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Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Corinth, Miss.
State views
Lawmakers leave town without a bond bill used BY JACK ELLIOTT JR. JACKSON — Nearly 40 years ago, Mississippi spent federal revenue sharing money on a wide range of new construction at universities, community colleges and public facilities, including renovation of the state Capitol. When revenue sharing ended during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, state lawmakers began issuing bonds for construction projects. That is, until the 2012 session ended this past week. For the first time in as long as people can remember, there is no bond bill. The philosophical lines are drawn, even with Republicans leading the House and Senate. Finger pointing? Oh, yes, there’s plenty. “I was, I guess, stunned,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jeff Smith, R-Columbus. “I thought what we would do once we got into conference (with Senate), we would deal with what they wanted in a bond bill. We never conferred; not a single time.” The House presented the Senate with a proposed $250 million bond package. Republican Tate Reeves is in his first year as lieutenant governor, the Senate’s presiding officer. He spent eight years as state treasurer, and campaigned for the state’s secondhighest office last year on the promise to reduce Mississippi’s long-term debt — to pay down the credit card balance, as it were. Reeves said the House proposal was too much. “It included such important things as $20 million for a sports complex. When the numbers get to such a point, someone has to stand up and say ‘no.’ I did, and that’s exactly what I had told the voters I would do,” Reeves said. He said the proposal offered by the Senate would’ve given the universities $58 million, about 60 percent of what they sought. It also proposed $15 million for the community colleges, slightly less than the average allocation over the past four years. Reeves said the Senate also proposed $7 million in cash and $13 million in bonds for the local bridge rehabilitation program championed by former Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck. “What we didn’t have was a Christmas tree approach where every legislator got what they asked for. We set out priorities and they were funded the right way. I don’t believe there are many taxpayers who believe we ought to increase our debt by $250 million,” Reeves said. Smith countered that the House had a conservative package. “State Treasurer (Lynn) Fitch said we would be paying off $284 million in bonds this year,” Smith said. “The House’s position was that we stay below what we were paying off. We were $34 million less than what we were paying off. That seemed prudent. And the beauty of our position was that we would have a bond bill with $104 million that address the needs of IHL (universities) for the next four years.” Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds said the bond bill could have provided the resources necessary to help the universities provide the learning and living spaces students and faculty. “We are in an extremely competitive higher education market, both for students and faculty. The condition of our facilities impacts our competitive edge and ability to attract students,” Bounds said in a statement. He said the bill gave the universities $96 million for a variety of needs. “The amount is on par with the amount received each year by individual universities in neighboring states, including the University of Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana State University,” Bounds said. “Increasing the educational attainment rate in Mississippi and investing in university research, development and commercialization will strengthen and expand Mississippi’s economy.” Smith described the Senate proposal as a “strange combination of bonds and appropriated dollars.” He said the cash would only be available if the economy grew. “It was ‘Take it or leave it,”’ Smith said. Reeves said it’s prudent to avoid borrowing more money by issuing bonds. He said the Legislature had gotten into a habit of issuing bonds to buy equipment that would be worn out long before the debt was paid off. “That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. We ought to utilize one-time money to pay for R&R on state buildings, college campuses and other projects,” Reeves said. The Senate also let die House-passed bills increasing bond authority for a program that helped rural water systems, for various programs through the Mississippi Development Authority and for construction of the Wellspring Center for Professional Futures, which would offer advanced career courses for high school students from Pontotoc, Union and Lee counties. (Jack Elliott is a writer for Associated Press based in Jackson.)
