Category: Mississippi

Mississippi Sets The Stage

My state of Mississippi has the distinction of many things…..we lead the nation on child poverty, one of the most unhealthy of states, most littered state,….on and on…..

Now Mississippi trying to be known as the state that brought down Roe v Wade…..

The Mississippi attorney general on Thursday asked the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, a challenge to the 1973 law that’s been expected since May, when the high court agreed to hear a case involving a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. Lower courts blocked the law, known as the Gestational Age Act, and the state is appealing, NBC News reports. Attorney General Lynn Fitch said the Roe v. Wade ruling, as well as the other major ruling legalizing abortion in the US, 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were “egregiously wrong.” She said there is an “overwhelming” case to be made for overruling them, CNN reports.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition,” Fitch said in a new brief to the justices. The request is notable, because when Mississippi asked SCOTUS to hear the case, it said doing so did not “require the court to overturn either Roe or Casey.” Politico says this brief “raises the stakes,” but notes that court watchers tend to think the justices are more likely to stop short of overruling Roe, while continuing to allow states to place an increasing number of restrictions on abortions. Axios points out the possibility that President Biden will protect abortion rights via an executive action if Roe is overturned. Oral arguments are expected in late fall or early winter, with a decision possible by June.

With a conservative ideologues on the Court this could well be the death throes of Roe v Wade….

And Mississippi will be the final nail in the coffin of reproductive rights.

I am so proud….(that is sarcasm in case you missed it)

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mississippi’s Covid

The news tells me about the Covid resurgence in Nevada, California, New York, etc so I thought I would let my readers know what is happening in my state of Mississippi….

Vaccinated…..my county of Harrison is at 29% (since we have a high population of old farts I would have thought it would be higher)….no county is over 45% and most of them are in the North of the state.

We have a Repube governor and he is doing his part to try and make it a disastrous Summer….

Back to school approaches and Tater Twat Reeves has issued his edict….

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves apparently does not plan to require unvaccinated students and staff to wear face masks when school starts up for the new school year to avoid further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

WLBT-TV reported Monday that Reeves’ press secretary said the governor has “no intention of requiring students or staff to wear masks when they’re in school this Fall.”

The reported statement seems to contradict the state’s own health officials and last week’s new guidance by the Centers for Disease Control which indicated unvaccinated students should continue social distancing and wear face masks when indoors.

Report: Tate Reeves has ‘no intention’ of requiring unvaccinated students wear masks in fall

More news about the pandemic….

With a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant in Mississippi, health officials are encouraging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a tweet on Tuesday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said there are seven children in the ICU due to the Delta variant. Two of the children are on life support. A previous tweeted from Dobbs said 12 children were in the ICU, and 10 were on life support. He said a hospital corrected its report to the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH).

According to Dobbs, a majority of the COVID-19 cases in Mississippi are the Delta variant. He said a “vast majority” of the cases, hospitalizations and deaths are of people who have not been vaccinated.

On Tuesday, MSDH reported 219 new coronavirus cases and 10 additional deaths across the state.

Two children on life support in Mississippi as Delta variant cases surge

Will Mississippi schools be in session in August?

The latest surge of COVID-19 cases in Mississippi, caused by the Delta variant, is also hitting the state’s younger population, increasing concerns over the return to schools next month. 

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted Tuesday that 7 minors have been hospitalized due to Delta infections in Mississippi, and 2 of them are now on ventilators. The earlier strains of COVID-19 were much less transmissible and did not infect children to the extent seen with the Delta variant.

Over the past three weeks, the number of confirmed Delta cases in Mississippi has increased nearly sevenfold, up from 29 to 231. Those 231 cases only represent a small surveillance sample though, so it is undoubtedly only a small fraction of the Delta infections in the state.

During an interview on SuperTalk Radio’s Gallo Show on Monday, Dobbs predicted that infections in younger people will cause a large wave of infections and negatively impact school district plans to reopen fully with in-person instruction. 

