Let them eat cake — and ice cream!

Spend 20 years listening to politicians yammer on, and you'll detect a common theme. No matter what mischief they are up to, they always claim to have the purest, most sacred motives at heart.

We've got to clean up our streets ... for the children.

This country must stop its liberal spending ... for the children.

The House must impeach this heathen president before someone has to explain all of this in really graphic terms ... for the children.

But the question right now is: When we cut $20 million for new school buses and $30 million for education, who is that for?

Some state senators have said that because the state is having a revenue shortfall, we're just going to have to forget about the shiny new buses. And because everyone has to share the pain, state schools systems stand to lose

$30 million.

Help us understand: Is this for the children?

Will it make them better students to push one of the most unsafe, broken-down buses in the country down Highway 52 on a cool winter's morn?

Maybe that passes for P.E. in the Upstate, but down here it sounds like two other initials, and the first one is B.

And is the cut to education funding, admittedly not a big chunk of their budget, for the children? Nah, that's just a little tickle compared to what's to come. You know, when they finally get around to choking public schools

to death and funneling their money to private schools.

That's for the children β€” well, some of them.

Gov. Mark Sanford says the Legislature ought to cut the competitive grants program to take care of budget shortfalls. Surprise, surprise β€” Sanford hates that little slush fund, even if it did help out the governor's

conference here a couple of years ago.

He has a point: What's more important, your kid riding on a safe school bus, or you getting to see the New Original Drifters for free at the Grady Squash Festival?

If you had to think about that, just call DSS right now and turn yourself in β€” or go buy a Drifters box set.

But Sanford is just, in parlance, throwing a skunk into the room (what is it with this guy and animals?). He knows that legislators aren't about to give up their mad money in an election year.

That would be too controversial right now, much like legalizing Monopoly.

Of course, because all politicians take the oath and drink the Kool-Aid to do everything for the children, they have been working around the clock to straighten out this issue, to find a way to get those kids to good schools

on safe school buses. Right?

Wrong.

They've been trying to figure out whether they ought to outlaw lap dancing.

Maybe if they'd go ahead and do it, they wouldn't have anything else to do at night except worry about the children.

Reach Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com.