This old country boy loves Mississippi. Until the last 5 years, the majority of my life was spent there. Of course I know about all the stereotypes (and many times, “truths”) that are used against us MS Folk. But generally, I used this as a way to keep the very wonderful things about the place my little hidden secret. I have taken pride in being from the “50th State”, because I never really believed that it was last.
Sure, we are the poorest state… have the highest obesity rates… one of the highest number teen pregnancy rates… one of the least educated… one of the highest unemployment rates… one of the highest rates of gonorrhea… and many other negative stats which make us “winners”. But I also know that most of these people are the nicest, most inviting and loving people in this country. That is a fact that I believe and have witnessed in my world travels.
There is also beauty in the country-side, especially in NE MS (where I grew up). There is ample wildlife and open spaces, not to mention the river therapy that Dr Doug talks about.
But, we are experiencing some devastation right now that includes the recent tornado event and perhaps worse, the Mississippi River is over-flowing, endangering the lives of many thousands of people on the west side.
DublinMick (a Georgia country boy), informed me of the SF Gate article which discusses the flood event and there is one paragraph that catches my attention in a very scary way:
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour urged people to get out if they think there is even a chance their homes will flood. He said there is no reason to believe a levee on the Yazoo River would fail, but if it did, 107 feet of water would flow over small towns.
You need to understand that the very highest point in Mississippi is near my hometown and that is 806 feet (Woodall “Mountain”). But to the far west, in the Delta, it is far lower, especially near the river. 106 feet would totally cover virtually the entire area, likely killing many of the 465,000 or so people who live there in their squalor. To think that the Gov is saying that “IF” the citizens “think” there is a problem for flooding to move out. Well, tell me, you sanctimonious clown, where will these poverty-stricken people go?
A Natural News article explains even more detail about what is going on and that many places have already seen the high water mark record broken:
Flood waters continue to rise all along the Mississippi, including in Natchez, Miss., which today saw its portion of the river rise to 58.3 feet, breaking the all-time 1937 record of 53.04 feet. Vicksburg, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., and New Orleans, La. are all expected to see record-breaking crests late next week, some far exceeding previous record flood levels.
Tunica is under water. Massive crop failures already have occurred.
According to the above article, the “Black Water” is also tainted and I wonder what this might mean for the future of the region (not to mention America).
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1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days
2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through.
3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. “Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product.”
But, “why”? Why let it keep spreading to new regions of the gulf? Or worse (as Dr Doug and I were discussing today) what happens when some tropical storm or hurricane picks this stuff up and dumps it on us? Into our water table? Killing our plants and livestock? Is it possible?
… the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially began on June 1. This season is predicted to be especially active with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expecting up to 23 tropical storms, up to 14 of which may become hurricanes. Strong storms could sweep the toxic mixture of oil and chemical dispersants from the Gulf far inland, contaminating rivers, wildlife and even residential areas that might have escaped exposure under other circumstances.
The experts are already frightened that this is the end of the fishing industry:
Because of the increasing threat posed to the environment by spreading oil, NOAA was forced to expand the area covered by their fishing ban for three consecutive days beginning May 31. As it stands, 37 percent of the Gulf of Mexico, or 88,522 square miles, is now closed to fishing. Large areas off the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are shut down. Federal waters near the Florida panhandle have also been closed.
“Fishing communities are suffering a worst case scenario of total collapse,” Carl Safina, an ecologist with Blue Ocean Institute, told the World Socialist Web Site. “I don’t see how this could be temporary. The basis of their livelihood is being destroyed.”
There has been one series of bad solutions. In the last case, they had to increase the flow by 20% to try the Top Hat. Ed shows us well that is working out for us. They just can’t seem to stop it. The scary thing?
Many technical experts have said that the first attempts to complete the relief well in August could miss entirely on the first try, as it is difficult to intersect the blown-out well at the precise location and angle needed.
Is it a done deal or not? Dr Doug has a friend who said this should have been stopped long ago (I have had oil folk tell me the same thing).
Am I just a suspicious bastard or is it a fact that everything seems so purposeful? It seems to me that people knew something was about to happen. Jay at ThoughtSwirl explains that there is Evidence Supporting Foreknowledge Of BP Oil Spill “Accident”
Goldman Sachs sold $250 million worth of BP stock in the first quarter of this year.
BP chief Tony Hayward sold £1.4 (about $1.68 million) worth of BP shares weeks before the oil spill.
And Haliburton bought a company that specializes in dealing with WELL FIRES and BLOWOUTS in APRIL
Earlier, when observing the US AG disclosure of a civil and criminal investigation into BP plc, we noted in passing that BP’s former Chairman, Peter Sutherland, who left the firm is a Chairman of Goldman Sachs International. Mr. Sutherland holds some other interesting titles, including a position on the Trilateral Commission, he was a chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008, he is a UN special representative for migration and development; he was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organisation, he had previously served as director general of GATT since July 1993 and was instrumental in concluding the Uruguay GATT Round Negotiations. Needless to say, we focused on the Goldman relationship. When digging deeper, we uncovered some amusing correlations, most notably between the BP plc sellside ratings by Goldman BP analyst Michelle della Vigna and the Goldman Sachs Asset Management holdings of BP plc.
I can say this… this is raw Capitalism in action. No regulation, winks and nods towards environmental safety concerns, and no matter what, PAY THOSE DIVIDENDS while you got ‘em.
Can you imagine the share owners as they laugh, knowing that at their Texas City facility, they just released 500,000 pounds of emissions, including more than 400 pounds of benzene for 40 consecutive days?
That’s a hoot to celebrate over with a bath full of cash, huh?
There is a lot of HooDoo going on about Gov Sanford’s liaison with his Argentinian sweetie (as a side a note, most Argentine women I have seen are drop dead gorgeous, but maybe I just look at the wrong magazines).
“Well, I went for a 4 day hike on the Appalachian trail“. Jesus, dude. You suck as a liar (which explains the R behind your name).
Anyway, what this does is open up the gallery for all the right-wing idiots clamoring all over themselves to be the next RayGun. Facing South has been on the spot regarding the missing Governor. Chris is also on spot regarding how this affects the upcoming presidential race in 2012.
The RGA (The Republican Governors Association) quickly announced that they are replacing Gov Sanford after he resigned his position. Found at Politico:
That was fast: The Republican Governors Association just announced that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour — already “in line” to take the chairmanship of the RGA — has assumed it.
” As a former RNC chairman and one of the best governors in the country, no one is better positioned to takeover as RGA chairman than Governor Barbour,” executive director Nick Ayers said in a statement.
Barbour is also a 2012 contender who sees the virtue of keeping his profile, for now, comfortably low, and one of the best-respected political minds in the Republican Party.
It makes me wonder if all of this is intentional. Would Gov Sanford still be protecting the R Party for some reason? I mean, I know he has been an idiot and had his foolish stance shut down by his state congress via veto (which has to be extremely embarrassing). Maybe it is simply that Sanford was thinking with little head instead of the hollow one on his shoulders.
But as Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Sanford is a clown who was playing diddly with a hot Latina woman and my bet is that it was about to become huge news. He circumvented the further destruction of the R Party (yeah, good luck with that one) by “coming out”. This also erases the the black eye that the “Stimulus Fighters” brought on themselves.
But Geezus Christ and a Whole Bunch of “By-God’s”, are you people SERIOUSLY considering a vote for that garbage can looking asshole, racist fuck, killer-releaser? REALLY?!?
Is this the best that R’s have to offer? Or Palin?
Somehow I am convinced that there are enough ignorant rednecks that even this worthless bag of shit may actually get a chance. Nothing will surprise me with this country. And the clueless Yahoos who have brought us to this state we are in.
After hearing some of the right-wing fools begin chewing each other’s asses out here and all the mixup going on on the Republican side of the Demublican Party where Rush rules and Steele is just another wanker, it would not surprise me if a disgusting toad of a man like Haley Barbour gets the nod to run for POTUS. But Jesus Christ, my Mississippi friends, have you no sense of honesty, honor or integrity? Can you not tell that this bag of shit is just another southern right-wing racist who plays the game just like the last reTHUGlican POTUS did?
Nancy Northern said Friday that she’s outraged her aunt’s killer is being released from prison today — courtesy of Gov. Haley Barbour — after he served only 19 years of a life sentence.
The governor this week commuted 54-year-old Michael David Graham’s sentence for murdering Northern’s aunt, Adrienne Klasky Graham. Graham has been incarcerated since 1989 and has been a trusty at the governor’s mansion for the last eight years.
“I’ve written a letter to Haley Barbour telling him that he should stay in prison,” Northern said. “He ruined my family and now the governor is giving him a second chance. No one gave my aunt a second chance. He took her away from us — her father, her mother, her children, my mother, all of us.”
When contacted Friday and told of Klasky’s family and the community being outraged over the governor’s decision, Pete Smith, spokesman for Barbour, declined to comment, saying, “We’ve released all of the information we are going to.”
There are no restrictions on where Graham can live in the state, said Suzanne Singletary, director of the communications division at the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Klasky’s family has heard rumors of Graham planning to live in Hinds County, but Singletary said the state agency does not disclose relocation destinations for inmates. Smith said Thursday that Graham will not live in Jackson County, but was unsure of the convicted felon’s plans.
Singletary said details of Graham’s commuted sentence are still being worked out.
“He will have to check in with parole officers once he’s released as if he’s on parole,” Singletary said. “He’ll always be a convicted felon. That won’t change.”
Singletary called Graham’s commuted sentence “an indefinite suspended sentence.”
“It can be revoked,” she said. “It all depends on his good behavior.”
Graham shot his ex-wife at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun as she sat in her car at a traffic signal at the intersection of Jackson Avenue and Pascagoula Street on April 7, 1989. He left the scene, but later turned himself in to authorities at the urging of his attorney, Don Sigalas. The couple had been divorced for three years and she alleged he was stalking and threatening her regularly….
Did you even know about such a thing? That like Scooter Libbey (who, as far as I am aware, didn’t pull the trigger directly to kill anyone) did, in fact, play a significant role in killing hundreds of thousands Afghanis and Iraqis and altho never charged, was pardoned. But think of this Lobbyist idiot, Barbour (who is a disgusting representation of humanity, sort of the Jabba the Hut of Governors) as your next president and the fact that he could pardon a convicted shotgun killer and the lack of judgment such a move takes.
So, when you read or hear that he may run in 2012, please don’t snicker too much. You can never tell what sort of idiot the American people are capable of electing to that position.
From Facing South we have a wonderful breakdown of this clown’s history and intentions:
Speaking yesterday to an American Legion youth program in Jackson, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said he has thought about running for president — but that he won’t think about it anymore until after 2010.
His remarks came following his speech to delegates attending the American Legion Boys State, a civics education program for high school boys created in 1935 to counter the Fascist Party’s Young Pioneer Camps. The Associated Press reports:
“Anybody who’s even thinking about this before the end of 2010, there’s no need to think about it, and I’m not going to think about it until after 2010,” Barbour said after his speech.
Adding to the speculation over a possible 2012 presidential bid by Barbour is the fact that he has scheduled trips to Iowa and New Hampshire next month to raise funds for those states’ Republican parties, WLBT reports.
Barbour told the gathering that he was focused on upcoming gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine can’t run again because the state does not allow consecutive gubernatorial terms. In the June 9 Democratic primary, Virginia voters will choose someone from among former Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe, longtime state Delegate Brian Moran and state Sen. Creigh Deeds for a fall face-off with Republican Bob McDonnell, a graduate of Rev. Pat Robertson’s Regent University law school and the top recipient of Robertson’s campaign cash.
But the AP noted that Barbour sounded at times as if he were making a stump speech. At one point he compared his background with that of President Obama, saying he thought it was more valuable for a president to come from a business background than from the Senate.
He also said Obama was the first U.S. Senator elected president since Harry Truman — apparently forgetting about John F. Kennedy.
Before being elected governor in 2003, Barbour worked as a lawyer and lobbyist, founding Barbour & Rogers LLC, which went on to became one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington and earned millions working on behalf of the tobacco industry. He also chaired the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997 and engineered the GOP’s capture of both the U.S. Senate and House for the first time since 1954.
Barbour has sparked various controversies during his time in politics, particularly around race and class issues. In 1982, while running a race for U.S. Senate that he eventually lost, a press aide complained to him that “coons” were going to be at a campaign stop at the state fair. In front of reporters, Barbour warned the aide to stop using racist language or he would be “reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.”
During his 2003 run for governor, Barbour again raised eyebrows when he spoke at the Blackhawk Rally, a fundraiser for a council school in Blackhawk, Miss. Also known as academies, these private schools were created by the White Citizens’ Council movement to avoid racial integration. The rally was hosted by the Council of Conservative Citizens, which fought school integration.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Barbour was widely praised for his success in responding to the disaster and in getting reconstruction funds for Mississippi. But as Chris Kromm and I reported in a 2007 story for Salon, the recovery in some of the state’s hardest-hit areas was plagued with serious problems, with some small towns fearing bankruptcy. Barbour also raised the ire of his state’s social justice advocates by diverting $600 million in federal funds from a program to help low-income homeowners who suffered losses in the storm in order to spruce up the state’s port at Gulfport — a move that led to a lawsuit filed late last year.
More recently, Barbour opposed President Obama’s federal stimulus plan, joining his fellow Republican governors from Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas in objecting to its expansion of unemployment benefits. Last month the unemployment rate in Mississippi fell slightly to 8.6% to match the U.S. rate, though rates were still as high as 11.4% in some Delta counties.
How in the world do you rednecks put up with him? Of all the things I miss about Mississippi since leaving, that nincompoop isn’t one of them. He is an embarrassment to Mississippians, and the saddest fact is that most of you don’t know it or care. When Haley vetoes the Stimulus money, there can be but one reason, he is running for higher office of some sort. I can’t wait until tomorrow to write about his pardoning a guy who shot his wife to death with a 12 gauge shotgun on a street corner in Mississippi. Don’t let me forget to mention that he once worked on the Gov’s staff, as I understand it. Or the fact that the Mississippi Senate felt like some sort of law be passed to have a citizen watch group have a board to question these idiotic “pardons”.
But don’t let that blubber filled lobbyist get away with his criminality. You can do something.
There is a new campaign by the Mississippi Center for Justice that allows you to sign a petition to make Haley fully aware that we are watching and know better. There are far too many Mississippians that are dependent upon whatever stimulus money they can get. Unlike Haley, most Mississippians have to work for a living and are not dependent upon lobbying efforts to make us rich, like most of the elitist wannabes that prance around, walking as if they are important or something.
The fact is that Haley works for YOU. You must figure that out and stop putting that embarrassment up on some sort of pedestal (unless it is a witches pyre):
Petition to Governor Barbour: Accept Stimulus Money
Mississippi Center for Justice launches national online petition in favor of stimulus
Mississippi Center for Justice launched an online campaign, “Standing With Mississippi,” designed to inform Mississippians—and other friends around the country—about Governor Haley Barbour’s intended rejection of nearly $60 million in Unemployment Insurance benefits provided to Mississippi as part of the Federal stimulus package.
“Standing With Mississippi” encourages people to voice their support for providing every available dollar to Mississippians who have lost their employment through no fault of their own.
As the poorest state in the nation, Mississippi can least afford to put partisan politics ahead of people’s basic needs. Mississippi desperately needs its rightful share of the stimulus package. The money that Governor Barbour is rejecting will help 39,600 hardworking families weather this recession.
The petition comes at a time when Governor Barbour has called a public meeting for April 16 to discuss the stimulus money. Mississippi Center for Justice believes hardworking Mississippians deserve every available resource to support their basic needs of food and shelter during such a difficult economic time.
The Mississippi Center for Justice is a nonprofit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice. Supported and staffed by attorneys, community leaders and volunteers, the Center develops and pursues strategies to combat discrimination and poverty statewide. To learn more about our work, visit www.mscenterforjustice.org.
I hope you Mississippians are proud of your lobbyist Governor who must be considering a run for the Whitehouse (and the scary thing is that there are actually a few ignorant rednecks who would vote for this piece of shit):
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Gov. Haley Barbour has vetoed a bill that would’ve given tax credits to furniture manufacturers in Mississippi.
Please read the thumb in Mississippians’ eye from the AP source.
Essentially, motion furniture had its heyday in North Mississippi for many years, until manufacturers started sending the cut & build operations overseas. I have witnessed so many companies shut down or lay off so many people over the past 4 or 5 years that it is amazing that the rednecks I know haven’t gone after a few heads.
Now this idiot Haley Barbour (he must be acting out his retribution towards his parents for naming him Haley… I mean, really. WTF?) has vetoed the only sound way to keep the Chinese honest.
Can you feel Haley’s love for his home state and the lives of working Mississippians?
I wonder if he and Bobby Jindal plan this ignorant, constituency back-stabbing shit together? Is that the new reTHUGlican ticket for Pres and VP?
“Even though all men desire knowledge, still not all devote themselves to the pursuit of it because they are held back by other things, either by pleasures or the needs of the present life; or they may even avoid the effort that learning demands because they are lazy.”
Aristotle
It takes a couple of things to make a redneck a clueless redneck. Most of us have a pretty hard life, as a redneck. Many of us know and understand farm life, if not country life. Many of us grew up poor and with certain breaks in life were able to succeed in a limited fashion (some moreso than others).
