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Saturday, December 4, 2010
The Vicksburg Post
THE VICKSBURG POST
EDITORIAL
Founded by John G. Cashman in 1883 Louis P. Cashman III, Editor & Publisher • Issued by Vicksburg Printing & Publishing Inc., Louis P. Cashman III, President Karen Gamble, managing editor | E-mail: kgamble@vicksburgpost.com | Tel: 601.636.4545 ext 123 | Letters to the editor: letters@vicksburgpost.com or The Vicksburg Post, P.O. Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182
JACK VIX SAYS: Tomorrow marks the 57th anniversary of Vicksburg’s downtown tornado.
OTHER OPINIONS
Buy local A healthy endeavor this holiday season From other Mississippi newspapers: • NE Miss. Daily Journal, Tupelo: The huge holiday crowds flocking to downtown stores, malls and shopping centers across Northeast Mississippi enrich the region’s economy in sustaining jobs and generating the revenues from sales taxes providing many public services, schools and recreation programs in communities large and small. Retailers in Northeast Mississippi rely heavily on people who not only want to please friends and relatives with quality gifts but also express loyalty to their communities and the region. Shoppers who keep their dollars close to home support diversity and vitality in the economy that’s outside our front doors, and it creates an all-positive situa-
tion for all. Surveys made during the recession that started in late 2007 have found that more holiday shoppers deliberately have sought out local purchasing nationwide. Similar surveys in 2009 and 2008 likewise found that independent businesses in cities with “Buy Local” campaigns reported stronger sales than those in communities without such an initiative. A strong mix of locally owned and corporate stores is equally healthy for every region’s economy. Free market competition, after all, is a thoroughly proven and essential component of the market system as we know it in Northeast Mississippi — and across the U.S. We believe it’s fair and economically healthy to ask residents, as much as possible, to keep all their holiday shopping
within the region. Retail diversity in our region is enormous, and only the rarest of gift needs can’t be purchased in stores employing people we know, mostly Mississippians. Every newspaper and every other locally/regionally focused advertising medium understands the value of supporting their advertising base, but the larger benefit is about jobs and about profits that help the region. More money retained in Mississippi — and our region specifically — enhances general economic prospects and the quality of life from wage earners relying on buying at home. The gifts bought from a warehouse in, say, Nebraska simply don’t yield the same benefit as the same or similar gifts from Northeast Mississippi.
Medicaid cuts could be disastrous The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson: When the history of the administration of Gov. Haley Barbour is written, one of the longest, thickest chapters will center on his loud, long and frequent political battles with the Mississippi Hospital Association — and it’s likely back to the future as the Fiscal Year 2012 budget is being crafted. Barbour’s FY 2012 budget recommendation proposes an 8 percent cut for hospitals and other Medicaid providers and a 4 percent cut for nursing homes that MHA officials claim puts him in the position of reneging on the 2009 “hospital tax” agreement. The “hospital tax” battle raged for three years between Barbour, the Division of Medicaid and the state Senate on one side and the MHA and the House on the other. The so-called “hospital tax” or provider assessment is a means to partially fund the state’s portion of Medicaid — the federal-state program that provides health care for the poor, the
blind, the disabled and children. After a protracted battle in 2009, the two sides agreed on a “hospital tax” plan for three years in which hospitals would pay a total of $210 million in additional taxes. At the time, MHA officials argued that Barbour’s efforts to cut Medicaid would not end with the tax agreement — and MHA officials now say his latest budget proposal bears their claims out and could leave a number of state hospitals on the brink of fiscal ruin. But Barbour has argued Mississippi’s Medicaid reimbursement is more generous than every state other than New Jersey and that some of the state’s largest and most profitable hospitals are socalled “nonprofits” that don’t pay the full complement of taxes paid by private hospitals. There are 108 non-state hospitals in Mississippi — with 39 of them publicly owned that pay no taxes other than employer taxes. Of the remaining 69 hospitals, 29 are “nonprofit” hospitals
that pay some sales taxes and employer taxes. As MHA points out, all hospitals pay the Division of Medicaid a “bed tax” on every bed in their facilities, whether the beds are occupied or not. And all hospitals already pay a gross revenue tax that helps fund Medicaid. Expect the state’s “not-for-profit” hospitals to draw increased scrutiny over matters like executive salaries, assets, indigent care delivered and other financial measures of their economic health. Expect Medicaid to be a flashpoint issue in the 2011 legislative session during an election year. This will be another long budget battle, but at the end of the day, it’s clear that cutting the Medicaid budget in the poorest state in the union during the worst recession since the Great Depression will have dire health consequences for Mississippi’s poor at a time of high unemployment and increased Medicaid demand.
Gift of bikes is a gift of smiles The Natchez Democrat: As most of us age, we start realizing that happiness and joy are found less in material possessions than in the relationships that we build and life’s little moments. Those moments can be in the beaming pride of new parents or a child’s eyes as they light up with joy when a Christmas wish comes true. That’s what makes the Christmas season so special — the spirit of giving,
modeled after the greatest gift ever given. For 20 years, Christmas has been a little brighter for hundreds and hundreds of area youth because of one good idea and a lot of hard work and generosity. Since 1990, Concordia Parish (La.) Sheriff Randy Maxwell and his crews — including inmate labor — have refurbished thousands of bicycles to give away to children who might otherwise
go without their own bicycle. Each of those bicycles almost certainly brought with it a wide smile and hours of fun for the recipient. We applaud Sheriff Maxwell and all of the many people who help donate bicycles and bicycle parts or who donate money to help make those childhood Christmas dreams come true. It was a simple idea that just needed a bit of organization to get rolling and now it’s a Miss-Lou tradition.
