www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
What should Republicans do? BY DICK MORRIS The new NBC poll has sent shock waves through the political world. This government shutdown is triggering a disastrous decline in Republican fortunes and has left President Obama largely unaffected. ■ GOP approval is down to 24 percent, the lowest ever and a drop of ten points in two weeks. Democratic Party approval is 43 percent, down four percent. ■ By 53-31 percent, people blame the Republicans for the shutdown. ■ Seventy percent of people say the Republicans put their own agenda ahead of the needs of the country. (Only 51 percent say that about Obama.) ■ Two-thirds think the shutdown is hurting the economy. Only 17 percent expect the economy to improve next year. 43 percent expect it to worsen. ■ The percent that say the country is on the right track has dropped from 30 percent two weeks ago -- very low -- to just 14 percent now -- very, very, very low. These data indicate that the Republicans are headed toward losing the House and the Senate in 2014 unless they change course. What should they do? 1. End the shutdown immediately by passing a continuing resolution to fund the government EXCEPT that the subsidy lawmakers get for health insurance should be ended. The public will applaud this and God grant that Obama is dumb enough to oppose it! 2. Agree to the six-week debt extension but demand in return $70 billion of spending cuts (dollar for dollar with the debt increase) AND demand that Treasury Secretary Liu commit to prioritizing the use of tax revenues to pay debt service interest in the event we bump up against the debt limit ever again, ending the risk of default. 3. In the long-term debt talks, demand a dollar for dollar cut in spending for each increase in borrowing. Also seek an end to the Independent Payment Advisory Board in Obamacare -- the so-called death panels -that hasn’t had the members appointed yet, repeal the medical device tax and gain approval for the Keystone pipeline. 4. Let Obamacare die of its own troubles. Very few are signing up, and the system can’t work without many more sign-ups. Let it unravel on its own. Republicans do no service to their constituents by committing suicide. (Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
Prayer for today Lord God, thou knowest what I am and where I belong. Have mercy upon me and strengthen me, that I may not through weakness stay in the darkness. Lead me out into the light; and may I find my way and be contented with it. Amen.
A verse to share “For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.” -- Mark 6:52
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Breaking Good: State’s meth law works While the country was mesmerized by high school chemistry teacher Walter White’s descent into ruin in the TV series “Breaking Bad” the truth is that methamphetamine manufacture is a filthy, dangerous and soul-crushing affair. Mississippi gets smacked around pretty good when people compare indices of economic progress, education, health outcomes, and income. Our people get pretty tired of hearing the latest measure in which our state ranks 50th. But there’s a new example in which Mississippi was among national leaders in an initiative to do something proactive to impede the manufacture of methamphetamine in Mississippi – an enterprise that had reached epidemic proportions prior to the courageous 2010 act of the Mississippi Legislature in adopting key legislation to make meth manufacture substantially more difficult in the state. The Legislature passed a law establishing that a prescription is required to
buy pseudoephedrine products in Mississippi. The state became the to Sid Salter second pass such Columnist a measure, joining Oregon. By 2010, methamphetamine had become the new moonshine in Mississippi. It’s relatively easy to make, the precursors were cheap and readily available at a lot of locations in even the smallest Mississippi towns and the demand for the drug was high. Just as poor Mississippians got into the whiskey still business during hard times in the state’s past, poor Mississippians were also making meth not simply for consumption themselves but for retail opportunities as well. So were garden variety drug dealers and other assorted thugs who choose to profit off the misery of others. I well recall accompanying law enforcement officers on a drug raid and
seeing an infant in a dirty diaper crawling on the floor amid buckets of caustic chemicals in a “shake and bake” meth lab in a private home. With that in mind, if would have seemed that passing such legislation would have been a political slam dunk. It wasn’t. Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Director Marshall Fisher became at once the chief cheerleader of the new law and the chief punching bag for its opponents. Fisher told lawmakers in 2010 that meth was Mississippi’s top drug problem — surpassing even powder and crack cocaine. That’s why the Legislature’s apparent decision to make over the counter cold remedy medications containing pseudoephedrine prescription-only drugs is such a huge victory for drug enforcement in this state. During the legislative battle, many otherwise solid citizens argued vehemently that they should not be inconvenienced or burdened by the additional expense of the new law by having to
get a prescription for medicines they were procuring and using in a legal manner. They argued that making over-the-counter cold remedy medications containing pseudoephedrine prescription-only drugs punished law-abiding citizens rather than drug dealers and drug users. But lawmakers also heard from child advocates and law enforcement officers who told them that where you find meth manufacture and consumption, you will also find child abuse, child molestation, child neglect, prostitution and a host of other societal evils. Three years later, MBN says the number of operational meth labs in Mississippi have declined 97 percent. Mississippi is now a leading state in the reduction of meth labs. Mississippi, it seems, is “breaking good” in its approach to making life hard on meth dealers. (Daily Corinthian columnist Sid Salter is syndicated across the state. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.)
Big government is not really a bad thing If a stranger resembling Texan Ted Cruz sat down next to me on the Greyhound, I’d change seats. His look is somewhere between post-office pin-up and a Grecian Formula television ad. The wonder is not that “normal” Republicans followed his asinine lead, but that a major national political party didn’t have a better plan than listening for 21 hours as Cruz postured, pontificated and read “Green Eggs and Ham.” Shutting down the government is never as popular as the Radio Right would have you believe. It is a Pied Piper ploy every time. Democrats, meanwhile, are rising in the polls along with the numbers for approval of Obamacare and even President Barack Obama. All they had to do was act as eager eyewitness to the other party’s gleefully shooting its foot. The dreaded Obamacare launch was a wild success
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or failure, depending, of course, on whom you asked. So many of our citiRheta zens wanted Johnson help from the new inColumnist surance exchanges that at its debut, the computer website crashed. You could, as Republicans tried to do, say that constitutes an Obamacare failure. The glass-half-full contingent, however, insists that it shows the desperation the uninsured feel and their determination to be a part of this program. It’s as if -- imagine -- millions of people have been waiting for help. One thing is certain. The government shutdown is once again the perfect illustration of why it is stupid to cuss Big Government in a Big Country. The armed forces, the
parks, the roads, the dams, the courts, the schools, the land grant colleges, the museums, the monuments, the bank insurance, the airtraffic controllers, the Social Security checks, veterans hospitals, environmental protection, disease control, meat inspection, Medicare and Medicaid, and, yes, welfare -- all the clocklike workings that you don’t think about till there’s a glitch or abuse or a shutdown -constitute Big Government. They are Big Government. It is an odd thing to oppose, when you think about it outside the context of Republican rants. Only the most simplistic mind could even imagine a huge, wellpopulated, diverse, industrialized and civilized nation not needing what must, by necessity, amount to a big and complex government. The mantra of “less government” should be revisited while the government is, well, less. How are you
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liking it so far? It is amazing what people will oppose for fear that someone else might benefit or gain a foothold in our society. Some will do without themselves to prevent others from forging ahead. The extreme and unfortunate way to show that there is a legitimate role for government is to shut it down. Perhaps the most bullheaded amongst us needs his own ox gored. As for the Democrats, beware. This rise in popularity isn’t a fixed status. It may have changed by the time you read this. Now would be the perfect opportunity for Obama and his administrative folk to sally forth and sell their ideas with clear explanation and purpose from atop this galloping gift horse. (To find out more about Daily Corinthian columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson and her books, visit www. rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com.)
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