Reece Terry publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
Obama’s trip tops Mitt’s firehouse pizzas BY ROGER SIMON It’s good to be president. True, you get blamed for stuff. But, if you are smart, you control events far more than events control you. Take campaign optics. The optics of a political event not only establish context and shape meaning, but people remember the images long after they forget the words. Last Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s optics included Romney carrying pizzas into a Lower Manhattan firehouse. Barack Obama’s optics had Obama standing in front of hulking, sand-colored MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) behemoths at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan, as he addressed the people of America. If that strikes you as a grossly unfair comparison, it is because the comparison is grossly unfair. But real. Presidents have certain disadvantages — they get blamed for everything from
unemployment to gas prices — but they also have certain advantages: They have cool stuff like Air Force One to fly them places, and they have the U.S. military to serve as background. Presidential campaigns are about campaigning. Which is to say that a day in which Mitt Romney communed with pizzas and Barack Obama communed with our troops and nation is a day that Romney probably lost. A few days earlier, Romney was asked if he would have ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and Romney replied: “Of course. Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” Even Jimmy Carter? Even the guy who had the guts to order a military mission into Iran in 1979 to try to rescue U.S. hostages? Sure, the mission was a disaster, but Carter tried. And why beat up on a guy best known today for climbing up lad-
ders and building homes for Habitat for Humanity? So with the one-year anniversary of the killing of bin Laden fast approaching, it seemed like a good subject for Romney to slide away from by ... delivering pizzas to a firehouse! What could be better than that? How could Obama possibly top that kind of imaginative optics? So last Tuesday Romney joins up with legend-in-hisown-mind Rudy Giuliani and goes to Joe’s Pizza parlor in the West Village and orders six pizzas for $136. Romney takes out a platinum money clip and slaps down a $10,000 bill — OK, OK, I am lying about the money clip and the bill. Romney pays, leaves a tip, and the two men walk out to a waiting black SUV to proceed to the firehouse. According to Sam Youngman of Reuters, “As Romney leaves Joe’s Pizza carrying three pizzas, someone on the sidewalk shouts, ‘Just don’t put ‘em on the
roof of the car!’” New Yorkers. You gotta love ‘em. The two men motor over to Engine 24, Ladder 5, a firehouse on Sixth Avenue and Houston Street, that lost 11 of its firefighters on 9/11, and Romney and Giuliani, carrying three pizza each, walk past the horde of cameras — and then dump the pizzas into the arms of a waiting aide as soon as the two (incorrectly) assume they are out of camera range. No press is allowed inside, but afterward, speaking about the day bin Laden was “taken out,” Romney says, “We respect and admire the many people who were part of that, from the president who authorized that attack” to all the rest. Romney goes on to criticize Obama for “politicizing” the event, but throughout his remarks a leather-lunged protester is screaming, “Mitt Romney, you’re a racist!” at the top of her lungs.
A nation of ‘cradle to grave’ Julias In the competition for the creepiest campaign material of 2012, we may already have a winner. It is “The Life of Julia,” the Obama re-election team’s cartoon chronicle of a fictional woman who is dependent on government every step of her life. The phrase “cradle to grave welfare state” originated with Clement Attlee’s socialist government in post-World War II Britain. Back then, it was meant as a boastful description of a new age of government activism. Subsequently, it became a term of derision for critics of an overweening government. In the spirit of Attlee, the Obama campaign revives the concept of “cradle to grave” as it highlights Obama-supported programs that take care of Julia from age 3 to her retirement at age 67. Julia begins her interaction with the welfare state as a little tot through the pre-kindergarten program Head Start. She then proceeds through all of life’s important phases, not Shakespeare’s progression from “mewling and puking” infant to “second childishness and mere oblivion,” but the Health and Human Services and Education Depart-
ment version: a Pell grant (age 18), surgery on insurance coverage guaranteed by ObamRich aCare (22), a Lowery job where she can sue her National e m p l o y e r s Review for more pay thanks to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (23), free contraception (27), a Small Business Administration loan (42) and, finally, Medicare (65) and Social Security (67). (In a sci-fi touch, these entitlements are presumed blissfully unchanged sometime off in the 2070s.) No doubt, the creators of Julia — imagine a dour and featureless version of Dora the Explorer who grows old through the years — weren’t seeking to make a major philosophical statement. But they inadvertently captured something important about the progressive vision. Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or
free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can. The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked. Her life is framed to show she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which Presi-
dent Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family’s income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans inveighing against the trend. These examples don’t suit the campaign’s purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn’t delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia’s birth-control pills free. The point of view of “The Life of Julia” is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture. This view’s infantilizing tendency is captured by ObamaCare’s insistence that, for purposes of health insurance, young adults are children who belong on their parents’ policies until the age of 26. It devalues self-reliance and looks at us less as independent citizens than as drab Julias, bereft without the succor of our life partner and minder, the state. No thanks.
Prayer for today
A verse to share
Dear God, break through the din of our routines so we may hear the cry of those who are struggling and find ways to extend to them your love and friendship. Amen.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases . . . The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. — Lamentations 3:22, 25 (NRSV)
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