McMaster Does One Good Thing

But then takes away food from poor kids

We got five inches of rain on Tuesday, with high winds, so they canceled school. Stephen and I both worked from home, and it gave me some real pandemic flashbacks, on Zoom for my first day of classes and kids running around, us passing the baton every couple of hours. Good reminder that virtually educating young children is difficult (impossible) and that we should really only have one job at a time.

A brief quiet moment.

Speaking of educators, McMaster (our incredibly unoriginal and conservative copycat governor bequeathed to us after Trump appointed Nikki Haley to an ambassadorship, so many reasons to hate Trump) surprisingly announced a good idea this week: working with the legislature to raise teacher pay. I’m sure he didn’t mean to accidently improve lives for the women who form the majority of the K-12 workforce, but maybe having our extremist and unqualified censorship queen Ellen Weaver as our state superintendent is creating a tricky environment to attract qualified educators. He made sure to not seem too nice by also declining federal aid to poor children that would have guaranteed grocery money for the summer.

McMaster’s buds in the House are holding up their end of the “go after kids” political agenda by advancing the anti-trans bill H. 4624 out of committee. Give your SC House representative a call and let them know you oppose it. Last week almost 50 people testified in the committee against it (only one person, from out of state, testified in favor), including my new hero Phil Ford, who during his testimony, cited a variety of studies, and when a legislator was like, yeah? what studies? Ford produced a GIANT BINDER. You love to see it.

SC Witness Reveals Comically Large Binder Of Trans Studies After Republicans Ask For Studies

The Republicans on the committee were like, yeah this evidence that what we’re doing hurts kids is not compelling because all these out of state special interest groups are sending us this copy and paste legislation, so what are we going to do? Come up with our own laws to actually meet the needs of our citizens? NO THANK YOU, let’s get this bill to the full legislature, stat!

In another interesting twist, my SC House rep is Jason Elliot, who supposedly is cool and not really a Republican (but who is sure trying to look like one, by voting for the abortion ban, among other things). He’s openly gay, so I’ll be really interested to see how he votes on this bill… will he support the LGBTQ+ kids in his district or will he be a party lackey?

I’m pessimistic because he just announced he’s running for Dwight Loftis’s SC senate seat, and will face off against Steve Shaw, who seems more friendly to the Freedom Caucus set and is further to the right. I worry Elliot will feel pressure to look more conservative to win the primary. It’s all so dumb.

Come on Jason, do the right thing! I think he’s trying too hard here.

But you should probably vote for Elliot. Maybe he’ll do good once he’s got that senate seat.

In more positive news, the LGBT Chamber just launched the Queer Arts Initiative, and Furman is supporting with a significant matching grant. Good job, team! You can donate here.

And EVEN MORE to look forward to: Katy Kirby on tour, playing Asheville February 5^th. I think she’s fabulous. Hope you have a great weekend!