OLD POST FILES 120 YEARS AGO: 1890 A large number of friends call on Dr. H. Sansom to congratulate him on the celebration of the 25th anniversary of his rectorship. • Mrs. S.B. McGuffie dies.
MODERATELY CONFUSED by Bill Stahler
Charles Downing, retired Vicksburg banker, dies.
At the marriage of Helion Dickson to Miss McWillie in Canton, Tom Dickson and W.B. Rocks are in attendance.
30 YEARS AGO: 1980 Gregory Crider is pictured holding the featured Christmas pets. • Mrs. Corrine Coffee Wolfe dies.
100 YEARS AGO: 1910 Alderman Helgason leaves for Washington to attend the rivers and harbors meeting. • The Warren County poultry and livestock show opens.
20 YEARS AGO: 1990
90 YEARS AGO: 1920
80 YEARS AGO: 1930 Louis Swett, assistant superintendent of the military park, reports the theft of a cannon on Iowa Avenue.
70 YEARS AGO: 1940 The mid-winter dance revue is held at All Saints’ College. • The American Association of University Women meets at the home of
Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Bigby and children are visiting in Norfolk, Va. • Mrs. Blanche Johnson dies.
40 YEARS AGO: 1970
110 YEARS AGO: 1900
Judge Harris Dickson has a story woven around the old Klondike Saloon that appears in the current issue of Collier’s Weekly.
50 YEARS AGO: 1960
Mrs. L.J. Clark. • Louis Hermann dies.
60 YEARS AGO: 1950 Joseph Short, former Vicksburg newspaperman, is appointed presidential press secretary by President Harry Truman. • Madison Parish wins the first round of a test suit to determine the legality of collecting taxes on the Vicksburg bridge that is now owned by Warren County.
Gambling boats are turned away by a 958vote margin in the most hotly contested referendum put before Warren County voters in years. • Homeowners in the Culkin Fire Protection District become the first in the state to lower fire insurance ratings by virtue of a tax and improved volunteer protection. • Maxine Elliott Klare dies. • Connie Lynn Nevels, 15, is a finalist in the 1991 Miss Mississippi National Teen-Ager Pageant.
10 YEARS AGO: 2000 Two additional covered pavilions are planned at Riverfront Park because of overcrowding. • Sherman and Delia Durst Simpson are the parents of a son, Sean Jacob, born Dec. 3. • Joseph Lewis DeMent dies.
No memories of being hauled away kicking and screaming ... or sitting blankly trying to recite a long list that nerves had deleted from my curly brown head.
Remembering the memorable life moments I’m getting a little dotty in my dotage and can spend entire days trying to remember inconsequential things that nobody in her right mind would forget. I cannot, for instance, remember a single visit with Santa Claus. Now I know what you’re thinking. With war, drought, pestilence and Sarah Palin dusting off her mascara wand for another run toward Lincoln’s Bedroom, what difference does it make if I can’t remember sitting on the Big Man’s lap? Why don’t I address the Big Issues? I’ve decided it’s best to leave matters of consequence to the same MiddleAge White Men in Gray Suits with Furrowed Brows who were on America’s op-ed pages when I was a teenager and who remain there now. If George Will and David Broder can’t figure it out in 40 years, who am I to try? I’ve always believed in Santa Claus, and nothing has happened to shake that RHETA belief. For at least gRIMSLEY eight years I had a literal interpretation of Santa, which means, conservative estimate here, I must have been marched to his lap at least seven times. I am a worrier. And I don’t do well in social situations. I worry about what I’ll say to the mail carrier if she happens to drive by just as I’m checking the mailbox for catalogs. I worry about hurting the feelings of telephone solicitors by responding abruptly. There’s no way I wouldn’t have agonized over what to say to Santa. I would have wanted my wish list to be perfectly clear, brand names and sizes explicit. I would have thought out how to respond when he asked that trite and unavoidable question: Have you been a good girl? “Define good,” I might have considered as a reply. “If by ‘good’ you mean no bank robberies or cat strangling in the past 12 months, I’ve been excellent.” But I don’t remember any of these deliberations, nor last-minute panic as the line grew short enough to smell the mothballs on his red velvet. Nothing. No memories of being hauled away kicking and screaming — that is the stuff of David Sedaris essays and not my style — or sitting blankly trying to recite a long list that nerves had deleted from my curly brown head. Nothing. There are photographs to prove I was not deprived. At least I think there are. Most of the photos in my parents’ scrapbooks are of my older sister, JoAnne, the first child. As everyone knows, first children get their pictures taken a lot more than subsequent brats. There are photographs of JoAnne, aka Little Miss Colquitt, playing a toy piano, cutting a birthday cake, cradling various dolls, generally looking precious for the Brownie camera. But, if failing memory serves, there is one black-and-white shot of both JoAnne and I sitting on the ample lap of a department-store Santa in Florida. We look worried but determined to take care of business. I imagine when it came my turn I said something like: “Sweet Sue, not Baby Sweet Sue. Puzzles, animal ones. Tea set. Surprises.” You always said “surprises” — at least I think you always said “surprises” — lest inventory lapses at Santa’s workshop left you with nothing on Christmas morning. I don’t really remember, but like to think I was smart enough to cover my corduroy bottom.
JOHNSON
• Rheta Grimsley Johnson writes for King Features Syndicate.