The Mississippi Budget

The state legislature ended the regular session in early April, they came back in early May, recessed and now are back to see just how the Fed Stim cash will help the budget.

Forbes magazine is reporting:

Mississippi lawmakers said they did the opposite of what they intended Thursday as House and Senate negotiators moved farther apart, rather than closer together, in their budget talks.

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour has urged legislators to be cautious because the recession has caused a decline in state tax collections.  (Yes it has and thanx to Barbour’s BS of giving away everything to corporations.  If you want someone to thank then send Barbour a note.)

The session is now scheduled to end next Wednesday. If the budget is still not done by then, it would take a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to extend the session to allow more time for talks.

You would think that people that are suppose to be our leaders would show some cajones and tell the residents the truth…..that is that they will most likely have to pay higher taxes if they want state programs to continue.

That is a pipedream on my part…they guys and gals that I speak of are cowards and will do nothing that can be used against them in their re-election bid.  The state’s poor will suffer…the state’s workers will suffer…….and still nothing will get accomplished….AS USUAL!

Could This Be Mississippi’s Future?

All state’s are facing some critical decsions on their budgets and their shortfalls.  As always it is the poor and the elderly that will pay for the problems.  California’s new plan may become a template for other states, and especially Mississippi.  Why?

Mississippi has a large poor community and the programs that are earmarked for them are a huge drain on the state budget, at least according to the politicians.

But the Gov-in-ator has found a new way to deal wuith his budgetary problems.

Proposals to eliminate insurance for needy children, reduce Medi-Cal services for the poor and scale back assistance to the unemployed would choke off millions of dollars to Santa Cruz County and cripple access to health care and other critical services for thousands locally, advocates say.

In addition to the $248 million hit for Healthy Families, the governor has proposed a savings of $34 million in Medi-Cal expenses by eliminating breast and cervical cancer treatment for women over 65 and cutting all non-emergency health care for undocumented residents. The governor also is calling for $92 million of Medi-Cal savings by scaling back treatment and drug options for the mentally ill.

Here are the proposed cuts–it will be interesting to watch the Mississippi side of this to see if any ideas were gleemed from California.

The governor’s plans to reduce the state’s budget shortfall call for big hits to health programs. Among them:

Elimination of Healthy Families Programs ($248 million savings)

Reductions for Medi-Cal mental health programs ($92 million savings)

Elimination of Medi-Cal breast and cervical cancer treatment and non-emergency care for undocumented ($34 million)

Cuts to HIV/AIDS programs ($56 million savings)

Cuts to primary care services in rural areas ($34 million savings)

Reductions to maternal health programs ($10 million savings)

Reductions to CalWORKs programs ($1.3 billion savings)

The poor is being attacked, but what will the wealthy be asked to contribute?

A Wind Pool Death

Mississippi’s Rep. Gene Taylor has had his pet project pulling from his hands by the Obama admin.

His pet project is a new Federal Wind Insurance.

Napolitano’s letter to key House leaders stated the Obama administration position on the issue: Wind insurance is too costly and unnecessary to add to the federal flood insurance program. FEMA chief Craig Fugate also wrote senators in response to questions at his confirmation hearing that he, too, was opposed to the wind plan, which the Senate rejected last year.

Mississippi’s Gov. Barbour said he is looking at “multi-state solutions” with states combining wind pools, and hopes to make more progress by the National Governors Association meeting in Biloxi in July.

Now this is where I start to worry…..these people, state government, who cannot do naything but give business everything, will not run an insurance program any more efficiently.  When the money is not there, they will start taxing the working class to pay for any programs they want.

Look at Mississippi’s Medicaid program…..all the cash from lawsuits and special cig taxes has not made it anymore stable…I would trust a Federal program way more than anything that a state politician would have.

Student Workers Unionize

Original source: unionreview.com

First student school bus drivers, monitors and mechanics in West Point, Mississippi, are now Teamster members, after an overwhelming 21-6 vote in favor of representation by Local 891 in Jackson. The workers united in order to secure fair pay, affordable and decent health insurance, respect and a say on the job.

“We’re going to start bargaining the second week of June, and look forward to negotiating the first contract in the state of Mississippi for bus drivers,” said Willie Smith, President of Local 891 and Secretary-Treasurer of Joint Council 87.

There are 42 workers in the bargaining unit, who are now part of the more than 400 First Student workers in Mississippi who have joined Local 891 since September.

Since the Teamsters national Drive Up Standards campaign to improve safety, service and work standards in the private school bus and transit industry began in 2006, more than 17,600 drivers, monitors, aides, mechanics and attendants have become Teamsters.

It’s Medicaid Again!

All the cig smokers have been targeted in the past as the “sole” financiers of the medicaid program…..but all the taxes imposed on tobacco uses has done NOTHING to help the system at all.  And now the gov wants a tax on hospitals to help cover the program shortfall.

Barbour has pushed the proposed hospital tax as a way to fix a shortfall in the state’s Medicaid budget, but Democrats and the Mississippi Hospital Association have opposed it. Without the tax, Barbour has warned of severe cuts affecting vital state services.

Barbour has said he is asking hospitals to pay their “fair share,” but opponents have said the cost would be passed down to paying patients and have tarred the idea as a tax on the sick.

Brown said the House has agreed to a $60 million hospital tax – an increase over the MHA’s drop-dead figure of $45 million – but the tax would have to come with an agreement that Medicaid reimbursement rates would be frozen.

This all is so damn silly!  The state keeps raising taxes, some of them hidden, to pay for Medicaid abnd turn around and give away millions and in some cases billions to corporations…..why?  Let me guess…as an incentive to buil;d in the state, right?