But we are led around by fools like Bredesen, Jindal and Barbour, thinking that they know best and are doing the right thing, no matter how badly we end up in the long run. We are basically a stupid bunch, a lazy bunch or just too busy to take notice. We vote for the very idiots who get their money from the people who want to keep us down the most, yet we are too ignorant to realize it, much less actually DO something about it.
Since in my line of work I deal mostly with educated engineers and the like, I doubt that it is stupidity. Generally, compared to most down here, they make more money. That leaves laziness.
Are you too lazy to read something other than Rush’s reading list? How did you make it through school without reading?
As an American patriot, I am embarrassed by you, if you are still touting the same old tired and totally bullshit right-wing talking points. I am embarrassed that you will still follow the piper to your demise and not give a shit that you are also herding many others with you to their death and doom.
What IS your problem, exactly, that you have this insatiable desire to ruin my country with your ignorant and sheople-like complicity?
Think about this. Haley Barbour (Governor of MS) is going for broke in his upcoming presidential bid (I snicker at the thought). He is going to turn down the money because he hates his fellow Mississippians as much as he loves his Party, it seems. But, if he is going for broke, why not REALLY go for broke.
Why let California beat him to the punch when all he has to do is use his kingly authority to authorize marijuana decriminalization in Mississippi?
Can you imagine the sudden tourism and revenue it would generate, all the while giving Mississippians access to a wonder drug? Its economy would immediately flourish, he could turn down the stimulus money and be a reTHUG hero at the same time.
Nice post by Jeff at CottonMouth in which he points out the hypocrisy in the governor’s financial system. Mississippians can be swayed by the most vile and corrupt criminals. Like little kids to a hand full of candy.
Haley Barbour wants to defy our state legislature and withhold financial documents related to his blind trust. A new that has passed but not taken effect requires transparency on such documents. Haley Barbour is the only political figure in Mississippi who has a blind trust. A blind trust allows the Governor to hold on to his financial assets, while relinquishing direct access.
“I don’t know of any legal authority to (deny public access), but the commission asked the attorneys to come back and look for legal authority to support their position, and we’ll consider it,” Tom Hood, the commission’s executive director, said after the meeting.
A lawyer for Griffin Norquist, a banker in Yazoo City who manages Barbour’s trust, also attended the meeting.
Barbour, a Republican and former Washington lobbyist whose client list included tobacco companies, created a blind trust when he took office in 2004. The tools are used mostly by politicians at the federal level and are supposed to prevent conflicts of interest by shielding them from their assets.
When will Mississippians realize the fact that we have a crook for a governor who operates under the guidance of the Bush-Cheney political playbook on a state level? Just like Cheney refusing to sell his financial interests before taking power, Barbour has insisted on keeping his ability to profit from his term in office. We have a lobbyist who serves as a part-time governor. When the numbers are released, Mississippians will see the truth. W
B’Man: I have written about this crook for quite some time (here, here, here and here) and havean obvious opinion about him. ThinkProgress has a post up in which recent testimony shows he has been intimidating witnesses with his Senatorial position (not that this is uncommon, just that here is another example of Mississippians being proved how they have been duped for so long).
During a deposition last week, Jim Robie, an attorney for State Farm Insurance, alleged that former Mississippi senator Trent Lott had “urged witnesses to give false information in a Hurricane Katrina lawsuit.” Questioning Lott’s nephew, Zach Scruggs, Robie asked if it had been his “custom” to have Lott “contact and encourage witnesses to give false information.” Scruggs refused to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment.
In an interview with LegalNewsline, Robie said Lott had “initiated contact with people surrounding” the case involving alleged efforts to “defraud” State Farm:
“Clearly, the record couldn’t be more plain that Sen. Lott and his associates were talking to people that were key advisers to Mr. Scruggs, paid consultants and those who were creating an illusion that simply doesn’t have any basic fact,” Robie told Legal Newsline on Thursday. […]
Robie said Lott, a leading Republican, initiated contact with people surrounding this case, something unprecedented for a U.S. Senator.
“Have you ever had a U.S. Senator call you?” he asked rhetorically.
A spokesman for Lott’s lobbying firm told Legal Newsline that “the former senator had no interest in justifying the implication with a response.”
