Jackson Jambalaya

At first glance it looks like bipartisan fingers-in-the-cookie-jar. I'm shocked this happens in an election year .

Mississippi's life support depends on earmarks. Ask Cochran.

Without earmarks Mississippi would look like Pakistan in terms of infrastructure, medical facilities, universities, etc. We would also have negligible influence with term limits (adios seniority system). I understand both ideas are idealogically pure, but they are also damn impractical.

Didn't you love the movie Porky's?

Agree totaly with 7:03. We don't have bridges to nowhere, airports with nine passengers and highways through barren personal pastures in this state. But, without our congressional delegation using political muscle over the past 50 years we'd be in much worse shape than we are. Imagine that.

Mississippi has indeed benefitted greatly from federal dollars and will miss those dollar in unimagined ways. And, we have had " road to nowhere" earmarks.We just don't talk about, oh, the semi-conductor building or our " studies" or the ships built at Ingalls that the Navy didn't want.
Doing away with earmarks doesn't have to mean that we will not qualify for federal funding, but the concern that Congress, as usual, will " throw out the baby with the bathwater" is a legitimate concern. We'll have to get better at applying for federal funds rather than relying on political clout.
I would also like to remind all the business people reading this blog that you may find yourselves more dependent on federal dollars than you understood. Your customers may have had jobs subsidized in whole or part by federal funds,done work on federally funded projects, had government contracts,and even been on assistance or received food stamps.Money they had to spend with you will now go to survival.
I've never understood why a State so economically dependent on the federal government is so anti-federal government and federal spending.
The notion, too, that we could have recovered from Katrina without federal money is laughable but damn if some Mississippians don't think they could have built bridges like they used to raise barns.
And we wonder why people think we're dumb.

8:46; I volunteered during Katrina and never heard anyone suggest this state could have 'recovered' without assistance. Who can you cite that was of that opinion?

We have the best of all grant writers right in our midst; the one who set the bar and against whom all other grant writers are measured. That's all Harvey ever did before hitching up to the trough of city gubment.

Here's a thought, naive as it might seem: maybe Mississippi is the poorest state in the country with a pisspoor culture of homegrown business and entrepreneurship in large part because of our state's addiction to the federal teat. Maybe, just maybe, if the "conservatives" in this state actually practiced what they preached about self-reliance etc. then we would not be one of only 4 states in this country without a Fortune 500 company headquarters located here. Maybe we would even have a few. I mean, all the other states in the South have major business sectors. Just an ignorant, puritanical thought.

What good is the headquarters of a Furtune 500 company? They don't shop at Wal Mart and we have only one Jos A. Bank.

Mackdaniel for Senate

Yes. I back Mac. McDaniel that is.