“It’s going to be disruptive,” Dobbs said. “I think Delta’s going to take its toll on having a successful, vibrant school year because kids are going to have to be quarantined, they’re going to have to be isolated. We’re going to have outbreaks and all that kind of stuff.”

What those outbreaks look like will be dependent on virus circulation in a school district’s surrounding community and individual districts’ policies on mask wearing and social distancing, since no requirements will be coming at the state level. 

“Governor Reeves has no intention of requiring students or staff to wear masks when they’re in school this Fall,” Reeves’ press secretary, Bailey Martin, said in an email to WLBT this week.

https://mississippitoday.org/2021/07/13/covid-infections-children-back-to-school-plans/

Any deaths will fall squarely on the shoulders of Tater Twat Reeves (his real name is Tate Reeves).

The near future is not looking good…..all we can do is protect yourself and your family for no one else cares enough to assist.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–16Jul21

Blues comes to my town!

Film star Morgan Freeman, a Mississippian by birth, is bring his blues club to the Mississippi Gulf Coast….Biloxi to be exact…..

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is bringing the Blues to Biloxi with plans to open a second location of his popular Clarksdale juke joint in on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

WLOX in Biloxi reports that Freeman’s second Ground Zero Blues Club will be will be located inside the old  Kress Building in downtown Biloxi. The 20,000 square foot space was formerly called Kress Live, a live music and entertainment destination.

Freeman co-owns the club with former Clarksdale mayor and attorney Bill Luckett. They started the original Ground Zero in Clarksdale in May 2001 and since then, the club has become a tourist attraction in Mississippi.

The juke joint got its name due to Clarksdale being described as “Ground Zero” for blues fans from around the globe.

(magnoliastatelive.com)

As a big fan of the Blues I wish them lots of luck and I will see them soon.

Enjoy your upcoming weekend…

Be Well….Be Safe….

Economic Development?

I have always thought that the promise of ‘economic development’ was a “LIE”…..it is the promise of something that is not going to happen to justify some sort of con perpetrated on the community.

I got thinking about this term more when I watched a piece on the local news…..the head honcho of the country economic development was taunting the building of several small strip malls.executive offices…as a bright world in which the county lives in……

First of all let’s define the term ‘economic development’…..

Economic development is a concerted effort on the part of the responsible governing body in a city or county to influence the direction of private sector investment toward opportunities that can lead to sustained economic growth. Sustained economic growth can provide sufficient incomes for the local labor force, profitable business opportunities for employers and tax revenues for maintaining an infrastructure to support this continued growth. There is no alternative to private sector investment as the engine for economic growth, but there are many initiatives that you can support to encourage investments where the community feels they are needed the most.

That definition is all blue skies and unicorns.

My question is to the city council where is this building economic development?

They built a structure that may remain empty….they employed a couple of guys to erect the structures but where is that economic development?

I mean where these couple of small malls were built sits in an area full of unused space……just two blocks away is a large strip center that sits 90% unoccupied….about one mile away is a large strip mall that is only about 70% occupied and 2 miles away is a strip center that has many open spots for businesses to jump on…..and this does not include the smaller strip malls within a 5 mile radius that sit basically unoccupied…so why were these new malls necessary?

So with this said where is all that ‘economic’ upside?

All this is just my area…..the broader look at local development is just as bleak…..

The average minimum wage in my county is $7.25…that is about half what is needed for a living wage.

So again I ask what ‘economic development’?

Land speculators and contractors are the only people making out like bandits…..by using the BS of ‘economic development’….there is few economic benefits for the average worker in this county.

My next question is….how with so many open spaces for businesses to expand how does a contractor/developer get the cash to build something that may go unused?

Of course I am told that these new structures will benefit the community…..and how does a empty office space enhance my community?

Just who will benefit from this non-existent economic development?

What makes anyone on the council think that business will rush to snap up this new space?

Are the objectives of development met by these structures….those objectives are 1) provide for basic needs.  2) Raise the level of living.  3) Expand the range of economic and social choices.

These structure fail.

