TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalMississippi cooperatives taking a close look at rural internet
TUPELO • Since the first of the year, companies that conduct economic feasibility studies in Mississippi have been swamped by requests from electric cooperatives.
They all want to know the same thing – Can we afford to run fiber optic cable to provide high-speed internet to our rural customers?
“We contracted with the National Rural Telecommunications Council to do a feasibility study,” said Chuck Howell, manager of the Pontotoc Electric Power Association. “We’re working to get them data and maps. They are swamped right now, so we will have to wait our turn.”
Tim Wigginton of the Tishomingo County EPA agreed. The cooperative commissioned a study months ago and is still waiting for the initial results.
Read more: https://www.djournal.com/news/mississippi-cooperatives-taking-a-close-look-at-rural-internet/article_6716c643-1fd1-5dc2-a4df-5a223559e810.html
Treated like 'animals': Lockdown at prison over guard shortage entering 4th month
Roughly 1,800 of the 3,000 inmates at the South Mississippi prison in Leaksville are locked in their cells 23 hours a day and haven't been allowed visitors in at least three months.
It's not because of anything the inmates have done, but because of a lack of correctional officers in the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Some family members say inmates are subjected to inhumane conditions including black mold on walls, leaking pipes and abusive treatment by security officers.
In late January, MDOC Commissioner Pelicia Hall said in a statement that visitation and other privileges would be canceled indefinitely at a unit of the South Mississippi Correctional Institution.
Read more: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/29/prison-lockdown-conditions-called-inhumane-not-enough-guards-mississippi-leakesville-smci-mdoc/3472313002/
Many state employees are waiting to get small pay raises. But some have already gotten large ones.
The state's 27,000 employees haven't received an across-the-board pay raise in more than a decade.
That's about to change: Roughly 80 percent of workers this summer will see a small bump after the Legislature signed off on a salary deal last month. It gives public employees raises up to 3 percent, though many will see less than that, or none, due to the limitations on the increase based on position.
Workers are unhappy with the small amount, said Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of of State Employees.
The increase averages out to $1,050 a year per worker — a raise that might "equate to a half a tank of gas" for many people per paycheck, she said.
Read more: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/25/mississippi-employee-pay-some-await-small-raise-others-got-large-ones/3500633002/
Reeves Falsely Claims Hood Will Let 'Terrorists and Rapists' Vote
HATTIESBURG, Miss.—Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican candidate for governor this year, misled voters on Tuesday when he claimed that state Attorney General Jim Hood would allow "terrorists and rapists" to vote from prison if elected.
During this year's legislative session, some Mississippi Democrats, like House Minority Leader David Baria, pushed for a law to allow the restoration of voting rights for those who have served their time, but Republicans blocked those efforts. Hood, a Democratic candidate for governor, did tell a crowd in Hattiesburg last week that he supports restoring the right to people with felony convictions, but only after they have served their time.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, though, Reeves suggested Hood holds the same position as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for the Democratic party's nomination for president.
In a CNN town hall on Monday night, Sanders argued that voting rights are "inherent to our democracy" and ought to be extended even to "terrible people." Inmates, he said, should retain the right to vote while they are still in prison.
Read more: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/apr/24/reeves-falsely-claims-hood-will-let-terrorists-and/
Democrats, Activists 'Infuriated' as Hood Defends Six-Week Abortion Ban
JACKSON — Abortion-rights activists and some Democratic leaders are unhappy with Mississippi's leading Democratic candidate for governor, state Attorney General Jim Hood, after his office filed a brief in defense of the state's new six-week abortion ban.
If the law survives a court challenge, it would require doctors to check for a fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion, and all abortions would be banned in cases where a heartbeat is detectable. That usually happens around six weeks—before most women even know they are pregnant.
"We should be able to expect better from a Democrat that claims to represent the people," activist Derenda Hancock said in a statement to the Jackson Free Press on Tuesday.
Hancock is an abortion-rights activist who oversees a group of "clinic escorts" who help women avoid protesters as they arrive at the Jackson Women's Health Organization—Mississippi's only abortion clinic.
Read more: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/apr/25/democrats-activists-upset-hood-defends-six-week-ab/
'This is a really big deal' -- some teachers left out of pay raise due to administrative error
The Legislature did not appropriate enough money to provide an annual $1,500 pay raise to all public school teachers in Mississippi due to an apparent administrative error, sources have told Mississippi Today.
