Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was recently interviewed by the conservative Washington Times and stated his opinion on a variety of current events. Barbour’s name has been floated as a potential 2012 Republican Presidential nominee and he appeals strongly to the party’s conservative base. The most interesting portion of the interview focuses on federal government spending versus state government spending. Barbour’s reply also reveals how quickly we have forgotten the problems of our past. Those who advance a states’ rights agenda and hold up the Tenth Amendment as justification often forget the massive problems this country faced when we focused more on individual states at the expense of Washington, DC. While placing more control in a centralized system of government has created some problems, they are nothing compared to way it was when the reverse was true.
Tag: Haley Barbour
Sep 18 2009
The Currency of Currency
Apr 19 2008
Katrina, Rita and the GOP Crony Capitalism
This was the first of my two posts as part of the NOLA/Gulf Blogathon.
Hurricane season is about six weeks away. The Mississippi River is very high due to heavy rains in the MidWest. The Bonne Carre Spillway has been opened for the first time in 11 years to let some river water flow through Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf of Mexico.
Things are tensing up down along the Gulf Coast. Less than three years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck and the levees failed in New Orleans, nature is reminding us of what a tenuous hold we have on the lives we’ve created and are still rebuilding for ourselves down here.
We don’t want to – and can’t – go through another disaster again. Especially with the current administration in place. Real help will not come.
The hard and, yes, bitter lessons learned along the coast over the past two-and-a-half years are going to come in handy for the rest of the country it focuses on the coming federal elections.
The core lesson is this: Republican crony capitalism doesn’t fix anything that’s broken. It’s all about them taking care of their own while the rest of us are left on our own. The proof is being lived out daily on the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi.