"Senate Bill 3064 & The Cloned Cat"

Last week I was chastised on the air by callers and cohorts simply because I didn't take the cloned cat story as GOSPEL. In case you missed it, a two month old kitten called Copycat is supposed to have been the product of a cloning by Texas A&M University in College Station. Here's the problem; all we've heard about cloning is it produces the identical twin from genetics to appearances. Well guess what? The cat looks very different from the tabby that gave her life. No wonder more than one "good Ole boy from Mississippi" wonders if the Aggies are duping us. You don't have to be from Missouri to ask some deranged looking scientist to show me a few more facts before we believe this stuff, do you?

Now, that brings me Senate Bill 3064. Senator Billy H. Thames of Mize was on a tirade condemning the newspapers and SuperTalk Mississippi for the failure of the pay raise bill. Senator Thames and other lawmakers keep up their justification spin by constantly going back to the lack of proper employees to do the job. The example we've heard over and over pertains to engineers. "We don't have enough in-house engineers for construction so we've go to contract with outside engineers and that's costly." I guess when a lawmaker makes a financially based statement, he or she expects most people to take it for gospel. I'm sorry, I think it's wise to ask a few questions. Such as, is it possible that contract engineers, who are job specific, would ultimately be a better decision than in-house engineers?

Think about it. If a project demands more expertise than in-house engineers have, you have to hire additional consultants and job specific engineers. If legislators overspend the budget you have fewer projects. If you have fewer projects, you've still have government engineers drawing government salaries with government pensions, government medical, government vacations, etc. If you contract engineers, they only work when you need them to.

If you have government engineers and somebody screws up big-time, the people eat the cost of the mistake. If you have job specific engineers on contract, THEY pay to do it over the right way the second time if it's done the wrong way the first time. They hire, they fire, they pay their own medical insurance, overtime, downtime-you name it. PLUS, doing contract work means the private sector HAS to come to the table with a competitive bid that saves every taxpayer a few more bucks. No wonder it's good to ask questions.

Hey look, I'm not saying that the figures wouldn't add up to boost the legislators' argument, I'd just like to have some really smart, unbiased accountants work the numbers over a little. All we've heard is that this pay raise bill was needed to increase efficiency in state government and NOBODY has questioned that statement.

You know, it took those Texas A & M scientist 188 tries to get just one kitten. They got 82 embryos but only one cat got pregnant with one single kitten. Now they tell us that one little cat is worth thousands of dollars. Why heck, in Mississippi we could do the same thing with one three-legged, nearsighted tomcat. Gives us a few months and we'll show up at the next press conference with 188 cats, 50 of them identical. When questioned about the genetic makeup, we can us the same press release script as the College Station gang. And as far as making you a deal on one or more cats, we'll give you a real, good Ole boy price!...just TRUST ME!

Paul Gallo

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