Lott has previously been reported to have used his position in the Senate to put pressure on State Farm. In May, the New Yorker reported:
Charles Chamness, the C.E.O. of a national insurance trade association, has claimed that Lott had threatened him, in a telephone call, with “bringing down State Farm and the industry.” Lott also co-sponsored a proposal to strip the insurance industry of an antitrust exemption that had been in place since the nineteen-forties.
B’Man: Fellow Mississippi Rednecks, do you believe that Thad Cochran, Roger Wicker, Haley Barbour or any of the other corrupt Mississippi reTHUGlicans are any better than this scumbag?
He is doing it again? That loudmouthed redneck is about to steal money from the folks who lost their homes, but for some reason I imagine you’ll just let it happen. God, I’m glad I left that God forsaken state. I’d come back if I thought the people would grow some balls and help me fix this thievery. But I have little hope for you now. The poorest state in the union, with more folks in poverty and Barbour will take money issued for homes and “earmark” it for other things.
I have a nephew who has been working with those tainted trailors down there and he is outraged over this bit of news. People are getting screwed.
Digby shares the details (the original MSNBC article found here):
While thousands of Mississippians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina remain in FEMA trailers, the federal government on Friday approved a state plan to spend $600 million in grants earmarked for housing on a major expansion of the state-owned port — a project that could eventually include casino and resort facilities.
[...]
The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing.
When it became clear that homeowners, who had to meet specific criteria on damage and insurance, would not tap all of the grant money, Barbour instructed the state development agency to seek a waiver from HUD to redirect $600 million for work on the port.
Mississippi, with the highest poverty rate of any state by several measures, already had won HUD waivers of rules that require the funds to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Critics see the waivers as a product of the unparalleled influence with the Bush administration enjoyed by Barbour, a former Reagan White House political director, Republican National Committee chairman and legendary fixer who continues to receive checks from the Washington lobbying shop that still bears his name.
[...]
After the storm, an update to the master plan found that Katrina had “accelerated redevelopment of port areas and opened new opportunities for the growth of the maritime and gaming markets.” The plan raises the prospect of new casino-resort development on port land as part of a public-private partnership, financed separately from the CDBG money.
It wasn’t until early December, six months after the update was adopted by the port authority, that the state development authority sought a waiver from HUD to divert $600 million of the housing grant money to the port — more than double the net dollar damage reportedly sustained by the port from Katrina.
[...]
Barbour’s current position that part of the housing grant pool was always intended for the port is at odds with his March 2006 testimony before a Senate committee, in which he emphasized that the CDBG money was mostly committed to housing and sought new funds for the port. A year later, Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, did not mention port funding in testimony before Congress about the use of grant funds a few months before the new port master plan was adopted.
[...]
Port Executive Director Don Allee agreed to an interview with msnbc.com, then canceled it and did not schedule another despite repeated requests.
Cindy Singletary of Living Independence For Everyone, one of 50 nonprofit, religious and social advocacy groups that make up the Steps Coalition, sees the move to divert the housing funds as a bait-and-switch maneuver. “I have nothing against the port itself,” she said. “The main thing I’m against is the priority of it. … We have jobs on the coast. There’s ‘help wanted’ signs everywhere. But we don’t have homes, we don’t have apartments. … That, to me, should be the No. 1 priority for Mississippi.”
… they remind me of this assclown Governor from Mississippi, Haley Barbour.
Mississippians are truly some of the most brainwashed sheeple in this country (I am a lifelong Mississippian, recently moved). You vote the R, no matter that he is an crooked and clueless lobbyist like Haley Barbour is.
Get a whiff of this redneck stench…
Miss Gov. Barbour takes swipe at Democratic candidates
Washington, D.C. — In a speech at the Republican National Committee winter meeting Friday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour refrained from endorsing any GOP presidential candidate but took some shots at the Democrats, especially Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.”I was worried that it was bad for us that Hillary seemed to be running in the center,” said Barbour of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. “And Obama is to the left of that,” he said of Sen. Barack Obama, D-N.Y. “Edwards,” said Barbour “is running to the left of Mao Tze -Tung.”Edwards’ fiery anti-corporate rhetoric apparently reminds Barbour of the late Chinese communist leader.
As the crowd erupted, Barbour said “I thought that might make Hillary look more new,” he said of her taking a centrist approach. “but I don’t think that’s happening.” Barbour, a former RNC chairman, did not indicate a preference for his own party, saying, “I can be enthusiastically for any of the five who might get nominated.”
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