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Reece Terry, publisher
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Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Saturday, June 4, 2016
Corinth, Miss.
Historic session yields notable successes BY NICK BAIN State Representative, District 2
When the House of Representatives adjourned “Sine Die” on April 21, there was little doubt that this had been an historic legislative session. Approximately 1,789 House bills and 969 Senate bills had been filed at the beginning of the session, and when all was done, only 119 House bills and 100 Senate bills had survived the process. To be sure, there were a number of measures I strongly supported that did not survive – for whatever reasons. I had introduced a measure to curb corruption in government (HB 1200) that died, for example. Another measure that I supported and co-sponsored would have prohibited candidates from using campaign contributions for personal gain. Yet another would have provided for the removal of officials under indictment for certain crimes. I, and a number of my colleagues, felt that matters such as these deserved full hearings and the support of the Legislature. I will be revisiting these topics in the upcoming session with hopes of a greater success rate and support. I am pleased to report that we were able to adjust the Law Enforcement Officers’ Death Benefits Trust Fund so that responders who die as a result of their response to a situation will still receive the benefits. Before, the language of the law stated that an officer or responder must be “killed in action.” However, we had a tragedy in our area whereby a firefighter responded to a fire, inhaled smoke and died as a result several hours later after he succumbed at home. Under the previous law, his family was not eligible to receive the death benefit. We all felt good about changing the technicality so that families such as these would benefit. House Bill 1758 authorized Alcorn County and others to contribute to the Northeast Mississippi Community Services, Inc. We are all grateful for the work this group does to help the less fortunate in our area, and I was proud to author this legislation. There were a number of other bills that I supported that passed, including House Bill 786, which provides that churches have the right to train certain church members on how to handle guns and also provide them with training on protection methods. This will allow churches to have armed security consisting of church members, rather than paid protectors, if they so choose. While there has been quite a bit of negative press on this particular measure, I supported it because I believe that churches should have the right to protect their congregants as they see fit. We all saw what happened at Mother Emmanuel Church in South Carolina last year. As distasteful as the idea of armed guards in churches may be to some, I choose to err on the side of caution for congregants. As you may know, in the waning days of the session, we were confronted with significant shortfalls in current and anticipated revenue, which caused the Appropriations designees to have to slash budgets for the coming year. While we were assured that these steps were being cautiously applied, there was a new idea that gained traction – to sweep the special funds out of agencies and budget that money out of the general fund. When the law of unintended consequences comes into play, it is often unrelenting – this action has caused many agencies to fear losing federal matching funds, and agencies like the Health Department are having to cut back on essential services, such as restaurant inspections. Additionally, the Governor is now poised to make even further cuts in agency budgets for the current year. For example, not long after we went home, we learned revenues were down $79 million. I am not going to get into finger pointing or laying blame in an effort to rationalize what we’re facing. As leaders, we are called upon to fix problems, and I believe our energies should be focused on fixing the problem. I will certainly do what I can to help. It would not be a surprise if we are called into special session to address these issues. I am so proud to represent Alcorn County at our State Capitol, and I am especially proud of all of you who paid us a visit during the session. It did my heart good to introduce you to my colleagues. I will continue to do my best to represent our citizens in a way that will make you proud of me, too. While I realize that some of the stands and votes I take may not please everyone, I will remain true to my upbringing, my community, and my faith, rather than to any political party. I believe that’s why you sent me to Jackson.
Prayer for today Gracious Lord, I pray that I may have reverence for that which is pure and holy, and that my soul may delight in the presence of the good. Help me to so live that I may have the memory of precious deeds, and that I may not have to depend on the service of others to supply contentment for my closing days. Amen.
