Our weekly Top Five feature offers big stories or views from the past week with policy and legislative implications.
- Is the privatizing craze ending? David Dayden in The New Republic, Aug. 24, 2016
“Is this the beginning of the end of the three-decade-long project of privatizing public functions? Ronald Reagan started us down the privatization path in the 1980s, championing the myth that private enterprise is always and forever more efficient than the government. Last week’s Justice Department decision to not renew 13 contracts with companies managing incarceration facilities for the Bureau of Prisons—and phase out of all federal private prisons over time—has cracked that foundation, perhaps irreparably.”
- How one woman suggests to deal with prejudice, The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2016
Writer Colby Itkowitz shares a story about how a C-SPAN caller identified himself as a prejudiced white man and asked a black guest how he could change his prejudice. The story relates the thoughtful response of public policy organizer Heather McGhee and highlights how the debate on race, which impacts South Carolina daily, can move forward. Click the link to find the video. An excerpt from the story:
“McGhee told him that people of all races and backgrounds hold such prejudices, some unconsciously, so for him to be able to say it outright, was ‘one of the most powerful things that we can do right now in this moment in our history.’ Then she offered him some ideas for how he could begin to allay those fears. She urged him to get to know black families, to not form opinions about people of color from the evening news, to join a black church (if he’s religious), to read the rich history of the African American community and to start conversations within his own community about race.”
- Boost school attendance by installing laundry machines, The Atlantic’s CityLab, Aug. 22, 2016
“It turned out that when students didn’t have clean clothes, they often stayed home from school out of embarrassment. Logan, an eighth-grader, spoke about how difficult it is for others to understand his problem: ‘I think people don’t talk about not having clean clothes because it makes you want to cry or go home or run away or something. It doesn’t feel good.’”
- What’s happening in Southern politics, Joseph Crespino in The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2016
In an essay on why Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton might win red neighboring state Georgia, there was these shocking sentence about South Carolina — a paragraph most politicos wouldn’t even have dreamed that someone would write a few months ago:
“Whether or not Republicans hold on to Georgia and South Carolina this year, the lessons they are likely to take away are predictable. Democrats will assume that these states, like Virginia and North Carolina, are part of a long-term liberal trend and push traditional liberal ideas harder in future elections. Republicans will most likely write off Mr. Trump as a one-time phenomenon and not do anything. In doing so, both parties will ignore lessons from the history of the Southern conservative majority.”
Did you see it — that a noted Emory history professor even mentioned that red South Carolina, where Clinton reportedly is even with GOP nominee Donald Trump in a new poll — would be even considered a potential swing state? Wow.
- A ranking of state economies, Louis Jacobson in Governing magazine, Aug. 22, 2016
Based on six variables — current unemployment rate, improvement in the rate, per capita state GDP, change in GDP, change in personal income per capita and growth — this report ranks each state’s economy. South Carolina comes in right in the middle, at 26th out of 50.
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We Can Do Better, South Carolina!