on test scores when the only real test of a public education system is the ability to create high school graduates who are productive members of society.
On that test, South Carolina doesn’t do a good job.
Randy – you obviously have ties to the South Carolina teaching community. What do teachers think of Jim Rex? If teachers don’t think he’s done a good job, why should voters believe he’d be a good governor?
Hey, Lee — Rex already has. Check it out:
http://ed.sc.gov/news/more.cfm?articleID=1233
I congratulate Jim Rexx for finally permitting DNR to teach in the schools. His three predecessors adamantly refused to allow the NRA or DNR instructors into the schools.
Contrary to Rexx’s braying about this being “first-of-its-kind”, many states have had these programs for more than 20 years, ever since hunter safety certification became mandatory in most states in the early 1980s.
Minnesota, for example probably still has a majority of its students go through firearms and hunter safety training in the schools as part of the curriculum, even with most of the state’s population residing in the metropolitan twin cities area.
Doug, you have often made salient points about education. I concur with your post, although I think there have been some significant steps – e.g. state standardized testing and end of course exams give us quantitative data. The achievement gap between minorities and whites becomes concrete upon seeing these scores.
Regarding teachers, many get lost in simply surviving in the classroom – lose the forest among the trees. Because they are often insulated from real accountability, they can easily deviate from the proper path. For example, it’s easier to give the student with a 67 final average an extra credit assignment to “earn” the extra 2.5 points to pass. It’s also easier to give a bunch of low cognitive level handouts and simply keep students busy.
Rex is an educator so he’s not going to challenge the teachers. In turn, they have and will support him.
But it’s not fair to limit this to teachers. When surveyed, most parents opine that education is not working well. In the same survey, most parents will say their school is doing a good job. If a student gets a good grade, regardless of how much he or she actually learned, the student and parents are happy and the teacher is praised. Hence, a 67 becomes a 69.5 (I’m generalizing).
Again, Floyd and the voucher crowd enabled Rex to side step meaningful reform because he simply had to run against her and not for something.
Birch, Palin has as much chance of winning the presidency as Brad has of being invited by Sanford to go hiking in Appalachia.
My hope is that she would be exposed as the fraud that she is to the point that even many of these right wingnuts would have to shake their heads in disbelief. This movement of fear and hate perpetrated by these wingnuts is potentially dangerous. Simply look at how Palin and Big Insurance has scared elderly people into thinking there is forced euthenasia in HR3200. It’s disheartening to see them speak up at these meetings with genuine fear of “death panels.”
Simply look at how Palin and Big Insurance has scared elderly people into thinking there is forced euthenasia in HR3200. It’s disheartening to see them speak up at these meetings with genuine fear of “death panels.”
Which is exactly why I want that kind of discourse off the national stage. I hope she doesn’t run and fades away into oblivion.
I do think you underestimate her chances though. It may not be likely that she would beat Obama, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. If the economy has not turned around — though it should and hopefully does — and if Palin continues to use her fear-mongering and disgusting appeals to patriotism she could do it. Fear-mongering is a powerful tool. And don’t forget; this country re-elected George W. Bush. It’s not a stretch that it could elect Palin.
Birch, I’ll grant you that history has precendent for mongers like her rising to power. If the economy gets worse again, I have to admit there’s a possibility (I had to find a way to squeeze in my Sanford analogy :). If she does, I’m moving to Spain (but will still blog here).
If economy is relatively stagnant, I think she still has not shot. The youtube clips of her contradictions, lies, and incompetence will be even more ubiquitous. For example, she declared Health Care Decisions Day in Alaska in April of 2008 and now she refers to the counseling she promoted in this declaration “death panels.” She’ll get pummeled.
I also think she’d lose in the primary because her opponents will be the ones to unleash the hounds fo hell on her. She won’t be able to blame the MSM if other right wingnuts are the ones bashing her.
Education transformation in our state MUST be systemic with the governor, super. of educ., and Commiss. of Higher Ed. on the same progressive platform, moving in tandem to goad, push, inspire, bully, and even cajole the legislature into making the tough decisions it needs to make. We have wasted far too much time going backwards, constantly combating issues such as vouchers–when we are already way behind. Systemic reform needs to address how we define accountability and its unintended consequences, openly acknowledge role poverty & racism play in education, and look at effectiveness of school boards, district organization, and funding in order to move our schools out of the dark ages into the 21st century. Unfortunately, I have not seen the “toughness” required from Rex, Sheheen, or any other dem. candidate to push back the wingnuts that constantly obstruct change needed to move forward.