Last week Gov. Phil Bryant signed a $1,500 pay raise for teachers and assistant teachers into law, but a mistake in the way certain types of teachers are coded in an information system means there are not enough state funds to provide the raise for certain types of teachers. This leaves already underfunded local districts on the hook.
Rep. Jay Hughes, D-Oxford, said the shortfall could be as much as $12 million.
“This is a really big deal,” Hughes said.
Mississippi Today obtained a letter sent to House and Senate education chairmen Rep. Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach and Sen. Gray Tollison, R-Oxford. In it, a Mississippi Department of Education official wrote that the Legislature asked the department to calculate the cost of the $1,500 raise for each teacher. The department did this using the Mississippi Student Information System, which tracks teachers by category. Their calculation did not include certain types of teachers, like gifted learning, special education and others.
Read more: https://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-government/article229646189.html
Grocery tax unpopular, but cutting it hasn't been winner for politicians
Politicians’ efforts to eliminate or reduce Mississippi’s grocery tax have been unsuccessful despite what appears to be widespread support for doing so.
Various polls have found that a majority of Mississippians favor reducing or eliminating the state’s sales tax on groceries.
A Chism Strategies/Millsaps Poll earlier this year found that nearly 70 percent of Mississippians supported reducing or eliminating the tax. In 2006, 71 percent favored reducing the grocery tax and increasing the tax on cigarettes in a poll conducted by the Mellman Group.
But thus far politicians who have chosen to take up the cause of reducing the 7 percent tax have not fared well on a statewide level.
Read more: https://www.sunherald.com/news/local/article229739439.html
'My top 3 changes every day': San Francisco voters turn out to hear Beto O'Rourke's 2020 pitch
SAN FRANCISCO – Though the line of people snaking outside the Irish Cultural Center late Sunday morning kept growing, few “Beto 2020’’ shirts could be spotted in the crowd.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was making his first appearance in famously liberal San Francisco since launching his campaign last month, but the folks coming out to hear him speak were not yet ready for a lovefest.
-snip-
“There’s so many right now, I’m just trying to find out as much as I can about each one. My top 3 list changes every day,’’ said Christian Marquez, 35, a compliance officer for a startup who listed O’Rourke third behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
By the time O’Rourke was done delivering his 25-minute talk and answering questions for another 25 minutes, he may have moved up on Marquez’s rankings. Probably also sold a few more T-shirts.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/28/beto-orourke-anti-donald-trump-san-francisco-voters/3612733002/
'My top 3 changes every day': San Francisco voters turn out to hear Beto O'Rourke's 2020 pitch
SAN FRANCISCO – Though the line of people snaking outside the Irish Cultural Center late Sunday morning kept growing, few “Beto 2020’’ shirts could be spotted in the crowd.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was making his first appearance in famously liberal San Francisco since launching his campaign last month, but the folks coming out to hear him speak were not yet ready for a lovefest.
-snip-
“There’s so many right now, I’m just trying to find out as much as I can about each one. My top 3 list changes every day,’’ said Christian Marquez, 35, a compliance officer for a startup who listed O’Rourke third behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
By the time O’Rourke was done delivering his 25-minute talk and answering questions for another 25 minutes, he may have moved up on Marquez’s rankings. Probably also sold a few more T-shirts.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/28/beto-orourke-anti-donald-trump-san-francisco-voters/3612733002/
Alabama's governor could clean up toxic soil. Instead, she took $55,000 from its polluter
Governor Kay Ivey, is this how the story ends?
“The site in Jefferson County, Alabama, was never put on the NPL nor was Drummond deemed a responsible party. The poisonous toxins are still in the ground in North Birmingham. Drummond saved itself over 100 million dollars by preventing the land in North Birmingham it has contaminated from being deemed a Superfund cleanup site and put on the NPL.”
Those are not my words.
They’re from the court record — filed on behalf of David Roberson, the former vice president of Drummond Co., and one of two men convicted last year of bribing state Rep. Oliver Robinson as part of the very scheme he describes.
Roberson is suing Drummond Co., which fired him earlier this year, for $50 million. In his lawsuit, he accuses the company’s general counsel of setting him up to be a fall guy for the Alabama coal giant. Roberson also says the company’s law firm, Balch & Bingham, caused him to believe the scheme was legal, and he’s suing them, too.
Read more: https://www.al.com/news/2019/04/alabamas-governor-could-clean-up-toxic-soil-instead-she-took-55000-from-its-polluter.html
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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