How does these ‘new’ buildings offer any of those?  Just who profits from this wish and a hope of destroy land and cutting down trees om a wish and a hope?

My thought is that if we truly wanted economic development then maybe paying livable wages would do more than the promise of empty buildings.

The council needs to design a plan and program for filling empty spaces before the destruction of more land….the council works for the people of the city and should not bow to the cash and wishes of developers….especially on the lie of ‘economic development’.

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–16Jun21

The abortion battle has been going on for decades and in all that time misinformation has been circulating and my governor, Tater Twat Reeves, has once again illustrate just how damn ignorant their lies are…..

I a recent interview he shows how far these liars will go to misinform….

Mississippi GOP Governor Tate Reeves appeared on Jake Tapper’s “State of The Union” to discuss his hopes and dreams for his state’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks. It should come as no surprise that his hope is that it will lead to the overturning or at least the erosion of Roe v. Wade. But what Reeves wanted to make most clear to Tapper and to CNN audience was that he wanted it overturned not just because of his personal beliefs about abortion, but because he believes the science has changed, therefore the law must keep up with that.

Here, however, appears to be Governor Reeves’s best guess on what “the science” says. It is very different from what “the science” actually says.

He said:

REEVES: For people such as myself that are pro-life, I believe that the Supreme Court made a mistake in the 1970s. But that’s not the issue at stake that is before the court, hopefully when the arguments are heard sometime in the fall.

The question that is before the court, and this is something you mentioned earlier, and that’s with respect to understanding and appreciating and respecting science.

The fact is, we know so much more in America today about the formation of young children in the womb than we did when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. We know so much more even than we knew when Casey was decided in 1992, that was 30 years ago. It is not unusual for the court to review cases from the past. And what we know now, Jake, is that we know that the heart has partially formed at 15 weeks. We know that the baby in the womb is practicing breathing. We know that most internal organs have started to form and we believe that child is viable outside the womb.

As it turns out, “we” know exactly none of those things, because Tate Reeves just made them all up as he went along.

https://www.wonkette.com/mississippi-gov-has-some-real-wild-ideas-about-human-gestation-periods

This just illustrates how far these GOP dullards will go to spread their crap and prevent the individual’s rights….something they pretend that they support.

This as usual is a pathetic lie that the idiots in my state will believe…..(I am shaking my head at the stupidity)……

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

BLM Mississippi

Note:  I apologize for this post is a week late.

Recently I posted on the death of a baby after a high speed chase that ended in gun fire in Mississippi….https://lobotero.com/2021/05/08/a-baby-dies/

Last Saturday Black Lives Matter held a gathering that asks for information on why a 3 month old baby was killed by police….

Black Lives Matter Mississippi held a protest outside the Gulfport Police headquarters on Saturday asking for police accountability and transparency regarding the death of three-month-old La’Mello Parker.

This comes after the Biloxi Police Department announces it will not disclose the results of the forensic test on the bullet that struck Parker.

Biloxi is handling the investigation because other law enforcement agencies were involved.

The baby, La’Mello Parker, was killed May 3rd near Biloxi after his father, Eric Derell Smith, led police on a chase from Louisiana to Mississippi.

The Black Lives Matter Mississippi group wants the public to have access to the officer body cam footage and for the individuals responsible for the infant’s death to be held accountable for their actions. Protester Dwight Watkinz said, “It is 2021. We have all the forensic evidence in the world that can help figure out who fired this bullet, who killed this child. I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean to do it. If I go out tomorrow and hit somebody on the side of the road and I didn’t mean to do it, I’m still going to jail for manslaughter.”

(wxxv25.com)

So many questions that needs answering….but will the information be forthcoming?

My guess is that it will not.

I can smell that “blue brotherhood” formulating their defense for killing a baby….for no reason.

At what point will this type of story become an exception instead of the rule?

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trying to Reason With The Hurricane Season–2021

Closing Thought–01Jun21

Today is 01 June….and the 2021hurricane season begins…..it actually got kicked off with a subtropical storm, Ana, in late May…..

