www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
Letter to the Editor
Let the ‘Gitmo’ detainees go To the editor: Recently, Sen. John McCain visited the rebel forces in Syria. Since Sen. McCain is not the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense was spokesman for our government. Why was he visiting Syrian rebels? I guess he wanted them to think he was somebody and he is somebody. He is a media hogging blowhard just like his political twin, Sen. Lindsey Graham. If Sen. McCain wants to put his experience and influence to good use, he should go down to Guantanamo Bay and make sure the detainees are being properly treated. I heard the president say recently he’s decided to allow the 88 Yemeni detainees to return to Yemen. I hope he does. He also seems to want to refocus the War on Terror only to the parts that effect us — Hooray for that! That should have been the policy from the very beginning. We don’t need to be going all over the world stirring up a lot of people who are doing just fine without our help. After the president's speech, four U.S. senators came on the television and criticized everything he was proposing. They seem to want a never-ending war on terror and permanent incarceration for the detainees at Gitmo. Of course there is more than one solution to the detainee situation at Gitmo. Permanent incarceration is not a solution. Here is what I think is the best way to handle this and it should be pleasing to everybody. We invite representatives from the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, the United Nations and the World Court (International Court of Justice) to the Guantanamo Bay naval station. Then we give each of the detainees a mobile phone, a chow pass, a generous debit card, a passport and anything else they may need, then we unlock the cell doors. Free the detainees at Gitmo and don't worry about where they go or what they do. They’ve been locked up for 10 to 12 years and they deserve a second chance. Rex Weathers CR 260, Burnsville
Prayer for today Father, thank for the people you bring alongside us on our path of suffering who bring us comfort, assurance and encouragement. They know just what to say or do that lifts our spirit to give us courage for another day. Amen.
A verse to share “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” — Job 23:8-10
Worth quoting If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. — George S. Patton
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Government needs to rethink economics vs. ‘need’ One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs Americans won't do,” especially in agriculture. One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?” “Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an economist using such a word. A recent editorial on immigration in the Wall Street Journal brought back the memory of Alchian's response, when I read the editorial's statement about “the needs of an industry in which labor shortages can run as high as 20 percent” — namely agriculture. Although “need” is a word often used in politics and in the media, from an economic standpoint there is no such thing as an objective and quantifiable “need.” You might think we all obviously need food to live. But however urgent it may be to have some food, nev-
ertheless beyond some point food becomes not only unnecessary but even counThomas terproductive Sowell and dangerWideColumnist ous. spread obesity among Americans shows many have already gone too far with food. This is not just a matter of semantics, but of economics. In the real world, employers compete for workers, just as they compete for customers for their output. And workers go where there is more demand for them, as expressed by what employers offer to pay. Farmers may wish for more farm workers, just as any of us may wish for anything we would like to have. But that is wholly different from thinking that some third party should define what we desire as a “need,” much less expect government policy to meet that “need.” In a market economy, when farmers are seeking more farm workers, the most obvious way to get them is to raise the wage rate until they attract enough people away from alternative occupations — or from unemployment.
With the higher labor costs this would entail, the number of workers farmers “need” would undoubtedly be less than what it would have been if there were more workers available at lower wage rates, such as immigrants from Mexico. It is no doubt more convenient and profitable to the farmers to import workers at lower pay than to pay American workers more. But bringing in more immigrants is not without costs to other Americans, including both financial costs in a welfare state and social costs, of which increased crime rates are just one. Some advocates of increased immigration have raised the specter of higher food prices without foreign farm workers. But the price farmers receive for their produce is usually a fraction of what the consumers pay at the supermarket. And what the farmers pay the farm workers is a fraction of what the farmer gets for the produce. In other words, even if labor costs doubled, the rise in prices at the supermarket might be barely noticeable. What are called “jobs Americans will not do” are in fact jobs at which not enough Americans will work at the current wage rate some employers are offering. This is
not an uncommon situation. That is why labor “shortages” lead to higher wage rates. A “shortage” is no more quantifiable than a “need,” when you ignore prices, which are crucial in a market economy. To discuss “need” and “shortage” while ignoring prices -- in this case, wages -- is especially remarkable in a usually market-savvy publication like the Wall Street Journal. Often shortages have been predicted in various occupations — and yet never materialized. Why? Because the pay in those occupations rose, causing more people to go into those occupations and causing employers to reduce how many people they “need” at the higher pay rates. Virtually every kind of “work Americans will not do” is in fact work Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans. And there are certainly many unemployed Americans available today, without bringing in more foreign workers to meet farmers' “needs.” (Daily Corinthian columnist Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell. com.)
Willie, Red, Jack and the boys GUTHRIE, Ky. — When determined women form a committee, move out of the way and take cover. Something's going to happen. What happened here was the salvation of a so-called railroad bungalow on a corner lot. It was about to be sold and moved, red brick by red brick, to the university over in Bowling Green, but the ladies of Guthrie galvanized and said: “Wait just a minute. This is ours.” In the late 1980s, Jeane Moore and others with a literary conscience bought, restored and saved for their town the birthplace of writer Robert Penn Warren. They were right to do so. You wouldn't move Shakespeare to Liverpool or Faulkner to Tupelo. And nothing is more significant than birth. Today the house where Warren remembered seeing sunlight embellished by a parlor piece of stained glass is a tidy little museum with period furnishings and first editions and movie posters and, best of all, the ghost of Willie Stark. Room by room, Jeane's
Reece Terry
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husband, Dean Moore, shares the exciting if esoteric treasures. There are Rheta the photos Johnson of this area's 1904 tobacco Columnist wars, when 2 0 , 0 0 0 struggling farmers showed up in Guthrie to stand up against the big tobacco companies. Warren wrote “Night Rider” based on that bit of history. On another wall is a young sportswriter's story about major-leaguer Kent Greenfield, Warren's neighbor, school chum and lifelong friend. The byline is “Ed Sullivan,” who was promised a newspaper job if he could get the interview. Sullivan, most know, didn't stick with newspapers. There is a movie poster from the 1949 version of “All the King's Men” that starred Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark and won Best Picture. There's also one from 2006, with Sean Penn as Willie, a Hollywood
contortion that makes Dean Moore shudder. The house also celebrates Warren's poetry, the second part of his one-two literary punch. He was the nation's first Poet Laureate and won two Pulitzer prizes for poetry, as well as one for his most famous novel with the Humpty Dumpty title. An intellectual prodigy, Warren graduated from Guthrie School at age 15, then went to nearby Clarksville, Tenn., for a second diploma. His plans to study engineering at Annapolis were destroyed by fate — and a rock thrown by his brother that hit Robert Penn in the eye. A blind eye ended his dreams of an Annapolis appointment but landed him at Vanderbilt University by age 16. The rest is literary history. While teaching at LSU, Warren got a close look at the legendary Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long, champion of the people who gave him so much power he was corrupted. From his frontrow seat in Baton Rouge, “Red” Warren, as friends called him, saw enough
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to imagine Willie Stark, whose star in American fiction shines brightly as Jay Gatsby's or Tom Joad's. “All the King's Men” is arguably the best American political novel, unless you understandably lump preachers in with politicians and make “Elmer Gantry” a contender. I, like every old reporter I know, identified with the idealistic young Jack Burden, who took an immersion course in life through his association with Willie Stark. At least two of my reporter friends have sons named Jack. It means a lot, then, to stand here in the house where in 1905 Robert Penn Warren was born to intellectual parents and made his first few memories before moving up the street. Thanks to a few stubborn Guthrie ladies, this remains a place for pilgrims to ponder. (Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a resident of Tishomingo County. To find out more about her and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com.)
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