Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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Nov. 19
The (Tupelo) Daily Journal on obesity:
The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Mississippi at the top of the list again with the highest adult and youth obesity rates in the nation.
Sunday’s (Nov. 17) front page centerpiece on this issue, as reported by staff writer Ginna Parsons, puts an emphasis on what can be done to address the obesity epidemic.
According to the State of Childhood Obesity report, Mississippi’s adult obesity rate is currently 39.5%, up from 23.7% in 2000 and from 15.0% in 1990.
Nearly two-thirds of our residents are overweight, with nearly half of those obese. To put it another way, only about one-third of Mississippians are at normal weight.
Obesity has a clear connection to heart problems, diabetes and other chronic diseases particularly prevalent among Mississippians. Health care costs, economic productivity and quality and length of life are all affected by obesity, which make it a public policy concern.
The most troubling aspect of the obesity epidemic is that it is affecting children in increasing numbers. The older children become, the harder it is to change habits established earlier in life.
But habits can be broken, which gives us hope. Two things are key to losing weight and keeping it off: Healthy eating and regular exercise. This is the only way we will break out of a mold that is sapping our collective health.
The good news is that childhood obesity is being targeted by improved nutrition and fitness in schools. These efforts must continue and expand; lifestyle changes must start early to be most effective. But schools can only do so much. The real work has to begin at home.
Turning the tide on adult and youth obesity will take a comprehensive effort by everyone.
The statistics show Mississippi at the top of the list on obesity. Finishing first in this case is really finishing last.
Online: https://www.djournal.com
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Nov. 19
The Vicksburg Post on giving back this season:
In praying for gifts and tithes at church, we often ask God’s blessing on both the giver and the gift. It is our prayer that the gift will be used to build the kingdom and the giver will be blessed to the glory of God.
It is this prayer that is felt most often during the holidays when gifts are given, donations are made and some of the most desperate appeals for help are made.
Over the weekend, The Post published a story about the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree and the organization’s annual Red Kettle campaign.
As for the Angel Tree, these families that are represented on the tree, located at the Vicksburg Mall, are in some of the most desperate of situations.
For these parents, they are in a situation where they are unable to provide a Christmas for their children. Through interviews and applications with the Salvation Army, their families have been placed on the tree in hopes their family and needs will be adopted.
As of last Thursday, 325 children and 100 seniors remained on the Angel Tree. It would be a shame if any of those angels remained unadopted.
As for the Red Kettle campaign, we are all familiar with the sound of bells ringing as we head out to some of the larger retailers in Vicksburg. Not only does the annual campaign provide a great opportunity to clean out the loose change in your car’s cup holder, but it also provides a great opportunity to support the Salvation Army and its programs throughout the year.
This campaign accounts for a majority of the Salvation Army’s annual revenue. Those pennies and nickels - along with a few 10- and 20-dollar bills - are pulled together and then stretched throughout the year to help countless people in our community.
The Salvation Army is a Christian-based organization with the best of our community at heart. Their programs - particularly the annual Angel Tree and Red Kettle campaigns - deserve our support.
Online: https://www.vicksburgpost.com
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Nov. 16
The Greenwood Commonwealth on what the newly elected secretary of state should focus on:
Michael Watson’s signature campaign idea of moving driver’s license services from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety to the Secretary of State’s Office should be shelved, if not by him, then by the Legislature.
If there are problems with long wait times for driver’s licenses, as has been reported, then the solution is improving the staffing and processes within the state agency logically in charge of this responsibility, rather than creating a new level of bureaucracy.
Watson, the newly elected secretary of state, has other priorities, however, that are of great merit and should be pursued.
He discussed some of those this past week with the Clarion Ledger newspaper. Among the good ideas:
- Scrapping the two-tier election process to which he and other statewide officials are subject.
Requiring a governor or other statewide candidate to win both a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the state’s 122 House districts had a pernicious intent when those provisions were included in the 1890 constitution: to make it harder for black candidates to win.
Today, it makes it harder for Democrats of whatever color to win because of how gerrymandered the legislative districts are. Although the governor’s race between Democrat Jim Hood and Republican Tate Reeves ended up not being close enough for the two-step process to become an issue, Hood’s math prior to the voting was illustrative of the unfairness of the two-pronged system. He calculated that he would have to win not just 50% plus one of the popular vote, but 54% in order to also win a majority of House districts.
Had he fallen somewhere in between, a Republican-dominated House theoretically could have awarded the governorship to a GOP nominee who wasn’t even close to winning the popular vote.
Maybe that will never happen, but Mississippi should take the possibility completely off the table.
- Eliminating the loophole that allows politicians to personally keep any surplus campaign funds they raised before Jan. 1, 2018. That provision was grandfathered in when the Legislature, under public pressure, enacted in 2017 restrictions on candidates using campaign funds for personal expenses.
Even though lawmakers were embarrassed at the time of the legislation by revelations over the food, clothing and apartment bills they had covered with campaign funds, they weren’t willing to make the reforms retroactive.
Watson is absolutely correct when he says they need to. No matter when the money was raised, it stinks that a losing or retiring politician can pocket it.
- Requiring that campaign finance reports be submitted in an easily searchable format.
Presently, the law still accepts paper documentation from candidates and their political action committees on where they got their money and how they spent it.
Although Delbert Hosemann, Watson’s predecessor and Mississippi’s next lieutenant governor, created a couple of years ago an online portal for submitting the data, still many candidates don’t use it.
As a result, it takes more time to try to connect the dots on campaign donations than it should.
If someone, for example, wants to see how much money a special interest group was giving to candidates during an election cycle, the search would require skimming through hundreds of pages of records to answer the question. With electronic filing, it would take a few keystrokes and probably just seconds.
Watson should have an ally in Hosemann in getting that mandate enacted, and possibly the other reforms, too.
Online: https://www.gwcommonwealth.com
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