Politicians and commentators these days like to point to an array of threats to our constitutional system. There’s one, though, that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should: our national debt.
Greetings, fellow time travelers, or in the words of the Chickasaw people: “Chuck-Mah.”
I hope you’ve heard the exciting news! Many states and some cities have updated their hiring laws. In many places, employers can no longer ask your current salary. And, in some, the laws are even more specific. In California, if a candidate asks for the salary range for a job, the company is…
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University Richard Vedder’s new book, “Restoring the Promise,” published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, California, is about the crisis in higher education. He summarizes the three major problems faced by America’s college…
A man who worked in a boxer’s corner in a 1962 match against Cassius Clay, as he still was known, explained why the referee stopped the fight in the fourth round: “Things just went sour gradually all at once.” It can be like that when government dabbles in protectionism.
In January 1948 — a black, 17-year-old high school dropout left home. The last grade he had completed was the ninth grade. He had no skills, little experience, and not a lot of maturity. Yet he was able to find jobs to support himself, to a far greater extent than someone similar can find jo…
Drive through parts of Jackson where Bill Waller Jr. grew up and still lives, or even through parts of south Madison County, and it is not unusual to see signs touting his campaign for governor.
The progressive catechism teaches that there is “too much money” in politics. A codicil to this tenet, written in fine print, is that the term “money” does not apply to money from George Soros, government employees unions, private-sector unions, trial lawyers, Democratic-oriented private-equ…
The Time Traveler this week takes a trek all the way back to the Fifties — the 1850s, that is, and more specifically July 12, 1854 when the “Phenix” newspaper recorded the fact that the Hernando Plank Road was at last completed and open for travel.
Last week’s column discussed Dr. Thomas Sowell’s newest book “Discrimination and Disparities,” which is an enlarged and revised edition of an earlier version. In this review, I am going to focus on one of his richest chapters titled “Social Visions and Human Consequences.” Sowell challenges …
Access to organ transplants is a broken system in the United States — and everyone involved knows it. If you need a lifesaving transplant, your hopes depend on where you live and how much money you have. And there’s no justice in that.
The day before he died, Martin Luther King said these words at a packed church in Memphis:
Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, as he runs for governor this year, spends a great deal of time tweeting and talking about national Democrats and his presumed November general election opponent – Jim Hood – and not about his party primary foes.
There’s this thing in the hiring world that’s considered important. It’s called “culture fit.”
At 96, James Buckley still is, like good cheddar, sharp and savory. Buckley, whose life has been no less accomplished than his brother Bill’s, recently said at a National Review gathering that his speech there would be his last public appearance. Let us hope not.
The Time Traveler took a journey back in time this past week to 1978 — and to a galaxy far, far away.
The Yankees have cut Kate Smith. She was once an immensely popular singer who premiered “God Bless America” on her radio show in 1938. The song quickly became iconic and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it became a staple of the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately fo…
An unsettling specter haunts the world economy: a future of ubiquitous robots that destroy millions of jobs. Sometimes this is called “artificial intelligence”; sometimes it isn’t. Either way, it threatens the social stability of the United States and other advanced countries, which depend o…
My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of “Discrimination and Disparities.” It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell sho…
Politicians’ efforts to eliminate or reduce Mississippi’s grocery tax have been unsuccessful despite what appears to be widespread support for doing so.
Lately, I’ve seen something new. Or, maybe it’s just resurfacing. Hiring managers are asking job seekers about their hobbies. But, they’re not asking in the normal friendly way. They’re not simply trying to get to know the job seeker better.
Pursed lips and clucked tongues signaled disapproval among the wise and responsible when, at a recent televised event, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the “democratic socialist” from Vermont, did not plausibly explain how he would pay for “Medicare for all.” The remarkable thing, however, is the quaint…
For some of our readers who have asked, the Time-Traveler doesn’t fly around in a souped-up DeLorean as the character Marty McFly popularized in the 1985 motion picture sensation “Back to the Future.”
If I told you there was a movement to create a navy or air force, you might respond, “Don’t we already have those?” If I said we need a movement to convince bears to relieve themselves in the woods, you might say, “Wait. Isn’t that happening already?