Doug–I’m perplexed at your comment that you only have two more years of having to deal with public education in SC. I intend to live here until I die. I hope you have more than two years to live and aren’t scheduled to leave the state.
Public education is all of our concern whether or not we have children in public schools. I do not have children, but I hope to have well-educated fellow citizens, and prospective employees for businesses looking to locate here, for example. I’d like our finest young people to stay here and not leave to seek greener pastures with better public schools.etc. etc.
The enemies of Sarah Palin are wasting their time trying to spin up phony conflicts by equating her signing legislation to create an day of awareness for personal planning of end-of-life issues, and the socialists legislation to create panels deciding who will be treated and who will be left to die, as they do in Europe.
I took care of my mother for her last four years. Her living will, health care power of attorney, and eventually her EMS DNR order were very important to her. All were developed in consultation with her primary physician, and were paid by the government programs Medicare and Tricare. When she eventually had a major stroke and went into coronary and pulmonary arrest, I was very glad to have her explicit written directions to rely upon. No one has quoted any provision of the proposed health care legislation that calls for anything other than this reasonable provision for end-of-life planning.
Karen,
I meant what I said about caring about public education in South Carolina. I’ve had 1,2, or 3 kids in public schools for each of the past 15 years. I did the PTO President role for two years. I ran for school board and finished dead last. What I learned was that my ideas of what we need to do regarding public education do not match those of the general public. All you need to do is look at the performance of the school boards in the Midlands area to understand what public education is about. It’s about bricks and mortar and bond referendums and multi-million dollar football stadiums that are used 10 days a year by players who are passed along with a wink. It’s about creating “nurturing” environments in high schools full of punks who show no respect for teachers… and parents who will never admit that their kid could ever do anything wrong. It’s about valuing the diversity of the students and setting the bar lower for some based on the idea that poor kids shouldn’t be expected to work as hard as kids who come from better off families. It’s about rampant cheating that goes on in the age of the internet and cell phones (and teachers using cellphones in the classroom for personal calls — like the one teacher my daughter had who spent a large portion of one semester on the phone arranging her wedding). It’s about the First Commandment of the teaching establishment: “Thou shalt not ever say a bad thing about another teacher” as some horrible, burnt out teachers man classrooms while their peers just stand idly by. It’s about paying teachers not on performance but on years of service and degrees held. It’s about education bureaucrats who spin every piece of news in the most positive way possible, thinking that parents are stupid enough to believe it (some do).
So, yes, I have two years left to get my last kid through this broken system. I gave many hours of time over the past 15 years volunteering and getting involved. It did no good.
South Carolina is the status quo capital of the United States. It’s better to do things OUR way and continue to fail instead of trying something new. The biggest fear voucher opponents have is that it might work. They won’t even attempt it on any trial basis because it could topple the house of cards.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing about the latest and greatest achievement test when the next Superintendent is elected. Me, I’ll be focusing on something that really matters.
The only part of Doug’s post I will contend is the part about vouchers. That simply has not been shown to work on a large scale. Milwaukee’s program, the exemplar for choice advocates, has simply not proven to be the panacea proponents suggest – see link below to article detailing results of a major study.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/29543004.html
Lee, what is socialism? Can you give a precise definition along with a source?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
[my comment: for examples see auto industry bailout, bank bailout, Medicare, Federal Reserve, eminent domain land grabs, property taxes, etc.]
2. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
Doug posted the accepted definition of socialism.
Because, as Marx and Lenin saw it, socialism was a transitional process from free market capitalism and elected republican forms of government, socialism takes many forms.
France has an socialist government, with its legislature elected from mostly socialist and communist parties, none of them holding a majority.
Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy were the fascist form of socialism.
Norman Thomas, head of the Socialst Party in the USA, said socialism in America would be achieved piecemeal, by socializing sectors of the economy a bit at the time. This has been done, sometimes totally, and then undone, since 1933 – banking, railway system, shipping, automobile manufacturing, medical care, wage and price controls, etc.
“Single payer” healthcare systems are socialist, a government monopoly of the entire industry.
