Tag: State Senator Debbie Dawkins

DMR Scandal day 99: Danny, I know I’m not that easy…..

Folks, we now have a free for all at DMR as Billy Walker and his co conspirators to the looting of the agency for their personal benefit are finally being thrown under the bus by Interim DMR Director Danny Guice and the embattled Commission on Marine Resources. I mention this because months after Tina Shumate’s double dealing was exposed by the Sun Herald, both her and her political hack sister have finally been let go from DMR. It is not nearly enough.

By all accounts Guice, a career politician, wants the top job at DMR badly thus his conversion into some sort of good government activist.  The Commission on Marine Resources OTOH, have been revealed as simpletons along the lines of the D’Iberville City Council, heaping praise on Walker despite the allegations right up to the bitter end.  Clueless does not describe them, which is why they all need to go as these misdeeds happened on their watch when they were supposed to be providing oversight.  They breached their fiduciary duty to the DMR and that is about the worst thing a board member can do.  It is my hope that any money not recovered from Bill Walker and his band of theives is recovered from the Board members who oversaw the looting of the agency by Walker and his cronies.

And this brings us to the public trust part because now the Commission on Marine Resources is in spin mode pretending to care what the public thinks.  I agree with Gov. Phil that the Commission on Marine Resources should be sunsetted and thus eliminated and such a step would enhance my trust that the Governor is actually interested in cleaning up the mess his coastal crony supporters made at DMR.

This brings me to another board that sorely needs a house cleaning, The Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plain. Continue reading “DMR Scandal day 99: Danny, I know I’m not that easy…..”

Tuesday Links

God bless him an AP reporter managed to make a story out of yesterday’s legislative audit report on the sand berms. Folks, a reader was kind enough to alert me about the 12 page report yesterday, I read it and found it marginally interesting but not enough to make a post out of it.  In a way it is an interim report to the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration as Shaw and the OCPR are still working to resolve the remaining cost items. The amount of money in question ($500K) is miniscule to the total $251MM spent on Bermdoggle by Jindy and his political lap dogs Nunny, Mini-me etc.

Speaking of Mini-me wouldn’t a similar cost audit provision been nice in the (non)Performing Arts fiasco. Gambitman Clancy DuBos thinks something criminal may have occurred but remains off in the weeds with the focus on Wiznia IMHO. We agree on the need for a federal investigation though. 😉

Today is general election day here in Mississippi. I like the fact the Sun Herald did not make endorsements in every race. I’m most interested in the state senate race in Long Beach and the house district 122 race in Bay-Waveland. In Long Beach the GOP ran a series of highly misleading ads that ended up being pulled against incumbent Deborah Dawkins. That race is a rematch of the 2007 election featuring the daughter of the mayor of Long Beach. In House district 122 David Baria managed to out-fundraise Dorothy Wilcox by $20K. Continue reading “Tuesday Links”

Insurance Reforms die once again in our special interest owned legislature

Having seen our do nothing legislature in action up close and personal I was not surprised to see this morning’s front page story in the Sun Herald which declared dead every meaningful consumer friendly insurance proposal introduced this legislative session including the basic policyholder protections contained in a policyholder bill of rights. Here on Slabbed we’re not nice in that we name names and point out broken promises unlike a typical newspaper which will rip a pol on page 1 while endorsing his re-election bid on the opinion page. For better or worse it is a reflection of my style from the finance boards where I post with money on the line. With that in mind let’s break down Michael Newsom’s report:

Several bills South Mississippi lawmakers submit annually in response to insurance issues discovered after Hurricane Katrina are poised to die Tuesday without debate in legislative committees.

Each year, Coast lawmakers submit various versions of the “policyholders bill of rights” designed to protect homeowners in the event they file an insurance claim and also measures removing the “anti-concurrent causation” clause, which insurance companies used to deny payment of wind damage claims in cases where they said water also played a role. Court cases and insurance law experts have said the clauses don’t apply to hurricanes because the two weather events cause different kinds of damages.

I don’t know if this is bad editing or bad journalism but once again we see anti concurrent causation slaughtered by a reporter. To understand the ACC all one must understand is the definition of concurrent:

1. operating or occurring at the same time. Continue reading “Insurance Reforms die once again in our special interest owned legislature”