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Editor, John Andrews

Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute

Volume 7, Number 1 January 2015

Publisher, William L. Armstrong

What can impact

a billion people?

When I think about the challengeswe face as a nation, I always go backto the songAmazing Grace. I oncewas lost, but now Im found. I wasblind, but now I see. I thank the

Lord he saved a soul like me.hats my story. I marvel at how thecombination of a strong God andan amazing nation has made a guy

like me even possible. As a Republican I believe its also thestory of the GOP, which I like to call the Great OpportunityParty.

Let me share my story with you and explainhow conservative principles made it possible.Growing up in a single parent household,my parents got divorced when I was about

seven, and I started drifting. By the time Iwas 14, I flunked out of high school.

As I freshman I failed world geography, and I failed civicsmaybe the only senator to do that. Yet when I got to theSenate, I was comfortable after all, because lots of those guyson the other side have failed civics too. I also failed Spanishand English. After doing that, they dont call you bilingual,they call you bi-ignorantand thats where I found myunhappy self.

A Mother and a Mentor

But I had two major blessings. One was a strong mama.My mama is an amazing woman. She would work 16-hourdays as a nurses aide, making sure we stayed off welfare.She believed she needed to set the example for her boys tofollow, and she worked hard at it. So when I flunked out,she was none too happy with me.

Mama believed that sometimes love has to come at theend of a switch. For those of you in the West who dontunderstand what that is, a switch is a Southern apparatus ofencouragement, typically applied from your beltline to yourankles. And my mama encouraged me a lot that freshmanyear.

Tim Scott was reelected to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina in 2014 after movingover from the U.S. House on a vacancy appointment in 2013. The CharlestonSouthern University graduate was previously a city councilman and state legislatorHe delivered these remarks on July 19 at Western Conservative Summit 2014

Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhancepublic understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nationBy proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedomteach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.

he second blessing that came my way was a small businessowner named John Monice, a Chick-Fil-A operator. Hewas a conservative Republican, though I didnt know ityet. All I knew was that John showed up at the right time,and he started telling me some very important lessons.

He said, im, you dont have to play football or be anentertainer in order to be successful in America. You canthink your way out of poverty. I had never heard thisbefore. I thought the only way out was playing for theDallas Cowboys.

Sorry, I know this is Denver Broncos territory. hree of

my top staff are from Colorado, and it does pain me to seeall the orange in my office.

John Monice, my mentor, also taught me that if you havea job, youve done well. But if you create jobs, youve doneextraordinarily well. If you make an income, you cansupport yourself. But if you make a profit, you can changethe life of your family and your community. his became

the very fabric of my journey towardconservatism.

Amazing Journey

here I was, a 15-year-old kid learningthese very basic business principlesthatthe free market works, and that making a profit can bean amazing journey in America. I bought it fully over thecourse of four years. But then when I was 19 years old andJohn was only 38, he died.

Knowing him had changed the course of my life, though.I set my mission statement to positively impact the livesof a billion people with a message of hope, based on myfaith in Christ Jesus, and a message of opportunity, basedon Johns lessons of financial literacy.

I started on course toward business ownership, and intime I had a great successful business. What a change fromthe way we had grown up, living with my grandparents in

OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL:HOW MY STORY BECAME

MY AGENDABy Tim Scott

ISSUEMONDAY

JAN.

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The Power of School Choice

In D.C. the cost per student for a public education is around$21,000. Some of you said, Wow. Only 56 percent of thestudents graduate, and very few of those students go on to geta college degree.

For contrast, here are the results of school choice: 93%graduate, 91% go on to a two-year or four-year institution,and 93% of the parents are happy. hats from the D.C.

Opportunity Scholarship program as it previously operated,currently shut down, which my Choice Act would restart.And it only costs $8500 per student, versus $21,000 fortypical public education.

If we are looking for a way to change the dynamics in whovotes for us, the issue of education cannot be owned bythe other side. We have to do our part, and when we do,the results are amazing. Im taking this agenda around thecountry, and people love the concept of choice.

But why is it that when people start liking something, thefederal government sues? Whats the correlation? When

Louisiana went forward with a school choice agenda, theU. S. Department of Justice took them to court. he theoryseemed to be that you cannot help poor kids get a bettereducation because it will hurt public education. [Editor:

Louisiana won.]

I believe, though, that the wayyou improve public educationis to decentralize things fromWashington and send the controland the money back to the states.

Do that very quickly. he average employee at the U.S.

Department of Education makes $103,000 a year and theaverage teacher makes $53,000. hats backwards.

People say we have a money problem in education. No, wehave a priority problem. his country spends $700 billionannually on education when you add the states and thefederal government together. We can do better. We shoulddemand better.

Rachels Victory

he other part of the Choice Act simply says that kids withspecial needs deserve to maximize their individual potential.So if someone cant get the education child needs in theirown zip code, we should make the IDEA grants, the moneyfor special needs kids, portable.

