What's Your Number?

Everybody, as a famous Mississippi resident noted, has a price.

I've heard my friends for a long time talk about how much more Jim Hood is going to get them paid. He's going to raise teacher pay, and public employee pay, and this, and that. And he'll do it by cutting grocery taxes!

(If you cut grocery taxes, property taxes go up, especially in municipalities, because that's where a lot of their funding comes from. But don't expect Jim or his media enablers to tell you that.)

So my question is: What's your price?

What's the price of being able to defend your home? Jim Hood doesn't want you to be able to do that.

What's the price of being able to defend your business from lawsuits, especially like those that Jack Phillips has had to go through?

What's the price of not giving boards and commissions over to the people who gave us this nickname?

What's the price of only defending Mississippi laws during election years when you need some pro-life cred with the "Bible thumpers?"

What's the price of watching unsolved murders continue to go unsolved just because nobody at the New York or Chicago or LA papers cares about them? Even when the crime occurred 35 miles from Jim Hood's house in Houston?

Bet you thought we forgot about that one, didn't you?

What's the price of giving power over to someone who has no problem using his office to punish his political opponents, or those of his friends?

Oh, you thought we forgot about that one too, didn't you?

So is your raise worth all those things? When you're probably getting a raise anyway, no matter who you're voting for?

Give me your number. Because you've admitted you have one. Just go ahead and say what it is.

Voltaire (Supposedly) Was Right

Voltaire supposedly said, "Show me who you can't criticize, and I'll show you who rules you." While I'm not enough of a French Enlightenment scholar to tell you if he actually did say that, I do believe that's generally true.

Which brings me to HB1523, the favorite whipping boy of the state press. Remember that the bill carved out religious beliefs that were to be respected by the state, and could be used as a defense?  And that the press got the vapors from the mere idea that people might need protections from the government telling their churches what they could and could not preach and believe in?

(Never mind that the federal government has a similar law.  I can hear them now-"But it wasn't meant to protect Christians!" they cry.  Yeah, wipe your tears with the 14th Amendment.)

*AHEM*

This is where they're going.  You didn't really think it was all about who could use which toilet, did you?

Hood says he's short $ to defend 1523

Translation: Those sweet, sweet out of state campaign dollars ain't gonna get themselves into his account, folks.

I See the 42 Narrative Forming

See, people wanted to vote for 42.  After all, it got 58% of the votes!

Except...

It got 58% of the votes actually cast between the two amendments, which, as I write this is about 35K votes less than the vote to not amend the state constitution.  What they won't tell you is about 50K that voted not to amend at all didn't bother to vote for either (because if you don't want to amend the constitution, why vote for the lesser of two evils option? This question will not be answered, except perhaps in a brief, small paragraph at the end of stories).

It's confusing, and the Clarion-Ledger and its fellow travelers in the media/lawyer caucus will use that to muddy the waters in the coming years.  I imagine there were a lot of people who were intent on voting for 42, but took one look at the sticker price ($201 million), and put it back on the shelf.

Always remember the truth of this issue:  The Little Guy won, because all of the trial lawyers, education consulting firms, Gannet Media, and out of state money couldn't buy an election in Mississippi.  Even with an endorsement of the New York Times this morning (helpfully retweeted by a CL writer as a "workaround for Red-State Dems"), the underfunded Little Guy kept the trial lawyers out of education.

There's still more work to be done, for sure-Hood, it appears, will remain in his post for four more maddening years, in which the politically connected will get away with anything short of murder-but the tide was held back today.

Even the 42 Cheerleaders Can't Hide This

Daily Journal, Today

My journalist friends tell me this is called "Burying the Lede."

"But at the end of the day, no one can say for sure how any court will rule in the future, and so the tough question remains."

Repeat after me:  THIS IS NOT ABOUT MAEP.  There is no language about MAEP in the Amendment.  When law professors (who are, WAIT FOR IT...lawyers!) can't tell you what is going to happen with the law, you probably don't need to leave it in the hands of the county judges.  

But of course you should trust them.  After all, when has a lawyer or judge in Mississippi ever been corrupt?  Or incompetent?  Or both?  Or even just out for a quick buck?

Somebody should ask Bobby DeLaughter.  Or Dickie Scruggs.  Or Ed Peters.  I'm sure they'd be experts on that last question.

Wow, Just What America Needs

A pushy, mean liberal Supreme Court justice! One who tries to shout down the opposition! One who is just a bit racialist! And one who thinks (by her own admission) the courts should make policy!

Why didn't he just nominate Jeremiah Wright?