I have a friend with whom I served with in the Navy who's now retired and living in South Carolina. He suppliments his income by driving school bus.
I asked how his work was going and the tale related to me sickened me. You see, it's been unseasonally hot in South Carolina this year. I was surprised to learn that the school buses aren't all air conditioned.
What my friend told me as his tale wound on was that the equipment used to transport school kids in his state is patched together junk. There are young drivers that are driving buses THEY RODE when they were students. My friend is mechanically inclined and rattled off a laundry list of fluid leaks, wear, and a lack of will by the state for improving the bus fleet.
As the father of an elementary age child, I was most disturbed when I heard of the younger kids who left the bus pale and shaking from dehydration. When one particular child's parents were not at the stop to greet the child, another concerned parent who knew that family rushed the sick child home and alerted the parents.
My friend told me such stories are common among bus drivers in the state. Horror stories of bus breakdowns, smoke and fumes from defects entering the passenger compartment, and more students sick from those or the heat.
I hadn't talked to him in awhile. I often seen posts from him on his Facebook that indicated he was buying into Republican dirty tricks and hate rhetoric, and I would often post things on his wall to slow him down and allow the big, good hearted, Christian that I remember in him to catch up.
You see, South Carolina mirrors my own state, West Virginia, in their politics and national rankings in deficiencies and political mood.
Like my state, the Tea Party made an all out assault to claim several key political positions within our government, with some success. The success in South Carolina was even greater for the GOP.
Turns out that there is a push in South Carolina to privatize it's school bussing system by Republicans in the state. .
The BIG difference that only allowed marginal GOP success in West Virginia is the presence of unions. South Carolina doesn't have that advantage. So if the state of South Carolina chooses to ignore it's responsibility of maintaining it's bus fleet and instead concentrate on shifting this essential state function to the waiting and clutching greedy hands of the for profit private sector, who's gonna' stop them?
In the meantime, South Carolina's children suffer and are put at risk.