Month: January 2016

JustUs: Jackson County Chancery Court #SRHS Proceedings Rotten to the core

A bit over eight years ago Slabbed appeared in the local cyber scene as a blog dedicated to covering the wind-water insurance court battles when a nice lady from central Mississippi the world would later know as Nowdy and I met at the Cracker Barrel in Hattiesburg and made common cause to tell the coast’s story from a local point of view. In the time since we witnessed the Scruggs prosecution and it’s use as a hammer against people who had lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina. Nowdy would later describe the phenomenon as “JustUs” and it usually reared it ugly head in the Mississippi judicial system when massive amounts of money were at stake.

Yesterday, thanks to a bombshell legal filing at the Mississippi Supreme Court, JustUs again reared its ugly head here on the coast with news that the major players in the Chancery case Almond v Singing River et al, were holding a meeting in which the Plaintiff’s counsel in Almond were excluded. Less than three hours later an order staying Almond was entered by special Judge Breland Hilburn one day before motions on his recusal from the case were to be heard.

Ms. Almond and around two hundred other Singing River retirees have been deprived of their day in court thus far in favor of a forced settlement that saddled the scandal ridden pension plan with an unqualified trustee whose main qualifications appear to be his political connections.  To add to the Alice in Wonderland like quality we have Jackson County Board of Supervisors pretending they are not a full partner in the Singing River disaster yet the county is paying the legal fees of the politically connected lawyers that helped caused the Singing River disaster.

For the Singing River retirees that are being lined up like sheep before being herded to the financial chop shop, the events of the past month must be absolutely maddening.  Worse yet for morale is the punditry advocating for a settlement that sweeps possible illegal acts under the rug while the largest single group of retirees are cut out from access to the legal process all while a proposed compulsory settlement is allowed to advance before Judge Louis Guirola in US District Court.

But now the clients of local lawyers Earl Denham and Harvey Barton whose state court case has been stonewalled for months at least know the fix is in against them and they have no chance at receiving justice from Judge Hilburn and Special Master Singletary.  And despite Mr. Singletary’s protestations to the contrary, to the public this secret meeting between defense counsel and the Court reeks worse than a dead skunk in the August heat. And it’s not just the public that feels that way. Continue reading “JustUs: Jackson County Chancery Court #SRHS Proceedings Rotten to the core”

Other Voices | Lana Noonan: Its a new game in town for Bay-Waveland School District

If the rest of the meetings of the Bay St. Louis-Waveland Board of Trustees are anything like the first one of this calendar year, which took place Monday night, you can safely say “There’s a new game in town!” And newly elected Trustee, Mark Kidd, representing Waveland, threw the first pitch.

Transparency, accountability, and communication are what he stated he is interested in moving forward, and move he did!!

On a motion by Kidd and seconded by the other Waveland representative, Mike Bell, Bay St. Louis representative, Casey Favre was elected Board President.

On reliable source, this was not the plan of some other Board members going into the meeting!!

The Superintendent then gave a report on the latest Test Scores with emphasis on the ACT test results. This ended up being an almost 15 minute monologue that excluded any real data on how the students actually performed with the exception of the Superintendent saying that she “thought” they came in somewhere around 4th Coast wide out of the 16 school districts tested . Trustee Kidd corrected that statement to reveal they came in 4th from the bottom or 13th with an average ACT score of 17.8. Does the Superintendent really expect the public to believe she didn’t have those results? Continue reading “Other Voices | Lana Noonan: Its a new game in town for Bay-Waveland School District”

Fillingame PR pumps click-bait web article. Pravda or Journalism?

In the strange world that are internet top 5, 10, 15 (take your choice as to the number) lists, accuracy doesn’t count for much thus you have Columbia Mississippi (One of the top 10 worst places to raise a family in Mississippi) located “an hour west of Hattiesburg” with the community’s relative isolation being cited as a major reason it sucked so badly for kids. I guess along those lines it is no surprise that Bay St Louis “Located just 90 miles from New Orleans” is a “Top 10 ‘Most Affordable Beach Towns’ in U.S.” Even less surprising is the local newspaper beating it down Hizzoner’s office bearing this fantastic news and needing some official reaction so they could spread the good news:

The typical homeowner in Bay St. Louis spends $9,276 annually on housing, including mortgage, insurance, property taxes and utilities.”

“Once again, it’s a very deserving recognition,” Bay Mayor Les Fillingame said Tuesday, “and I think when you talk about affordability, Bay St. Louis should be recognized for that. I think we’re very astute stewards of the taxpayers’ money – from taxes to utility rates, we really look very competitively at those things and try to maintain a competitive structure.

“It’s very gratifying that people recognize the Bay for that. … I think Bay St. Louis is on a lot of radar screens for all the right reasons. People look to Bay St. Louis as a model in a lot of those respects and it’s very rewarding for all of us and my hat is off to the community, because we have a lot of people who work (both in public and in private) to make sure those things happen.”

I’m not sure what a “typical homeowner is” so I guess the key is in the semantics. My own anecdotal experience would be whoever calculated that was smoking some prime Colorado ganja describing $9,276 as “typical” because there are more than a few folks here that pay more than that for insurance alone. Since the word “homeowner” was used that would exclude all the subsidized multi-family housing. There are some clues in the rental market however, where a three bedroom house goes for between $900-$1,000/month. Add in a $150/month power-bill, $50 for water and an additional amount for the gap difference in insurances coverages and I come up with between $14,400 and $16,400.

I’m not trying to wet blanket civic pride folks, but making a click bait top 10 list for being cheap just doesn’t light my fire any more than Hizzoner claiming to be a good steward of the taxpayer money in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including all the burned-out decorative street lights in Old Town that comes with financing municipal operations off deferred maintenance.

Other Voices | Wednesdays Wars – Politics 2016: Anger In; Political Correctness Out

Everybody’s angry.

Middle-aged and older white Christian men are angry big time. They think they’re losing status to people they’ve been accustomed to looking down on.

They sit in front of the TV for hours and watch FOX. The owner of FOX, Rupert Murdoch, a Jewish immigrant from Australia, serves up a steady diet of slop for those who need their hate Obama fix. They simply cannot miss a day without marinating in the muck that has made Murdoch a billionaire a dozen times over.

I heard a guy being interviewed at a Trump rally say he “was really angry”. When asked why, his reply was “Look what’s on TV … Look what’s going on in the world”. The interviewer asked him what he was going to do about his anger. His response, “Watch more TV”. Seriously.

A sure-fire applause generator to open a Republican rally nowadays goes something like this: “I don’t know about you, but I’m mad as hell. (Huge applause). And I’m about to tell you why … but first, if there are any of those deeply sensitive, politically correct souls here, I suggest you excuse yourself, because I’m going to tell it like it is, and you’re not gonna like it. Go home and water your plants.” (They’re going wild now).

Whatever is said after that is immaterial. What’s important is that you show that you’re mad and you’re willing to throw your weight around and bully anyone who doesn’t agree with you. That’s leadership!

Talk like that and Murdoch will give you all the airtime you’ll ever need.

While white middle-aged Christian men may register high on the anger meter, they’re not alone. Let me explore the response to angering events with two individuals and one group: a Pakistani-born taxi driver in New York City; the American Jewish community; and my own experience.

The Pakistani-Born Taxi Driver

About a month ago, in New York City, I had occasion to spend about forty-five minutes in a taxi with a driver who was born in Pakistan. As is my custom, I engaged him in conversation about his country and world events. Continue Reading………….

What we have here is an ol’ fashioned bar fight

And it’s the bar down here on the coast that is having the bare knuckle brawl folks and the shame of it is I haven’t had a chance to add some much needed commentary but that changes with this post, which I’ll update as I gain time through the day. The short story is this. In one corner there is what I’ll term “the settlement retirees”, their counsel along with the Jackson County political establishment (most of it anyway). In the other corner are the “we want to be made completely whole retirees” and their counsel. The money stakes here are huge which is why the fight is turning very nasty, again exposing some old rivalries that I first noticed back during the Scruggs prosecution.

For me the question is settling now a better deal than fleshing things out via litigation. I did notice that a concern raised here about the handling of attorney fees was addressed.

First things first, someone sent me “retirees that want to be made whole” attorney Harvey Barton’s 2009 judgment via anonymous email a while back and I can’t find it in my extensive email archive.  Nevertheless someone took the time to mail me a hard copy and I agree the time is right to explore the judgment and more importantly the legal concepts behind what Judge Persons found.

I’ve also seen and will post the second recusal motion of Special Judge Hilburn as it exposes some of the fault lines running under the Bar in greater detail.

Before I do any of that its worth pointing out that Slabbed began covering the Singing River Pension Meltdown because it was the exact type of story to which we were tailor made to cover and not because of the gruesome car crash quality to it all but because Slabbed could help get information out to help the retirees make informed decisions.  We’ve reached the inflection point. Updates will be posted beginning with the flying muck below the jump as time allows.

Update #1: Continue reading “What we have here is an ol’ fashioned bar fight”