Watch how Barbour governs poorest state during bad times

The Clarion-Ledger Editorial, 2/1/8

“If you were working for Sara Lee in West Point or Alan White Furniture in Shannon or for any one of the dozens of other businesses that have closed in the last four years, life has been tough.”

That’s what state Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, said in a Democratic response to Gov. Haley Barbour’s somewhat glowing account of progress during his tenure claiming a job gain of 50,000 and “more people working than ever.”

According to the state’s Center for Research and Planning, finally in 2007, Mississippi’s job total got back to where it was in 2000. The biggest hit happened between 2000 and 2003, when the state’s textile industry felt the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement.