Our weekly Top Five feature, absent for a few weeks, is back. It offers big stories or views from the past week with policy and legislative implications.
1. Ethics decision awaits Senate action, The Post and Courier, May 24, 2017
This story highlights how more than 50 accusations against S.C. public officials are on hold because the S.C. Senate has yet to confirm eight appointees to the S.C. Ethics Commission after lawmakers last year reworked how the commission would be formed. The House approved the nominees on May 4.
“According to the ethics law passed by the General Assembly last year creating the new independent panel of investigators, the eight commissioners — selected by Gov. Henry McMaster and the House and Senate Republican and Democratic caucuses — were to be seated by April 1.”
2. Trump budget shouldn’t kill MOX facility at SRS, editorial in the Aiken Standard, May 24, 2017
“Trump’s dismissal of MOX is perplexing. The commander in chief has gone to great lengths to separate himself politically from Obama only to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps as it relates to MOX. It’s also baffling considering both South Carolina senators and at least one House member are ardent supporters of MOX….
“Moving forward, there will be plenty of haggling over the budget. Remember in 2016 – MOX funding wasn’t locked in until December. Approval came despite Obama stating his desire to shut down MOX, and also in spite of a paltry $270 million being awarded. We suspect this is how things will play out this year, as well.”
3. Sanford invokes Goldilocks in describing Trump budget, Huffington Post, May 24, 2017
U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, a former stat governor and federal budget hawk if there ever were one, has problems with President Donald Trump’s new $4.1 trillion budget plan, suggesting that it is not based on real numbers. His description is at odds with what was offered by federal budget director Mick Mulvaney, formerly a South Carolina congressman from the Rock Hill area. From the story:
“I have looked every which way at how you might get there, and you can’t get there,” Sanford told Mulvaney [in a House budget hearing]. … What it does is it perpetuates a myth that we can go out there and balance the budget without touching entitlements. It’s not only a myth, it’s frankly a lie….
“This budget presumes a Goldilocks economy, and I think that’s a very difficult thing on which to base a budget,” Sanford said. ..” “Can you guess the last time we had an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent, growth at 3 percent, and inflation held at 2 percent. It’s never happened.”
4. Americans want more from higher education, Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic, May 17, 2017
The author writes that the future is bright for those who complete college, but not as much for those who don’t have a four-year degree. An excerpt:
“The reality is that America has a college-completion crisis. Among traditionally aged bachelor’s degree students, the U.S. Department of Education reports that only 59 percent graduate within six years, nevermind four. For students in two-year institutions, completion rates are even lower. Put those numbers together and a majority of American students who enter college do not complete their degrees in the time allotted, or indeed ever….
“Institutions are failing to help their students successfully navigate the path to a degree. Yet because college students are presumed to be adults and because college is an expensive personal investment, the public and the government typically begin from the presumption that students are solely responsible for their own success or failure.”
5. Do your ethics depend on your electronics? Tom Jacobs in Pacific Standard, May 16, 2017
This is, plain and simple, and interesting article. It highlights how a new report suggests people might make ethical decisions based on whether they get information via a personal computer or smartphone. An excerpt:
“When we’re rushed, we tend to rely on our intuitive responses, which—in the case of moral questions—means falling back onto a set of basic rules we learned in childhood. But, oddly, [researcher Albert] Barque-Duran and his colleagues found that is not the case when the troubling information is conveyed via smartphone.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!