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Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Thursday, December 19, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
Education, health care are key budget issues BY CECIL BROWN State Representative
Gov. Phil Bryant and the Republican controlled Legislative Budget Committee (LBC) have released their state budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year. Despite a growing economy that will produce more than $400 million in new tax revenue over the next two years, the Republicans have once again failed to add any additional funds to the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), the state’s formula for determining the level of appropriations for our public schools. MAEP is currently some $265 million below the amount required by law. If these budget recommendations are enacted during the upcoming legislative session, every school district will receive 12 percent less than the amount of money both the legislature and previous governors have determined is necessary to provide every child the opportunity to receive an adequate education. Operating costs continue to escalate in school districts. For example, we know that in districts served by Mississippi Power Company utility costs will increase by some 25 percent in the next few years. Across the state other operating costs are increasing as well. In some cases funding shortages will result in cuts to in personnel, books and school supplies. In other cases, school boards will increase local property taxes to make up the shortfall. Either way, the recommended budgets are short sighted and indefensible. Ninety percent of all Mississippi kids attend public schools, and the Republican budget proposals are threatening their future. For the second year in a row, Mississippi’s Republican leadership is jeopardizing the health of hundreds of thousands of our state’s citizens by refusing to create a state-based health insurance exchange and expand the Medicaid program. Two independent studies have projected that expansion of Medicaid would provide significant economic benefits and more than $9 billion of federal funding to Mississippi at very little or no cost to the state. In addition, these studies project that expansion would create between upwards of 12,000 private sector jobs in Mississippi. Rejecting expansion will cause us to miss the opportunity for those jobs. Those studies also point out how Medicaid expansion can provide a substantial amount of financial support to many of our hospitals. Under current law, our hospitals will lose millions of federal dollars over the next several years. Those losses should be offset by money from the expansion of the Medicaid program. By rejecting expansion, the governor and the legislative leadership are endangering the survival of health care providers across the state, including our hospitals. There is no better example of the governor’s willingness to put his partisan politics ahead of what is good for the state than his budget recommendation to cover losses at our hospitals with state tax revenue rather than take advantage of the federal funding that would go to these very same hospitals under expansion. There are many recommendations in both the governor’s budget and the LBC budget with which Democrats agree. But we cannot agree to continue underfunding public education and to denying basic health insurance to our hardworking fellow Mississippians. Cecil Brown represents Mississippi’s District 66, which includes Hinds County, in the state House of Representatives.
Prayer for today Dear Lord, help us to devote time each day to serving you. Open our eyes to see where we are needed. Amen.
A verse to share “And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.” – Luke 1:30
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GOP seeks fewer debates, dumber reporters BY ROGER SIMON I understand that politics is petty, vicious and disgraceful. I just don’t want to take all the fun out of it. The Republican Party is now considering changes in its rules to squeeze the last remaining pleasure out of politics. According to Peter Hamby of CNN, a special party subcommittee is considering dramatically reducing the number of Republican debates and taking control over which journalists get to moderate them. This is not being done in the name of reform. This is being done in the name of “let’s stop kicking ourselves in the groin.” The theory goes like this: The more the public sees the potential Republican nominees for president the more the public tends to dislike them. One reason is that the potential Republican nominees dislike the potential Republican nominees. In February 2012, Newt Gingrich, while running for the Republican nomination, said that Mitt Romney was “fundamentally dishonest” and “pro-abortion, progun control and pro-tax increase.” Accusing a politician of being fundamentally dishonest is like accusing a
ballerina of dancing on her toes. No big deal. But accusing a Republican of being for abortion, against guns and for taxes is serious stuff. Naturally, Romney had to prove that he was none of those things. So every time Romney got attacked by his fellow Republicans, he had to move further to the right to get around them. Unfortunately, the people he had to get around included Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain. That was less like a presidential field and more like a therapy group. The debates were full of bad moments, especially for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was considered by the media to be a formidable candidate until Perry got on stage and opened his mouth. In one memorable debate, Perry could not name the third of three government agencies that he would shut down as president. He had a 53-second “brain freeze” on live television and ended up saying, “Whoops!” It is worth keeping in mind that Perry was not asked to name the three agencies by any of the journalists on stage. Perry raised the subject himself and then just drew a blank. Though the press eviscerated him, to
