The tiny little car pulled up to the steps of the state capitol building in Jackson Tuesday. The car door swung open and 174 legislators piled out to the strains of calliope music.
Yes, the 2014 Mississippi Legislature is officially in session and lawmakers are eager to get down to the serious business of seeing how much nonsense they can inflict on us during the next three months.
Aside from showing up, legislators took no action Tuesday, which means it was a good day for Mississippi.
Don’t hold your breath, though. Each session, in the neighborhood of 2,000 bills are presented for consideration. Of course, most of those bills won’t go anywhere. Only the most ridiculous, ill-conceived, politically-patronizing bills will attract the scrutiny they do not deserve. Many will become laws.
Of that select group, a fair number will not have emerged from the fertile minds of our dully-elected representatives, but from Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
ALEC produces conservative legislation that it farms out to dim-witted but politically pure legislators around the country. Mississippi is one of ALEC’s favored guinea pigs when it comes to pushing its legislative agenda. Our legislature is, essentially, a trial balloon for ALEC legislation. The Mississippi legislature pushes through the law and ALEC waits around for the inevitable Constitutional challenge that is sure to follow.
The quaint idea that Mississippians should set their own legislative agenda free of outside influences does not apply here because — let’s face it — most of the people we send to Jackson couldn’t put together a proper grocery list, let alone something so complex as a bill. Somebody has to write those bills, you know. Most of those folks are in D.C.
Today, the work of the quasi-Mississippi legislature begins in earnest and some bills have already shown some, uh, promise.
Last year, Jeff Smith, R-Columbus, co-sponsored a House bill with Gary Chism, R-Columbus, that would have allowed Mississippi to secede from the union under the premise that “if at first you secede (1861), try, try again.” Sadly, that bill never made it into law, although the idea of Mississippi seceding from the union was one that the other 49 states would likely have approved of, given Mississippi’s utter dependence on federal dollars.
Undaunted, Smith is back again, rolling up his sleeves, this time pushing legislation that would outlaw human cloning in Mississippi. As you know, human cloning is one of the top issues facing our state these days, far more serious than things like — oh, I don’t know — education, crumbling highways and bridges, unemployment, prison overcrowding, etc. It’s finally time we put an end to this human cloning business. If Mississippians are going to all look alike, we favor the time-honored tradition of cousins marrying cousins. Thanks, Jeff.
There are also House bills sponsored by Sam Mims, R-McComb, and Mark Formby, R-Picayune, that would subject those receiving state assistance through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to drug testing. As previously noted, similar drug-testing in a handful of states, most notably Florida and Utah, have proven not only to be spectacularly ineffective and costly, but unconstitutional as well.
Yes, this is an idea whose time has come for Mississippi.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a real session of the legislature if some sort of education bill wasn’t passed because there is nothing our legislators take more seriously than education. “Education is the key” they will tell you. “It is our No. 1 priority,” you will hear them say.
This is not just idle talk, either.
This year, House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Freakin’ Mars, is presenting a bill that would shorten the K-12 school year from 180 days to 175.
It’s pretty obvious that the real reason our kids can’t read, write or do math is because they spend too much time in school.
Besides, this whole book-learnin’ stuff is overrated, if you ask Moore, who placed so much value on his own education that he dropped out of college.
Obviously, putting a drop-out in charge of the House Education Committees a clear indicator of how our leaders feel about the value of education, don’t you think?
Once we have dispensed ourselves of drug-using welfare clones whose kids lolly-gag around schools for almost half the year, the legislature can take up other matters of grave concern to the people of Mississippi.
We can hardly wait — nor will we have to.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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