Enjoy our new Top Five feature — five must-read, big stories and opinions from the past week with policy and legislative implications.
- McConnell: Transportation, education vital to S.C. prosperity, op-ed, The Post and Courier, 1/21/16
“Imagine a three-legged stool: One leg is the recruitment of industry (bringing jobs to the state), the second leg is our transportation system (getting workers to those jobs) and the third leg is education (helping workers earn and hold onto those jobs). Unfortunately, we are adequately investing in only one of the three legs: the recruitment of industry. And while our state leaders have done a remarkable and praiseworthy job using incentives to attract top-level businesses, our state will never significantly better the quality of life for all its citizens without increased investment in the other two legs.”
- State delays tax refunds to fight fraud, Associated Press, 1/21/16
State taxpayers won’t get state income tax refunds until after March 1 in an attempt to fight fraud, state officials say.
- USC plans $200 million health campus, The State, 1/21/16
The university’s med school would become part of the new campus near Palmetto Health Richland. Interesting note: This story was at the top of the printed issue of the newspaper. Just under it? A story on the State of the State, which included a reference by Gov. Nikki Haley that more investment was needed in K-12 education instead of higher education.
- Congressmen say shutting down SRS MOX facility would cost $500 million, Aiken Standard, 1/20/16
Congressmen Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Rick Allen of Georgia say it’s important to keep building the Savannah River Site’s MOX facility to turn weapons-grade plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. They and two other congressmen visited the facility this week. To shutter it would cost $500 million, they say.
- What would MLK Jr. think about America today? The Charlotte Observer, 1/18/16
“Had he lived, King would have turned 87 this week in an America that’s dramatically different, in some ways, from the one he knew during the 1960s. The country has an African-American president, for example, and the Confederate flag has finally begun to fade into the mist of history. Still, there also are distressing echoes of King’s time. Many see voting rights for minorities imperiled again and hear an update of George Wallace’s harsh “us vs. them” rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies. And the murders at a black church in Charleston last summer recall the deaths of four little girls in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.”
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