www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Thursday, August 16, 2012
Corinth, Miss.
Letters to the editor Spending some now on Corinth — or a lot later To the editor: I am a Corinthian. I was born and reared here and have many fond memories. After living in Memphis for the last 17 years, I am thrilled to call Corinth home again! Being away caused me to long to raise my son in Mississippi. Corinth has a lot to brag about — our strong public school, cost of living is reasonable, low crime, Southern charm, a growing hospital, and most importantly, the warm and friendly people. I am saddened when I brag about Corinth to most outsiders and all they know about Corinth is what they see driving down U.S. Highway 72. Corinth is rich in history and rich in people, and I want everyone to see what I see. Come shop, come eat, come play in Corinth — come spend your money here. Like any small or large city, we must have a plan for the future. We must first update the drainage and ensure the piping system is updated so we keep our citizens safe especially during storms. We must take care of our current streets by repaving so kids can ride bikes without falling in a pothole. We must tear down abandoned residential and commercial buildings to keep crime out and make our town look better. We must ensure all streets are visibly marked and on every street. We must clean up U.S. Highway 72 and do a better job of creating various entrances to encourage people to visit. I realize we are all on a budget and every penny counts, but I feel it is like making home repairs. We either spend some now or a lot later. I am so encouraged with Corinth and I really feel we are on the brink of something great. I would like to give my thanks to Mayor Tommy Irwin and the Board of Aldermen for creating the Corinth Future Fare program. One of my favorite quotes is from John D. Rockefeller. It says, “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” Let’s continue to make Corinth great! David W. Dixon Webster Street, Corinth
Let’s support the plan to improve Corinth To the editor: I want to express my support for Future Fare. We have many needs in our city that must be addressed. Often in the past we patched things instead of doing them the right way. We have many of our streets in desperate need of repair. The city is filled with dilapidated houses that need to be torn down. Future Fare will make much more money available to clean up. As we try to get new business to come to Corinth, we need to make good impressions on those looking at us as a place to invest. Let’s support this plan to improve our city. James Eley Fillmore St., Corinth
Prayer for today Lord God, help each of us to find our way of serving you so we can make music that delights you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
A verse to share Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33 (NIV)
Worth quoting To love beauty is to see light. — Victor Hugo
Sound Off Policy Effective immediately, the Daily Corinthian Sound Off policy will be the same as its Letter to the Editor Policy. Sounds Offs need to be submitted with a name, address, contact phone number and if possible, e-mail address, for author verification. The author’s name and city of residence will be published with the Sound Off. Sound Offs will only accepted from those who wish to have their names published with their opinion. All other Letter to the Editor rules apply for Sound Offs.
Reece Terry publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
Occupy Wall Street paved the way BY WILLIAM A. COLLINS Super-rich Don’t hear our woes; They attend, To cars and clothes. The Occupy movement seems somewhat subdued these days. That’s largely because the 1 percent is ready for them. Consider how Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel prepared for the May NATO conference in the Windy City, which drew countless Occupy protesters: He outfitted his troops with new laws, new military equipment, and new surveillance gear — and authorized them to make old-fashioned trumped-up arrests. And while Occupy Wall Street and other branches of this new movement have brought attention to our nation’s rampant inequality, where do you go next to address the concentration of extreme wealth in the hands of too few individuals? It’s shattered both our economy and our democracy. But there’s no congressional committee in charge of that. Sure, President Barack Obama himself has dipped into the debate over inequality. First, he called for every American to have what he called “a fair shot.”
More recently, he ridiculed Mitt Romney’s tax proposal during an address to supporters in Stamford, Connecticut as “Robin Hood in reverse,” or “Romney Hood.” But really tackling the problem? That’s probably above his pay grade. In an earlier era, we had a president born to privilege who helped weave the fabric of America’s safety net. But unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, Romney isn’t interested in addressing the challenges our nation faces because of extreme inequality. He’d rather hide behind’s his wife’s saddle, complaining that the media is picking on her for being into million-dollar, Olympic-contending dressage horses. The Occupiers smartly chose to first camp out on Wall Street, rather than Pennsylvania Avenue. The big banks are the center of the problem, so why not simply confront them on their own turf? Activists rightly guessed that the coverage would be better in Manhattan, where the media is less inured to protests than their jaded brethren in Washington. By now, however, the Big Apple’s reporters are bored with flamboyant efforts to shine a light
on the power our outsized banks wield. Of course, the scourge of inequality harms all Americans, not just activists residing in media-saturated cities. And it’s only one of a panoply of crises. Median family income is declining, the foreclosure epidemic rages on, we’re still exporting manufacturing and service-sector jobs at a brisk rate, health insurance remains out of reach for millions, highly profitable companies are declaring war on their unions, Romney’s advocating a tax plan that would cut taxes on the rich and raise them on the rest of us, and public schools and college students are being squeezed by spending cuts. No wonder thousands of disgusted citizens have taken to the streets. Since young people are the bestequipped to camp out in the rain, they tend to lead the charge, especially if they’re stuck with big college debts and no job prospects. In fact, total college debt now exceeds total credit card debt. Can you imagine what would happen if a movement grew to stop paying? Anyway, to foment serious change in the face of militarized police depart-
ments and a media that increasingly caters to the 1 percent, the Occupy movement needs more allies. Even peaceful revolutions require song writers, bloggers, political operatives, and upper-crust dissidents. Not to mention more people on the streets. But most Americans aren’t yet comfortable on the streets. They have no sufficiently hated target like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. And while millions are suffering, most of us haven’t been evicted or foreclosed on. This spring, preparing for the day when we will finally be ready, Occupy and its allies ran hundreds of activist training sessions, getting the protest infrastructure all lined up and fired up. But when will we see really huge crowds out there? How impoverished will we have to be before we join in? Beats me, but Occupy has beaten the trail for us, mapped the course, and is impatiently waiting. (OtherWords and Daily Corinthian columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Conn. He can be contacted at OtherWords.org.)