That is silly too!  The way labor is suppressed in the state is enough to make it attractive without all the tax incentives.

Eventually, someone will realize that taxes MUST be paid if the state is to operate and that all concerned, including the corporations, which pay little as it is now, has got to be involved.  The people of Mississippi are asked to do MORE than their part while the vultures in government and business reap the benefits.

Tobacco Companies Lose Again

The U.S. Court of Appeals has sided with a lower court, finding that cigarette companies set out to deliberately deceive consumers about the dangers of smoking. The court found the defendants, including Altria, violated federal racketeering laws.

Read more: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/05/court_cig_lawsuit.html#ixzz0GGwqJbOZ&B

I have a hard time with this and other rulings against tobacco companies.  Why?  For 40+ years they have been telling smokers on every pack that the habit is hazardous to their health and will cause death.

Now if the smoker chooses to ignore the warning then how can a company be held responsible for stupidity of a person?  It is the lawsuit lotto, as usual Americans do not want to take responsibility for their actions–someone else is ALWAYS to blame–never the individual and their ignorant choices.

Do Not Give Mississippi Ideas

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance officials, faced with a growing budget gap, Thursday unveiled more ways to cut spending by doing away with a popular health care program for children, welfare payments to poor families and grants to university students.

That is the plan to cover a California budgetary shortfall.  After reading that I thought…Damn!…please do not give Barbour any ideas on new ways to screw the poor in Mississippi.

The recession is bad and the poor suffer more than others especially at the hands of state government.  Always the programs for the poor take the biggest hits, and the corporations get yet more tax cuts on the hope that it will stimulate the economy.  So far that has been a bust but no new tact is considered.

Eventually Mississippi will get out of the tax cuts for the rich and taxes for the workers mentality, but until then……workers continue to suffer at the hands of their state government.

Your Car Tags

Something had to be done or the price of Mississippi car tags was going to go up……enter a trick play…..tie the unsuccessful cig tax to the car tag bill……genius…it worked….cigs have gone up.

If we look back 10 years ago and the tobacco lawsuit that was won by the state….think about it……that windfall was to be used to fund an ailing MedicAid program…did not work out that way…did it?  Or that the tax revenue from the new casinos would be used to fund education…..another lie……never do new taxes go to the promised programs or if it does it is some minor that it does not help in the less.

The big argument for a new cig tax was that it only effected a small portion of the population…using that logic….maybe the car tags could be funded by a whopping tax on luxury SUVs…after all that effects only a small portion of the population…..thast will not happen…why…rich people rule!

One of the biggest selling points was that Mississippi collected one of the lowest cig taxes in the country……they wanted it to be more in line with the rest of the country……cool……using that logic….why not bring teachers pay more in line or unemployment benefits or ….well you get my drift.  That selling point was as lame as the population argument.

The true is that it , the tax, will effect the working class more than any other and Mississippi is notorious for crap on its workers.

Is Low Income Housing Gone For Good?

My is answer is yes.

Low income housing is taking a hit on the Coast……many of the units that were destroyed by Katrina are being rebuilt and will be more like Section 8 that the traditional low income housing.

I would expect the housing to change….why?…the state ignores the low income person.  To them they are a group that has no champion…therefore it is about profit not people.

I watched a local housing authority go from an organization of 15 maintenance people to about 5 on the Coast.  That number sadly hinders the quality of the work and repairs.

The people suffer, but it is NOT a maintenance man’s fault they can only do what management allows them to do.  I mean I am talking about a management team that did not want homes to have flowers growing.  The only thing that stopped the plant massacre was the intervention of one Trent Lott.

The housing authority went about planting many, many trees some of which were dead and the contractor was not forced to replace the dead ones.  Just a minor waste of money, but you can see where I am going with this.

To save money, the authority uses contractors instead of in-house people…..but I ask if it really saves money?  At one point the authority had very capable electricians, plumbers, carpenters and such.  And as normal for Mississippi they were paid a lot less than the going job market…..but yet these people have since gone and replaced with low bidder contractors, that have to make return visit after return visit to make good their screw ups.  Does that save money?

Still looks like the residents are not that important, saving money and giving management their raises are.

Way Cool Science!

I live in the South and one of our biggest probs is that of fire ants…the f*ckers are everywhere.  Most ant poison just makes them move a few feet away and kills very few.  There has got to be a way to control the little bastards.

But wait!  There is good news on the horizon!

It sounds like something out of science fiction: zombie fire ants. But it’s all too real.

Fire ants wander aimlessly away from the mound.

Eventually their heads fall off, and they die.

The tool is the tiny phorid fly, native to a region of South America where the fire ants in Texas originated. Researchers have learned that there are as many as 23 phorid species along with pathogens that attack fire ants to keep their population and movements under control.

The flies “dive-bomb” the fire ants and lay eggs. The maggot that hatches inside the ant eats away at the brain, and the ant starts exhibiting what some might say is zombie-like behavior.

The maggot eventually migrates into the ant’s head, but Plowes said he “wouldn’t use the word ‘control’ to describe what is happening. There is no brain left in the ant, and the ant just starts wandering aimlessly. This wandering stage goes on for about two weeks.”

About a month after the egg is laid, the ant’s head falls off and the fly emerges ready to attack any foraging ants away from the mound and lay eggs.

The flies, which are USDA -approved, do not attack native ants or species and have been introduced in other Gulf Coast states, Plowes said. Despite initial concerns, farmers and ranchers have been willing to let researchers use their property to establish colonies. At the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth in March, Plowes said they found plenty of volunteers.

I say bring it on!  If anyone has ever been biten by these ants knows that it is very uncomfortable and something has to be done.  They destroy a lot of wildlife and cause a lot of damage.  Kill the f*ckers!