Just like we have school choice for vulnerable kids and failingor underperforming school districts, we should allow thesame thing for our kids with special needs.

I like to illustrate this with the story of Rachel Lewis, akindergartner in South Carolina, a young lady with Downsyndrome but doing pretty well in mainstream classes whenshe was five.

Centennial Review January 2015

We have

a priority

problem.

WILL DEMOCRATS GO THE WAY

OF THE WHIGS?

By William Moloney

Whenever the Democrats win an election,

they promptly issue an obituary for the

Republican Party. In mock solicitude

they advise the GOP on what it must doto save itself and avoid the same oblivion

suffered by the 19th century Whigs. But

maybe its the Democrats who should

worry about becoming an endangered species.

Republicans now control 69 of 99 state legislative

chambers, 31 of 50 governorships, and both houses of

Congress. Electoral demographics also point to a growing

GOP dominance in the future.

For years Democrats have bloviated that the gender gap

was a mortal threat to Republican electoral prospects.While its true that female voters have decidedly preferred

Democrats for years, the fact is that male voters show an

even greater preference for Republicans.

he Democrats edge with women narrows considerably

in some elections, and strong GOP candidates sometimes

win the female vote outright, as did Greg Abbott and John

Kasich in 2014. On the other hand, the GOP hold on

male voters has been stronger and more consistent since

the time of Ronald Reagan, particularly in the South.

Democrats are equally delusional in their belief thatAmericas growing Hispanic population guarantees them

future political dominance. Even with projections that

the U.S. Hispanic electorate, currently about 10%, will

grow to 16% by 2030, thats still less than one-sixth of

the nations total electorate. About 40% of all Hispanics

reside in just three statesCalifornia, New York, and New

Jerseyalready safe for Democrats and thus offering little

political upside.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the Democrats future,

however, is their misreading of the countrys largest

minority group, seniors. In the last three electioncycles, Republican support among seniors has surged,

culminating in a 57% GOP landslide in 2014. And they

are the countrys largest and fastest-growing population

subset, to be 31% of the country by 2030. Whigs, anyone?

William Moloney is a Centennial Institute fellow in

conservative thought and a former Colorado education

commissioner. A longer version of

this article appears on the 76 Blog at

Centennialccu.org

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Lets help more

kids rise up.

Opportunity for All:How My StoryBecame My AgendaBy im Scott

Flunking out of school at 14, learningthe ropes in business at 15, later acollege graduate and business owner

himself, Senator Scott credits his turnaround to a devoted

mother and a wise mentor who challenged him: Tinkyour way out of poverty. Such thinking prompted hisresolve to positively impact the lives of a billion peoplewith a message of hope and opportunity.

eachers got uncomfortable with her being around the otherstudents, however, and tried to push her into a special needsclass. Her parents fought to get her back in the mainstreamclass. After a year and a half, they were successful. But theywere concerned that these same teachers who fought topush her out were now going to be the ones responsible for

educating her. Not good.hey were able to take her to a private school, Hiddenreasure, and today at age 20 Rachel has graduated fromthere with her high school diploma and gone to work. Infact, she doesnt just have one job, she hastwo.

It shows that if we give people the opportunityto maximize their potential, they can succeedbeyond the wildest imagination. Like whatit says in Ephesians 3:20: He is able to do exceedingabundantly above all that we ask or even imagine. hats

the picture I want for our kids.Energy Potential

he second part of my opportunity agenda is how to builda better economy. ime permits me just one example,energy. Our economic recovery, anemic as it is, has been

driven by energy production. Yet today the president iconsidering whether to federalize the regulation of frackingand horizontal drilling, practically taking over the energyindustry. hats a bad idea.

I have a bill called the SEA Jobs Act aimed at unlockingresources on the Atlantic outer continental shelf, deposits

of natural gas we could seismically identify. If we do thatSouth Carolina could see $1.8 billion of new revenue. hefour-state region could see over $10 billion of new revenue

Nine million jobs today in America are connected to oiand gas, and that could double in the next 15years. We could see North Dakota levels ounemployment all across America. But hereagain, as with school choice, if somethingstarts working right, the president thinks its

wrong. hats a problem we have to solve. And we can.

We can return America to the brightest path forwardwith the greatest opportunities for success. Well see morekids like me rising up, not to be senators, but to be CEOsand presidents, leaders and difference-makers in theircommunities. God bless you all. God has already blessedthe United States of America.

WESTERN CONSERVATIVESUMMIT 2015Your Story: Freedom Alive

Americas story is fading? Your story doesnt matter?

Some say so. Well showem different at

June 26-28 at the Colorado Convention CenterPlus: Young Conservatives Leadership Conference II

City on a Hill with Hugh HewittJune 21-26 at Colorado Christian University

Save big when you buy WCS or YCLC tickets by January 31westernconservativesummit.com or 800-937-8728