I became active in politics in the late 1950s, got elected to Congress in 1964, and have remained engaged in one way or another every year since then. I’ve had a ringside seat for a long time. So I suppose I should not be surprised that I get asked a lot these days how American politics have…
I run into many questions surrounding parents. And, I’m not talking about the parents of young children. I’m talking about the parents of full grown adults. Both the parents and the children don’t seem to know where the boundaries are in the job search world. A similar issue was magnified fo…
I run into many questions surrounding parents. And, I’m not talking about the parents of young children. I’m talking about the parents of full grown adults. Both the parents and the children don’t seem to know where the boundaries are in the job search world. A similar issue was magnified fo…
Yesterday was th 49th anniversary of the first Earth Day. This comes 50 years after the Santa Barbara oil spills which were instrumental in the declaration of the first Earth Day. The fate of our planet remains threatened by two inextricably connected threats, that of climate change and nucl…
In 2008, as a majority of northeast Mississippians were voting with the rest of the state for Republicans John McCain for president and Roger Wicker for Senate in a hotly contested special election, they also were playing the pivotal role in electing Democrat Travis Childers to the U.S. Hous…
Sixty years ago, the folks in DeSoto County were going “whole hog,” so to speak.
Some government foolishness has an educational value that compensates for its considerable cost. Consider the multibillion-dollar federal electric-vehicle tax credit, which efficiently illustrates how government can, with one act, diminish its already-negligible prestige while subtracting fr…
It’s been many decades now, but I still remember a piece of advice I got not long after entering Congress. It came in passing from a prominent journalist as we were talking about the bewildering array of issues Congress faced. Every day, he told me, I should ask myself a simple question: “Wh…
There’s a push to change laws to permit both criminals serving time and ex-criminals the right to vote. Guess which party is pushing the most for these legal changes. If you guessed that it was the Democrats, go to the head of the class. Bernie Sanders says states should allow felons to vote…
If you’re in the middle of a job search, you know: it’s not the searching that’s hard. If you have a loved one who’s looking for a job, you may wonder what has gone wrong in their life. They’re moody and they doubt their abilities. You wonder what’s taking them so long.
If one needed evidence of the gross ignorance of millennials, and their teachers and college professors, it’s their solid support for socialism and socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. Socialism has produced tragedy wherever it has been implemented. Last year marked the 40th…
Incumbent Republican Gov. Haley Barbour did not have to debate Democratic challenger John Arthur Eaves in 2007, but he did.
With over a dozen Democrats having already announced they are running for the Democratic presidential nomination, we are moving rapidly into the 2020 election season. The pace will increase, as will the rhetoric. Both parties will attempt to create a narrative that will appeal to enough vote…
Spring brings with it a great deal of pomp and ceremony with Easter celebrations, proms and graduation and the Time Traveler could land in any decade of the past century to enjoy spectacles and pageantry.
That Congress has not already reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is abhorrent. VAWA, which was initially signed into law by President Bill Clinton, has provided funding and support for domestic violence services for decades. Its various reauthorizations (in 2000, 2005 and 201…
The president has received from one of his employees, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a report that probably tells Ross’ employer what he wants to hear: that imports of cars — “The Audis are coming! The Audis are coming!” — threaten “national security.” This report is required by our lackada…
Minutes before the 2019 legislative session recently ended, Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, went to the presiding officer’s podium in the Senate chamber to whisper to Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves that he wanted to take a point of personal privilege.
Appropriately, during the crescendo of this college basketball season, in which the most significant event was a shoe malfunction, a lawyer whose best-known client was a pornographic actress was indicted for threatening to shrink a shoe company’s market capitalization by making allegations a…
Not a day goes by that someone is not complaining about the congested traffic on our local roads, especially along heavily travelled Goodman Road that crisscrosses DeSoto County all the way from its intersection with old State Highway 161 in Walls to the point where “Old Goodman” intersects …
Dear Editor,
I have distinct memories of two memorable, inimitable figures from the civil rights era in Mississippi whose lives and experiences are featured in two books published by the University Press of Mississippi, the state’s academic book publishing press, that are now in bookstores or available a…
Sometimes, during my drive to work, I listen to Clarence Maurice Mitchell IV, host of the Baltimore’s WBAL C4 radio show. Mitchell was formerly a member of Maryland’s House of Delegates and its Senate. In recent weeks, Mitchell has been talking about the terrible crime situation in Baltimore…
Perhaps no question more succinctly separates the past from the future, or so it occurred to me after I read Rebecca Solnit’s stunning observation in a recent essay: that the mass murders in Christchurch, N.Z. on March 15 occurred on the same day, and in the same general area, as the climate…
At one point Thursday on the next to last day of the 2019 session, Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, sat in his state Capitol office surrounded by reporters – educating them on the fact that the Legislature does not have any money of its own.
We, in the United States, have yet to realize both the futility and immense consequences of war even as we develop, store, sell, and use hideous weapons. The number of children killed is rising.
Seventy years ago, people from all over the United States heard about the DeSoto County seat of Hernando as it gained the reputation for being the “Marrying Capital of the United States.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people involved in cheating and bribery in order to get their children admitted to some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities, such as Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, University of Texas, University of Southern California and UCL…
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