Alternative New Media for the Gulf South
Come join Jim Brown and I as we discuss Mississippi House Bill 44 aka Leary’s law, a subject which I am an expert. Here in Mississippi, if you pick up the Genesis Radio network signals from Hattiesburg, Jackson or McComb you can find us. The full list of nationwide affiliates can be found here. Those of you that are outside the broadcast radius of the Genesis Network can listen online or even telephonically.
And the docket has some very interesting entries on it dating to last month. I’m not gonna recap this saga but those that want to catch up should click the post tags for the details of a California hookup gone bad, a well hung Tranny, anal discomfort and allegations of extortion.
Here is a screen capture of the docket, which is listing returned mail and hearing cancellations:
Slabbed has quietly kept up with the criminal case and hopes to add a bit more to the discussion in the next few months. Stay tuned.
Thursday, January 30th, 2013
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
JINDAL AND INDIA A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR LOUISIANA!
Louisiana’s two-term governor and aspiring presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, just returned from a 10-day junket to the Far East. Stops were made in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan for the expressed purpose of seeking out foreign investment in the Bayou State. But if industrial development in the state by foreign companies was his goal, Jindal missed the mark by some 1300 miles.
Jindal is one of two Indian American governors in the U.S. But so far, he has passed on the opportunity to travel to India and move Louisiana onto the front burner of a special relationship with the world’s largest democracy. The other Indian American Governor, Nicki Haley of South Carolina, has made several trips to India. Her first visit was just a few months after taking office.
Jindal had a face to face meeting with the Prime Minister of India back in 2009, when he attended a dinner in the Prime Minister’s honor at the White house. And if Jindal is the smart Rhodes scholar he has been touted to be, one would have thought that he would have seized the chance to build a special relationship based on his ancestry. In recent years, India has been reaching out, worldwide, for both export and import opportunities. If Jindal had played his cards right, Louisiana would now be the bountiful beneficiary of a new and huge trading partner.
Jindal had more in common with the Prime Minister than just their mutual Indian heritage. The leader of the world’s largest democracy, like Jindal, took a degree from Oxford University, and worked as a policy wonk in several government appointed positions. The chemistry is there to build a strong relationship between these two leaders and their respective country and state. Continue Reading…………..
Jackson, Mississippi As the movement against the Kemper County coal plant continues to grow, Mississippi State Representative Jeff Guice (R-Ocean Springs) and Senator Albert Butler (D-Port Gibson) have introduced bills to repeal last year’s legislation authorizing Mississippi Power Company to issue bonds and force customers to pay for them. The law enabled Mississippi Power to issue up to $1 billion in bonds to offset the skyrocketing cost overruns at the Kemper County coal plant, an experimental facility that is currently months behind schedule and more than double its original cost estimates.
“One year after the Legislature was misled by Mississippi Power on the true costs of the Kemper boondoggle, the chickens have come home to roost,” said Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club. “Since last year, Mississippi Power has taken us deeper down the rabbit hole, with the Kemper plant’s price tag now exceeding $5 billion dollars, making Kemper the most expensive coal-fired power plant ever built in the United States on a per kilowatt basis. Hard working Mississippi families should not have to pay for the bad business decisions of Mississippi Power.”
The 2013 legislation was filed just days after the Mississippi Public Service Commission announced a settlement agreement with Mississippi Power to resolve disputed rate increases to cover the runaway costs of the plant. The Mississippi State Legislature approved the legislation, and Governor Phil Bryant then signed it into law. The new law gave Mississippi Power the authority to issue up to $1 billion in bonds to cover cost overruns at the Kemper plant, to be financed through a separate charge on customers’ monthly electric bills. Continue Reading……………
Shazam! Team Nagin managed to do the same task in a higher profile case in a day and then off we zoom to opening arguments. Here is the takeaway the lawyers are talking about from NOLA.com’s live coverage:
3:27 p.m.: Jenkins’ presentation is scattershot. It doesn’t even sound like he made an outline. Prosecuors on the other hand laid everything out in a highly detailed and organized presentation, illustrated with PowerPoint slides.
3:35 p.m.: Jenkins just wrapped up. He free-styled the entire thing. Didn’t even have notes. Coman, meanwhile, had his prewritten, it seems.
The entire Team Nagin extravaganza took 12 minutes. My mind is open to the possibility Ray Ray gets over 20.
As the words literally write themselves…..
Jamie Miller came to the Executive Director’s job at the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources with a reputation as a no nonsense hatchet man and he has lived up the PR in his first 10 months on the job. In true Mississippi political fashion the surviving, politically connected finalist was also hired on with the agency as well so as to minimize blowback potential, Joe Cloyd got another do nothing sweetheart state contract and all was declared well with the world.
Mistake not the fact that Miller was Phil Bryant’s man from the start as there was never really any competition for the Executive Director job in the wake of Bill Walker’s departure from the agency. Miller Time reigns supreme at DMR and so it is natural the local legislative delegation would be pushing reforms that give even more power to the executive director and that is exactly what Senate Bill 2579 does.
Like most legislation it contains things that people would judge to be good and bad. I personally like the fact the agency will be required to have an annual audit performed. That said on these pages commenters have decried giving the Executive Director even more power and when I read the bill I wondered why there is even such a thing as a Commission on Marine Resources given the Executive Director’s sweeping power to hire the top positions with no oversight. More on that in a bit. Continue reading “Senate Bill 2579 a small step forward for a deeply troubled DMR but is Miller Time a good time for the agency”
And the question in the post title begs the next key question in “Is City is expending the revenues it will never receive?”. The answer to both questions appears to be yes if the City budget is more than a simple piece of paper with numbers on it. First up is an analysis of Revenue account 201, where Ad Valorm Tax Revenue from Real Property is coded. Here is the salient portion of the 2013-2014 City Budget:
We can see that in 2012-2013 the City Budget called for total revenues for this line item, the largest of all the Ad Valorem Tax Revenue sources, of $1,680,000 yet as of September 12, 2013 only $1,284,724 had been collected. That amount ($1,284,724) should be very close to the final number aka actual for the 2012-2013 Fiscal Year as very little Real Property Ad Valorem tax is paid at that time of the year since the property taxes were due in January. Therefore using that number for 2012-2013 means that line item was short $395,276 in Real Property Tax Ad Valorem Revenues, which represents in excess of 10% of total budgeted revenues. Following is a chart which shows the 3 year trend for this revenue line item:
RFP was all over this fact in comments linking a 2011 WLOX story on the problem:
Bay St. Louis mayor sets record straight about finances ~ Michelle Lady Continue reading “Financial Statement Drilldown: Is Bay St Louis budgeting revenues it will never collect?”
Far better to laugh than cry folks…….