STARKVILLE, Miss. —
The stagnant economy of the last few years has produced varying degrees of human impact across the nation. U.S. Census numbers released this week show that median household income declined in 18 states between 2010 and 2011 and that the percentage of people in poverty increased in 17 states over the same time frame.
But in Mississippi, those same indices of economic progress saw no real movement. Mississippi remains in the lead in the U.S. in the poverty rate and dead last in the index of median household income. Census numbers showed Mississippi with a poverty rate of 22.6 percent in 2011 with median household income of $36,919.
Nationally, the poverty rate is 15 percent while the median household income is $50,054. The diagnosis for Mississippi based on those numbers is far more people than the national average in poverty struggling to live on far less income than the national average.
Those numbers haven’t changed dramatically for years. Mississippi has traditionally been impeded by those dual challenges no matter the economic development progress that has been achieved. For every Nissan or Toyota or PACCAR, there is a corresponding town or county or region in which unemployment rates soar along with declining public schools, population flight to areas with more opportunities, and chronic blight and decay in communities that once thrived.
While the economic impact is undeniable, the political impact in Mississippi is negligible. Mississippi remains a state that is heavily dependent on government subsidies, welfare, public health care and a host of other federal transfer payments. Mississippi continues to pay in far less per capita in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending.
Despite those facts, Mississippi has remains a “red” state based on social issues. As the Democratic Party saw party platforms evolve on issues ranging from civil rights to abortion to gun control to questions of religious freedoms, the Republican Party began to make inroads not merely at winning the votes of the majority of Mississippians in federal elections but ultimately in state elections as well.
Today, Mississippi’s poverty and median household income numbers suggest that the political fields should be ready to harvest for candidates preaching big government solutions to basic economic problems like health care, elder care, nutrition and cooperation with Big Labor.
But the numbers show emphatically that the facts of Mississippi’s poverty disconnect with Mississippi’s voting behavior on social issues. The majority of Mississippians still oppose abortion on demand. The majority of Mississippians oppose any erosion of their gun rights. Likewise, the majority of Mississippians still oppose any intrusion they perceive on the free expression of their primarily Protestant, Judeo-Christian faiths.
Barring a misstep of gargantuan proportions by Gov. Mitt Romney, he will carry Mississippi on Nov. 6. The Boca Raton tape, the tax return flap, none of those “issues” embraced by Romney’s opponents and the national media will have much impact on the eventual outcome in Mississippi.
Some will dismiss that outcome as race being the common denominator in Mississippi politics. To do so dismisses more fundamental facts. Even the poorest Mississippians have bedrock beliefs — some founded in their faith, some founded in their sense of right and wrong and much founded in tradition.
They vote their beliefs, not necessarily their wallets. But at some point in the future, as Mississippi’s population evolves, poverty and lack of resources may one day trump social issues. That day won’t be in the 2012 presidential election.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Opinion
State voters vote social issues
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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