In fact, the GOP rhetoric here has been almost the reverse, especially by major contender Charlie Ross, the former state senator, who boasts of being honored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the giant business organization that poured $1 million into Mississippi’s 2000 Supreme Court races to buy several court seats.
John Grisham’s new book, The Appeal, fictionally portrays corporate money undermining Mississippi’s Supreme Court to shield a huge chemical company polluter from tort damages after causing dozens of deaths from cancer. Grisham’s book should be required reading in Mississippi politics.
To say as did 3rd District candidate David Landrum that he would go to Congress to “cut spending, and cut taxes” shows a total ignorance of, or disdain for, the reality that Mississippi basically depends on federal aid.
Transfer payments (Social Security, welfare, etc.) are the chief source of income for Mississippians.
Even the money being spent for recovery in the Katrina-ravaged region has come from the federal government, absurdly through the back door, as an attachment to the appropriations for the war in Iraq, a war that two-thirds of Americans say was a mistake.
We’ve heard nothing from the GOP 3rd district congressional candidates about ending the war. A newly-published book by two Nobel economists reveals Iraq will cost $3 trillion – enough money to rebuild the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans and then some.
Bill Minor
3/9/8
Magnolia Tribune