many viewers it seemed like a perfectly human and genuinely funny moment. Which is why the Republicans now want to make sure it never happens again. According to CNN, one Republican source says there is a “heavy appetite” not just to severely reduce the number of debates, but also to control which journalists get to ask questions. This is in keeping with the most important principle of modern politicking: control. Keep the candidate “in the box” as much as possible, and make sure that you select a network and moderator that will be friendly and unchallenging. The ideal 2016 debate, therefore, would go something like this: ANNOUNCER: Coming to you live from the basement of Republican National Headquarters, an officially sanctioned debate moderated by Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly! MEGYN KELLY: My first question is to the entire panel: Is Santa Claus white? TED CRUZ: I don’t know if he’s white, but he sure is fat. Just like Chris Christie. CHRIS CHRISTIE: How about I come over there and bust your kneecaps? RAND PAUL: I don’t know if he is white, but I do
know that he wants to cut the corporate tax in half to create millions of new jobs for the elves. RICK PERRY: There are actually three Santas. They are sometimes called the Three Wise Men. They are Donder, Blitzen and um, um... (53-second brain freeze). MEGYN KELLY: I think those are reindeer. But let me give you an easier question: What is your full name? RICK PERRY: James Richard ... um ... um ... (53-second brain freeze). MEGYN KELLY: You can’t remember your last name? RICK PERRY: Rick? MEGYN KELLY: That’s your nickname. What is your last name, Gov. Perry? RICK PERRY: Governor? MEGYN KELLY: And that’s all the time we have! Join us in six months for our final debate: “Democrats: Threat or Menace?” In reality, the secret to choosing a winning nominee in 2016 is the same for both parties: It is not fewer debates or mushier journalists. It is stronger candidates. So good luck with that. (Roger Simon is chief political columnist of politico. com, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times best selling author.)
Is Putin more in tune with conservative America? Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us? While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian president’s state of the nation address. With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, “In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered.” “They’re now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil.” Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to equate traditional marriage and samesex marriage is to equate good with evil. No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree. President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire “the focus of evil in the modern world.” President Putin is implying that Barack Obama’s America may deserve the title in the 21st century. Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
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Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
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press foreman
Pat Buchanan Columnist
America’s embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood
values. Our grandparents would not recognize the America in which we live. Moreover, Putin asserts, the new immorality has been imposed undemocratically. The “destruction of traditional values” in these countries, he said, comes “from the top” and is “inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of the majority of people.” Does he not have a point? Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over the vehement
objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian. And same-sex marriage is indeed an “abstract” idea unrooted in the history or tradition of the West. Where did it come from? Peoples all over the world, claims Putin, are supporting Russia’s “defense of traditional values” against a “so-called tolerance” that is “genderless and infertile.” While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind. Same-sex marriage is supported by America’s young, but most states still resist it. In France, a million people took to the streets of Paris to denounce the Socialists’ imposition of homosexual marriage. Only 15 nations out of more than 190 have recognized it. While much of American and Western media dismiss him as an authoritarian and reactionary, a throwback, Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm. As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East
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vs. West, the 21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite. And though America’s elite may be found at the epicenter of anti-conservatism and anti-traditionalism, the American people have never been more alienated or more divided culturally, socially and morally. Putin is seeking to redefine the “Us vs. Them” world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west. In his speech, Putin cited Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev whom Solzhenitsyn had hailed for his courage in defying his Bolshevik inquisitors. Though no household word, Berdyaev is favorably known at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Which raises this question: Who is writing Putin’s stuff? (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.
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