So socialism is government control of production and services as in complete control. Government intervention is not inherently socialism. TARP, the auto bailout, etc. are examples of intervention but there is no effort to exert complete control.
Government intervenes in all areas of our lives: alcohol, smoking, monopoly busting, national banks, public schools, etc. Doug and Lee may contend that public schools are socialist progams. Because people can opt for private schools and homeschooling, the threshhold of complete control of services is not met.
If either of you want to argue that there doesn’t need to be complete control to be considered socialism, then you are suggesting that there is some arbitrary line. I will be that you’ll determine that line for us.
Lee, medicare is single payer, Lawrence McDonnell considers it a socialist program and I will agree. Because you abhor socialism, it follows that you want medicare to be eliminated.
Last I checked, France seemed to be holding up OK. Calling something “socialism,” even if it is, is only one part of the picture. You have to then demonstrate that the equation:
socialism = bad
is true.
The US healthcare system wastes 30% of healthcare dollars on insurance company administrative costs, a great deal of which represent working to deny payment. Health insurance companies take premiums from people and then work to deny care. They pay people based on the amount of care they are able to deny. The US healthcare system is built around companies that take money and deny service. Subjecting healthcare to the free market will inevitably lead to such a result. It is always more beneficial to a company to take the money for a service and then refuse to provide the service.
Not only that, the government steps in as a backstop, paying for services insurance companies are obligated to pay for, but refuse to pay for.
You can’t just say that a single payer system, or a public option, is socialism and socialism is bad, you have to explain why it would be worse than our present inefficient system of essentially transferring public money to private companies that don’t provide any useful service; that don’t do anything except collect money and fail to provide the services paid for by that money.
It is also ironic that the inveighing against socialism comes typically from freeloaders. Alaska, for example, is the biggest freeloader state in the nation; there’s no way Alaska could survive without the constant flood of federal dollars they receive.
Randy E, you need to read more carefully before commenting. In fact, you should be ashamed that you are so ignorant of the forms of socialism, but I suspect half of that is just pretending out of being too ashamed to admit you are a socialist. If so, at least you have some degree of morality, and realize socialism is immoral.
To restate, socialism does not have to be TOTAL CONTROL of the entire economy, nor of even one sector. That would be the pure communist form of socialism. Socialism is partial control of the entire economy, which might mean partial control of all sectors, or total control of some industries and minor regulation of others.
Barack Obama, former Socialist Party candidate, said so in 2003, when he told socialist Democrats that cooperatives, price fixing, and some sort of “public option” might have to be used as interim measures on the way to totally socialized medicine under “single payer”.
France has had an economy for years that is as depressed as ours has become under Obama, Pelosi and Reid.
Apparently, socialists who only eat from the trough and never fill the trough don’t care.
Lee, that was a sad attempt at a rebuttal. I’ll use the following to show how wrong you are and will resume ignoring you.
Pure socialism entails the government COMPLETELY controlling the distribution of goods and services.
If the government does not completely control the distribution of goods and services, as you suggest, then there is some arbitrary threshhold for determining socialism. This is the trick the GOP and Lee are attempting with US health care reform.
Communism entails complete control of the state – financial, social, political. People are even directed to jobs and their pay is determined by the party. You don’t take a dump without approval by the party (Red October reference).
Canada controls how health care is administered but through private entities. This is socialism. In a communist state, nothing would be private.
Randy uses the absurdity ruse of all socialistic liberals – “Socialism must be 100% pure, or it’s not socialism.”
Baloney.
There never was pure socialism and never will be. Just as there never will be pure free market capitalism with individual liberty and responsibility.
Only an idiot would claim that the USSR, Maoist China and Nazi Germany were not socialist.
The USSR and Red China never had pure socialism. They still allowed small farming for profit. These farms produced more food in a fraction of the land, than the huge collective farms which starved 100,000,000 Russians and Chinese to death.
Nazi socialism was not pure socialism. That is what fascism is: socialism through control of business rather than ownership.
Barack Obama said “single payer” is socialist. He said “public option” is just a means to drive people out of private insurance and into a government monopoly.
Barack Obama was raised as a communist.
His father was a Soviet-trained communist.
His mother was a communist.
His Kenyan grandfather was a Mau Mau terrorist.
His best friends are communists and terrorists.
Take Obama’s word for it – his plan is socialist.