If any of you lawyerly types (or otherwise) know of a reasonable/reliable video conference center here on the coast I need to explore renting one.
Comments or email appreciated.
Thank you.
Day: June 20, 2013
Saw this coming long ago……..
“The defense counsel failed to argue that he (Ladner) had tried to quit the county prior to renting his equipment to various vendors,” according to the motion. “The county authorities wouldn’t let him and told him to go ahead and rent it out to people involved in the cleanup and it would all be just fine. The defense counsel failed to bring up the fact that the county attorney was the one who drafted the letter that the defendant signed telling FEMA he had no interest in the companies of his brothers. The truth is, the only thing the defendant did do was rent equipment to contractors that needed it. His supervisors told him to do it and that it would all be good. These are clearly mitigating factors that needed to be brought before the court that were not.”
The major problem I see is Roger Ladner is bringing this up wayyyyy too late. File this one under strung along and hung out to dry.
Time to go, know what I mean Vern?
For the second time the Sun Herald has called for a complete house cleaning at the Commission of Marine Resources, a subject which Slabbed has reserved judgment upon until very recently. With the release of the Horne CPA Group report on the internal control structure of the very troubled Department of Marine Resources it is abundantly clear the very people charged with overseeing the agency and its governance were completely derelict in the discharge of that duty. The taxpayers will get stuck with the bill.
Since the scandal broke the consistent theme from the Commission on Marine Resources has been a Sergeant Schultzian “I know nothing” and I think the gang is being 100% truthful saying that. It betrays the fact they were simple rubber stamps for Bill Walker. Later they continued in their role of lackey, this time for Phil Bryant as they conducted the charade of an open hiring process for DMR Executive Director that landed Jamie Miller at DMR.
Another word for a rubber stamp board, Godfather style, is “buffers” and that is the real purpose of the Commission on Marine Resources which is to give the man really responsible for the operation of State Government, the Governor, cover when his cronies are caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The Board members will point to the fact they are essentially volunteering their time to this state agency and that is true enough. However it is equally true they are an expensive bunch of volunteers to support with the taxpayer funded freebie deep sea fishing trips and all the other toys that also come with the turf.
This goes way beyond a money issue though money to fund the agency is certainly the topic de jour. The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, as it is currently structured, is constructed to fail. Since the Governor is really calling the shots, the Commission on Marine Resources should be eliminated, or a new board constructed and empowered to provide proper oversight free from political interference from Jackson save for the power of appointment. I am not so naive to think the latter will ever happen so the chop shop it is. There is no way this bunch of bumbling lackeys will ever regain the public’s trust.
Finally I’m certainly aware there is huge uncertainty among the worker bees at DMR, the vast majority of whom are still discharging their job duties at a high level despite the circus show like atmosphere iternerate to hosting monthly an oversight board of know nothing stooges. At this point in time there should be no reason the agency should not have a firm grasp of exactly where it stands financially. This needs to be clearly communicated to the employees so the uncertainty is minimized.
Jim Brown’s Weekly Column: Congress
Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
CONGRESS — THE REAL CULPRIT IN SECURITY LEAK PROBE!
In the 2014 congressional elections, one major issue should be front and center: Incumbents are failing to do their job. We send them to Washington to oversee this massive federal bureaucracy, and to ensure that it is being run properly. We expect them to pass laws, and then to provide proper monitoring to see that these laws are carried out. The failure of Congress to properly monitor the executive branch has resulted in the wholesale exposure of the entire surveillance system that is supposed to be overseen by the NSA. Some say that this Congressional dereliction of duty has caused an irreparable breech in our national security.
Every single member of congress should be livid at the incompetence of those running the NSA. This top secret federal agency, that is responsible for gathering and securing the reams of data that will protect us from the bad guys, has proven to be inept at running its own operation. Why would they turn over the keys of our most sensitive data to a 29-year-old high school dropout? That’s the real scandal. The maladroit and ineffectual handling of America’s secrets makes us wonder if our federal spy network is being run by the Keystone Cops!
Edward Snowden, the “whistleblower” at the center of this firestorm, dropped out of high school, was forced to leave the military, and developed his “top secret” information access wizardry by taking a few computer classes at a community college in an effort to get a high school diploma, which he failed to get. He couldn’t complete the courses. So he gets a job at the NSA as a security guard. The next thing you know, he’s hired by one of the NSA’s big private contractors, Booz Allen Hamilton, which receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the NSA. In fact, over 70% of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private companies such as Booz Allen, Northrop Grumman and the Boeing subsidiary Narus.
So this high school dropout is paid $200,000 a year by a private contractor and given an open door to a top-secret national security database. He was not prepped by the FBI, the CIA, or the State Department. He’s just an IT guy and not a very good one at that. Simply put, he had no background in anything related to national security. Yet working for a private contractor, with apparently little or no oversight by the NSA, Snowden is allowed to spread America’s intelligence gathering system to the entire world. Continue Reading…………..