Anti-Ryan smears ignore the truth Democrats believe fervently in the folly of Paul Ryan’s ideas, yet somehow can’t speak about them truthfully. They are confident they can destroy Ryan -- not because they think they can win the debate over his proposals on the merits, but because they are certain they can distort those proposals with impunity. Mitt Romney’s inspiring (and inspired) choice of the Wisconsin budget maven as his running mate had commentators on both sides welcoming a clear choice for the country. Romney had done us a favor, they said, in ensuring such a stark clash of visions. The League of Women Voters would approve. This Hallmark sentiment is nice, though naive. The battle of ideas will be as unsightly and dishonest as the battle over Bain Capital. If Democrats will lie about Mitt Romney killing a woman, it’s only a matter of scale to lie about him unloosing a near-genocidal assault on America’s seniors. Immediately upon Ryan’s selection, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina released a statement that recalled author Mary McCarthy’s put-down of left-wing
Beth Cossitt
Mark Boehler
business manager bcossitt@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
press foreman
playwright Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and Rich ‘the.’” Lowery Messina scored Ryan National for his “budReview get-busting tax cuts for the wealthy” (except that there aren’t tax cuts, budget-busting or otherwise), for bringing to an “end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system” (except there’s no voucher, and Medicare benefits would stay exactly the same), and for “shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors” (except the Ryan plan doesn’t apply to today’s seniors, nor will it shift costs onto the seniors of the future). The Democrats never want to admit three things about Ryan’s Medicare plan. First, that it doesn’t affect anyone over age 55 and won’t kick in for another 10 years. Conceding this makes the job of frightening elderly voters trickier, so it is best ignored. Second, that the current version of the Ryan plan
gives future beneficiaries the option to keep traditional Medicare. They will choose among a menu of insurance plans, including a fee-for-service federal option, all of which will be required to offer at least the same level of benefits as Medicare now. The federal government will pay everyone’s premiums up to a level matching the secondlowest-priced plan in a given area. There’s no reason a beneficiary will have to pay more (although he can choose a pricier plan and pay the difference). Third, that Ryan and President Barack Obama cap overall Medicare spending at the same level. The president is adamant that the growth of Medicare is unsustainable — and rightly so. Everyone acknowledges the program is the foremost driver of our longterm debt. Both Ryan and the president use the same formula of roughly GDP growth plus inflation for setting Medicare’s global budget. The difference is that the president wants a bureaucratic board to get the savings through arbitrary limits on prices that ultimately will limit access to care, while Ryan wants to get the savings through
World Wide Web: www.dailycorinthian.com To Sound Off: E-mail: email: news@dailycorinthian.com Circulation 287-6111 Classified Adv. 287-6147
competition and choice. The Democrats’ demagoguery should be further crimped by the fact that they voted $700 billion in cuts in Medicare to fund Obamacare, not in the faroff future, but right now. Ryan preserved the cuts in his budget but set them aside for the Medicare trust fund. Mitt Romney wants to repeal Obamacare in its entirety, including the Medicare cuts. What the Ryan plan offers, most fundamentally, is a vision of a reformed entitlement state that won’t require massive new tax increases or debt to fund. For all the talk of the “radicalism” of his budget, it keeps taxes at a slightly higher level of GDP than they have averaged over the past several decades. Ten years from now, federal spending still would be at a higher level of GDP than it was at the end of the Clinton years. This vision — now at the center of the campaign — deserves a serious, honest debate, and will assuredly not get it. (Daily Corinthian columnist Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review. He can be reached via email: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.)
How to reach us -- extensions:
Newsroom.....................317 Circulation....................301 news@dailycorinthian.com advertising@dailycorinthian. Advertising...................339 Classifieds....................302 com Classad@dailycorinthian.com Bookkeeping.................333
Editorials represent the voice of the Daily Corinthian. Editorial columns, letters to the editor and other articles that appear on this page represent the opinions of the writers and the Daily Corinthian may or may not agree.