A verse to share The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. — Revelation 3:5
Donald Trump, the GOP id Even Donald Trump’s defenders on the right are hard-pressed to argue that he is conservative. He is, nonetheless, a kind of conservative dream candidate. Few politicians in memory have so powerfully tapped into and expressed the conservative id, which has long yearned for a Republican politician willing to heap the verbal abuse on the Clintons and, especially, on the media that they so manifestly deserve. Except on cable and talk radio, the conservative id tends to get smothered by the hated Republican superego, i.e., “the establishment” of campaign consultants, donors and opinion-makers who worry about things like propriety and scaring off swing voters. Since Trump has no superego keeping him in check – he doesn’t care about the political rules or personal manners – he can unleash unbridled hell on “Crooked Hillary” and the dishonest media. At a news conference about the money he raised for veterans groups at an Iowa event earlier this year, Trump called one reporter “a sleaze” and another “a real beauty” (it wasn’t a compliment). He displayed a smash-mouth disregard for the assembled media horde that is deeply satisfying for every Republican who wishes a Bush, McCain or Romney had done the same. They say that Trump’s garish wealth is aspirational – people think that, if they were billionaires, they would spend on all the same conspicuous consumption. For lots of Republicans, Trump’s outrageous
treatment of the media is just as aspirational – if they had the opportunity to tell off Tom Llamas of ABC, or any other mainstream reporter, they Rich would resort to all the Lowry same insults. What is policy or National knowledge compared Review with this moving feast of contempt for the right’s enemies? Trump could promise to nationalize the banks, and as long as he was calling a reporter a guttersnipe or retromingent every day, he’d probably still pass muster with his supporters. A central insight of the Trump campaign was captured in the philosophy inculcated in the salespeople of Trump University: “You don’t sell products, benefits or solutions – you sell feelings.” Trump is channeling legitimate feelings. The press is biased and highhanded, and deserves to be taken down a notch. Too often, Republicans resort to a defensive crouch in the face of criticism. The conservative writer Rick Brookhiser has said of self-flagellating Republicans, “In their hearts, they know they are wrong.” Trump knows he’s right – or at least adopts a posture of supreme self-confidence – even when he’s in the wrong. Ultimately, the media’s offense in the matter of Trump’s veterans funding was to call him on not yet having fulfilled his promise to make his own highly touted $1 million contribution, but he acts
like he is a modern-day Clara Barton who just can’t catch a break from the heedless jackals of the media. If Trump has an elemental appeal to his supporters, he also drags down the right to its lowest common denominator. Forget the philosophers, the books, the ideas, the policies, the entire intellectual infrastructure of conservatism as it’s been developed over decades – insulting the right people is just as, if not more, important. Forget the sermonizing about the centrality of personal probity and trustworthiness, elevated into a fever pitch during the controversies of Bill Clinton’s presidency – the cardinal virtue is sheer combativeness. Forget the suspicion of state power and the fear that it can be wielded to punish those who antagonize people in high office – it all depends, apparently, on who is punishing whom. During a time when conservatives are rightly consumed with preserving free speech from its left-wing antagonists, they are rallying around a man who has made an art form of shutting down critics through lawsuits real and threatened; who muses about changing libel law to make silencing unwelcome voices easier; and who wants the government to use antitrust law to crack down on a newspaper owner – Jeff Bezos – whose publication features coverage he doesn’t like. The id may be a powerful force, but no one ever said it is pretty. (Daily Corinthian columnist Rich Lowry can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview. com.)
Hillary rejects ‘America First’ “Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order.” Thus did page one of Thursday’s New York Times tee up Hillary Clinton’s big San Diego speech on foreign policy. Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point: “Clinton to Portray Trump as Risk to the World.” The Times promoted the speech as “scorching,” a “sweeping and fearsome portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in the coming months.” What is happening here? As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America’s broken borders and Bill Clinton’s trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as “temperamentally unfit” to be commander in chief. In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump. William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton. Robert Kagan contributed an oped to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is “how fascism comes to America.” Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid. For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with
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failures. As senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had not attacked us and did Pat not want war with us. Buchanan Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, anColumnist other way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country, costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars. That invasion was the worst blunder in U.S. history and a contributing factor to the deepening disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate ourselves. As secretary of state, Clinton supported the unprovoked U.S.-NATO attack on Libya and joked of the lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, “We came. We saw. He died.” Whether or not Clinton was complicit in the debacle in Benghazi, can anyone defend her deceiving the families of the fallen by talking about finding the evildoer who supposedly made the videotape that caused it all? Even then, she knew better. How many other secretaries of state have been condemned by their own inspector general for violating the rules for handling state secrets, for deceiving investigators, and for engaging, along with that cabal she brought into her secretary’s office, in a systematic stonewall to keep the department from learning the truth? Where in all of this is there the slightest qualification, other than a honed instinct for political survival,
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for Clinton to lead America out of the morass into which she, and the failed foreign policy elite nesting around her, plunged the United States? If Trump will stay true to his message, he can win the foreign policy debate, and the election, because what he is arguing for is what Americans want. They do not want any more Middle East wars. They do not want to fight Russians in the Baltic or Ukraine, or the Chinese over some rocks in the South China Sea. They understand that, as Truman had to deal with Stalin, and Ike with Khrushchev, and Nixon with Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev, a U.S. president should sit down with a Vladimir Putin to avoid a clash neither country wants, and from which neither country would benefit. The coming Clinton-neocon nuptials have long been predicted in this space. They have so much in common. They belong with each other. But this country will not survive as the last superpower if we do not shed this self-anointed role as the “indispensable nation” that makes and enforces the rules for the “rules-based world order,” and that acts as first responder in every major firefight on earth. What Trump has hit upon, what the country wants, is a foreign policy designed to protect the vital interests of the United States, and a president who will – ever and always – put America first. (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.)
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