Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
May 20
Greenwood (Mississippi) Commonwealth on questions for Senate candidate Chris McDaniel:
Chris McDaniel has rightfully denounced the short-lived attack video that included a photo of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran’s bedridden wife.
McDaniel’s campaign also has started to come clean about what it knew about the video and when it knew it. It’s now taking credit for putting pressure on the blogger who posted it to take the video down.
There are still, though, some questions that McDaniel, who is challenging the longtime incumbent in the June 3 Republican primary, has not satisfactorily answered. Among them: Why did he and a top campaign aide deny early Saturday morning, after the arrest of the blogger, Clayton Kelly, knowing anything about Kelly, his arrest or the video?
A voice mail and a reported email from McDaniel’s campaign chairman, state Sen. Melanie Sojourner, indicated she knew plenty about all of the above. Is it credible that she would not have shared this knowledge with others in the campaign, including McDaniel himself? Or is it believable that, as McDaniel claimed in a radio interview this morning, that he cut her off during a Saturday morning wake-up call before she could share many details?
And what about that email? Breitbart News, a conservative website that has been supportive of McDaniel, says it received a partially redacted email written on April 26 by Sojourner, denouncing the video and threatening dismissal if any staffer was involved. Then, according to Breitbart, the McDaniel campaign initiated an effort to find the person who posted the video and get it taken down. Kelly removed the video within two hours, allegedly telling his wife that “the big man” wanted it taken down, referring to McDaniel himself.
It’s doubtful that McDaniel would have called Kelly. More likely an aide or a supporter.
But the point is, if McDaniel knew about the video three weeks ago, why did he wait until after Kelly’s arrest to denounce it and the blogger? Why didn’t he reach out to Cochran three weeks ago to completely dissociate himself from the intrusion on the senator’s privacy and the grotesque exploitation of Rose Cochran, a bedridden woman in the last stages of progressive dementia?
Politics can be a brutal and nasty business, but there’s a line that ethical candidates draw. The controversy over the Cochran video raises the question of where McDaniel draws his.
Online:
https://www.gwcommonwealth.com
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May 19
Sun Herald, Biloxi, Mississippi, on NASA:
If you want to see the price of our dysfunctional government, just look up — up toward the International Space Station.
It once was a symbol of international cooperation but it is now caught in a web of intrigue that threatens its existence. The United States, having shut down the space shuttle, the only craft it had capable of bringing astronauts to and from the space station, is now at the mercy of Russia, which is taking advantage of that situation.
We have a single seat on each flight of a Russian craft — at a cost of $71 million per trip. Only one-third of the crew at the station at any given time is American, even though the U.S. paid for most of the station’s $140 million price tag.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. President George W. Bush got things started when he decided in 2004 that NASA’s mission should be a return to the moon and space colonization. That plan retired the shuttle in favor of building deep space rockets.
But that left a gap between the end of the shuttle program and the launch of new craft capable of carrying people into space.
When Barack Obama became president he decided we needed a quicker way for ferry astronauts to the station and left it up to commercial interests to figure out how to do it.
Congress balked and underfunded the commercial program, which means the first flight will be in 2017, not 2015 as Obama envisioned. Not the best solution but a workable plan — until Russia annexed Crimea.
In the tit-for-tat that followed, the Russians threatened to pull the plug on the Space Station by 2020. That would seem to make it even more urgent to get these commercial flights — flights that Stennis Space Center could play a big role in — as soon as possible.
We shouldn’t have to rely on Russia, an unreliable ’partner’ at best and a country that doesn’t seem to be seeing us as much of an ally in its ambitions.
And we shouldn’t be playing politics with an investment of more than $100 billion.
Online:
https://www.sunherald.com
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May 19
Northeast Mississippi Journal, Tupelo, Mississippi, on public education having no off season:
Advocacy for public education in Mississippi has no off-season. The pressing needs, beginning with inadequate basic financing from the state, demand full-time attention.
This month, The Parents Campaign issued refreshed information about the short-changed allocation of funds for public schools through the Mississippi Adequate Education Program.
The MAEP, passed by the Legislature, could have been the biggest step forward in the history of Mississippi schools, but it has fallen short of its potential because the Legislature (with the complicity of some governors) has not fully funded the MAEP formula, which is a law.
If individuals failed to pay bills as they come due as lawmakers have failed to pay for MAEP the legal consequences would have kicked in long ago.
MAEP is a law that provides a formula that is designed to ensure an adequate education for every Mississippi child - whether that child lives in a “wealthy” community or a “poor” one.
Note that the formula is not intended to provide funding for top-tier spending, simply an amount for adequate achievement.
The MAEP formula does not include funding for administrators’ salaries, transportation, special education, vocational education, gifted education, alternative education, teacher supplies, increases in insurance premiums, building funds for facility maintenance and improvement, salary increases mandated by the legislature for the next fiscal year and school improvement programs
The shameful truth about school funding in Mississippi is that since 2011 (the last election year), recurring state revenue has increased by more than $800 million. During that same time, funding for the Mississippi Adequate Education Program has increased by only $113 million, or 14 percent of the increase in available funding.
The summer offers a perfect time for meeting, planning and building MAEP momentum for late 2014 and the all-important 2015 state election year. Our schools depend on it.
Online:
https://djournal.com
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