Christmas is nigh and everybody has a wish list. Here’s my modest list.
• In honor of the recently departed 41st president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, I’d like a kinder, gentler nation and state where all people are concerned about the health and welfare of all other people. Mr. Bush’s counsel was patterned after that of Jesus, whom we honor and praise during the Christmas season.
• More access to healthcare for all Mississippians, and the only way to achieve that wish: Expansion of Medicaid.
• More Mississippi communities attaching themselves to cultural arts tourism, the new wave of economic development that is easier to implement and far less expensive than having to give breath-taking tax cuts to corporations to bring new jobs to the state.
• An immediate re-examination of our vocational education system to ensure that more regions will truly be ready the next time those corporations come looking. A study of how other southeastern states teach vo-tech at all secondary levels might speed that process along.
For instance, all of Georgia’s vocational-technical training falls under the university system, giving it more weight. Most areas of our state have the other assets that corporate America desires, lacking only a thoroughly skilled workforce to complete the infrastructure system.
• A guarantee from the Legislature that every school in every public school district in Mississippi receives adequate funding, once and for all.
• A chicken in every pot to help ensure that we remain among the country’s top broiler producers. And a side-wish that the federal government end this nonsense of allowing contaminated catfish from foreign countries to enter our markets. Mississippi producers can more than fulfill the nation’s supply needs for this delicacy.
• More signs — any signs — of nonpartisan activity in the U.S. Congress. The current political divide has helped to create more ill will among the electorate than even the Vietnam War, and that’s saying a lot.
• Speaking of Vietnam, I wish the merriest of seasons for my fellow veterans and hope that the federal government will someday do what is has always vowed to do, and never has done — reform the VA healthcare system. We need another man like Mississippi’s late Rep. Sonny Montgomery, whose vision to enhance the GI Bill has helped thousands of vets receive a college education.
• Renewed prosperity for every newspaper in Mississippi from the Clarion-Ledger to the Enterprise-Journal, Leland Progress, the Magnolia Gazette, the Clarke County Tribune, the Union Appeal and the Southern Herald at Liberty, and all in-between.
• The desire for every man, woman and child on Christmas morning to Google this: “Walter Stewart’s Christmas Column.” The late sports editor of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal wrote it while serving in Burma during World War II. It is one of the finest pieces ever written about the true meaning of Christmas. Please do it.
• Better college football recruiters in the state, considering that one-fifth of the Top 10 finishers for the Heisman Trophy hail from Mississippi, and neither plays for any state school. Gardner Minshaw of Washington State is from Brandon. Darren Henderson of Memphis is from Batesville.
• A return to good health for several of my beloved classmates from the McComb High Class of 1965 who have been stricken with life-threatening diseases. And your own good health and prosperity.
• A desire by all the people of Mississippi to decide in 2019 to do everything possible to positively transform our image nationally and across the world. It’s almost to the point of now or never. It is just that crucial to our future.
• The best Christmas ever for your family and mine.
Mac Gordon, a retired newspaperman, is a native and part-time resident of McComb. He can be reached at macmarygordon@ gmail.com.
