From the June 5 paper
Let me back up a bit first. I don’t know where Slim calls “home” (Tupelo, I think), but I grew up hearing an expression that gets truer and truer every year: “We’ve got the best politicians money can buy! The problem is we don’t have enough money to buy any really good ones.” Now I’ll add, “So, we let others chip into the kitty.”
Now to last Thursday’s paper. Not only are old and bad habits hard to break, but when you put small-minded people in positions of power, power corrupts. And they think they have absolute power, which corrupts absolutely. These people need to be reminded that they are public servants, and that they serve at the will of the people. Honesty is always the best policy.
The letter by the Hunts was timely, considering the low voter turnout in this primary election. If you don’t vote, you have no room to complain about what your public servant does or doesn’t do. I’ll touch more on voting in a minute.
Raider, somebody surely doesn’t understand the art of compromise, which is not the Democrat version of, “Let’s do it my way and everybody will be happy (and sure to vote Democrat since they give away all kinds of freebies).
The simplest and most efficient overhaul of the healthcare system would have been to expand Medicare, with a Federally-guaranteed increase in the federal government’s share of the “pie.” Medicare and Medicaid would be made secondary insurances with a finite amount any one person could claim in a year and fixed allowable charges on any procedure. The ACA — Obamacare — is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the American people.
Mr. Howard, I couldn’t agree more with your sentiment about removing hats and caps indoors. Before I even started school my mama had taught me that gentlemen do not wear their hats inside of buildings, especially homes, offices, stores, churches, schools, just about every building. Back then there weren’t malls, but stores in a mall are still stores. It’s a matter of respect for others and a point of honor for gentlemen. If you see a man walk into a building and his hat comes off his head before he’s well in the door, he’s most likely current military or retired career military.
Years ago Will Rogers said that he wasn’t a member of any organized political party. He was a Democrat! Today he’d have to make that a Republican. While I’m on that subject, it is the Democrat Party, not the democratic Party. The Republican Party is just as democratic as the Democrat Party, if not more so. Words mean things, and can be (and have been) used to convey wrong impressions.
According to a local Democrat Party Chairman, if you ever vote Republican, you cannot be a Democrat. If you vote Democrat, you must support whatever candidate the Democrat Party nominates, period, or you’ll be kicked out of the party.
Several prominent black Democrat politicians voted Republican, for Thad Cochran, in the Senate primary this time. That’s a no-no! But it does illustrate why we really need to go to open primaries here in Mississippi. It would lessen the likelihood of people crossing party lines to sabotage the other side’s results.
Finally, the low turnout in this primary is embarrassing. Primaries are even more important than general elections because they select just who will be in the general elections. As far as I’m concerned, if somebody doesn’t vote in a primary and there’s a run-off, somebody shouldn’t bother voting in the run-off. If somebody would have voted in the primary, a run-off might not be necessary.
Cameron Triplett
Brooksville
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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