This means little to anyone that does not live in Hurricane Alley….but since I do it is a big deal.

NOAA has made its predictions for 2021…..

Subtropical storm Ana formed in the Atlantic Ocean early Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Ana was the first named storm in the Atlantic this year, though hurricane season doesn’t officially start until June 1, per the AP. Ana was located about 200 miles northeast of Bermuda, with maximum sustained winds of 45mph, the hurricane center said in a 5am advisory. The system was expected to continue its slow and erratic motion, then dissipate in a few days, forecasters said. CNN and the Weather Channel note this is the seventh year in a row that at least one named storm has formed before the official start of hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

This also isn’t the first hurricane season of late that’s kicked off with a subtropical storm: That happened in both 2018 and 2019, with Alberto and Andrea, respectively. The hurricane center said Ana is a subtropical storm because it is “entangled with an upper-level low,” but still has some “tropical characteristics.” A tropical storm watch was in effect for Bermuda. The storm isn’t set to hit the US. Meteorologists expect the 2021 season to be busy, but not as crazy as the record-breaking 2020 season.

Ana is a harbinger…..now for the predictions….

NOAA announced its initial outlook for the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season on Thursday.

It said an “above normal” season is most likely, at a 60% chance.

NOAA said it expects 13 to 20 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes, and three to five major hurricanes for the 2021 season.

The 2021 hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

NOAA said it does not anticipate the historic level of storm activity seen in 2020.

Forecasters with Colorado State University reported last month that they believe there could be as many as 17 named storms for the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. That would make it the sixth consecutive “above normal” season.

WE have set about getting our emergency supplies together……non-perishable food, drugs and especially batteries…..

Zeta hit us pretty hard last year….we are hoping that we get a small break…..

As usual I leave you with the tune of Jimmy Buffet….

Be Well….Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–18May21

Mississippi’s governor did what all cowards within the GOP does……he jumped on the BS that people are not working because they make too much on unemployment….

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves followed the lead of his Republican counterparts in Montana and South Carolina by announcing the state will refuse expanded federal unemployment benefits, costing unemployed Mississippians $300 a week in an effort to force them into low-wage jobs—despite a lot of data showing that Republican claims about the effects of the federal unemployment aid boost are simply false.

President Joe Biden pushed back on some of those claims in Monday remarks on the economy, saying “we don’t see much evidence” that people are staying home because of high unemployment benefits, and pointing out: “We still have 8 million fewer jobs than we did when the pandemic started.” At the same time, Biden emphasized that “anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.”

In Mississippi, businesses “report that they cannot get employees to return to work because they can earn more from combined federal and state unemployment benefits than their normal wages … These businesses are no longer suffering from a lack of demand due to COVID-19,” Mississippi state House Speaker Philip Gunn wrote in a letter to Reeves. “Rather, they are suffering from a labor shortage caused by unemployment benefits that exceed normal wage levels for productive work.”

Mississippi’s maximum unemployment benefit without the added $300 a week is $235, so the benefits that “exceed normal wage levels for productive work” end up at $13.38 an hour, just under the $13.43 an hour that the MIT Living Wage Calculator says is a living wage for one adult with no children in Mississippi.

Contrary to Republican claims that people are staying home because they don’t want to work, Ashton Pittman reports that Mississippi’s labor force participation rate is back to pre-pandemic levels. People are either working or looking for work, in other words. And nationally, the April jobs data suggests “the exact opposite” of the claim that people aren’t looking for work because they can get more money from unemployment benefits, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently noted. That’s because the highest job growth has been in low-wage industries like hospitality and food service, where unemployment benefits can outstrip wages. 

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/5/11/2029937/-Mississippi-dives-into-the-Republican-push-to-blame-low-wage-workers-for-the-COVID-19-economy

This spin that people do not want to work because they are making too much with it is just plain BS.

It seems they want to blame people for the shitty work environment….the GOP is killing workers with their fixation on BS.

Enough Said!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Mississippi Voters Mean Nothing!

