[Editorial] Start Asking Questions

August 27, 2008

Community response to the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Flora brings to mind a question every mother has asked an irresponsible teenager since time immemorial: “If ‘everyone’ jumped off a cliff, would you follow?”

What little information the public received about the facility was positive: It will create jobs; it will bring money into the state; it will begin (or feed) a biotech boom; Mississippi will contribute to fighting the War on Terror. Waving jobs, opportunity and the American flag, few community members have opposed the lab, encouraged no doubt by the “paper of record” not investigating the official claims. The JFP can’t claim innocence in not raising the red flag soon enough, but then we’re not the big daily paper with the large staff of reporters.

There is plenty of information out there that doesn’t paint as rosy a picture about the NBAF as Gov. Haley Barbour and The Clarion-Ledger, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find it. From the Government Accounting Office to National Geographic magazine, the warnings are there: Bio and agro-defense research is inherently dangerous. The cost of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease will be far greater than Homeland Security estimates.

It’s a situation that gets repeated over and over again in the Magnolia State and in Jackson, from the Two Lakes plan to Mayor Frank Melton’s election. Hamstrung by poverty and misinformation, Mississippians act out of desperation: Anyone who promises “progress” is given carte blanche to institute whatever changes they see necessary. Acting like sheep, we’re forever getting shorn.

For far too long, Mississippians have been too trusting of leadership, unwilling or unable to do the work of verifying and questioning. In the wake of finding out that we’ve have been taken—again—we become indignant, yet the indignation rarely translates into action. Faced with another “official” telling us they have great plans for us, we believe again, as if struck with amnesia.

These are the same “officials” who left Gulf Coast reconstruction to contractors and developers, while private citizens still live in trailers three years after Hurricane Katrina; who refuse to raise the cigarette tax despite majority desires to the contrary; and who continually cut services to the most needy while shielding the tobacco industry from higher taxes. In fact, since 1999, Mississippi has experienced the greatest increase in economic inequality of any state in the nation.

Our attitude must change if we’re going to make progress. “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” isn’t a joke. We must take responsibility for our own growth and education, not blindly leave it to those in charge.