Charleston Currents – Andy Brack

Andy Brack

BRACK: Let’s confront the ghosts of our past and calm things down

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The ghosts of our past are boiling in a cauldron that is spewing fury and distress across America like lava jolting from a volcano.

And just like climate change, many deny or ignore how different segments of our society are colliding, getting hotter and hotter week after week. There’s an increasing sense that America is out of control, preferring dysfunction and confrontation to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

by Andy Brack · 02/11/2019 · 1 comment · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Early books are first step to education reform success

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | If you want real education reform, give a free book a month to every child under five in South Carolina.

It’s a common-sense, quick, practical, affordable and proven investment that can make more of a difference than most of the fiddle-faddle in thick policy papers. It’s low-hanging fruit. And it’s easily achievable because there’s a delivery network already in place. It’s something Gov. Henry McMaster and legislators like GOP House Speaker Jay Lucas and Democratic Sen. Vincent Sheheen should embrace now.

by Andy Brack · 01/28/2019 · 1 comment · Andy Brack, Views

View of a 2016 caucus in Alaska. Via Wikipedia.

BRACK: S.C.’s role in 2020 presidential process is big, really big

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | South Carolina will again play an outsized role in picking the next presidential candidates for U.S. voters. It’s where the political rubber hits the road.

In large part, the story is told by the numbers …

by Andy Brack · 01/21/2019 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

Scene from Bowen's Island looking toward Folly Beach, S.C.

BRACK: New “Beach” read offers critical conservation, political insights

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Conservationist Dana Beach years ago described how to keep development from mauling everything into a mess of sprawl.

Don’t, he said, talk or write about merely “protecting land.” Instead, use words to conceptualize protecting “special places” in South Carolina. The first approach is kind of clinical and vanilla. It outlines what one wants, but doesn’t link to what someone else may really care about. But the second method connects conservation with a reader’s innate definition of keeping safe …

by Andy Brack · 01/14/2019 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Don’t play verbal shell games with tax reform

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Two people can look at a painting or watch the same football game and see two completely different things.

One person, for example, might see little more than an abstracted bull, horse and people in Picasso’s Guernica. Another might be moved to tears over human suffering.

by Andy Brack · 01/07/2019 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Pay our teachers better

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | This should be a no-brainer for state legislators: If you want to have better teachers, you have to provide a better salary.

South Carolina has been failing its teachers, students and parents for years. Over the last eight years, the General Assembly has steered $4 billion less to public education than state law requires. If you want to know why we keep showing up at the bottom, trying to get education on the cheap is the biggest reason of all.

by Andy Brack · 12/17/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: No halfway needed on tax reform

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The newly-found political buzzphrase among the South Carolina legislative class is “tax reform.”

Suddenly, after years of hemming and hawing about doing something about the hodge-podge of laws that make up the state’s tax code, there’s a little juice to do something real to stabilize the tax structure and, we hope, make it a little bit fairer up and down the line.

by Andy Brack · 12/10/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Let’s look at how we do electricity in S.C.

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | There’s a huge disconnect going on with electricity in South Carolina.

On one hand, we’re in the second year of trying to figure out why there was a $9 billion debacle of a nuclear power plant project in Fairfield County being built by SCE&G and Santee Cooper. There’s been finger-pointing by legislators, finger-pointing about the legislature, testimony to regulators, lawsuits, and on and on. At the end of the day, it’s still a mess and it’s probably going to consume the legislature again in 2019. …

by Andy Brack · 12/03/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views