I have said on numerous occasions that the vote means little to politicians anymore…..and Mississippi proves my point.

Recently there was an initiative that the Mississippi voter approved of the sale of medical marijuana…..a win right?

Maybe elsewhere but not in Mississippi…..

In a brutal loss for direct democracy in Mississippi, the state’s supreme court struck down a ballot amendment on Friday that legalized medical marijuana in the state. But the ruling didn’t stop there. Invoking a technical flaw in the law, the court invalidated the entire process for amending the state’s constitution by popular vote.

“The killing of our ballot initiative process means that Mississippi is, definitively, the state with the least democracy, the most restricted ballot access, and where voters’ voices matter least when it comes to the deciding our future,” said Ashton Pittman, a reporter at the Mississippi Free Press.

“The Mississippi Supreme Court just overturned the will of the people of Mississippi,” read a statement from Medical Marijuana MS, which organized Initiative 65 that would legalize the use of the drug. “Patients will now continue the suffering that so many Mississippians voted to end.”

About 73 percent of voters supporter legalizing medical marijuana, according to Pittman.

At the heart of the court’s decision is a crucial flaw in the process that gives voters the power to amend the constitution by popular vote. According to the law, organizers for ballot measures have to collect signatures from the five different congressional districts in the state. But since the 2000 census, Mississippi dropped from having five districts to having only four.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/mississippi-supreme-court/

This is what you get when party politics is a decider on judges.

I continue to be a critic of voting as it is today…..

The people’s will means NOTHING to partisan politicians.

If it happened in Mississippi then it can happen elsewhere……..beware!

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A Baby Dies

Some sad news for the weekend.

Here on the Coast we have had a horrific high speed chase that ends with driver shot and killed as well as a baby he had in the vehicle.

The chase started in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a double murder and the suspected perp went on the lame with a 4 month old baby…..along I-10 that ended in Harrison county Mississippi.

East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies responded around 11:30 a.m. to 911 hang-up call from the 2000 block of Richmond Street in Baker. Smith’s ex-girlfriend lives at the address.

When deputies got to the home, they found the shooting victims, identified by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office as Christin Parker, 32, and her nephew, Brandon Parker, 26.

Smith left the home in a blue Nissan Altima and had the 4-month-old baby with him.

The top priority for Louisiana authorities was to locate the child unharmed, so they immediately released details of the incident to the public.

Biloxi police are handling the investigation into Smith’s death because the Mississippi Highway Patrol, Gulfport Police Department and the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office took part in the chase.

The baby has died from wounds sustained in the “shoot out”…..

After a baby was killed in an alleged shootout with police on the interstate Monday, many in South Mississippi have questions about police protocol and policies related to use of force.

Law enforcement chased a double-homicide suspect, Eric Derrell Smith, after he was spotted on the interstate in Mississippi. Smith’s 4-month-old baby boy was in the blue Nissan Altima with him.

After officers deployed spike strips, Smith kept driving at a speed as low as 10 miles per hour. Then, when Smith’s car got stuck in the interstate median, officers fired a barrage of bullets into the vehicle.

 
The story goes that there were 20-35 shots fired into the car…..the perp was killed and the baby did as well from a gunshot wound…
A coroner’s report says a 4-month-old died from a gunshot wound after his father was killed by police, though officials won’t say how the baby was shot. 
 
The autopsy report released Wednesday did not say where on his body the child was shot. It’s still unclear who fired the bullet.
 
This was the use of deadly force and a hostage situation….and yet many shots were fired into the car with apparently no concern for the safety of the baby.
 
The article above has the rules for the use of deadly force from the local law enforcement…..all responded (read the rules for yourself)….that with the exception from the county where I reside, Harrison,….they rejected the request for clarification.
 
Why was that?
 
Do they not have a set of rules or do they fear scrutiny?
 
Just another incident of “shoot first and cover ass later”…..
 
This is a tragedy that could have turned out better for the baby.
 
Now these troopers have to live with the fact that their trigger finger killed an incident by-stander.
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”