Republican House-leader Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) is refusing to apply for $700 million in federal stimulus funds, most of which would go to improving South Carolina’s failing schools. Also Sanford refused to join a national school reform effort to set curriculum standards. Sanford claimed that he refused to sign on because the “governor does not have a role in implementing education policy.”
Now the governor has taken action on two bills that show where his priorities really lie: He vetoed a bill reigning in predatory payday lending, and signed a bill allowing loaded guns on school grounds. read on here>>

Reinforcing his ideological approach, Sanford claimed that regulating payday loans was incompatible with “limited government and maximized individual freedom.” State Sen. Joel Lourie (D) replied, “His vision for South Carolina is for ineffective, underfunded schools, for kids buying cheap cigarettes and for unprotected consumers.”

The gun law Sanford signed allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to leave a gun in their car while parked at a school so that, according to the bill’s sponsor, teachers can more fully exercise their rights:

“I’m not trying to bring firearms inside the school,” said [Sen. Shane] Martin, R-Spartanburg. “You don’t need to carry it inside the school. But I’ve had teachers tell me they can’t exercise their (Second Amendment) rights traveling to and from school. They ought to be able to travel to school without having to leave their weapon.”

So while Sanford refuses to fix crumbling schools or prevent thousands of teacher layoffs or crack down on some of the most predatory lending practices around, he was willing to join a freshman senator’s “grand gesture” to the NRA. It must be more of that “reform” Sanford has trumpeted.

This entry was posted on vrijdag, juni 5th, 2009 at 1:25 am and is filed under American In The News, Politiek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.