Over 100 Schools Victimized in Bid-Rigging Scheme
The Justice Department issued the following statement.
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Rigged bids in Mississippi ??? No way !
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This name is TrimmOver 100 Schools Victimized in Bid-Rigging Scheme
The Justice Department issued the following statement.
He was caught and is currently being prosecuted! 17 negative Nelly about
anything government or Mississippi.
anything government or Mississippi.
Between this and Shad prosecuting the hell out of 70 year old women at a state Visitor's Center for being $8.75 short in cash register in 2015, I have no doubt public corruption has been cleaned up in Mississippi.
Phil Bryant, Bennie Thompson, & Chokwe all thinking "Hold my 17ing beer"
Certainly can appreciate someone not liking his politics, but has Bennie Thompson ever been credibly accused of using his elected position to defraud the public? I don't recall anything & his wiki page doesn't mention it.
I will be interesting to see who replaces him. He's been in Congress 30+ years and is 76 years old. I'm not in favor of mandatory term limits but that feels like too long. What a complicated public official - again, I can appreciate not agreeing with his politics, even as he's been a well-regarded chair/ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee & really went to bat for the Coast post-Katrina when FEMA was sucking.
Supposedly Chucky Labamba is/was being groomed to be the heir apparent but a few of his blunders have left Uncle Ben with a bad taste in his mouth about that deal. Never heard who the backup player was
that sounds implausible to me, but I'd guess his name ID would be about the highest of any potential candidates , at least of anyone currently in elected office
He used to be criticized for his networth in comparison to his earnings. There was stuff all the way back in the late nineties questioning how he became a millionaire that quickly on his salary.
Looking at his current disclosure, there's nothing much there:
Except he sold 30 ft of right of way across two lots on west capitol street in Jackson for between $1M and $5M. Bennie listed the value of the entire lots as between $15k and $50k on his 2022 disclosure. Obviously Entergy wouldn't have any incentive to do anything other than negotiate hard for ratepayers. Just sucks for ratepayers that they ran into a bang-up negotiator like Bennie.
Looks like he also sold a lot to Greater Bethel Church for a parking lot for between $1M and $5M. More than a little surprised that a parking lot would go for more than $1M in Mound Bayou, MS. On his 2022 disclosure, he listed that lot as being worth between $1000 and $15,000. I assume Tate has the Mound Bayou vote locked up since it's obviously booming right now.
ETA: I'm just taking what's on the reports at face value. I have no clue whether there is any real enforcement mechanism to stop them from lying on their disclosures (does anybody check against tax returns?) or whether members take their disclosure obligations seriously.
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I'd certainly be interested to learn more about those two transactions - at face value they sound fishy. Unfortunately, even if they're not completely above board it would be small potatoes in Congress. I'm great with mandatory blind trusts and/or oversight commissions with real teeth.
Lets see, ethics violations for have corporate sponsors pay four he and his family to visit St. Maarten in 2008-2009.
I wonder how he was selected to chair the Jan 6 commission. Surely being persuaded to kill the Yazoo Pumps had nothing to do with it.
That walking path in Bolton (Northside Drive), I'd love to see the funding and bid request on it. Using is at a bare minimum.
No easy solution. The pay right now is fantastic for morons but not enough for smart honest people. Our only chance a smart, capable, and decent congressman is for them to have family money (or doing after they've made their own money) or for it to be somebody willing to sacrifice a lot to be there. That's a pretty slim hope. So instead we get ones that couldn't be productive enough to make anything close to that or one that's willing to use their position to get rich, or people that are already rich and are feeding their ego rather than actually sacrficing (or are rich because of family money and haven't developed any capabilities of their own). You require blind trusts and take away their ability to invest and it's that much more costly for good, smart people to serve. But an oversight commission is generally going to end up captured by partisan interests or not have any teeth. Really need voters to demand more, but that's obviously not going to happen.
One small thing they could do is provide dorms for congressmen. $175k is pretty good, but if you don't provide them a place to stay, it's not great. It was fine before pricing on the hill and surrounding areas went bonkers, but now I'm guessing to have a decent place to stay that doesn't involve sharing a room is going to be 15% of their gross income? More? Provide them a relatively spartan dorm so they can at least have a place to stay without spending 15-20% of their gross income on a renting a second home and that makes it a little more palatable, and having the dorm be spartan means you don't make the job that much more attractive to the morons.
Granted I think they have pretty much given up on trying to stop the practice of members essentially living out of their office. So they sort of have a dorm, but I'm sure it would be preferable to have an actual studio dorm room type set up if it didn't cost $2k a month.
Doing business with the state on the up and up means that you lose a lot of deals to the people who don't do so. However, I'd rather work that way than be dishonest...Over 100 Schools Victimized in Bid-Rigging Scheme
The Justice Department issued the following statement.
ETA: because of state purchasing rules, it is very hard for state entities to get what they need and to buy it from who they work best with. The terms in state law about "lowest and best" means "lowest". I can see how people get frustrated. Also, for at least a decade now, a state agency can buy up to $5k without getting a second bid. It makes it incredibly hard to function, or you spend a large amount of your time trying to specify and get bids.
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We very much need max age of around 72-75 for all national elected offices and all Federal judges.
I'm mostly good with all this. My only addition is the size of the House should grow - no idea how much. The last time the number of House members increased I believe was in the 1920s. At that time a Congressman represented around 200,000 people. Today that number is knocking the door on 800,000.
Yeah. While you're at it, let's go ahead and codify some kind of logical way to draw district lines without gerrymandering.
I would welcome doubling the number of congressmen and doubling the number of staff positions per congressman and senator if they could do away with Chevron deference and stop delegating legislative authority to the bureaucracy.
I'd think you'd need to 1000x the size of Congress if you actually want your elected officials getting down in the nitty-gritty of policy implementation and completely eliminate agencies. While I'm in favor of maintaining the status quo of Chevron deference, I hear the arguments against it. I'd be highly skeptical this is the way to make those changes you seek.
The purchasing rules in our state are awful. I work a lot of state contracts and see a lot of people win bids that are not qualified. Our state spends more money fixing mistakes from bad contractors than it would have cost to do it right the first time. In a state that prides itself in being republican our purchasing looks very socialist.
