Public Office for Personal Gain (again)

Fancy graphics and a State Department Seal? It must be official!
Follow-up email will tell you who to vote for once registered…

In recent years public education in South Carolina has become heavily politicized.

Politicians and bureaucrats at the state and district level have worked hard to resist the grass roots push by parents for reform and choice. In doing so the educrats have utilized – and exploited – their public offices to defend the failure of public schools across the state.

From illegal candidate endorsement to corporate influence peddling to direct cash-for-vote campaign donations to flagrant ethics violations to data manipulation …and of course using public money to block education reform for handicapped children… the government school apparatus is a far-reaching and powerful political machine.

In his latest ploy, Jim Rex has tried to distract attention from the shamefully low AYP ratings of public schools by rallying school employees and his donors with an official-looking email encouraging them to register more voters.

What’s more, as the Free Times has recently noted, Rex is also using third-party non-profit groups to assemble a long-shot gubernatorial run in 2010.

Based on his emails during the last primary election, we can expect him to follow up with a similar email telling those voter who to vote for.

This is shameful. Even the appearance of impropriety undermines Rex’s already shaky credibility and serves as a distraction from his responsibility to our children.

With the worst public schools in the nation, Rex should be focused on improving instruction and offering parents choice, not his own political security.